My Son
I had intended to call my son kathemai on the site – his name appears in Rev 4:3 like mine appears in Luke 1:63. However, I couldn’t get past the word meaning “he that is seated” looking like the feminine name, Kathy Mae. Since my son now prefers to sit up over anything else, it seemed appropriate.

In any case, today is the first day that I remember where he looked at me and grinned. He genuinely smiled at the recognition of his papa, and not because he thought that my nose was a great chew toy. In my estimation, this is the first day he recognized his Dad. (As compared to Mom, whom he recognized around day 18.)

Literary Theory
Some have decried the death of literary theory in American circles. I dunno. I read Derrida, Lacan, Russell, and others in college and it was not enjoyable or even meaningful to me. Most of the folks I read appeared to be more interested in philosophy and the search for meaning as opposed to providing any real ideas about art and literature. All I got from Derrida was a very obscure and meandering way to say “the artist’s intent is not necessarily important to understanding his/her work”. (I’m sure that he would have said that I was not reading his work correctly and that I am obviously oversimplifying concepts I do not understand. Oh well.) The last essay of any note that I read and enjoyed about literary theory was written by T.S. Elliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919). Maybe I have simply appreciated his ideas summed up in this quote “literary criticism should be completed by criticism from a definite ethical and theological standpoint.” I could write more about this, but on to the point…

I believe there is no real literary theory in the US because our culture as a whole is anti-intellectual. One author, Paul Auster has remarked that we have been this way since Andrew Jackson was president. Again, there’s something to that sentiment that would require another series of posts.

Seriously, though, the US is largely anti-intellectual. We do not want intellectual political leaders (Dubya,Nagin) or commentators (O’Reilly, Limbaugh, Franken). We do not want intellectual religious leaders (Falwell, Joel Osteen, e.g.). We do not want intellecutal artists (Spears, 50 cent, Aguliera, Mapplethorpe, Clive Barker, and many more in every discipline). Very few go to see Ted Kooser, the US Poet Laureate, when he travels outside Nebraska. Truth be told, most folks here in Nebraska wouldn’t know what he looks like. If they saw him, they’d probably ask him what he thinks of Steve Spurrier. (He looks like Lou Holtz). It’s no great secret that we pay Tom Cruise 100Mil a film, but we really follow him because we wonder about Katie Holmes and the practice of complete silence during a Scientologist birth. I’m not saying that art has to be some huge intellectual exercise, I’m going to watch MI:III when it hits the dollar movies. I am saying that there is a place for at least a little thoughtfulness – some evidence that effort was put into a work. No one should have to read How to Do Things with Words by J.L. Austen, but at least read Brooklyn Follies or How to Eat a Poem before moving on to Stephen King, Clive Cussler, or tuning in to the next episode of American Idol.

Christianity and the First Internet Generation
We grew up with computers – I was programming basic at 8. I surfed the web in 1989 with this really cool browser called Mosaic. We were all ‘connecting’ to the university mainframe in order to play MUDs. I did spreadsheets with Microsoft’s Multiplan on a TI-99/4A. I even attempted two computer projects for the science fair only to have the programs crash both times. Those were the days.

During all this, however, members of my generation found a new resource to gather information, the internet. Quite frankly, so much info poured in that we really didn’t know what to do with it. (We were, after all, the generation that played Trivial Pursuit.) Not knowing what to do, we simply tried to memorize it all. In the process, the definition of an intelligent person shifted from a person with great mental ability to a person with tremendous recall.

People my age that strive to be close to God seem to make the mistake that their relationship to God is somehow marked by how much they can cram into their skulls about the Bible, its culture, its languages, etc. As Yancey has said in “The Jesus I Never Knew”, he could list all of Jesus’ miracles in order, but had failed to understand the signifigance of any one of them.

More later.

Friend in MN
A friend of mine in MN is going to start a ministry in a couple years specifically aimed at the gay community, mainly because he was a part of that community for a long time. As he said to me, the goal is not to change from homosexuality to heterosexuality, but to strive for holiness. As he pointed out to me, the opposite of homosexuality is holiness, not exchanging one sin for another.

He regularly talks to the folks at Adullum Underground, but doesn’t seem to be making much progress. I read on Adullum every once in a great while just to see how he is doing. Every time I go, though, I cringe because I recognize myself at 19 in almost every post.
More later.