“The Weekend Wanderer” is a weekly curated selection of news, stories, resources, and media on the intersection of faith and culture for you to explore through your weekend. Wander through these links however you like and in any order you like. Disclaimer: I do not necessarily agree with all the views expressed within these articles but have found them thought-provoking.
“If Your World Is Not Enchanted, You’re Not Paying Attention” – L. M. Sacasas at The Convivial Society: “Disenchantment is one of the most venerable, and contested, concepts in the vast literature devoted to understanding the state of affairs we call modernity. The term was popularized by the eminent German sociologist Max Weber in the early 20th century. It is an English translation of a German word, Entzauberung, that means something like “de-magic-ifcation.” To say that the modern world is disenchanted is to say that it is no longer experienced as a realm of magic, mystery, animate spirits, or other non-human forces and agents. According to some accounts, it also means that we inhabit a world bereft of any intrinsic meaning or purpose and which thus generates relations of alienation and exploitation. I am, of course, glossing a long and multi-faceted tradition of scholarship, which has more recently included arguments to the effect that we have never been disenchanted or that the world remains enchanted (although more like enchanting) if only we’re willing to embrace certain modes of being. The former position is staked out by Jason Josephson-Storm in The Myth of Disenchantment, and the latter claim is argued by Jane Bennett in The Enchantment of Modern Life. And while I do have my own lightly-informed positions on these debates, I certainly don’t intend to adjudicate them here. Instead, I simply want to posit one idea for your consideration: Enchantment is just the measure of the quality of our attention.“
“My Correct Views on Theological Diversity: Drawing closer together in belief, and even more essentially, in love” – Alan Jacobs in Mockingbird: “There are three kinds of theological diversity:
- That which results from finitude
- That which results from fallenness
- That which results from ignorance
1. Because we are finite creatures (even were we unfallen we would all still be finite) we cannot comprehend an infinite God. All of us will be — by temperament, ability, inclination, and formation — more capable of perceiving some aspects of God’s Being and God’s Creation and less capable of perceiving others. Some will immediately see the Righteousness of God; others, God’s Mercy; still others, His Creativity (as “maker of heaven and earth, and of all things, visible and invisible”). Probably we do not deny the aspects of Divine Truth that we are not quick to notice, but our minds won’t go in those alternate directions of their own accord. For this reason we Christians all need one another to make our understanding and appreciation of God more complete. (It will never and can never be fully complete.) W.H. Auden’s way of putting this point is to say that theology, like the music of Bach, is polyphonic. Most of us will hear clearly one of the themes that God propounds; others we will hear less clearly or not at all. You, my sister or brother in Christ, will be my instructor in those musical themes of God’s Being and of salvation history that I am deaf to. And this is one of the chief reasons why the many members of the one body must value one another.”
“Suspect in killings of U.S. missionary couple and nonprofit chief arrested in Haiti” – CBS News: “Police in Haiti have arrested a suspect in the fatal shooting of a U.S. missionary couple and a Haitian man who headed a nonprofit in an attack by gunmen earlier this year that stunned many in the troubled Caribbean country. The May 23 killings of missionaries Davy Lloyd and his wife, Natalie Lloyd, and Jude Montis, the country’s director for Missions in Haiti Inc., a Claremore, Oklahoma organization, was blamed on gangs rampaging across Haiti’s capital and beyond. The killings took place in the community of Lizon, in northern Port-au-Prince. The city has crumbled under the relentless violence of gangs that control as much as 80% of the Haitian capital. A video posted on social media late Wednesday by Haiti’s National Police shows a 52-year-old man in handcuffs, accused of being involved in the killings of the Lloyds and Montis. Arrests in high-profile killings are very rare in Haiti. In the video, the suspect denies any involvement in the killings. It wasn’t immediately clear if the man has been charged and if he has a lawyer.”
“In Praise of Physical Work: There’s joy to be found in work that requires muscle, sweat, and skill” – Aston Fearon in Plough: “Certain types of work are more valued than others. When someone asks, “What do you do?” the reply is often weighed, sifted, and placed in a subconscious pecking order of value. Many of us have been on the receiving end of this kind of sizing up. Practical work is placed lower on the list of modern society’s values. Work that is paid is valued more highly than work that is unpaid. The ordering of such values happens, in part, because of the way capitalist economies function. As well as this, there’s the way schools prioritize academic learning over practical skills. As a society, we’d much rather move away from certain forms of work, placing them out of view. If we could, we’d replace more and more of the practical aspects of industry with machines, computers, apps, or artificial intelligence. But why is work done by humans important? Why does bodily labor matter? Is there something to preserve from the thousands of years of the history of human bodily work?”
“Classes, Clubs, and Pubs: The World of C.S. Lewis – a review of C.S. Lewis’s Oxford by Simon Horobin” – Micah Mattix in The Washington Free Beacon: “It is not wrong to say that America made C.S. Lewis. Lewis’s 1942 book The Screwtape Letters was popular in Britain but was initially rejected by American publishers until Macmillan took a chance on it in 1943. It was a huge success. Macmillan quickly brought out his The Problem of Pain and The Case for Christianity (collecting Lewis’s popular BBC talks), as well as his sci-fi novel Out of the Silent Planet. Lewis was put on the cover of Timein 1947. It has been mostly American readers (and his late American literary executor) who have kept his name in print since his death in 1963. And it has been mostly American institutions who have protected his legacy. Lewis’s personal library and much of his archive can be found at Wheaton College’s Wade Center outside Chicago. His home near Oxford is owned and run as a study center by the C.S. Lewis Society of California. Yet, while Lewis may be indebted to America (a country he never visited) for his fame, he owes Oxford much more, Simon Horobin argues in C.S. Lewis’s Oxford. Both the town and the university shaped his mind and imagination in profound ways.”
“Doctors Raise a Patient from a Deathlike State with Electronic Music: Is ultrasound the healing song of the 21st century?” – Ted Gioia at The Honest Broker: “Years ago, I met several surgeons who used ultrasound to treat cataracts. The technique had been developed by a jazz saxophonist named Charles Kelman. I even scrubbed up and went into surgery to watch how it worked. Kelman got rich from his innovation. Surgeons all over the world started using his ultrasound device—called the phacoemulsifier. People laugh when I describe it as a musical instrument. But that’s a legit view. When you use an instrument to create ordered sounds with purpose, you are entering the traditional territory of music. And I’m never surprised when sound demonstrates its powerful effects on our bodies and psyches—because I’ve seen it happen firsthand as a musician. You won’t read about this in Rolling Stone, but maybe you should. That’s because ultrasound is now used everywhere from removing kidney stones—there’s a real rolling of stones for you—to treating wounds. My dental hygienist even uses ultrasound nowadays to clean my teeth.”
Music: Sting, “Fragile,” from …Nothing Like the Sun
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Matthew Erickson 