This morning I was watching Gordon White’s tribute to the recently-departed Peter Carroll. I’ve never read any of Carroll’s books and I doubt I ever will. I was watching for the same reason I read or watched nearly everything Gordon produced: you never knew when he would drop some jewel of knowledge or practice. He ended the video with a prayer that Carroll would be seated as an ancestor of practice.
“The man with an experience is never at the mercy of the man with an argument,” said the Holiness preacher. This line keeps coming back to me this year. It can and did indicate anti-intellectualism. I prefer to frame it, however, in terms of anti-rationalism, the critique of the idea that the rational mode of thought is, or at least ought to be, the clearest path to truth. Fresh out of Holiness churches during my cage stage Lutheranism, my parents, Rachel, and I were having Sunday dinner.
We were visiting with my in-laws this evening, talking about all sorts of things. Eventually the conversation turned to our worries about caring for my mom. My mother-in-law had been talking about her experience caring for a relative when, at one point, she launched into the most powerful two-minute sermon about trust in God I’ve ever heard. I had tears in my eyes. If she would have made an altar call, I would have responded.
Me and Dad
Me and Darcy
This is the sort of bread Rachel turns out on a random Thursday. She’s gotten so good over the last couple of years.
Today I’ll be driving through southwestern Indiana’s coal country and then up to the Terre Haute area to visit St Mother Theodore Guerin. As is my tradition with these trips, I will be listening to old episodes of Weird Studies. Sets the right mood, since these trips are almost always centered on some religious or “weird” place. 8:12am First stop of the day at Camp Olivet. This creek is where I was baptized.
A neighbor cut down what appeared to be a perfectly healthy, mature maple on Tuesday. In response, Rachel is planting three serviceberries and one juniper. Answer foolish destruction with a quadruple investment in future life.
Just saw a sixty-something man, no shirt, huge eagle tattoo spreading from shoulder to shoulder, chasing after a little dog calling, “Here, Cookie! Come here, Cookie!”
Working on a project for a neighbor but I need one final measurement from inside his house. I keep looking over to see if he’s up and about. Reminds me of when I was a kid and the neighbor always opened their door when they were home, which was my signal that I could go ask Timmy to play.
Mentioning “total work” earlier today has me thinking again about how strange our contemporary work culture seems to me. Strange, I think, because I never really came through the usual acculturating institutions. A bit about my background. I come from a working class lineage, through my grandparents and beyond. Well, that’s being generous about my dad’s family, which might be better described as “working-when-not-drunk class.” There are some professionals here and there among the aunts and uncles and cousins but my direct line is all laborers, secretaries, and cooks (not chefs!