It's a road map to how to Sabbath littered with jewels along the way but I find the author's generous borrowing from other religions to supplement the concept of Sabbath a bit icky though not denying the usefulness and insights of those practices.
The concept of growing in time instead of in wealth was insightful for me. There are many good suggestions on how to incorporate Sabbath practices. [a deeper wealth]
The joy of rest, begin again, the rhythm of creation, nobody special (downward mobility/humility), being Sabbath to people by listening when they are aching....These were some topics Muller expounded.
2 October-1 November, 2017
New York: Bantam Books, 1999
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
Thursday, October 19, 2017
35. God Can Not Be Trusted and Five Other Lies of Satan - Tony Evans
P: This is such a neat little book that is packed full of truths for the Christian life. I read it in a sitting but it has reminded me of my need to put my trust in God's faithful promises in the Bible--each and every one of them!--because He is a God who never lies. I have often fallen prey of the lies that the Enemy throws at us.
-Take time to take up your Sword: "That means reading, studying, and meditating on the Bible daily. e.g. Jesus in the wilderness, knowing how to respond to the devil with God's Word. Often we feel frustrated about the bad things in life and get tired when we have God's Word there already. "All we need to do is obey the words of Jesus and abide in that Word and we'll have an answer for any lie or temptation Satan throws our way." p.47
-"You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore." Ps 16:11
"By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharoah's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward." Heb 11:24-26
-"The only question each of us has to answer is, Whose words am I going to believe? Those of a spiritual enemy who hates us more than we can imagine, or those of a heavenly Father whose love for us surpasses our ability to comprehend?" p.91
12 Oct 2017
Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, 2005
-Take time to take up your Sword: "That means reading, studying, and meditating on the Bible daily. e.g. Jesus in the wilderness, knowing how to respond to the devil with God's Word. Often we feel frustrated about the bad things in life and get tired when we have God's Word there already. "All we need to do is obey the words of Jesus and abide in that Word and we'll have an answer for any lie or temptation Satan throws our way." p.47
-"You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore." Ps 16:11
"By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharoah's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward." Heb 11:24-26
-"The only question each of us has to answer is, Whose words am I going to believe? Those of a spiritual enemy who hates us more than we can imagine, or those of a heavenly Father whose love for us surpasses our ability to comprehend?" p.91
12 Oct 2017
Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, 2005
Monday, October 9, 2017
34. What your money means and how to use it well - Frank J. Hanna
PART I What your money means
"Are we spending our money as we ought?" p.13
How much money is enough?
-The essentials/fundamentals:
bare necessities (genuine needs, profession-related needs e.g. the US president's need for a White House + beneficial needs (=those things which are good for us, but whose lack does not ordinarily prevent us from becoming the persons--physically, mentally, and spiritually--that we are meant to be." p. 42 e.g. money for summer school in Russia)
-Non-essential wealth
"Yet the possession of much wealth increases the weight of care, which is a great distraction to a man's mind." -St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) p.85
The Law of Rising Expectations: The more we expect from something, the more vulnerable we are to disappointment and the unhappiness and vices that come from it." p.93
-Deut 8:17-18 'But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth..." p.109
-Wealth should be valued by the ends it serves:
"Money never remains just coins and pieces of paper. Money can be translated into the beauty of living, a support in misfortune, an education, or future security. It also can be translated into a source of bitterness." -Sylvia Porter (1913-1991)
-the universal destination of goods. Our non-essential wealth is for others who do not have the fundamentals.
-Conclusion: "We must seek to employ our money in the service of values, not whims and pleasures. We must rule our money rather than letting it rule us. We must extract from it meaning and values that were not formerly there. By doing so, we add strength and goodness to the community in which we are members. We grow in love and wisdom and make it easier for others to do so, too." p.120
PART II: What your money calls you to be
-Vocation= life-calling. We are called to a task that is uniquely ours for our time on earth. p.129
1. Virtue
2. To create wealth; "some people have a vocation to create wealth" e.g. John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937) "I believe the power to make money is a gift from God...to be developed and used to the best of our ability for the good of mankind. Having been endowed with the gift I possess, I believe it is my duty to make money and still more money and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow man according to the dictates of my conscience." p.140
-God gives people the vocation to create wealth so that they can grow in humility and help others, just like the gift of music etc.
3. Giving
"Riches are for spending, and spending for honour and good actions." -Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
-don't wait to give later, give now. Why? because public money e.g. tax money given to the government becomes less wisely used vs. you knowing how to give to others in a helpful way, cultivating virtue etc. "That you have such money, a unique background, and your own talents and opportunities is a sign that you have a particular calling, a task, a responsibility that is your own and not anyone else's." p.161
-faith in Providence: that God will guide the hands of others in their work
3 goals of the author in the book:
1. To show you that your money has a meaning that is intimately bound up with the meaning of your life: you have been called to help bring about the universal destination of goods.
2. To show you the two paths to follow: wealth creation & giving now
3. To take the first, difficult steps down the path to regular, sustained giving.
p.174-5
Deut 14:22 "Set apart a tithe of all the yield of your seed that is brought in yearly from the field."
tithe regularly
"Indeed, too severe a scrutiny of those to whom we give (or may give) can nurture in the soul such a distrust of others that the very love which originally motivated our charity gets snuffed out..." In our giving, we must be prudent, but never hard. p.206
"Society can be changed on four levels: cultural, political, organizational, and personal. Generally speaking, the greatest breadth of change happens at the cultural level, while the greatest depth of change happens at the personal level." p.217 Use the Principle of Leverage: Support efforts that bring about the greatest multiplication of results from the time or money you contribute. p.218
The Ten Rule of Thumb for Donors-the author gives practical advice on the wisdom of giving.
P: Most of the ideas in this book I already know and are not revolutionary but I did find the practical input from the author as a successful businessman who has real life experience of handling money insightful. That being said, this book seems to be geared more towards businessmen in the way the author addresses his audience about how to create wealth and to give vs. other vocations.
9-10 Oct 2017
New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2008
"Are we spending our money as we ought?" p.13
How much money is enough?
-The essentials/fundamentals:
bare necessities (genuine needs, profession-related needs e.g. the US president's need for a White House + beneficial needs (=those things which are good for us, but whose lack does not ordinarily prevent us from becoming the persons--physically, mentally, and spiritually--that we are meant to be." p. 42 e.g. money for summer school in Russia)
-Non-essential wealth
"Yet the possession of much wealth increases the weight of care, which is a great distraction to a man's mind." -St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) p.85
The Law of Rising Expectations: The more we expect from something, the more vulnerable we are to disappointment and the unhappiness and vices that come from it." p.93
-Deut 8:17-18 'But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth..." p.109
-Wealth should be valued by the ends it serves:
"Money never remains just coins and pieces of paper. Money can be translated into the beauty of living, a support in misfortune, an education, or future security. It also can be translated into a source of bitterness." -Sylvia Porter (1913-1991)
-the universal destination of goods. Our non-essential wealth is for others who do not have the fundamentals.
-Conclusion: "We must seek to employ our money in the service of values, not whims and pleasures. We must rule our money rather than letting it rule us. We must extract from it meaning and values that were not formerly there. By doing so, we add strength and goodness to the community in which we are members. We grow in love and wisdom and make it easier for others to do so, too." p.120
PART II: What your money calls you to be
-Vocation= life-calling. We are called to a task that is uniquely ours for our time on earth. p.129
1. Virtue
2. To create wealth; "some people have a vocation to create wealth" e.g. John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937) "I believe the power to make money is a gift from God...to be developed and used to the best of our ability for the good of mankind. Having been endowed with the gift I possess, I believe it is my duty to make money and still more money and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow man according to the dictates of my conscience." p.140
-God gives people the vocation to create wealth so that they can grow in humility and help others, just like the gift of music etc.
3. Giving
"Riches are for spending, and spending for honour and good actions." -Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
-don't wait to give later, give now. Why? because public money e.g. tax money given to the government becomes less wisely used vs. you knowing how to give to others in a helpful way, cultivating virtue etc. "That you have such money, a unique background, and your own talents and opportunities is a sign that you have a particular calling, a task, a responsibility that is your own and not anyone else's." p.161
-faith in Providence: that God will guide the hands of others in their work
3 goals of the author in the book:
1. To show you that your money has a meaning that is intimately bound up with the meaning of your life: you have been called to help bring about the universal destination of goods.
2. To show you the two paths to follow: wealth creation & giving now
3. To take the first, difficult steps down the path to regular, sustained giving.
p.174-5
Deut 14:22 "Set apart a tithe of all the yield of your seed that is brought in yearly from the field."
tithe regularly
"Indeed, too severe a scrutiny of those to whom we give (or may give) can nurture in the soul such a distrust of others that the very love which originally motivated our charity gets snuffed out..." In our giving, we must be prudent, but never hard. p.206
"Society can be changed on four levels: cultural, political, organizational, and personal. Generally speaking, the greatest breadth of change happens at the cultural level, while the greatest depth of change happens at the personal level." p.217 Use the Principle of Leverage: Support efforts that bring about the greatest multiplication of results from the time or money you contribute. p.218
The Ten Rule of Thumb for Donors-the author gives practical advice on the wisdom of giving.
P: Most of the ideas in this book I already know and are not revolutionary but I did find the practical input from the author as a successful businessman who has real life experience of handling money insightful. That being said, this book seems to be geared more towards businessmen in the way the author addresses his audience about how to create wealth and to give vs. other vocations.
9-10 Oct 2017
New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2008
33. In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America - Alice Kessler-Harris
The conception of law makers' (influenced by the overall societal attitude) views on gender roles in families affect how they distribute taxes for men and women who work, and also the development of social security. It is interesting to see how societal attitudes affect the rights of workers. [preconceptions that have shaped the experience of women]
The author shows the development of social policy from the New Deal to the 1970s, showing the deeply embedded set of beliefs that had distorted seemingly neutral social legislation to further limit freedom and equality of women. "Government rules generally sought to protect women from exploitation, even from employment itself; but at the same time, they attached the most important benefits to wage work. To be a real citizen, one must earn--and most policymakers (even female ones) assumed from the beginning that women were not, and should not be, breadwinners. Kessler-Harris traces the impact of this gender bias in the New Deal programs of Social Security, unemployment insurance, and fair labor standards, in Federal income tax policy, and the new discussion of women's rights that emerged after World War II."
-a lack of individual economic freedom for women and old assumptions up till the 1960s and '70s (but the break-down process is not complete yet)
P: I chose to read this book because of its title and even though it is quite a boring read for me as I am not knowledgeable in either US history, economics, or legislation, I found myself just reading over the names of policy makers and policies. The only part I could understand was the gender roles and their concerns about how wage-earning relate to the providence for families. I guess I was expecting more discussion about the actual settings in families and stories of real people in workforces rather than the process the policymakers went through.
1-9 October, 2017
New York: Oxford University Press, 2001
The author shows the development of social policy from the New Deal to the 1970s, showing the deeply embedded set of beliefs that had distorted seemingly neutral social legislation to further limit freedom and equality of women. "Government rules generally sought to protect women from exploitation, even from employment itself; but at the same time, they attached the most important benefits to wage work. To be a real citizen, one must earn--and most policymakers (even female ones) assumed from the beginning that women were not, and should not be, breadwinners. Kessler-Harris traces the impact of this gender bias in the New Deal programs of Social Security, unemployment insurance, and fair labor standards, in Federal income tax policy, and the new discussion of women's rights that emerged after World War II."
-a lack of individual economic freedom for women and old assumptions up till the 1960s and '70s (but the break-down process is not complete yet)
P: I chose to read this book because of its title and even though it is quite a boring read for me as I am not knowledgeable in either US history, economics, or legislation, I found myself just reading over the names of policy makers and policies. The only part I could understand was the gender roles and their concerns about how wage-earning relate to the providence for families. I guess I was expecting more discussion about the actual settings in families and stories of real people in workforces rather than the process the policymakers went through.
1-9 October, 2017
New York: Oxford University Press, 2001
Thursday, September 28, 2017
32. Protestant Worship: Traditions in Transition - James F. White
White surveyed the nine Protestant worship traditions/distinctives/historical development using seven categories: piety, time, place (circumstances of worship), prayer, preaching, music (acts of worship, and people. p.16
-In trying to be a 'descriptive' instead of 'normative' historian, White did not tell the history of Protestant worship in terms of eucharistic texts/liturgical texts. "A liturgical theology that gives preferential treatment to some forms over others is highly dubious." p.15
-"People are the primary liturgical document." p.16
-piety is the traditional term for spirituality. p.18
-Place "We must look at the relationship of the basic spaces for worship: gathering, movement, congregational, choir, baptismal, and altar-table. p.19
-Tradition: we mean inherited worship practices and beliefs that show continuity from generation to generation. ...Worship traditions, then, are specific ways of and attitudes toward doing worship that are passed on from generation to generation. p.21
16th C. Anabaptist, Reformed, Anglican, Lutheran
17th C. Quaker, Puritan
18th C. Methodist
19th C. American Frontier
20th C. Pentecostal
The Reformation era:
-"The insistence today in many parts of the Reformed tradition on beginning all worship with confession is a good instance of late-medieval penitential piety still flourishing." p.27
The future of Protestant worship:
-"If convergence becomes too prominent, we must ask whether some of the richness of the variety of Protestant worship will suffer. The richness of Protestant worship consists in its diversity and its consequent ability to serve a wide variety of people." p. 212
-new traditions will develop
-"...when more study and research are given to understanding the process, all the churches will benefit. Very little has been done to conceptualize the process of transmission of the various traditions down to the present, ..." p. 216
P: I appreciate the author's look at the historical development of Protestant worship through the lenses of people: what they do and the circumstances (space!) because this is closer to what I am used to when doing research as learned in my musicology course. However, as a Christian historian, I find very little evidence of describing God's Hands in the course of how these evolved. The book does provide a good survey of the important key moments and charts the events and people that shaped the different traditions--whether by reform or by holding onto their central theological beliefs/interpretations. White also acknowledged how certain elements of other traditions are borrowed and incorporated into one, e.g. how Methodist hymnody are adopted by the Anglicans.
26-29 Sep 2017
Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989
-In trying to be a 'descriptive' instead of 'normative' historian, White did not tell the history of Protestant worship in terms of eucharistic texts/liturgical texts. "A liturgical theology that gives preferential treatment to some forms over others is highly dubious." p.15
-"People are the primary liturgical document." p.16
-piety is the traditional term for spirituality. p.18
-Place "We must look at the relationship of the basic spaces for worship: gathering, movement, congregational, choir, baptismal, and altar-table. p.19
-Tradition: we mean inherited worship practices and beliefs that show continuity from generation to generation. ...Worship traditions, then, are specific ways of and attitudes toward doing worship that are passed on from generation to generation. p.21
16th C. Anabaptist, Reformed, Anglican, Lutheran
17th C. Quaker, Puritan
18th C. Methodist
19th C. American Frontier
20th C. Pentecostal
The Reformation era:
-"The insistence today in many parts of the Reformed tradition on beginning all worship with confession is a good instance of late-medieval penitential piety still flourishing." p.27
The future of Protestant worship:
-"If convergence becomes too prominent, we must ask whether some of the richness of the variety of Protestant worship will suffer. The richness of Protestant worship consists in its diversity and its consequent ability to serve a wide variety of people." p. 212
-new traditions will develop
-"...when more study and research are given to understanding the process, all the churches will benefit. Very little has been done to conceptualize the process of transmission of the various traditions down to the present, ..." p. 216
P: I appreciate the author's look at the historical development of Protestant worship through the lenses of people: what they do and the circumstances (space!) because this is closer to what I am used to when doing research as learned in my musicology course. However, as a Christian historian, I find very little evidence of describing God's Hands in the course of how these evolved. The book does provide a good survey of the important key moments and charts the events and people that shaped the different traditions--whether by reform or by holding onto their central theological beliefs/interpretations. White also acknowledged how certain elements of other traditions are borrowed and incorporated into one, e.g. how Methodist hymnody are adopted by the Anglicans.
26-29 Sep 2017
Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989
Monday, September 25, 2017
31. The Bible Method of Daily Living based on lectures by Matthew Henry - James R. Boyd, D.D.
-a cultivation of piety
-Mr. Henry's own practice was a constant effort to 'begin and spend and conclude each day with God." Besides the full and deliberate worship of God in his family, he abounded in secret prayer. It was his recourse in every undertaking.
-"What incomes of grace," he wrote, "yea, and outward good things, as far as they are indeed good for us, have we by an access to God in Christ! Such have a companion ready in all their solitudes, a counselor in all their doubts, a comforter in all their sorrow, a supply in all their wants, a support under all their burdens, a shelter in all their dangers, strength for all their performances, and salvation insured by a sweet, undeceiving earnest. What is heaven but an everlasting access to God? And present access is a pledge of it." p.12-13
I. HOW TO BEGIN THE DAY WITH GOD
-"It should be our purpose, also, daily to approach our God in prayer and in praise." p.23
"We have, or ought to have, something to say to God every day."
Ps 55:17, Ps 119:164, Heb 11:6,
"New every morning is the love
Our wakening and uprising prove;
Through sleep and darkness safely brought,
Restored to life, and power, and thought.
New mercies each returning day
Hover around us while we pray;
New perils past, new sins forgiven,
New thoughts of God, new hopes of heaven.
Only, O Lord, in thy dear love,
Fit us for perfect rest above,
And keep us this and every day,
To live more nearly as we pray." -Keble
II. HOW TO SPEND THE DAY WITH GOD
Ps 25:5
"The devout believer waits on Him as the beggar waits on his benefactor, with earnest desires to obtain needful supplies, or as the diseased at the pool of Bethesda waited for the stirring of the water and for the expected cure." Ps 63:1 (p.42)
"...during and throughout the day we are to wait upon Him."
= to live a life of delight in God Ps 116:7, Ps 62:5
= to live a life of devotion to Him
"The will of God, therefore, is to be our rule of action every day." p.45
III. HOW TO CLOSE THE DAY WITH GOD
-I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone O LORD make me dwell in safety. Ps 4:8
-To compose ourselves to sleep: "The love of sleep for the sake of sleep is the characteristic of the sluggard, but as the divinely-appointed means of recruiting our physical energies--quite as needful as food--we are to employ it with thankfulness to Him who 'gives His beloved sleep.'" p. 83
"When each day's scenes and labours close,
And wearied nature seeks repose,
With pardoning mercy richly blest,
Guard me, my Saviour, while I rest!
And as each morning sun shall rise,
Oh, lead me onward to the skies!
And at my life's last setting sun,
My conflicts o'er, my labours done,
Jesus! thy heavenly radiance shed,
To cheer and bless my dying bed,
And from death's gloom my spirit raise,
To see thy face and sing thy praise." - Sir R. Grant
Application:
we must live a life of communion with God...In order to do this, we must have in our hearts a principle of grace, which, like a well of living water, may be continually springing up to life eternal (Jn 4:14)
20-25 September 2017
Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1998
-Mr. Henry's own practice was a constant effort to 'begin and spend and conclude each day with God." Besides the full and deliberate worship of God in his family, he abounded in secret prayer. It was his recourse in every undertaking.
-"What incomes of grace," he wrote, "yea, and outward good things, as far as they are indeed good for us, have we by an access to God in Christ! Such have a companion ready in all their solitudes, a counselor in all their doubts, a comforter in all their sorrow, a supply in all their wants, a support under all their burdens, a shelter in all their dangers, strength for all their performances, and salvation insured by a sweet, undeceiving earnest. What is heaven but an everlasting access to God? And present access is a pledge of it." p.12-13
I. HOW TO BEGIN THE DAY WITH GOD
-"It should be our purpose, also, daily to approach our God in prayer and in praise." p.23
"We have, or ought to have, something to say to God every day."
Ps 55:17, Ps 119:164, Heb 11:6,
"New every morning is the love
Our wakening and uprising prove;
Through sleep and darkness safely brought,
Restored to life, and power, and thought.
New mercies each returning day
Hover around us while we pray;
New perils past, new sins forgiven,
New thoughts of God, new hopes of heaven.
Only, O Lord, in thy dear love,
Fit us for perfect rest above,
And keep us this and every day,
To live more nearly as we pray." -Keble
II. HOW TO SPEND THE DAY WITH GOD
Ps 25:5
"The devout believer waits on Him as the beggar waits on his benefactor, with earnest desires to obtain needful supplies, or as the diseased at the pool of Bethesda waited for the stirring of the water and for the expected cure." Ps 63:1 (p.42)
"...during and throughout the day we are to wait upon Him."
= to live a life of delight in God Ps 116:7, Ps 62:5
= to live a life of devotion to Him
"The will of God, therefore, is to be our rule of action every day." p.45
III. HOW TO CLOSE THE DAY WITH GOD
-I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone O LORD make me dwell in safety. Ps 4:8
-To compose ourselves to sleep: "The love of sleep for the sake of sleep is the characteristic of the sluggard, but as the divinely-appointed means of recruiting our physical energies--quite as needful as food--we are to employ it with thankfulness to Him who 'gives His beloved sleep.'" p. 83
"When each day's scenes and labours close,
And wearied nature seeks repose,
With pardoning mercy richly blest,
Guard me, my Saviour, while I rest!
And as each morning sun shall rise,
Oh, lead me onward to the skies!
And at my life's last setting sun,
My conflicts o'er, my labours done,
Jesus! thy heavenly radiance shed,
To cheer and bless my dying bed,
And from death's gloom my spirit raise,
To see thy face and sing thy praise." - Sir R. Grant
Application:
we must live a life of communion with God...In order to do this, we must have in our hearts a principle of grace, which, like a well of living water, may be continually springing up to life eternal (Jn 4:14)
20-25 September 2017
Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1998
30. Let Me Be a Woman - Elisabeth Elliot
---Notes to My Daughter on the Meaning of Womanhood
"In order to learn what it means to be a woman, we must start with the One who made her."
She quotes Scriptural texts here and there and gives the scriptural basis for her thoughts/advices. A well-thought out, comprehensive advice book to a daughter who is about to get married. Elliot writes from her own experience and God's Word about womanhood, and the difference between men and women. We are called to live out our feminism, not to strive to match the men in every aspect as we are created different. True freedom is living according to the design, within the rules as a sailboat has to obey the rules of the water and wind to sail freely. Hierarchy does not equal superiority, although these two have been equated in societies.
The chapters on "you are marrying a man, a husband, a sinner, ..." give really practical examples and point out the sometimes overlooked obvious differences between a man and woman that often give rise to conflicts and false expectations.
Ultimately, there is true freedom and beauty in living as a woman created by God.
17 Aug-22 Sep 2017
Carol Stream: Tyndale, 1976
"In order to learn what it means to be a woman, we must start with the One who made her."
She quotes Scriptural texts here and there and gives the scriptural basis for her thoughts/advices. A well-thought out, comprehensive advice book to a daughter who is about to get married. Elliot writes from her own experience and God's Word about womanhood, and the difference between men and women. We are called to live out our feminism, not to strive to match the men in every aspect as we are created different. True freedom is living according to the design, within the rules as a sailboat has to obey the rules of the water and wind to sail freely. Hierarchy does not equal superiority, although these two have been equated in societies.
The chapters on "you are marrying a man, a husband, a sinner, ..." give really practical examples and point out the sometimes overlooked obvious differences between a man and woman that often give rise to conflicts and false expectations.
Ultimately, there is true freedom and beauty in living as a woman created by God.
17 Aug-22 Sep 2017
Carol Stream: Tyndale, 1976
Wednesday, September 20, 2017
29. A Burnt-Out Case - Graham Greene
Querry is the protagonist in this novel. The story opens with him on a boat with a captain and a priest heading down the West Africa river to a leprosie, where Doctor Colin, an atheist among the Catholic priests treats the lepers. As the story moves along, we hear about Querry's reason for wanting to be down at the end of the river, where there is no more road to go, surrounded by lepers as he wanted to distract himself from the life he had gotten tired of. He needed a cure and this was where he sought a world where no one knew him. The outside world, however, did eventually find him in the form of journalist Parkinson, informed by plantation owner Rycker, whom we found at towards the end of the story needed a sense of significance. Querry had been a successful architect of Catholic churches and a former devout Catholic who believed in God and tried to know love in his own way until he could not live with his inability to make himself believe in the love that he did not know of and was trying to act out. He despised his fame and success and wanted to get away from himself--the life he has believed for himself or who he thinks he is. Marie Rycker, the young wife of Rycker did not enjoy her life in Africa and the non-existent love her husband gave her. At last, she latched on Querry for an escape and put him into a scandal as that was the only way she knew of to escape.
They all needed to be saved from their hearts and the lies they have been believing about themselves, manifested in different ways and made worse as time went on and they did not know how to get out of it. The result was self-destruction or others-destruction in a way that they could not control, as if swimming towards the end of the river without being able to return.
Greene's metaphors for describing things are so clever and the imageries so sharp and penetrating. The way he writes and switches between narration and different persons in conversations is so naturally clear as to who is speaking without having to put name: ".... ".
The way he describes the human condition, the condition of human hearts through these characters is really his form of art and what I love about stories. It will take a second read for me to appreciate the depth and layers he has crafted into each character, as well as the overall metaphor of a "burnt-out-case", as opposed to still being infectious, as first mentioned and explained on p.105 by Colin: "Perhaps Querry is also a patient, ....a burnt-out case," Anyway, it is ambiguous as to whether Querry is actually a burnt-out case or if he actually exudes more faith in his acts.
1-20 Sep 2017
New York: Viking Press, 1960
They all needed to be saved from their hearts and the lies they have been believing about themselves, manifested in different ways and made worse as time went on and they did not know how to get out of it. The result was self-destruction or others-destruction in a way that they could not control, as if swimming towards the end of the river without being able to return.
Greene's metaphors for describing things are so clever and the imageries so sharp and penetrating. The way he writes and switches between narration and different persons in conversations is so naturally clear as to who is speaking without having to put name: ".... ".
The way he describes the human condition, the condition of human hearts through these characters is really his form of art and what I love about stories. It will take a second read for me to appreciate the depth and layers he has crafted into each character, as well as the overall metaphor of a "burnt-out-case", as opposed to still being infectious, as first mentioned and explained on p.105 by Colin: "Perhaps Querry is also a patient, ....a burnt-out case," Anyway, it is ambiguous as to whether Querry is actually a burnt-out case or if he actually exudes more faith in his acts.
1-20 Sep 2017
New York: Viking Press, 1960
Thursday, September 14, 2017
28. Caminemos Con Jesus: Toward a Hispanic/Latino Theology of Accompaniment-Roberto S. Goizueta
how does U.S. Hispanic popular Catholicism inform/show the theology of the truth/relevance of particularity of embodied people/place/culture/experience/affects-feelings to mediate the universal truth for all. The interrelationship between person to person as human praxis vs. individualism that claims on rationalism and the dominant group's truth/legibility claims even while promoting pluralism and multiculturalism. The privatisation of faith forced by the dominant liberal individualists is a haughty position to take and actually pretends to be generous/tolerant but is still asserting their own position as the right one--that everyone should follow.
What we can learn from Hispanic Christians and their popular Catholicism that involves the physical, the ordinary--clay, candle, flower, kissing of the feet--pilgrimage and processions. They live out their faith in the particular, everyday life things. Family relations is prime vs. individualism; understanding that we are connected with the past (our ancestors who may be poor and had been exiles) and the future makes us humble. There is the universal truth of God that can be seen and only can be seen through the particulars so the particular experience/culture of a marginalised group cannot be seen as a mere number to be quantified to add up to the most number (p.167) of sum.
Introduction of the book:
The author sets the context for discussion:
Who are the Hispanics? Exiles in the US, identified by the language they speak
-"Language is not merely a superficial reflection of our culture and worldview; it helps construct and shape that culture and worldview." p.12
-"For this exile and mestizo/a, however, the everyday struggle to live this 'in between' existence becomes the seedbed of liberation."
Nosotros: Community as the Birthplace of the Self: community/universal v.s. individualism
-"One cannot love the universal and supernatural if one cannot love the particular and natural..." p.49
-"Community," writes Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, "is not something added on, but a web of relationships constitutive of who we are." The assertion that personal identity is intrinsically relational, or give by others from "outside," is thus the corollary of a sacramental worldview which asserts that the identity of every concrete, particular entity is relational, or given by an Other from "outside." ...the particular is the place where and the material through which the universal is encountered. p.50
-The U.S. tradition of modern liberal individualism manifests itself in three distinct, though interrelated areas of our lives: 1) the political, 2) the religious, and 3) the economic. p.54 "Whitin the horizon of modern liberal individualism, community is understood to be a "temporary and voluntary association of separate individuals." p.55 "The assumption underlying such responses is that participation in a religious community is in no way intrinsic or essential to religious belief; one relates to God as an individual, not as part of a community." p.56
-Bellah at al. speak of the "socially unsituated self" as the foundation of U.S. liberal individualism and the arbiter of all values, from the political (who is the best candidate) to the religious and moral (which is the right religion and the moral course of action) to the economic (which is the best brand of mouthwash). Thus, not only matters of taste but also matters of truth and morality come to be decided on the basis of quantitative criteria..." p.57
-The ironic result is, not a society of unique individuals, but a society of conformists: "As Tocqueville observed, when one can no longer rely on tradition or authority, one inevitably looks to others for confirmation of one's judgements. Refusal to accept established opinion and anxious conformity tot the opinions of one's peers turn out to be two sides of the same coin." p.58
-"The sentimental notion of community as an unstructured, deinstitutionalised, face-to-face, emotionally warm, and voluntary association implies, a dichotomy between community and tradition...for modern l i, community bonds cannot extend beyond this particular time and place; insofar as, through its structures and traditions, an institution extends communal bonds beyond and between generations, it can only do so illegitimately. If community is limited by space and time, then all institutions, all tradition, and all forms of institutionalisation will necessarily be viewed as intrinsically coercive, that is, a former, dead community's attempt to impose its identity and values (by definition obsolete, since that community no longer exists) on the only real community, that voluntary community which exists here and now. We have no responsibility to the past or to the future, since neither exists nor participates in our voluntary community." p. 64
P: I'm realising again how endemic the embededness of individualism is in today's people. It's so steeped in their psyches that they do not realise their way of individualist thinking is so strong and often opposing the grace-giving, community-needing, reality of who God created us to be. Thankful for Tim Keller's sermons who help me see this in my own thinking (e.g. the work rest sermon where I saw through my deep belief about my value as a person being relied on self accomplishment/actualisation in terms of career). Seriously, I can't believe my peers who say and believe in "your personal happiness is the most important thing, values/beliefs notwithstanding".
-Dichotomy btw the particular and the universal-individualistic anthropology: Where there is no strong, constitutive sense of community, then, the r/s btw the particular (individual) and the universal (family, church, community, tradition, institution) will be viewed as intrinsically dichotomous: i.e., the particular is in no way constituted by the universal; the universal is ipso facto oppressive because it limits individual autonomy. p.64 "As Alasdair MacIntyre contends, 'the essence of individualism is not so much to emphasize the individual rather than the collective...as to frame all questions according to an ostensible antithesis between the individual and the collective.' p.65
-The anthropology implicit in U.S.Hispanic popular Catholicism: "community is understood to be fundamentally preexistent (therefore involuntary) and constitutive. Therefore, the universal is not merely the sum of the particulars; rather, the universal is mediated by the particulars." p.65
-case: an elderly Mexican woman kisses the feet of the crucified Jesus: "If this piece of wood merely 'points to' some external supernatural reality, not itself revealed in and through the wood, then to kiss the wood is to commit an act of idolatry. But, if this piece of wood, shaped into Jesus' crucified body, is itself the particular and concrete manifestation of a universal, supernatural reality revealed in and through this object, then to kiss the wood is the make the only appropriate Christian response. ...but the disparate interpretations stem from a fundamental, anthropological and epistemological difference. --the universal (e.g., the community, or the Jesus Christ of Christian faith and tradition), and an organic worldview, which would presuppose an essential, intrinsic, or 'organic' r/s btw the particular and the universal. ..Jesus and Mary defined relationally to each other and to us. p.65
-The Latinos' depictions of Jesus implies a concrete, physical historicity and concrete, physical relationship. p.66
-A relational being: Hispanic presupposes the foundational role of relationships in defining what it means to be a human being--and what it means to be a Christian. e.g. I do not experience myself as an individual person until I am confronted by another. infant-mother. ...entails an interaction. p. 72
Community does not extinguish but enhances individuality p.75
-"In an organic anthropology, each person is not a mirror reflection but a unique refraction of the whole." p.76
Beauty or Justice? The Aesthetic Character of Human Action
-"A relational anthropology, wherein the person is viewed as intrinsically social, is thus rooted in human action, or 'praxis.' p.77
-What is the r/s between theology (our knowledge of God) and praxis (the theological articulation of that knowledge in our everyday lives/action"?
-the significance of Latin American liberation theology for understanding praxis.-the person is defined more by what he or she does than by what he or she thinks.; orthopraxis aka "correct action" as the most basic norm of Christian faith. ...vs. injustice and oppression p.78
-What is praxis?
1) modern Western understanding: praxis as instrumental action=the action of an autonomous subject upon his or her external environment, itself construed as but a passive object of the subject's actions.; technique/practicality-the value of human action or life is predicated upon its usefulness. p.80 e.g. Marx-human action->prodcution; Aristotle-all human activity whose end is internal rather than external to itself aka human intersubjective activity. Human action whose end is external to itself is called poiesis. e.g. production aka the process of doing/making doesn't have intrinsic value, only the product is the goal p.83 For Aristotle, "life is action [praxis] and not production [poiesis]. p.84 What makes human life human is precisely that it is an absolute value in itself--regardless of its productivity, usefulness, or practicality. ...To reduce human action to social transformation is to reduce it to productive activity, which is to reduce it to technique; and to reduce human action to technique is to reduce the human person to but a passive object, a mere instrument of production. p84
The modern, post-Enlightenment emphasis on technique, or instrumental action, as the highest form of human activity: ...then all human activity will tend to be judged by the criteria of production; whether in capitalism or socialism. p.85
P: Doesn't this view of human action/life affected my view also? I thought I must be useful to God--be able to evangelise a lot--in order to be of worth. But this is antithetical to God's grace and preeminent love. This was why I found it hard to accept the saying that there is nothing more that you can do to make God love you more and nothing that you do that can make Him love you less.
1b) liberation theologians were also influenced by this view of praxis as liberating social action. p.86
Several definitions, but this one: represents "perhaps the most significant contribution of liberation theology to the church, reminding Christians that the lived commitment to social justice is not superfluous to but a precondition for authentic Christian faith. The struggle for justice is not an option for Christians, over and above their Christian belief and worship" p.88
-What is the r/s between historical praxis aka praxis-as-an-end-in-itself & liberating praxis? still ambiguous: "Is liberating theology fundamentally a reflection on human action as an end in itself (historical praxis), or on human action as an instrument of liberation (liberating praxis)? p.88
2) Praxis as aesthetics:
early 20th century Latin American philosophers emphasise the aesthetic experience as the key category for interpreting human action. Jose Vasconcelos (1882-1959): against the Comtean positivism of the day that asserted that "human beings can know only that which is verifiable through empirical scientific analysis/observation." p.89 separation between the subject-observor (external)
-Aesthetic philosophies=grounded not in pure reason/practical reason but in the mystery of aesthetic judgment. ...the special pathos of beauty as the unifying principle aka the "emphatic fusion" between subject and object that takes place in the aesthetic experience (i.e., the experience of beauty, or a work of art), wherein the person loses himself in the experience. p.91
Ethical-political, and aesthetic character of praxis
-"As revealed in popular Catholicism, human action is 1) sacramental; 2) essentially and intrinsically communal/relational; 3) an end in itself; 4) empowering; and, therefore 5) liberating. p.103
-Beauty as revelatory: the aesthetic character of human action: people's action is mediated by physical symbols, by physical gestures/movement and processions, singing songs, and by the very physical effort exerted in preparing the church for the celebrations. Our r/s to God thus involves embodied action in the world; it is not merely a private sentiment or feeling. p.103
-"For it is in the acting, in the performing, in the participation, in the living itself that God is revealed." p.103
-The term sacrament refers not only to the revelation of God in creation, but also to the revelation of God in the person's embodied action in the world, in interaction and participation. p.103
-Their value to the participant derives from the fact that these are not fundamentally the actions of one individual by him or herself, but actions between him or her and God, ...and the other members of the community, both living and dead. ...even in my most "private" moments, I am responsible to those communities and hence, ultimately, to the entire human and divine community, in which I necessarily participate." p.105
-"If our goal is a just society, where all human persons are valued, affirmed, and loved as ends in themselves, as genuine "others," we cannot arrive at that goal through an instrumentalisation of persons which contradicts the very goal itself. At its most basic level justice, like happiness, is not a product but a concomitant, or byproduct, of human life when that life is lived and valued as an end in itself. ...social justice and personal growth or transformation are not directly-intended 'products' of the 'work' the individual person undertakes respectively 'on' society, or 'on' himself or herself. Rather, these are but byproducts of the persons' interaction with others. In short, the only justice and the only true self-improvement or personal growth is that which is the unintended (directly, at least) consequence of the person's active love of others. This is simply another way of expressing the paradox of the cross." p.107
-"Celebration becomes possible only when we cease making a project of our lives and our world." p.107 "In sum, the achievement of freedom and justice, whether at the personal or social level, will be impossible if freedom and justice are viewed primarily as products of our efforts rather than as, fundamentally, implicit byproducts or concomitants of human lives affirmed and valued as ends in themselves. Only if and when our intersubjective r/s-as lived in our families, communities, and institutions--reflect such an affirmation will we have true freedom and justice." p.108
-"Only when we are freed from the anxiety created by the need to control others, or the need to be controlled by others, are we truly free. Thus, the highest form of aesthetic praxis becomes the act of celebration, wherein the intrinsic value of human life as an end in itself." <-this reminds me of what Nouwen wrote in "Here and Now" about why we celebrate birthdays.
Conversely, "When human action is instrumentalised, one's 'life' becomes a problem to be solved, a plan to be carried out, or a project to be realised. ...Consequently, I become enslaved to the desired result, anxious to plan all aspects of my life so as to ensure its successful conclusion. Convinved that I am free bc I am 'in control' of my life, I am actually enslaved by my very need to control..." p.110
-Praxis always has an affective dimension. It is through this affective dimension that we can relate most intimately with others." human interaction, not billiard balls. p.110 "The sharing of any feelings, however 'negative,' implies and affirms interaction, connection, and relationship with the other person; the failure to do so implies and affirms estrangement and alienation." p.110-111
-Domestic life as human action. not just the productivity in the public sphere (marketplace/political arena).; A proper understanding of human action must, thus, embrace both public and private spheres of activity, and the intrinsic r/s btw them: Although it is often regarded as autonomous, daily life is in fact at the center of history, invading all aspects of life." p.113
-the depreciation of domestic life as praxis has resulted historically not only in the marginalization of women's experience but also in the marginalization of popular religion as a locus theologicus" p.116
-in the context of the modern Western private-public dichotomy
-The insufficiency of aesthetics : embedded in ethical-political and economic r/s too. "After all, as bodies we act and make (products) as well as feel. Human action always has an ethical-political character since--given our relational or organic anthropology--human action implies a rs between ourselves and our environment, especially other persons. ... "the intrinsic interrelationships among aesthetic action, ethical-political action, and poiesis" P: reminds me of musicology, the lecture about opera in Paris and how things affected each other-sponsorship, audience reception...
-One culture can fuse emphatically with another culture only if and when they are both already acknowledged as equal. p.126
-Culture is an attractive, alternative 'key to history,' ..to human liberation... If justice demands nothing more than an open mind, a room-full of pre-Columbian artifacts, and an 'exposure' to other perspectives, then we can achieve justice without leaving the comfort of the suburban enclosure or the ivory tower. p.127 Culture symbols and practices are always mediated by political and economic structures and r/s.
-Conclusion: Goizueta suggests that "rather than superseding the ethical-political, the aesthetic dimension of human action is mediated by the ethical-political; it is encountered and lived out within ethical-political action, as the deepest meaning and significance of the ethical-political." p.128
-"The only proper locus of aesthetics and worship is, thus, the ethical-political option for the poor. Yet the deepest significance of that option is not social transformation per se, but the celebration of everyday human life. This is why, paradoxically, it is among the poor that one will find the most vibrant and vital communities of celebration and worship." p.131
Rationality or irrationality? Modernity, Postmodernity, and the U.S. Hispanic Theologian
-"If lived human experience is inherently relational, embodied, and affective, then we cannot understand that lived experience through concepts alone. Interpersonal reality cannot be understood or known primarily through theoretical analysis, but through an aesthetic, affective, and active participation in ('fusion' with) the sacramental r/s, symbols, and rituals. p.141
-Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz: "Praxis is both intellectual enterprise as well as action; the dichotomy between intellectual activity and physical work is a fictitious one..." p.142
-The liberation of the poor implies the emergence of historically marginalised persons as full-fledged rational historical subjects. p.148
-dichotomy of theory and praxis->dichotomy of truth and meaning
-If objective, scientific methods cannot lead us to truth, then truth per se must not exist. All that we can hope for is "meaningful" experiences which, as "meaningful," are inaccessible to rational analysis and judgment; the statement, "this particular experience or theory is meaningful for me," is ipso facto incontrovertible and must be accepted at face value, since to judge it according to rational criteria would be to impose on it external, alien, and artificial categories. Truth, then, is reduced to meaning...Rational certainty is replaced by sheer indeterminancy and ambitguity, since the story which is true to my experience is not necessarily true to yours, and the work of art which is meaningful for me is not necessarily meaningful to you. p.150
-The postmodern absolutization of particularity places U.S. Hispanics, and other historically marginalised groups, in an ambiguous situation. ...Justo Gonzalez: ...in which the dominant is confused with the universal. p.151
-For Christians, the understanding of the rs btw the universal and the particular is rooted in the incarnation itself, in the "scandal of particularity" p.152
-The possibility of mutual understanding--not simply mutual empathy--is thus itself intrinsic to an organic, relational anthropology. ...implies the possibility of shared norms--mediated, always, by the particular perspectives through which they are revealed. ...mediated by praxis aka the active relationship btw particular others. Truth is not fundamentally a thing but an event. p.153
-Symbols are both the end and the source of rational understanding; in the words of Paul Ricoeur, "the symbol gives rise to thought, but thought always returns to and is informed by the symbol." Aesthetic experience not only transcends theory; it also gives birth to theoretical reflection. p.155
-Particular meaning mediates universal truth.
-Only if I affirm your own concrete particularity and uniqueness will I be able to understand how your own life and history reveal a universal truth that is also true for me. p.157
*-"When the meaning of particular experiences is not recognized as mediating universal truth--art, literature, and religion lose their ability to subvert the dominant culture because, by becoming privatized, they lose their ability to engage that culture at all." ...We experience art and religion as not only meaningful, but as also true, as having a relatively autonomous and objective reality beyond our own particular social location. p.160
-competition among particular theologies, especially Third World and feminist theologies. ...surest sign that an authentic pluralism or multiculturalism does not exist: the access to those material resources necessary for making one's voice heard remains controlled by the same dominant groups. p.166
-Whatever else a pluralist is telling you, he is also telling you that his heart is in the right place...the right place is every place and therefore nowhere at all." p.170
-A pluralistic, multicultural society is one that multiplies the number of available options (whether political, economic, religious, or cultural) without according explicit preference to any--
"I'm OK, you're OK." Implicit preference continues to be accorded, however, to the dominant culture's interpretative horizon. ...Whatever its multicultural intent, such a pluralism ironically perpetuates the violence inflicted on marginalised groups and, indeed, compounds that violence by forcing these groups to turn against each other, thereby deflecting criticism and opposition. p.171
The preferential option for the poor & the proper place of theology:
-Authentic justice ->authentic pluralism=presupposes a praxis that is genuinely intersubjective, between particular, unique others. If mutual respect and understanding presuppose a r/s of others, oppression, injustice, marginalization, and exclusion are the names we give to the denial of the particularity and otherness of certain persons, namely, the poor. Thus, as long as there are poor persons there can be no pluralism. p.173
-emerged within the Latin American culture because or their organic worldview; it could not have emerged within a worldview that pits the universal (the good of the whole) against the particular (the good of a part, e.g., the poor). Within an individualistic worldview, the scriptural command to do justice--as a necessary implication of our very humanity and creatureliness--is literally inconceivable; instead, that command will be interpreted as a mere suggestion that one autonomous individual help other autonomous individuals. Where there is no necessary connection between persons there can be no necessary ethical-political imperative to love others. p.173
-Gustavo Gutierrez argued for a scriptural basis of this historical option: God's predilection for the weak and abused of human history in the Bible, starting with Cain and Abel...This preference brings out the gratuitous or unmerited character of God's love. p.175
-Gutierrez: "God has a preferential love for the poor not because they are necessarily better than others, morally or religiously, but simply bc they are poor and living in an inhuman situation that is contrary to God's will. The ultimate basis for the privileged position of the poor is not in the poor themselves but in God, in the gratuitousness and universality of God's agapeic love." p.176
-if God is present preferentially among the poor, we can only know God if we place ourselves there also. The option for the poor is, then the most important epistemological precondition for Christian faith: to know God we must first opt for the poor. p.177 To turn a deaf ear to the cries of the poor is implicitly to identify God's voice with that of the status quo and, hence, its established power structures. To hide their suffering and struggles is thus to make faith in a transcendent God impossible." [a precondition for authentic Christian faith] p.178
-illustration: a father would help the 3 year old brother who is involved in a fight with the big sister because he is weaker and to help the older sister would be to side with the privileged and unfair. To help the younger brother is the loving/fair thing to do.
-other reflection: when the rich people keep building tall walls and install alarms for fear that the poor outside would invade and steal their abundance of money. p.178This is not recognising that we all are humans created by God and we are connected because God is love. Our ignorance of their needs is what compelled the poor to have to steal--they taking the initiative to get what they need from whoever has a lot. Why can't we go out and give them in the first place? When I think about this in this way, I suddenly am not so scared of having my valuable things stolen (except for those associated with memories that are not replaceable). Who am I to think that the things I enjoy are mine? Aren't they all gifts from God and He can will these material things to whoever He chooses to give?
-To love the poor preferentially is to make an intentional choice to be that which we already are through no choice of our own: individual persons defined by our a priori rs to others, to humanity, to the universes, and, ultimately, to the Triune (i.e., intrinsically relational) God. p.179 If to be a human person is to be intrinsically related to others, what is irrational, then, is the failure to acknowledge that reality.
-"If God can love even clay, then God can love gold and silver. ...If--and only if--God can love even the crucified criminal, then God can love the ruler." p.179
-"It is from their (the poor) perspective that the intrinsically relational character of the person is revealed. It is, paradoxically, in the faces of those persons most alienated, most abandoned, most excluded that the intrinsic bonds that unite us all show forth--as that which is denied by such injustice. That is precisely why our society continues to alienate, abandon, and exclude the poor--bc, face-to-face w/ the poor, one is forced to confront our intrinsically relational reality. ...is so threatening that those bodies must be isolated, hidden from view in barrios, ghettoes, reservations, hospitals, etc." p.182
-When we recognise the injustice of those consequences, we get our first glimpse of what true justice is. If I, as an exile, have experienced the separation from my family, ...it is bc that experience threatens, and thus evokes a truth deeper and more fundamental than that of separation, namely, the truth of community." p.182
-"Suffering shared is suffering already in retreat." p.183
-"the concreteness and particularity of human praxis"
-"the particularity of the poor is the most accurate perspective from which to view the community as a whole--and from which to "opt for" all persons." p.185
-The act of accompaniment (being with, feeling with, doing with-as equals) p.191~
-"Where the option for the poor is simply reduced to an option for social justice, the poor will inevitably be reduced to an abstract concept or a manipulable object. ...universal love is mediated by particular love, and the most particular love is familial love. p.195
-Familial relationship->gives dignity->life affirming/common personhood affirmed
-to walk with the poor--literally, physically, and spiritually (self-reflection/soul changing) as Jesus walks with them (including geographical location-the hetereogenous urban vs. the white suburbs, crossing boundaries/in between/in exile people). Together with is important-affective, aesthetic union with the poor.
30 Aug-14 Sep 2017
New York: Orbis Books, 1995
What we can learn from Hispanic Christians and their popular Catholicism that involves the physical, the ordinary--clay, candle, flower, kissing of the feet--pilgrimage and processions. They live out their faith in the particular, everyday life things. Family relations is prime vs. individualism; understanding that we are connected with the past (our ancestors who may be poor and had been exiles) and the future makes us humble. There is the universal truth of God that can be seen and only can be seen through the particulars so the particular experience/culture of a marginalised group cannot be seen as a mere number to be quantified to add up to the most number (p.167) of sum.
Introduction of the book:
The author sets the context for discussion:
Who are the Hispanics? Exiles in the US, identified by the language they speak
-"Language is not merely a superficial reflection of our culture and worldview; it helps construct and shape that culture and worldview." p.12
-"For this exile and mestizo/a, however, the everyday struggle to live this 'in between' existence becomes the seedbed of liberation."
Nosotros: Community as the Birthplace of the Self: community/universal v.s. individualism
-"One cannot love the universal and supernatural if one cannot love the particular and natural..." p.49
-"Community," writes Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, "is not something added on, but a web of relationships constitutive of who we are." The assertion that personal identity is intrinsically relational, or give by others from "outside," is thus the corollary of a sacramental worldview which asserts that the identity of every concrete, particular entity is relational, or given by an Other from "outside." ...the particular is the place where and the material through which the universal is encountered. p.50
-The U.S. tradition of modern liberal individualism manifests itself in three distinct, though interrelated areas of our lives: 1) the political, 2) the religious, and 3) the economic. p.54 "Whitin the horizon of modern liberal individualism, community is understood to be a "temporary and voluntary association of separate individuals." p.55 "The assumption underlying such responses is that participation in a religious community is in no way intrinsic or essential to religious belief; one relates to God as an individual, not as part of a community." p.56
-Bellah at al. speak of the "socially unsituated self" as the foundation of U.S. liberal individualism and the arbiter of all values, from the political (who is the best candidate) to the religious and moral (which is the right religion and the moral course of action) to the economic (which is the best brand of mouthwash). Thus, not only matters of taste but also matters of truth and morality come to be decided on the basis of quantitative criteria..." p.57
-The ironic result is, not a society of unique individuals, but a society of conformists: "As Tocqueville observed, when one can no longer rely on tradition or authority, one inevitably looks to others for confirmation of one's judgements. Refusal to accept established opinion and anxious conformity tot the opinions of one's peers turn out to be two sides of the same coin." p.58
-"The sentimental notion of community as an unstructured, deinstitutionalised, face-to-face, emotionally warm, and voluntary association implies, a dichotomy between community and tradition...for modern l i, community bonds cannot extend beyond this particular time and place; insofar as, through its structures and traditions, an institution extends communal bonds beyond and between generations, it can only do so illegitimately. If community is limited by space and time, then all institutions, all tradition, and all forms of institutionalisation will necessarily be viewed as intrinsically coercive, that is, a former, dead community's attempt to impose its identity and values (by definition obsolete, since that community no longer exists) on the only real community, that voluntary community which exists here and now. We have no responsibility to the past or to the future, since neither exists nor participates in our voluntary community." p. 64
P: I'm realising again how endemic the embededness of individualism is in today's people. It's so steeped in their psyches that they do not realise their way of individualist thinking is so strong and often opposing the grace-giving, community-needing, reality of who God created us to be. Thankful for Tim Keller's sermons who help me see this in my own thinking (e.g. the work rest sermon where I saw through my deep belief about my value as a person being relied on self accomplishment/actualisation in terms of career). Seriously, I can't believe my peers who say and believe in "your personal happiness is the most important thing, values/beliefs notwithstanding".
-Dichotomy btw the particular and the universal-individualistic anthropology: Where there is no strong, constitutive sense of community, then, the r/s btw the particular (individual) and the universal (family, church, community, tradition, institution) will be viewed as intrinsically dichotomous: i.e., the particular is in no way constituted by the universal; the universal is ipso facto oppressive because it limits individual autonomy. p.64 "As Alasdair MacIntyre contends, 'the essence of individualism is not so much to emphasize the individual rather than the collective...as to frame all questions according to an ostensible antithesis between the individual and the collective.' p.65
-The anthropology implicit in U.S.Hispanic popular Catholicism: "community is understood to be fundamentally preexistent (therefore involuntary) and constitutive. Therefore, the universal is not merely the sum of the particulars; rather, the universal is mediated by the particulars." p.65
-case: an elderly Mexican woman kisses the feet of the crucified Jesus: "If this piece of wood merely 'points to' some external supernatural reality, not itself revealed in and through the wood, then to kiss the wood is to commit an act of idolatry. But, if this piece of wood, shaped into Jesus' crucified body, is itself the particular and concrete manifestation of a universal, supernatural reality revealed in and through this object, then to kiss the wood is the make the only appropriate Christian response. ...but the disparate interpretations stem from a fundamental, anthropological and epistemological difference. --the universal (e.g., the community, or the Jesus Christ of Christian faith and tradition), and an organic worldview, which would presuppose an essential, intrinsic, or 'organic' r/s btw the particular and the universal. ..Jesus and Mary defined relationally to each other and to us. p.65
-The Latinos' depictions of Jesus implies a concrete, physical historicity and concrete, physical relationship. p.66
-A relational being: Hispanic presupposes the foundational role of relationships in defining what it means to be a human being--and what it means to be a Christian. e.g. I do not experience myself as an individual person until I am confronted by another. infant-mother. ...entails an interaction. p. 72
Community does not extinguish but enhances individuality p.75
-"In an organic anthropology, each person is not a mirror reflection but a unique refraction of the whole." p.76
Beauty or Justice? The Aesthetic Character of Human Action
-"A relational anthropology, wherein the person is viewed as intrinsically social, is thus rooted in human action, or 'praxis.' p.77
-What is the r/s between theology (our knowledge of God) and praxis (the theological articulation of that knowledge in our everyday lives/action"?
-the significance of Latin American liberation theology for understanding praxis.-the person is defined more by what he or she does than by what he or she thinks.; orthopraxis aka "correct action" as the most basic norm of Christian faith. ...vs. injustice and oppression p.78
-What is praxis?
1) modern Western understanding: praxis as instrumental action=the action of an autonomous subject upon his or her external environment, itself construed as but a passive object of the subject's actions.; technique/practicality-the value of human action or life is predicated upon its usefulness. p.80 e.g. Marx-human action->prodcution; Aristotle-all human activity whose end is internal rather than external to itself aka human intersubjective activity. Human action whose end is external to itself is called poiesis. e.g. production aka the process of doing/making doesn't have intrinsic value, only the product is the goal p.83 For Aristotle, "life is action [praxis] and not production [poiesis]. p.84 What makes human life human is precisely that it is an absolute value in itself--regardless of its productivity, usefulness, or practicality. ...To reduce human action to social transformation is to reduce it to productive activity, which is to reduce it to technique; and to reduce human action to technique is to reduce the human person to but a passive object, a mere instrument of production. p84
The modern, post-Enlightenment emphasis on technique, or instrumental action, as the highest form of human activity: ...then all human activity will tend to be judged by the criteria of production; whether in capitalism or socialism. p.85
P: Doesn't this view of human action/life affected my view also? I thought I must be useful to God--be able to evangelise a lot--in order to be of worth. But this is antithetical to God's grace and preeminent love. This was why I found it hard to accept the saying that there is nothing more that you can do to make God love you more and nothing that you do that can make Him love you less.
1b) liberation theologians were also influenced by this view of praxis as liberating social action. p.86
Several definitions, but this one: represents "perhaps the most significant contribution of liberation theology to the church, reminding Christians that the lived commitment to social justice is not superfluous to but a precondition for authentic Christian faith. The struggle for justice is not an option for Christians, over and above their Christian belief and worship" p.88
-What is the r/s between historical praxis aka praxis-as-an-end-in-itself & liberating praxis? still ambiguous: "Is liberating theology fundamentally a reflection on human action as an end in itself (historical praxis), or on human action as an instrument of liberation (liberating praxis)? p.88
2) Praxis as aesthetics:
early 20th century Latin American philosophers emphasise the aesthetic experience as the key category for interpreting human action. Jose Vasconcelos (1882-1959): against the Comtean positivism of the day that asserted that "human beings can know only that which is verifiable through empirical scientific analysis/observation." p.89 separation between the subject-observor (external)
-Aesthetic philosophies=grounded not in pure reason/practical reason but in the mystery of aesthetic judgment. ...the special pathos of beauty as the unifying principle aka the "emphatic fusion" between subject and object that takes place in the aesthetic experience (i.e., the experience of beauty, or a work of art), wherein the person loses himself in the experience. p.91
Ethical-political, and aesthetic character of praxis
-"As revealed in popular Catholicism, human action is 1) sacramental; 2) essentially and intrinsically communal/relational; 3) an end in itself; 4) empowering; and, therefore 5) liberating. p.103
-Beauty as revelatory: the aesthetic character of human action: people's action is mediated by physical symbols, by physical gestures/movement and processions, singing songs, and by the very physical effort exerted in preparing the church for the celebrations. Our r/s to God thus involves embodied action in the world; it is not merely a private sentiment or feeling. p.103
-"For it is in the acting, in the performing, in the participation, in the living itself that God is revealed." p.103
-The term sacrament refers not only to the revelation of God in creation, but also to the revelation of God in the person's embodied action in the world, in interaction and participation. p.103
-Their value to the participant derives from the fact that these are not fundamentally the actions of one individual by him or herself, but actions between him or her and God, ...and the other members of the community, both living and dead. ...even in my most "private" moments, I am responsible to those communities and hence, ultimately, to the entire human and divine community, in which I necessarily participate." p.105
-"If our goal is a just society, where all human persons are valued, affirmed, and loved as ends in themselves, as genuine "others," we cannot arrive at that goal through an instrumentalisation of persons which contradicts the very goal itself. At its most basic level justice, like happiness, is not a product but a concomitant, or byproduct, of human life when that life is lived and valued as an end in itself. ...social justice and personal growth or transformation are not directly-intended 'products' of the 'work' the individual person undertakes respectively 'on' society, or 'on' himself or herself. Rather, these are but byproducts of the persons' interaction with others. In short, the only justice and the only true self-improvement or personal growth is that which is the unintended (directly, at least) consequence of the person's active love of others. This is simply another way of expressing the paradox of the cross." p.107
-"Celebration becomes possible only when we cease making a project of our lives and our world." p.107 "In sum, the achievement of freedom and justice, whether at the personal or social level, will be impossible if freedom and justice are viewed primarily as products of our efforts rather than as, fundamentally, implicit byproducts or concomitants of human lives affirmed and valued as ends in themselves. Only if and when our intersubjective r/s-as lived in our families, communities, and institutions--reflect such an affirmation will we have true freedom and justice." p.108
-"Only when we are freed from the anxiety created by the need to control others, or the need to be controlled by others, are we truly free. Thus, the highest form of aesthetic praxis becomes the act of celebration, wherein the intrinsic value of human life as an end in itself." <-this reminds me of what Nouwen wrote in "Here and Now" about why we celebrate birthdays.
Conversely, "When human action is instrumentalised, one's 'life' becomes a problem to be solved, a plan to be carried out, or a project to be realised. ...Consequently, I become enslaved to the desired result, anxious to plan all aspects of my life so as to ensure its successful conclusion. Convinved that I am free bc I am 'in control' of my life, I am actually enslaved by my very need to control..." p.110
-Praxis always has an affective dimension. It is through this affective dimension that we can relate most intimately with others." human interaction, not billiard balls. p.110 "The sharing of any feelings, however 'negative,' implies and affirms interaction, connection, and relationship with the other person; the failure to do so implies and affirms estrangement and alienation." p.110-111
-Domestic life as human action. not just the productivity in the public sphere (marketplace/political arena).; A proper understanding of human action must, thus, embrace both public and private spheres of activity, and the intrinsic r/s btw them: Although it is often regarded as autonomous, daily life is in fact at the center of history, invading all aspects of life." p.113
-the depreciation of domestic life as praxis has resulted historically not only in the marginalization of women's experience but also in the marginalization of popular religion as a locus theologicus" p.116
-in the context of the modern Western private-public dichotomy
-The insufficiency of aesthetics : embedded in ethical-political and economic r/s too. "After all, as bodies we act and make (products) as well as feel. Human action always has an ethical-political character since--given our relational or organic anthropology--human action implies a rs between ourselves and our environment, especially other persons. ... "the intrinsic interrelationships among aesthetic action, ethical-political action, and poiesis" P: reminds me of musicology, the lecture about opera in Paris and how things affected each other-sponsorship, audience reception...
-One culture can fuse emphatically with another culture only if and when they are both already acknowledged as equal. p.126
-Culture is an attractive, alternative 'key to history,' ..to human liberation... If justice demands nothing more than an open mind, a room-full of pre-Columbian artifacts, and an 'exposure' to other perspectives, then we can achieve justice without leaving the comfort of the suburban enclosure or the ivory tower. p.127 Culture symbols and practices are always mediated by political and economic structures and r/s.
-Conclusion: Goizueta suggests that "rather than superseding the ethical-political, the aesthetic dimension of human action is mediated by the ethical-political; it is encountered and lived out within ethical-political action, as the deepest meaning and significance of the ethical-political." p.128
-"The only proper locus of aesthetics and worship is, thus, the ethical-political option for the poor. Yet the deepest significance of that option is not social transformation per se, but the celebration of everyday human life. This is why, paradoxically, it is among the poor that one will find the most vibrant and vital communities of celebration and worship." p.131
Rationality or irrationality? Modernity, Postmodernity, and the U.S. Hispanic Theologian
-"If lived human experience is inherently relational, embodied, and affective, then we cannot understand that lived experience through concepts alone. Interpersonal reality cannot be understood or known primarily through theoretical analysis, but through an aesthetic, affective, and active participation in ('fusion' with) the sacramental r/s, symbols, and rituals. p.141
-Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz: "Praxis is both intellectual enterprise as well as action; the dichotomy between intellectual activity and physical work is a fictitious one..." p.142
-The liberation of the poor implies the emergence of historically marginalised persons as full-fledged rational historical subjects. p.148
-dichotomy of theory and praxis->dichotomy of truth and meaning
-If objective, scientific methods cannot lead us to truth, then truth per se must not exist. All that we can hope for is "meaningful" experiences which, as "meaningful," are inaccessible to rational analysis and judgment; the statement, "this particular experience or theory is meaningful for me," is ipso facto incontrovertible and must be accepted at face value, since to judge it according to rational criteria would be to impose on it external, alien, and artificial categories. Truth, then, is reduced to meaning...Rational certainty is replaced by sheer indeterminancy and ambitguity, since the story which is true to my experience is not necessarily true to yours, and the work of art which is meaningful for me is not necessarily meaningful to you. p.150
-The postmodern absolutization of particularity places U.S. Hispanics, and other historically marginalised groups, in an ambiguous situation. ...Justo Gonzalez: ...in which the dominant is confused with the universal. p.151
-For Christians, the understanding of the rs btw the universal and the particular is rooted in the incarnation itself, in the "scandal of particularity" p.152
-The possibility of mutual understanding--not simply mutual empathy--is thus itself intrinsic to an organic, relational anthropology. ...implies the possibility of shared norms--mediated, always, by the particular perspectives through which they are revealed. ...mediated by praxis aka the active relationship btw particular others. Truth is not fundamentally a thing but an event. p.153
-Symbols are both the end and the source of rational understanding; in the words of Paul Ricoeur, "the symbol gives rise to thought, but thought always returns to and is informed by the symbol." Aesthetic experience not only transcends theory; it also gives birth to theoretical reflection. p.155
-Particular meaning mediates universal truth.
-Only if I affirm your own concrete particularity and uniqueness will I be able to understand how your own life and history reveal a universal truth that is also true for me. p.157
*-"When the meaning of particular experiences is not recognized as mediating universal truth--art, literature, and religion lose their ability to subvert the dominant culture because, by becoming privatized, they lose their ability to engage that culture at all." ...We experience art and religion as not only meaningful, but as also true, as having a relatively autonomous and objective reality beyond our own particular social location. p.160
-competition among particular theologies, especially Third World and feminist theologies. ...surest sign that an authentic pluralism or multiculturalism does not exist: the access to those material resources necessary for making one's voice heard remains controlled by the same dominant groups. p.166
-Whatever else a pluralist is telling you, he is also telling you that his heart is in the right place...the right place is every place and therefore nowhere at all." p.170
-A pluralistic, multicultural society is one that multiplies the number of available options (whether political, economic, religious, or cultural) without according explicit preference to any--
"I'm OK, you're OK." Implicit preference continues to be accorded, however, to the dominant culture's interpretative horizon. ...Whatever its multicultural intent, such a pluralism ironically perpetuates the violence inflicted on marginalised groups and, indeed, compounds that violence by forcing these groups to turn against each other, thereby deflecting criticism and opposition. p.171
The preferential option for the poor & the proper place of theology:
-Authentic justice ->authentic pluralism=presupposes a praxis that is genuinely intersubjective, between particular, unique others. If mutual respect and understanding presuppose a r/s of others, oppression, injustice, marginalization, and exclusion are the names we give to the denial of the particularity and otherness of certain persons, namely, the poor. Thus, as long as there are poor persons there can be no pluralism. p.173
-emerged within the Latin American culture because or their organic worldview; it could not have emerged within a worldview that pits the universal (the good of the whole) against the particular (the good of a part, e.g., the poor). Within an individualistic worldview, the scriptural command to do justice--as a necessary implication of our very humanity and creatureliness--is literally inconceivable; instead, that command will be interpreted as a mere suggestion that one autonomous individual help other autonomous individuals. Where there is no necessary connection between persons there can be no necessary ethical-political imperative to love others. p.173
-Gustavo Gutierrez argued for a scriptural basis of this historical option: God's predilection for the weak and abused of human history in the Bible, starting with Cain and Abel...This preference brings out the gratuitous or unmerited character of God's love. p.175
-Gutierrez: "God has a preferential love for the poor not because they are necessarily better than others, morally or religiously, but simply bc they are poor and living in an inhuman situation that is contrary to God's will. The ultimate basis for the privileged position of the poor is not in the poor themselves but in God, in the gratuitousness and universality of God's agapeic love." p.176
-if God is present preferentially among the poor, we can only know God if we place ourselves there also. The option for the poor is, then the most important epistemological precondition for Christian faith: to know God we must first opt for the poor. p.177 To turn a deaf ear to the cries of the poor is implicitly to identify God's voice with that of the status quo and, hence, its established power structures. To hide their suffering and struggles is thus to make faith in a transcendent God impossible." [a precondition for authentic Christian faith] p.178
-illustration: a father would help the 3 year old brother who is involved in a fight with the big sister because he is weaker and to help the older sister would be to side with the privileged and unfair. To help the younger brother is the loving/fair thing to do.
-other reflection: when the rich people keep building tall walls and install alarms for fear that the poor outside would invade and steal their abundance of money. p.178This is not recognising that we all are humans created by God and we are connected because God is love. Our ignorance of their needs is what compelled the poor to have to steal--they taking the initiative to get what they need from whoever has a lot. Why can't we go out and give them in the first place? When I think about this in this way, I suddenly am not so scared of having my valuable things stolen (except for those associated with memories that are not replaceable). Who am I to think that the things I enjoy are mine? Aren't they all gifts from God and He can will these material things to whoever He chooses to give?
-To love the poor preferentially is to make an intentional choice to be that which we already are through no choice of our own: individual persons defined by our a priori rs to others, to humanity, to the universes, and, ultimately, to the Triune (i.e., intrinsically relational) God. p.179 If to be a human person is to be intrinsically related to others, what is irrational, then, is the failure to acknowledge that reality.
-"If God can love even clay, then God can love gold and silver. ...If--and only if--God can love even the crucified criminal, then God can love the ruler." p.179
-"It is from their (the poor) perspective that the intrinsically relational character of the person is revealed. It is, paradoxically, in the faces of those persons most alienated, most abandoned, most excluded that the intrinsic bonds that unite us all show forth--as that which is denied by such injustice. That is precisely why our society continues to alienate, abandon, and exclude the poor--bc, face-to-face w/ the poor, one is forced to confront our intrinsically relational reality. ...is so threatening that those bodies must be isolated, hidden from view in barrios, ghettoes, reservations, hospitals, etc." p.182
-When we recognise the injustice of those consequences, we get our first glimpse of what true justice is. If I, as an exile, have experienced the separation from my family, ...it is bc that experience threatens, and thus evokes a truth deeper and more fundamental than that of separation, namely, the truth of community." p.182
-"Suffering shared is suffering already in retreat." p.183
-"the concreteness and particularity of human praxis"
-"the particularity of the poor is the most accurate perspective from which to view the community as a whole--and from which to "opt for" all persons." p.185
-The act of accompaniment (being with, feeling with, doing with-as equals) p.191~
-"Where the option for the poor is simply reduced to an option for social justice, the poor will inevitably be reduced to an abstract concept or a manipulable object. ...universal love is mediated by particular love, and the most particular love is familial love. p.195
-Familial relationship->gives dignity->life affirming/common personhood affirmed
-to walk with the poor--literally, physically, and spiritually (self-reflection/soul changing) as Jesus walks with them (including geographical location-the hetereogenous urban vs. the white suburbs, crossing boundaries/in between/in exile people). Together with is important-affective, aesthetic union with the poor.
30 Aug-14 Sep 2017
New York: Orbis Books, 1995
Friday, August 25, 2017
27. Songs of the Saints: Enriching our singing by learning from the songs of Scripture - Mike Raiter & Rob Smith
Exodus 15-the song of Moses. Saved people sing: "when the Saviour God has captured someone's heart, forgiven their sins and worked in them the new birth, one of the spontaneous responses of the newly redeemed is to sing. They realize that God has done something incredible for them, something they could never have done for themselves. And he has done this both for his glory and as an expression of his grace. The only appropriate human response to this is wonder, praise and gratitude; a response that naturally finds its voice in singing." p.33-34
-"to praise is to express respect, adoration or gratitude by declaring the greatness, goodness or worthiness of the object of our praise." p.34
-"The songs God wants us to sing celebrate both what he has done, and his eternal purposes in winning salvation for us. Our Christian songs must turn our eyes backwards and forwards. ...And it is so important that our songs lift our eyes beyond the here and now, which so consumes our thoughts, anxieties, dreams and prayers, to the place where God is leading us." p.38
-"the songs of Scripture don't just invite us to praise the Lord, but give us a mountain of reasons why we should do so." p.53
-Chronicles: "How, then, do God's people respond appropriately to the presence of the God who is now in their midst? ...appoint...singers who should play loudly on musical instruments, on harps and lyres and cymbals, to raise sounds of joy (15:16)" p.63
-association of music and warfare..."the singers and musicians are set apart 'for the ministry of prophesying' (25:1)...because their praise and thanksgiving was understood to be the result of divine inspiration. ...the Lord himself both commanded and enabled this ministry (2 Chr 29:25). Second, because of the vital teaching role their ministry played." e.g. Asaph Psalms 50, 73-83
-"in the act of worship, the 'singing prophets' both led the people in praise and edified them by addressing profound theological questions of life and faith, all the while reminding them of the character and deeds of their faithful, sovereign God." p.65
-"73 of the 150 psalms are laments, either in part or in whole. Why, then, do so few of our contemporary songs present us with the brutal realities of life outside of Eden? ...a handful of musical resources that both express these sufferings and help us find strength and comfort by turning our hearts and minds to God? Theologian Carl Trueman suggests: "...Perhaps--and this is more likely--it has drunk so deeply at the well of modern Western materialism that it simply does not know what to do with such cries and regards them as little short of embarrasing. Yet the human condition is a poor one--and Christians who are aware of the deceitfulness of the human heart and are looking for a better country should know this." p.77
-Ps 42-43 tell the story of a believing man's profound sense of estrangement from God.' p.78
-"The importance of lament is not that it makes our troubles disappear, but that as we come before the throne of God and give voice to our present distress, hope is awakened and we are enabled to 'rejoice in our sufferings' (Rom 5:3-5). While we wait for the end of our sufferings, singing has a unique way of helping us process the emotional dimension of our pain and so bring us to a point of genuine praise." p.90
Hannah's song 1 Sam 2:1-10
-we're singing it on two levels: Hannah's personal testimony to God's saving grace in her life & Israel's anthem for what the Lord is about to do for all of his people. p.102
-"Too many churches have embraced the world's intolerence of the God of Hannah. ...we would rejoice in the fact that God both "brings down to the grave and raises up" (v. 6, NIV). WE would teach our children all the truth about God, and they would grow up deeply loving him and appropriately fearing him." p. 103
-1 Sam 2:4-9 "Hannah's song celebrates the truth that God is the God of reversals, the one who confounds the ways of the world. She catalogues the mighty warrior (whose weapons are broken), the wealthy (who are left beggars), the mother of many (who is rendered childless), and the rich (who is impoverished), while the feeble, the hungry, the barren and the poor take their places. This is what the New Testament calls the gospel." p.104
& Mary's song/the magnificat Luke 1:46-56
-God has "always responded with kindness to those who fear him (Luke 1:50), he has always been the God who delights to dwell with the humble (vv. 51-52), and he has always acted mercifully when his people have been in need (v. 54).
Eph 5:19, Col 3:16
-calls upon Christian congregations to engage in singing "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs". p.118
Zephaniah 3:17 "...he will exult over you with loud singing." p.155
Emotions and music, singing
-Robert Robert, who has written extensively on emotions in the Christian life, calls them "concern-based construals." ...emotions--like joy, fear, anger, exasperation, regret--are the natural responses we have, when we grasp 'with a kind of perceptual immediacy" the significance of the situation we are in." ...the significance of this event grips you...
in singing a good hymn, "the response is both intellectual and emotional." p.179
-Music can both express and arouse emotion. Stephen Davies, a philosopher at the University of Auckland, suggests that the connection lies in what he calls 'appearance emotionalism'. That is, there is a connection between the appearance of something and the emotion it evokes. e.g. a weeping willow... Music, acts in much the same way. e.g. a gradual downward movement/dark timbres/thick harmonic bass textures, music can recall an appearance of sadness." p.180
-"when we sing, we usually sing words with meanings, and those words not only express the cognitive content of the song, but the singing of them helps communicate the emotional content of the song as well."
Yip Harburg: "Words make you think a thought; music makes you feel a feeling; a song makes you feel a thought'. p.183
-our emotional responses, are largely determined by our (selfish) instincts, (corrupted) values, (false) beliefs and (foolish) thoughts. p.185 but "just as God's Spirit continually transforms our ways of thinking and patterns of behaviour, so he transforms our emotional responses as well." p.186
-"For God wants us to not only 'think his thoughts after him', but to 'feel his feelings after him' as well--to share his passions, grieve his griefs and know his joys. This is part of our growth. Indeed it is part of the renewing of our minds. ...'There is a distinction to be made,' wrote Edwards, 'between a mere notional understanding, wherein the mind only beholds things in the exercise of a speculative faculty; and the sense of the heart, wherein the mind don't [sic] only speculate and behold, but relishes and feels." p.190
The book ends with several practical ideas for how we should do congregational singing in our churches. Song leaders' roles etc.
P: Overall, this book is an easy read, very helpful for having a comprehensive discussion about how we should sing in churches, following the biblical examples of songs and what the Bible teaches about singing. It makes me want to join in in singing with my heart and being with other Christians, to praise and proclaim that "God's truth is marching on" and what a wonderful Saviour He is, kind and compassionate and just. To sing to Him and sing to one another to edify each other.
4-25 Aug 2017
Sydney: Matthias Media, 2017
-"to praise is to express respect, adoration or gratitude by declaring the greatness, goodness or worthiness of the object of our praise." p.34
-"The songs God wants us to sing celebrate both what he has done, and his eternal purposes in winning salvation for us. Our Christian songs must turn our eyes backwards and forwards. ...And it is so important that our songs lift our eyes beyond the here and now, which so consumes our thoughts, anxieties, dreams and prayers, to the place where God is leading us." p.38
-"the songs of Scripture don't just invite us to praise the Lord, but give us a mountain of reasons why we should do so." p.53
-Chronicles: "How, then, do God's people respond appropriately to the presence of the God who is now in their midst? ...appoint...singers who should play loudly on musical instruments, on harps and lyres and cymbals, to raise sounds of joy (15:16)" p.63
-association of music and warfare..."the singers and musicians are set apart 'for the ministry of prophesying' (25:1)...because their praise and thanksgiving was understood to be the result of divine inspiration. ...the Lord himself both commanded and enabled this ministry (2 Chr 29:25). Second, because of the vital teaching role their ministry played." e.g. Asaph Psalms 50, 73-83
-"in the act of worship, the 'singing prophets' both led the people in praise and edified them by addressing profound theological questions of life and faith, all the while reminding them of the character and deeds of their faithful, sovereign God." p.65
-"73 of the 150 psalms are laments, either in part or in whole. Why, then, do so few of our contemporary songs present us with the brutal realities of life outside of Eden? ...a handful of musical resources that both express these sufferings and help us find strength and comfort by turning our hearts and minds to God? Theologian Carl Trueman suggests: "...Perhaps--and this is more likely--it has drunk so deeply at the well of modern Western materialism that it simply does not know what to do with such cries and regards them as little short of embarrasing. Yet the human condition is a poor one--and Christians who are aware of the deceitfulness of the human heart and are looking for a better country should know this." p.77
-Ps 42-43 tell the story of a believing man's profound sense of estrangement from God.' p.78
-"The importance of lament is not that it makes our troubles disappear, but that as we come before the throne of God and give voice to our present distress, hope is awakened and we are enabled to 'rejoice in our sufferings' (Rom 5:3-5). While we wait for the end of our sufferings, singing has a unique way of helping us process the emotional dimension of our pain and so bring us to a point of genuine praise." p.90
Hannah's song 1 Sam 2:1-10
-we're singing it on two levels: Hannah's personal testimony to God's saving grace in her life & Israel's anthem for what the Lord is about to do for all of his people. p.102
-"Too many churches have embraced the world's intolerence of the God of Hannah. ...we would rejoice in the fact that God both "brings down to the grave and raises up" (v. 6, NIV). WE would teach our children all the truth about God, and they would grow up deeply loving him and appropriately fearing him." p. 103
-1 Sam 2:4-9 "Hannah's song celebrates the truth that God is the God of reversals, the one who confounds the ways of the world. She catalogues the mighty warrior (whose weapons are broken), the wealthy (who are left beggars), the mother of many (who is rendered childless), and the rich (who is impoverished), while the feeble, the hungry, the barren and the poor take their places. This is what the New Testament calls the gospel." p.104
& Mary's song/the magnificat Luke 1:46-56
-God has "always responded with kindness to those who fear him (Luke 1:50), he has always been the God who delights to dwell with the humble (vv. 51-52), and he has always acted mercifully when his people have been in need (v. 54).
Eph 5:19, Col 3:16
-calls upon Christian congregations to engage in singing "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs". p.118
Zephaniah 3:17 "...he will exult over you with loud singing." p.155
Emotions and music, singing
-Robert Robert, who has written extensively on emotions in the Christian life, calls them "concern-based construals." ...emotions--like joy, fear, anger, exasperation, regret--are the natural responses we have, when we grasp 'with a kind of perceptual immediacy" the significance of the situation we are in." ...the significance of this event grips you...
in singing a good hymn, "the response is both intellectual and emotional." p.179
-Music can both express and arouse emotion. Stephen Davies, a philosopher at the University of Auckland, suggests that the connection lies in what he calls 'appearance emotionalism'. That is, there is a connection between the appearance of something and the emotion it evokes. e.g. a weeping willow... Music, acts in much the same way. e.g. a gradual downward movement/dark timbres/thick harmonic bass textures, music can recall an appearance of sadness." p.180
-"when we sing, we usually sing words with meanings, and those words not only express the cognitive content of the song, but the singing of them helps communicate the emotional content of the song as well."
Yip Harburg: "Words make you think a thought; music makes you feel a feeling; a song makes you feel a thought'. p.183
-our emotional responses, are largely determined by our (selfish) instincts, (corrupted) values, (false) beliefs and (foolish) thoughts. p.185 but "just as God's Spirit continually transforms our ways of thinking and patterns of behaviour, so he transforms our emotional responses as well." p.186
-"For God wants us to not only 'think his thoughts after him', but to 'feel his feelings after him' as well--to share his passions, grieve his griefs and know his joys. This is part of our growth. Indeed it is part of the renewing of our minds. ...'There is a distinction to be made,' wrote Edwards, 'between a mere notional understanding, wherein the mind only beholds things in the exercise of a speculative faculty; and the sense of the heart, wherein the mind don't [sic] only speculate and behold, but relishes and feels." p.190
The book ends with several practical ideas for how we should do congregational singing in our churches. Song leaders' roles etc.
P: Overall, this book is an easy read, very helpful for having a comprehensive discussion about how we should sing in churches, following the biblical examples of songs and what the Bible teaches about singing. It makes me want to join in in singing with my heart and being with other Christians, to praise and proclaim that "God's truth is marching on" and what a wonderful Saviour He is, kind and compassionate and just. To sing to Him and sing to one another to edify each other.
4-25 Aug 2017
Sydney: Matthias Media, 2017
Saturday, July 22, 2017
26. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens-Sean Covey
Get in the habit, they make you or break you.
Shift your paradigms and be principles-centered.
The Personal Bank Account:
1. Be proactive, take responsibility for your own life. Don't complain. Choose to respond with the right attitude.
2. Begin with the end in mind. How do you want to be a year later? Deciding what your values are and setting goals. ; the "Great Discovery"; writing your Personal mission statement
3. Prioritze: big rocks scheduling
"Winning means rising everything you fail."
4. Think win-win.
Relationship bank account.
Keep promises, do small acts of kindness, be loyal, genuine listening, say you're sorry, set clear expectations.
-Don't compare with others. "When competition is used as a means of creating a self-image relative to others, the worst in a person comes out." -Tim Galwey, p.155
5. Seek first to understand, then to be understood.
-Listen first, talk second because everyone wants to be respected and valued for who they are--a unique, one-of-a-kind individual. People won't expose their soft middles unless they feel genuine love and understanding.
6. Synergize. Celebrating differences, teamwork, open-mindedness, finding new and better ways.
7. Renewal: sharpen the saw. Nothing in life comes easily. Pay the price of hard work to develop a strong mind. p.217
Laughter is the best medicine
Caring for your soul: journal, listen to good music, walk in nature (what is it that moves your soul?)
Overall, the "baby steps" provided at the end of each chapter provides great practical applications and can be looked at again to carry out the steps.
13-22 July, 2017
New York: Fireside, 1998
Shift your paradigms and be principles-centered.
The Personal Bank Account:
1. Be proactive, take responsibility for your own life. Don't complain. Choose to respond with the right attitude.
2. Begin with the end in mind. How do you want to be a year later? Deciding what your values are and setting goals. ; the "Great Discovery"; writing your Personal mission statement
3. Prioritze: big rocks scheduling
"Winning means rising everything you fail."
4. Think win-win.
Relationship bank account.
Keep promises, do small acts of kindness, be loyal, genuine listening, say you're sorry, set clear expectations.
-Don't compare with others. "When competition is used as a means of creating a self-image relative to others, the worst in a person comes out." -Tim Galwey, p.155
5. Seek first to understand, then to be understood.
-Listen first, talk second because everyone wants to be respected and valued for who they are--a unique, one-of-a-kind individual. People won't expose their soft middles unless they feel genuine love and understanding.
6. Synergize. Celebrating differences, teamwork, open-mindedness, finding new and better ways.
7. Renewal: sharpen the saw. Nothing in life comes easily. Pay the price of hard work to develop a strong mind. p.217
Laughter is the best medicine
Caring for your soul: journal, listen to good music, walk in nature (what is it that moves your soul?)
Overall, the "baby steps" provided at the end of each chapter provides great practical applications and can be looked at again to carry out the steps.
13-22 July, 2017
New York: Fireside, 1998
Thursday, July 13, 2017
20. Religions/Globalizations: Theories and Cases - eds. Hopkins et al.
"For the majority of cultures around the world, religion thoroughly permeates and decisively affects the everyday rituals of survival and hope." "The norm, therefore, is not a false divide between secularity and spirituality but the coexistence and interweaving of the so-called holy and profane." "Religious spirituality remains both endemic to controversy and empowering for social transformation." p.1
-This book "use theoretical and material approaches to explore religion in the context of globalization." p.2
-Pros & cons/questions raised about globalization: e.g. "Does globalization bring about more conformity or more heterogeneity? Can an overemphasis on globalization as a determinant miss seeing local agency?" p.3
PART ONE / THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS
"The Religion of Globalization" - Dwight N. Hopkins pp. 7-32
-The World Council of Churches (WCC)-evangelistic goal vs. the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions-pursues "civil conversation through mutual encounter" p.7
-Thesis of this article/chapter: "that globalization of monopoly finance capitalist culture is itself a religion." p.8
-Def.: "Religion is a system of beliefs and practices comprising a god (which is the object of one's faith), a faith (which is a belief in a desired power greater than oneself), a religious leadership (which determines the path of belief), religious institutions (which facilitate the ongoing organization of the religion), a theological anthropology (which defines what it means to be human), values (which set the standards to which the religion subscribes), a theology (which is the theoretical justification of the faith), and revelation (which is the diverse ways that the god manifests itself in and to the world)." p.9
-The religion of globalization crafts the new "value of individualism" -"accumulation of things for the individual's primary benefit. ...It downplays sharing. It weakens the art of negotiation and compromise. It blinds a vision of mutuality. And it fosters a utilitarian way of being in the world where people, places, and things become tools for, and stepping stones toward, increased personal profit." p.14
-"The 'West' becomes a place, like a utopia, of meaning to fulfill one's theological anthropology. ... For the elite who remain in developing countries, energies and resources are deployed, metaphorically or literally, to purchase or imitate the latest thought forms, things, and lifestyles from NY, Paris, and London. ... The religion of the new human being moves one's senses through space, time, and imagination to the 'altars' of the monopoly finance capitalist god of concentrated wealth." p.15
P: This is so true, I am part of the wannabes in this 'elite' in a developing country. ; worship should move Christians' senses through space, time, and imagination to the altar of God as effectively as the promotions of instagram/youtube/ads/movies move us to these desired hashtag roomgoals cafegoals fashiongoals (basically materialism)
-"Theological justification/their dogmatics: 1. emphasis on free markets--a movement to open up global markets, especially in the Third World. 2. Privatization-imposed by transnational corporations in Third World countries 3. deregulation-stripping governments of their historic role of regulating the harmful effects of business practices imposed on people and the ecology." p.16-17 basically, all for the benefits of monopolies/ "capitalist wealth concentration on a global scale" p.19 -pursues "the integration of all markets throughout the world. ...to lock developing countries into a dependent state by advancing loans and making these countries go into debt." p.19
-The notion of distanciation or time-space compression brought about by computer technological and telecommunications advances allows instantaneous international activity of concentrated monopoly finance capitalist wealth." -gives the god 'transcendence'-travel the world p.22
-Worse yet, "developing countries' governments make policy not for the benefit of labor, the environment, the domestic economy, or the marginalized sectors of society but in the interest of what will facilitate intensified wealth concentration." p.22-23
-"Television serves as a major pioneer in developing a common way of being and worldview. ... The vision of the real and the ideal, hopes and failures, can often be more powerful in molding a popular opinion ... television soap operas spark ways of imitating and incorporating the visual lessons from fictional people into the cultural trappings of the viewers. " p.25 Basically, the tv/media present to us what is the norm and people try to imitate it.
-"Globalization has become the vehicle of cultural invasion. Technology is power. It becomes the carrier to those systems and ideologies (values and cultures) within which it has been nurtured. The tendency is to create a mono-culture. By mono-culture we mean the undermining of economic, cultural and ecological diversity, the nearly universal acceptance of a technological culture as developed in the West and the adoption of its inherent values. The indigenous culture and its potential for human development are vastly ignored. The tendency is to accept efficiency with productivity without any concern for compassion or justice." p.27-28 (quoted from K. C. Abraham, "Together in Mission and Unity: Beholding the Glory of God's Kingdom," Voices from the Third World 22, no. 1 (June 1999): 144-45.)
"Culture is an industry inventing and spreading aesthetic sensibilities, fantasy and imagination, the pursuit of pleasure, and the creation of compassion on a global scale." p.28
-EATWOT's understanding of religion and globalization accents agency and the coconstitution of a new human self with the God of freedom for the oppressed. EATWOT offers a new spirituality of resistance to domination and a sustained struggle for freedom and justice, anchored in the plight of the poor but yielding a full humanity for all."
"The Sociohistorical Meaning of Liberation Theology (Reflections about Its Origin and World Context)-Enrique Dussel pp. 33-45
-reflecting on the sociohistorical world "context" that gave birth to liberation theology's emergence.
-"liberation theology becomes a 'reinterpretative and critical reflection' arising at the end of modernity (in the ancient colonial world of the Hispanic and preindustrial modernity I), within the only southern and peripheral Christianity of the poor. This fact produces, inside a culturally 'dominant' Christianity, the awakening of a 'prophetic and political' responsibility, in radical contrast to Islamic 'fundamentalisms' that claim direct power from the Right. It also yields a Christianity that transforms from within: the definite 'popular imagination' that emerged from the impact of the Catholic modernity I. This is a 'critical' Christianity from the perspective of the impoverished masses of the South, which could not develop within the Christianities of the rich North of Europe and the United States. It is also a transmodern and postecumenical reflection, for its point of departure (rather than the divided churches--both Protestant and Catholic--of modernity) is its reference to the oppressed and exlcuded masses." p.35-36
-"This theological perspective emerges from a commitment to the poor of the South, that is, those who have been excluded from the present globalization modernizing process. Thus this is a critical reflection leading to a transmodern hope, aimed toward an alternative of greater justice for the people at the periphery." p.41
Society's Religion: The Rise of Social Theory, Globalization, and the Invention of Religion"-Eduardo Mendieta pp.46-65
-myth of secularization/to abolish religion by sublimating it
-"Modernity produced both the illusion of the end of religion and the birth of the religious proper. Before modernity there was no religion, just as there was no 'society.'" p.46 "the invention of the religious" p.47
-Theories of globalization:
1. Mono-metastructural: explains the rise of globalization in terms of "the expansion of one societal subsystem...Every other subsystem develops under the pressure of the dominant.../diffusionist perspective.../the expansion of modernity" p.48
2. Matrix Rearrangement and Differentiation: "globalization is seen as a radically new order in which the fundamental building blocks of social interaction enter into radically new relations" (intergrationist perspective) p.48
3. Metatheoretical Reflexivity (Luhmann's theory): "The global order is different not just in quantity and order but in kind from what has preceded it." "Religious revolutions, reformations, and so-called regressive fundamentalisms are not just defensive or counterreactions to the effects of economic globalization. Instead they are already aspects of a global culture." "From this theoretical perspective, then global modernities are already forms of the world order, of a globalized social system." "...we observe the observer." p.50 "globalization is a way in which society observes itself as an integrated system. ...society as a self-observing system, soceity itself can no longer conceive of itself as an aggregation of somewhat interrelated parts and elements...we must think society anew." p.50-51
-Def. social theory="the analysis of the means by which society reflects on itself--it is the observation of observation." and "social theory performs" whether the images/concepts produced by social theory is false or true, ideological or ideal models; "there is a history of the ways in which society has conceptualized its unity as a totality." e.g. "the major social transformations from ancient, to medieval, and then to modern society; from mercantile, to industrial, and then to finance capitalism. ...in tandem with the rise of different centers of social integration." p.51
-"Intellectual regimes...are ways of interacting; in short, a habitus, a group of social practices that are enabled or disabled by social spaces. Reflection is a social habitus that inhabits a certain social space." Therefore, "we could tell the history of the self-thematizations of Western society as the histories of the social spaces for the production of those self-thematizations: the monastery, the cloister, the semiprivate, semipublic spaces of the salons and academies of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, the state-financed university, and the profit-driven 'infotainment' (to use Benjamin Barber's term) networks of the information age." p.52
P: Where is this social space where the Malaysian Chinese society self-thematizes? Newspapers, families, church, coffee shops?
-Question of the history of religion: "In Chinese it may be translated as Zong jiao (which may connote piety, lawfulness, respect, reverence, ritual), or it may also be translated as li (again rites, rituals)." vs. in Indian, Dharma-law, order, mores) ..."they reveal to what extent religion remained undifferentiated from other aspects or dimensions of society. Thus if we look at Socrates, we find a combination of ethics, religion, and civic duty." p.53
-The 16th century marks a nodal point in the history of the evolution of human society in general, and religion in particular. The Reformation, the printing press, and the debates between Sepulveda and de las Casas on the humanity of the Indians were key events and processes that altered the fabric of human relations in the so-called West first, but eventually throughout the entire world." p.54
-"at the moment that the world is presented as a unity, as a planetary totality, human cultures are relativized. Some will claim for themselves supremacy and a higher status. ...Perspectives become local; no one culture can claim a privileged point of view. ...The political, the economic, the cultural--all fall under the rubric of the social system." p.54-55 "Paradoxically, just as the social proper is discovered, humans discovered that society is made up of societies." "if society is its own totalizer, Religion is now seen as one of the subsystems of human interaction." p.55
-18th century, "social theory proper is forumulated as a formal, self-conscious, fairly distinct endeavor." to work out the epistemological convulsions brought about by the new perspective gained on humanity...to be worked out through theology, state theory, moral theory, even economics, before they could reach their proper conceptualization in social theory/sociology.
-The "process of marginalization or pushing out of the religious from society came to be called secularization."
-"society's self-thematization depends on the type of space from which a self-image and self-identity can be projected." p.56
-stages of social theory's development: personalized by key figures (Heilbron's view) 1. Montesquieu and Rousseau-preoccupation with the order of society, dissatisfaction with politics or economics->2. Condorcet & Cabanis-the social makes its appearance, but its appropriate science not formulated->3. Comte "father of social analysis" p.58-59
-"The questions of language, individualism, even of bodily and subjective experimentalism and celebration, were made possible by the presence of Christian values and norms. Similarly, the rise of the state apparatus, its legal and constitutional norms, its principles of legitimation, were in one way or another derived from and rooted in canon law, church functions, and theological insights that necessitate their own relativization." p.60
-Def. globalization="the creation of a new planetary social order in which the centrality of the state, in the form of both nationality and the rule-of-law state (Rechtstatt), the economy, as a system of hyperconnected interactions, and culture, as a new order of the production of world images, have been contested and repositioned." p.60
"Who Is an Indian? Religion, Globalization, and Chiapas"-Lois Ann Lorentzen pp. 84-
-Mires: the indio/Indian has become a homogenizing concept signifying the 'not European,' expressed not as an affirmation of identity but as a negation. Alberto Huerto claims that 'en Mexico los indios son los naturales' This 'imaginary' Indian, according to Mires, emerges from a 'romantic naturalistic vision of history' reflecting the rediscoverers more than the actual indigenous community.
-"Is globalization the most important dynamic to consider--more important than intergroup conflict, the power of local caciques, the Mexican goverenment, regional inequities, ladino-indigenous dynamics, or more important than the characteristics of Maya religion and cosmology, with its capacity to absorb and re-create itself? ...I am reluctant to jump too quickly to macrodeterminants." p.98
"This indio, then, is agent. This indo is not just the 'discovered' indio. The ideology or discourse of Indianness..is a true product of globalization. ...The 'West' first invents and then discovers this 'authentic' indio who isn't Catholic, isn't Protestant, is ecologically pure, and practices centuries-old rituals." p.99-102
PART TWO / CASE STUDIES
"The African Transformation of Christianity: Comparative Reflections on Ethnicity and Religious Mobilization in Africa"-Lamin Sanneh pp. 105-134
-2 sides: "Africa was afflicted with a double jeopardy. It served as an outpost of Europe's mastery, exploitation, and world dominance, and while thus repressed, it was held to standards of freedom and progress it lost under European hegemony." ... "it oversimplifies a complex theme and overlooks the point of so-called native victims being able to turn to their own account the things to which Europeans introduced them, including mother tongue literacy. For that, European motives could be discounted. Furthermore, African societies, insofar as they were living societies, were no more immune to change than other societies, and to condemn to lost authenticity from having encountered Europeans seems particularly harsh, and without ground."p.107-8
-T: "The missionary sponsorship of Bible translation became the catalyst for profound changes in language, culture, and ethnicity, changes that invested ethnic identity with the materials for reawakened sense of local identity." p. 109
-18th century evangelical and humanitarian movement in Europe, in Scandinavia, France, and Britain...spawned the antislavery movement. & the contemporary missionary movement. p.110-111
-"the 'central and enduring character of Christian history is the rendering of God's eternal counsels into terms of everyday speech. By that path believers have come to stand before their God." p.111
-"In Bible translation, hitherto taboo ethnic groups and their languages and cultures were effectively destigmatized while at the same time superior cultures were stripped of their right to constitute themselves into exclusive standards of access to God." p.112
-"The striking mark of Christianity in its mission is its confidence that because God spoke to us all, then all human speech in its concrete ethnic diversity is hallowed for our ordinary and consecrated use." p.113 "incarnation...humanity is the chosen language of divine self-expression."
-Professor Diedrich Westermann of Berlin: "In this sense we speak of the soul of a people, and the most immediate, the most adequate exponent of the soul of a people is its language." p.113
-"...affected ethnic sensibility, gave it material expression, moral affirmation, and a historical vocation, even if at the same time it mediated the spread of European cultural ideas." p.116
-"Thus, if we started from the religious roots of knowledge, we should see that the impulse to understanding was grounded in the encounter with a personal God, with a God who had spoken and acted and, as the source of living and meaning, was graciously available to us in the habits and languages of human community, in fact in ethnic particularity, if you will. In philosophy it was the accepted custom to speak of God as the Supreme Being; in religion the divine was spoken of as the living God. As long as we kept close to the soil, we would not split God between an abstract form and a personal deity." p.118
-"The question for religion at this point was how the conception of a universal God could be reconciled with worship of God in all the particularity and concreteness necessarily involved in worship as such, notably in the particularity and concreteness of language, symbol, ritual, aesthetics, music, dance, and art. ...these were not opposite conceptions but different levels of apprehending the real. ...It is a matter of the 'One and the Many,' of the one God and the many representations." pp.118-9
-Johannes Christaller (missionary-linguist): "not to despise the sparks of truth entrusted to and preserved by their own people" p.119
-cultural intimacy p.120
-"It is the special power of the Bible clothed in the mother tongue thus to bring together individuality and universality..." p.121
"(In)Corporating Threshold Art: Kolam Competitions, Patronage, and Colgate"-Vijaya Rettakudi Nagarajan pp.161-186
P: a good, punny, specific, interesting title that is clear also.
-another layer of social complexity: "The Tamil women who eagerly participate in these globalized contexts also seemed to impart a certain kind of agency, expressing and acting out of a desire to become part of the local public sphere through this transforming of a 'domestic' ritual art tradition." p.182
-the presentation of 'traditional' rituals in public cultural spaces (topic ideas)
transnational belonging p.188
parallel development of processes of globalization and localization p.203
13 April-12 July, 2017
Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001.
-This book "use theoretical and material approaches to explore religion in the context of globalization." p.2
-Pros & cons/questions raised about globalization: e.g. "Does globalization bring about more conformity or more heterogeneity? Can an overemphasis on globalization as a determinant miss seeing local agency?" p.3
PART ONE / THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS
"The Religion of Globalization" - Dwight N. Hopkins pp. 7-32
-The World Council of Churches (WCC)-evangelistic goal vs. the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions-pursues "civil conversation through mutual encounter" p.7
-Thesis of this article/chapter: "that globalization of monopoly finance capitalist culture is itself a religion." p.8
-Def.: "Religion is a system of beliefs and practices comprising a god (which is the object of one's faith), a faith (which is a belief in a desired power greater than oneself), a religious leadership (which determines the path of belief), religious institutions (which facilitate the ongoing organization of the religion), a theological anthropology (which defines what it means to be human), values (which set the standards to which the religion subscribes), a theology (which is the theoretical justification of the faith), and revelation (which is the diverse ways that the god manifests itself in and to the world)." p.9
-The religion of globalization crafts the new "value of individualism" -"accumulation of things for the individual's primary benefit. ...It downplays sharing. It weakens the art of negotiation and compromise. It blinds a vision of mutuality. And it fosters a utilitarian way of being in the world where people, places, and things become tools for, and stepping stones toward, increased personal profit." p.14
-"The 'West' becomes a place, like a utopia, of meaning to fulfill one's theological anthropology. ... For the elite who remain in developing countries, energies and resources are deployed, metaphorically or literally, to purchase or imitate the latest thought forms, things, and lifestyles from NY, Paris, and London. ... The religion of the new human being moves one's senses through space, time, and imagination to the 'altars' of the monopoly finance capitalist god of concentrated wealth." p.15
P: This is so true, I am part of the wannabes in this 'elite' in a developing country. ; worship should move Christians' senses through space, time, and imagination to the altar of God as effectively as the promotions of instagram/youtube/ads/movies move us to these desired hashtag roomgoals cafegoals fashiongoals (basically materialism)
-"Theological justification/their dogmatics: 1. emphasis on free markets--a movement to open up global markets, especially in the Third World. 2. Privatization-imposed by transnational corporations in Third World countries 3. deregulation-stripping governments of their historic role of regulating the harmful effects of business practices imposed on people and the ecology." p.16-17 basically, all for the benefits of monopolies/ "capitalist wealth concentration on a global scale" p.19 -pursues "the integration of all markets throughout the world. ...to lock developing countries into a dependent state by advancing loans and making these countries go into debt." p.19
-The notion of distanciation or time-space compression brought about by computer technological and telecommunications advances allows instantaneous international activity of concentrated monopoly finance capitalist wealth." -gives the god 'transcendence'-travel the world p.22
-Worse yet, "developing countries' governments make policy not for the benefit of labor, the environment, the domestic economy, or the marginalized sectors of society but in the interest of what will facilitate intensified wealth concentration." p.22-23
-"Television serves as a major pioneer in developing a common way of being and worldview. ... The vision of the real and the ideal, hopes and failures, can often be more powerful in molding a popular opinion ... television soap operas spark ways of imitating and incorporating the visual lessons from fictional people into the cultural trappings of the viewers. " p.25 Basically, the tv/media present to us what is the norm and people try to imitate it.
-"Globalization has become the vehicle of cultural invasion. Technology is power. It becomes the carrier to those systems and ideologies (values and cultures) within which it has been nurtured. The tendency is to create a mono-culture. By mono-culture we mean the undermining of economic, cultural and ecological diversity, the nearly universal acceptance of a technological culture as developed in the West and the adoption of its inherent values. The indigenous culture and its potential for human development are vastly ignored. The tendency is to accept efficiency with productivity without any concern for compassion or justice." p.27-28 (quoted from K. C. Abraham, "Together in Mission and Unity: Beholding the Glory of God's Kingdom," Voices from the Third World 22, no. 1 (June 1999): 144-45.)
"Culture is an industry inventing and spreading aesthetic sensibilities, fantasy and imagination, the pursuit of pleasure, and the creation of compassion on a global scale." p.28
-EATWOT's understanding of religion and globalization accents agency and the coconstitution of a new human self with the God of freedom for the oppressed. EATWOT offers a new spirituality of resistance to domination and a sustained struggle for freedom and justice, anchored in the plight of the poor but yielding a full humanity for all."
"The Sociohistorical Meaning of Liberation Theology (Reflections about Its Origin and World Context)-Enrique Dussel pp. 33-45
-reflecting on the sociohistorical world "context" that gave birth to liberation theology's emergence.
-"liberation theology becomes a 'reinterpretative and critical reflection' arising at the end of modernity (in the ancient colonial world of the Hispanic and preindustrial modernity I), within the only southern and peripheral Christianity of the poor. This fact produces, inside a culturally 'dominant' Christianity, the awakening of a 'prophetic and political' responsibility, in radical contrast to Islamic 'fundamentalisms' that claim direct power from the Right. It also yields a Christianity that transforms from within: the definite 'popular imagination' that emerged from the impact of the Catholic modernity I. This is a 'critical' Christianity from the perspective of the impoverished masses of the South, which could not develop within the Christianities of the rich North of Europe and the United States. It is also a transmodern and postecumenical reflection, for its point of departure (rather than the divided churches--both Protestant and Catholic--of modernity) is its reference to the oppressed and exlcuded masses." p.35-36
-"This theological perspective emerges from a commitment to the poor of the South, that is, those who have been excluded from the present globalization modernizing process. Thus this is a critical reflection leading to a transmodern hope, aimed toward an alternative of greater justice for the people at the periphery." p.41
Society's Religion: The Rise of Social Theory, Globalization, and the Invention of Religion"-Eduardo Mendieta pp.46-65
-myth of secularization/to abolish religion by sublimating it
-"Modernity produced both the illusion of the end of religion and the birth of the religious proper. Before modernity there was no religion, just as there was no 'society.'" p.46 "the invention of the religious" p.47
-Theories of globalization:
1. Mono-metastructural: explains the rise of globalization in terms of "the expansion of one societal subsystem...Every other subsystem develops under the pressure of the dominant.../diffusionist perspective.../the expansion of modernity" p.48
2. Matrix Rearrangement and Differentiation: "globalization is seen as a radically new order in which the fundamental building blocks of social interaction enter into radically new relations" (intergrationist perspective) p.48
3. Metatheoretical Reflexivity (Luhmann's theory): "The global order is different not just in quantity and order but in kind from what has preceded it." "Religious revolutions, reformations, and so-called regressive fundamentalisms are not just defensive or counterreactions to the effects of economic globalization. Instead they are already aspects of a global culture." "From this theoretical perspective, then global modernities are already forms of the world order, of a globalized social system." "...we observe the observer." p.50 "globalization is a way in which society observes itself as an integrated system. ...society as a self-observing system, soceity itself can no longer conceive of itself as an aggregation of somewhat interrelated parts and elements...we must think society anew." p.50-51
-Def. social theory="the analysis of the means by which society reflects on itself--it is the observation of observation." and "social theory performs" whether the images/concepts produced by social theory is false or true, ideological or ideal models; "there is a history of the ways in which society has conceptualized its unity as a totality." e.g. "the major social transformations from ancient, to medieval, and then to modern society; from mercantile, to industrial, and then to finance capitalism. ...in tandem with the rise of different centers of social integration." p.51
-"Intellectual regimes...are ways of interacting; in short, a habitus, a group of social practices that are enabled or disabled by social spaces. Reflection is a social habitus that inhabits a certain social space." Therefore, "we could tell the history of the self-thematizations of Western society as the histories of the social spaces for the production of those self-thematizations: the monastery, the cloister, the semiprivate, semipublic spaces of the salons and academies of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, the state-financed university, and the profit-driven 'infotainment' (to use Benjamin Barber's term) networks of the information age." p.52
P: Where is this social space where the Malaysian Chinese society self-thematizes? Newspapers, families, church, coffee shops?
-Question of the history of religion: "In Chinese it may be translated as Zong jiao (which may connote piety, lawfulness, respect, reverence, ritual), or it may also be translated as li (again rites, rituals)." vs. in Indian, Dharma-law, order, mores) ..."they reveal to what extent religion remained undifferentiated from other aspects or dimensions of society. Thus if we look at Socrates, we find a combination of ethics, religion, and civic duty." p.53
-The 16th century marks a nodal point in the history of the evolution of human society in general, and religion in particular. The Reformation, the printing press, and the debates between Sepulveda and de las Casas on the humanity of the Indians were key events and processes that altered the fabric of human relations in the so-called West first, but eventually throughout the entire world." p.54
-"at the moment that the world is presented as a unity, as a planetary totality, human cultures are relativized. Some will claim for themselves supremacy and a higher status. ...Perspectives become local; no one culture can claim a privileged point of view. ...The political, the economic, the cultural--all fall under the rubric of the social system." p.54-55 "Paradoxically, just as the social proper is discovered, humans discovered that society is made up of societies." "if society is its own totalizer, Religion is now seen as one of the subsystems of human interaction." p.55
-18th century, "social theory proper is forumulated as a formal, self-conscious, fairly distinct endeavor." to work out the epistemological convulsions brought about by the new perspective gained on humanity...to be worked out through theology, state theory, moral theory, even economics, before they could reach their proper conceptualization in social theory/sociology.
-The "process of marginalization or pushing out of the religious from society came to be called secularization."
-"society's self-thematization depends on the type of space from which a self-image and self-identity can be projected." p.56
-stages of social theory's development: personalized by key figures (Heilbron's view) 1. Montesquieu and Rousseau-preoccupation with the order of society, dissatisfaction with politics or economics->2. Condorcet & Cabanis-the social makes its appearance, but its appropriate science not formulated->3. Comte "father of social analysis" p.58-59
-"The questions of language, individualism, even of bodily and subjective experimentalism and celebration, were made possible by the presence of Christian values and norms. Similarly, the rise of the state apparatus, its legal and constitutional norms, its principles of legitimation, were in one way or another derived from and rooted in canon law, church functions, and theological insights that necessitate their own relativization." p.60
-Def. globalization="the creation of a new planetary social order in which the centrality of the state, in the form of both nationality and the rule-of-law state (Rechtstatt), the economy, as a system of hyperconnected interactions, and culture, as a new order of the production of world images, have been contested and repositioned." p.60
"Who Is an Indian? Religion, Globalization, and Chiapas"-Lois Ann Lorentzen pp. 84-
-Mires: the indio/Indian has become a homogenizing concept signifying the 'not European,' expressed not as an affirmation of identity but as a negation. Alberto Huerto claims that 'en Mexico los indios son los naturales' This 'imaginary' Indian, according to Mires, emerges from a 'romantic naturalistic vision of history' reflecting the rediscoverers more than the actual indigenous community.
-"Is globalization the most important dynamic to consider--more important than intergroup conflict, the power of local caciques, the Mexican goverenment, regional inequities, ladino-indigenous dynamics, or more important than the characteristics of Maya religion and cosmology, with its capacity to absorb and re-create itself? ...I am reluctant to jump too quickly to macrodeterminants." p.98
"This indio, then, is agent. This indo is not just the 'discovered' indio. The ideology or discourse of Indianness..is a true product of globalization. ...The 'West' first invents and then discovers this 'authentic' indio who isn't Catholic, isn't Protestant, is ecologically pure, and practices centuries-old rituals." p.99-102
PART TWO / CASE STUDIES
"The African Transformation of Christianity: Comparative Reflections on Ethnicity and Religious Mobilization in Africa"-Lamin Sanneh pp. 105-134
-2 sides: "Africa was afflicted with a double jeopardy. It served as an outpost of Europe's mastery, exploitation, and world dominance, and while thus repressed, it was held to standards of freedom and progress it lost under European hegemony." ... "it oversimplifies a complex theme and overlooks the point of so-called native victims being able to turn to their own account the things to which Europeans introduced them, including mother tongue literacy. For that, European motives could be discounted. Furthermore, African societies, insofar as they were living societies, were no more immune to change than other societies, and to condemn to lost authenticity from having encountered Europeans seems particularly harsh, and without ground."p.107-8
-T: "The missionary sponsorship of Bible translation became the catalyst for profound changes in language, culture, and ethnicity, changes that invested ethnic identity with the materials for reawakened sense of local identity." p. 109
-18th century evangelical and humanitarian movement in Europe, in Scandinavia, France, and Britain...spawned the antislavery movement. & the contemporary missionary movement. p.110-111
-"the 'central and enduring character of Christian history is the rendering of God's eternal counsels into terms of everyday speech. By that path believers have come to stand before their God." p.111
-"In Bible translation, hitherto taboo ethnic groups and their languages and cultures were effectively destigmatized while at the same time superior cultures were stripped of their right to constitute themselves into exclusive standards of access to God." p.112
-"The striking mark of Christianity in its mission is its confidence that because God spoke to us all, then all human speech in its concrete ethnic diversity is hallowed for our ordinary and consecrated use." p.113 "incarnation...humanity is the chosen language of divine self-expression."
-Professor Diedrich Westermann of Berlin: "In this sense we speak of the soul of a people, and the most immediate, the most adequate exponent of the soul of a people is its language." p.113
-"...affected ethnic sensibility, gave it material expression, moral affirmation, and a historical vocation, even if at the same time it mediated the spread of European cultural ideas." p.116
-"Thus, if we started from the religious roots of knowledge, we should see that the impulse to understanding was grounded in the encounter with a personal God, with a God who had spoken and acted and, as the source of living and meaning, was graciously available to us in the habits and languages of human community, in fact in ethnic particularity, if you will. In philosophy it was the accepted custom to speak of God as the Supreme Being; in religion the divine was spoken of as the living God. As long as we kept close to the soil, we would not split God between an abstract form and a personal deity." p.118
-"The question for religion at this point was how the conception of a universal God could be reconciled with worship of God in all the particularity and concreteness necessarily involved in worship as such, notably in the particularity and concreteness of language, symbol, ritual, aesthetics, music, dance, and art. ...these were not opposite conceptions but different levels of apprehending the real. ...It is a matter of the 'One and the Many,' of the one God and the many representations." pp.118-9
-Johannes Christaller (missionary-linguist): "not to despise the sparks of truth entrusted to and preserved by their own people" p.119
-cultural intimacy p.120
-"It is the special power of the Bible clothed in the mother tongue thus to bring together individuality and universality..." p.121
"(In)Corporating Threshold Art: Kolam Competitions, Patronage, and Colgate"-Vijaya Rettakudi Nagarajan pp.161-186
P: a good, punny, specific, interesting title that is clear also.
-another layer of social complexity: "The Tamil women who eagerly participate in these globalized contexts also seemed to impart a certain kind of agency, expressing and acting out of a desire to become part of the local public sphere through this transforming of a 'domestic' ritual art tradition." p.182
-the presentation of 'traditional' rituals in public cultural spaces (topic ideas)
transnational belonging p.188
parallel development of processes of globalization and localization p.203
13 April-12 July, 2017
Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001.
Monday, July 3, 2017
25. Decision Making by the Book-Haddon W. Robinson
How to find guidance/make decisions in life?
-Read the Bible. "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." 2 Tim 3:16-17
-obey God's words (Psalm 119:97-104)
-God's Moral will 1 Peter 4:8-11
-the freedom to decide (1 Cor 10:27)
-don't ask 'how can i know the will of God'. Instead, ask "How do we develop the skills necessary to make wise and prudent choices?" that can glorify God.
-make decisions in submission to the sovereign will of God (p.55)-James 4:13-16; If God wills...; pray to God when making decisions; "The purpose of prayer is to bow before the sovereign God and acknowledge His sovereignty in my life and my decisions.".p. 59
-Wisdom through prayer. Wisdom is "intellectual and moral." p. 60
-based on the motive of love (Luke 10:25-28); agape love-seek the benefits of others, not just love as a strong emotion
-know your strengths
-consider the circumstances but don't treat all open doors or feeling of peace as an okay from God.
-General principles: "A second-best decision, diligently pursued, will often beat a first-best decision that is not diligently pursued." p.127
4 July 2017
Grand Rapids: Discovery House Publishers, 1998.
-Read the Bible. "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." 2 Tim 3:16-17
-obey God's words (Psalm 119:97-104)
-God's Moral will 1 Peter 4:8-11
-the freedom to decide (1 Cor 10:27)
-don't ask 'how can i know the will of God'. Instead, ask "How do we develop the skills necessary to make wise and prudent choices?" that can glorify God.
-make decisions in submission to the sovereign will of God (p.55)-James 4:13-16; If God wills...; pray to God when making decisions; "The purpose of prayer is to bow before the sovereign God and acknowledge His sovereignty in my life and my decisions.".p. 59
-Wisdom through prayer. Wisdom is "intellectual and moral." p. 60
-based on the motive of love (Luke 10:25-28); agape love-seek the benefits of others, not just love as a strong emotion
-know your strengths
-consider the circumstances but don't treat all open doors or feeling of peace as an okay from God.
-General principles: "A second-best decision, diligently pursued, will often beat a first-best decision that is not diligently pursued." p.127
4 July 2017
Grand Rapids: Discovery House Publishers, 1998.
Thursday, June 22, 2017
24. The five people you meet in heaven--Mitch Albom
This story is about Eddie Maintenance at Ruby Pier who died at 83 and went to heaven to meet 5 people who helped him understand his life on earth--how he was able to stay alive, the sacrifices that others made for him, the things he did not understand about his father, the wife he missed, Marguerite, and the girl he accidentally killed in war but the many children he kept alive because of his job at the pier. It taught me that I shouldn't let one big setback/regret in my life to keep me down and angry for the rest of my life (like Eddie's wounded knee that knocked him down and knocked his dreams down for the rest of his life).
21-22 June, 2017
New York: Hyperion, 2013.
21-22 June, 2017
New York: Hyperion, 2013.
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
23. Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other People's Minds--Howard Gardner
Agents and agencies of mind change:
-cognitive science & the ways in which mental representations change, or are changed. p.7
-e.g. Vilifredo Pareto's "80/20 principle" (Italian economist and sociologist) pp.7-14
7 factors/levers that help to determine if they succeed in changing minds:
Reason (tight logic), Research (draws on relevant research), Resonance (with audience) [Rhetoric]
Representational Redescriptions (e.g. in linguistic, numerical, graphic ways), Resources & Rewards, Real World Events, Resistances.
Contents of the mind: ideas
-Concept="any set of closely related entities" p.19 e.g. virtue/vice; plant/animal
-Stories=narrratives that describe events that unfold over time (at a minimum, stories consist of a main character or protagonist, ongoing activities aimed toward a goal, a crisis, and a resolution, or at least an attempt at a resolution) e.g. girl meets boy; hero is defeated by a tragic flaw
-Theories=relatively formal explanations of processes in the world. "From an early age, young children develop theories about how things work in the world. They will also encounter theories that are held by others in their culture. And once they begin disciplinary study in the schools, they will also encounter formal theories" e.g. thunderstorm p.20 e.g. if two events occur in close proximity, the first causes the second; might makes right
-The Skills of Practices=procedures that individuals know how to carry out, whether or not they choose to--or even can--put them into words. prevalent skills:dividing resources equally; conserving energy in preparation for a high-stakes performance
skills can also be changed e.g. an experienced performer who typically learns a new piece of music by starting at the beginning..change to starting from the back. "The relation between content and form unfolds somewhat differently in the case of such skilled practices. ...The current status of the practice is both its form and its content--to recall poet William Butler Yeat's famous query, "How can one tell the dancer from the dance? The content and the form of the procedure can and do change--but by and large they change together."
"Human beings constantly create or construct new mental representations, and so the content of the mind is by its nature an open, infinitely expandable category. At the same time there are serious attempts to itemize and categorize the principal contents" p.21
Multiple intelligences (late 19702/early 1980s developed by Gardner):
-intelligence="a biopsychological potential to process specific forms of information in certain kinds of ways. Human beings have evolved diverse information-processing capacities--I term these "intelligences"--that allow them to solve problems or to fashion products...must be valued in at least one culture or community."
-Linguistic intelligence
-Logical-mathematical intelligence
-Musical intelligence=appreciation of melody and harmony, sensitivity to rhythm, the ability the recognise variations in timbre and tonality; and, speaking more holistically, the capacity to apprehend the structure of works of music " p. 33
"Elements of musical craft underlie many productions that ostensibly foreground other symbol systems. I write books, using words and occasional graphic images, but the way in which i assemble these linguistic and graphic forms draws on principles of organisation that, at least in my case, have their apparent origin in musical structure. Perhaps that is because music is the least overtly semantic of the major symbol systems: It does not convey discrete meanings. Instead music deals, on the one hand, in the pure architectonics (or syntax) of organization and presents, on the other, the forms and shapes of our feeling life. As the nineteenth-century British essayist Walter Pater memorably put it, "all art constantly aspires to the condition of music." p.34
-Spatial intelligence
-Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence
-Naturalist intelligence
-Personal intelligences: Interpersonal: knowing human beings, to discriminate among persons, figure out their motivations, work effectively with them; Intrapersonal intelligence: inward
~Daniel Goleman: emotional intelligence
-Existential intelligence?
Cognitive approach vs. sociobiological approach & the historical-cultural approach (these two stipulate that the moves that active human agents can make are severely constrained.) p.43
-"The more emotional one's commitment to a cause or belief, the more difficult to change." p. 57
-Vygotsky-when a child is performing poorly at a task, he or she will benefit from scaffolding: the orderly provision of just enough support so that the child can improve his or her performance significantly. until it is internalised. p.60
-content and countercontent
Examples: Margaret Thatcher: a story & a life (the weapons of persuasion & embodiment) "They had to tell their stories over and over again, tell them well, and embody their stories in appropriate life actions and evocative symbolic elements.They had to recognize, acknowledge, and ultimately undermine the regnant counterstories." p.88
-"by creating a compelling story, embodying that story in one's own life, and presenting the story in many different formats so that it can eventually topple the counterstories in one's culture." "when on eis addressing a diverse or heterogeneous audience, the story must be simple, easy to identify with, emotionally resonant, and evocative of positive experiences." p. 82 "In addition to its conscious appeal, a story must also capture an audience at a deeper, more visceral level." p.83
Nelson Mandela: "Mandela was imprisoned for twenty-seven years. Although such an experience would likely have demoralized, radicalized, or marginalized most other persons--especially since it occurred at middle age, often considered the apogee of an individual's personal power--imprisonment seemed only to fortify Mandela." he convened a Commission of Truth and Reconciliation. p.86
Jean Monnet (French economist and diplomat): "I regard every defeat (or every challenge) as an opportunity." p.87
"More complex stories and theories have a better chance of success when the entity in which one is working is of limited size and composed of individuals of similar background and with common expertise." p.92
e.g.: James O. Freedman-"Whenever he had the chance, Freedman would talk about the importance of excellent ideas, the power of intellectual discourse, the contributions to society made by individuals who valued the life of the mind." p.95
"Another way that leaders can present their case is by appealing to deep questions about life, experience, and possibility." p.101
Effective leader: intelligences, instinct, and integrity.
Indirect leaders: "artistic masters alter our minds in three ways. First, they expand our notion of what is possible in an artistic medium. e.g. Picasso" p.122 "Second, artists change minds by employing themes that rarely if ever had been the subject of art...Third, help us to understand, indeed help us to define, the spirit of an era." p. 123 use 3 levers: representational redescriptions, resonance, & resistances.
"there is value in struggling with ideas that one resists." p.126
"GoodWorker" -mission, models, and a mirror test.
28 May-2 June, 2017
Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2003.
-cognitive science & the ways in which mental representations change, or are changed. p.7
-e.g. Vilifredo Pareto's "80/20 principle" (Italian economist and sociologist) pp.7-14
7 factors/levers that help to determine if they succeed in changing minds:
Reason (tight logic), Research (draws on relevant research), Resonance (with audience) [Rhetoric]
Representational Redescriptions (e.g. in linguistic, numerical, graphic ways), Resources & Rewards, Real World Events, Resistances.
Contents of the mind: ideas
-Concept="any set of closely related entities" p.19 e.g. virtue/vice; plant/animal
-Stories=narrratives that describe events that unfold over time (at a minimum, stories consist of a main character or protagonist, ongoing activities aimed toward a goal, a crisis, and a resolution, or at least an attempt at a resolution) e.g. girl meets boy; hero is defeated by a tragic flaw
-Theories=relatively formal explanations of processes in the world. "From an early age, young children develop theories about how things work in the world. They will also encounter theories that are held by others in their culture. And once they begin disciplinary study in the schools, they will also encounter formal theories" e.g. thunderstorm p.20 e.g. if two events occur in close proximity, the first causes the second; might makes right
-The Skills of Practices=procedures that individuals know how to carry out, whether or not they choose to--or even can--put them into words. prevalent skills:dividing resources equally; conserving energy in preparation for a high-stakes performance
skills can also be changed e.g. an experienced performer who typically learns a new piece of music by starting at the beginning..change to starting from the back. "The relation between content and form unfolds somewhat differently in the case of such skilled practices. ...The current status of the practice is both its form and its content--to recall poet William Butler Yeat's famous query, "How can one tell the dancer from the dance? The content and the form of the procedure can and do change--but by and large they change together."
"Human beings constantly create or construct new mental representations, and so the content of the mind is by its nature an open, infinitely expandable category. At the same time there are serious attempts to itemize and categorize the principal contents" p.21
Multiple intelligences (late 19702/early 1980s developed by Gardner):
-intelligence="a biopsychological potential to process specific forms of information in certain kinds of ways. Human beings have evolved diverse information-processing capacities--I term these "intelligences"--that allow them to solve problems or to fashion products...must be valued in at least one culture or community."
-Linguistic intelligence
-Logical-mathematical intelligence
-Musical intelligence=appreciation of melody and harmony, sensitivity to rhythm, the ability the recognise variations in timbre and tonality; and, speaking more holistically, the capacity to apprehend the structure of works of music " p. 33
"Elements of musical craft underlie many productions that ostensibly foreground other symbol systems. I write books, using words and occasional graphic images, but the way in which i assemble these linguistic and graphic forms draws on principles of organisation that, at least in my case, have their apparent origin in musical structure. Perhaps that is because music is the least overtly semantic of the major symbol systems: It does not convey discrete meanings. Instead music deals, on the one hand, in the pure architectonics (or syntax) of organization and presents, on the other, the forms and shapes of our feeling life. As the nineteenth-century British essayist Walter Pater memorably put it, "all art constantly aspires to the condition of music." p.34
-Spatial intelligence
-Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence
-Naturalist intelligence
-Personal intelligences: Interpersonal: knowing human beings, to discriminate among persons, figure out their motivations, work effectively with them; Intrapersonal intelligence: inward
~Daniel Goleman: emotional intelligence
-Existential intelligence?
Cognitive approach vs. sociobiological approach & the historical-cultural approach (these two stipulate that the moves that active human agents can make are severely constrained.) p.43
-"The more emotional one's commitment to a cause or belief, the more difficult to change." p. 57
-Vygotsky-when a child is performing poorly at a task, he or she will benefit from scaffolding: the orderly provision of just enough support so that the child can improve his or her performance significantly. until it is internalised. p.60
-content and countercontent
Examples: Margaret Thatcher: a story & a life (the weapons of persuasion & embodiment) "They had to tell their stories over and over again, tell them well, and embody their stories in appropriate life actions and evocative symbolic elements.They had to recognize, acknowledge, and ultimately undermine the regnant counterstories." p.88
-"by creating a compelling story, embodying that story in one's own life, and presenting the story in many different formats so that it can eventually topple the counterstories in one's culture." "when on eis addressing a diverse or heterogeneous audience, the story must be simple, easy to identify with, emotionally resonant, and evocative of positive experiences." p. 82 "In addition to its conscious appeal, a story must also capture an audience at a deeper, more visceral level." p.83
Nelson Mandela: "Mandela was imprisoned for twenty-seven years. Although such an experience would likely have demoralized, radicalized, or marginalized most other persons--especially since it occurred at middle age, often considered the apogee of an individual's personal power--imprisonment seemed only to fortify Mandela." he convened a Commission of Truth and Reconciliation. p.86
Jean Monnet (French economist and diplomat): "I regard every defeat (or every challenge) as an opportunity." p.87
"More complex stories and theories have a better chance of success when the entity in which one is working is of limited size and composed of individuals of similar background and with common expertise." p.92
e.g.: James O. Freedman-"Whenever he had the chance, Freedman would talk about the importance of excellent ideas, the power of intellectual discourse, the contributions to society made by individuals who valued the life of the mind." p.95
"Another way that leaders can present their case is by appealing to deep questions about life, experience, and possibility." p.101
Effective leader: intelligences, instinct, and integrity.
Indirect leaders: "artistic masters alter our minds in three ways. First, they expand our notion of what is possible in an artistic medium. e.g. Picasso" p.122 "Second, artists change minds by employing themes that rarely if ever had been the subject of art...Third, help us to understand, indeed help us to define, the spirit of an era." p. 123 use 3 levers: representational redescriptions, resonance, & resistances.
"there is value in struggling with ideas that one resists." p.126
"GoodWorker" -mission, models, and a mirror test.
28 May-2 June, 2017
Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2003.
Thursday, May 25, 2017
22. Shoulda Coulda Woulda: Live in the Present|Find your Future -- Les Parrott
Everyone has regrets. Learn from the core of event and live better/change.
True guilt--sinned against God's law vs. false guilt--the feeling of guilt that may not even be related to something you actually did wrong.
Guilt vs godly sorrow. Guilt is self-focused and leads to hopelessness. Sorrow is others-focused and leads to change.
25 May, 2017
Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003.
True guilt--sinned against God's law vs. false guilt--the feeling of guilt that may not even be related to something you actually did wrong.
Guilt vs godly sorrow. Guilt is self-focused and leads to hopelessness. Sorrow is others-focused and leads to change.
25 May, 2017
Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003.
21. The Overcoming Life - D. L. Moody
"If you are not overcoming temptations, the world is overcoming you.
How can the world be overcome? Not by education, not by experience; only by faith."
Fight worldly habits, temptations, pleasures.
Have humility, the yoke of Christ is light.
Hold up the candle.
There is no rest in sin.
"Let us go on turning as many as we can to righteousness. Let us be dead to the world, to its lies, its pleasures, and its ambitions, Let us live for God, continually going forth to win souls for Him. ...'Will you thus live and dies, O man immortal? Live for something. Do good, and leave behind you a monument of virtue that the storms of time can never destroy. Write your name in kindness, love, and mercy on the hearts of the thousands you come in contact with year by year" p.84
So many applicable, real life stories that is just as relevant today as when Moody wrote the book. Definitely worth a re-read to boost the spiritual life.
1-25 May, 2017
Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2010.
How can the world be overcome? Not by education, not by experience; only by faith."
Fight worldly habits, temptations, pleasures.
Have humility, the yoke of Christ is light.
Hold up the candle.
There is no rest in sin.
"Let us go on turning as many as we can to righteousness. Let us be dead to the world, to its lies, its pleasures, and its ambitions, Let us live for God, continually going forth to win souls for Him. ...'Will you thus live and dies, O man immortal? Live for something. Do good, and leave behind you a monument of virtue that the storms of time can never destroy. Write your name in kindness, love, and mercy on the hearts of the thousands you come in contact with year by year" p.84
So many applicable, real life stories that is just as relevant today as when Moody wrote the book. Definitely worth a re-read to boost the spiritual life.
1-25 May, 2017
Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2010.
Monday, April 17, 2017
11. Contemporary Worship Music and Everyday Musical Lives -- Mark Porter
Research Question: How individuals relate their varied experiences of music outside of a church environment to their experiences within it.
Literature Review:
-Monique Ingalls & Anna Nekola, both writing from a North American perspective, provide important foundational work in the field (of Christian congregational music) from within music scholarship.
-Contemporary Worship Music (Ingalls' definition): 'the broad repertory of evangelical congregational song composed from the late 1960s to the late 2000s in mainstream Western popular music styles' (2008, p.16)
-The enduring influence of key tenets surrounding the music's origins:
"The idea that music was simply a vehicle or tool for promoting the Christian message; that musical style was not an integral part of the evangelical tradition; and that the timeless Christian message not only could, but should, be paired with contemporary cultural styles--each of these ideas and practices would become increasingly important in the ensuing decade as the contemporary song repertory gained popularity. -Ingalls (2008, p.72)
Anna Nekola wrote on the "worship wars" in late 20th C. America...disputes about the role of music; attitudes of ahistioricism within evangelicalism. p.6
-Howard and Streck's research: Contemporary Christian Music (1999)-beyond congregational to Christian music industry as a whole.: separational, integrational, and transformational (p.7)
...
-the alliance between popular music and charismatic experience-both emphasise the personal experience.
-Pete Ward: (UK), provided a detailed "summary of its history and development,
charting the music’s rise as part of evangelical youth culture in the 1960s and 1970s through movements, events and festivals, groups and publications, and its later association with the charismatic movement, noting that ‘charismatic [worship music] has become the default setting in most evangelical churches in Britain’" (Ward 2005b, p1). p.7
Methodology:
-it is not, primarily, a historical project.
"The core of this research centres around 42 individual unstructured and semi-structured interviews with members of the congregation, members of the worship team and church staff at St Aldates, through which I interrogate the ways in which individuals frame and articulate their experiences within and outside of a worship context and examine the connections and disjunctures between their experience and evaluation of these different environments." p.8
-pros, cons, situate the research, acknowledge self-bias...
The chapters:
road map of the rest of the discussions/how you organised the research into sections/chapters
"Chapter 2 is largely theoretical in nature, focusing on some of the key issues raised by my research questions and highlighted in the foregoing discussions. I suggest the problematic nature of frequent ascriptions of neutrality to music within the church, alongside associated relegations of musical attachment to the level of personal preference, while suggesting that attention to the ethical has the potential to provide a more-helpful basis for discussion. After a brief discussion of music and identity I examine models of diversity in congregational music, suggesting the applicability of frameworks taken from the ‘new cosmopolitanism’, and offering this body of social and political theory as an alternative to the shortcomings I find within existing models. I finish by introducing the framework under which I will be discussing material from the interviews.
Chapters 3, 4 and 5 are dedicated to a discussion of the interview data within my chosen framework, the division into three chapters reflecting the framework’s tripartite nature detailed at the end of Chapter 2. I discuss in detail individuals’ experiences of music both inside and outside the church,
paying attention to the way in which they navigate the movement between ecclesiastical and extra-ecclesiastical musical environments and relating this to a variety of concerns in theory and in discourse.
Chapter 3: (worth re-reading: pp. 59-63)
The malleability of music:
-"Laudan Nooshin’s work (2011) draws attention to the way in which the meanings associated with different musics can be altered in the movement between un-related contexts in such a way that their significance becomes almost entirely different. She draws particular attention to the way in which mediated technology makes it possible for musical style to migrate without a necessity for it to do so alongside particular peoples or cultures which might serve to maintain its ‘original’ meanings." p.60
-concepts of ‘oppositional’ and ‘negotiated’ readings. p.61
-Timothy Rice (2001): the multiple levels on which music can be assigned meaning p.61
"metaphors as ‘music as object’, ‘music as art’, ‘music as emotional expression’, ‘music as text’, ‘music as social behaviour’, ‘music as political symbol’ and ‘music as sign’ serve to make truth claims about the ontological status of music and should be taken seriously as ‘fundamental claims to truth, guides to practical action and sources for understanding music’s profound importance in human
life’ (2001, p22)." p.62 'music as a space of worship', 'music as a neutral canvas for worship'=>different musical metaphors leave space for each person who chooses a different metaphor to interpret the significance of music in the worship context.
-"If intertextuality refers to the possibility (or inevitability) of the formation of significant or meaningful relationships, through a variety of methods and agencies, between texts, then we might refer to the possible relationship between different musical worlds as a form of intercontextuality, highlighting the likelihood that meaning (as we will see later in the chapter) will spill over between multiple contexts. ... the idea of intercontextuality avoids the necessity of focussing on pre-given meaning, allowing a fluid relationship between constructed, experienced and given meanings." p.63
-"a music’s context is not merely a passive and semi-neutral background but is capable of becoming meaningful as much as the texts embedded within it. Discussion of the relationship between contexts can often fall to the background as they are often treated as self-contained worlds within which to
understand the content they contain" p.63
-Different metaphors the interviewees adopted: expression of the heart, power to move and connect, contemplation, ...
Chapter 4: Boundaries--Communal and private, spiritual and secular
-"the establishment of significant boundaries is an important key to their experience of worship music, their ability to maintain attachments to multiple disparate musical environments and their ability to evaluate and experience multiple musics in a positive manner." p.82
-Catherine Bell: the close similarities between ritual and other performances, & the dynamics which often underlie this kind of ritual separation: 'Another feature of performance lies in the dynamics of framing. As noted with regard to sacral symbols, distinctions between sacred and profane, the special and the routine, transcendent ideals and concrete realities can all be evoked by how some activities, places, or people are set off from others. Intrinsic to performance is the communication of a type of frame that says, ‘This is different, deliberate, and significant – pay attention!’ By virtue of this framing, performance is understood to be something other than routine reality. Bell (2009, p160); contemporary worship music reverses this separation and tries to be similar to everyday music, erasing the boundaries between the everyday and the special
-The interplay of similarity and differentiation: anthropologist Anthony Cohen: "the greater the pressure on communities to modify their structural forms to comply more with those elsewhere, the more are they inclined to reassert their boundaries symbolically by imbuing these modified forms with meaning and significance which belies their appearance. In other words, as the structural bases of boundary become blurred, so the symbolic bases are strengthened." (1988, p.45)
Chapter 5: At the Edges--Value transfer, judgments, discontent
-"a broad range of experiences in which musical value judgements formed largely outside of the church either become problematic for worshippers or need to be consciously suppressed in order to maintain a positive experience of Sunday worship. This is, perhaps, the most pastorally sensitive of the three categories of experience as it can sometimes lead to frustration and alienation on the part
of musicians and congregation members." p.105
-an associated renewal of social space. As Hesmondhalgh suggests: The great advantage of [Habermas’s notion of] the public sphere, when used appropriately and with attention to other Habermasian concepts such as discourse ethics, is that it can encourage us to think properly about the institutional conditions that make it possible for people to question simplifications and projections … The idea of an aesthetic public sphere relates … to the degree to which a social space provides those
participating in … debates with the resources to undertake discussion in a thoughtful and informed way." Hesmondhalgh (2007, p524) p.124
-the public sphere as ‘a sphere between civil society and the state, in which critical public discussion of matters of general interest was institutionally guaranteed’ (Thomas McCarthy 1989, pxi).
Chapter 6 Alternative musical spaces in the church: I examine two marginal/third spaces musical spaces within the life of the church: ‘Sing O barren woman’ – a week long prayer event, and ‘Word on the street’ – an evangelistic busking group that go out each Saturday onto Oxford’s main pedestrianized shopping street. I suggest that these two spaces embody different relationships between individuals’ diverse musical backgrounds and the church, offering differently nuanced musical ontologies from that found in the main Sunday worship services. I suggest that these spaces serve both to challenge and to reinforce the musical patterns of the main church services." p.10-11
-marginal/third spaces: "in-between realms, standing at the intersection of the music of the church and individuals’ broader musical lives. As such, I want to suggest that they can helpfully be understood through the idea of ‘third space’, as locations in which discourses and knowledges from two usually-distinct spaces encounter one-another and interact. p.127
-"Moje et al (2004) outline three principal ways in which such third spaces can be understood:
1. "as a means of building bridges between conventional institutional discourses and discourses marginalised in such settings.
2. they put forward the understanding of third space ‘as a navigational space, a way of crossing and succeeding in different discourse communities’.
3. ‘third space can be viewed as a space of cultural, social, and epistemological change in which the competing knowledges and discourses of different spaces are brought into “conversation”’ (Moje et al 2004, p44).
According to these understandings third spaces are largely productive in nature, a means of reconciling disparate identities and belongings." p.124
-While Moje et al’s understandings position third space as a relatively stable
structural phenomenon, other authors highlight its potential to destablise. ~Routledge, following the lead of Homi Bhabha (Bhabha 1994), suggests that it is ‘a place of invention and transformational encounters, a dynamic in-between space that is imbued with the traces, relays, ambivalences, ambiguities and contradictions, with the feelings and practices of both sites, to fashion something
different, unexpected’.
~Hoover and Echchaibi likewise highlight Bhabha’s understanding that ‘third space displaces the histories that constitute it, and sets up new structures of authority, new political initiatives, which are inadequately understood through received wisdom. [it] gives rise to something different, something new and unrecognizable, a new area of negotiation of meaning and representation’ (2012, p.13), suggesting that playful and negotiative practices in which signs and symbols are subverted and re-read stand at the centre of such spaces (2012, pp12, 20)." p.124
-Physical distance creates freedom for a different musical space--Word on the street: "As a project at some distance from both the authority structures and the physical space of the church," p.144
Conclusion:
-theoretical lens of cosmopolitanism, drawing on a typology of usages set out by Steven Vertovec and Robin Cohen "in order to examine the multiple ways in which cosmopolitan thought can be brought to bear on the experiences presented in this book." p.11
-"The various chapters of this book suggest a multi-faceted conception of musical identity that is far from straightforward. It is the result of an interplay of boundaries and connections, individuals and institutions, freedom and constraint such that these elements and a host of others are in a constant process of negotiation and contestation." p. 153
P: Basically, the author interviewed church members at St. Aldates, a church in Oxford that focuses on using soft rock type of church music and asked them how this style of church music relates to the music that they listen to in their daily lives. A lot of them don't really listen to the worship music style in their lives but saw the worship music as good to be used in church as it is the lowest common denominator and a music that buzzes, unites worshippers to sing together to worship God, and that the lyrics/worship attitude is more important than if they enjoyed this type of music anyway; music is just a tool while spiritual experience is more important. However, the author suggests that there is a relation between how they feel about the music and how that changes their formation by the church music and when they were given freedom and an alternative space (in-between) in the 24/7 prayer room and Word in the street, they could express their theology and faith using music styles that more represent them (e.g. jazz, hip hop) and experience a different area of their spiritual lives.
Feb-31 Mar, 2017
Abingdon: Routledge, 2017
Literature Review:
-Monique Ingalls & Anna Nekola, both writing from a North American perspective, provide important foundational work in the field (of Christian congregational music) from within music scholarship.
-Contemporary Worship Music (Ingalls' definition): 'the broad repertory of evangelical congregational song composed from the late 1960s to the late 2000s in mainstream Western popular music styles' (2008, p.16)
-The enduring influence of key tenets surrounding the music's origins:
"The idea that music was simply a vehicle or tool for promoting the Christian message; that musical style was not an integral part of the evangelical tradition; and that the timeless Christian message not only could, but should, be paired with contemporary cultural styles--each of these ideas and practices would become increasingly important in the ensuing decade as the contemporary song repertory gained popularity. -Ingalls (2008, p.72)
Anna Nekola wrote on the "worship wars" in late 20th C. America...disputes about the role of music; attitudes of ahistioricism within evangelicalism. p.6
-Howard and Streck's research: Contemporary Christian Music (1999)-beyond congregational to Christian music industry as a whole.: separational, integrational, and transformational (p.7)
...
-the alliance between popular music and charismatic experience-both emphasise the personal experience.
-Pete Ward: (UK), provided a detailed "summary of its history and development,
charting the music’s rise as part of evangelical youth culture in the 1960s and 1970s through movements, events and festivals, groups and publications, and its later association with the charismatic movement, noting that ‘charismatic [worship music] has become the default setting in most evangelical churches in Britain’" (Ward 2005b, p1). p.7
Methodology:
-it is not, primarily, a historical project.
"The core of this research centres around 42 individual unstructured and semi-structured interviews with members of the congregation, members of the worship team and church staff at St Aldates, through which I interrogate the ways in which individuals frame and articulate their experiences within and outside of a worship context and examine the connections and disjunctures between their experience and evaluation of these different environments." p.8
-pros, cons, situate the research, acknowledge self-bias...
The chapters:
road map of the rest of the discussions/how you organised the research into sections/chapters
"Chapter 2 is largely theoretical in nature, focusing on some of the key issues raised by my research questions and highlighted in the foregoing discussions. I suggest the problematic nature of frequent ascriptions of neutrality to music within the church, alongside associated relegations of musical attachment to the level of personal preference, while suggesting that attention to the ethical has the potential to provide a more-helpful basis for discussion. After a brief discussion of music and identity I examine models of diversity in congregational music, suggesting the applicability of frameworks taken from the ‘new cosmopolitanism’, and offering this body of social and political theory as an alternative to the shortcomings I find within existing models. I finish by introducing the framework under which I will be discussing material from the interviews.
"...the values of the St Aldates church community, offering a range of important qualities including freedom, fluidity, simplicity, flexibility, the ability to respond to the Spirit, dynamic range, easy participation, accessibility, and easy replicability at home. The musical style adopted by the church
is one that is able to fulfil its function well and to serve the purposes to which it is put within the context of the church community through its service to a range of other practical goals. The way in which these goals are embedded in the music connects with the way in which congregation members are expected to identify with the music." p.24
-Musical meaning:
"Much recent work in musicology (Small 1998; Chua 1999; Cook 2001; Kramer 2003, 2004; Cross and Tolbert 2008) and ethnomusicology (DeNora 2000, 2003; Clayton 2001; Rice 2001; Nooshin 2011) has sought to conceptualize in a variety of ways the different kinds of meaning that are present within and around music and the activity of music-making. In particular, the ways in which musical meaning can be socially constructed and ascribed have replaced earlier conceptualisations of ‘absolute music’ which push many forms of musical meaning to the margins in favour of granting music a more autonomous existence. Such an understanding is not, however, one that is immediately at home within the discourses of Contemporary Worship Music; as Monique Ingalls highlights, part of the founding ideology of the movement is that music is a profoundly neutral medium (2008, p248), an understanding that has clear and important historical roots in the worship wars surrounding the introduction of Contemporary Worship Music." p.32
-In evangelical churches, there is an ontology of neutrality that deflect attention away from music and onto more spiritual concerns. "Neutrality has become a model for music which not only denies it inherent moral significance but which, in doing so, sets up a conceptual frame which pushes out other ways in which it might be conceived of as significant." p.33 "Christians worry that talking about music and potentially ascribing power to it in a setting where direct encounter with God is expected risks ascribing power to an aspect of the experience that should not become powerful and potentially confuses the source of encounter." p.33
-Difference: Rowan Williams: "Williams maintains that such a situation is undesirable in society and that instead, in order to create a healthy liberal democracy, there is the need for public negotiation
of difference in an environment where different voices can be heard and taken seriously without the assumption that in doing so the result would be inevitable animosity, conflict or disloyalty to the larger community. Conversely, he argues that in providing a space for these differences to be taken seriously there is the potential for a more powerful level of social identification to take place." p.34 "David Hesmondhalgh (2007) examines some of the ways in which discourse around music may have the potential to establish commonality despite differences in perspective and initial dismissals of others and their values."
-"Monique Ingalls draws attention to the way in which assumptions about the neutrality of style and the emphasis, instead, on the heart and the motives of the individual within the activity of worship can serve to deflect critical reflection away from musical practices (2008, p247). A lack of music-talk provides a means of maintaining authority," p.35
-Ethical significance:
"These priorities seem to affect people’s relationship with the church community, its worship and its spirituality in wide-ranging and significant ways which, due to the value-laden nature of such relationships, seem to best be thought of in ethical terms." p.35
-Can affect: "how questions of music have the potential to draw in matters of spirituality, justice, authority, cultural and contextual engagement, theology and gender, amongst others and how these are negotiated within the life of the church community. " p.35
-Ethics does not point us to one particular set of concerns, but rather allows a particular mode of attentiveness to the concerns and issues of particular situations, people and things – in the case of this book, those that arise within the St Aldates community. For the purposes of this book, to say that something has ethical significance is to say:
1 that it is not neutral and, instead, is closely bound up with particular goods or evils whether in and of itself or through those things with which it forms some kind of connection.
2 that something matters and it matters for and in relation to particular people or communities.
-"In the case of music, and within the concerns of this project, this means to say that not only is music a vehicle for a range of meanings but that many of these meanings are in some manner associated with particular values and that, within the context of a community of diverse and different individuals, these will inevitably be subject to negotiation as to their appropriate functioning within that community’s ongoing life. This ongoing negotiation can be seen to constitute the practice of ethics. The ethical dimension of music is an inevitable function of its nature as significantly meaningful in the context of shared musicking in community." p.36
-"Timothy Rommen, ... has sought to draw up a framework within which to think about some of the ethical issues surrounding church music on the island. He proposes an ‘ethics of style’ which:
[f]ocuses attention on the discursive spaces between individual and community (self and other) in order to come to a more nuanced understanding of music in its sociocultural contexts … investigates the process by which musical style informs identity formation for both artists and audience; illustrates how style thus becomes the vehicle for a multifaceted communal discourse about value and meaning; and interrogates the process of personal identification or disidentification with musical style as a
moment of ethical significance." Rommen (2007b, p2), p.38
-"Habermas and Rommen draw our attention to the fact that the way in which congregation members encounter discourse surrounding music and worship can be highly significant." p. 40
-"Nanette Nielsen and Marcel Cobussen suggest a number of key locations through which music can become ethically charged: Fundamental to our understanding is music’s association with activity (‘Interaction’), including contact with music through the act of listening (‘Listening’ and ‘Voice’), music as an immanent critical process that possesses profound cultural and historical significance (‘Discourse’), and as an art form that can be world-disclosive, formative of subjectivity, and contributive to intersubjective relations (‘Interaction’, ‘Affect’, and ‘Voice’)." Cobussen and Nielsen (2012, p4), p.41
-"Shusterman (who articulates similar claims) argues that a routine isolation of the aesthetic can even lead to ethically undesirable situations ‘provid[ing] an excuse for the powers and institutions that structure our everyday life to be brutally indifferent to natural human needs for the pleasure of beauty and imaginative freedom." p.42
"These are not to be sought in real life, but in art, whose and escape from the real gives us human sufferers temporary solace and relief’ (1992, p20). More recent trends towards a virtue ethics which focuses on the good and the good life (Higgins 2011, pxviii) and a view of music which draws both subjects and social meanings into its very core mean that the conceptual gap has begun to fade to the background. Music can carry with it a range of different goods by virtue of the different ways in which it becomes meaningful, and these can thus become part of the process of ethical negotiation as they make themselves felt in different situations and experiences. As we have seen, attention to ethics serves to focus this research on musical value and meaning, encounters with discourse, patterns of authority and community, the relationship between music, subjectivity and the wider world and the negotiation of all of these. Examining these in the course of this book helps to reconnect music with a plane of significance that has both been frequently side-lined, not least within Contemporary Worship Music, and which is deeply meaningful within the life of the church." p.43
-"Differences of taste and the specifics of individual attachment are thereby positioned outside the
realm of meaningful negotiation and contestation. Psychological studies of music often serve to reinforce this subjectivization of musical judgment, investigating the different traits that lead one person to prefer music with certain characteristics over other kinds of music (Chamorro-Premuzic et al 2010; Schäfer and Sedlmeier 2010; Rentfrow et al 2011) and thereby setting to one side questions
of agency, individuality and deeper significance." p.43
-Hennion: "By conceptualizing taste as a matter of varying modes of attachment and engagement...opens up the discourse around taste in a way that can make it meaningful and productive, able to involve diverse aspects of listener and music and the establishment of different forms of relationship between the two." p.44
"Likewise, if music and taste both have engagement and interaction at their core, then music is able to
become a significant participant in the process of tasting, not merely as a separate object, but as something which can be discussed using a common language. Hennion helps us to move beyond common models which locate taste largely in the internal make-up of the subject, thus subjectivizing it, and instead allows taste to become part of an interaction in which both subject and object (music) have crucial roles to play and in which the relationship between the two stands as the key determining element. This, in turn, opens taste up much more readily to negotiation – the process of tasting and the activity of the relationship is one that can provide room for manoeuvre that is harder to come by in a space where there is a strict dichotomy between a subject’s tastes and the properties of a musical object. Such a view is remarkably at home in the situation of congregational worship music, in which worshipers actively engage in the process of singing. Views about preferences in such a situation are
hard to frame without addressing individuals’ experiences of being present and their modes of engagement within the process of congregational singing." p.44
Music & identity:
-"some of the diverse ways in which music and identity can be conceptualized:
1 Do we want to argue that music contributes to the psychology of an individual’s identity or to some form of collective social identity or to both?
2 If we want to argue that music contributes to the psychology of identity, then are we talking about a sense of ‘who am I?’ – that is, ‘what is my essential nature?’ – or are we talking about a person’s desire to ‘suture’ himself or herself to a social group?
3 How many identities does an individual have? Do all individuals have the same possibilities for multiple identities or are the possibilities constrained by social, economic, and political inequalities? Does music contribute in the same way to all of them?
4 If we are arguing that music contributes to the social identity of a group, then how does it do that? Through performativity? Symbolization? Boundary formation?" Rice (2010, p322), p.45
-Subcultural studies gradually waned in favour as the fluid, fragmented and individual aspect of identity became more prominent (Gelder 2005, p12). Alternative notions such as the neo-tribe (Bennett 2000) and the scene (Straw 2001)..." p.46
-"Tia DeNora, rather than focusing on group identity, takes the individual as a starting point, focusing on the way in which music is present within the regular patterns of daily life (2000, 2003). Music, for DeNora, gains meaning through its ability to ‘afford’ different meanings depending on context. She uses case studies to show how music can afford different meanings for particular individuals, allowing them to exploit these affordances for identity-formation and meaning." p.46
-"For Turino ‘identity is the representation of selected habits foregrounded in given contexts to define self to oneself and to others by oneself and by others … Social identities are based on recognized similarities within groups, and differences from others, which in turn serve as the basis of collective feeling and action. Group identities are the foundation of all social and political life’ (2004, p8). Turino notes that these identities will tend to play out differently between different groups depending on whether it is helpful to highlight difference or unity." p.46
-How, then, can we account for movement across and between identities? Here it becomes critically important to distinguish between individual self-identity and collective identity in relation to music... Without such a distinction between individual and collective forms of musical identity …we cannot address the potential disjunctures and conflicts between individual and collective musical identities, the way that cultural expectations and norms, or dominant musical discourses, may be in tension with individual identities and may exert powerful pressures of musical subjectification."
Born and Hesmondhalgh (2000a, pp32–33) p.47
-"Nancy Ammerman proposes a similar position from the sociology of religion: I am unwilling to discard the possibility that persons seek some sense of congruence within the complexity of their lives. Nor do I believe that structured categories exist untouched by the actions and resistance of the actors who inhabit them … What we need is a way to talk about who we are and how we behave without reducing ourselves either to a single determining structural essence or to complete chaotic indeterminacy …"Ammerman (2003, pp211–212)
-The inadequacy of assimilation and multiculturalism p.48
-Cosmopolitanism:
-"A turn towards intercultural processes is often complemented by a move towards cosmopolitan models of community, and it is these which, I suggest, in seeking to provide frameworks for understanding the interactive negotiation of cultural movement, inter-relation and difference, form a helpful basis for understanding the various negotiations of congregational diversity." p.50
-A number of ethnomusicologists have, in recent years, been drawn to cosmopolitan frameworks in order to understand a variety of musical negotiations and practices (Turino 2000; Stokes 2007; Tsiouslakis 2011; Perman 2012; Bosse 2013; Harnish 2013; Webster-Kogan 2014).
-While cosmopolitanism often refers primarily to national identities and international flows and exchanges this is not the only level on which it can be a useful concept. Gerard Delanty suggests that:
It is useful to distinguish three main dimensions of cosmopolitanism: the historical level of modernity, the macro or societal level of the interaction of societies or societal systems, and the micro level of identities, movements and communities within the social world … cosmopolitanism is not to be equated with transnationalization … it makes more sense to see it expressed in more reflexive kinds of self-understanding … it resides in social mechanisms and dynamics that can exist in any society at any time in history where world openness has a resonance." Delanty (2006, pp41–42), p.50
-Vertovec and Cohen make a similar point, suggesting that ‘present-day processes … such as diasporic identification and the rise of identity politics, have multiplied people’s interests and affiliations. Now gender, sexuality, age, disability, ‘homeland’, locality, race, ethnicity, religion - even cultural hybridity itself - are among the key identifications around which the same person might at one time or another politically mobilize’ (Vertovec and Cohen, 2002, p12). p.50
-Thus, the cosmopolitan conceptual framework can be applied to "the micro-scale of everyday movements within individuals’ lives." p.51
-"Onyx et al suggest that ‘everyday cosmopolitanism reflects the ordinary interactions that occur between individuals of different cultures routinely negotiating across difference in order to coexist
within a shared social space’ (Onyx et al 2011, p61) and Anthony Appiah suggests that 'cosmopolitanism imagines a world in which people and novels and music and films and philosophies travel between places where they are understood differently, because people are different and welcome to their difference’ (2005, p258)." p.51
-"Beck suggests that ‘The central defining characteristic of a cosmopolitan perspective is the “dialogic imagination” … The dialogic imagination corresponds to the coexistence of rival ways of life in the individual experience, which makes it a matter of fate to compare, reflect, criticize, understand, combine contradictory certainties’ (2002, p18), while Vertovec and Cohen quote Waldron, who suggests that ‘[cosmopolitanism] means the ability to stand outside of having one’s life written and scripted by any one community, whether that is a faith or tradition or religion or culture - whatever it might be - and to draw selectively on a variety of discursive meanings’ (Vertovec and Cohen 2002, p4)." p.51
paying attention to the way in which they navigate the movement between ecclesiastical and extra-ecclesiastical musical environments and relating this to a variety of concerns in theory and in discourse.
Chapter 3: (worth re-reading: pp. 59-63)
The malleability of music:
-"Laudan Nooshin’s work (2011) draws attention to the way in which the meanings associated with different musics can be altered in the movement between un-related contexts in such a way that their significance becomes almost entirely different. She draws particular attention to the way in which mediated technology makes it possible for musical style to migrate without a necessity for it to do so alongside particular peoples or cultures which might serve to maintain its ‘original’ meanings." p.60
-concepts of ‘oppositional’ and ‘negotiated’ readings. p.61
-Timothy Rice (2001): the multiple levels on which music can be assigned meaning p.61
"metaphors as ‘music as object’, ‘music as art’, ‘music as emotional expression’, ‘music as text’, ‘music as social behaviour’, ‘music as political symbol’ and ‘music as sign’ serve to make truth claims about the ontological status of music and should be taken seriously as ‘fundamental claims to truth, guides to practical action and sources for understanding music’s profound importance in human
life’ (2001, p22)." p.62 'music as a space of worship', 'music as a neutral canvas for worship'=>different musical metaphors leave space for each person who chooses a different metaphor to interpret the significance of music in the worship context.
-"If intertextuality refers to the possibility (or inevitability) of the formation of significant or meaningful relationships, through a variety of methods and agencies, between texts, then we might refer to the possible relationship between different musical worlds as a form of intercontextuality, highlighting the likelihood that meaning (as we will see later in the chapter) will spill over between multiple contexts. ... the idea of intercontextuality avoids the necessity of focussing on pre-given meaning, allowing a fluid relationship between constructed, experienced and given meanings." p.63
-"a music’s context is not merely a passive and semi-neutral background but is capable of becoming meaningful as much as the texts embedded within it. Discussion of the relationship between contexts can often fall to the background as they are often treated as self-contained worlds within which to
understand the content they contain" p.63
-Different metaphors the interviewees adopted: expression of the heart, power to move and connect, contemplation, ...
Chapter 4: Boundaries--Communal and private, spiritual and secular
-"the establishment of significant boundaries is an important key to their experience of worship music, their ability to maintain attachments to multiple disparate musical environments and their ability to evaluate and experience multiple musics in a positive manner." p.82
-Catherine Bell: the close similarities between ritual and other performances, & the dynamics which often underlie this kind of ritual separation: 'Another feature of performance lies in the dynamics of framing. As noted with regard to sacral symbols, distinctions between sacred and profane, the special and the routine, transcendent ideals and concrete realities can all be evoked by how some activities, places, or people are set off from others. Intrinsic to performance is the communication of a type of frame that says, ‘This is different, deliberate, and significant – pay attention!’ By virtue of this framing, performance is understood to be something other than routine reality. Bell (2009, p160); contemporary worship music reverses this separation and tries to be similar to everyday music, erasing the boundaries between the everyday and the special
-The interplay of similarity and differentiation: anthropologist Anthony Cohen: "the greater the pressure on communities to modify their structural forms to comply more with those elsewhere, the more are they inclined to reassert their boundaries symbolically by imbuing these modified forms with meaning and significance which belies their appearance. In other words, as the structural bases of boundary become blurred, so the symbolic bases are strengthened." (1988, p.45)
Chapter 5: At the Edges--Value transfer, judgments, discontent
-"a broad range of experiences in which musical value judgements formed largely outside of the church either become problematic for worshippers or need to be consciously suppressed in order to maintain a positive experience of Sunday worship. This is, perhaps, the most pastorally sensitive of the three categories of experience as it can sometimes lead to frustration and alienation on the part
of musicians and congregation members." p.105
-an associated renewal of social space. As Hesmondhalgh suggests: The great advantage of [Habermas’s notion of] the public sphere, when used appropriately and with attention to other Habermasian concepts such as discourse ethics, is that it can encourage us to think properly about the institutional conditions that make it possible for people to question simplifications and projections … The idea of an aesthetic public sphere relates … to the degree to which a social space provides those
participating in … debates with the resources to undertake discussion in a thoughtful and informed way." Hesmondhalgh (2007, p524) p.124
-the public sphere as ‘a sphere between civil society and the state, in which critical public discussion of matters of general interest was institutionally guaranteed’ (Thomas McCarthy 1989, pxi).
Chapter 6 Alternative musical spaces in the church: I examine two marginal/third spaces musical spaces within the life of the church: ‘Sing O barren woman’ – a week long prayer event, and ‘Word on the street’ – an evangelistic busking group that go out each Saturday onto Oxford’s main pedestrianized shopping street. I suggest that these two spaces embody different relationships between individuals’ diverse musical backgrounds and the church, offering differently nuanced musical ontologies from that found in the main Sunday worship services. I suggest that these spaces serve both to challenge and to reinforce the musical patterns of the main church services." p.10-11
-marginal/third spaces: "in-between realms, standing at the intersection of the music of the church and individuals’ broader musical lives. As such, I want to suggest that they can helpfully be understood through the idea of ‘third space’, as locations in which discourses and knowledges from two usually-distinct spaces encounter one-another and interact. p.127
-"Moje et al (2004) outline three principal ways in which such third spaces can be understood:
1. "as a means of building bridges between conventional institutional discourses and discourses marginalised in such settings.
2. they put forward the understanding of third space ‘as a navigational space, a way of crossing and succeeding in different discourse communities’.
3. ‘third space can be viewed as a space of cultural, social, and epistemological change in which the competing knowledges and discourses of different spaces are brought into “conversation”’ (Moje et al 2004, p44).
According to these understandings third spaces are largely productive in nature, a means of reconciling disparate identities and belongings." p.124
-While Moje et al’s understandings position third space as a relatively stable
structural phenomenon, other authors highlight its potential to destablise. ~Routledge, following the lead of Homi Bhabha (Bhabha 1994), suggests that it is ‘a place of invention and transformational encounters, a dynamic in-between space that is imbued with the traces, relays, ambivalences, ambiguities and contradictions, with the feelings and practices of both sites, to fashion something
different, unexpected’.
~Hoover and Echchaibi likewise highlight Bhabha’s understanding that ‘third space displaces the histories that constitute it, and sets up new structures of authority, new political initiatives, which are inadequately understood through received wisdom. [it] gives rise to something different, something new and unrecognizable, a new area of negotiation of meaning and representation’ (2012, p.13), suggesting that playful and negotiative practices in which signs and symbols are subverted and re-read stand at the centre of such spaces (2012, pp12, 20)." p.124
-Physical distance creates freedom for a different musical space--Word on the street: "As a project at some distance from both the authority structures and the physical space of the church," p.144
Conclusion:
-theoretical lens of cosmopolitanism, drawing on a typology of usages set out by Steven Vertovec and Robin Cohen "in order to examine the multiple ways in which cosmopolitan thought can be brought to bear on the experiences presented in this book." p.11
-"The various chapters of this book suggest a multi-faceted conception of musical identity that is far from straightforward. It is the result of an interplay of boundaries and connections, individuals and institutions, freedom and constraint such that these elements and a host of others are in a constant process of negotiation and contestation." p. 153
P: Basically, the author interviewed church members at St. Aldates, a church in Oxford that focuses on using soft rock type of church music and asked them how this style of church music relates to the music that they listen to in their daily lives. A lot of them don't really listen to the worship music style in their lives but saw the worship music as good to be used in church as it is the lowest common denominator and a music that buzzes, unites worshippers to sing together to worship God, and that the lyrics/worship attitude is more important than if they enjoyed this type of music anyway; music is just a tool while spiritual experience is more important. However, the author suggests that there is a relation between how they feel about the music and how that changes their formation by the church music and when they were given freedom and an alternative space (in-between) in the 24/7 prayer room and Word in the street, they could express their theology and faith using music styles that more represent them (e.g. jazz, hip hop) and experience a different area of their spiritual lives.
Feb-31 Mar, 2017
Abingdon: Routledge, 2017
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)