May 2010
Michael Pollan: The Food Movement, Rising
Tagged under:Michael Pollan reviews five books on the rise of the increasingly visible food movement. The article alone is worth reading, providing excellent summaries as good reviews are supposed to do. His closing comments on Janet Flammang's book are particular interesting given the tension created by the apparently conflicting values of women in the workplace and the importance of shared meals perceived as "women's work."
The full article is here.
But the movement’s interest in such seemingly mundane matters as taste and the other textures of everyday life is also one of its great strengths. Part of the movement’s critique of industrial food is that, with the rise of fast food and the collapse of everyday cooking, it has damaged family life and community by undermining the institution of the shared meal. Sad as it may be to bowl alone, eating alone can be sadder still, not least because it is eroding the civility on which our political culture depends.
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Response to Linsley on "Why Women Were Never Priests"
Tagged under:John Sanidopoulos, whose posts on tidbits of Orthodox tradition and the Saints I enjoy reading, re-posted an article by Alice Linsley today. Linsley is a former Episcopalian priest who left the priesthood and eventually joined the Orthodox Church. She appears to be a sort of living proof-text used by some Orthodox assure us that women are not called to the priesthood (except, as she says in one explanation of both her call and eventual departure, when men fail to serve. Only then does God call women to serve in this capacity.) Since my response was a bit longer than most comments warrant, I decided to post it here.
The Mystagogy post is here, and the original post at Preachers Institute is here.
Cult of Personality
Tagged under:The devotion below has been circulating the internet in the days since it was posted, particularly among the Orthodox. It is, frankly, quite nice to have such sympathetic attention drawn to Orthodox liturgical practice. I suspect much of its popularity is precisely because of such sympathetic attention on an otherwise quite Protestant website. In addition, it highlights a number of aspects of Orthodoxy which are true, or, more honestly, which some of us would like to be true. So while I appreciate elements of its characterization of Orthodoxy, and certainly resonate with the danger inherent in cults of personality, there is quite a bit here that is disingenuous. I wouldn’t think the more disingenuous elements worthy of comment except that they are rhetorical descriptions which are voiced by many Orthodox, and I am not at all sure they are true. They feed into a construction of ourselves, and a construction of us by others, which seems more about how we want to portray ourselves (or be portrayed) than about how we really are.
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Praying Aloud
Tagged under:I recently quit the choir, primarily because I realized that I was having trouble praying while singing. It took me a long time to make this decision since I couldn’t understand how it is that I could sing the liturgy and not be praying. I am not sure I have ever regularly attended a church and not been in the choir. Any number of factors probably contributed to the problem: concentrating on timing, the music, singing in a language I do not actually speak. All of these things can distract from actually praying rather than just mouthing the words I sing in (thought not always) tune. At other times in my life, these elements were not distracting, but they were now for whatever reason. It was just time for a break.
My first Sunday standing in the congregation was, well, surprising. I must admit, I sang virtually everything I would have sung had I been in the choir. I am not sure I am able to participate in liturgy without singing. At various points though, I didn’t sing. Sometimes, I read the translation (if it was in Greek). A number of times, I read the prayers along with the priest. And it was wonderful, reading these prayers.
