tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-150454732024-03-07T02:20:56.800-06:00randomthoughtsrandyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13271933716555045784noreply@blogger.comBlogger79125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15045473.post-73556654372750693712012-05-23T07:59:00.002-06:002012-05-23T07:59:21.468-06:00A Hymn for Ascensiontide
This is a Latin hymn of unknown origin, translated into English in 1861, according to the BCP.
The fourth verse is most striking:
O Lord most high, eternal King,
By Thee redeemed Thy praise we sing;
The bonds of death are burst by Thee,
And grace has won the victory.
Ascending to the Father’s throne
Thou claim’st the kingdom as Thine own;
Thy days of mortal weakness o’er
All power is Thine randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13271933716555045784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15045473.post-38968820714002289892012-05-02T07:21:00.002-06:002012-05-02T07:21:41.049-06:00Feast Day of St AthanasiusToday is the feast day of St Athanasius in the Western tradition, and I am reminded of how highly T. F. Torrance regarded this Father of the church, particularly for his insistence that the Holy Spirit, like the Son, is homoousios (consubstantial) with the Father. A friend who studied with Torrance in Edinburgh said that Torrance's practice was to set up an icon of Athanasius at the front of the randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13271933716555045784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15045473.post-53902535786063713032012-04-15T18:08:00.005-06:002012-04-15T18:53:49.855-06:00Dead or Alive?Jeff Clarke outlines 4 reasons that he chooses to remain in the Pentecostal tradition. I resonate to a large degree with Jeff's perspectives in his blog postings, particularly his analysis of where the tradition needs to address some serious areas of concern. I can appreciate his 4 reasons for staying, too, but I can't help but wonder, when I read an aside at the end of reason #2, if some of therandyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13271933716555045784noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15045473.post-39016367377568339372012-04-04T09:15:00.001-06:002012-04-04T09:18:55.901-06:00The Name of JesusAt the Name of Jesus, every knee shall bow, Every tongue confess Him King of glory now; ’Tis the Father’s pleasure we should call Him Lord, Who from the beginning was the mighty Word.Mighty and mysterious in the highest height, God from everlasting, very light of light: In the Father’s bosom with the Spirit blest, Love, in love eternal, rest, in perfect rest.At His voice creation sprang at once randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13271933716555045784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15045473.post-39552398687261482962012-04-01T20:22:00.004-06:002012-04-01T20:30:18.927-06:00Church and culturePaula Huston, in an interview with The Other Journal, speaks of monasticism, Lenten disciplines, and community. What struck me is her assertion thatif we are going to be effective witnesses for Christ from within culture, whether as cultural critics or culture shapers, we must be willing to look with a clear eye at the habitual patterns of behavior and thought that dominate our society. If we’re randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13271933716555045784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15045473.post-1101935827754915142012-03-26T13:55:00.002-06:002012-03-26T13:59:18.602-06:00Jesus is Lord, and I am notI just came across Penelopepiscopal's blog, and I followed rabbit trails to this post from two years ago. I really like her closing line, very appropriate for Annunciation Day: " To let go of being in Planning My Life mode long enough to allow oneself to be visited by angels and surprised by joy."randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13271933716555045784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15045473.post-34889373310758685592012-03-17T20:09:00.003-06:002012-03-17T20:22:54.687-06:00Ellen Charry on happiness (and the church)Ellen Charry says that “all persons are blessed by God to enjoy themselves and their life in him. Believers learn this through the ministrations of the church that orient people toward their proper identity. When believers properly grasp that identity, they should want to become in practice who they are in God by definition” (162, emphasis added). This is an excellent combination of the personal randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13271933716555045784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15045473.post-61408518408217201332011-02-27T21:31:00.002-06:002011-02-27T21:43:38.773-06:00Paying attention to criticsI'm sold on the usefulness of the Web for education, so it's important that I hear a different perspective once in a while. So . . . I checked out Nicholas Carr's The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains and Sherry Turkle's Life on the Screen from our provincial library system. I was really disappointed with the former; Carr just kept saying that the way the Internet is shaping the randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13271933716555045784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15045473.post-85805503399875449222011-02-16T20:59:00.003-06:002011-02-16T21:07:58.133-06:00"Flipping" instructionFunny--I was calling this a "flip" before I knew that others are. In a small way it's what we're doing with a course I'm now facilitating, and it's what I'm proposing as the heart of our Distance Ed program at Horizon.The idea? That we take the risk of dividing what we've worked so hard over the past few years to integrate--content and interaction--and use the web to "deliver" content, reserving randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13271933716555045784noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15045473.post-63492649949193447342011-02-06T14:27:00.002-06:002011-02-06T14:36:45.542-06:00A Calebite!I was reading along in 1 Samuel, finding it all quite familiar, and suddenly came upon 25:3--His name was Nabal and his wife’s name was Abigail. She was an intelligent and beautiful woman, but her husband was surly and mean in his dealings—he was a Calebite.Wow! For all the sermons I've heard and preached about Caleb and his godly, faith-filled character and about Nabal and his surly godlessness,randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13271933716555045784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15045473.post-18856880384612618332011-02-06T14:13:00.002-06:002011-02-06T14:27:06.820-06:00How time has flownI knew it had been a long time since the last posting, but good grief--back in May? Since then I've finished the PhD and graduated and started a new job and moved . . . phew!I'm trying to inspire students to use blogging in a course I'm teaching and, as part of that effort, am blogging with them--using edublogs but not as a class blog, just for my own contribution.Besides that, though, it's randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13271933716555045784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15045473.post-66828496630091969792010-05-10T21:26:00.004-06:002010-05-10T21:43:43.845-06:00Barth and Christian joyOn Friday, we read this rather uncharacteristic bit from Barth:He talks about the oxymoron of a “gloomy, morose and melancholy Gospel” and then says, “A troubled Christian is per definitionem not a Christian, because as such he is definitely not in a position to be a witness of Jesus Christ. To be sure, it is not his personal joyousness which makes him a witness. For this is not what makes his randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13271933716555045784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15045473.post-2902100560445559352010-01-15T22:30:00.002-06:002010-01-15T22:43:49.365-06:00Barth on FridaysBarth made me mad today. That’s a good thing, because it means 1) he’s making me question some basic things that I most likely have uncritically assumed, and 2) some of my thoughts are beginning to gel re: these important issues. In today’s reading, from IV-3-2, pp. 568-76, Barth takes on Quietists, Pietists, and assorted others for whom I have come to have a great appreciation (not least of randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13271933716555045784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15045473.post-65933585826303362622009-12-04T10:05:00.002-06:002009-12-04T10:15:19.013-06:00AdventI'm thoroughly enjoying the Advent meditations from Goshen College. Today's posting is from Lisa Guedea Carreño, director of the Good Library. She writes,"Preparing the way of the Lord doesn’t end when Advent ends, but begins anew and continues – until all flesh shall see the salvation of God.". . . and all the members of our Barth reading group said, "Amen!" We read about union with Christ this randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13271933716555045784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15045473.post-48399188224433483892009-10-16T17:15:00.002-06:002009-10-16T18:04:22.882-06:00ConversionWe've been exploring some things at our Barth reading group lately that are resonating deeply with me and related closely to my studies. D. W. Horstkoettker at flying farther explains his reservations (not strong enough?) about evangelicals' focus on conversion as the central paradigm/narrative for Christian faith. I'd be surprised if DWH doesn't get some feedback from his Lonerganian friends at randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13271933716555045784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15045473.post-41396459459886957272009-03-19T14:54:00.004-06:002009-03-19T15:28:18.091-06:00Assessing Intellectual VirtueDavid Scobey, in his article, "Meanings and Metrics", Inside Higher Ed, March 19, 2009, notes the challenge that assessment poses when the goals for learning go beyond "informational content in a sub-discipline, performance of competent analyses according to check-listed rubrics." He calls for "a 'slow food' model of evaluation" via portfolios. What he has to say resonates to a great extent with randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13271933716555045784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15045473.post-50907907990336248082009-03-08T16:39:00.003-06:002009-03-08T17:00:03.046-06:00Competing vs. CollaboratingClarence at Remote Access is thinking about the negative side of competitive learning. I agree totally when he says,I would argue that it is more likely that global cooperation and collaboration are the skills we should be aiming at promoting in schools and classrooms. Students who can think through problems with others, who know where to go for information and understanding, and who have the randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13271933716555045784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15045473.post-14303633963212101242009-02-16T08:50:00.002-06:002009-02-16T09:31:48.935-06:00AnalogyMy friends and family regularly hear my confession that anything that has to do with numbers makes my head swim, so it's interesting to me how I find something like Dale Harris's latest post so fascinating. I think it's the power of analogy, and the fact that, without being able to comprehend all the details, I can get so caught up in the general idea when it's explained by a master teacher like randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13271933716555045784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15045473.post-76427827069269547652009-02-12T18:16:00.003-06:002009-02-12T19:00:35.900-06:00The Social Net [at] WorkSomething important occurred to me as I was thinking about key parts of my research project, and I wondered how I might go about finding out whether I was on the right track. So, I turned to my (very informal) network. I'm not a dues-paying member of the T F Torrance Fellowship because their online payment system doesn't accept $ from Canada, and I noticed that the Fellowship's blog hasn't seen randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13271933716555045784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15045473.post-60480570887187230552009-01-24T10:37:00.003-06:002009-01-24T11:41:03.974-06:00EpistemologyWow--a long hiatus! I've been working hard to try to understand and express what's central to my project, but nothing has ended up here for a long time. So here are some random thoughts (ok, not quite so random): On his blog, “Just in CASE,” Trevor Cairney responds to Tim Clydesdale’s “Wake Up and Smell the New Epistemology” in the Chronicle of Higher Education. I'm a little surprised by Trevor'srandyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13271933716555045784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15045473.post-58875896866407326242008-10-07T20:57:00.003-06:002008-10-07T21:06:42.259-06:00ParticipationTo respond to Dustin's comment on the previous post, here are some references to participation that I've gleaned from Torrance--on knowledge of God, conversion, and the church:Regarding knowledge of God, “we know that we cannot attribute it to ourselves and know that we can only say something of how it arises by referring beyond ourselves to God's acts upon us—i.e. though it is our knowledge of randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13271933716555045784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15045473.post-17796174530396664802008-10-03T14:29:00.002-06:002008-10-03T14:49:51.641-06:00EcclesiologyAs I worked through some material on and by those who speak of Radical Orthodoxy (as I realized I needed to do) and came upon the conversation between RO and Reformed scholars, especially in Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition, ed. Smith & Olthuis, I began to realize how much the discussion re: participation, analogy, etc. is tied up with ecclesiology. Then I read the pieces by Johnrandyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13271933716555045784noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15045473.post-59984316789002444742008-10-03T14:20:00.002-06:002008-10-03T14:25:01.503-06:00New blogSo . . . Dustin has (reluctantly) entered the blogosphere! I'd say "welcome," but that's probably inappropriate from someone who blogs as sporadically (randomly) as I do. Lots of good stuff already at ". . . A Resch Like Me," and I'm looking forward to lots more.(The title makes me laugh--I can just imagine Dustin's "Mini-Me" coming out with that line.)randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13271933716555045784noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15045473.post-88991279396458976252008-10-03T14:10:00.003-06:002008-10-03T14:15:28.419-06:00Something differentI'm among the least interested when it comes to politics--at every level, but particularly when it comes to those of our giant neighbour to the south. But I enjoy the "Van Peebles Land" blog of David Williamson (an Irishman in Wales!) and I have to shout out a huzzah for this clever post on President Bush II and his future.randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13271933716555045784noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15045473.post-56892674885122600882008-09-20T15:44:00.002-06:002008-09-20T16:15:34.531-06:00Radical OrthodoxyI've already forgotten whose footnote set me on the trail, but I suddenly realized that the language I've been using of participation and analogy, etc. is a significant part of the vocabulary of Radical Orthodoxy, so I've been trying to get up to speed with the way Milbank, Ward, Pickstock & co. are using those terms/notions. In the process, it finally twigged why John Webster chose, in his randyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13271933716555045784noreply@blogger.com0