Update on Teresa

Since yesterday, Teresa has reportedly gotten much better.  She is a lot more comfortable and happy, in answer to all your prayers. I'm still waiting to hear the results of more tests, and hoping that she will get lots of rest and take in plenty of nutrients and water. Praise God.

Urgent prayer needed for Teresa

Dear Family, Friends and Fellow Prayer Warriors,

Will you join us in praying that God would intervene in Teresa’s health?  Some of her basic organ functions are shutting down.

Here is a note from a fellow teammate who flew with her to Taipei to seek more advanced medical help.

All Because of Jesus,

Tim & Janet Straub

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Straub,

I am Teresa's teammate and friend, Bekah. I am sure you are aware that we are in Taipei doing some tests and trying to find out what can be done to bring about her healing. In the past few days it has been brought to our attention just how severe her illness is and that something must be done immediately to help her. 

Because of the intense pain in her stomach, she hasn't been eating or drinking, and this has been over a very long period of time. As a result her body has slowly started to shut down some basic organ functions, simply from a lack of nutrients and enzymes. Also because she has not had food in a long time, her body doesn't know how to handle food and her digestive system is not functioning at top notch. 

She has been severely dehydrated, and we gave her an IV for that, and we have found a few foods that we are experiementing with to see if maybe we can build back her body's strength and give her the nutrients and enzymes needed to fight the infection in her stomach and intestine....

She is a very sick girl but we are seeking our Father's help and healing. I believe that He is going to help us find some answers. I will do my best to keep you updated as I learn new things.

His

Bekah

Spence on the research-writing balance

Jonathan Spence wrote one of my favorite books:To Change China: Western Advisers in China, 1620–1960 (Little, Brown, 1969). He has been at Yale for more than fifty years and due to his prolific writing for trade presses, has become known outside the academy as a leading scholar in the history of modern Chinese civilization. Nicholas Basbanes interviewed him for a history of Yale University Press.

Nicholas Basbanes, A World of Letters: Yale University Press 1908-2008. Yale 2008. Pp. 184-185.

“I think the Press is always aware of the presence of some kind of audience, or the lack of one,” he stressed in one of the first interviews I conducted for this book. “They do need to have people read their books, after all, and if possible to buy them, maybe not on the scale of trade books, but even nonprofits have to break even in some way or another.” One way of assuring this is to have “two or three titles each year which can carry a lot of much lower-selling monographic studies,” he said. Yet for all that juggling of material, Spence added, “scholarship is still very hard to gauge,” and he cited his own work as an example. Around the time that Yale published his first book, Ts’ao Yin and the K’ang-hsi Emperor: Bond servant and Master, in 1966, Spence said he began to consider writing for a broader audience, especially as a number of trade publishers approached him with invitations to write for them.

“I got interested in the interconnection between scholarship and the more general readership. I used to ask myself why scholarship had to be arcane. That may be the wrong question to ask, but that’s how I phrased it myself. My feeling was this: that instead of spending years and years on the research and then just trying to write it up and get somebody to take it, supposing you spent half the time on the research and half the time on the writing? Just really concentrate on that; just shut yourself away and go on and do it — and then see who wants to publish it and who wants to read it. That’s what I did. I got involved in a different world.”

Shouldn't our presentation be just as careful as our preparation?

Related post: From Monograph to Gem of Scholarship (Aug. 24, 2010).

Mounce on the new NIV and accuracy

Bill Mounce, a Greek scholar who worked on the ESV Bible translation committee, is now on the committee for the revision of the NIV. In this post he blogs about "What constitutes an accurate translation".

Go over and read it!


HT: Better Bibles Blog

Migratory coconuts

Over the course of today, I've confirmed my personality orientation as primarily INTP, not INTJ. To celebrate, I submit to you a conversation I would love to have been in on, from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.




Aspects of the INTP personality in the tower guard:
1) Seeing straight through facades
2) Picking up on irrelevant details
3) Hammering a random topic to death or distraction

McHugh on the introvert identity

At SIL-UND this summer, introverts vs. extraverts was a big topic -- mainly since we introverts were in the uncomfortable majority. A friend named Allison introduced me to the Myers-Briggs personality test, which became a minor passion of mine (since I'm an INTJ).  Keith Slater gave a very candid talk on being an introvert in overseas ministry.  Then, yesterday I noticed a post by Jon Winslow on a book called Introverts in the Church (IVP, 2009) by Adam McHugh.  The following paragraphs are clipped from an interview of McHugh on Crosswalk.com.
 

What are the qualities of an introvert that may be overlooked?
Put bluntly, I think most qualities of an introvert are prone to be overlooked!  In our extroverted society, we value aggressive, action-oriented, gregarious people, and  I think this extroverted bias has bled over into some of our churches, where often the "ideals" of faithfulness are strikingly extroverted. We praise people who are social and expressive, eager to participate in a wide variety of activities, have an overt enthusiasm, share their faith with strangers easily, assume leadership positions quickly. But introverts do not usually fit this profile, and our lives of faith may be a little slower, a little quieter, a little more solitary. We are often calm, thoughtful, reflective types who may be invisible to others if they are not looking or listening.

Yet I think that introverts have tremendous gifts to bring to others. In the book I start with our listening abilities. Because introverts process internally, we can offer people a non-judgmental presence that helps others open up to us. There is also something about being intimately connected to our inner worlds that produces a great deal of creativity. Many introverts are gifted writers, artists, musicians, and even actors. I also think that having a rich inner life lends itself towards a deep compassion for others, something I have seen in many introverted pastors and chaplains I have worked with. Further, we are capable of an insight that is borne of self-awareness and listening, a peacefulness that spreads to others, and a servant mindset which is often expressed in behind-the-scenes service.

How can introverts be evangelists?
As I was exploring this topic, I had someone ask me whether an "introverted evangelist" is an oxymoron.  But I firmly believe it's not that introverts are ill-suited to evangelism; rather, many of our common strategies for evangelism are ill-suited for introverts.  Even though teaching on evangelism is (thankfully) changing, there are still some prevailing models that are very difficult for many introverts. One of those models is the spiritual salesmanship model, to borrow an image from evangelism professor Rick Richardson. We must be fast talking experts, armed with answers to all the questions, able to persuade others and "close the deal." Or another common mode of evangelism is debate - we need to prove that our worldview is superior to that of others. Most introverts will struggle with these methods, since we're not naturally aggressive or chatty and our internal processing slows us down in situations of conflict or debate.   I think there are different methods and images for evangelism that are more suited for introverts. One of the things I suggest is that introverts, instead of radically stretching themselves to initiate with strangers in uncomfortable situations, should start with the people who are already in their lives and ask how God is already at work in them.  Evangelism is always a response to what God is already doing in people, as he works on people's hearts in ways that transcend even the most profound words we can muster. We can come alongside of our friends and partner with God in teaching and embodying the gospel of Jesus. And we can use our gifts as introverts - especially listening and compassion - to demonstrate the love and the presence of God. By listening to people, and really giving them space to express their questions and doubts, we ensure that when we do speak we are addressing the real needs and concerns of a person.     

         

What is the gospel and how can it specifically be applied to the main issues you raise in the book?
This isn't a comprehensive definition, but I would start by saying that the gospel is the reality that in the person of Jesus Christ - in his life, death, and resurrection - God has reclaimed the world as his own and has broken the powers and strongholds that ensnare and divide people. In Christ we have been adopted as God's beloved children - our new foundational identity - and God is rescuing us from the false identities we have constructed and freeing us to be the people he created us to be. The body of Christ is comprised of unique, diverse members who have different gifts and strengths, and we are intended to work together, bringing all that we have, for the glory of God. We are of different cultures, genders, social status, and temperaments. My book explores in depth the introverted temperament, and how the church doesn't always value what introverts bring to the table. People who fall on the introverted side of the personality spectrum can love God and love others authentically, bringing their God-given gifts to bear on their communities.   

On defending Muslims

Ms. Khakpour, an Iranian-American, captures well the experience of protecting people while disagreeing with their ideology. Her editorial was published in the New York Times yesterday, on the anniversary of the day a group of Muslims plotted to wreck the World Trade Center in New York City.  Her example of taking up someone else's reputation can apply to Muslims, Amish, Mormons, ATI-ers, Democrats, Tea-Partiers, or anyone. It also dignifies un-anonymous (onymous?) relationships, where you know you're talking to a real person who knows how to blush.

Porochista Khakpour, "My Nine Years as a Middle-Eastern-American." New York Times, September 11, 2010.

The hilarity started to curdle at the moment I was also feeling the most euphoric: during Mr. Obama’s bid for the presidency. It was around then that I began murdering whole days on the Internet, and not just on the Internet but in its dirty basement, the comments sections of blogs. There, an angry tribe of fake names spoke in misspelled obscenities and declaimed the true, evil nature of Middle Easterners and their intentions in this country. This is silly, I’d tell myself, these trolls aren’t representative of my neighbors or of Americans.

Then I’d go on Facebook, and engage in more online warfare with friends of friends, real flesh-and-blood people with real-life names, who a bit more politely and grammatically stated the same. And there was me — a non-Muslim, who has publicly criticized certain Islamic practices — flaccidly battling for Muslims worldwide. It got to the point that I was telling people I didn’t even know that their opinions were making my life downright “unlivable.”

It reminds me of how I used to experience so many mixed emotions when I’d see women in full burqa in Brooklyn: alarm at the spectacle (no matter how many times I’d seen it), followed by a certain feminist irk, and finally discomfiture at our cultural kinship. And then it would all turn into one strong emotion — protective rage — when I’d see a group of teenagers laughing and pointing at them.

Porochista Khakpour, the author of the novel “Sons and Other Flammable Objects,” is a professor of literature at Santa Fe University of Art and Design.

My newest reading

Here's a summary of my newest reading in books, which doesn't include articles and blogs.

Krister Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles. Fortress Press, 1976.
(Stendahl was bishop of Stockholm, Sweden, and dean of Harvard Divinity School.)
I'm reading this with my youth pastor, Bill Douglas, and we're planning to discuss it soon. Stendahl argues that we missed something by extracting our theology from Galatians and Romans without making the relation between Jews and Gentiles a major feature and motivating factor as it was for Paul. Thus we applied the law to make our own consciences guilty and the gospel to make them clean and then to fight off the legalists, while Stendahl thinks Paul was more interested in Church unity and growth, or something. Because the Jews are now outsiders and Gentiles are insiders to the Church, we forget what the New Testament was about, and have a hard time repositioning ourselves into the first readers' view and thence to a responsible modern application. Stendahl is severely handicapped because he rejects Ephesians and the Pastoral Letters as genuine letters of Paul. This means he can't interact with "by grace are you saved... so that no one can boast". (Eph. 2:8-9)

Paul Nation, Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge, 2001.
(Nation teaches applied linguistics at the University of Victoria, Wellington, NZ.)
Very interesting discussion of how many words are present in English. Nation goes through strategies for learning, remembering, testing, and using vocab in classroom and individual second-language settings. Most of all, it's fascinating in the scope of research, outlining the vastness of the language we grew up swimming in and shining into the depth of any new language we would start to learn.  Its biggest weakness is that it's grounded in lexicography, corpus linguistics, and classroom applications while remaining intellectually beyond your average teacher who would use it. Second, it sticks to the surface of memory and ignores research in the psychology of the mental lexicon or the "long road" of true participation in a host community.

Jean Aitchison, Words in the Mind: An Introduction to the Mental Lexicon. 3rd ed. Blackwell, 2003.
(Aitchison teaches language and communication at Oxford.)
A lucid book that I only started, and then flitted to something else. It's a step backwards from Nation's book, but it's more easily understandable. Aitchison does a good job of integrating psycholinguistics with reader-friendly illustrations.

Rod Ellis, The Study of Second Language Acquisition. 2nd ed. Oxford, 2008.
(Ellis teaches applied linguistics at the University of Auckland, NZ.)
An enormous book reviewing all the research on language learning from the last 50 years. I like it especially for the glossary, which answers my questions on terms I've picked up from scattered readings in SLA. I also like its encyclopedic quality, where I can pick it up and open to a chapter on any aspect or theory in the field, and get a satisfyingly deep discussion.  The many tables and charts orient you on the different experiments and movements in the field of Second Language Acquisition research. Confession: I use it sometimes just for the bibliography, to search for potential mentors.

James Davison Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. Oxford, 2010. (Kindle for PC)
(Hunter teaches about cultural institutions at the University of Virginia.)
I first read about this book in Christianity Today this summer. Finally it is out in Kindle for instant download, which I promptly did last night. Hunter paraphrases our dominant Christian strategies of cultural engagement in America: change the individual mind and heart, then influence politics and society. This is fun, seeing Adventures in Odyssey, Worldview Academy, Family Research Council, Jesus For President, and Sojourners side by side. Then he says conservatives, liberals, and Anabaptists have all three let themselves be defined by politics (or rejection of politics). The problem, he says, is that politics is such a narrow strip of life. Furthermore, individuals and big ideas are subordinate to the social networks that support them. So, he wants us to calm down and work on networking and participation with culture at the centers of influence in a way that gives off a "faithful witness". He wants us to be faithful and make for broad-based transformation rather than an election. It's a great call for reorientation. However, it ignores and writes off the work some of our favorite Christian groups and writers have done in exactly this direction. As Andy Crouch says, Hunter will need their impetus if he wants to have a lasting impact. In my opinion, motivation and understanding don't always come in the same breath. This is one hard look in the mirror at the efficacy of motivational groups I've hung around with for years. It's also fun to watch the liberals and Anabaptists squirm. To get what he's saying, you have to read the whole book, not just this interview and the responses in this issue of Christianity Today.

C. John Sommerville, The Decline of the Secular University. Oxford, 2006.
(Sommerville is professor emeritus of history at the University of Florida.)
This is a thin book I picked up off the back corner of the bargain shelf at the University of North Dakota bookstore. It addresses doubts I've had about integrating faith and academics. It says the state universities are fading in relevance to public thought, because they exclude discussion of religion on science and only wanly poke at comparative religion with a scientific perspective. Academics study how to improve human life without agreeing on what makes life good or what makes us human. Thus, religiously motivated students are alienated, and others let knowledge go in one ear and out the other, settling for a credential and getting relativism in the bargain as a substitute for wisdom. The solution is to let religious discourse in as one voice among others, in order to carve science a meaningful place in a worldview rather than trying to insert religion into a narrow scientific view of life. Then, Sommerville looks forward to professors and students taking time in campus worship centers to pray and reflect on the implications and directions of their work.

Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-critical Philosophy. Corrected ed. Routledge, 1962. (Kindle for PC) 
(Polanyi was a medical doctor from Hungary who taught chemistry, economics, and philosophy at the Universities of Manchester and Oxford.)
I first read about Polanyi in Francis Schaeffer's He is There and He is Not Silent, where Schaeffer crowed that this book blew positivism out of the water. His only complaint was that he remained a closet or almost-Christian and didn't come right out and build certainty of knowing on divine revelation after demolishing positivism. Sommerville also recommended this book in connection with Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), which stole some ideas from it. I downloaded it from Amazon last night, and read through the first chapter. It does seem to deal with important ideas, chief of which: scientists look at the world through theories, and sometimes make discoveries through intuition and "tacit knowledge," those skills and understandings that are caught more than taught. Theories stick when they delight the mind with their orderly pictures, and they persuade via peer pressure among scholars. So realizing the faith commitments your knowledge rests on, respect your personal observations, and try to develop them.

Charlie W. Shedd, Letters to Philip: On How to Treat a Woman. Spire, 1968.
(Shedd was a doctor and also wrote Letters to Karen, selling a ton of copies.)
My mom left this on my nightstand. :) Boy, I have a lot to learn, in spite of what she and my six sisters try to tell me. In these short 'letters' to his son, Shedd dispenses handfuls of marriage and dating advice in the teen-lingo of the sixties. He inspires confidence in the powers of kindness and genuine leadership of the kinds thought to have died in the sixties, to build mature man-woman relationships.

So there you have it! My browser crashed a couple times in the middle of drafts, which makes my reviews (thankfully!) shorter, and I kept noticing other books lying about my room to add. But if I'm learning anything in communication, it's that girls start the conversations and boys control the topics... yes, that, but what I was going to say was, saying something is better than saying everything. Because you can't say anything until you've said something, and you can't hear anything if you're saying everything.

What about you? What's on top of your current reading list?

A new metaphor for integrity

David Phillips Hansen, in a book review from 1988, gave me a new metaphor for integrity. That of a bone reconstruction.

David Phillips Hansen. Book Review: Resurrection and Moral Order: An Outline for Evangelical Ethics, by Oliver O'Donovan. Theology Today, Vol. 45, No. 1 (April 1988), p. 117.

The structure of a moral life, [O'Donovan] argues, depends on an ordered moral field of action and on an ordered moral self. The unity of the law, which orders the field, ensures the unity of the moral agent who respects it. The summary of the law is the double commandment to love God and neighbor.

Pray for me, because my integrity and follow-through is very immature right now.
HT to Matt Lee Anderson for sparking interest in O'Donovan's book.

From monograph to gem of scholarship

John Donatich, director of Yale University Press, admits that funding for scholarly monographs is getting scarce. And with the advent of the internet, who reads them anyway? Thus, he shares what makes the occasional monograph into a gem worth reading.

John Donatich (2009). Why books still matter. Journal of Scholarly Publishing, 40.4 (July 2009), pp. 329-342, 338-339.

The marketplace demands we ask ourselves the question, What needs to be a book? In particular, what needs to be a scholarly monograph? Aside from tenure and career advancement issues, what does a university press have to publish? And what is a monograph, anyway? Webster’s has an inelegant definition: ‘a written account of a single thing.’ The chair of our Publications Committee, David Bromwich, once defined it as ‘a work of scholarship that will not sell many copies until it does, at which point it becomes a gem of scholarship.’ While there was certainly a twinkle in his eye, his distinction has actually become a useful one, and even prompted a spirited conversation at a recent agenda-less Publications Committee meeting.

We started by thinking about what qualities the scholarly monograph and the gem of scholarship might share:

• original primary research
• blindness to fashion; a love of the ignored and the arcane; providing the culture a way of keeping its neglected history ‘warm’
• rigorous methodology
• compound argument, capable of advancing a dozen or more layers of argument
• scholarly apparatus that not only amplifies the text but enables the reader to reconstruct and replicate the original research, to test the author’s conclusions, or to use the same material to different ends

Where, then, might the two part company? How could a monograph be cut to reveal its lapidary and gemlike qualities?

• The research demonstrates a passionate commitment, an almost athletic joy in uncovering and managing masses of material.
• The structure invents a new model of managing complexity.
• The prose contributes terminology to the lingua franca of the discipline. It challenges yet can be understood by educated nonspecialists. As Einstein is supposed to have said, ‘Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.’
• The book crosses disciplines with ease; it listens to its own internal echoes.
• While perhaps narrow in scope, the book feels close. You can feel the breath of the intellect on the page.

You all know what I’m talking about. I’m sure of it. You have all been entranced by the seamlessness of a narrative and dazzled by the marshalling of dozens of arguments in service of a grand theory. You have been transformed within the alchemy of literature. You have been moved by a book.

Through the Church, wisdom

 "[T]hrough the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory." Paul, Ephesians 3:10b-13

Whooooo are they?

The following paragraph is from Tony Perkins's newsletter Washington Update. The article is about a bill introduced into Congress to permanently ban the federal funding of abortion procedures. Read down to the yellow-highlighted sentence, and tell me which of the blue-highlighted phrases is the referent of "they". 

This push is especially timely given that a group of pro-abortion Senators are trying to open the doors to abortion on military bases. Meanwhile, HHS officials and other abortion proponents still insist that the new health care law won't fund abortions--despite an independent analysis from Congressional Research Service, which reported that there's nothing stopping the agency from covering the procedure in its high risk pools. Regardless of what Americans think about the legality of abortion, they object to paying for it by overwhelming majorities--which could explain why the Smith-Lipinski bill has such broad bipartisan support. Any member who claims to be moderate on abortion knows that they have to vote for this legislation to prove it. Passing the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act is the only way to make pro-life policies permanent and apply them across the federal government. Even the Left should have no trouble supporting a bill that they insist is the status quo. Encourage your member to co-sponsor the Smith-Lipinski bill. Click here to contact them today!

What helped you decide who/what "they" were?
(Writing the title reminded me of the Cheshire Cat's query to Alice, in the old Disney animated feature: "Whhoooo aaaaare you?")

Sophisticated

Is a sophisticated mind, one that belongs to a recently converted sophist?

Sex ratio in language studies and missions

I was reading the list of students enrolled in the Second Language Studies PhD program at Michigan State, when I was struck by two things: first, most of them are Asians. Second, most of them are women. Try 22 females to 10 males.  Are all the men camping out in the grammar department?

Anyway, that reminded me that I have spent a lot more time over lunch with girls here at my summer linguistics program than with guys. So, I went over the phone list. Turns out, there are roughly 26 single young men, and 49 single young women... although there technically are more if you count the girls who are currently engaged or the ones in their thirties and forties. No wonder.

Which brings me to the Mormon church. How do they deal with this reality of more mission-minded females than males?


Gary Shepherd and Gordon Shepherd. 1998. Mormon passage: a missionary chronicle. Univ. of Illinois.p. 31

Fn 3 As recently as January 1994, LDS bishops and stake presidents were instructed in a statement from church headquarters that "a young woman should not be recommended for a mission if it would interfere with a specific marriage proposal... Though capable and effective, young women do not have the same responsibility to serve full-time missions as do young men who hold the priesthood"... 

Embry quotes Apostle Thomas S. Monson as saying that missionary work for young women is "optional"; if they wish to serve, "we are happy to have them," but "we do not wish to create a program that would prevent them from finding -- or place hardships in their way toward finding -- a proper companion in marriage, because that is their foremost responsibility" (1997, 4)

 Fn 6  Unlike Mormon males, young women must wait until they are twenty-one before they can receive a call to serve a full-time mission, a rule that suppresses rather than stimulates female missionary enlistments. To our knowledge the official rationale for this gender discrepancy in age eligibility has not been stated publicly. We have been told informally in interviews with church officials that young women are called at a later age than young men in order to maximize their opportunities for marriage. 

One latent consequence of these gender-based age rules is the creation of a larger pool of marriage-eligible young LDS women available for Mormon males when the latter return home from their missions while simultaneously encouraging a traditional Mormon courtship pattern in which returned male missionaries marry somewhat younger females.

In addition, waiting until they reach the age of twenty-one before calling single women to missionary service maintains an imbalanced sex ratio of younger males to older females in the field. These age discrepancies are believed by LDS officials to reduce the likelihood of distracting mission field romances between sister missionaries and their male counterparts.

If marriage is, theologically, the foremost responsibility of the female, then policy can find a way to make it happen. What an economic twist! The Botkin sisters would be proud.

Bonhoeffer's "Who Am I? They often tell me"

This poem was written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer from his prison-cell in either 1943 or 1944. It was probably smuggled out of prison by a guard he befriended.  Today I am getting caught up with my TA work, and feel chained to my desk, and overwhelmed like him at the difference between what others know of me and what I know of myself.  The words I can imagine from someone reenacting his ordeal, but that he actually wrote them himself, and they survived, is a gift.

Who Am I?

Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell's confinement
calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
like a Squire from his country house.

Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
freely and friendly and clearly,
as though it were mine to command.

Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
equably, smilingly, proudly,
like one accustomed to win.

Am I then really that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat,
yearning for colours, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
thirsting for words of kindness, for neighbourliness,
tossing in expectation of great events,
powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
faint, and ready to say farewell to it all.

Who am I? This or the Other?
Am I one person to-day and to-morrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
and before myself a contemptible woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army
fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine!

(Translated by J.B. Leishman. From Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship. Rev. ed. London: SCM Press, 1962. p. 15)

My new bike

Update from SIL-UND

So, I've been here in Grand Forks, ND for three weeks now. Had a lot of victory in my actions this week... and working on my thought life. There was a prayer group started among some of the guys living on my floor of the dorm, on Tuesday. Skit night was on Friday night, and it was a blast. There was a "linguist's confession" video during the show, and part of it showed me leaping onto a table and yelling, "I'm really an extrovert!" I will not live it down.

I'm a TA in a class called LING 480 Learner-Directed Second Language Acquisition. There are eight of us TAs: Me, Amy, Amber, Sallie, Lydia, Lesa, Bob, and Becky. Greg is the professor, and his wife Angela is manager of the lab sessions and TAs (us).

Up to now, we've been using Angela's lesson plans for the first two weeks (I got here a week before classes started). Now, we have to plan one lesson a week, and let the students each plan and lead one lesson a week. I have eight students, four in each group. The lab groups meet from 2-3 and from 3-4 every weekday. We're learning Kirundi, a Bantu language from Burundi, Africa. And our nurturer is named Pascal.

Beyond that, I'm taking a class called Ethnographic Methods in Field Linguistics (LING 535). It's a challenging amount of reading and writing. The current prof, Doug Fraiser, has inherited the teaching materials from Tom Headland, who made it very rigorous. I've been reading about ethnocentrism, the reputation of missionaries, the reputation of SIL, structures of family units around the world, kinship terms... and writing a summary of just about every article I read. It will be good to look back on, and it makes me reflect quickly on what I've been reading. It just takes a lot of time.

Been making lots of acquaintances. First of all my students. It's always beneficial for an introvert to expand his circle.

The forehead of a whore

I felt the desire to flip open Jeremiah 3 this morning. It says,

"By the waysides you have sat waiting for lovers,
like a nomad in the wilderness.
You have polluted the land with your whoring and wickedness.
Therefore the showers have been withheld,
and the spring rain has not come;
yet you have the forehead of a whore,
you refuse to be ashamed." (Jeremiah 3:2b-3)

I have done this too often... at least twice a week... where I would imagine my way into a sinful situation, often while listening to a Christian book on my ipod. Then once the idea is realized, I would mb. Later in retrospect, I would rationalize it as not sinful. Refusing to be ashamed forestalls repentance. Be ashamed and repent. Then you won't be ashamed.

Pachelbel Rant

This week I've been practicing a version -- make that three versions -- of Pachelbel's Canon in D to play at my cousin's wedding. We're combining two violins, a flute, and a guitar.  The flute can't play the high notes, so now we've transposed it to Canon in C.  And because Canon in C doesn't have the fancy, complicated violin melodies, we decided to cut it in the middle and I'd improvise some of them for a minute, and then come back so we could play the last few bars and end together on the same chord.  Almost every time we play it, though, Mom tells me I should study the part by myself and figure out what I'm going to play, so I don't lose everyone.

I took her advice, and found this hilarious rant. (Watch out for foul language at the end.)



Then I found this, and it made me happy to know that someone successfully modified the Canon for the poor cellists.

Salvo Mag: Seam Redeemed

It's a weird title, I know. I wanted to highlight Salvo Magazine's feature article this month, "Seam Redeemed," a theological interpretation of The Learning Channel's fashion reality show "What Not to Wear".

Read on to find out why the clothes matter, and how a wardrobe transformation mirrors salvation.  Here.