Last night I met some friends to visit a couple galleries here in Chattanooga. At the first gallery I met an artist, Suzy Scarborough and wound up discussing philosophy and religion with her (after complimenting her on one of her paintings and asking a question about her Hegel quote in her artist's statement). It turned out she's a sort-of new age pantheist who believes that all is god and god is everything. I really do like some of her works that she had there, especially a blue herron with a very textured water in the background, and under it all was a print-transfer of electronic circuit boards. Her paintings were thoughful and well executed.
We had in common our belief that there is truth, and that the western secular reductionist view of the world is fundamentally flawed, because it ignores and neglects the spiritual part of reality. Our fundamental difference seemed to be that she insisted all is a unity, and is divine, and I hold that God is separate from all the cosmos. She asked if I thought God made it and left it to run on its own, and I said, no, he's involved in running every part of reality (I'm not a deist!).
She took offense when I said I believed that God had made or created everything, and that he is actively involved in sustaining and keeping the cosmos running. She wasn't offended at my belief in God, at my use of the masculine pronoun, or at my assertion that God is the Creator, but at my referring to God as a person, in personal terms. God, she insisted, is everything and is impersonal, and she was highly offended that I would speak of god in personal language.
In the conversation I asked her how she would explain human personality, and why every person is a person, why every human is unique, and she said that personality is rooted in the universal unconsiousness. Unfortantely, that was the end of our conversation, because other folks there wanted to talk with her about her art.
I don't get how a universal unconsiousness could result in particular persons--everyone is so incredibly unique, and so human: how could an impersonal cosmos create persons?
If you want to see some of her paintings, http://www.suzyscarborough.com/ is her website address.
Thursday I stopped Mark and Amy's to see their daughter Adia, who was not quite two days old when I met her. What incredible joy to see for the first time a person I've prayed for, and to see her parents' and grandmother's joy in having her born healthy, with a cute face and joyful eyes. I got to hold her for the better part of an hour, and she was sometimes looking, smiling, and other times dozing with her eyes shut. Her little, long fingers reminded me of the hands Flemish painters painted during the northern rennaissance.
A few days before that visit I stopped at local used bookstore to scout out a CD and some books, and upon arriving home I realized that they'd rung up the books and never charged me for the CDs. I thought the bill total was sort of low, but I didn't think about it much until I saw my receipt at home. So I called the store, got their voicemail (they don't answer the phone, but screen their calls so that the don't get tons of people saying "hey, find such and such a book for me, ok?"), and left them a message telling them that they didn't charge me for two CDs. The store never called me back, so I guess the CDs are mine to keep.
One of the CDs was a gift for Mark and Amy, a collection of lullabies by Michael Card.
The other is my very own free copy of Radiohead's "Kid A". Yeah for a intriguing, skillful album to listen to, a part of our popular culture's ongoing dialogue with general revelation. Hopefully I'll grow in my understanding of the world around me and in my compassion for the many creative people in it.
One day everything will be in its right place. In the mean-time, I'm thankfully listening, and rejoicing with my friends in their joy over their newest blessing from God.
Flipping through an old issue of Time magazine, I found an article reporting that green tea and coffee are good for one's health. Researchers found, in a couple population studies, that five cups of green tea daily, and three of coffee, helpped to protect against heart disease and cancer. To receive full benefits, though, you need to be drinking good quality green tea and coffee. Hmm, sounds like a trip down to Greyfriar's is due...
So after popping in WiggleWorm and purchasing a baby gift for friends of mine, I "set up shop" at one of Greyfriar's tables, with my lexan Greyfriars mug and a fresh cup of organic Peru. Reading
Reflecting Theologically on Popular Culture as Meaningful: The Role of Sin, Grace, and General Revelation by Theodore A. Turnau, III, I stumbled across a Calvin quote which I've been meaning to share for some time. Calvin, a theologian of common grace if there ever was one, reminds us that all truth is God's truth, and is to be received with thanksgiving:
"If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonor the Spirit of God. For by holding the gifts of the Spirit in slight esteem, we contemn and reproach the Spirit himself." (Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.2.15)
Turnau's article describes the typically weak understanding and response of many evangelicals to popular culture as meaningful, and proposes a dialogical theory of popular culture as a tension-filled dialogue between general revelation (God constantly and unrelentingly forcing his reality onto people who suppress that reality by their idol-making--Rom. 1:18ff) and our human cultural response to it. He proposes we regard popular culture as a meaningful discourse, and we embrace the two poles of the fallen brokenness of the world and our solidarity with it and with fallen people, and the hope of renewal and restoration which has already been accomplished by Jesus' resurrection but not yet fully consummated. I found his analysis of popular culture as meaningful dialoge really helpful. He draws on hermeneutic and liguistic theories to shed light on how culture means--and if we want to understand the people around us we've got to understand our culture.
There's much to mull over in Turnau's article. You should read it, and then email, call, or in some way talk with me about it.