Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
In anticipation of a new course I will be taking this term, Spirituality, Health & the Christian Life, I read one of the required texts, The Wounded Storyteller, just for a taste. I was stunned at how closely Frank’s account of illness matches my own experience and at how closely his language (he might call it his discourse) speaks to the way I orient myself to my world.
I first read Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudun while riding a bus to Ithaca, N.Y. during a high school music trip when I was 15. Returning to the book more than 25 years later, I have made several discoveries.
Jerzy Kosinski’s novel, The Painted Bird, filled with vignettes of violence perpetrated against innocence, is more compelling than ever in an age when media presents us with confirmation that such things occur on a daily basis in our world. Whereas CNN’s truth is of one sort, Kosinki’s is of quite another.
Professor Harold Wells, who teaches Systematic Theology in Toronto at Emmanuel College, has written a big book with a simple message: The Christic Center: Life-Giving and Liberating (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2004). In fact, the message appears clearly in the title.
The book has 16 chapters each devoted to a distinct social justice issue. These issues fall into two broad categories: 1) domestic concerns such as religion and public schools, abortion, and the penal system; and 2) concerns arising from the global economy such as corporate responsibility, debt relief and environmentalism.
Music creates strong associations which end up, through some organic process, becoming melded to our personal identity. This music is not “out there” as an object to be grasped for a time and then returned once we are done with it; this music is “our” music.
On Sunday, we went to West Hill United Church which holds itself out as a “progressive community of faith.”
The Interpretation of Cultures, by Clifford Geertz (New York, N.Y.: Basic Books, 1973) is a collection of anthropological essays which combines a theoretical examination (how we should think about thinking about cultures) with field work (thinking about cultures). First collected in 1973, the volume has been reissued because its ideas simply will not go away. His writings may have wider application and a more urgent relevance than is apparent at first glance.
Summer reading, nothing freshly published, just books that have sat unread on my shelves, books I’ve been meaning to read but have brushed aside in favour of more immediate demands.
A Le Carré spy novel is more than just another cheap paperback thriller. That is what we learn from the dust jacket of The Little Drummer Girl. According to the L.A. Times: “Le Carré’s ability to create character, dialogue and event approaches the amazing … THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL confirms without qualification his status as a writer of elegance and importance.”
I must be maturing; I think I’m developing a deeper appreciation for Virginia Woolf. My first encounter with this author came when I was 18 and had to read Edward Albee‘s play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf in high school. I had no idea what Virginia Woolf had to do with the play, and so, because I didn’t know any better, I decided to read something by Virginia Woolf.
I haven’t had much blogging time as I’m struggling to finish two papers for the end of term. One is on Martin Luther and in my reading, I stumbled upon an interesting digression about the Kabbala. We’ve all been hearing more about Kabbala lately. It’s all the rage in Hollywood. And its chief pop proponent is that intellectual giant and spiritual icon, Madonna.
This is a question that has plagued me for some time now—at least since lunch time. After all, this is the man who distinguished himself in 1991 by becoming the only Canadian ever to be arrested for selling his writing.
The metaphor contains an inherent danger. We often fall into the trap of co-opting the metaphor as a source of meaning rather than as a tool for conveying meaning.