The New Hampshire Public Radio has just run a story about No Sweat Apparel. Check it out.
Cyd and I have been buying shoes ans shirts from them for a while. Quality, well made stuff. And responsible too.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
No Sweat on Public Radio
The New Hampshire Public Radio has just run a story about No Sweat Apparel. Check it out.
Cyd and I have been buying shoes ans shirts from them for a while. Quality, well made stuff. And responsible too.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Hum...Politics
I'm very much looking forward to Obama's acceptance speech tonight. And seeing the reaction from various fronts.
It is good to be living into these moments.
And as a contrast, living into the Russo-Georgian 'war' also seema to be a moment in 21st century global politics. America might get its first Black President, and Russia shows the world that it is liable to invade a sovereign country on the basis of humanitarian compulsion (even though some think it is to protect its oil interests in the region) Oops, that sounds like some else.
It is good to be living into these moments.
And as a contrast, living into the Russo-Georgian 'war' also seema to be a moment in 21st century global politics. America might get its first Black President, and Russia shows the world that it is liable to invade a sovereign country on the basis of humanitarian compulsion (even though some think it is to protect its oil interests in the region) Oops, that sounds like some else.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
"This is my blood" and the fruit of the earth
"I think that any sermon on the salvation of the soul, on love of the poor, any so-called eucharistic ritual, any evangelical discourse that doesn't concern itself with saving the earth and its natural resources, is perverted. How can certain men and women repeat the words "This is my body, this is my blood" over the fruit of the earth with out worrying about how long that earth will remain fruitful? What are these men and women talking about?"- Luce Irigaray (1983)
Wow. This is great. Personal salvation, corporate worship, and social action must coordinate with preservation of creation or it all equals non-sense. I'm all about the Eucharist, but this really put it in a different frame. I think I really should become a farmer to understand the gospel (and why did Jesus pick fishermen anyway when he's always talking agriculture?)
Christian Politics?
Some great posts on christian politics, or on not always as christian as we might think.
"Not Voting" as an Act of Christian Discernment- by Dave Fitch
"Not Voting" as an Act of Christian Discernment- by Dave Fitch
Changing the Wind?- over at Jesus Manifesto
Advise Everyone...Endorse No One- by Shane Claiborne
Monday, July 21, 2008
Summertimes
Posting these days gets more difficult, esp. with learning German and working on some articles. Although I have set up a facebook account, finally, and mostly living through that cyber-portal.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Christian Liturgy #1: reading notes
(these are my reading notes for my Christian Liturgy Class)
In his essay, Kevin Irwin notes two types of liturgical theology: first, reflection on the meaning/significance of the liturgy, particularly the sacraments; second, using liturgy as a principle source for systematic theology. This dialogue is noted in the reciprocal relationship between lex orandi and lex credendi, where the prayers of the church are the material for theology, and theology can be a corrective to deficient prayer. To these two, current liturgical theology has added lex agendi, which is the performative experience of liturgy. These three must always work in critical relation.
Kilmartin, Christian Liturgy: I Theology and Practice, sets the stage with the scholastic definition: a sacrament is a sign instituted by Christ to confer the grace with it signifies. But this definition only makes sense in the context of salvation history, addressing humanity’s problem. Therefore a theology of the sacraments must address God’s activity in the world, human sinfulness, and most of all, be linked to the incarnation and life of Christ and his Church (6). This leads to the questions of divine initiative and faithful response of the Church. Against the neo-scholastic separation of created and uncreated grace, recent theology affirms the original grace of God as always orienting humanity toward God, through the sacraments and elsewhere. Also, against the neo-scholastic orientation of a passive reception of the liturgy, there has been a turn to active participation in the sacraments. Also, from the scholastic understanding that the sacraments happen within the church by qualified minister, a turn to sacraments as acts of the Church itself. Conclusding, in the liturgy, God addresses his people through Christ, who is still proclaiming his gospel to all people. In the liturgy, the assembly hears, receives, and responds in faith to the call of God.
The article, "How to Receive a Sacrament and Mean It," Karl Rahner deepens this perspective by initiating a Copernican revolution in sacramental understanding as being not a movement from the world to God and then a return to the world, but rather as the movement of the world to God. He begins by moving beyond old understading of grace, as Kilmartin explained it, and also by outline the liturgy of the world as salvation history, which always situates the narrower conception of liturgy. From here Rahner unfold that the efficacy of the sacraments is not added to the sign-character, but rather is found within themselves. Or rather, the causality is internal to the sacrament itself. This return to ancient tradition of the ‘real symbol’ allow Rahner to then speak of the Church as the ‘sacrament of salvation’ of the world (via Vatican 2), linked with his articulation of anonymous Christians. In this way, as the Church celebrates the sacraments, it is as a sign to the world, even without their participation, of the redemption of Christ.
Analysis:
Rahner returns to patristic source of sacraments as unity of sign and reality, but then applies the latter shifts of the corpus mysticum to this recovery (i.e. anonymous redeemed). It is only a half-turn to patristic source because it doesn’t identify church with Christ as his body as an ‘ontological symbolism’ but only a ‘real symbol’ linking Christ and world through the church as a sign.
Questions:
- Is ‘real symbol’ related to performative action, the perlocutionary aspect of language?
-How does Rahner’s view relate to the secularization thesis of Christianity, or an understanding of the ‘kenotic’ emptying of the Church into Culture?
-If the ancient tradition affirmed the combination of sign and reality, sign and cause, in the sacraments, they also affirmed there was no salvation outside of the Church. How is it that by recovering the formed, Rahner still denies the latter?
In his essay, Kevin Irwin notes two types of liturgical theology: first, reflection on the meaning/significance of the liturgy, particularly the sacraments; second, using liturgy as a principle source for systematic theology. This dialogue is noted in the reciprocal relationship between lex orandi and lex credendi, where the prayers of the church are the material for theology, and theology can be a corrective to deficient prayer. To these two, current liturgical theology has added lex agendi, which is the performative experience of liturgy. These three must always work in critical relation.
Kilmartin, Christian Liturgy: I Theology and Practice, sets the stage with the scholastic definition: a sacrament is a sign instituted by Christ to confer the grace with it signifies. But this definition only makes sense in the context of salvation history, addressing humanity’s problem. Therefore a theology of the sacraments must address God’s activity in the world, human sinfulness, and most of all, be linked to the incarnation and life of Christ and his Church (6). This leads to the questions of divine initiative and faithful response of the Church. Against the neo-scholastic separation of created and uncreated grace, recent theology affirms the original grace of God as always orienting humanity toward God, through the sacraments and elsewhere. Also, against the neo-scholastic orientation of a passive reception of the liturgy, there has been a turn to active participation in the sacraments. Also, from the scholastic understanding that the sacraments happen within the church by qualified minister, a turn to sacraments as acts of the Church itself. Conclusding, in the liturgy, God addresses his people through Christ, who is still proclaiming his gospel to all people. In the liturgy, the assembly hears, receives, and responds in faith to the call of God.
The article, "How to Receive a Sacrament and Mean It," Karl Rahner deepens this perspective by initiating a Copernican revolution in sacramental understanding as being not a movement from the world to God and then a return to the world, but rather as the movement of the world to God. He begins by moving beyond old understading of grace, as Kilmartin explained it, and also by outline the liturgy of the world as salvation history, which always situates the narrower conception of liturgy. From here Rahner unfold that the efficacy of the sacraments is not added to the sign-character, but rather is found within themselves. Or rather, the causality is internal to the sacrament itself. This return to ancient tradition of the ‘real symbol’ allow Rahner to then speak of the Church as the ‘sacrament of salvation’ of the world (via Vatican 2), linked with his articulation of anonymous Christians. In this way, as the Church celebrates the sacraments, it is as a sign to the world, even without their participation, of the redemption of Christ.
Analysis:
Rahner returns to patristic source of sacraments as unity of sign and reality, but then applies the latter shifts of the corpus mysticum to this recovery (i.e. anonymous redeemed). It is only a half-turn to patristic source because it doesn’t identify church with Christ as his body as an ‘ontological symbolism’ but only a ‘real symbol’ linking Christ and world through the church as a sign.
Questions:
- Is ‘real symbol’ related to performative action, the perlocutionary aspect of language?
-How does Rahner’s view relate to the secularization thesis of Christianity, or an understanding of the ‘kenotic’ emptying of the Church into Culture?
-If the ancient tradition affirmed the combination of sign and reality, sign and cause, in the sacraments, they also affirmed there was no salvation outside of the Church. How is it that by recovering the formed, Rahner still denies the latter?
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