A Sci-Fi Destiny

Having received some interesting pushback about orthodoxy after writing on the science fiction show “Stargate, SG-1″ last post (read the comments from episcopal café here), I’m following up here on rootweaving with a book recommendation and the question it provoked.

The book? Well, there’re three of them, actually. I just read through Peter Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn Trilogy for the second time (and second year in a row, as it so happens). I don’t want to spoil the ending (there are a few folks who I know read this blog who might enjoy the 3000+ pages — a fun discussion of the book’s style at the bottom half of Hamilton’s blog entry here), but I think you can still really enjoy the books even if you go in knowing this much about them: Hamilton comes up with a (scientific and fictional) theory of what the soul is.

Stargate SG-1, Orthodoxy, and Imagination

(Edit: This piece was also published on episcopal café, a blog that offers writings on a number of topics related to spirituality. There were some strong opinions offered in the comments; read it here)

I recently (last night!) finished a lengthy project of mine, and finished watching Stargate SG-1 on DVD, putting me several years behind those who followed it on-air. For those who don’t know, the show had a mixture of religious themes, mythology, romance, humor, and the US Air Force going into space by walking through wormholes in the Stargate. But this morning, walking to work (following my own busgate trip), I found myself thinking back over my time watching it, and while I found it a fun romp, I realized that I disagree with (at least) one of the basic assumptions of the show’s fantasy.

The Gay IS Contagious!!

Over on episcopalcafe, a cyberspace locale for intelligent conversation about faith, Rev. Donald Schnell’s Article, “Reasoning with the mind of the heart,” had a good, high octane phrase that caught my attention: “What changes our mind is our heart, not argument. The experience of knowing people changes our mind.”

This caused me to realize something that fury-filled conservatives have long-known: the gay IS contagious!!

Trinity Sunday Sermon

I’m spending the summer doing some worship leadership and preaching at a parish in Chicago suburbs; here’s the text of the sermon I preached on Trinity Sunday, though I sometimes tend to go off the text pretty far if I feel like something needs more explaining.

Strong Roots

Recently, a post by Jeff Lehn helped me put words to something I’ve been thinking through recently: my resistance to “strong” versions of statements. (Jeff was wondering about how Christians answer the question “What is the gospel,” and I found myself resisting any single, strong answer)

A statement is in its “strong” version when it is closer to an absolute statement. It’s a history that’s written by the victors. It’s often something true when you look at it head on, but it can often leave you with a “well, yes, but . . .” thought. Strong claims are things like “The key to fixing the economy is reducing entitlements” (or any other thing you’d care to put in there), or “The history of the western world will always tend towards progress, and science will replace unnecessary religious myths.”

But even as I resist them, I can’t help but wonder if strong statements aren’t actually a more “true” thing to hold to than their more complex and nuanced counterparts. Let me explain.

The Squares on the Board

Recently I’ve been thinking about how people make decisions (I’m usually thinking about this, on some level or another). Sometime in the last few weeks, I heard about “mirror neurons,” which basically, as I understand them, “fire” as if you were doing the same activity you observe someone else doing. So when we’re babies, we use these to learn how to perform increasingly advanced tasks, and when we’re more cognitively-developed, we can use these to empathize with others, “feeling” their pain, understanding what they’re going through, etc.

Now, I think that biology offers us some of the most powerful metaphors for other aspects of our lives (partly on the theory that, being embodied, all of our experiences come through bodies, so we can only analogize from those experiences, whether we like it or not). So I got to wondering, to what extent do we have emotional, spiritual, or ethical “mirror neurons?”

Reflections on the Week

I don’t claim any particular knowledge of how to untangle the events of last weekend, and the killing of Osama Bin Laden, but I have written some thoughts in response to Jeff Lehn’s blog, which I’ve mentioned before several times. Please feel free to follow the link and the conversation if you’re also trying to feel your way towards more resolution around what happened and all the after-effects. — Ben