Gathered As One

I went to a small, liberal-arts college in Annapolis, Maryland (Saint John's College). It's an unusual place, where great books are read and discussed. It's a fixed curriculum, which means no pesky majors or electives. Everyone starts as a freshman (no transfers, thank you), and everyone takes the same classes, in the same order, from the 1930s to the present. That's bound to bring a great deal of cohesion to any group.

It's a smallish place; they only admit about a hundred freshmen each year. Since everyone begins as a freshmen, the size of the student body is kept in check. When I attended (1983-1987), the vast majority of students lived on campus. Campus life was rich and rewarding. As I look back, my mind often ends up in the dining hall.

Now, I'm as a big fan of cafeteria food as the next guy (as long as the next guy is my friend, Elliott). I ate my way through some memorable meals (THIRTEEN patty melts! Take that!!). I can probably still find the red Jell-O stuck to the high ceiling by Jack Handy one bored lunch. The room itself is a thing of beauty. Deep, wide, high, with a wooden floor and two rows of columns running its length, it's a wonderful space.

Yet it's not fond memories or architecture that recommend the place to me. It's community. With such a small student body and with so many on campus, meals at Saint John's were where (essentially) the entire community met several times a day. Sure, we all sat at separate tables--often zealously guarded for years at a time--but we came together around a single (if metaphorical) table.

So, if the guys from third-floor Randall decided at the last minute to have a party, all they had to do was ring a glass at dinner and make the announcement. Everybody knew. Instantly (years before the advent of Instant Messaging). It's occurred to me that that was the real power of the place. Everybody at their own tables, with their own friends, in their own conversations, yet with the ringing of knife on glass, we were One Body.

In the 1990s, major construction was required on some of the old, decaying dorms. As a necessity, more students lived off campus. I wasn't there for those years, but a good friend of mine was and noticed the shape of the community change. Gone were the days when the tinkling of a glass could attract the eyes and ears of the body as whole. That incredible sense of togetherness was lost. I don't know how things have fared since they re-opened those dorms. I don't know if community life has coalesced around that wonderful dining hall. I pray that it has, because that wwas where the beating heart of that place was to be found in my day.

Shields and Swords

When I was in grad school the first time, I took a number of law classes. I remember well my Criminal Law & Procedure class, taught by a pair of Secret Service agents. One night, in a conversation about Constitutional rights, one of them quoted "the Constitution is a shield, not a sword." (A recent Internet search has turned up no definitive author of this quote, but suggests James Polk.) The line has always stuck in my mind.

In subsequent years, I came to study the Bible with some great seriousness. I discovered that many people wield the Bible as a weapon against others (notably against other Christians). This grieved me greatly (and still does). In my own mind, I began to apply the Constitutional quote to the Bible, thinking (and saying), "the Bible is a shield, not a sword."

That's what troubles me about this week's lectionary text: Ephesians 6:10-17. It speaks powerfully about the "whole armor of God," which is to keep us safe as we take the Gospel of Peace into a hostile world. What's not to love about the belt of truth and the breastplate of righteousness? I want that shield of faith and helmet of salvation!

But then Paul shifts gears. To all this protective armor is added the "sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God." Here's where Paul's metaphor breaks down for me, as I see the word of God (or the Word of God, for that matter) not as a weapon, but as a force of grace, healing, peace and protection.

The armor of God is essential if we're to take the Gospel of Peace out into the dark places. I just don't know why we need the sword.

I think I'll leave mine at home.

Update on my Netbook

My friend, Amy, asked me how I like my new netbook (ASUS Eee PC 901). I've been writing about it to a few people, so I thought I blog it for posterity...

I got mine in early July 2009. I played around with it, but didn't really use it much (not a lot of wi-fi in Arkport). I got a great deal ($169) on a lower-end model that seemed to meet my low-end needs. I did some common upgrades (upping RAM from 1G to 2G and replacing slow 4G Solid-State-Disk with faster 16G SSD) and was content.

As a low-cost netbook, mine came with Linux (no biggie, I like UNIX variants). I replaced the so-so stock Linux install with the Ubuntu Netbook Remix (better formatted for small screens). I started using it. Fun, quick, no probs. Life was good, and it was great to have a command line again.

Then my old, slow laptop died. I'd been using it as my office PC. When it went, I needed to put the netbook into service fast. Ubuntu gave me a few hassles here, some I've experienced before with Linux, others were new. I needed to add the fonts I use in my church publications. No biggie, I've added fonts to UNIX systems before. I even found clear and helpful instructions on the Internet. The only problem? They didn't work. Grrr...

I also need to print at work, and printing is (in my 15+ yrs experience) the Achilles Heel of Linux. I'm sure others know how to make it work and have no issues. I've NEVER been able to get a Linux/*BSD/Solaris machine to print successfully. Call me dumb.

So, this week I jumped ship and installed the Windows 7 Release Candidate on it. I've been testing Win 7 on my home PC since last year and like it a lot. I wasn't sure if the netbook could handle it, but Microsoft is specifically targeting the netbook market (the only PC market to have any real positive sale this year). Once I made a bootable Windows 7 USB thumb drive, I was off to the races. Installation was a snap, hardware recognized without a hitch.

Speed is great. The laptop I was formerly using was a Sony VAIO from the year 2000. It had a Celeron 600 CPU and 256M of RAM. I was running Windows 2000 Pro on it and it was OK, but sluggish, especially loading programs. The netbook is like a Ferrari compare to it (though just about anything would be!). I've yet to experience even a hiccup.

I am conscious about hard drive space. I've got a 16GB SSD in it, Win 7 takes up under 6G of that. I also have a 4G SD card to store stuff like music files. It's really no biggie, I keep all my working documents on a thumb drive. My media-intensive files (images, movies, music) mainly live on my home PC, with it's whopping 80G hard drive. I'm not anticipating a problem with the 16G capacity of the netbook (though I can get a 32G or 46G SSD for it, if I do).

So far, so fun!!

Shooting Star!

While it's hardly earth-shattering news (in fact, it barely broke the atmosphere), I did see one Perseid meteor last night. I was out taking the dog for her late-night wee when I saw the bright streak in the sky. I wasn't able to get out any other time this week, when the shower was at its peak. Well... at least I saw one!

The Deplorable State of Magical Education Today

I've been thinking about Harry Potter. Something's been bothering me for years about the current crop of young wizards and witches portrayed in the HP books and films. They all seem to suck at magic. By this I mean that they seem to be in no way the magicians their predecessors were. Maybe this is a commentary on the decline of education at Hogwarts and beyond...
Consider Harry's dad, James, and his Hogwarts pals, Sirius, Remus and Peter. By the time they were Harry's age, they had created the Marauder's Map (one of the most infallible and amazing pieces of wizardry in the series) while three of them (if memory serves) had become accomplished Animagi -- able to transform into animals at will (stag, dog and rat). All this before they were eighteen.
Reading (or watching) the Half-Blood Price shows us young Severus Snape, who was busy correcting his textbooks and inventing his own powerful spells. Let's not even talk about the things that young Tom Riddle was able to do whilst at Hogwarts.
While still a student (we hear in the Half-Blood Prince movie), Harry's mom-to-be, Lily, was able to conjure a wondrous magical fish that swam contentedly until the day she died.
In short, who among the current crop of Hogwarts students is doing anything like this? It seems like Harry, while plucky, only knows three of four spells. Even Hermione, the genius of them all, seems to be a master of Magical Trivia (knowing the answer to every magical question there is) without actually doing much momentous magic.
I'm sending my kids to private wizard school.