Aslan's Forum: 2005-2006

For the past couple of years, I've facilitated a readers' forum at Oak Hills Baptist Church. The forum, titled Aslan's Forum, was started in the late 90s by Wendell Hoffman.

The forum was a big reason why my wife and I chose to attend Oak Hills. Moving from the Dallas metroplex to Sioux Falls, I had pretty much given up on the possibility of having a thoughtful, intellectual reading group, or something like Denton Bible Church's Lay Institute. But, when we visited Oak Hills, the sign for Aslan's Forum was stading smack-dab in the middle of the hallway. The group became a real blessing for me.

Now that I'm facilitating the group, the hardest part of the job is compiling the list of books to be read during a given year. I get several helpful suggestions from group members, but much of the process consists of me putting together a list of books that I find compelling, and then tweaking the list in hopes that it is perceived as intellectually rigorous and compelling without being too academic. I'm never sure if I succeed.

The reading list for 2005-2006 was generated with a loose theme centering on the senses. Four of the seven books have some connection with one of the senses. Of course, some of those books are more closely connected with the senses than others. In any event, here's the reading list for the next year. It goes public in September. Anyone interested in participating can obtain more details from the web site for Aslan's Forum.

• October 2005: C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
  
• November 2005: Philip Yancey's Rumors of Another World
  
• December 2005: Bill McKibben's Hundred Dollar Holiday
  
• February 2006: Henri Nouwen's The Return of the Prodigal Son
  
• March 2006: Robin Jensen's The Substance of Things Seen
  
• April 2006: Michael Schut's Food & Faith: Justice, Joy, and Daily Bread
  
• May 2006: Richard Mouw's The Smell of Sawdust
  

There Goes My Life

I dropped the kids off with the grandparents today. It's the first time they've gone away on their own. Usually if both my wife and I have to be out of town or something, then one of the grandparents comes to South Dakota to stay at our house. In any event, as I was driving home--like that scene from the movie Better Off Dead, Kenny Chesney's "There Goes My Life" came on the radio. (Those unfamilar with the song can at least take a look at the lyrics here.) While the song is about a young man who became a dad as a teenager, and I didn't become a dad until my 30s--and under much different circumstances, I suspect it is a song that resonates with most fathers of little girls (of all ages). At least, I hope it would on some level.

I'll admit to being a guy who tears up at some odd things. For instance, Bill Murray's Scrooged makes me well up every time. Chesney's song hits me in a similar fashion, especially on days when I've just started driving north while the kids are riding south. It was a bittersweet three or four minutes.

Those minutes did, however, revive my memory of a web-based writing project that crossed my brain a while back. One that I've considered using as sort of a special-topics-creative-writing-over-Interim course. Given the impact that music has on our lives, the way songs can function almost as bookmarks allowing us to flip back to particular emotional places in our past, I have this notion of a web site called "The Synoptic Jukebox."

The interface to the site would function like one of those old countertop jukeboxes, where you flip the pages to see the various songs available. When readers select a particular title, they would be met with a collection of writings connected in some way with the song. The writings wouldn't be about the songs--at least not directly--but about those emotional places that we associate with various songs. Hall and Oates's "Sara Smile," for example, might connect with an account of a high school dance where some goofy young teen (to remain nameless) requested the song in order to orchestrate the perfect moment to ask a certain Sara to dance. But, perhaps the DJ at this dance, who said he'd be glad to play the song, never got around to doing so, and the goofy young teen--waiting for the perfect moment--never asked the girl to dance. That's just one hypothetical example.

The intersections of music and experience seem such fertile ground that the site could grow rapidly, and given a sufficient number of voices, could become quite fascinating. Regional difference. Generational difference. Etc.

gad

Llamas, Tigers, and Ducks

My wife is out of town for a week, so the kids and I went to the zoo this morning. It was probably the single most impressive visit I've ever made to any zoo. The tigers (a mother and two "teen-age"? cubs) were frisky. Wrestling. Pouncing on one another. Chasing. Even, at times, standing up on their hind legs swatting at one another like sparring partners. In the truest sense of the word, it was quite awesome.

Of course, when we got home (after a trip through McDonald's), I asked my kids about their favorite things at the zoo. My son (3) informed me he didn't have one. My daughter (5) rattled off the following list:

• the mama duck with chicks that ran across the rhino's pen.
  
• feeding the ducks and swans.
  
• the duck that half bit her finger while she was feeding it.
  

No tigers. No bears. Not even the llama-like creatures getting it on while all the parents snickered nervously and the children asked "Why is he making that noise?"

My daughter, the more conversant of the two kids, then asked me about my favorite thing, at which time I reminded them about the tigers. Her reply was, "Oh, yeah."

The conversation got me thinking about the extent to which learning is often serendipitous. My kids may never see tigers playing so actively at any other point in their lives, and chances are they won't remember this moving sight. Had the event occurred five years from now, the impact may have been different. Similarly, I've heard folks say of any number of novels, "You have to be at a certain point in your life to really enjoy it." While I suspect that line is often used as some combination of excuse and encouragement, I also suspect that there can be some truth in it.

The point I guess, is this: The feeling I had today with my children was not entirely unlike the feeling I sometimes get with my first-year composition courses. Some of the students are "ready." The events in their lives have brought them to a place where they are receptive to and appreciative of the discoveries and the challenges and the rewards of writing. Others--even while academically and intellectually prepared--see the course as a hoop to jump through. (Perhaps because we've framed it that way?) Certainly, I was in these same shoes as an undergraduate. In such instances, I find myself wishing for something along the lines of a "ghost of Christmas future," some way to provide a bit of perspective that hasn't yet been generated in the course of one's life to date.

gad

The Funk

Okay, this isn't going to be much of a post. I've been dealing with some sort of funk for the last three days--coughing, intermittent fever. Not debilitating, but bad enough that all I want to do is sleep.

The last three days were supposed to be spent scraping my house in preparation for a new paint job, and engaging in the blogging phase of the DWP E-Writing Marathon, and finishing up some comments for an independent study that I'm overseeing at the moment. I've done little of any, and I've found myself thinking some about my students, their illnesses and absences, and my reactions to them. I simply don't remember being sick very often when I was an undergrad, and after the last three days, I'm quite thankful for that. Combine this funk with my 20-year-old-self and a 16 credit hour load, and I think it's fair to say that I would be just about ready to make my run on Jeopardy.

gad

Dakota Writing Project Electronic Writing Marathon

Well after nearly three months without posting to this blog, I should have a flurry of activity over the course of the next week. In the summer of 2004, I began my association with the Dakota Writing Project, an affiliate of the National Writing Project. This summer, I'm helping to facilitate an "electronic writing marathon," a six-week opportunity for teachers in the DWP network to explore various electronic writing media and their potential applications for pedagogy.

This week, our focus is on blogs, so I'll be posting at least three times in the next few days. (I'm going to try to prevent this initial post from being one of the three.) Hopefully this flurry will spill over into the rest of the year ahead.

gad

Disheveled in the Pulpit

Okay, I've taken far too long to post to this blog, even if I'm talking to an audience of one. Early in this semester, Kirby--in his Monday-night class on calling--asked us to describe last semester in a word, and our hopes for this semester in a word. My two words were "fog" and "joy," respectively. Well, this semester has become a fog as well, and perhaps in more pronounced ways.

My epigraph for this blog--taken from Annie Dillard--emphasizes the connection between verbalization and seeing. Well, I haven't had/made the time for verbalizing (as indicated by the gap between posts), and as a result, I'm not seeing very clearly right now. I'm very much in the fog.

Today was one of those days when I didn't even have the time to get naked (see the post titled "Naked in the Pulpit," below). Nor was I hiding behind an impressive if metaphorical set of threads designed to perpetuate in others some perception of control, authority, or even competence. I was disheveled today.

Part of the mess was the relative apathy that hits both students and faculty alike at this time of year. Part of it was a completely unproductive weekend. Also, by attempting to not let work overwhelm me, I've managed to let work overwhelm me. Tons of papers to grade. Lots of other administrative type stuff to be done as well. Plus the onslaught of more personal obligations and events that surface toward the end of the school year. To misquote Jerry Reed, in that masterpiece of American cinema--Smoky & the Bandit--"I've got a long ways to go, and a short time to get there."

I don't mind being "naked in the classroom." Indeed, that's my goal, really. Today, however, was one of those days where I simply couldn't get out of my sweats.

Now that I've run a perfectly apt metaphor into the ground, I'll try to get some grading done.

Naked In the Pulpit

Let me throw out another link to some stuff by Tim Keel. This time, it's an article titled "Naked in the Pulpit," published in Leadership Journal. The article reflects on Tim's movement from a more planned, scripted, didactic manner of preaching toward a more personal, intimate, relational approach. As I'm not a preacher, I find the article interesting mostly for the potential parallels to be drawn between Tim's reflection on preaching and my own manner as a teacher.

For example, consider the following:

If the only kind of speech we use is speech that deals with comprehension, then we will only talk about that which we understand. As a preacher, I am invited to describe a reality that I am just beginning to get the hint of. That means being willing not to know, to stumble over language so I might tell a story. I'm not so interested in merely providing comprehension; I'm interested in describing reality, even if that leaves room for confusion.

In many ways, this same interest is what most motivates me as a teacher. It is this interest that pulled me back to graduate school to begin with. On the good days, this goal comes close to being realized--at least for me. (You'd have to ask my students whether or not I ever really come close from their perspective.) On the not-so-good days, this goal seems miles away. I find myself wondering about my ability to pursue such a goal, to overcome the various forces--cultural and personal--that can inhibit the pursuit (e.g., the assessment culture, NCLB, etc.).

Self Split

Now, in my fifth year at USF, I'm finally getting to do something that I thought I'd be able to do when I first accepted my position--namely, take advantage of the opportunity to sit in on classes that feed my whims and questions-of-the-moment. My wife regularly comments--half-jokingly--that if we hadn't gotten married, I'd still be in school somewhere, pursuing a degree in something. She's probably right.

This semester, I'm sitting in on Dr. Kirby Wilcoxson's course titled Spirituality, Calling, & Service. In tonight's class, we engaged in something called "class splits," where Kirby presents the class with certain choices, and each individual in the room indicates his or her choice by moving to one side of the room or the other. The final question of the night was something like the following: "Those of you would like to hear audibly God's account of what will happen in the next ten years of your life, move to this side of the room. Those who wouldn't want to know, move to that side."

I moved to the "wouldn't-want-to-know" side. As we discussed our reasons for choosing to know or not to know, we quickly saw that part of the issue may have been the way the question was worded. Would it have made a difference if God were revealing merely the destination, rather than the entirety of the next ten years? Then, one of the individuals on the "want-to-know" side asked why we wouldn't want to know? Afterwards, I sat half listening to the rest of the discussion, trying to clarify my own thinking.

As best as I can recall, my first thoughts in reaction to the question centered on the joy of discovery, and the avoidance of limits. There is something in me that cherishes the ability to learn and discover, the freedom to drop one subject and follow another if my interests dictate. I think this is one reason why I was drawn to an emphasis in creative writing throughout graduate school. Rather than being an end in and of itself, the study of creative writing was, for me, the study of a means--the means to explore ideas, experiences, memories, emotions, and discover what might be learned, to discover what I think. To arrive, in short, at what Robert Frost calls "a momentary stay against confusion."

Somewhere within all of that reflection, I found myself moving (albeit metaphorically) to the other side of the room. I thought back to Matthew 7:9: "Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone." God's design for my life would presumably reflect, develop, and utilize my personality traits, habits of mind, strengths, weaknesses, dispositions. Given that assumption, I suspect that if God spoke his 10-year plan to me--especially if it focused on the larger goal rather than the specific path--it would be necessarily vague, allowing me to follow my passions and retain those joys of discovery and whimsy. Emphases might shift. Specific behaviors might need to change. Motivations would certainly be called into question. But, for the most part, I suspect an audible expression of God's plan would address--and perhaps even highlight--those longings that moved me toward the "wouldn't-want-to-know" side of the room.

Jayber Crow: The Second Time

My Interim course concluded by reading Jayber Crow, a novel by Wendell Berry. It's my second time through the book, and different things jumped out at me this time around. Here's the passage that has continued to linger:

My mistake was not in asking the questions that so plagued my mind back there at Pigeonville, for how could I have helped it? I can't help it yet; the questions are with me yet. My mistake was ignoring the verses that say God loves the world.

But now (by a kind of generosity, it seemed) the world had so beaten me about the head, and so favored me with god and beautiful things, that I was able to see. "God loves Port William as it is," I thought. "Why else should He want it to be better than it is? (250-51)

All of us have heard folks talk about how being a parent opens up a new understanding of God's love. In my four years of fatherhood, I've sensed this to be true. Felt it to be true. Berry has helped me to understand how it is true. Our society is one that tends to equate love with an uncomplicated acceptance. The key word there is "uncomplicated." Love includes acceptance. There is no question that I will accept my kids in any situation. I can't help but to do so. But that acceptance is complicated. There's more to it. It is because of my love for my kids that I want them to "be better." That desire for betterment doesn't negate acceptance. The two are intimately tied to one another. The presence of one to the exclusion of the other is necessarily a diluted love that more poorly reflects God's love for us.

Practice

For the next Aslan's Forum at Oak Hills Baptist Church, we're discussing Lauren Winner's Mudhouse Sabbath. Having grown up Jewish and converted to Christianity in her college years, Winner reflects upon Jewish practices that she misses, "places where Christians have some things to learn"(ix). The following passage convicts me every time I read this book.

Jews do these things with more attention and wisdom not because they are more righteous nor because God likes them better, but rather because doing, because action, sits at the center of Judaism. Practice is to Judaism what belief is to Christianity.(ix)

Certainly, I'm thankful that my ability to have a relationship with Christ is based upon faith rather than works. And, certainly, in a mature Christianity the dichotomy between belief and practice becomes almost a false one, as the two undergird and support one another. I do think, however, that perhaps the pendulum has swung a bit too far in one direction. I fear that most of us--myself included--too easily dismiss the spiritual disciplines meant to enrich and deepen our faith and steady us in those times when belief lags or wavers. Combine this tendency with R. R. Reno's discussion of acedia (see previous post), and we risk cultivating a faith that remains incredibly abstract and qualified.

As an academic, I believe in critical distance. I sometimes wonder, however, if our embrace of critical distance is pursued as a corrective to an un-practiced belief. I suspect the conviction I feel from Winner's passage is sparked by the likelihood that critical distance (which comes fairly easily) must be combined with spritiual discipline (much more difficult) if our belief is to purposeful, tangible, and vital.

Dose of Conviction

A few months ago, I discovered a blog written by Tim Keel. Tim and I worked at the same summer camp for several years while we were in college, and he's since become pastor of a church in Kansas City. It's been a blast to drop in on his blog and eavesdrop on his life a bit. He's become a pretty sharp guy :), and I've become a regular reader. A while back, he shared this quotation from Dostoevsky, which has lingered with me for a couple of weeks, as it forces me to consider contemporary views of the intellectual life--especially my own.

These men do not understand that the sacrifice of life is, perhaps, the easiest of all sacrifices in many cases, while to sacrifice, for example, five or six years of their ebulliently youthful life to hard, difficult studies, to learning, in order to increase tenfold their strength to serve the very truth and the very deed that they loved and set out to accomplish - such sacrifice is quite often almost beyond the strength of many of them.

~ Narrator, Dostoevksy’s The Brothers Karamozov

Acedia

The following post was written a while back in the context of a group blog that never took off. I thought I would go ahead and repost it here, since the issue continues to linger.

======

A recent thread on the ChristLit discussion list lead me to the following article: "Fighting the Noonday Devil," by R. R. Reno. Given the goals of USF and LAR, I found the article to be both convicting and fascinating. It focuses on the danger of acedia--"a lassitude and despair that overwhelms spiritual striving"--and explores the manner in which the modern academy, with its emphasis on critical distance, might be inflicting acedia upon students. Reno cites Dante's Purgatorio several times, and has prompted me to take a closer look. I ended up buying Merwin's translation not long ago.

In any event, the article is an intriguing read, and one that generates some questions in terms of LAR goals (particularly the search-for-truth aspect of the Christian liberal arts) and how LAR functions in the larger scheme of USF. Some quotations:

There are no intellectual solutions to spiritual problems. Like each of the seven deadly sins, acedia must be fought with spiritual discipline. Such discipline is profoundly alien to our culture, not because we have alternatives, but because we entertain the fantasy of life without spiritual demands. This fantasy is the most important legacy of modernity. For the great innovation of modern culture was the promise of progress without spiritual discipline.

* * *

We should rush toward our Lord, for we can never become too intimate, and we should wait patiently with Him, for He always has something more to give. To do so, we must place the pedagogy of critical distance and the dictates of conscience within a larger vision of journey toward the truth, a journey in which the warm and enduring embrace of love is to be cherished rather than mocked or feared.

How--at USF, in LAR, or in the academy generally--do we place our instruction of critical distance into this larger context? Or, do we handle the critical distance stuff and let other parts of campus handle the larger vision?

gad

Welcome

As I was attempting to get this blog up and running, a friend of mine commented in an email that he simply doesn't see the point in blogs. My unverbalized response to his comment, and my rationalization for bothering with this whole endeavor, is expressed in the following quotation from Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:

Seeing is of couse very much a matter of verbalization. Unless I call my attention to what passes before my eyes, I simply won't see it.

So, "37" is a means of calling my own attention to what I see.

Why not a journal or a sketchbook?

Well, a writing experience this past summer has convinced me that I need to be wrestling with a rhetorical audience--or at least the possibility of one. Stated more directly, I simply tend to think more about my writing and thinking when the possibility of a reader exists. And yet, that lurking reader can also paralyze me. This medium seems like a worthwhile means of simultaneously considering and rejecting audience.

Thus, we're off.