This morning as I read BBC News and my Christology textbook, two thoughts keep bobbing to the surface:
1. The federal bailout of mortgage firms Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae: I believe I recall an interview on Marketplace (Public Radio International) that said it's an open secret that these public-private partnerships are effectively a socialized banking system. WIth the full take-over, we now have government-run mortgage banks. This is a peculiar move for a Republican administration that is supposedly dedicated to small government and a free market. Don't get me wrong--I support the bail-out to reduce financial crisis on national and individual levels--but it seems like a funny inconsistency between ideology and practice. I hope it puts to rest the peculiar mistrust of socialism (the idea that some things must be administered by the state instead of the free market -- agencies such as police, fire, defense, roads...).
2. My Christology (the study of Jesus as the Christ figure in Christianity) textbook presents a pretty traditional view. There's a lot of talk about how Jesus represented a new relationship between God and humanity. It seems like a funny inconsistency, to claim that Jesus changed everything, and Jesus is the only thing that has and ever will change everything. You have to open to the possibility that change will happen, and then close quickly to the idea that change could ever happen. Well, and you also have to buy the Bible texts as historically accurate and "true." I don't buy the "new relationship" thing, because I believe religion is always involves looking in the rearview mirror and interpreting previous texts and traditions in light of current situations (just like the early Christians, and some today, look in the rearview mirror and interpret Hebrew Bible texts as if they automatically point to Jesus--a strange assumption, given the contexts of the writing.
I guess the real point is that someday I'll have to either accept the traditions I was born in, problems and all, and find a way to sift through, interpret, and be comfortable--or I'll have to leave it behind as no longer worthy of being passed on.
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I think you know this, and I think you know I'm gonna say this, but you have to read Catherine Bell. She turned ritual studies on its head when she moved her focus from explicit "rituals" to the act of ritualizing everyday actions, she looks at how these habits become meaning-makers in our lives. For instance, it's a habit that your mother-in-law kisses you in the morning and asks how you slept. So, what does that mean? How is she marking her relationship with you? With whom else does she do that?...and so on.
Ritual is the world.
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