Christ the Lord out of Egypt

I had the great and stimulating pleasure today of participating in a COW Religious Studies professor's research. His speciality is religion and the arts and he often teaches a course in Religion and the Literary Imagination (or something akin to this title). The students I know love him--there are long waiting lists for his classes. Among the titles he taught last year is Ann Rice's new book, Christ the Lord out of Egypt, a huge departure from the vampire books that brought her fame and wealth. The death of her husband sent her back to her Catholic faith and she wrote the book out of her devotion to Jesus. The professor is interested in a couple of theoretical literary issues--reader response theory and intertextuality. He thought, rather than sitting in his office and speculating, that he could get at both better by forming real groups of Christians reading this book about Jesus' childhood (about which we have no historical evidence) through their religious, text-based lenses. So far he has had two groups, one of evangelical students and one of members of my church (which happens to be the church of his student research assistant). He hopes to form a group of mainline Protestant readers and of Catholic readers as well.

And so my pastor, the IV staff member on campus, and I met in the new coffeeshop on campus with the professor and his assistant. If he had any preconceptions about the uniformity of evangelicals, we quickly messed them up (and I'd say the three of us are not "typical" evangelical readers in any case...no lovers of "Christian fiction" among us; I am the only lover of fiction as a genre of the three though Regis and Annie are both avid readers). Nearly two hours later we emerged, having discussed whether fiction can tell truth (not Truth) by/despite bending historical fact (as Ann Rice does despite her massive research--two examples: she begins with the appocryphal stories of Jesus breathing life into a clay bird and life into a bully he has murdered with his inexplicable power, and she places his getting "lost" at the Temple at age 8, not 12) and whether it can deceive the non-critical reader (as most readers of pop fiction are) into a false, that is, non-Biblical "opinion" about Jesus. Is the book likely to send a naive reader away from Scripture or propel her to it? Is the mixture of truth and falsehood more damaging than the obvious falsehoods of Dan Brown's fiction despite Rice's clear intention to reverence Jesus? Is everything in a novel about Jesus (not about a lesser figure in history or a completely imaginary one) a "claim of theology." Or is fiction about something else even if its subject is God? We didn't solve these issues but I hope we discussed them in a way that will help the professor with his research and along his own spiritual journey.

2-do list 2 long

The trouble with only being home three and a half weeks this summer plus a few days here and there is that our list of things to do and finish so that we can sell the house next winter/spring is longer than our time to get them done. Here's what we should do, besides work of course (math work and getting a talk turned into a paper for Chuck and cranking out chapter 5 for me) and some desired entertaining when the house is not up-ended:
1) Put up two replacement ceiling fans in the sun room. One is in and the other on the way though giving C much grief because of a lost screw and wrong holes to fit the thing to the ceiling.
1 1/2) Possibly reinstall one of the old ceiling fans in our bedroom.
2) Replace the plumbing fixtures in the newly tiled shower (C's) and in the tub in the relatively newly painted bathroom (mine).
3) Replace the glass shower door in said shower.
4) Repaint the kitchen to coordinate better with the new tile floor (decide whether or not to replace the countertops after we see the new paint). I saw repaint because we painted it last summer before we saw what the new tile would do for the room.
5) Paint the living room. (Big job).
6) Stain the deck (two COW students hired to help with this huge two day job).
7) Make all the trips to Lowe's that these jobs necessitate.

The "we" in the first sentences is primarily a royal "we," as you might have guessed. I find dropped screws (except when I can't), fetch necessary tools, give encouragement etc, but will do fully my share in the last-ever !!! deck staining.

Dallas? Which Dallas?

A week ago today, Chuck was carefully driving Ellen's U-Haul through downpours in Louisiana (having survived driving through the record one-hour rainfall total in Vicksburg MS the day before) and I was flying to Dallas. He had carefully arranged our rondevous point as the south remote parking lot of the Dallas airport if he wasn't actually meeting me at the baggage claim area. When I arrived at baggage claim at Dallas Love Airport (a few minutes late), he was there but breathless. Seems that the airport with the north and south remote parking areas is Dallas-Fort Worth. He had gotten the truck into the south lot with care and then called American to see which was my arrival gate. The recorded message told him alright, but it also said "Dallas Love" not "Dallas Fort Worth," the only airport C has ever had occasion to fly through in his traveling career. The best laid plans of mice and men....now what? He negotiated the ten or so miles to Dallas Love but then could find no parking lot that was either not full or had too short an entrance. Finally, after several tries and feeling the clock tick down (If he wasn't there to meet me, what would I do after I discovered there was no remote parking lot, south or north?), the nice folk at Thrifty/Budget rental cars let him park in their back corner. He made it to the baggage claim with a few minutes to spare. Then we had to drive through downtown Dallas traffic at six p.m. on a Friday afternoon. That did nothing for my love of big city traffic, I'll tell you.

By nine p.m. we had made it to Ellen's new townhouse, slept on air mattresses that evening and greeted the two strapping Baylor students who hire themselves out as movers the next morning. We spent the next three days helping her make the townhouse her home, doing the many errands that go into moving from state to state, dodging raindrops, going to the church she is likely to join, and touring the Baylor campus (very beautiful, especially for garden lovers and those who appreciate stylish but functional academic buildings). We decided as the three of us drove back into Dallas so we could get a hotel near Love Field Monday night that from now on, flights ought to go all the way to Waco. Two hours and horrendous traffic might well make the extra cost worth it. Whatever we decide, we'll pay attention to "which Dallas" we will arrive at or go through.

Transitions

Well, we got Jenny settled in her charming home in Holland, as much as we could without her furniture, which arrived the day after we had to leave. It wandered around the Bronx for seven lost hours as the movers filled her partial truck-load, and that meant they couldn't deliver her stuff on Friday. Four of us (Karen included) camped out on the floor in sleeping bags and an aero bed. We were grateful that Jenny bought some patio furniture and a grill so at least we could enjoy some summer eating and her "peaceful" back yard. That's her terminology.

Now Chuck is driving across the soggy south in Ellen's U-Haul truck. I will fly to Dallas tomorrow, he'll meet me at a far-south parking area of the airport and we will drive on down to Waco (Hewitt is where E's townhouse is) together. Some Baylor students will unload the truck Saturday. And speaking of transitions, we put in an offer which was accepted on our retirement home in Grand Rapids last week as well. When we can get inside to take pictures (probably in August--we'd like to stay in Wooster for a few weeks, anyhow), I'll post some and tell the whole "double blessing" story of this wonderful house. "Rejoicing in God's blessings" describes the Hamptons these days.