Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Movie Review: The Bicycle Thief


I just saw an old movie last night called The Bicycle Thief. It is an old foreign film, made in Italy in 1948. The story is about a guy who gets his bike stolen. Not the topic of a drama, you ask? Not so. It was a powerfully riveting and heart-wrenching film.

The story revolves around a man who is trying to support his family in Italy after WWII. He finally gets a job, but the job requires a bicycle. He and his wife sell the family bed sheets in order to buy their bicycle back from the pawnshop. Unfortunately, on the very first day of work, the bicycle is stolen by a group of thugs. The rest of the film takes place the next day as the man and his young son try desperately to find the bicycle.

The film is a work of "Italian Neorealism." From what I understand, no professional actors are employed. The main character, it seems, was actually a factory worker.

I believe everyone should see the film. After you see it, please come back and read the rest of the post...


I'll wait right here....


Seriously...

Seen it? Good. Now, what struck me most, I think, was the ending. The man, who has lost all hope, is tempted to steal a bicycle himself. And he does. He is chased down, caught, and humilitated in front of his son.

The movie is successful in making us resent intensely the person who originally stole the bicycle. We see the devastation that this one action caused in the lives of this poor family. But then, the film suddenly turns our judgment on its head. The father, who we feel great sympathy for, is then placed in the position of the thief. We want his theft to be successful. So, on the one hand, we are made to resent a thief intensly and then, just as quickly, we are made to completely sympathize with a thief. In this, it is a tale about our cautionary tale of our moral judgments, and how quick we are to point fingers without understanding.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

The tale of my book manuscript

Many of you know that I am currently trying to get a book published. It has been a long, humbling experience, to say the least. I dreamed up the idea for my book way back in 2001. I was trying to figure out the effect that one of my professors had on me. His name was Jack Newell. That man, along with Claudia Wright back at old Cottonwood High, were the two biggest teaching influences in my life. Jack taught a class in education that used philosophy, religion, literature, and psychology. He introduced me to Emerson and Earl Shorris. But more than that, though, the dude was a story teller and gave us glimpses into his life -- a life that integrated action and scholarship. I found myself gravitating to him and wanting to be like him. I wanted to adopt his (sometime unorthodox) views. I wanted not only to integrate action with scholarship, I wanted to eat lunch where he ate lunch, for crying out loud. I'm not sure the influence was completely for the best. The interesting thing is this: I never chose to want to be like this guy. I just starting imitating. This influence made me want to understand the processes by which we are influenced in this way. How, in short, are we influenced by other human lives?

The idea eventually morphed into my special field examination product, then to my dissertation, and then to a book manuscript. Along the way, I've noticed, and been informed of by others, every problem with the text, major and minor. I've had to make the case that somebody other than me would actually be interested in the book enough to (gasp) pay money for it. I spent hours trying to craft the proposal and the manuscript to be both literarily sophisticated, scholarly sound, and commercially viable. But I, more than anyone else, know that beneath the makeup of the finished product there are a few warts here and there. I've not been surprised, then, to receive various polite letters saying that the manuscript was not a good fit for publishing house X.

Finally, though, it appears that the book may actually get off the ground. I received some very positive feedback from a respectable academic press. The book was called "a pleasure to read," "clear and often elegant," "fascinating and ever-timely," and an achievement that "demonstrates good control of the sources in supple and straightforward fashion." So, I'm not really sure how to feel. On the one hand, I feel excited that this little piece of me, my little child, will finally see the light of day. On the other hand, I'm worried that when people actually read it, they will see just a little brat covered with warts -- a kid only a mother could love. Darn that Jack.

Bryan

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Top of the World

While the rest of the world mourns the loss of the Utah Utes to the hated BYU Cougars, I was relatively unaffected. Sure, it is always hard to see BYU do well at anything, especially at the expense of the Utes. One of the advantages though of spending a lot of time in higher education is that you gain multiple feelings of allegiance.

Right now, I can align myself more with my current institution, which currently sits atop the college athletics world in both football, where their supremacy is now undisputed, and in men's basketball (#1 in the most recent coach's poll). This is only the third time in history that such a thing has happened. Life is good in Columbus.

It is possible to feel this way because, so far, the Buckeye fans haven't been acting like idiots, as they often do. After OSU beat Michigan, not one car was torched. Given all the alcohol and excitement that surrounded that game, the lack of rioting should be accounted a miracle akin to Moses parting the Red Sea.

OSU football games are really something to behold. I was walking around the "Shoe" (the football stadium) three hours before OSU play Bowling Green (Bowling Green mind you!) and the atmosphere was unlike anything I've ever seen. 3 miles around campus ever single home and frathouse had some sort of Buckeye party going on. As one approaches the stadium, along Lane Avenue, a carnival atmosphere begins to erupt -- a big street fair emerges with thousands of people milling about eating, selling, buying, whatever. 1 mile from the stadium is tailgating country which turns the parking lots into enormous picnic areas. And then there is Buckeye Stadium. It is hard not to get caught up in such excitement, even though I've never been much of a fan of anything Buckeye.

Bryan

Friday, November 03, 2006

On Being a Homeowner

Owning my own home has made me a different person. I now worry about how well my neighbors are taking care of their house. I read about interest rates. I follow home sales in the neighborhood and in the region. Which brings me to a dismal topic. I wanted to share some graphs with you that I ripped off from my favorite political blog (Kevin Drum on Washington Monthy).


Look closely at the graph at the right. Do you see the peak housing prices? June 2005? That peak corresponds precisely to when we bought our home. How is that for some bad luck? The For-Sale signs are now so thick in our neighborhood it looks like a veritable forrest of signs. The prices for homes in the midwest were never inflated, it seemed, like they were elsewhere. And yet, the housing crash seems to be hitting the midwest as hard as anybody. Go figure.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

What goes around comes around

I just finished grading a whole bunch of exams. It is always a relief to finish that dismal task.

Whenever I make comments on student papers or exams, I always think back to a comment one of my professors made. I think it was my history of physics class. It was an essay exam. I had written a little essay, and I can't even remember what the topic was. I thought I did fairly well. I didn't have the most precise conception of what I was saying, to be sure, but I thought it was good enough to get partial credit. A week passed and I got the exam back. I looked eagerly to see my grade and the comments that had been written. Usually, comments on my papers were fawning and highly complimentary. Not this time. This time the only response was written in red ink at the bottom of my essay.

It said, simply, "Not so."

That was it. No explanation. No pretending to engage with what I'd written. No illusions that my response was worth more than the pencil stratches I'd used to vomit out my answer. Just a flat and simple contradiction. A pin prick to a balloon full of intellectual hot air.

Not. so.

It was a deflating moment. I was, with those two words, once again clear on where I stood in the world of true minds. I laugh about that moment today. And, every once in awhile I, too, write on a student paper the simple phrase: Not so.

Bryan

Friday, October 06, 2006

I've been cited!

One of the great anxieties in my life right now is when other people actually read the stuff I write. Sometimes I wish they wouldn't. Sometimes I wish my thoughts would simply fly off into nowhere leaving only the trace of a line on my curriculum vitae. Usually, I can't stand re-reading something I've just published, and I can't imagine why anyone else would want to do so. Here are two recent citations of my work (some of my first, actually).

After reading my paper on religion and educational theory, one writer responds:
"As someone who has not bee religiously observant since secondary school, I find W's words unsettling but compelling. He seems to challenge the norms upon which our discipline is founded. Perhaps this is the paralogy that is most needed now -- a paralogy that crosses the boundary that is imagined to separate the religious from the secular. While paralogy for the sake of legitimation alone will be seen as terroristic and may prove counterproductive, this paralogy comes form an openness to the radical incommensurability of the language games that constitute our scoeity. It invites new possibilities to emerge."
Got it? I'm not sure I do either. Whatever the case, who would have thought that "unsettling and compelling" would be a way of describing me?

Another citation, less positive. After reading my paper on cadaver dissection, one writer snipes:
"The only review of quantitative research into dissection so far [footnote], sometimes misleading quoted [footnotes], deals mainly with dissection in high school classes."
Guess who quotes misleadingly. Yup, me. What's funny is the guy really liked my paper except for that little snippet. And yet, what do I get recognized for -- being "misleading."

Is it true there is no such thing as bad publicity?

Bryan

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Okay Edge, play the blues...

So, the bishop began a conversation last Sunday in the following way: "They've decided to split the early morning seminary class and they need a teacher."

Let me assure you that there is no good way this conversation can end. Arrgh!

Bryan

Friday, September 22, 2006

Bryan's Trip to the Ruby Mountains

At the end of August, I had a great trip with my brother Derek and uncle Brent to the Ruby Mountains. The Ruby Mountains are in Nevada, actually, near Elko. If your impression of Nevada was like mine, there is nothing really to see there. On the contrary. The Rubies are a gem of a mountrain range -- as nice as anything in the Rocky mountains (if not as extensive).

On Sunday, the 27th, we spent the night in the neat little Pine Lodge in Lamoille, NV, at the base of the mountains. Pine Lodge also has a great little steakhouse. The chicken wings were especially good! Here is a picture of the famous Lamoille Presbyterian Church.

Here we are starting out.

On the first day we hiked up Lamoille Canyon...

...stopped at Lamoille Lake...

...went over the breathtaking Liberty Pass...

...and established our base camp near Liberty Lake -- the quintessential mountain lake.

On the Second day, we left our camp and hiked a portion of the "Ruby Crest Trail"...

...ascended various peaks and passes...

...got really tired...

...and caught some fish down at Favre Lake.

Here I am hiking out on day 3.

Other pictures:



Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Summer Photos

Well, I guess the summer is officially over. Here are some pictures of what we've done this summer (and late Spring).

We repainted our kitchen.

We also repainted our living room and (finally) bought some decent furniture.

We watched Andrew grow up.

We were visited by our good friend from Champaign, the Cassavaughs.

We went to the Columbus Arts Festival. Nora recieved this clown's nose and a little pink disco ball from members of the Gay Choir of Columbus -- we thought that was nice of them. (Note: we also went to several of the free Shakespeare in the park plays that Columbus offers in the German Village area, but don't have any photographic evidence that we did -- be assured that it was cool, though).

In late June, we went to visit family in Utah.

While in Utah, we welcomed Aunt Anna home from her LDS mission in Chile (she is Ellie's sister on the far right). Ellie, her sisters, and her mom all got their ears pierced for the first time.

We went to Red Butte Gardens above the University of Utah campus.

We saw the cows at The Farm (my Grandpa's farm) for the last time. Sad. The Farm is now being sold to a real estate developer (a minion of Satan) who will turn the farm into a subdivision with big houses for people who know nothing of the history of the land on which they are living.

Nora got to play with her cousins.

Back in Ohio, we had a nice visit with Ellie's uncle Ralph and aunt Cathy from Virginia.

We played around a lot on the slip-n-slide.

We went to the Franklin County fair. Nora is sitting with her friend Rachel.

Andrew had ear surgery -- tubes.

We discovered a fun little beach on Deer Creek Reservoir, about 45 minutes away from our house.

We continued to watch Andrew grow up.

More pictures to come soon.

Bryan

Monday, September 11, 2006

September 11, 2001

It was a beautiful morning in Columbus today. Just like it was in Champaign five years ago. Just like it was in New York City five years ago.

I had gone through my normal morning routine as a graduate student, rolling out of bed around 8:30 or so, and arriving at campus to attend the lecture portion of the "Introduction to Mythology" course where I was serving as a TA. It was then that I realized that something had gone terribly wrong that day. Attendence was unusually sparse, and the instructor of the course called for a moment of silence for "those who were buried in the rubble and those who were trying to save them." He didn't explain what had happened, assuming everybody already knew. I hadn't heard anything. I went to my computer after class and looked up the NY Times webpage. Information was sparse. It had a simple title: "Airplances crash into Twin Towers; Both Buildings Collapse." I couldn't believe what I was reading. I thought it was a hoax.

The rest of the day was spent in front of the television in the student union and at home. I remember a sucession of images, each more sad than the last. Images of people falling. Images of people hanging out of windows. Images of panic. And, later, images of people desperately searching for loved ones. Images of walls full of photos of the dead and missing. I remember particuarly the images of a young woman, not much older than a teenager, holding a picture of her mother and begging the television audience (begging me on my sofa in Champaign!) to give her information, any information, about her mother -- a mother of several small children, the young woman's siblings. It was then that I finally lost it, drowned in sea of such images.

The day was peppered with small, memorable conversations, as people tried to understand what was happening and why. I remember talking with my advisor about the events of the day. He said simply that he was afraid -- afraid of what had happened and afraid [prophetically] of what would come after.

I did not know anyone who was killed on September 11. But that day changed me, perhaps more than any other single day of my life. More than any other day, that day told me that all was not well in the world. I didn't know who to blame, and I still don't. Not entirely. I know to blame hate, and fear, and ignorance. I know to blame that part of human nature that makes us want to think that we, and only we, have all the right answers. I know to blame that part of us who thinks we can all solve our problems through force, intimidation, and violence. I know to blame that part of us that wants to swagger and to have our enemies "bring it on." But to blame these things is simply to blame human nature, or a part of human nature -- that hateful part of human nature of which we are all comprised and from which, it seem, we are doomed to never escape.

September 11 was the day my professional life became trivial. Before that time, I was busy writing papers on Heidegger, the nature of metaphor, and the finer points of philosophical debates in epistemology. After that time, such pursuits lost much of their meaning. Who cares about such things when there are mothers being burned alive? When soldiers are deploying? When children await parents who will never come home? I couldn't muster any motivation to care about my studies in the days and weeks after the attacks. And since that time, I have never escaped the doubts that my life -- the life of comtemplation, teaching, and writing -- doesn't matter much. In the world of tough guys that was introduced on 9/11, people like me don't matter much.

I remember walking around the afternoon of September 11th. Every church on campus had its door open. I walked into the Episcopal church near the main library. The priest was busy offering prayers and a handful of people were kneeling. I listened to the prayers of another religion, but felt that it was also my religion. I remember seeing the long lines of people, ready to give blood, and I felt as if we were all really of the same blood. I felt ready to do whatever it took to solve the problems we faced.

But, then, it seems we couldn't find an answer that fully satisfied our national psyche. First came the war in Afghanistan. Then came the war in Iraq -- a war, unfortunately, that began the week my dear daughter Nora was born. Both wars now continue, with things getting worse everyday. Thousands upon thousands of more people have been killed. The hatred that was so clearly manifest by 19 highjackers has spread like a wildfire. Images of death and suffering have grown. The images of 9/11 have been replaced by images that are equally powerful. A young widow of an American solider, killed without meeting his daughter. Images of dead children being pulled out of buildings bombed by American aircraft. And the image below, the most recent image that touched me, and almost made me lose it.

I don't know much about this photo. There sits a prisoner, a father it seems. Perhaps he is a terrorist; perhaps just an innocent man caught up in one of our wild midnight raids. He sits in the desert with a black bag over his head and tries to comfort his obviously exhausted and probably terrified son. This is the fallout of 9/11. How can we make the world better for this boy? How can we make the world better for the girl on 9/11 with the missing mother? I wish I knew. 9/11 for me opened a flood of questions I have never fully answered.



Bryan

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

My deep ancestry

So we got my dad a National Geographic DNA testing kit for a Father's Day present. Apparently the results are in. My Dad writes:

Everyone that has my DNA belongs to Haplogroup R1b (M343). A haplogroup is a series of markers that defines the mutations in your DNA and is shared by your ancestors (the men in my case). According to the information I received, my earliest ancestor emerged in Africa about 50,000 years ago. About 5000 years later they moved to the Middle East. About 5000 years later they moved to Central Asia. They moved further into Asia during the next 5,000 years. This was during an ice age and survival was difficult so they moved to Northern Europe and later to Western Europe. This is where our ancestors got the M343 marker – the defining marker of our haplogroup. We are direct descendants of the Cro-Magnon man that did all the cave paintings in France.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Internet explorations

I was playing around with Google Trends today when I should have been working. Google Trends allows you to see what people are searching for on the internet and when. I typed in the name "Warnick," not expecting any results. Here is what I found. Apparently, in Late October, 2005, there was a huge surge in people searching the name "Warnick." I wonder what the heck was going on at that time to make people interested in searching for the name "Warnick." The surge in searches did not seem to correlate with any significant news involving Warnicks. Anyway, the most popular search regions for the name "Warnick" are:

1. Salt Lake City, UT, USA

2. Boston, MA, USA

3. New York, NY, USA

4. Seattle, WA, USA

5. Chicago, IL, USA

6. Toronto, Canada

Funny that the good people of Toronto should be so interested in Warnicks. What's up Toronto?

Another cool site is Pandora.com, which helps you find music that you like. You simply type in a group or song that you like and the site matches the characteristics of the group or song with other groups. My favorite rock and roll song of all time is "Until the End of the World," by U2. Typing that in, I found that I like music with subtle harmonies, mixed acoustic and electric guitar, extensive vamping, repetive melodic phrasing. The list of music this has generated has been great so far. From other searches, I found that I like folk roots, minor key stuff, and, um, "breathy male vocals."

Bryan

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Mean t-shirt

Ellie and I saw a t-shirt the other day that made us wince. It simply said:

NOBOBY CARES ABOUT YOUR BLOG

Friday, August 04, 2006

My response to Bryan's list. (For the record, I knew all those things about him.) Items are in random order. . .

Favorites
1. Homemade rootbeer
2. Going to the fair
3. The sizzling sound a sparkler makes when you douse it in a bucket of water
4. Eating a handful of freshly fallen snow
5. Sleeping in a cold bedroom
6. Getting an unexpected letter in the mail
7. Washing a floor on my hands and knees (it’s nuts, I know, speaking of which - )
8. Hazlenut-flavored chocolate
9. Endorphins after running
10. Reading a good book on a rainy afternoon
11. People who aren't afraid to use big words
12. Clean bedsheets

Least Favorites
1. Getting into a hot car
2. Books with dumb endings
3. Finding a bleach stain on my new clothes
4. Cleaning my room – or my daughter’s
5. Little yappy dogs
6. Finding out they don’t carry ______ in my size
7. People who play dumb
8. Beauty pageants and/or popularity contests
9. Being called “Sweetie” by salespeople my age
10. Days with no ice cream
11. Our deathly slow computer
12. Shaving my legs (it's so dangerous!)

Ellie

Friday, July 28, 2006

Some things you probably didn't know about Bryan

Here they are, in no particular order:

1. I passionately crave buttered popcorn and eat it almost every night.

2. I really like Madonna. Material Girl -- yeah!

3. I always get nervous before I teach. Even a youth Sunday School Class.

4. I never, ever, say no to warm chocolate chip cookies.

5. In airplanes, I always turn the air valve on full blast no matter what the temperature.

6. I’m semi-claustrophobic (see 5).

7. I will sometimes look at you like I know what you’re talking about, when really I have absolutely no idea.

8. I believe that days that start out with a sugar cereal are better than days that do not.

9. I don’t floss much.

10. Sometimes I laugh at jokes I don't think are funny, and don't laugh at jokes I find hilarious.

11. I find babies kind of boring -- give me a toddler any day!

12. I believe one should never buy a cheap car, but also that one should always take the bus.

13. Speaking of buses, if I see a person reading something on the bus, I can't rest until I find out what they are reading.

Obama Link

Oops. The link to the Barak Obama speech has now been fixed. Sorry.

Bryan

Friday, July 07, 2006

Friend's blogs

Finally, Jared has something interesting on his blog. Be sure to check it out. The comments section, though, alleging that I once was found lacking in fashion sense, is scandalous and should be ignored by all decent people.

I also got to read all about David Chapman's Father's Day celebration. Apparently, old Chappo got a grill AND was able to buy himself a coveted bike trailer. I got, um, a couple DVDs.

Barack Obama

I once heard Barack Obama speak once at the University of Illinois. Ever since that time, he has been my favorite politician, by far. I know, I know. He has been way hyped. But in his case, for now at least, I think the hype is real. He is by far the most thoughtful speaker in pulic life today. Check out this talk on the relationship between religion and politics. You'll see.

Thursday, July 06, 2006

Two Interesting Mormon Links

You never really know what you'll find on the Internet these days. Many of you probably already knew this, but I just found out that Glen Larson was Mormon. Larson was the guy who wrote/produced shows like Knight Rider, Buck Rogers, Magnum PI, the Fall Guy, and, most intersting, Battlestar Galactica. Battlestar Galactica was one of my favorite shows as a kid. Now, wouldn't you know it, but apparently there are all sort of Mormon allusions spread around the old show. See here, and here, and here.

Also, I recently found out there is a society for LDS Skinny dippers and nudists called "LDS Skinny Dipper Connection." Their motto is "Familes Forever Naked and Not Ashamed." You can go to the website without fear -- there is not nudity. A joke possibly?

Friday, June 02, 2006

WalMart and Me

My buddy Jared is always going ff about the evils of Walmart. I can't say I blame him. A massive company with the almost single-handed ability to kill off the American worker once and for all. A detestable company, in almost every way imaginable.

And yet...and yet...I can sometimes be found roaming the local supercenter. It is the closest store to us, and also the cheapest, and it will have almost everything we want. The service is almost always poor, but it also has the best root-beer available (no, really). It is also the home to our local Papa Murphy's Pizza. The combination of these factors too often proves an irresistable temptation. Count me as a sheep, cared for the shepard of consumer culture!

Bryan

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Juan Cole on Da Vinci

Juan Cole's take on the Da Vinci code:

Despite the scowls and titters of the critics, the DaVinci Code did $77 million at the box office in the US, better than Tom Cruise pulled in MI3. And the world-wide gross is already $224 million.

What in the world accounts for the popularity of this complicated and improbable story?

Dan Brown's narrative is about restoring the happy medium to contemporary Western modernity.

The novel has a binary structure. On the one hand you have the Church hierarchy, which is patriarchal, doctrinal, monotheistic, ascetic, and authoritarian. Those attributes are its normal pole, but it is open to corruption when they are over-emphasized. The first step toward over-emphasis is Opus Dei, which stands for a cult-like kind of monotheism in which individualism is much more surpressed than in the Church generally. But even Opus Dei is not so far from churchly normality. The villain of the movie is the man who corrupts the principles of Opus Dei itself, Bishop Manuel Aringarosa and his acolyte, Silas. They take self-denial in the direction of manic masochism, so that Silas routinely inflicts excruciating pain on himself in emulation of the crucifixion. And he has moved so far in the direction of giving up his individualism that he will do anything he is told by his master, including committing murder and torture. Inspector Bezu Fache, a representative of bourgeois order as a policeman, is likewise willing to put aside due process to obey his cultic master, violating individual rights and attempting to railroad a suspect, though he later has an ethical awakening.

Silas is, of course, a religious terrorist. With his monk robes, he inevitably nowadays evokes Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Corruption of an authoritarian and partiarchal tradition leads in the direction of murder for the faith.

This pole of the film reflects the authoritarian side of modern institutions and culture. It isn't about Catholicism at all, or about Opus Dei. It is about the unchallengeable doctrines (norms) of society, and about the constant danger that ordinary obedience to the law can turn into a cultic exaltation of the law above principle and spirit. The Silas's of the US are the Ollie Norths and the Irv Lewis Libbys, apparatchiks who are willing to break any law and throw over any constitutional principle in order to serve their masters. (I.e. Cheney gets to play Aringosa in the Plame scandal). As for patriarchy, it is still dominant in much of American life, from the presidency to the CEOs in the boardroom to the US officer corps, and it is linked to the bands of brothers who form gangs and go overboard in imposing conformity. Joe Wilson had to be punished for challenging the orthodoxy that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

The other pole in the Brown narrative is the priory around the female descendants of Jesus through Mary Magdalene. This pole is about paganism, feminism, individualism, scientific rationality and sexual freedom. This pole, likewise, can become corrupt and antinomian. Thus, the pagan orgy or hieros gamos repulses Sophie Neveu and causes an almost fatal break between the Grail (herself) and the priory. Likewise, scientistic society has led her to become an unbeliever, so that the Grail itself is corrupted by doubt. Sir Leah Teabing is the symbol of this pole gone to unethical extremes. In his quest for the Grail, he is willing to deceive and to kill. He is Silas's structural analogue.

The "pagan" (in Brown's sense) temptation is a significant feature of contemporary American life-- which can be lived without much immediate penalty as libertine, selfish, and undisciplined. Untempered by spirituality and ethics, science can be soulles and led to e.g. eugenics experiments.

Neveu, like Fache, is in the police and a symbol of middle class order. But she is willing to put her ethics above her professional discipline. When she sees that Fache has become a cultist and lost his perspective, she defies him and helps the fugitive Professor Langdon. She stands for genuine justice rather than only procedural justice.

The film is popular because it isn't about Catholicism or France or some odd conspiracy theory centered on Mary Magdalene. It is popular because it is about the dilemmas of secular modernity.

As a film, it has its disappointments. The figure of Langdon does not actually speak like an academic. His talk at the Louvre is a sermon, not an analysis. His arguments with Teabing are jejune and the substance unbelievable. There is too much exposition, too much explaining and dwelling on the details of the whole gnostic conspiracy theory. To be good, the film would have had to be more allusive and less preachy, to show not tell.

Still, it did big box office, and is hitting a nerve. Critics should be interested in what that nerve is.


Bryan

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Tag Game

Four Jobs I've Had
1. Construction Grunt -- Christiansen Heating and Air Conditioning
2. Cashier Grunt -- Circle K
3. Lawn Mower Grunt (with Donald Nelson back in high dchool)
4. Research Grunt (BRCA1 study, medical ethics, UI, OSU)

Four Movies I never get sick of
1. Chariots of Fire
2. Pride and Prejudice (A&E version, although new version is good too)
3. The Matrix (to regain my manhood after Pride and Prejudice)
4. Twelve Angry Men (old version)

Four places I have lived
1. SLC -- Lakeside Dr.
2. SLC -- Roberta St.
3. Champaign, IL
4. Columbus, OH

Four TV shows I can't miss
1. The American Experience
2. The News Hour (Friday nights)
3. Frasier reruns
4. College basketball

Four favorite foods
I don't really belive in favorites. I rarely meet a food I don't like.

Four sites I visit daily
1. Washington Monthy
2. Crooked Timber
3. Talking Points Memo Cafe
4. Andrew Sullivan

Four places I'd rather be right now
1. Cameron Indoor
2. Tetons/Wind Rivers
3. Not grading exams
4. With family and friends

Bryan

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Why Warnicks Fail

I'm always on the look out for excuses to explain my future flop. Here is a good one, via Kevin Drum:
ALPHABETICAL TYRANNY....Alex Tabarrok reports that alphabetical privilege is real — in the world of economics, anyway:
A new paper (free, working version, Winter 06, JEP) demonstrates that...faculty members in top departments with surnames beginning with letters earlier in the alphabet are substantially more likely to be tenured, be fellows of the Econometrics Society, and even win Nobel prizes (let's see, Arrow, Buchanan Coase...hmmm). No such effects are found in psychology where the alphabetical norm is not followed.

The "alphabetical norm" is the rule that coauthors on a paper are listed alphabetically, which results in only alphabetically privileged authors getting citation credits (everyone else is "et al"). The paper demonstrating the effect was written by Liran Einav and some other guy.


Bryan

Spaz

The recent controversy about Tiger Wood's use of the word "spaz" has been interesting to me. I have always loved the word spaz. For one thing, most words with the letter z are cool. For another, it transports me back to the early days of my youth -- the 80s. Happy times, simple times, crazy times. Alas, I didn't know that, since its popularity in the 80s, it has become a word of disrepute. As a good liberal, I suppose I must surrender.

Bryan

Random News from the Warnicks


I realize that we haven't used this blog to keep people informed much with our lives. I suppose that is largely because our lives are fairly banal and we, furthermore, are not much good at making the banal seem exciting. That is a deadly combination for personal blogging. (The dictionary definition of banal, I found, is "so lacking in originality as to be obvious and boring"; it is said to come from the French root meaning "compulsory," that is, "common to all" -- that about sums us up).

For what its worth here are some things we have been doing:

(1) We recently redecorated our kitchen. We repainted in a color called Snake River, which a light green, almost a mint blue. The kitchen, of course, is the worst room in a house to paint. We are fairly unskilled painters, too, so the kitchen now comes with various drops and splotches. It looks fairly good, though, especially after we finished it off with a nice Cezanne still life. Nothing like distorted fruit to spice up a kitchen.

(2) Our yard is actually starting to become a true back yard. We recently dug out a vegetable garden and purchased a swing set. Five minutes after Nora starting using the swing set, she had her first swing set accident. Lovely.

(3) Andrew recently rolled over! Or so Ellie claims, I have yet to verify. Andrew was also recently diagnosed with two ear infections. Hasn't hurt his weight, though. He recently weighed in at whopping 15 lbs. He is one of the biggest three-month-old babies I've ever seen.

Bryan

Sunday, March 19, 2006

An Exercise in Homiletics

A Sermon. Hilliard Ward Sacrament Meeting. March 12, 2006.

The Varieties of Revelatory Experience
Bryan

Today I would like to talk about the experiences of revelation. Personal revelation is one of the pillars of Mormon belief. From the beginning, Joseph Smith seemed eager that other people swim in the same river of revelation that he was immersed in. We can ask God questions, we still believe, and he will answer. I would like to begin by telling you about four different experiences with revelation.

January 1994: Before embarking from the MTC to the mission field, a boy goes to the Provo temple wanting to know for himself if the Church is true. In response, a thought comes to his mind as clearly as if the words had been spoken aloud by somebody else. The voice asks a question that is an answer, but also a challenge. “How could it be any other way?” the voice gently asks and, by so doing, invites a life-times of continuing engagement.

November 1996: A young returned missionary, who has rarely found within himself the courage to ask anyone out, finds himself turning to young lady sitting behind him and asking her on a date. The invitation occurs at precisely the right moment; for various reasons, it was the only time when the invitation could have come and been well-received. The young man concludes he was inspired. It was less of a prompting, though, than a possession. It was as if he were acting involuntarily, as if the Spirit had somehow taken over.

May 1999: A young college graduate is deciding where to go for graduate school. Upon visiting one campus, he has a strange, negative feeling and wonders if this is the Spirit telling him not to attend that university. However, all the reasons point to that campus as the best place to go. Unsure of what to make of the negative feeling, he decides to attend that university anyway and has, it seems, a wonderful graduate school experience. He concludes that those negative feelings were probably just discomfort with the traffic running through campus.

October 2004: Now older and married, a man watches a young friend of his. His friend has been praying for some time for some sort of verification that the church is true. No recognizable answer has come. Instead of answers, there is simply silence. The prayers fly off into the nothingness of a seemingly empty universe. His friend becomes disillusioned and slowly drifts into doubt and inactivity.

These are four very different sorts of experiences with revelation. In the first experience, I was given a clear answer, but it was an answer that invited further discussion (to me, the voice gave me the answer I needed at the time, but also seemed to say, “let’s talk about this more.”) In the second experience with my future wife, it was an involuntary command rather than a quiet suggestion. This sort of revelation raises the question how such possession is possible and how is it compatible with our freedom to act? In the third experience, an impression I thought was inspiration was really no such thing, at least I don’t think it was. Perhaps the inspiration in such a moment was to ignore how I was feeling rather than following my feelings. In the fourth incident, my friend was not given a promised revelation at a crucial moment in his life – what are we to make of such moments, when the heavens seem closed to us?

These experiences show that revelation is a very complex sort of thing. I admit that it is something that I don’t understand very well. John 3:8 says that the spirit “blowest where it listeth” and we can hardly tell from “where it cometh and whither it goeth” Indeed, it sometimes seems impossible to track its movements or comprehend its wanderings. The Spirit of Revelation is more something that I watch in wonder and awe as it moves upon the souls of human beings than being something that I understand. Although I do not claim to understand what revelation is very well, however, or even how to receive it, I do think I have some ideas about what revelation is not. So I have created a list of misconceptions or myths that are common about revelation.

Myth #1. Revelation of the Spirit always comes to us in the form of feelings.

We often break the world down into two separate spheres. We have our rational life and our emotional life. We often think that our emotional life is the domain of spirituality and religion. Our capacity to reason is limited, we often say, and truth comes from following your feelings. As I missionary, I always asked how people were feeling about what I taught them, and I urged them to follow their feelings as the surest guide to truth. I now think that this probably restricts our religious lives too much. It is true that the D&C 9:8 speaks of what appear to be emotional responses to revelation (the revelation comes as a “burning in bosom” it says). But it also tells us that messages will come to our minds, our intellect, as well as our emotions (D&C 6:23 talks of the Lord speaking peace to the mind of Oliver Cowdry, D&C 6:15 talks about the Lord enlightening the mind, D&C 8:2 tells about revelation coming to our minds and hearts) .

When we look at the experience of revelation in the Scriptures, people do not always describe in terms of a purely emotional response – visions are seen, voices speak, and people have ideas that attribute to the Lord. The Spirit may prick our hearts, to be sure, as in Acts 2:37. But the Spirit also works through the whole range of human experience. Consider the many different ways that the Golden Plates were revealed to the book of Mormon witnesses – three of them were shown the Plates by an angel and heard the voice of God, eight of them were allowed to handle and examine the Plates themselves without any divine encounter. One experience was based on being passively shown the Plates and hearing supernatural testimony; the other was tactile, more actively scientific and empirical. Both experiences were certainly a type of revelation from God, but they were very different sorts of experiences. There are many ways God may reveal his will to us: we may feel emotions, it appears, but we many also be given ideas and reasons as we actively try to figure stuff out. As I will discuss more in the end, we should be open to the many ways God speaks. In fact, remembering revelation as coming to both mind and heart is important because if we look to our feelings alone, it is hard to distinguish prejudice from promptings, or indigestion from inspiration.

Myth #2. There is always one right answer to life’s questions, and revelation will help us to find that one right answer.

The scriptures present us with several moments when there seems to be an open exchange of ideas between human beings and their Heavenly Father. In Genesis 18, we have Abraham bargaining with the Lord about the fate of Sodom. We Genesis 19:19 we find Lot bargaining with the Lord about where he will flee once Sodom is destroyed. In the Book of Ether, we have the brother of Jared proposing an idea to the Lord about how to provide light in his barges. In such moments, it seems as if the “right answer” is not fixed in God’s mind. The right answer does not sit there awaiting us to discover it. It seems that, as least some of the time, what constitutes the “right answer” about what we should do is cooperatively shaped as God listens to our ideas and brings us into the process of formulating action. God wants us, as it says in D&C 9:8 to study it out in our minds, to try to figure an answer for ourselves, and then he will guide us (“let’s see what you’ve got,” he seems to say). In this way, God makes us a part of his creative and redemptive work.

It is important to note that this cooperative work with God did not only happen in ancient times. The process by which Joseph Smith constructed the D&C is instructive on this point. In his wonderful recent biography of Joseph Smith, Richard M. Bushman writes:

The editing process uncovered Joseph [unique] assumptions about the nature of revealed words. He never considered the wording infallible. God’s language stood in an indefinite relationship to the human language coming through the prophet….Recognizing the pliabily of the revealed words, Joseph freely edited the revelations by the spirit, making emendations with each new edition. He thought of his revelations as imprinted on his mind, not graven in stone. With each edition, he patched pieces together and altered the wordings to clarify meaning. They words were both his and God’s. (2005, p. 174)

In other words, the revelations in the D&C were co-constructions of God working through the mind of the prophet Joseph; they were not words graven in rock. I believe revelation is often like this, although I don’t know how much it is like this or when we can know when we should think of ourselves as co-participants in constructing the answers we get. It is an idea, though, that I find endlessly exciting.

Myth #3. Revelation is always personal.

When we use words “personal revelation” we tend to imply that revelation is a simple transaction between an individual and God. This ignores, however, the social aspect of revelation. Sometimes God answers us through the actions of others; sometimes the revelation comes not to any individual alone but to a group. For our most important revelations – like a Patriarchal blessing – God has arranged things so the revelation does not come to us personally and we are forced to rely on somebody else to help us. Sometimes it seems that one person has one piece of revelation, and somebody else has another piece. As we come together in discussion, the whole picture emerges. Richard Bushman writes about how Joseph Smith saw the work of church councils to be an important conduit of revleation:

After the organization of the Twelve apostles, the frequency of canonical revelations dropped precipitously. The commandments to particular people, included among the revelations in the early years, were omitted from later compilations. Instead, Joseph’s history was filled with the minutes of the Twelve Apostle’ meetings as if they had become the source of inspiration. The Acts of the Apostles from the New Testament -- a history of their activities – became the pattern for revelation rather than the visions of Moses on Sinai. …By putting the work of councils on the same plan as his own revelations, Joseph set a precedent for inspiration other than his own: revelation through a council.

In the case of a council, revelation is given to the group and not only to one person individually. We should not, therefore, let the idea of personal revelation blind us to the existence of revelation as a community phenomenon.

Myth #4 Everyone Experiences Revelation In Similar Ways

When we hear testimonies in Church, or when we read the scriptures, it sometimes seems that revelation should be an easy thing. Moroni 10 gives us a simple method to use to receive revelation about the Book of Mormon. For some people, it does seem to be easy as following a simple method. Such people speak of manifestations coming like a river barely contained by its banks. Joseph Smith, again, was one such person for whom the heavenly world was as constantly near as our world. For others, though, revelation is less like a continually flowing stream and more like a slowly dripping well in a thirsty desert. Such people cling to those drops of revelation that have seemed like clear manifestations of God’s guidance and love, and listen intently, hoping such manifestations come again soon. I sometimes feel like this is how it is with me. For others, clear divine manifestations don’t seem to come at all, such as the friend in my experience. Why God gives us such different experiences with revelation, I can’t say. But I don’t think it can always be attributed to lacking worthiness or sincerity. Nor do I think it is because they refuse to recognize an answer. After all, at the end of his life, even Christ on the cross felt forsaken by his Father and painfully understood what heavenly silence was like when he cried Eli , Eli lama Sabacthani (Matt 27:46). Perhaps for us, like Alma 7:12 says of Christ, there is something specific that we are to learn in those moments when the heavens are closed to us, something we are to learn about how we can best succor other people according to their infirmities. Maybe we are to learn how to help those who wander without God’s guidance, for example.

Another possibility is that, in such moments, we are forced to listen more closely to the many ways God can speak to his children and through his children. Perhaps our revelation is to come through involvement in art, music, or science. Perhaps it is to come through family testimonies that we are to learn to trust. Perhaps our revelation can come in the eyes of a child, or in the tears of a child, or in the embrace of the child. Perhaps our revelation is in the warm story of a grandparent or in the coldness of their skin on the day that they die. Perhaps it is in the forest in the summer twilight or in a book that opened our eyes – where once we were blind, we now see. Perhaps revelation is in memory – a memory of our mother’s knee or of an opportunity that we once squandered. Perhaps it is in finding a community to be a part of, or a community that is calling for our help. Perhaps.

March 2004: A young father is worried about his relationship with his infant daughter, who has clearly become a Mommy’s girl. That night he prays that he daughter can somehow feel how much he loves her. The next morning, his daughter awakes and asks, for the first time, for Daddy. The words of a song come to his mind: “When I walk through the shades of death, thy presence is my stay, One word from thy supporting breath, drives all my fears away.”

It is a myth that revelation will come to everybody in predictable ways, but it is not a myth that heavenly Father loves us and lovingly speaks in a thousand different languages of love. It is my prayer that we may have ears to hear this language.

Monday, February 27, 2006

Nice or Kind

I’m starting to realize that there’s a big difference between being nice and being kind. While the two may be manifest in similar types of actions, the distinction lies in the thought behind the actions. Nice has an element of artifice to it. Someone described as extremely nice might actually be considered phony or simply over-the-top in their friendliness. But you can never be too kind. Kindness has a genuineness and unmistakable sincerity about it. Kind is what I want to be.

Recently I learned that someone I just met doesn’t like me. Friends familiar with the situation console me that this person has undeniable issues that cloud the person’s ability to respond normally to others. Add to this the fact that the person doesn’t really know me—has had only a handful of experiences with me, in fact—and it is absolutely clear to everyone but me that I should disregard the animosity and move on. But it bothers me. First it bothers me that the person disliked me immediately. Do I make such a bad first impression? Then the reason the person gives others for not liking me is disturbing: I am too happy. Too happy? Huh?

I’ve agonized over the issue (obviously) and critiqued into the ground every interaction I’ve ever had with the person. Is happiness a problem? Do I smile too much? Am I too enthusiastic? Did I try a little too hard to make the person like me? And I’ve concluded that it all harks back to this issue: the difference between nice and kind.

I think what I’ve been to this person since the moment we met is nice. I’ve smiled big, complimented, inquired about the person’s life and interests, and overall assumed a chumminess and familiarity that could be nothing but artificial under the circumstances. After all, I hardly know the person. I’ve been relentlessly friendly despite unspoken but clearly perceived messages from the person and from others that friendliness might not be welcome. I believed myself the exception—niceness from me would be welcome, other just weren’t trying hard enough.

Well, then came the reality check: an outright rejection of me and my accursed friendliness. After a lot of reflection this is the only way I can wrap my mind around the response. The person is prickly and expects to be treated warily. Someone like me barreling in with my battering ram of niceness, trying to move through the thorny exterior is not only trespassing, but bound to get jabbed. So I got jabbed. I hope I’ll gain some wisdom from the experience.

Here’s what I’ve gotten so far. Don’t be too nice. A nice person exudes a certain impenetrable joviality and self-satisfaction that feels condescending from the receiving end. Someone who is nice to you doesn’t necessarily know you or like you. Niceness is centered on the needs of the person giving it and disregards the condition of the receiver. Niceness is impersonal.

Be kind instead. Kindess is more subdued. It is built on mutual experience; where experience is lacking, it is founded on empathy. Kindness requires knowing, understanding, and accepting. Kindness ponders both the heart and the situation of the receiver; the giver is only a conduit through whom the love of God can flow. Kindness is deeply personal. Kindness has love behind it.

I may have lost my chance to befriend this person who is so obviously in need of friends. I hope not. But I have learned for the future that where my sometimes superficial (though well-intentioned) niceness is unwelcome, kindness will likely never be rejected.

Ellie

Monday, February 20, 2006

The Life of an Introvert

Sometimes, you just come along a quote that sums up your experience perfectly. Here is one that spoke to me, via Kevin Drum.

I marvel at [my extrovert friend] who can always somehow turn the conversation right over effortlessly and keep it going even when what he says is not necessarily profound or interesting. What he comes up with is perfectly tuned to the sense and flow of the conversation. But it's not words that are particularly intended to convey ideas or mean things. It's words that socialize — that simply continue the conversation. It's chit-chat. I have no gift for that. I have to think about what to say next, and sometimes I can't think fast enough and end up saying something stupid. Or sometimes I just come up dry and the conversation kind of ends for while until I can think of another topic.

This is why it's work for me. It takes positive cognition on my part. I think that's probably a core introvert characteristic that you and I have in common and which can probably be distinguished from shyness per se — that small talk takes conscious effort and is very hard work. There's nothing small about small talk if you're an introvert.

Bryan

Sunday, February 19, 2006

Emergency Rooms -- Hell on Earth

Over the past 8 months, Ellie and I have been to the emergency room 3 times. All three visits were caused by Nora. The first time, Nora scratched Ellie in the retina and we had to get her eye examined. The second time, Nora fell off the couch and hit her head on the coffee table (3 stiches). And just recently, Nora was apparently trying to climb up her closet, fell down, and nearly bit through her lip (3 stiches).

As we were waiting to be seen for the most recent accident, Ellie and I concluded that emergency rooms were hell on earth. It took us five hours to get in and out, which is actually fairly good compared to horror stories others have told us. The waiting in emergency rooms is interminable, the staff often uphelpful, and the cost astronomical.

Some observations:

1. Your wait time in an emergency room has little to do with how busy it seems. We once were pleased to find an empty emergency room, only to find that we still had to wait for several hours. We’ve also been repeatedly put on the “fast track,” which still entails a wait of several hours. (The “slow track” apparently is an all day experience.)

2. Ever notice how hardly anyone else in an emergency room appears to have an emergency? When we’ve gone, Ellie either had her eye bandaged or we’ve brought in a bloody and crying child. But everyone else in the waiting room has always seemed just fine. There were in our recent visit a few people who looked tired and a guy who was limping, but other that they hardly looked like they had emergencies. I’m sure all these people problems of some sort, but they never seem that way.

3. The staff never appears to be in any hurry. I’ve seen the doctors and nurses that were “caring” for us often just sitting in their offices or chatting with colleagues in the hallway, as we twiddled our thumbs waiting to be visited.

4. The division of labor is ludicrous. The attending physician can only do certain jobs apparently. The same with the residents, nurses, and nurses aides. We waited forever to get a cotton ball anesthetic taped to Nora’s lip. When it finally came to the person who was supposed to do that job, she didn’t know what she needed to do and she had to ask the nurse who then consulted the doctor. Why couldn’t the freaking doctor have simply taped on the cotton ball? Or at least have given me the stuff and gotten out of my way! Sheez.

When people say we Americans have got the greatest health care system in the world, I just think of crap like this.

Venting over.

Bryan

New Dinosaur

So, Nora has been really interested in dinosaurs lately. She knows the names of all the major varieties. Recently, I was discussing with Ellie my "Philosophy of Education" course. Nora overheard our conversation and thought "philosophy" was the name of dinosaur, which she called the "philoso-raptor."

Heck, maybe such a dinosaur did exist. After all, some dinosaurs may have become reflective about their existence. They probably didn't last long though. Poor guys.

Bryan

U2: Questions and Redemption

Throughout their "musical journey," U2 challenges the listener with a tension between the beauty of divine promises and the ugly realities human beings confront and inflict upon one another. In their early song, “October,” we are presented with the image of an autumn tree, stripped bare of life, bracing against the oncoming winter. The tree is immediately contrasted it with the glorious idea of an eternal, unchanging being who transcends death and winters (“Kingdoms rise / and kingdoms fall / but You go on, and on”). Much later, in his song “Peace of Earth,” Bono contrasts the Christmas promise of peace with ugly realities of human history: “Jesus this song you wrote / The words are sticking in my throat / Peace on Earth / Hear it every Christmas time / But hope and history won’t rhyme / So what’s it worth? / This Peace of Earth?”

Within such a framework of glorious, but seemingly forever deferred promises of redemption, U2 seems to suggest that questioning can be an act of faith. Thus, their song “Wake up dead man” becomes a simultaneous act of affirmation and questioning: “Jesus / I’m waiting here boss / I know you’re looking out for us / but maybe your hands aren’t free.” Taken to an extreme, this attitude culminates in the rather sympathetic portrayal of Judas Iscariot in U2’s masterpiece song, “Until the End of the World.” Judas seems to say to his betrayed Lord: “In my dream I was drowning sorrows / But my sorrows they learned to swim … / In waves of regret, wave of joy / I reached out for the one I tried to destroy / You, you said you’d wait until the end of the world.” Judas, acknowledging guilt, reaches out to someone who, thankfully, has deferred final judgment into the future. The eternally deferred redemption allows for an eternally possible repentance – if only we can bring ourselves to do it.

The spiritual elevation of questions, confusion, and doubt, however, is matched by an equally strong celebration of divine promises. U2, follow up their questioning refrain of “Peace on Earth” with a gentle ballad called “Grace.” In this song, Grace, personified as a divine female force, quietly works to clean up the messes of human life: “What once was hurt / What once was friction / What left the mark / No longer stings / Because Grace makes beauty / Out of ugly things.”

So, how does one navigate a theology that simultaneous celebrates divine promises with one that recognizes (as we must recognize) that the fulfillment of such promises is often delayed or absent? Bono’s answer is simply to wait, to seek, and to persist. “If you walk away, I will follow,” Bono proclaims, betraying an attitude persistent, even stubbornness, in awaiting a forever-not-yet-arrival of a redeeming Messiah. Even if you still haven’t found what you’re looking for, there is spirituality in the quest itself.

The latest album sums up the spirituality of questioning, the acknowledgement of forever deferred redemption, and the value of persistent waiting. In the last song, “Yahweh,” Bono calls out for help in transforming himself into something better (“Take these hands / Teach them what to carry”), and then slurs the divine name to sound very much like a repeated chant of “Yeah I’ll wait.”

Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before the Child is born
Yahweh, tell me now
Why the dark before the dawn?

Monday, January 30, 2006

Behind the Curtain

I have now been on the other side of the student/faculty divide for about four months. I am continually amazed at how unorganized higher education can be. At least in the circles I swim in, organizational tasks are the last thing anyone wants to do – time is better spent with students, reading, or writing. I certainly didn’t become a professor to ruminate over bureaucratic minutia, and nobody else did either. This does breed some surprising ways of doing things. Or perhaps shocking is a better word.

When I was applying to graduate schools, for example, I obsessed over my “statement of purpose.” This is a document that explains an applicant's future plans and research interests. I had this picture of graduate student selection committees poring over every word of my statement, ready to reject me at the slightest hint of naivety. I wrote it and rewrote it, taking hours of my time (and Ellie’s time, too). In the first meeting where the graduate admissions were discussed here at OSU, however, I was interested to find out that hardly anyone had even glanced at the application materials, let alone studied them with any care. I certainly hadn’t. The process simply consisted of a quick check of the “numbers” and a quick skimming of the statement of purpose, if even that. And all this was done by only a few members of the committee. (The letters of recommendation seem to be joke that no one really takes seriously -- they all seem to say the same thing). These applications, which many applicants had obsessed over for hours, were given only 30 seconds consideration. And remember these can be life changing decisions!

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Judas Iscariot: A bad rap?

An interesting article about Judas Isacriot. Apparently, the NT evidence that he delibertly "betrayed" Jesus is quite scanty.

Monday, January 16, 2006

Goodbye, Omnipotence


It’s happened. I knew it would someday, and yet it’s come on so slowly I almost didn’t notice it. My child has developed a mind of her own.

I’ve bragged to friends and relatives about how sweet and obedient my daughter is, basically since she was born. Whenever I left her with others for a while, I came back invariably to reports of how good she’d been, how well she’d played with other children, how she knew the answers to all the questions.

But she’s had a lot of upheaval in her life this past year—a new home, new state, new friends, new nursery classes, new baby—and somehow amid these changes, my perfect little girl has turned into a terror. Or maybe she’s just become an average child.

I saw the change in her eyes a few days ago when I asked her to do something, I don’t even remember what it was, something trivial like put on her coat or turn off the TV. She looked straight at me and said, “No.” Now, I’m not claiming that she’d never said no before. She did, and fairly frequently. The difference, as I said, was in her eyes. Somehow mirrored back in those baby blues was her clear understanding that she really didn’t have to do what I asked. In that moment, she had gained power: I knew she had it; she knew she had it; she knew I knew she had it.

It’s unsettling—almost horrifying, really—to realize that she knows she has the power to choose. I guess choosing is what life’s all about, and I just must come to grips with it. But it opens up whole new, frightening possibilities I hadn’t really considered. She might choose to do things that hurt herself or her family or others. She might choose to run away or reject what we teach her. She might choose badly.

Up till now, it’s been easy for me to see her as an extension of myself. I’ve just assumed she’ll be like me and choose things that I would choose for her. My beliefs seem naïve and comical, looking back on them, but as she is my first child, they have existed unchallenged up to this point.

So now, I suppose she and I must negotiate the boundaries of this new relationship. We both know now that I’m not omnipotent. I sure miss the illusion.

Ellie

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Ode to a bowtie round my neck

As many know, I have taken to wearing bowties lately. It is something I’ve wanted to do since my undergraduate days, and now, thanks to a good friend in Champaign, I have finally taken the plunge. Why am I so attracted to bow ties? My guess is that I am intrigued by the personality associated with bowties. It is non-conformist without being countercultural. It sends an “I don’t care” message to the fashionable lawyers in the Italian suits. The focus of the bow tie is the knot, not the endlessly hanging fabric of a conventional tie. In other words, the focus is on the skill of the knot tier, rather than the abundance of silky material. It is competence over style, substance over materialism. It is not all seriousness, though. A bow tie also involves poking fun at oneself and glorifying in the idea of looking a bit outdated and silly. It is this mixture of seriousness and humor that I find intriguing. Wearing a bowtie involves standing back from fashion mores, even standing back from one’s self, to mock both self and society. You could say that a bow tie is for transcendentalists.

Knowing Brother Joseph Again

My in-laws gave me the new Richard Bushman biography for Christmas. I finished it on Friday. For a long time, I have looked for a comprehensive study of Joseph Smith just like this. It is a book that focuses more on the meaning of Joseph’s religion than endlessly debating its “truth.” More than that, though, it is a book I felt like I could finally trust. Bushman is just the right type of person to write about Joseph. He is a believer, but he takes seriously the claims of argument and evidence. He is affiliated with a non-LDS school (Columbia University), so his credibility as a respected historian is on the line and subject to serious non-Mormon review. Accordingly, I came away from the book thinking that I really knew Joseph for the first time – the Joseph as a human being, and not as the caricature drawn by both believers and critics. A believer in Joseph Smith, like me, now knows what he or she must come to terms with.

Here are just a few things I found interesting:

(1) Bushman writes at length about the implications of the following fact: Joseph did not see himself as building churches that would exist within communities; rather, Joseph wanted to build the communities themselves. From this simple impulse flowed many of Joseph’s greatest problems and achievements.

(2) Bushman has much to say about the relationship between Joseph and democracy, something that has interested me for a long time. Joseph was democratic in the sense of participatory democracy – giving simple farmers the chance to be eminent participants in God’s kingdom. Joseph was not so much interested in electoral democracy, with power given to the people to reign (although there are moments when councils legitimately overruled Joseph’s judgments). The democracy Joseph envisioned was more one of a “listening monarchy.” One person has complete executive power, but that person must be open to being influenced by surrounding intelligences.

(3) Bushman details how Joseph grew to be politically engaged with the outside world, and much of it had to do with the Saints’ construction of persecution narratives. These narratives assumed that there were good, sympathetic non-Mormons who would be moved by their plight. These narratives broke down the church=righteousness, world=wickedness dichotomy. For persecution narratives to have a point, you can’t have a black and white world anymore.


(4) And then there is plural marriage. Bushman describes how Joseph married dozens of women, many of whom were married to other men. He does a great job of trying to explain what all this meant to Joseph, though. He suggests that plural marriage was another manifestation of Joseph’s first for community (“He did not lust for women so much as he lusted for kin,” Bushman writes). I think he must be at least partially right in saying this, and what convinced me was his description of how Joseph married Brigham Young’s 58 year old sister. There is more going on in something like this than simple libido. It was hard, however, to read about how plural marriage played out in Joseph’s marriage to Emma.

(5) It was also hard to read about Joseph’s lapses in judgment – his weird passivity during the Missouri war, his inflammatory rhetoric and thin skin, his trust of bad people, his bad money management, and his failure to learn lessons about getting along with his neighbors. As I read this, though, I saw myself falling into these same traps in those situations. I saw myself in Joseph, in a sense, and I felt I could identify with errors.

(6) Bushman describes how Joseph was able to infuse mundane details with great religious significance. The simple act of record keeping during baptisms, for example, became an action of recording in heaven what happens on earth. Bushman shows clearly why even some outsiders have acknowledged Joseph’s “religious making imagination.”

(7) Overall, I came away with a greater admiration for Joseph. I knew Joseph had it rough, but I had no idea how rough. Reading about many of his close friends turning away from him was gut wrenching. But Joseph had a strong determination and will of steel. He was a real person, with real flaws, whose faith had a real impact.

Monday, January 02, 2006

Second Baby


Our second child, Andrew, was born two weeks ago yesterday. I can’t believe how different in every way the experience of having him has been from the experience of having my first child.

During my first pregnancy I spent days in a mental haze where every thought and action revolved around carrying or planning for my baby. My conversations all dealt with maternity symptoms, anticipations, dreads, or needs. Bryan and I spent hours speculating about the baby’s gender and had both a boy’s and a girl’s name at the ready basically from conception. The baby’s car seat was installed a full month before her due date, as per the instructions in What To Expect When You’re Expecting.

Conversely, my second pregnancy seemed to speed by too quickly. By the week before my scheduled induction, I still hadn’t catalogued what supplies we still needed. We hadn’t chosen a name. I packed my hospital bag at 11:30 p.m. the night before his birth. It seemed almost to me as if there could be no room in our fully occupied lives for this new person. I couldn’t conceive of how he might fit in, since I hadn’t spent nine months pondering who he might be, as I had with my first. In the moments I did think of him prior to his birth, I felt guilt: that I wasn’t as excited about his arrival as I should be; that I might not be able to love him as I loved Nora; that I might resent the loss of sleep and free time he would entail; that he would be the forgotten child.

But now I find myself unable to tear myself away from him. His sweet milky smell, his soft skin, his fuzzy hair enchant me. My initial fears and guilts have been replaced by this overpowering, melting, fiercely protective infatuation. And I can’t stop marveling over how this second venture into motherhood is so much better than the first. Labor was simpler, nursing is simpler, bonding is simpler. While my inclination is to declare him simply an easier baby, I don’t think that fully explains it. It’s more the fact that he’s the second. Talk to almost any mother you’d like, and you’ll hear the same thing: “My second baby was so much easier.” Certainly it can’t be the case that everyone has a difficult baby first. It’s more likely that the same newness of a first baby that’s so exciting and all-encompassing has a darker side, too. With my first I was anxious, obsessed, and overwhelmed by the searing waves of pain, first of labor, then of recovery, then of nursing. It seemed that each new development threw what I thought I had learned into doubt. I felt confused, depressed, and exhausted, barely treading water in a black sea of chaos.

While the pains haven’t been so different this time (although nursing has been much better), somehow knowing them, knowing what was and is bound to come, has made them easier to bear—in fact, scarcely noticeable. I have been able to enjoy our little boy’s infanthood in a way I could not enjoy my daughter’s because of my myriad anxieties. The very obsessiveness that I thought was key to good motherhood stood in the way of my enjoying her.

I am pleased to see now, more than anything, that I have learned something. Something concrete, something demonstrable, something worthwhile. Something I didn’t know I’d learned until I experienced it a second time. I have learned how to have a baby. How to carry him, bear him, feed him, bathe him, dress him, change him, enjoy him. I learned how to take deep breaths, relax, and love the baby I thought I’d forget.

Ellie

Teaching, Power, and Tragedy

Sometimes being a teacher feels like an impotent and silly profession -- especially being a teacher who specializes in theory and philosophy. Sometimes it seems like all talk and no action. That is, it sometimes feels like a meaningless job with nothing really to grab onto and no real accomplishment to admire after a long day’s work (students rapidly forget most of what they learn in class, and no one reads your publications). Recently, however, I’ve been working with a former student from Illinois who is applying to graduate school in my field. Indeed, she is applying to graduate school, it seems, because I once suggested it to her. It wasn’t much, really. She was a great student and I said, almost in passing, that she should go on to study philosophy of education. She perked right up at this suggestion, and before long she was investigating schools and asking for letters of recommendation. It was not something she had considered before I suggested it to her, she said. So there you have it: one little comment from me, her teacher, will probably end up changing her life completely. Hopefully it will change it for the better, but I guess I really can’t be sure of that. She might dedicate years of her life to something she will eventually learn to hate. Maybe it will even ruin her life (it wouldn’t be the first time that graduate school has ruined somebody’s life, that’s for sure). It is a burden to wield such influence and to point people in directions where there is no guarantee of happiness. Whatever else it is, I’ve learned that teaching is far from impotent. It is loaded with tragic responsibility.

Bryan

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

As a teenager, my brother Derek was way into the books by Douglass Adams, an author whose magnum opus was probably the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Derek would sometimes tell me about humorous moments from the book, and I always meant to get around to reading it someday. Alas, I never have read it, but I recently rented the recent film version. I can’t comment on whether the movie lives up to the book, but I can say the film was hilariously philosophical. One of the central themes of the film is that a few aliens and human refugees from an obliterated earth go looking for an answer to “life, the universe, and everything else” with the aid of a guidebook to the universe entitled, The Hitchhiker’s Guide. In the film, we learn that the answer to the big questions is the confusingly simple number “42.” Silly as this is, I think it underscores an important point, namely, that answers are meaningless unless we have learned to ask the right questions. Unless we have meaningful and deeply troubling questions, there is no such thing as a meaningful and fulfilling answer. That is exactly what is wrong when, in Sunday School or secular schools, we try to give people answers to the big questions without helping them to first see the force of the questions. An education that tries to inculcate a particular pattern of life will always be shallow without an element of critical thought that develops questioning as much as answering.

Another theme of the film is looking beyond appearances. For example, the film tells us that, although we think that humans are the smartest creatures on earth, we are, sadly, just the third smartest. Dolphins, it seems, have been trying to send us messages for years and yet, we simply see them as performing amusing tricks like jumping through hoops and flipping their fins. Throughout the film, the heroes are placed in situations that thwart expectations (who would have thought that a towel, for example, would be one of the most important tools in the universe!). It reminded me of the research on creativity which suggests that creative thought is the ability to break free from “functional fixidity” and see irregular uses of regular things.

Bryan