On Sufjan Stevens and the "born-again" phrase.  On the expression that sends some into mystery while others into repulsion: born-again. Once while hearing a Catholic priest speak, I witnessed him almost crawl out of his skin at this phrase, at the question "Are you born-again?"  Somebody in his past asked him, and and he responded, "I come from Poland. I have been all over Europe.  People don't ask you there if you are born-again Christian or not in Europe.  Yet when I came to America 6 years ago that is a familiar question that has been posed to me.  And every time I am asked, I remain thinking 'Is person unsure of his faith, that he has to ask of mine?'"

I don't think it is the best phrase, and I think it is overused, yet I feel one cannot dance around the centrality, the magnificence, the starting point of salvation.  And if slogan-obsessed Christians continue insisting on making the phrase an obese, uncomfortable elephant in the room, than woe to them to sticking to their borrowed, rusted guns.

The Ssss Ssss the man the Sss ss: Sufjan Stevens (an Episcopalian) has been building a bonfire in the music industry of late adding the delicate folk, intricate choral pieces, banjo whispers, and high school cheers that has been burning so mightily that its fire has won him many diverse listeners.  I have listened to several music acts lately from Emmylou Harris to Old Crow Medicine Show to Nirvana to Nico to Common.  Yet Sufjan's album "Seven Swans" has now a special place in my heart. "Seven Swans" is the only album that allows me to mystically drift through the music.  Too many albums make you tense by the end while this album eases the tension, and unchains you to glide in the wind.  It has been weaving its way into my character, and along with N.T.Wright and occasional visits to the Episcopal churches in town, the majesty and reverrence of Anglican Christianity is becoming increasingly appealing.  Reading the Lord's Prayer, singing the Hymns, surrounding each other in God's symbolism, acknowledging God's grandeur in architecture, all in unison of the worshipping community, is is is is is... purificatory and joyfull, people!  Well enough about this, and let's hear what Sufjan Stevens had to say on the meaning of being born-again:  

Sufjan Stevens, from the Oct/Nov 2005 issue of Plan B Magazine:

This is what it means to be born again: to fully and completely disengage with the preconceptions and preoccupations of the adult world and its religions, to dismantle all laws - of physics and society - and yield yourself to the birth canal, and what comes after, in which everything begins to shake and tremble with all senses fully turned to the centre of the universe, the creator, God the Father, in whose cultivation we begin to know and understand our true selves, our real selves, as a reflection of God's image, his creation, like newborn babies, full, fresh, suckling, elated and laughing at everything... I'd like to spend less time talking about God and more time being in God's presence. I think that would put an end to this conversation, once and for all.

A brand new semester brings professors of geology who put "Reminder" in the middle of the first page of syllabus to remind us what they think education is.  Here's what my geology professor came up with:

"The essence of education is an attempt to model beliefs and opinion in accordance with reason and facts, so far as they are known.  The intensity of a belief does not make it correct or valid no matter how widely shared."

Hmmmmm...... I guess he does not believe in miracles.

I was on the Internet today and I found all of this, somehow:

  "What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and; anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding." — Friedrich Nietzsche, On truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense

  "I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives." — Leo Tolstoy

Graduate student commits suicide

Dec. 4, 1997

By Lori Lenarduzzi

Staff Writer for The Baylor Lariat

Oatman 'Mike' Green, a 47-year-old Georgetown philosophy graduate student, died from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head on Nov. 22, according to Sgt. Pete Hughey, an investigator for the Williamson County Sheriff's Office.

Green left behind a wife and two children, ages 17 and 14. Funeral services were Nov. 25 at Gabriel Funeral Home in Georgetown. A burial with full military honors followed at a cemetery a few miles from there.

Green had a bachelor's degree from Dallas Baptist University and two master's degrees from Southwestern University. He was an active-duty army chaplain who was completing a master's degree in ethics, according to Lydell Stike, an Austin graduate student. Stike was also sent on orders by the army to participate in the same program. He was a friend of Green's and spoke at his funeral.

'Mike's death was very unexpected and just a tragic death,' Stike said. 'It's hard to understand.'

Stike said Green's family was doing as well as could be expected. He said they were appreciative of the kindness from students and friends.

Dr. Robert Baird, chairman of the philosophy department, said the department is grieved over Green's death.

'We thoroughly enjoyed having Mike in class,' Baird said. 'He was much appreciated.'

Chris Blakley, a Garland graduate student said that Green will be missed in the department.

'Mike was a nice guy with a lot of great stories,' Blakley said. 'His death really makes you think about how precious life is.'

Copyright © 1997 The Lariat

Comments or Questions can be sent to The Lariat

"Thinking can never answer its own ultimate 'Why?' because each answer only generates a new 'Why?'"

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer