The reading plan includes three or four chapters of Scripture each day, accompanied by a reading from the Book of Psalms, and is posted on YouVersion.com. You can sign up there to have the daily readings sent to you via email or rss, and use that site to take notes & track your progress. The churches are also supporting this reading community by providing study guides & weekly teaching on the texts, all available at the links above.

The readings for today: Genesis 1-3 and Psalm 1. Join in if you like!

When we read a text, we sometimes notice the overall outline, or perhaps a bit that interests us, and then we quit looking, and start to mentally fill in the rest. Just as nature is more varied than our natural mental ability to fill in, so the text is more varied and interesting than what we project into it.

– David E. Carlson, Watercolor and the Bible,
at Fresh Read

“Those of you who have seen my book, whatever you think of its contents, will probably agree it is a beautiful object. And if the physical book, as we’ve come to call it, is to resist the challenge of the ebook, it has to look like something worth buying, worth keeping.”

– Julian Barnes, accepting the Man Booker prize for The Sense of an Ending

e-books are all very well, they say, but you can’t beat the feel of a traditional, print book can you? The sheer prevalence of this response has got me thinking about what it really means. Interestingly, when questioned further about what exactly they like about the feel of books, the conversation turns more vague….

There are also things I do miss about the physical book format, the book-shelf experience for one. I spent a very pleasant half an hour last weekend browsing my book-shelf with a friend, discussing books I’d enjoyed and passing on novels I thought she’d enjoy. Browsing the list of e-books on my Kindle does not offer a similarly satisfying experience….

But the feel of books? I can’t say that’s something I miss. I love reading. I’ve been an avid reader since I was a child and I think the written word might be the medium that has inspired and moved me the most in my life so far. What has inspired and moved me, though, is the content of the books I’ve read, whether this was printed on a page or delivered digitally via my Kindle.

– MmITScotland, What’s So Great about the Feel of Books?

I don’t suppose we’ll be done with the digital vs. print debate any time soon, probably because it isn’t really about which well-understood thing is superior to which other well-understood thing. Instead, it’s an effort to make sense of new things that throw the old into wholly new contexts, redefining everything else as they define themselves.

So it is with e-books. Before e-books were an option, we had little reason to ask, “What is a book anyway?” Or if we did ask, it would most likely have been in the context of distinguishing book-like content from non-book-like content. But here the content remains (relatively) constant, while everything else changes. Before this shift, it had been a long time since we’d asked questions like, “What good are paper & print for communicating ideas & stories?” And rarely, if ever, have we had reason to think of the feel of books (or for that matter, their smell) as something separate from the books themselves.

But here we are. Readers inclined to embrace technological change have been enthusiastic. Print books are all very well, they say, but you can’t — you shouldn’t — stop the March of Progress! Out with the old, in with the new; and don’t hold back out of some quaint attachment to inferior technology! After all, they say, we’ve been through this before; it’s just more of the same, another step forward, nothing to be afraid of. Stop being so silly!

RT @MorrisonAJ: I accept that this new papyrus stuff is easy to carry around, but I’d miss the feel of a chiseled slab of stone in my hand

October 25, 2011 1:48 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@MmITScotland

MultimediaITScotland

I’ve argued before that a book is what’s bound together, regardless of whether that binding is accomplished via catgut or DRM; but the physical form of the bound book does make a difference. What can printed bound books can do that digital content delivery systems cannot? Until now, the question simply hasn’t come up. The value of print books as distinct from the newer digital formats lies not in the things that both formats can do (poorly or well), but in the things that digital books can’t do at all.

This is where I think the e-book advocates have got it wrong. When Julian Barnes praises the physical book as a beautiful object, he’s speaking as the recipient of an award for excellence in literary craft, to a room full of people whose craft is publishing printed books, who may be wondering where that craft is headed as a viable business. Printed books have always been potentially beautiful objects; with the rise of e-books, this aspect comes to the fore. Printed books can be a tactile delight: the tightness of its binding, the texture of its cover, the heft & weight of its pages — all these create a physical relationship between reader & text, lived and felt in the body, present in, with, & under the “content” of the book.¹ For some books, and for some readers, this will be a less or more important; but for the authors & publishers engaged in the craft of making books, renewing an understanding of the old format is at least as important as exploring the advantages of the new.

What is it that creates the “book-shelf experience” of being bodily in the same room with particular volumes of ideas, each standing physically next to each other and to us? What does it mean for business leaders to work in the corner office with Socrates or Sun Tzu or John Updike, or Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in there, too, visibly present? What’s the difference between text that requires electricity to be read, and one that requires only eyes? What does a home full of physical books mean for the child just learning to read, or for the exhausted mother just learning to read aloud to her child? And what do these experiences do for us that cannot be done by files on an electronic gadget?

Appreciating the distinct strengths of printed books, even before we fully understand them, is not a blind, fearful resistance to Progress. It is merely the willingness to listen to the printed page, and learn its lessons. And just as the page will teach us to write, and to read, so too it will teach us to publish.

“In fact, it’s hard to find a single minute during which the American public is not completely captivated by these shining… these dazzling…”
– Report: 90% Of Waking Hours Spent Staring At Glowing Rectangles

St. Augustine said the rapture of the saved soul will “flow over” into the glorified body. In the light of our present specialized and depraved appetites we cannot imagine this torrens voluptatis…. Meanwhile the cross comes before the crown and tomorrow is a Monday morning.

– C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (The Weight of Glory & Other Addresses)

In Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools, Max Harris argues that we might we wise to reconsider the meaning of fools in our history and culture, and the origin of this strange day. We’ve long thought of April Fool’s day as being rooted in a riotous, disorderly, profane mockery of respectable society, especially the hierarchy of the church. Not so! says Prof. Harris. By returning to original historical documents and carefully untangling fact from rumor, Harris uncovers instead a reverent liturgy that was in fact an alternative to wild misrule. Celebrated in only a few Cathedrals and churches in northern France at the turn of the thirteenth century, the feast used role reversals in liturgical worship, with minor clergy taking leading roles, to give thanks to God for choosing the foolish and humble, rather than the great and powerful, to accomplish His purposes, and especially for humbling Himself to take human form as the Suffering Servant. This idea, that the Good News was an act of God that turned the world upside down, confounding our notions of honor and propriety, is an ongoing Biblical theme.¹

It didn’t take long for the rest of the church to imitate the world, taking offense at God’s topsy-turvy notions. By the fifteenth century, church leaders who has heard unflattering rumors and distorted accounts of this form of worship were writing attacks against it, sometimes exaggerating or even deliberately lying to make their point. Later generations believed those false accounts all too readily, mixed them up with other festivals, and obscured the understanding of the original liturgy & it’s meaning.

Exalting — respecting, honoring, loving — worthless people was an offensive thing in Jesus’ day, and to call someone a worthless fool is still an insult today, one we use frequently. But perhaps we’d be wise to rethink that practice, too:

This almost throwaway line usually gets short shrift in many Christian circles. And it’s true that this same chapter in Matthew’s Gospel raises issues that are seemingly more important. Jesus talks about himself as the fulfillment of the Law, for example. That’s pretty important. He talks about adultery. He talks about divorce. He talks about lying. All these things are significant statements. But almost in the same breath, he talks about speaking kindly to one another, not slandering one another, not calling one another’s names, and does so quite in the strongest terms.

Why do we overlook this? Probably because we do it so often.

“Whoever says to his brother raca will be answerable to the Sanhedrin [the Jewish court],” Jesus says, “and whoever says ‘you fool’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna.”

That’s strong stuff. If you engage in name-calling, you’ll go to hell. Pretty surprising, given what Christians usually focus on. When’s the last time you heard a Christian in public life speak in such strong terms about name-calling?

–Rev. James Martin, S.J.,  Matthew 5:22: The Forgotten Gospel Passage on Name-Calling

So it seems our notions of fools and foolishness could use some close examination. Here’s a list of seven fools to help us out:

1. Seven Samurai It’s been called “the greatest film in Japanese cinema.” My boys & I can believe it! Layers of fear, friendship, justice, respect, heroism, and tragedy make Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece a film to watch over many times. Toshiro Mifune as samurai-wannabe Kikuchiyo shows that even the lowest fool can have virtues unseen at the surface.
2. King Lear Shakespeare’s play of family and foolishly placed loyalty, and a fool that speaks the truth to a tragic king.
3. Mimus Lilli Thal’s grim, complex medieval story of growing up through coping with pain and defeat, in which captured Prince Florin is apprenticed to Mimus the Fool, “a bundle of contradictions as victim, victimizer, and possible savior.”
4. Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories Isaac Bashevis Singer’s brilliant stories of folks who may be fools, but don’t let that hold their hearts back. (Great to read aloud!)
5. God’s Fool: The Life and Times of Francis of Assissi A look at a young man who wanted what every young noble wants: glory and honor in battle, fame and fortune at home — and of what happened when he abandoned those dreams for a foolishness that changed the world.
6. Five Festal Garments: Christian Reflections on the Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Esther We are fools for our hearts, seeking meaning, seeking love, and sometimes finding only grief. Barry G. Webb takes us through the “five scrolls” to wrestle with the way life makes fools of us, and offers us garments of love, kindness, suffering, vexation, and deliverance.
7. How to Read Proverbs “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom — but only fools despise wisdom and discipline.” Leading us through explorations of the cultural context and the setting in Scripture of the Biblical Book of Proverbs, Tremper Longman III doesn’t let us get complacent with a shallow understanding of wisdom.

–

When God began to create the heavens & the earth, the earth was formless & void, while the Spirit of God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light!” — and there was light. And God saw that the light was good….

In the day that the Lord God made the earth & the heavens…then the Lord God formed an earth-man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.

– from Genesis 1 & 2

They will not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

– from Isaiah 11

And the one who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new….”

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God & of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the City. On either side of the river is the tree of life, with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there any more; but the throne of God & of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign for ever & ever.

– from The Revelation to John 21 & 22

Here’s that original short (which my mom might have seen in the movie theater along with a news reel about the World’s Fair or the Germans bombing London):

This was nominated for an Academy Award. If that disturbs you, perhaps you could pick up Everything Bad Is Good for You in which Steven Johnson argues that pop culture, by demanding more & more of our cognitive surplus in order for us to keep up with it’s increasing complexity, is actually making us smarter.

Not sure if I buy that, but I do know that the stranger Bugs got, the more I liked it:

What do you think? Do popular stories get more complex over time? Have the shows you watch become more challenging? Can complex structure offset vapid content? Is it possible to have both?

Participating in a zealous community of readers facilitated their reading growth–no matter how many books each child completed….Each book title represents a story–not only the words on the page–but the story of a reader, who discovered something about literacy, himself, or the world while reading every book. No tally or list adequately captures the power of these stories.