Five more days till carnival time

This is a meandering post. There's no need to tell me about posts. I've got posts a-plenty - approaching 300, doubling the BLT carny.  This post has no internal links.

What have I been doing all month? Reading lots of blog posts (and not reading some). It is a fascinating insight into the varieties of stuff out there. Rabid to rational, focused to perseverating, furious to turgid, Biblical studies, theology, social comment, and too many others to classify. The worst are the ones who shout their ignorance spewing words all over the screen. Eventually they ought to shut down.

What have I not been doing? My projects on music have stalled a bit

1. to introduce the music of the Bible to the masses, and 
2. to produce an English Psalter based on the Hebrew melodies, 

 - but I have introduced the concept to a dozen people in the arts, at the university, and among friends, singers, instrumentalists, and composers. The interest is high but the pace is slow. Even my atheist (but musical) friends are somewhat astonished. (No one who loves music can be an atheist.)

The projects need a good technological base. Either one has extreme discipline (as Suzanne Haik Vantoura had) or one has good technology.  I have yet to find an error in her transcriptions.  I have found plenty in mine.  And technology is to enable clear presentation: music + text for performance - and what not to present (theory, derivation etc) - these are large questions at the beginning of a project.

I am focused - my blog posts tend to be 90% on BS (Biblical Studies that is) with a heavy emphasis on the Psalms and more recently on the music - but not without some others.  My blog posts are for my learning also.  They are generally not finished products (excepting the carnival - wait for it...). It is possible that I perseverate as well - overly focused - unbalanced.

I tend not to be furious. Fury relates to fear and fear is non-productive. If others are wrong, well - pray - what else is new?  If others insist on one way or one century or some exclusive adjective or other, I could be seen that way as well, liberal fluff. I would really like to write some theology - but I am limited to reflection and  juxtaposition.  But I hope I am not scattered - like a news blog.

I just made this comment on a blog that perseverates:

Suppose I speak of bosonic string theory in 26 dimensions focused on cubic Open String Field Theory in the presence of two parallel D24-branes. If you are a scientist, you know what I mean - right? You are aware of the charm and colour of the metaphors.

Suppose I speak of ascension, that completion of the whole burnt offering that is a metaphor implemented through the incarnate God offering himself in the flesh to taste death on behalf of all. Ascend and burnt offering are the same single action, even the same word, Abraham's link to the only-begotten, a kind of singularity in history upon which history itself is built. Your timelines are all unidirectional and failing in radiation. You must 'know' about such things in your theories. Time (and all scientific laws work backwards as well as forwards) - so also the cross radiates in all space-time directions.

Polemical science has the same problem as polemical theology - too many people think they can explain everything and that their syllogisms are the only ones in town.

So perhaps I do get a bit impatient at times. It would be curious to gather my out-takes and make an anti-carnival.... but no. --- effort and return, value for time...  I would suggest one thing perhaps: every second year, every BS blog should be required to re-register and in so doing, indicate the focus of that blog for the coming period. Blogs without any posts for a year should be dropped from the list. The guild of Bibliobloggers is very open, but each blog syndicate ought to have a purpose roughly in line with the social imaginary of BS - no sermons, no polemics over conversion, a confessed confessional bias - hah!  A discipline. No one needs to like it, but it ought to be there and it's better than aught. And a relationship to the content of the Bible and its surroundings (impact, liturgy, tradition, reason, history, reception, etc, etc, - it's still wide open.)

Hey Bob - what's yours? Good question. I am Anglican by tradition. I write from within a liturgical and believing context. My faith is in the Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ (and that's not his second name). I am a scientist with a degree in Mathematics and Physics. There's plenty of room for angels and archangels in my multi-dimensional reality.  Science is grounded in the incarnation.  What do I plan to do? I study the TNK in Hebrew. I am working in The Bible as if it were a Love Song - the music projects I have outlined. I joy in reaching across the tremendous bridge of time. That and offshoots will likely occupy the remaining years of my immediate time. (It's a big subject.)

I have been getting a bit of exercise almost every day - today we walked to the voting station. Once a week, tennis, and golf if the fairways are not too sodden. Last week we went to Vancouver for the day, a visit to a forensic psychiatric institution. The children are always on my mind of course, two of them disabled in one way or another, and one - the organist born on St Cecelia's day 44 years ago and who is at the top of her field. The third, a long way away (Winnipeg). We will go to Hawaii with violinist son and yoga-teaching dancing daughter-in-law in early January for a week.

Some days I cycle to the University for the CSRS coffee times. A great community. This month - an introduction to the Shi'ite festival of Moharam, a conversation on John Donne's Anniversaries - the only two poems he published in his lifetime, and an introduction to the ancient oral and written history and philosophy in Hindu thought and the Buddhist reactions. The question of which came first generated some discussion. Liturgy and word were also discussed - I reflect on how easy it is to prioritize abstraction over experience!

Every week, every month... - Eucharist at the high church down the street, Compline there too, Evensong at the church down the hill, lots of Bach there too, with top-notch teachers and world-class performers, Studies around the Deanery and at the Synagogue.

So - a meandering post - a call to discipline, perhaps. And there is a need for exercise - bodily exercise is of some value and should not take second place to godliness as if there were no incarnation.