done!

that's right...take a bow, folks. we here at hdiv are done. assuming all my papers pass the bar, i'm a MTS2. wahoo!

crummy.

i'm getting sick. bring on the oj! c'mon veggies! grapefruit & oranges are my new best friends. c'mon team, hang in there. fight those viruses for just two more night...go team!

important

a health warning:

when surfing around on the internet while you should be writing a paper, make note of what time it is when you get off-track. that way, when you look up and realize you have been putzing around for 20 minutes, you know that. i find this preferrable to the vague sense of being lost in ether-space for an unknown amount of time.

shays' rebellion

that's right, friends. shays' rebellion--that agrarian uprising in western massachusetts that some say hurried the formation of the 1787 constitution & pulled george washington out of retirement. of this rebellion, jefferson, writing from france, said, more or less "a good revolt is good for a country now and then."

and the religious landscape of the day is fascinating--complete with the state-sponsored congregationalists! what? separation of church & state? not in 1786 massaschusetts!

crazy slowing going am i

dear mojo:
i need you. i know you have been overworked for the last six weeks or so. you deserve a well-earned vacation. yes, of course.

but, dear mojo, i need you to come back. you see, i am in the library silently exploding because my mojo for papers is GONE and i have a good 1 and three-quarters to go. its going to be a long week without you...and bound to be a disappointingly unsuccessful time in my life.

i am sorry that i have been on you for so long. but summer is around the corner and if you could just rescue me for 6 days, i will be eternally indebted.

please, mojo, please.
sincerely,
k.

moving right along...

ah, the feeling of having two papers (of 4) turned in is not quite the exuberence i expect to feel next week at this very moment, but i'm getting there. happily, the stack of books i have to return to the library is larger than the one i still need to comb through. a good sign, my friends. a good sign.

the paper of the weekend is a commentary on the very intriguing book pictured here--the ethics of memory by an israeli professor at the hebrew university in jerusalem, avishai margalit. while his book is broader by scope than by depth, its a fascinating 200-pg read. he distinguishes between ethics & morals saying that ethics is the stuff of "thick relations"--those people in our immediate lives: family, close friends, immediate community members. morals is the stuff of "thin relations" which encompasses all of the rest of humanity.

i think the thing i'm going to tug at his is argument about "moral witnesses" which he says are people who describe how it is to live in evil; not just that evil existed. they, he says, have a special role in "uncovering evil" and offer a sober hope that is realistic. and they must have survived. so while anne frank is definitely a moral witness to the holocaust, she is not what he calls a paradigmatic moral witness because she died. people like marian in the aforementioned "a jew among the germans" are.

okay. it will be an exciting weekend...wahoo! if you call me, chances are extremely high i'm at the library with my wireless card disengaged for the good of my sanity. though greg & i do have a date tonight.

finally, a call for help: i am looking for a moment in u.s. history pre-Reconstruction where class & religion intersect with that moment. any ideas, i am game. that's right, ladies & gentlemen, i'm going to be legally permitted to teach this subject one year from now. scary, i agree. k.

procrastination prognosis

check this out: Federation of Mass. Farmers Markets. i am going to be the market manager at union square's farmers market this summer. wahoo. if you're in the massachusetts area, come by and get your veggies & fruits starting june 10th: 9-1pm each Saturday!

he says i'm a crack head

so...here's the thing. i like the idea of school, but the reality of writing finals is not nearly so fun. i'm just getting going on a paper about the social trinitarian doctrine of jurgen moltmann. i don't know if its because i have to read him in translation (from german), or if he really is just heideggarian-like in his writing, but sheesh! i mean, i tell myself just to read the page, and it all goes haywire.

let me be more productive. his project is to think about how the trinity can be relevent to christians. so...he wants to think about the persons of the trinity as model of human relationality and communion (koinonia). he argues that our monotheism is modeled on monarchy and then when augustine started with the unity of god and moved to the trinity of god, he got us in the west off on the wrong foot. now, that is an argument imbeddd in the 19th century d'regnon paradigm that, unbeknownst and unintended by d'regnon, kind of maligns the West and the East, drawing too thick of lines. but, augustine does start from unitiy and argue to three. moltmann thinks that inevitably limits the human capacity for threeness. so, he wants to assert what he sees as the Eastern way of thinking and argue from threeness to unity. in this thinking, then, humans are challenged to community in modeling divine unity.

he reads the new testament as the history of jesus and the holy spirit as active in the world. the three of them enact love in the world. and it seems like part of moltmann's argument is that if love is in the world via the trinity, then humans have the tools necessary to enact this.

that seems very nice. but would gregory of nyssa or augustine even recognize what he writes as the trinity? maybe not. but who cares? well, sarah coakley does.

okay. clearly, more thinking is necessary. more later. k.

now entering...

dear loved ones:

okay. it has begun. reading period and finals are upon me--four papers to write in four weeks. let me apologize in advance for any of the following:
1. ignored phone calls (though i did finally change my greeting)
2. excessive emails
3. the related demand for email replies
4. boring blog posts
5. rants about papers and their topics
6. finals-induced low self esteem
7. and to the coffee farmers of latin america, i am sorry for my overconsumption

regular-scheduled kate will return around 5pm friday, may 26th.

i hope your mays are lovely and i look forward to hearing about them!
much love,
k.