Memorizing 1 John: six weeks later

This was where it started:

7/14/2012: ...picked out the Spiritual Disciplines Handbook from the library, again, and this time I set myself to one of them: a memorization of 1 John 3. One of my go-to Epistles of the NT, and it's... one of my go-to Epistles in general, like Psalm 103 and Psalm 19....

There are 24 verses in the chapter; one verse a day, and I'll be able to memorize it all by August 19.

Well, that didn't happen. I did, however, manage to memorize 1 John 3:1-24 by September 1, though. As of today, I've skipped back a bit to 1 John 1:1-3; my plan is to work my way through 1 John 1-2 and take it from there. Hopefully I should have the entire thing down by the end of the year.

A Bible As It Might Be

GAS is the clinical term for a psychological issue first recognized in the guitarist community. It's an acronym for "Gear Acquisition Syndrome." I got it early on in life, and I've had it ever since.

It comes in a few forms. One of them - most prevalent with books, for me - is completism. Series of books are self-reinforcing, cookbooks especially. There are two series of cookbooks that I will buy less because I'm interested (or able) to make any of their recipes than for the simple satisfaction of a rainbow row of books lined up together, all the same size and series. The other - especially with guitar paraphernalia - is utopianism: drawing up the exact utopian specifications for every last detail, in ways that would honor Fourier himself. This year, my GAS has been for Bibles.

Starting in January, when I first found religion, it was driven by dissatisfaction with the one that I had, which (as I've testified before) I had no idea how to read or even approach. Starting in the late spring, it was linked to the discovery of new favorite authors and new versions. As of the last month, it's been enabled and furthered by the GAS-inducing Bible Design and Binding Blog, which finally confirmed what I'd realized without knowing: that the Bibles I like are both marginal and poorly-supported. (The marginality and support are directly tied into the Discourse of Decline, and while it's going to take a lot of research to get the details it will be touched upon.)

I'd tried outlining point-by-point things about my dream Bible before. I fell asleep last night on  another specific list from Christian Matters of Taste. And in the morning, I awoke to the ever brilliant Slacktivist's article, "When 'evangelism' intends to alienate and exclude," which just about brings me to the matter at hand.

Fred started with an Orwell-grade lead: "The Truth For Youth culture-war Bible we discussed yesterday is destined to be poorly received. I think that's by design." Invisible Neutrino followed up:

One attraction I could see is that for teenagers questioning their place in the universe - what their purpose is - one possible answer is given in the Bible and its associated faith. But it has to be a process of self-discovery. You can't just patly supply the answer and expect someone to uncritically accept it; that's not the bedrock of a proper foundation of a faith-based existence.

It's linked because I'm still responding to it, and will write more on that in the future. But the first words out of my mouth on reading that were "I've been mulling over something like that myself..."

Evangelicals have tons of teen Bibles, with very specific culture-war topical notes and horrid garish finishes that instantly doom them to a fate no Bible should ever have: being outgrown. (I can't speak for the mainline, but I was given more or less a bonded-leather pew Bible; I have sentimental bonds to it but it's been totally unapproachable my whole life.)

Teenagers are questioning and establishing their place in the cosmos, and the Bibles they're given either give them pat answers or walls of text that are clearly meant to be filled in by an outside source (which teens are challenging.) From a product-side view (inspired by lurking on the Better Bibles Blog), somebody needs to design a Bible that lends itself to being both critically engaged and kept.

I'd mulled over specifics in the past, but right there was a half-sentence embodiment of what my dream Bible is meant to be. And now I'm going to spell out why it would look like itself - and what that self would look like.

Also, what she said up there at the top

So far, this series has been as follows:

• I used to define myself in oppositions...
• I used to need to assert my faith...
• I used to think of this thing as stone tablets...
• Faith used to be a capstone...

Tonight I'm going to interject with words not my own, from the same series of posts.

I used to think I needed to “reach out” to those who are marginalized, overlooked, oppressed…

This week in Andalusada blogging

This week has been an extraordinarily busy one on Andalusada.

• I've introduced two kings.
• I've had a few moments of linguistic geekery, which are always enormously fun for me.
• I've begun the lifelong process of de-Eurocentrizing the blog, in space and in time.
• And I've started writing about writings.

It's been a pretty good week.

Andalusada principles and practices

This is a cross-bloggage. The original was posted here.

IRL, Islamic Spain ended around 1250, with the collapse of the Almohads. Andalusada is the story of how that civilization never died; how its death was, in fact, derailed before it could begin. Even more importantly than that, however, Andalusada is the story of how that derailing (and the survival) changed the world beyond recognizability into uncanniness.

I'm not purely making things up as I go, though. There are some rules of thumb. Here they are.

Coming soon to a continuity near you

One of these years, maybe this year, I wanna do Pretend To Be A Time Traveler Day. A dystopian one, of course, because dystopians have the most fun.

But I'm not really thinking of the usual post-apocalyptic style of dystopia.

In an homage to Dan Simmons, Bruce Bawer, Bat Ye'or and the entire class of professional prophets of Islamophobia, we're gonna be

Tourists From The Grim Darkness Of The Evil United American Islamofascist Caliphate Of 1930.

(1930 Hijri. That's something like AD 2500 as the kaffirs reckoned such things.)

And I mean we, because the way I'm seeing this I'm gonna need a few lady friends to do this with me.

• Them: The actual tourists. Wanting to get out of the confines (such as they are? The United American Emirates did have to soak up a lot of unbelievers really quickly, after all, and if Iran and Europe are any indications having an official state religion really helps secularize a society quite a bit) of the mind-numbing boredom that projections of neoconservative utopias will wind up being when the whole wail-and-envy-the-dead part wears off tend to involve. (And presumably burqas. You can't have a proper Evil Islamofascist Caliphate without all the women being forced to wear burqas.) Far too genki and tourist-y for their own good. Which is where I come in.
• Me: The handler. Grim, frustrated, looking vaguely like a cross between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Uncle Jam Wants You.

  I've commented on this before talking to Engel, but I may as well say it here too: Shi'a fundamentalism would be greatly improved if it took some fashion points from George Clinton. But I digress.

  Bored out of my mind, obviously out of place, and only there because in the grim darkness of the Islamofascist future women can't go outside or do anything without a mahram male. I'm the straight man in all the jokes; the killjoy who tries to make sure they never have any fun (Sisters, it's haram! The pious ancestors never let themselves have fun. It's part of the jihad an-nafs); the enforcer of Islamopatriarchy, who's scandalized by everything they do and writes it all down in his little black book.

Not sure about what exactly we'll do, besides wander around as a group and pose for photographs. I do have one basic vignette worked out, though:

(to a passer-by) "It's so strange, all the signs in English... where I'm from everything's in Arabic."
("Where are you from?") "Milwaukee."

Or something like that.