The Rabbi

Phyllis Tickle articulates the state of the church in North America, seeing reformation-like change underway. (Perhaps it's time to stop trying to return to a model set in a time that no longer exists. After observing that about every 500 years the church reconstitutes itself, she begins closely following the state of the church over the last 100 years. Generally speaking a four quadrant picture defined christianity: liturgical, social justice, renewal, and conservative. But of course each interface became fluid over time. Recently though, something new, a "gathering center" emerged, not part of, and not delineated by standard terminology, see for instance McLaren's Generous Orthodoxy.

This volatile, dynamic center set off backlash among the established organizations, drawing lines to distinguish but now finding themselves occupying corners instead of filling a quadrant. In between, where many christians find themselves, all sorts of adaptive models are arising: this and this but not that.

Who am I to evaluate this work, but from my limited perspective, she's on to something. The cutting edge is dangerous, but extinction hardly suffices as an alternative.

Anyone interested, should likewise read Harvey Cox's The Future of Faith. A great read, if the expression "the tone-deafness of literalism" resonates with you (p75).

Some of my engineering background surfaced when I read a review of Rediscovering the city center. Of course my thoughts always lean toward Davis College and how we can go about making this a better place. One thing the campus lacks is a center. A community place, the highest trafficked place, a place where students, faculty, and staff naturally congregate. Where is that? Where should, could that be?
Whyte has an interesting section comparing the inner city, the busiest place in the city, with the ancient Greek agora: the market. But it was more, small business of all kinds, meeting places, "coffee" shops, exciting, crowded, dynamic.
Davis College needs such a place. Where should it be?

Evolutionists struggle to explain human language acquisition. Two streams of argument flow: (1) as with the entire evolutionary process the step from non language to language was gradual; (2) it was just the opposite--animals function differently than humans, they don't think, they react. Bickerton is in the latter group and well sets out his theory. Some version of homo starting talking, simply, most likely related to getting food to eat. That led over time to larger brain capacity, which then gave rise to increased thinking.
I read to discern if any of this would make me better understand Hebrew, it didn't.
But I must admit the relation between the bible and science intrigues me. There are no easy answers to the difficult questions.

If you can believe it, this is an enjoyable read. I will briefly sum: English was, and is a dynamic language; ie, grammar not only vocabulary changes on the fly. The clash of languages produces new "bastard" (my favorite kjv word) forms and syntax. English teachers beware; your grammatical rules are out of date. But then the rules never were such, only passing forms of how we do now what they did differently before,and certainly only partially related to how our children will do the same.

McWhorter describes an interesting step in the formation of proto-Germanic, the precursor of old English; that is, a possible Semitic influence via the Phoenicians. Ah, the Brits really have descended from Israel. He likewise refuented the proposal that culture influences language or the other way around. For example, western civilization advanced physics because our languages have distinct, diverse tense indicators. Something to think about, but it's really a goofy idea.

So English traditionalist beware: the e is coming back in the word "judgement," and the distinction between subject and object pronouns is almost history. To you and I, this should not matter.

My god my god where did such behavior ever come from? Hollander shares 20 years of experience helping over emotional teens and their parents learn alternative strategies to short circuit cutting episodes. Through adaptive case studies he demonstrates who the teens are that cut themselves and why these teens cut. In my reading he demonstrates that emotional sensitive teens unable to manage a stressful situation resort to self harming to release the tension. Parents seeking to help their children in such situations often unintentionally exacerbate the event through misplaced intervention.
Hollander strategies with such parents to help them learn how to assist their child to break the cutting cycle.
A sad read, but it's a real world out there. Where is christianity in all of this? How we so removed ourselves from the society in which we live that we cannot see the need?