This has been cracking me up for a couple years. Our local grocery tags Land O' Lakes products as LOL. I wonder if they know what amusement they are affording us.

Filed under Geek
Posted by ironic1 at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As a rule, I enjoy taxonomies, typologies, personality inventories, and the ilk. I've been Meyers Briggsed, Strong Campbelled, Corinne Wared, Gallup Strengths Findered, Enneagrammed, and the list goes on.

But, honestly, I'm not sure any of them are much better or worse than the good old D&D alignment matrix. In old school D&D you choose an alignment to describe the ethos of your character. You can, on one axis, be Lawful, Neutral, or Chaotic in relationship to your adherence to authority, and on the other axis be Good, Neutral, or Evil in what, in game terms, boils down to your own sense of altruism. In D&D terms, Evil characters are always out for self enrichment and use other people to achieve their own ends.

When applied to real life the alignment grid becomes very interesting. As a pastor in a major, mainline denomination (perhaps two of them) you might predict that I'd be Lawful Good, seeking to maintain social order and promote the common good. It's the classic Paladin alignment after all. But, actually, in testing and in practice, I'm Chaotic Good, and not accidentally so.

I'm fairly suspicious of institutions, whether governmental or ecclesiastical, and not that I doubt the good intentions of the leadership, though sometimes I do. Moreso I question the overall efficacy of such institutions and their ability to really do anything of worth. The bigger the institution, the more out of touch it is. And that's not just my experience, it's my theological reasoning as well. A key biblical text for me in this regard is 1 Samuel 8 which describes what a king does to his people.

Also, I'm just suspicious of moral frameworks in general. After all the fall was caused not by eating an apple, but eating of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Morality is a curse in the context of Genesis 3 and one could argue that the rest of the Bible is dealing with that curse.

So, I'm a Chaotic Good Preacher. I believe that Good is best expressed in individual actions of compassion and justice and not in institutional expressions of the same. Sometimes the system works, sure, but even a blind pig finds an acorn once in awhile.

Practically this means I preach about grace and joy found in concrete expressions of individual's life and charity found in the life of the community. As a leader I try to be sure that my institution for which I'm paradoxically responsible is a permission giving body that tries to chart a course for the body, and then pretty much stays out of the way, giving resources and support, rather than micromanaging. In other words, I try never to let the rules stand in the way of a good idea.

Filed under Geek | Musing | Religion
Posted by ironic1 at 8:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

My daughter, Emma, is featured in this promo video. What she says is true. When she was six and first auditioning she was extremely shy, but also extremely charming. I'm very proud of her, in case you didn't know.

Filed under Kin | Theater
Posted by ironic1 at 2:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Simon has started contributing to a D&D wiki and has created two races - Hill Giant and Underworld Elf. Not only did he master the whole wiki editing thing without any input from me but he clearly demonstrates great formatting and editing sensibilities. He has an eye for detail and game mechanics as well. Really, my geek heart is full to overflowing. Couldn't be prouder.

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Posted by ironic1 at 9:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I dreamt last night that I was teaching or working in a seminary. I was working on a project where, with a team of grad students, I was doing a thorough cataloging of all of the verbs in the New Testament associated with Jesus, particularly from the Gospels and doing a statistical analysis of the frequency of these verbs so that we could say, with some statistical certainty, what Jesus would do.

I remember I had a rather lengthy discussion of whether we should admit the verb "to be" into our calculations as was argued that the word is often just a linking verb and has no real existential meaning in most cases.

I also remember a dean or a vice president or some such authority being very upset with me because he thought I was trivializing the whole thing and wasting time.

The interesting thing is, now that I have had the dream, I think this might be a fun project to do in reality.

Filed under Dream
Posted by ironic1 at 9:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Washington Post today mistaken says that "Zachary Quinto prepared to play Spock in the new 'Star Wars'." The sound you hear is bat'leths being sharpened and readied for battle.

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Posted by ironic1 at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I had a dream last night that Noah was gay. God saw how horrible the world was and decided the whole of creation needed to be reset, so God got Noah and his partner, who both looked really buff, and explained the plan and that they would have to gather all the animals on board the ark.

Noah, perplexed by this plan, wondered aloud to God about what would happen after he and his partner died off and there were no more humans left. God led them down into the lower levels of the ark where there were these humanoid robots in various states of construction.

"These will replace humans as caretakers of my creatures," said God. "They can't do any worse than humans have."

And that's where the dream ended.

Filed under Dream
Posted by ironic1 at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)