Thoughts from Culhwch

Day 1.

Me: 0 – Headache: 1

The topic of Christian unity cannot be understood without also addressing the concept of rebuke. I think Christ is precisely addressing the problems that will come about in a Christian community when in Luke 17 he says that stumbling blocks will come, but that when someone sins against you, you should rebuke, and forgive when they repent. This is key. There can be no Christian unity where people are hurt by sin. It will not happen. This goes two ways. If I have sinned, or become a scandal to someone else, I am hurting the community. If someone has sinned against me, and I do not address that pain that has been done to me, but continue to let it go, it will probably continue to divide me from my brothers and sisters. But we don’t like rebuke. Nobody likes being rebuked. However, unity cannot exist where sin goes unaddressed. If we want to talk about uniting Christians together, we must find a loving way to accept and give out loving rebuke.

If someone sins, but they do not know how, then rebuke, when done rightly, can provide a path of reconciliation. We have lost this path, when rebuke becomes exclusion [from God's grace]. Rebuke should be the means of grace… not an exclusion from it. Likewise… when we fail to learn how to accept or give out rebuke at all… then our lack… far from just allowing things to continue, may actually exclude others.

So, I think I found a theme I like a little bit better, though I need to work on the typography.

So, I’m still musing over bits and pieces of a conversation from earlier. What do we do when we are confronted in the Bible with collections of teachings? On the one hand there is an impulse to try to link them together in an a->b->c fashion. Each point then participates directly in the next. But I’ve had way to much literary theory to be comfortable with this. The other method of making sense asks, do each of these teachings fit under a rubric. This feels a little less invasive to me, like I’m being a little more honest with the text. The third way is just to say that the miscellaneous is ok, and that we need not link the them all together at all. The thing is … none of these can really be generalized into a nice rule.

Ok.. I think I have found a theme for the main website. It will require some tweaking and new photos to get rid of the prettiness factor.

I flew home yesterday, and by home I mean New Haven this time. Unfortunately at one point in my first flight I got extremely dizzy, most likely due to some sinus and inner ear congestion issues that still haven’t healed up after nearly three weeks. The dizziness lasted too long and I literally could not stomach it… so I got the chance to use the lovely little white bag in the seat pocket. Then everybody thinks I’m just incredibly sick, but whatever… what can you do?

So, I’m working on putting together a website that I have envisioned for some time. Think of it as a cross between a blog, and a poetry reading, with discussion. You can follow the link at the right and check it out. I haven’t put a good theme on the site yet. Anyway, I hope a lot of you will register for the site and share your thoughts, poetry, prose, aesthetic theories and pretty much anything that you think would contribute to the website and toward building a community of people who want to talk about the intersection of the arts and faith. I’m working on a better self-registration system. Currently you can all self-register, but I’ll have to elevate your privileges before you can publish anything.

You know that feeling that when you go home you’re only really on show for everybody else. You know it’s not really true, but a certain part of you feels like you’re being rushed around so that everybody can see you. Sometimes it feels like coming home is a little like that. It’s like you have to be seen more than you get to see everyone else. Maybe this is what Yale does to people. You turn into this celebrity because you are never around, and everybody know that you’re somehow special. The thing is, I don’t want people to think of me as special just because I go to Yale. It’s an opportunity that God gave me, not something I deserved because of any merit of my own.

I’m sure not everybody reading this will agree with what I’m saying here. But even if you contest whether or not God exists or acts as I think, it doesn’t change the fact that I feel increasingly alienated from people on the grounds that I’m attending a prestigious university. It’s the last thing in the world I want, to be alienated from the very people I want to serve… all of you.

I set out to go to Yale because I knew I had learned something, and wanted to learn more about how I could communicate something. And that something is that the role of faith in the arts is important. We cannot simply overlook it. Faith can be a part of the fine arts, not just the arts and crafts show at the local church/parish. But I feel like I have to fight this education which is helping me to understand all this, just to be able to communicate it without being some Yalie, some Academic, some important celebrity or whatnot.

Well, that’s enough rant for the first day.

I’m setting up a new website today. And here is my own personal blog. I’m not sure if any of you will actually be interested, but welcome to my thoughts.