Biblioblogging Carnival Aftermath

Wow, there was a lot of work putting together the Biblioblogging Carnival for April. It was a few days late and came right at the time I was finishing marking and doing the annual student’s conference here at the U. of Lethbridge. I had a bit of internet burnout, I think. I made one little post since, but haven’t really spent anytime on the blogs at all.

And its FINALLY spring! The shrubs are getting their leaves and there are a ton of weeds that still need pulling (I’ve already delivered THIRTEEN of those big paper bags of old leaves and twigs and assorted other sticks to the city’s grinding and mulching facility). And there are many steaks, roasts and other critter carcass components that need grilling or smoking. Better I do the cooking than hanging out at Church suppers:

And in TWO WEEKS I WILL BE MERRILY MARRIED TO MARY!

The gods agree to the wedding. Here is Jew-piter and Afro-dite
at the news of the engagement. Jew-piter was especially
pleased since Mary sewed the deity’s kippah.

Yup, May 28 is the big day and we are making the final arrangements. Then on May 31 we are off to Ireland for a while. I have a suit, too. Its even got pants so I will really be doing it up in style!

So I won’t be blogging much for the next little while.

Oh yeah, I also have to write a paper for a conference in Munich in late June. The Germans need a copy of it by June 1st so their students have a chance to read it (it won’t be translated so they have to struggle through the English). So I’m trying to write it.   Here is an abstract:

Lest we forget our sins: Innovative religion, “exilicist” ideology, and the sanctification of disjunction.

This paper explores the production of various “exilicist” traditions in select Second Temple Judean writings that both institutionalize and problematize a theology of divine retribution. The book of Lamentations will be presented as routinizing past pain, continuing guilt and hopes for salvation and creating cultural “memories” in the wake of Persian restoration efforts in Yehud. This will be contrasted to the less emotive reporting of these events in Kings and elsewhere.

Implicit in Lamentations is not only an expression of trauma and shame but the craving for a resolution between these and hopes for vindication. The book may be described as opening a sacral space comparable to the way some physical monuments and memorials preserve and transmit memories of pain, suffering and the search for a positive meaning in past tragedies. The hoped for resolution cannot ultimately be found within the text of the highly organized poetry of Lamentations itself and the disjunction between textual order and imagined chaos is only reinforced by the continued transmission (and eventual canonization) of the book. The book, therefore, creates and transmits “memories” of pain and shame that it cannot sooth.

Methodologically, the paper will develop from the work of J. Z. Smith and especially Burton Mack (Myth and the Christian Nation: A Social Theory of Religion). Additional insights well be drawn from other work on the creation of sacred space and national monuments.

And I found this on the I can has cheezburger site which pretty much sums up here is what I have to put up with during the writing process:

Anyway, I hope to make a few more appearances here as a bachelor, and then, later in the summer, as a merrily married man, write a lot of horrible things about the Bible and assorted silliness and idiots (i.e., same old same old).