Posted in textures, tagged 2 Peter, biblical reflection, Peter, textures on November 30, 2007| Leave a Comment »
The alienation of knowledge from loving action in the life of human beings and human communities is hardly a modern problem. Yet the systematic divorce of ‘mind and heart’ or ‘heart and head’ arguably is.
Only a post-Descartian distinction of the knowing being from the object of his or her knowledge could become the breeding ground for the dualism the has become received truth for generations of Bible readers who promptly project such epistemological nonsense back onto its pages. (more…)
Posted in denkschrift, tagged theological education on November 29, 2007| 3 Comments »
Tiempos atrás, la vida me otorgó la satisfacción de compartir aulas y espacios pastorales con un amigo y colega costarricense quien no ha flaqueado en mantener los lazos de la amistad desde mi emigración hacia la patria en 2004. Recientemente el mencionado Alexander Cabezas, ahora miembro imprescindible del equipo de Viva Juntos por la Niñez en Costa Rica, se permitió ventilar unos pensamientos que a este peregrino vivificaron el corazón. (more…)
Posted in my hometown, tagged birding, fauna on November 29, 2007| Leave a Comment »
The water in the bird bath is well frozen this morning in our Indianapolis back yard, this in spite the battery-powered ‘bubbler’ I installed as a vacation task this week. Somewhere in the house there lurks a birdbath heater that I bought in the summer in ant-like preparation for winter and then inserted into some perfect space with squirrel-like absence of a record. It’ll turn up. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged 2 Peter, biblical reflection, Peter, textures on November 29, 2007| Leave a Comment »
It is easy to wonder about the logical thread that purports to string together a chain of human virtues in consecutive fashion. It looks like artifice, like all form and no function, like empty words. (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged film music, music, reseña on November 28, 2007| Leave a Comment »
One wonders what people will say about John Williams in the year 2050. The man just keeps producing scores that, if it were possible, surpass the prior one in elegance, emotional weight, and sheer, gorgeous, spellbinding beauty.
Gushing?
I don’t think so. Listen to this soundtrack before you conclude that this reviewer has gone out-of-his-mind starry. (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged classical music, Johannes Wildner, music, Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, reseña, Robert Schumann on November 28, 2007| Leave a Comment »
The six-note motif that introduces Robert Schumann’s Overture (later Scherzo and Finale), Op. 52 is the calling card of a formidable Romantic composer. In the main, the Schumann pieces included in this anthology of his overtures make due on the promise put down by those first six notes.
The Overture to Genoveva is as evocative as the tale its opera tells. The overtures to ‘Bride of Messina’, ‘Julius Caesar’, ‘Hermann and Dorothea’, ‘Faust’, and ‘Manfred’ are all beautifully performed on this 1992 Naxos recording by the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Johannes Wildner.
The market for operatic overtures is not huge. Naxos has done us a service with this serviceable presentation.
Posted in textures, tagged 1 Peter, biblical reflection, Ezekiel, Peter, textures on November 28, 2007| Leave a Comment »
It is difficult to take the measure of rubble.
One cannot tell where one wall ended and another began. To guess the function of the buildings that are now this pile of stone is the stuff of speculation. One can only wonder who lived here, who died, who loved, who screamed, who longed for something better than this mountain of rock and dust. (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged classical music, Leos Janacek, music, Prazak Quartet on November 26, 2007| Leave a Comment »
From the heart of Central Europe in the first quarter of the twentieth century comes this penetrating, challenging, occasionally disturbing, and ever rewarding music for small ensembles. The Prague-born Prazak Quartet is of course equal to the challenge.
Leos Janacek’s music for string quartet show what the genre can be. Easily mistaken for a weak, limpid subset of classical music, music for quartet a la Janacek is as sinewy and energetic as it gets. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Ezekiel, textures on November 26, 2007| Leave a Comment »
Ezekiel makes for hard reading.
My own rather buoyant hopefulness has taken some hits in these weeks of reading slowly through this insistent book, determined as it is to mark out the profile of Israel’s failure and cut the ground from under false optimism. The text is punctuated by theodicy—what some have defined as ‘justifying the ways of God to man’—by the phrase ‘Then you shall know that I am YHWH’. (more…)
Posted in fauna, my hometown, tagged birding, fauna on November 24, 2007| Leave a Comment »
After a season of travel, it’s beautiful to be back home where a holiday morning can be spent in my easy chair with some good books and a pair of binoculars to oversee my backyard, where my birds are enjoying the overdue filling of their feeders. (more…)
Canter Bridge 