Late Night Haiku XLII
CXIX. The porch light glows. Isolated
From anyone to enjoy
Its undarkening.
CXX. Silence. Rain passed.
Drip. Drip. Drip. The trees lose hold
Of storm-remnants. Drip.
CXXI. Crickets do not care.
They do not chirp at all now.
For it is still spring.
Karl Barth on the Reformation
Today's helping of Karl Barth, courtesy of Lewis Spitz's anthology, Interpretations of the Reformation (p. 156):
[T]he Evangelical church in the Reformation sense is there and only there where the concern is for the pure teaching of the Christian truths, where the whole life of the church Is determined and measured by this one task. But one must pay close attention. The Reformers were concerned about the pure teaching of those truths.
Barth challenges the reader as he explores this concept of “pure teaching” and relates it to the proper role of faith in the life of the Christian. The “is there” in the first sentence in the quote is not a careless wording: Barth is astutely aware that the orthodox, Evangelical teaching of the Reformation is always at risk for falling into a cold, dead orthodoxy vacant of living faith.
Why Can't I Use My Phone Number on Messages.app?
Zach Phillips explains my most significant frustration with iMessage on the iPad and Mac:
It would only take one feature to make Messages on iPad and Messages.app useful. Allow me to use my phone number as my iMessages account. My phone number has always been my unique identifier through which I choose to receive these short bits of text (for good reason). If I can't use my real “address,” there's not much point in signing up for a different delivery company. The package will not arrive where I need it.
Since iOS 5 launched, it has puzzled me why Apple designed the system so that iMessages sent to my Apple ID go to my Mac, iPhone and iPad while iMessages sent using my phone number only go to my iPhone. It creates a confusing (and technologically needless) situation where one ideally needs to give up iMessages' brilliant capability of seemlessly replacing SMS to reap all the benefits of using it.
Apple should fix this in iOS 6.
For the record...
This is the handiest way to calculate one's grades in a course and figure out what final grade one can still achieve in the same. I show it to my students when they ask if a certain letter grade is within reach for them.
Obama vs. Romney
Well, with Rick out it looks like we know who the players in this year's race for the White House will be. Alas, another presidential election will pass without a brokered convention, dashing the hopes of this political junkie who would like to see a political convention that decided a party's candidate and wasn't prior to my lifetime.
Iran-ternet
This is big. Iran, it seems, is going to build its own isolated intranet and all but cut its citizens off from access to the real, worldwide Internet:
Millions of Internet users in Iran will be permanently denied access to the World Wide Web and cut off from popular social networking sites and email services, as the government has announced its plans to establish a national Intranet within five months.
This is unprecedented for any nation with readily available Internet access. Here's hoping the plan falls apart.
Outlet Mall Wars
It seems two outlet mall developers are vying to build an outlet mall in Chesterfield Valley. This is just down right bizarre:
It was surely a highly contentious decision for Saks to decide to go with Simon's project, she added. After all, Saks has a big presence in many of Taubman's malls.
“I'm sure they were sweating bullets on that one,” she said. “It is often more political than trying to end the war in the Middle East.”
Hmm.
In My End is My Beginning
From T.S. Eliot's “East Coker” in the Four Quartets:
The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.
Calvin and the Mystery of the Eucharist
In his Commentary on 1 Corinthians, while commenting on 11.24, Calvin pushes back against all those who would seek to explain the inner workings of the Lord's Supper:
“In the meantime, however, drive away gross imaginations, which would keep thee from looking beyond the bread. […]” These few things will satisfy those that are sound and modest. As for the curious, I would have them look somewhere else for the means of satisfying their appetite.
Though Calvin does briefly discuss his own view of the Supper in this work, clearly he puts a great deal of emphasis on the need not to explain too much.
