Not dead yet...

...although you would certainly be pardoned for thinking otherwise!

I am just now in the midst of trying to finish writing up my dissertation, hoping to submit in the summer. This autumn, I'm to begin a new teaching post, so I'm starting to prepare lectures and curriculum. We're getting ready for a transatlantic move. Oh, and did I mention we've just had our second child?

We've just had our second child.

She's Samantha Brigid Danielle; although she was a little over a month premature, she's flourishing and growing and doing well. But it does make for a bit more on the to do list.

So, I assure you, I'll be back some time in the future with witty observations, stentorian pronouncements and the occasional anguished soul searching - or whatever it is I do here, I haven't quite figured it out myself. Keep your bookmarks!

Also - Gower Street may undergo a slight format change, too: there's a possibility it might become a team blog. So (as they say): watch this space.


(BTW, I'm also over at Facebook, and I sometimes do something like blogging within the parameters of their format - so if you use Facebook as well, look me up!)

I'm Dreaming of a White...

...Easter. Or at least we were here in Cambridge. We woke up to an inch or so of snow, the only snow we've had here this entire year. It waited until the second day of spring, but we still got some!

Wisdom - Let us attend.

The title of this entry is taken from the Orthodox Christian liturgy, said just before the reading of the gospel. I use it because Clifton Healy, an old friend from seminary who has entered the Orthodox Church, has written something beautiful and wise which I wanted to share - I hope he doesn't find it embarrassing that I do so.

I share it partly because I find it beautiful and wise, but also because it gives voice to some of my own recent ruminations on life and faith, although he wrote this before I did and (no doubt) did so with more elegance and incisiveness than I might have. But it captures well the mystery of the searching love of God and the growing contentment with my own perplexity in being caught up in this which I have been growing in awareness of recently. (The only aspect I might add in, for my part, is the judgement of God.)

Anyway, here is an extract:

It seems as though with every day that I continue on in my journey as an Orthodox Christian, I find myself knowing less and less. The things I thought I knew are so pale and incomplete when placed in the center of the reality they claim to approximate, that I wonder if there is much use in holding on to them. God is love. The Tripersonal God is love. God the Father is love. Jesus, God the Son, is love. God the Holy Spirit is love. The Holy Trinity loves my wife, my daughters, my parents and siblings, my in-laws. Even, more mystery, even me.

The rest is inscrutable. Why is it that I am called to just this time, just this day, just this city, just this parish, to do that which I am called to do: to pray for the conversion of others? Why is it, that I am given just these pains and consolations at just this time? Why is it that I have been called to these things, and to this struggle? I do not know. I wonder whether I will ever know. I do not even know whether the pains and sufferings will be recompensed with deliverance and joy. I do not know whether the consolations will bring about further union with God, or whether I will squander them. But here I am, at this time, in this place of struggle and desolation and loss, and joy. And I must believe that God is love. And I must pray for the conversion of others.

Interestingly, this parallels in some respects what friend Maggi Dawn has recently written in the Christian Century 'Faith Matters' column:

When I was taking my first degree in theology, most of the building blocks of my faith came up for serious reexamination. I asked one of my professors how it was possible for faith to survive this kind of intense intellectual scrutiny. He thought for a while, then said, "Once upon a time I believed in a great many things. Now I believe only in a few things, but I believe in them more deeply than I ever thought possible. That God exists, that God is love, and that Jesus is the son of God—these things I believe. Everything else is up for debate."

I think I've realised in retrospect that this has been the case for me, after a fashion. Plunging more deeply into the church's tradition and the depths of contemporary theology has been humbling and formative. It's brought - what? Less certainty, more trust? That begins to get at it.

Not, that is, that I would only list the few things that Maggi's professor would. The Incarnation and the Holy Trinity are absolutely foundational for me. But they are not 'foundational' in the sense that I have them all figured out or even - as I study further - that I understand them in anything like an exhaustive sense. (Indeed, seeing how the church itself has maintained a discreet silence in some areas has been a large part of this learning.) But I believe in them, confess them, believe they are true, and that their truth is not dependent on my understanding them. It's not that they are not truths - it's that they are not my truths. They're truths of a world within which I have been given the grace to live, and the grace to spend inordinate amounts of time learning about, thinking about, and contemplating these truths.

Indeed, they make sense: not that they are entirely transparent to penetration by human reason, one wouldn't expect that of God anyway. Rather, they 'make sense' - create sense - because by them the world is rendered more sensible. Again, this is not 'more sensible' meaning 'more useful', as in a strategy to use the world for my own ends. It's something much more like seeing the world in the light of God's glory, and praying to be used for that.

Dream Interpretation...

What does it mean that when I'm awake I dream of Europe, but when I'm asleep I dream of Chicago?

Progress, of a sort...

I have had the perhaps odd experience of people - strangers - often remarking that I reminded them of a celebrity. (I don't know if this happens to others, too?)

The most...ahem...interesting thing is that the celebrity that I remind people of has changed over time. When I was in high school, quite a number of people thought I could have been a twin for actor Cary Elwes (of Princess Bride fame), pictured right.

But in university, that experience waned, the flower of youth somewhat faded. One summer I found myself working on a movie set (for The Babe), and was told that I had a more-than-passing resemblance for Charles Grodin (of Dave and the Beethoven series, um, 'fame').

More recently, this occurence has virtually disappeared. I have gone years on end without someone rumbling me as a celebrity lookalike. Until today.

I was getting a coffee at a great new shop in Cambridge called Origin-8. The shop itself is part restaurant, part grocery, and it specialises in local, sustainably grown (or humanely raised) food. A great idea whose time has come.

As I was struggling to get my money out of my pocket to pay, wrestling with my cumbersome coat, the lady behind the counter said in a friendly manner 'has anyone ever told you that you look very much like Bill Bryson?' At first I was touched, even a bit flattered. Bill Bryson is among my absolute favourite non-theological authors, I read everything he writes at least once. I thought of his engrossing books on the English language, and the American version of it. Warmly encouraged, I recalled his ever-growing list of humourous travelogues, of places such as Britain by (more or less) foot, America by car, Australia, Europe and Africa: there are few places in this world where he hasn't looked hilariously out of place and befuddled.

It was at that moment that I called to mind my mental pictures of Bill Bryson, which turned out to look something like this real life picture, to the right:

Bill is good-natured enough to be able to poke fun at himself - a tradition I hope I'm following through this ridiculous post - and so in one book (I think it was Notes from a Small Island) he introduced the term 'old flubba-wubba' which was his son's term for a middle-aged, out of shape, red-faced chap: namely his father!

It occurred to me that I wouldn't mind being compared with Bill Bryson at all, but would prefer that the comparison be made to his sharp wit, rich imagination, and formidable prose composition skills, and not his befuddled frumpiness. (Or more accurately, having my befuddled frumpiness compared with his.) Well, he is an American living here, who quite loves England, so the comparisons continue.

Looking back on it, I guess there seems to be a pattern to those celebrities to whom people have felt they can compare me. I'm not sure it's entirely encouraging, to be honest, but there you have it. It is progress...of a sort.

Little Victories/ des petites victoires

I returned however reluctantly from several days in Paris a little over a week ago - photos to follow. More than the other times I've visited France, I felt that my French went into overdrive; a very interesting experience and I am trying to work hard to keep it up. But I experienced a few small victories, which may well have fuelled my rapid expansion of French: I was twice stopped and asked for directions from native French speakers (they may have been in Paris from Toulouse or Lyons or Montreal, who knows); apart from appearing savvy enough to actually be worth asking for directions, I also actually knew Paris - and French - well enough to direct them accurately.

The other moment of distinction was one night when I was in a bar with my brother, and we were talking with some of the patrons, and one of them guessed I was from...wait for it...Belgium. What an amazing holiday it was.

This might sounds like I'm bragging, but I'm really only bewilderedly proud, and grateful.

À Mme. Lowstuter, Mlle. Washer, M. Johnson, et toutes les autres personnes qui m'assistent apprendre le français: je vous remercie!

Some Reasons We Wish We Could be Home for the Holidays

Well, we're looking at another Christmas here in Cambridge - with all of the wonders that that implies - but without family present. My brother is coming after Christmas for a while (which will be great), but for Christmas itself it'll just be us three. So there's one reason we wish we could be back in Chicago for Christmas.

And just today in the Chicago Tribune, I saw another reason: there has been a spate of openings of better-quality thin crust pizza restaurants, which I won't be able to try out for a while. (I've blogged about my pizza adventures in Chicago earlier.) Chicagoans are learning about the wonders of Neapolitan (and Neo-Neapolitan) style pizza, often from a wood-burning or coal-burning oven. Although I like thick, pan-style pizza too (hey, I'm from Chicago, after all), I really prefer a thinner crust pizza, and that's the kind I am known for making myself. It will be interesting if this will lead to Chicago being known not just for deep dish but also for trademark styles of thin crust pizza as well? It can become a wide-ranging pizza mecca, pushing the envelope on tastes and styles.

Below is a link to a video on some of the new restaurants, courtesy of WGN News:
Thick vs. thin - the pizza war

No, I don't have a life - why do you ask?

Last spring, when the prognosis of my supervisor's condition became clear, arrangements were made for me to have another supervisor 'waiting in the wings', for if and when Dan could no longer do it. My new supervisor is David F. Ford, for whom I have great respect and sympathy, and with whom, when I applied to Cambridge, I initially thought I might be working.

We had the 'Ford Home Group' today, a fellowship group of theology and doctrine students here at Cambridge, and it happened that David, who hosts it, was getting rid of a pile of clothes, and he thought at the last minute that some postgraduates might like to have a grab at them before sending them to Oxfam. Most of us demurred, but I did make one auspicious acquisition: I now own the tie that he was wearing in his official Cambridge staff photo (picture right).

It's almost like a brush with fame...

Unfortunately, I can't actually think of anything with which I would wear it.

Daniel W. Hardy 1930-2007

Dan Hardy, my doctoral supervisor - and mentor, friend, colleague, father-figure, and much else besides - passed away at sunrise on Thursday 15 November, after having been diagnosed with brain cancer last spring. I am endlessly grateful for the years I had with him and all that he gave me. I go back and forth between joy for a full life, well lived, and grief at having lost someone so close to me. He was for me the model of a Christian scholar, teacher, and mentor, and I hope to spend the rest of my life sharing what I have gotten from him in these areas with students and parishioners.

I am hoping that the Telegraph does one of their fine obituaries for him in due course - I'll post it here if and when. In the meantime there are a few other tributes arising around the net, including:

Andy Goodliff

Fulcrum

Also, Wikipedia has a pretty good article on him, although as I write it has not been updated with news of his death.

AAR/ SBL 2007

I shall be away at the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature joint conference in San Diego from Wednesday 14 November to Wednesday 21 November. It should be a great time to hear some good papers, catch up with old friends and make some new ones, buy some deeply discounted books, and even participate in an interview for a possible teaching position. But I'll be away for a week, so keep the Street clean for me.

Also, if you can, please make time to lift a prayer for my doctoral supervisor - and dear friend - Dan Hardy, who is near death, and for all of his family, friends and colleagues. We will all dearly miss the presence of this scholarly saint who has given us so much.

Away

We are away until 15 August, and so I will not be blogging during this time (unless provoked, but don't hold your breath), and may well be away at least another week, as we are moving immediately after returning to Cambridge. See you around in late August, or, just possibly, early September.

Last Day of Easter Vacation

Today my daughter and I dropped my parents off at Heathrow and decided to see some of the sights in London, this being the last day of her Easter school break.

We stopped first at the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. It was quite the affair, I hear. We weren't actually able to see much because it was jam-packed with tourists from the four corners of the globe including what seemed to me like a surprisingly large contingent of Hasidic Jews. At one point the two guard units paused in the ceremony, collected music stands, and held a brief concert including - I kid you not - the theme to the original Star Trek TV show. Joe Queenan would have loved it; he could have written his next book on little else. But it was generally quite wonderful in the idiosyncratic, anachronistic way that one comes to expect of British institutional traditions. Change it over my dead body.

Then we trod through Green Park and another park and across a surprising amount of real estate to get to the London Eye. The parks were lush and well used and wonderful, especially in the 75F degrees and full sun we had today, but the Eye looks closer to the Palace on the map. I had never been before, and Alex was keen to go.

It was great. The wheel moves very slowly and gently, taking 30 minutes to go an entire revolution. You have almost no sense of movement when you are in it. And the views were spectacular. Almost everything that the Big Smoke had to show could be clearly seen. It was just amazing.

And then a carousel ride and some more walking in the sun and warmth and the day drew to a close. But all in all a most excellent day for a father and daughter on the last day of Easter Vacation.

Back from Nice

Wow! What a great holiday. We had a great time. It was warm and sunny (especially the first two days), and all the people we met were friendly and welcoming. It was a great getaway and we're looking forward to going back sometime.

We stayed at Hotel Splendid -- yes, I know, a "splendid" hotel in a "nice" city -- and I would highly recommend it. It was only a few blocks from the beach, with its own private access (if you go when swimming is an option), the rooms were luxuriously large: the bathroom alone seemed to stretch to the horizon. All of the people we met were quite friendly and helpful. It didn't have 'old world' charm, perhaps, but it more than made up for it in generous creature comforts, and we got a great rate through British Airways holidays.

Enough recommendations for now, though, and on to some more snapshots, which you can find here.

Je suis allé à France (encore)

We are taking a brief holiday over our daughter's half term break. We are going to Nice (where, of course, we will stay in a Splendid Hotel), à la Côte d'Azur. We should be back Sunday, but it will be quiet in the Street until then.

Winter Wonderland

We received several inches of snow today in Cambridge: it was wonderful!

Alas, it has mostly melted by now, but still, for the first half of the day we were in a winter wonderland.

For many children, it was a snow day. I love snow days, even at my age. When I was a kid, of course, they just meant a day off of school. But now they are something more, something precious. They are an interruption in the schedule, a blessed time to pause from the routine -- a time which, since it is unanticipated, I have not had the opportunity to fill with scheduled events (such as the weekend), nor will the time be filled with traditional and family demands (such as holidays). It is just a day off: a gift of time.

And it is a gift that comes packaged in the most beautiful white wrapping paper. In our case, today, the snow took a beautiful city and made it moreso. I hope the pictures in this post -- this time, taken by me -- help to illustrate this beauty.

Along with blanketing the city, the snow served to bring out snowmen, a traditionally under-represented group here in Cambridge, as undergraduates paused in their studies to take advantage of the snow. It also brought out another group quite prominently: photographers.

You can find some more Selwyn College photos here, and some more Cambridge photos here.

Reading report

This morning, Alex took her first (so far as I know) self-motivated steps in reading. She was watching 'You're (Not) Elected Charlie Brown', and there was a scene when people started laughing at Linus for talking about the Great Pumpkin. The laughter in the cartoon was dramatised by the screen being filled with HAHAHAHA. She saw it and, entirely on her own, read out the letters: 'H' and 'A', and then began putting them together to sound out the word. 'h-ay'. 'No', she said to herself, '...h-ah...ha! Daddy, they're saying 'ha'!' I was sitting right next to her, looking at her with my mouth agape, almost overcome with excitement. It is a moment that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. HA!

Hey, it's not 'Moby-Dick', but I feel so swollen with fatherly pride that I might well be accused of being a white whale anyway.

What's in a name?

I have recently learned that my name means a bad word in French.

Which one? you might well ask.

Well, as it turns out, all of them.

That's right, apparently very nearly any rude, profane or vulgar expression in French will involve some form of my name. I'll say this for the French: they're certainly efficient.

The mystery goes deeper, though. You see, my people are French, we come (so I have discovered) from eastern France, near Strasbourg and Colmar. I can hardly imagine the story behind a family whose name is synonymous with a vulgar verb. Culturally, it may reflect the French insouciance in the face of contradiction: Oh, there's Jean-Jacques @#&%! Who cares that his name is a rude expression? Or perhaps it is a case of French stubbornness: So my name is Jean-Jacques @#&%! So what?

Which leads me to my sentiment about it, a great chance to use the expression: Je m'en fou!

I also happen to know that my surname, in Dutch, means 'error' or 'mistake'. It is common, when you get 'the blue screen of death' or other serious computer error to call it a 'fout'. Where does it all stop, I ask you? (I can only imagine that in Italian, my name is synonymous with a discredited politician or other animal excrement.)

To help shed some light on this, I asked a friend, who is Dutch, what he thought of it. He confirmed that 1) it does mean 'error' or 'mistake' in Dutch, and 2) it is an uncommon name in Dutch, but 3) 'Voet' -- pronounced the same -- is a common surname in Dutch, and it means 'foot'. No it's not exactly 'Windsor' or 'Saxe-Coburg', but it's better than 'mistake', or @#&%!. The only problem is, to my knowledge, I have no roots in Holland. But this does seem suggestive, and I may follow it up as a lead sometime.

In the meantime, I am wondering just what to do in the off chance that I am called to serve a church in France -- or, more practically, what name to give the hotel in Nice that we are going to next month. Currently, I am considering the following two possible aliases:

Roger Brightman

Slim Bootleg

I briefly considered Colonel Sanders as an alias, but rejected it because I would invariably have to spell out 'Colonel' to people.

Perhaps, in the end, this is why my people immigrated from France to America. Given an ignominious name, they sought for nothing more than to settle down to a quiet life of farming in Indiana. No doubt they bought property situated between the farms of Richard Cephalous and Randy Wanker.

A Happy New Year to All

I marked the turning of the calendars the same way this year as last. For the the final hour, I listened to The Last Night of the Proms on BBC3, closing with the British National Anthem (God Save the Queen!), and the live sound of the chimes of Big Ben ringing midnight in Westminster. All the while, I was able to watch four separate fireworks displays from my third floor (fourth in America) flat, which looks out on several villages to the west and south. The fireworks were impressive for small villages -- doubly so, given that we were experiencing constant wind with gusts of 80 miles per hour.

All the same, a most agreeable way to welcome 2007. Cheers, all!

My goodness: Truth and Beauty!

It is remarkable the genesis of some blog posts.

Several times I have either posted or considered posting something on the basis of my blog showing up in a google search. Once someone googled my name along with "John Milbank", looking, I suspect, to see if a copy of my master's thesis (or bibliographical information for such) was available online. (I did my thesis on the christology of John Milbank. If you're really curious, there is a copy of it available on NUCat, the Northwestern University library catalog. If you're not, believe me, I understand.) But simply on the basis of that google search, I wanted to create a post which mentioned the thesis and gave at least some bibliographical information -- which I suppose I've just done.

I often show up surprisingly high on searches where someone is looking for a book review. This is fair enough; I have written a variety of reviews in the paper press, and have begun reviewing books on Gower Street as well. But part of the reason I end up high in searches for reviews is that the search engine spiders my reading list (in the right hand column), which makes it look like reviews of all those books might be available here. Of course you, gentle reader, know that I have a full time job and many extracurricular pursuits besides and I've been turning out the online reviews at the pace of the proverbial treacle in January.

But couple my busy-ness with my conceit that Gower Street might become something of an online resource for (certain types of) theology, and you understand some of the tension I feel when my site appears in a search and I cannot meet the demand.

All of which is to say that when I appeared in a google search for a review of David Bentley Hart's book The Beauty Of The Infinite: The Aesthetics Of Christian Truth I was disappointed that I couldn't deliver the goods. This is a book which I have been intent on reading since late last summer, partly because it seems fascinating and brilliant, and partly because it is very near what I envision as the topic of my doctoral dissertation and, hence, I need to read it. But I have kept it on the shelf.

It's not that I don't have excuses: I was embroiled in the university admissions process last fall, I have become accustomed to prioritizing books that I have review deadlines on over other reading, I am chair of the commission on ministry and we're undergoing a complete overhaul, I have a blog, a daughter, a wife -- oh, yeah, and a demanding full-time job. So, obviously, I haven't read it yet.

Which raises two points:
First, is anyone out there also intent on reading it? Would you like to read it together -- and perhaps blog on it?

Second, since I can't deliver the goods just yet, perhaps you might be interested in reading some thoughtful reviews from other places on the web on D.B. Hart and his book The Beauty Of The Infinite: The Aesthetics Of Christian Truth.

One worthwhile review is here, originally found in The Christian Century. William Placher of Wabash College authored it.
Another review is found here at First Things. It is written by Geoffrey Wainwright, professor of theology at Duke University.
A third review can be found here at Touchstone Magazine. R. R. Reno of Creighton University wrote it.

I think these reviews might be especially helpful for someone wanting to get a good first look at what Hart is up to in his book. Also, Placher and Wainwright have been particularly helpful influences on me and my own thinking, so I like to promote their work.

A final resource worth mentioning is this post over at Xanthikos, an Orthodox blog. It provides some more information about D. B. Hart and his writings. (I've previously posted a link to an op-ed piece that Hart wrote in the wake of the December 26th Tsunami, here.)

Finally, in doing the research for this post, I ran across what looks like an excellent general theology resource put out by the Wabash Center, which has provided a great deal of support for the teaching of religion and theology in the academy today. I'll put a link to it on the main Gower Street page someday soon.

Bad News, Good News

Well, I found out yesterday that Duke University took a pass on me being admitted to their doctoral program in religious studies. I still think it's a great department and all, but I am rather disappointed in how they notified me: I received a brief e-mail which linked to a perfunctory form letter. It used to be they sent out a more elaborate rejection letter on university stationery, something you could hang on the wall with pride (and throw darts at). Now their notice is only one step above spam.

On the other hand, I also received a very cordial e-mail yesterday from someone named Giovanni Mccoy -- who could make up a name like that, I ask you? -- offering me a genuine college degree in only two weeks. Apparently, there is this loophole in the law that soon may be closed that allows me to get whatever degree I want, from a bachelor's degree all the way up to a Ph.D., fully verifiable, with no study required! And here I am like a sucker working my butt off to get into a doctoral program which will take years and will require a great deal of hard work. So look for me to be wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with the logo of a prestigious nonaccredited university sometime soon, toting around my doctoral certificate -- or heck, maybe I'll have two!

I know, I know, I've been admitted two other places so far and I have no reason at all to be snarky. Oh well, three down, six more to go.