Life, with all its minor inconveniences, goes on.

Life with all its minor inconveniences goes on.

One of my problems is that I often fail to place the first comma. I have a lot of problems with punctuation, not being regularly instructed or something. I need logical explanations, not arbitrary rules, and logical explanations are not always what is provided. But sometimes a logical explanation doesn’t go far enough.

You can see the difference above. Can you explain it?

The first one is about life continuing the inconveniences notwithstanding, the second one is about what life keeps doing, as if it were personified. There is a clearer way to write it, but there’s nothing incorrect with that second sentence.

That’s what’s good about my present job; I have to explain it. Now my mind is able better to grasp not only the conceptual difference between a defining (restrictive) clause and a non-defining clause but also to adjudge it–as it were–in practice. Here the commas are subordinating the clause by a shade: that’s all. It is, one might say, cosmetic: the translation of written from spoken speech.

Which is what seems sometimes lost to view. (I teach with teachers who believe that reading is almost exclusively a silent activity and to suggest otherwise is absurd. But if you’re not listening or not imagining the sound you’re missing something.) Think of it this way–for the television crowd: if you’re writing a dialogue you’re putting in the commas to indicate a change of tone. There is a heaviness in the first that the second breezes on without; color in the first the second lacks. The second is all in anastrophically muted shades of irony. And the determination isn’t primarily of logic; it is a matter of intention that logic then adjudicates. You can have it both ways, it seems to me, providing you’re no pedant.

Have notions of language lost the sense of an aural primacy? I sometimes wonder. Still, life goes on, with all its minor inconveniences . . . no: life goes on with all its minor inconveniences.

Having some trouble with audio, and it turns out, I think, to be drivers. An optional update screwed up my Conexant driver. I took it out, and now I’m finding out about driver updates.

I think I’m on the right track . . . Might just get out that spare copy of XP pro and install that instead. Aren’t there any totally free driver updaters?

In Luke 5 there is the story of the leper who is cleansed. The pericope goes from verse 12-16, and is clearly marked. In Luke’s mind, I have no doubt, this is a whole section; which is interesting because in I. Howard Marshall’s mind, at least back when he wrote his commentary, there is no obvious connection between the point of the pericope and verse 16.

I think Marshall ought to have given more time to the reading and contemplation of the Metaphysical poets. Of course, I don’t know if he did, but it seems to me the connection would be clearer to anyone familiar with the kind of thinking that makes metaphysical poetry possible, especially when it finds its inspiration in a Biblical turn of phrase. It may seem a stretch to us to think the Spirit of God, through the pen of Luke, was sowing metaphysical conceits, but to anyone committed to the priority of meaning, to the notion that the world of our perceptions is a world that can only be permanent when aligned with a transcendent order of meaning, then it is no real stretch. It is, in fact, necessary.

And it is interesting to note how important a role culture plays in the cleansing of this particular leper. That he is impure, unclean and also repugnant is given: he is a leper. But that he is found in an Israelite city is a mark of disobedience against the Mosaic legislation. Whether he had bothered to report to the priest in the manner prescribed when first contracting his leprosy cannot be ascertained, but it seems doubtful given that he is not too careful to maintain the prescribed isolation of Leviticus 13:46. Luke is rather explicit on the man’s condition: he was full of leprosy, as bad as it gets. That the state of religious observance was rather poor in Galilee is a point Luke has been making in chapter 4, and the presence of this leper in one of the cities seems to go along with this point—which reinforces my interpretation of the situation.

But even though the principles of his religion were not ruling his behavior, the customs and traditions, the culture which the principles of his religion had given rise to were, because he doesn’t ask Jesus to heal him, but he uses the theologically precise word to describe his condition, a word and meaning that comes from the Mosaic legislation that gives Israel its peculiar culture. He asks Jesus to cleanse him.

Leprosy may well be an emblem of sin, but leprosy is more than anything a symbol of the consequences of sin, and in actuality a consequence in and of itself. Leprosy is a sort of living death, and death is a consequence of sin. Leprosy is a state of impurity, and impurity is a consequence of sin. What this man had was a bad case of the consequences of the sin in which our race is born, and he went to Jesus because he wanted to be freed of the consequences. He was not a particularly obedient man, but he was a man particularly conscious of his condition under the consequences. So Jesus touches him, and so renders him ritually clean, and makes it possible for him to rejoin the people, and be declared pure for ceremonial purposes and the consecrated life of the people of God.

And I think Jesus did it because the request was precisely worded, responding precisely to the words. Because as far as we know Jesus gave him nothing else—only cleansing. If he did, Luke does not comment on it.

The result is another wave of popularity and attention, another rush of people to which Jesus attends, but not for long. The fleeing from the crowds continues. He goes away, he seeks solitude for the third time in as many chapters. He touched the leper, but he needs to get away from contact with the people and he needs to find another sort of contact and communion. Jesus goes to pray because it is his delight, but Jesus also goes away because he has a need for it.

It is because at the heart of true religion is a heart that is set on nothing but God and needs this contact above all others. This is the heart and meaning of all consecration, and true holiness for a human being begins not in the skin, but in the heart—that seat of all desires: all likes and all loves. The realization of our need for communion with God is at the heart of true holiness, and therefore of purity. Jesus does not need to be reminded, but he reminds us, and Luke does too, like a metaphysical poet reflecting on the word “touch.” What is touch?—Luke seems to ask, Socratically. Purity of heart, as Kierkegaard reminded us, is to desire one thing. Touch, we might say—borrowing the word of another metaphysician—real touch, is cordial union.

Here you can download Sir Hubert Parry’s 3rd.

What with reading so much Waugh, I miss them.

What a crazy week! And it aint over till after Monday, but at least I can sleep in a bit tomorrow.

Heading in to the week I was teaching 15 hours which is one hour short of my load, according to the contract. It is not a busy schedule, of course, but it adds up when every hour is multiplied by two for transport.

But not that busy. So I have time to invest myself in my Sunday school, and also have time to preach once a month. So this week come both. I still need 10-15 hours to prepare a class or a sermon and not be ashamed of my work.

And this week I had the visa stuff, which today took long hours away from my life without really finishing. That’s a bit stressful though it shouldn’t be. The sovereignty of God extends to every drawer of the bureau, even though it seems sometimes trivial to point it out (though not during times when you have to open them and look in).

And then I get handed eight hours of class, which is sixteen hours with transportation that are clean taken out of the week. And then it is at night making it impossible for me to get eight hours of sleep.

There are people who scoff at sleeping eight hours. I am not one of them. Sleep is a gift of the Lord, an important part of life, and the quality of everything I do is significantly reduced by increasing the quantity of time I spend awake, not to mention one’s outlook on life, the universe and everything.

Time waiting, especially the added hours in a bus, have given me time to read enormously. But one needs the mental alertness that the encroaching wearing weariness does not help. You go without sleep and those added hours are not worth the same as rested and sane hours.

It is madness that the modern world thinks it such a virtue to go sleepless in a frantic effort to accomplish. It is another of the types of inflation John Lukacs talks about, where the more you have the less it is worth.

I hope to regain some control of the time of my week in the following weeks, and settle into longer grazing rather than be one of the eaters of bread of sorrowful labors.

When Jesus goes down to Capernaum he has a confrotation with a demon in the synagogue. Luke shapes the story to highlight Jesus’ authority. And Jesus’ authority has an innitial impact on the audience: they are amazed. But then comes this demon, shouting and carrying on, defying Jesus, and interestingly enough, saying only what is the truth. Jesus, however, does not need the kind of publicity the demon is offering. The result is an excercise of his greater authority confirmed by an ability to make the demon not only shut up but also relinquish his tool. It is an exercise in the power of the Spirit, the power of God, which is superior to the natural impotence of the mob at Nazareth, and now confronts the supernatural powers of darkness.

In Nazareth the people wanted to exploit the power of Jesus and they were unable. Now comes the demon in defiance, and perhaps alarm at what Jesus is doing. The first is an attempt to use God’s power for purposes other than divine (and the only miracle in Nazareth Luke records is when Jesus walks out from a mob of people who have known him all his life and are bent on killing him); the second is an attempt to dilute the greater power with a formidable but lesser power. An act of spiritual adulteration is contained in the demon’s bravado, and that is why Jesus puts a quick end to it.

The irony that Luke exploits is the contrast between the real authority of Jesus and the mere volume of the demon. This is the point of the confrontation, not the truth of what the demon says, and important for drawing those implications we call applications. What the demon shouts is true, it is the source that’s problematic: the message is not acceptable to Jesus for all its truth because of its empty packaging. The power of God is behind the authority of the truth of Jesus, not the power of darkness.

Not that the message is any less true because it is shouted by a demon possessed man. What it implies to me is that the truth of the message is not enough. It has to have some congruence with the means by which it comes. Jesus could have commanded a legion of demons making enough noise to put a rock concert out of business, but he didn’t want the artifical amplification. It resulted in distortion.

And the questin for us is, what is the spiritual energy behind our truth? Is it artifical amplification, or something more congruent with the message? Does it come by shoutings and shenanigans or Scripture and reason? By their fruits shall ye know them, and the fruit of the Spirit is . . . love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.