327 Market

Smells Like

The den smells like stale maple syrup. I don't know if its me, or if I am having weird olfactory hallucinations.

Clue #1 The crusty bowl of oatmeal sitting on the desk.

Clue #2 Empty McCann's Irish Oatmeal Packets (maple flavour) laying in the garbage can.

Mystery solved...

The Silver Bullet Salon

I carpooled with the Amazing 11 yesterday and now my brain is buzzing with ideas. We occasionally talk about culture on our way to the Valley. Yesterday was no different. Her father posits that culture is man's fallen attempt to fill in the spiritual/philosophical/moral vacuum created when mankind rejected God and that human culture is tainted and therefore is neither worth preserving nor important. He has been a missionary for at least a couple of decades, travels widely, and is well-known and respected in Christian circles the world over. Since I haven't spoken to him directly, I haven't gotten the chance to hear this from him personally, nor have I been able to learn all of the ramifications of this philosophy. She says he believes people in developing nations should have the choice to leave their traditional way of life if they want to, instead of staying where they are at (because of poverty, of badly distributed resources or because of some ethnologist's wish to maintain vanishing cultures).

Thank God I Went to a Godless Art School

Our conversation then turned to the idea of Christian culture when I brought up the story of my friend J who studied art at a small christian college in Georgia. I had invited her to one of my figure drawing sessions and she declined. I was shocked! How could one who claims to be an art school grad, who enjoys painting and drawing, not want to gather with other artists to draw the figure? I asked her if she had done it in college at all. She replied that she had done it twice. That her college didn't offer it because they believed it was immoral. She had a radical prof who thought figure drawing was critical, so she hired one of the students to model in her home, and invited her students to come draw secretly (or at least off-campus). The young model was too shy to disrobe completely, so she only took off her shirt. By forcing it underground, the college administration turned it into something that was uncomfortable and creepy-- the very thing they were trying to avoid.

Why do christians have to create their own culture? asked 11.

In creating christian culture, seperate from the mainstream, do we commit some weird backwards idolatry (assuming all human culture is tainted)?

Any thoughts?