tan·gent
idiom– 7. digressing suddenly from one course of action or thought and turning to another: The speaker flew off on a tangent.

The quoted article below is by Leithart, The Cross of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, in (of all places …) Credenda Agenda. It’s an excellent article, host magazine notwithstanding (its association with Doug Wilson makes me more than a little nervous … but I suppose that puts me in the same boat as those who railroad Leithart without actually taking the time to listen carefully, huh?).

“The Crucifixion is the fountainhead of all my values,” wrote the German-American philosopher and historian Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, “the great divide whence flow the processes most real in my inner life, and my primary response to our tradition is one of gratitude to the source of my own frame of reference in everyday life.” He adds, “our chronology of B.C. and A.D. makes sense to me. Something new came into being then, not a man as part of the world but The Man who gives meaning to the world, to heaven and hell, bodies and spirits.” A bride who receives her husband’s name is set in a “new realm” and all her actions are “credited” to that realm. In the same way, “in His name we [as His bride] enter a realm of freedom unknown to mere heirs” (Christian Future, hereafter CF, p. 102).

This paragraph neatly captures the pace and sprawl of much of his writing. He begins with the historical event of the crucifixion, and immediately goes existential, describing how the cross is frame for his own experience. In the next sentence he has moved from inner life to the crux of history, endorsing the division of time between B.C. and A.D. Characteristically, he employs a marital image to describe the historical change that comes with Christ, and, obsessed as he is by speech, he cannot stop himself from inserting something about new names.

From here Leithart continues to touch upon several themes with which I find myself perpetually and persistently grappling with, not least of which is, on the one hand, the pressing sense of urgency to speak of the existential, moment-by-moment reality of the cross for life coupled with, one the fore-finger of the other hand, my own frustrating inability to find words to make that connection and, on the thumb of that second hand, the complementary frustration of our cultural inability – and impatience – to try to hear and understand the connection. Alas …

In my stumbling, bumbling efforts I have been intrigued by how far “old world” technology goes: a hand-written note here, a personal email there, a direct look in the eye there. What is happening at our church is nothing more than God’s simple, original design for the Body of Christ: “behold, how they love one another.”

All of that to say, I suspect that the Ron Paul R[3VOL]UTION is tapping that very thing: people are longing for a simple, original straight-shooter. Someone who wants to be in Washington not for any reason but that which motivated the legendary (though fictitious) Mr. Smith: to simply serve by leading with integrity and vision. In reading Dr. Paul’s note regarding this past Sunday’s outpouring of support, I find his humility and astonishment and consequent enthusiasm refreshing.

December 17, 2007

What a day! I am humbled and inspired, grateful and thrilled for this vast outpouring of support.

On just one day, in honor of the 234th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, the new American revolutionaries brought in $6.04 million, another one-day record. The average donation was $102; we had 58,407 individual contributors, of whom an astounding 24,915 were first-time donors. And it was an entirely voluntary, self-organized, decentralized, independent effort on the internet. Must be the “spammers” I keep hearing about!

The establishment is baffled and worried, and well they should be. They keep asking me who runs our internet fundraising and controls our volunteers. To these top-down central planners, a spontaneous order like our movement is science-fiction. But you and I know it’s real: as real as the American people’s yearning for freedom, peace, and prosperity, as real as all the men and women who have sacrificed for our ideals, in the past and today.

And how neat to see celebrations all across the world, with Tea Parties from France to New Zealand. This is how we can spread the ideals of our country, through voluntary emulation, not bombs and bribes. Of course, there were hundreds in America.

As I dropped in on a cheering, laughing crowd of about 600 near my home in Freeport, Texas, I noted that they call us “angry.” Well, we are the happiest, most optimistic “angry” movement ever, and the most diverse. What unites us is a love of liberty, and a determination to fix what is wrong with our country, from the Fed to the IRS, from warfare to welfare. But otherwise we are a big tent.

Said the local newspaper (http://www.thefacts.com/story.lasso?ewcd=36475b4d132fc0a1): “The elderly sat with teens barely old enough to vote. The faces were black, Hispanic, Asian and white. There was no fear in their voices as they spoke boldly with each other about the way the country should be. Held close like a deeply held secret, Paul has brought them out of the disconnect they feel between what they know to be true and where the country has been led.”

Thanks also to the 500 or so who braved the blizzard in Boston to go to Faneuil Hall. My son Rand told me what a great time he had with you.

A few mornings ago on LewRockwell.com, I saw a YouTube of a 14-year-old boy that summed up our whole movement for me. This well-spoken young man, who could have passed in knowledge for a college graduate, told how he heard our ideas being denounced. So he decided to Google. He read some of my speeches, and thought, these make sense. Then he studied US foreign policy of recent years, and came to the conclusion that we are right. So he persuaded his father to drop Rudy Giuliani and join our movement.

All over America, all over the world, we are inspiring real change. With the wars and the spying, the spending and the taxing, the inflation and the credit crisis, our ideas have never been more needed. Please help me spread them https://www.ronpaul2008.com/donate in all 50 states. Victory for liberty! That is our goal, and nothing less.

Sincerely,

Ron

However, for the last few months my dad says he is “tired” a lot more. Recently, he has repeated the phrase “living on borrowed time.” While the death of my aunt a couple months ago is part of the reason we are convening to talk about “the future” (i.e., my dad’s business affairs, personal wishes, etc.), I wonder once again if this will be the last time we meet face to face? Please pray for us, especially that the walls would come down and that we could have an open and honest discussion about everything.

Abba, Father, fulfill the meaning of Thy name towards Thy servants; do Thou govern, protect, preserve, sanctify, guide, console them; let them be so enkindled with love for Thee, that they may not be despised by Thee, most merciful Lord and most tender Father.
– Gallican Collect

Below are some of the Trinity Hymnal selections that readily come to mind (please feel free to add to the list with your own observations by using the comments).

Related malapropisms:

And the classic Aaronic Benediction from Fiddler on the Roof:

If there is any humor to be found here (largely the self-depricating kind), it is in admitting that I have actually caught myself repeating (several times) some of these malapropisms in worship (classic Freudian slips). In fact, I must confess that for the last hour Matthew Smith’s voice (from the Indelible Grace IV album) will simply not go out of my head: “More love, more love, more love to me …” Sounding somewhat like the word intended, it is ludicrously wrong given the context. It’s all about who? What seems like a harmless mistake is instead after reflection a view into the depravity of my heart and picture of my need for grace.

The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do With the Other

Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self Help Book

Why does man feel so sad in the twentieth century? Why does man feel so bad in the very age when, more than in any other age, he has succeeded in satisfying his needs and making over the world for his own use? Why has man entered on an orgy of war, murder, torture, and self-destruction unparalleled in history and in the very century when he had hoped to see the dawn of universal peace and brotherhood? Why do people often feel bad in good environments and good in bad environments? Why do people often feel so bad in good environments that they prefer bad environments?

He adds to these reflections in the latter book, Lost in the Cosmos:

How is it possible for the man who designed Voyager 19, which arrived at Titania, a satellite of Uranus, three seconds off schedule and a hundred yards off course after a flight of six years, to be one of the most screwed-up creatures in California–or the Cosmos?

Brennen Manning, author of The Ragamuffin Gospel, and also a life-long Catholic with a vital, evangelical faith (i.e., faith that the “evangel” is, in fact, truth unto life itself), observes himself and his contemporaries along with Percy and, also along with Percy, groans with wonder, and then begins to offer something of an answer: “How is it possible? Because we are awash in lies about ourselves, not least of all passionately denying that we are sin-saturated bundles of paradoxes. We drink in, savor, believe, and perpetuate these lies, both by silence as well as verbal declaration.” But …

When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.

To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side, I learn who I am and what God’s grace means. As Thomas Merton put it, “A saint is not someone who is good, but someone who experiences the goodness of God.”

A few pages later he quotes Paul Tillich (not one of our tradition’s most trusted theologians, but …)

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life [lives of lies, we should note]. … It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness [think John 1], and it is as though a voice were saying: “You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything, do not perform anything, do not intend anything. [Simply 'come unto Me and rest.'] Simply accept the fact that you are accepted.” When that happens, we experience grace.

Truthing about ourselves is a function of grace, a byproduct of the work of grace by the Spirit in our lives; it is a fruit of that creating Word-made-effective by the Spirit; Truthing about ourselves to our Lord (who already knows) and to others (who also already know more than we care to acknowledge) and to ourselves (who are the last to truly come to know ourselves) is the way of God’s life-giving grace in Christ which leads to the promise of SHALOM in and with Christ for real people in real life in real space and time. Thus the proclamation of the Gospel on the lips of Jesus: “Be repented of the lies, those myriad misconceptions and myth-conceptions, that bind, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Be renewed, reborn, recreated in the Truth, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”

What’s been going on with Transformatum?

• Life is hard (but God is good)
• Lost K2 (high maintenance)
• Layout (sporting some new CSS)
• Live redesign (still tweaking things)
• Laboring (eight posts in July)

So stick around and save those bookmarks.

While the photo above is kind of eschatohumorous, the point in posting it is purely pragmatic. I am in a blogging funk and do not know how to get out. While I can say that a good deal of my absence from Transformatum is due to life events, I do find myself becoming increasingly ambivalent about the blogosphere. Whether it is temporary or permanent, I do not know.

I have learned a lot from reading blogs and making blog posts, but I often wonder if my time would not be better served doing something else; like, for example, reading more books? It is almost as if the more time I spend in the blogosphere, the less time I can devote to personal study, which equates to fewer thoughts and topics to blog about. Are there any other long term bloggers who are having (or have had) the same experience?