The Legend.

Corporate Barons rule the city with an iron-fist, but a thirst for change is in the air. As a “Seeker,” you have the chance to return choice to the people. To do so you must embrace adventure, face your destiny, and help create the next Mountain Dew.

Starting November, 2007, you are invited on a mythic journey through interactive Chambers of adventure that, once entered, will let you vote on new features for the next Mountain Dew: flavor, color, name, logo, label and tag line.

To succeed, you will need all of your cunning and strength. Each Chamber is blocked by a Guardian and ruled by a Master, epic creatures of adventure and deception. There are enemies to fight, lessons to learn, and tools to earn – like a 2-sided battle axe or a coral divining rod to point the way. And there are points to be scored. The more points you win, the greater your fame in the fellowship of Seekers everywhere.

Upon your return to the city for a final showdown with the Authorities, the people will be set free to vote on which elixir shall pour across the land – the People’s Dew. Your destiny will become clear. Choice and creative freedom will become the rule. And the next Mountain Dew will become reality.

Even advertising acknowledges the captivity in which we are held by corporatist capitalism, and exploits the desire to be liberated from that captivity in order to increase sales. How do you escape corporatist hegemony? Buy Mountain Dew, of course! This is the new advent - we do not, in this advent, await the enfleshment of our God, but the unveiling of a new sort of soda, created (uniquely!) by the purchasing masses - a new union of Consumer and Product that claims to destabilize the relationship between the two, and so bring redemption. In reality, of course, (as Thomas Frank has shown), this new advent, rather than bringing freedom by destabilization of the reigning ontology, actually calcifies our captivity to the ruling hegemony.

Geneva College:

Trinity International University:

I’ve left the asphalt to its own devices,
traded neon and Yuengling steins
for the cold hard crush of campus leaves
strewn by the hand of Pollock’s god.
I’ve known the rust belt, the worn-out
gears of seven-league Fords all mortared
and pestled into dust that permeates
air and food and love and beer,
like the pharaohs’ wind-blown sand,
wearing down teeth, machines, and hearts.
I’ve known the summer in Beaver County,
the four short months when the sun seems
to shine with the energies of God,
when death becomes vibrant and poverty joyous.
I’ve left the acid waters of the rivertowns
for repristinated lakes and artificial prairies,
for restaurants inside churches
and investment-banking joggers.

I’m trying to get some discussion started on campus about the relationship between global capitalism and the Christian polis; what do you think of this flyer?
Christianity and Capitalism flyer

(Name removed in case I am misrepresenting the argument.)
Professor: The hermeneutical circle (we interpret the text, and then the text interprets us) is problematic because it never gets anywhere. What happens, in reality, is a “hermeneutical spiral” (cf. Osborne, 1991), where the knower continually (albeit, perhaps, gradually) approaches the knowee (in this particular case, the Scriptural texts).

(Written in class, so it’s a little disjointed.)
Me: This is, in some sense, a valid critique, but its effectiveness is undermined, I think, by its captivity to an ideal of achievement or arrival. St. Gregory of Nyssa’s conception of the infinite pursuit of God may be helpful in formulating a third way, which I offer here. The hermeneutical circle is, in fact, a circle, rather than a spiral - we interpret texts, and are in turn interpreted by them. The circle, however, is not abstract, but located, embodied, emplaced. It is, like all things, located in relation to God, suspended in his being. This suspension creates a natural ebb and flow, an interrelation of currents, and the circle is moved by these. It is not the cognition of an object which, ultimately, causes the circle to become a spiral, to move toward an end; rather, the very act of interpreting and being interpreted in turn, as a sort of prayer, of meditation, creates an extreme localization, which, when practiced properly, becomes, paradoxically, a disjunctive delocation. It is, in fact, the complete surrender of the self to the futility of interpretation which allows the interpretative act to bear fruit, because the alternative, the pursuit of a false subject-object duality, denies the deeper reality that all reality exists by, in, and for Jesus of Nazareth, the risen Christ.

This is the ritual of the grain offering: The sons of Aaron shall offer it before the Lord, in front of the altar. They shall take from it a handful of the choice flour and oil of the grain offering, with all the frankincense that is on the offering, and they shall turn its memorial portion into smoke on the altar as a pleasing odor to the Lord. Aaron and his sons shall eat what is left of it; it shall be eaten as unleavened cakes in a holy place; in the court of the tent of meeting they shall eat it. It shall not be baked with leaven. I have given it as their portion of my offerings by fire; it is most holy, like the sin offering and the guilt offering. Every male among the descendants of Aaron shall eat of it, as their perpetual due throughout your generations, from the Lord’s offerings by fire; anything that touches them shall become holy.

Leviticus 6:14-18, NRSV

Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing. Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord, your God? Blow the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast; call a solemn assembly; gather the people. Sanctify the congregation; assemble the aged; gather the children, even infants at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her canopy. Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep. Let them say, “Spare your people, O Lord, and do not make your heritage a mockery, a byword among the nations. Why should it be said among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’”

Then the Lord became jealous for his land, and had pity on his people. In response to his people the Lord said: I am sending you grain, wine, and oil, and you will be satisfied; and I will no more make you a mockery among the nations. I will remove the northern army far from you, and drive it into a parched and desolate land, its front into the eastern sea, and its rear into the western sea; its stench and foul smell will rise up. Surely he has done great things! Do not fear, O soil; be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done great things! Do not fear, you animals of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are green; the tree bears its fruit, the fig tree and vine give their full yield. O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the Lord your God; for he has given the early rain for your vindication, he has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the later rain, as before. The threshing floors shall be full of grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and oil. I will repay you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent against you. You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never again be put to shame. You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I, the Lord, am your God and there is no other. And my people shall never again be put to shame.

Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit.

Joel 2:12-29, NRSV

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o”clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ “You that are Israelites, listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know— this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.

Acts 2:1-24, NRSV

Music for Independence Day

I bought a bicycle at the thrift store for $8 the other day, and decided to see if I could build a trailer for it using mostly junk found around my parents’ house. The only things I bought were twine, bolts, and an inner tube; the rest was scavenged. Altogether, the bicycle and trailer cost something in the neighborhood of $16. I hope to replace and strengthen a few parts, to make it capable of carrying more weight, but I’m fairly pleased with the results at this point (especially considering that most of the joints are made of twine).