Beyond Parody – exorcising demons = depriving possessed girl of her gift of spiritual awareness

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I guess you have to start your hermeneutic exercise with the idea that Saint Paul was a misogynist who is responsible for all that is narrow and exclusive about Christianity to get here – but here she got!

Paul is annoyed at the slave girl who keeps pursuing him, telling the world that he and his companions are slaves of God.  She is quite right.  She’s telling the same truth Paul and others claim for themselves.  But Paul is annoyed, perhaps for being put in his place, and he responds by depriving her of her gift of spiritual awareness.  Paul can’t abide something he won’t see as beautiful or holy, so he tries to destroy it.  It gets him thrown in prison.  That’s pretty much where he’s put himself by his own refusal to recognize that she, too, shares in God’s nature, just as much as he does – maybe more so!

The preacher who sees the gift of spiritual awareness in demon possession is the Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop and Primate of The Episcopal Church. Here’s the whole sermon. It’s mainly about failing to see beauty – in the skin color of others, in nature, in demon possessed teenagers.

I read this at Simcha Fisher’s blog at the National Catholic Register – you can check out her response here. I got there via New Advent.

And bon voyage to the classes of 2013!

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Here at these Colleges we operate in the plural, so the above is correct – yesterday was the 102nd commencement for William Smith College and the 188th for Hobart (they graduated in that order – we alternate).

I have to admit that this was a year in which I was not particularly attached to many seniors. I was away for 2 of their 8 semesters (the 2nd semester of their sophomore year I was in Rome and this semester I was on sabbatical), so I haven’t taught them as often as I do many students. But I did have a number of advisees and got to hug most of them and meet some parents (always a fascination – you know, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree).

So, congratulations, best wishes, come back for Reunion, and always remember to send money. Your almae matres need you!

Whew! Random expenses averted!

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Yesterday I got a haircut. The young woman who cuts my hair wanted to see my pictures from Egypt, so I took my iPad along with me. Then I stopped by Wegmans on my way home.

I got the fabric shopping bag (aren’t I responsible) out and slung the shoulder bag with my iPad under the cart. When I checked out, I grabbed the shopping bag and left – and my shoulder bag (with iPad and camera!) was still under the cart.

I figured out what had happened at about 8:30 last night and called Wegmans. The young man on the Service Desk didn’t know anything. I activated Find My iPhone (which covers iPads, too) and put in a lock screen message with my name and phone number.

I went back to Weggies in person this morning and it turned out they’d locked it up in the accounting office as soon as they spotted the iPad. Sure enough, as soon as I touched it my phone pinged at me – my iPad was online! And the lock screen message was there. Even if someone had walked off with it instead of turning it in to the service desk (which in Geneva I would have found hard to believe), Find My iPhone would have prodded him or her to have called me!

I’m almost as glad to have gotten the Crumpler bag back as the iPad and camera (I was looking for an excuse to buy a new camera!) – it’s the perfect day bag for an iPad, a sketchbook, and the point and shoot camera. Especially since Crumpler no longer makes exactly this bag.

So – if you have Apple portable electronics, download Find My iPhone from the App Store and activate it on all your stuff! It certainly can’t hurt!

Cultivating donors

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A couple of us had lunch yesterday with the biggest living donor to our departmental efforts. He wants to give us more money – evidently while he’s still lively enough to enjoy watching what we do with it!

So, today I spent some time with another department member making a loosely prioritized wish for slices of the Pie Pie In the Sky.

Excerpt from the Impeachment Articles of Richard Nixon

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Or, as George Will put it, how stupid do they think we are? It’s not just some functionary in Cincinnati. But then, President Obama has been cracking jokes about the IRS targeting his opponents for a long time.

Oh – I suppose I should say that I’m opposed to the IRS targeting ANY group on political grounds. Is that a Rightist position? Or do we all agree on that one? That is to say, all of us outside the bureaucracy?

And if not. Oh, dear.

Prof Althouse on the IRS and rightist organizations

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What’s wrong about what the IRS has been doing? Here’s Professor Ann Althouse, in answer to an attempt to mitigate the scandal:

The unequal, politically skewed enforcement of a law is a far more serious problem than the level of harshness of a neutrally enforced law. We can disagree about what the tax laws should be and how strictly or harshly they should be enforced, but everyone knows it is fundamentally wrong to vary the degree of enforcement, selecting victims by their politics. If government cannot be trusted to avoid that fundamental wrong, it cannot be trusted with any power at all. It would be better to wipe the tax code clean and rebuild it without any complicated corners where government officials — great or small — have a place to do their dirty work.

 

The Suitcase Mood

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Can a country die? Edward Hugh at Fistful of Euros thinks about the Ukraine, and what will spread to southern Europe. He’s talking about the combination of the net outflow of population and falling birth rate – both of which are true of  Italy, too. I have to admit that I’m not entirely certain that when I next lead students to Rome, Spring 2014, the Bancomats will be spitting out Euros.

via Marginal Revolution.