When I Was A Child I Thought As A Child

or something like that.

I'm tired, gang. My application packet for the other campus in my district is due Thursday. It's Tuesday. And I tend to take these things seriously. I haven't updated my vita, my resume, since 99, and it it taking me hours of deeply critical work. I say critical, because that's how the writing feels. Every word, every sentence...though my tone is much more relaxed, I notice, than in the parts of the resume I wrote in 99. Then I was gasping for professional life; now I'm tenured and pink-skinned and that's not going anywhere.

Tooling around the blogspot world I find several professors writing truly anonymous blog (unlike my poor attempt at anonymity here). Maybe there should be a webring; we're an anxious and driven bunch, and chatty as kathy.

I'm still tired. And of course, I don't have much time today. So much of my past I want to articulate, but that will have to come slowly.

One thing I will say is that the vestry retreat last weekend was helpful with my constant doubt. I'm reading Raymond Brown's nt intro, and want to read n.t. wright's book on the resurrection, but Christianity can be approached from the intellectual or the spiritual plane. Meaning I want to wrap my brain around my faith, sure, but the content of the faith is nearly unique, is perhaps unique, in world religion. Bhakti comes close, but without the sacrificial, personal savior. And more than anything, we have the gospel literature. Four books unlike any others, in wonder, in tone, in style.

Oh to be right, to spend eternity with a loving creator. Who else has promised this?

I've tried to do a little theoblogology here, but reading wright and brown...hah, I am a child. I am unread. It is comforting to know that, maybe, to know I'm not alone and that minds more rigorously trained than mine have gone before, laid the groundwork for a modern, rational faith. A faith which can accept what science and reason have to say about the world, and still cling to the glorious promise of the vacant tomb.

Not that this isn't all strange for an ex-evangelical like myself. My priest (whom I grilled on the long drive to the retreat) doesn't believe in a fall, just a god who wants a relationship with the one species on this planet who can know him. Interesting. While many in my church still read the bible as the authoritative word, many don't. Hence the international war, and it is becoming a war, over the bishop of new hampshire. There are clear verses, in the ot and the nt, against homosexual sex. But are those writers' opinions, defective and contemporary world views, or something more? And is the real issue, say, world hunger?

The E church is so tolerant of different ideas, as long as the early creeds are maintained and the bible still used as normative for faith...it's refreshing but staggering.

Oh, I'm still tired. Sitting in my office feeling a hundred years old. Who were those people in Swift's Gulliver that lived forever but aged like the rest of us? Like Tithonus? I feel, oh, two or three hundred. Don't know why. I think I slept enough last night.

It's nice to be sharing here again. I still don't know what my blog is or should be. It doesn't come up if I google my name because I've never used a last name here, but there's enough info that if anyone who knows me found it they'd know right away who I was. When I began, I wanted to write about my faith, then felt I should share my struggles with ocd, then needed to share them here (been doing gradually over this last year incidentally). What I would most like to do is tell my stories, my past; some of them are gripping. How wonderful such expression will feel. Do I have the talent to do them justice? No. Or not yet, as I believe writing is a learned process. I've never written creative prose, so blog is the place to learn. Someday, I will get to that.

Have to run. Be well all. Wish me luck with my letter of app. and vita and all that jazz.

Comments

KMJ said…
Absolutely! Best of luck in getting everything together for the application deadline. I'm sure it will all come together as you want. I'm with you in the uncertainty of what the blog should be for me. My photoblog is easy. Pictures and pretty much nothing personal. But the other...much more difficult to know what to / not to put in. Ah well, I haven't regretted anything I've posted yet. (At least not long term regret!) :)

P.S. I thought and you and S this weekend, because Eric and I were in San Francisco Sat & Sun. Love that city.
FunKiller said…
Brother, I feel your professional pain. I too am preparing resumes for employment applications. Mine are headed up north near Scooter. I will pray for you, I could use all the prayer I can get.

As for the reading. When I first began reading Wright I was truly aware of my intelllectual mortality. I have yet to finish anything of his I have started.
Peace.
Tenax said…
Hey guys,

yes, I am still in blogolescence, unsure what I want my blog to do and be, and what I can share here. I am very glad just to have one, though.

So you're trying to move up north, Mike! Wow. Best of luck for sure. What a change that will be.
I love 'intellectual mortality.' Awesome phrase. I haven't begun wright's big book yet, just saw it on a book shelf.

t

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