Seven Days of Creation, Dorothy and Peter
Another one of those What's Brian Doing and Reading Posts
Hi Everyone,
I’m back teaching a couple college courses, and getting them up and running and getting to know a new batch of great young adults has taken most of my time. I’m bound and determined to continue to find time to offer my writing here on this Substack. But, every day is a juggling/balancing act.
Perhaps you are not surprised to hear that I’ve not been idle. I am going to be participating in a panel discussion with two other professors (that new title “professor” makes me chuckle inside a little whenever I apply it to me. What, exactly am I professing? You who read this Substack would know best!) I’m quite excited and interested to participate in it. We are going to use Chapters 1:1-2:4 of the book of Genesis (the seven day creation story) to demonstrate for folks what we do in the course that we teach. We will try to show close reading and asking questions of the text to derive (or divine!) meaning. The “hook” question that’s on the flyer is “Must We Choose Between Science and Religion?” If you know me from this Substack, you know that kind of question is right up my alley, and so I find myself constantly musing about it, jotting down thoughts, snippets and reminders to myself about what I want to say. . .and also reminders to try not say too much and overwhelm people! If you are local to Racine and want to attend, reach out to me and I’ll send you the info.
I’m also reading a new book: We Are Only Saved Together: Living the Revolutionary Vision of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement by Colin Miller. I came across it while researching for the World Religions class I’m teaching. Through that research I found this excellent Catholic Worker Substack page, and Colin was profiled in a recent issue. Colin is based in Minneapolis, and is writing from a Catholic Worker perspective as the title suggests. If you’ve never encountered the Catholic Worker movement, it’s worth checking out. You’ve likely heard of Dorothy Day, but fewer people know her partner in starting the Catholic Worker, Peter Maurin. Reading this book was a great way for me to learn a little more and gain more interest into both of these interesting historical persons with inspiring visions. While I have a long list of deep disagreement with the institutional Catholic Church, I also have great respect and affinity for certain elements of the Catholic Worker movement. I first checked it out when I was in seminary, and returning to it through Colin’s writing is quite evocative and interesting for me. Although it may seem like he’s coming from a very different context, he quotes and refers to Wendell Berry in certain passages, and even makes reference to the book Shop Class as Soulcraft that I’ve written about here. In my head, I find myself, first, agreeing with most of what he says, and then, secondly, arguing with Colin about his claim that the movement toward voluntary poverty, solidarity with the poor and agrarianism, comes solely and entirely from the Catholic Worker movement. Rather, I think that at the turn of the 20th century many disparate people coming from very different contexts were all coming to a common realization. Dorothy Day and Peter Marin, surely. But also Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, J.I. Rodale, many different “new experiential school movements,” . . . and Wendell Berry a generation later. They are all, in my view, accessing the same wellspring using sometimes different language. So, while I like most of Colin’s arguments and find myself inspired by his forays into radical agrarian and egalitarian living, I don’t like the fact that he seems to be claiming the entire territory as Catholic grounds. Oh well, why quibble? It’s nice to add yet another person to my cache of cool folks exploring in their own way a lot of the same stuff I am. Nice to meet you, Colin. Join the club.
So, this is a long way of saying that I am finding it difficult once again to get some more material published and out there, to you. As always, I’ve just got to work with the available time and available landscape.
Pulling from my long list of topics I want to take a step farther, I decided I’m going to make a Projective Geometry post. And I will do that… right now! Right after I post this, you should see a second post coming from my “Projective Geometry and Beyond” sub-page. Enjoy!
We used this image for our flyer for our upcoming panel discussion. I don’t know who created it, but I really like it. Image of the seven days of creation found here: https://intotheclarities.com/2018/03/03/seven-days-seven-speeches/