The Great Controversy Story 2 (Campmeeting 2014)

In planning this presentation, Dale and I realized we couldn't tell one definitive version of "The Great Controversy."  Rather, each of us tells a slightly different story, sharing common themes and developments, but emphasizing different aspects according to our particular personalities, histories and values.  This week, Dale tells his version of events, as written in a Reddit discussion.  In addition, we hear from some of our audience members about their own versions of the story and the themes that matter to them.  I had forgotten just how awesome this discussion was.  I hope you enjoy it.

The central question Dale takes up is "if there is a God, why is there evil?"  After that, the question also arises, "are we merely pawns in a divine game?"  Join us for this stimulating discussion and please, share your thoughts.  This is, for both of us, the core of our understanding of God.

Next week, I share my best understanding of the story.

Enjoy!

The Great Controversy Story 2

The Great Controversy Story 1 (Campmeeting 2014)

I must begin by apologizing for the late posting.  I had the podcast ready to go on Thursday and simply forgot to post it yesterday.

Today we get to one of my favourite stories: The Great Controversy.  This isn't simply a book, this is a narrative of God's ongoing involvement with humanity and the universe, the rise of evil and the vindication of God's character (which is to say the investigation by created beings of whether or not God is worthy of our love and devotion).  The Adventist answer is that God is worthy, but this is not without some serious investigation yet to come.  Questions remain.

After all that, we don't begin with the story.  We begin with our own stories.  In this episode, interspersed with relevant discussion, we briefly share our personals stories of learning about God and why we appreciate the Great Controversy understanding.  Next week we get more into specifics of the story itself, but this week lays the groundwork for that discussion.

Enjoy!

The Great Controversy Story 1

Foundational Stories 2 (Campmeeting 2014)

We're back.  This week is part 2 of 3 from our second day presenting.  I managed to clean up the sound quite a bit, so I'll be updating last weeks podcast, as well.

As the discussion continues, we spend some time in discussion and exploring the significance of Sabbath, the Second Coming and what all this has to do with language learning.  Among other things, we talk more about context and how language and belief without context leaves us without the ability to speak and act in a way that reflects our "knowledge."

Thanks again for listening.

Enjoy!

Foundational Stories 2

Foundational Stories 1 (Campmeeting 2014)

We're back!  I (David) apologize for the lack of a podcast last weekend.  I was preaching at my local church and forgot about the podcast entirely.  If you're interested, let me know and I can post a link to it.

This week begins the second session from our Story presentations at Campmeeting 2014.  We entitled it "Foundational Stories."  Underlying the small stories we tell are larger stories about what stories are and how we should relate to them.  Technically, this can be termed "foundational philosophy."  To begin the presentation, Dale and I talked about how each of us began to grapple with foundational stories through our own (academic) experiences.  This is one of my favourite presentations because we lay out many of the guiding ideas that have shaped the rest of our thought.  It's great listening to it again and being reminded of these things.

I hope you enjoy listening.


Foundational Stories 1

Living with Different Stories (Campmeeting 2014)

Great news!  Over a year later, I've finally found the recordings of our "Story" series of presentations from Campmeeting 2014.  The format is quite a bit different from our usual discussions--we had a plan for what we wanted to say, rather than simply discussing questions, and we had some good audience involvement.  Although we've covered much of the content elsewhere, these recordings are very different because we're trying to connect a lot of our ideas together into a more coherent series of presentations.  I'm working on cleaning the recordings up for posting over the coming weeks.

To begin with, I was finally able to track down the recording of our Sabbath morning presentation at The Wave from Campmeeting 2014.  We had a lot of fun with this presentation.  This episode, we talk about the difficulties we face when we start with different stories, and how that has impacted Dale and I on a personal level as we have worked and traveled together.

Thanks for joining us.  Enjoy!

Living with Different Stories

PS: If you have trouble keeping up with us on Facebook, you can subscribe for email notification of new podcasts via the box to the right of this post.

Also, if you've enjoyed our podcasts, please check out our new blog How Shall We Read?  We've decided to spend some time studying and discussing the question of Biblical hermeneutics (interpretation) while our church is doing so at a global level.  This is a question of importance for all Christians and Adventists--not just academics--so we will be reading and writing easy-to-understand (hopefully) summaries and analyses of relevant material.

Whose Community? Which Story? (WO) (Campmeeting 2015)

Today is the final episode we recorded at Campmeeting this summer.  It sounds a little different because we recorded at the bottom of half ledge after spending about ninety minutes rock climbing.  There are occasionally people passing by and background noise, as well as a few guests.  Don't worry, though, the mic picked us up loud and clear.

This time we focused on a major issue in contemporary Adventism--the vote about Women's Ordination at the 2015 General Conference.  While this is the main topic, our thematic focus is the question of "who decides which story to tell about our community?"  In turn, what does that story mean?  And, how is that decided?  These questions of community narrative and identity have much larger resonances than a single vote about how to include women in our community and impact on how we view our own relationships to the community in light of various stories being told.  The discussion is by no means finished within Adventism.

Thanks for listening and enjoy!

Whose Community? Which Story?

Community Stories (Campmeeting 2015)

In this session, recorded on the Thursday of Campmeeting, we explore the difficulty and necessity of telling community stories--stories about who we are together.  This begins with a brief summary of Derrida's discussion of hospitality and the competing needs for clear boundaries and for open boundaries.  This is the difficulty of telling our stories and sharing them with others, without become bound to them in unhealthy ways.  Of course, the discussion is much more interesting than this brief synopsis.  And yet again, we have a few guests sitting in on the recording.  Please join us.

Thank you for listening.

Community Stories

In other news, Dale and I are putting together a new blog project.  In the aftermath of the 2015 San Antonio General Conference, our Adventist world church has committed to an in-depth study of hermeneutics (basically rules and methods of interpreting the Bible).  Our interpretations of the Bible profoundly impact our picture of God and the way we live as Christians.  Our plan is to provide a series of concise summaries of relevant Adventist materials for those who may not be so inclined to academic studies.  Stay tuned for more information.

The Great Controversy: The Narrative - Part 2

This week we finish telling how we understand the Great Controversy.  What has happened in the past matters, but so does the ending.  Thus we continue on, talking about the various parties involved and tracing how the story has developed since Christ.  How does a story end when the point isn't power and control?  When domination can't be the means of resolution?

This podcast is a little shorter than usual, but some of you will appreciate that.

The Great Controversy Narrative 2

The Great Controversy: Lost in the Middle

Welcome back!  Hopefully your holidays were enjoyable and you were able to spend time with family and catching up on any podcasts you missed.  Dale has been busy tweaking links and file management on the website so the links are now standardized.  Eventually I intend to do some work as well, but I've been busy with PhD applications.

Anywayz, to kick off the new year, we have a multi-part series exploring a narrative (idea) that is central to our understanding of life, faith and history: The Great Controversy.  However, before we deal with details, we wanted to talk a little more about story.

This week, we explore the dilemma of interpretation in a different way.  How do you make narrative sense of anything when you arrive in the middle of the story?  What elements do you focus on and what difference does that make?  It all begins on a bus in a Mexican desert in 1996...


The Great Controversy - Part 1

Missing Paul Walker

Dale here. In the same week that we are marking the death of Nelson Mandela, David and I instead did a podcast trying to make sense of the impact of the death of Paul Walker.  The first reason for this would be that, well, Mandela died the day after we recorded.  The second reason is that the reaction to the death of Paul Walker is harder to explain, at least for me.

For the first time in a while the death of a celebrity impacted me.  I saw a post come up on Facebook, and immediately I thought "oh please let this be a hoax", but it wasn't, and it hit me.  At the same time, it wasn't supposed to - he's a celebrity, not part of my life, not the most amazing actor, and I'm supposed to be above this.  But I'm not.

In this podcast David and I try to get to the bottom of why the death of Paul Walker seems to have resonated with so many people, including myself, and what the implications of this situation are.

     Listen here: Missing Paul Walker

And for those who are just missing Paul Walker, here's a youtube memorial video for him, that incorporates some of the reasons why I think people miss him:

God as Other: Why so Complicated?

Well, in Dale's absence, I've managed to find a podcast we recorded a while back but haven't released yet.  I think this is a good time for it.  Our discussion starts with a question: "If God is real, why doesn't He make himself known in a way that is obvious and unmistakable?"  This ties back into our discussion about reading the Bible as non-fiction, "Made for the Story", and my thesis.  This is a common question grounded in some assumptions about God and language and faith that don't make a lot of sense.  God wants a relationship--as such, he approaches us in ways that allow us to ignore or reject him.  He does not force himself upon us, and he speaks and appears in ways that require a response, without dictating a particular response.  That responsibility is vital to faith and life.  Ultimately, God appears as the "Great Other" who challenges our self-conceptions and doesn't always act in ways that are either comprehensible or desirable from our perspective.  But that is the great difficulty of loving another rather than yourself--different choices, different actions, different words.

Enjoy.

God as Other: Why so Complicated?

Hopefully, next week we will continue our discussion of the Bible as Nonfiction with an exploration of practices of good interpretation.

Responding to Violence: Security, Responsibility and the Nation-State in Light of the Boston Bombings, Part 1

Well, we had planned to release The Truth About Stories Part II this week, in which Dale explores a story about story that is particular meaningful to him.  That will be up in a few weeks.  However, it seemed more relevant to post a discussion we had about the recent Boston bombing.

First, I must express our sympathy for the people and communities impacted by this tragedy.  Life is not meant to contain such horrific pain and loss.  However, the stories we tell about loss and in response to loss are especially powerful and thus especially worthy of attention and consideration.  Too often, in our pain, we speak stories which only immortalize and extend the pain we have suffered rather than grapple with it and resolve it in any meaningful way.  As such, I must clarify that my sympathy also extends to the two young men involved, as well as their communities and to those involved in other less widely spoken stories, including the explosion in Texas and the Rehtaeh Parsons story.  We live in a broken and often brutally painful world and our response to that pain matters immensely.

This podcast focuses on the question of how we respond to vulnerability and loss, especially in terms of the stories set in motion by the nation-state and its representative authorities and authoritative speakers.  These are not easy questions and our exploration may prove unsettling to some, but I ask you to bear with us.  Given the complexity of these issues, we recorded a second podcast which, as per the poll results, we will release next week.  In the meantime, here you are:

Security, Responsibility and the Nation-State in Light of the Boston Bombings, Part 1

Or alternatively:

the same podcast on Spreaker

The Truth About Stories, Part 1

One of the most influential books for me, giving shape to how I view the world, was Tom King's book The Truth about Stories - which he gave as the 2003 Massey lectures.  In his book he starts with a creation story, looking at how the story impacts how we view the world, and how the story shapes how we view stories themselves.  Among everything else in this wonderful book,  he states that "the truth about stories is that that's all we are." In other words, what we are as people, is the nexus of all the stories that we live in, our relationships, and our developing ideas.  In part 1 of this two-part podcast David and I try to explain how this idea impacts our thinking, starting an exploration of what the stories of our culture are, and some of the implications for how we give meaning to our lives.

The truth about stories discussion, part 1

And if you prefer, the same, but on "Spreaker"

If you enjoyed this discussion, we return to it from a different angle in The Truth About Stories Part.

Why this forum?

Over the past good while myself and a a friend have been in the process of writing a book - or to be more accurate co-writing.  To be more accurate still would be to say that we've spent several hours each weak discussing everything that we want to write about, but very rarely writing.  This blog will be a way of giving us a forum to write in, to post some of our discussions, and to give others a chance to tell us how ridiculous we are.

The subject matter will vary across a few disciplines, but will always be linked back to one question - why?  If that's too broad, I could narrow it to the domains of critical theory, religion, love, narrative, story, friendship, language, and hiking.  Even narrower, subject matter will almost always be relevant to our own lives, and the stories that we interact with regularly - urban vs rural, academia vs "normal", Adventism, the outdoors, television, gaming, and board games. If that's too broad, you'll have to either read later things that I've written, or listen to the podcasts that I think we'll be posting in the near future.

Finally - the title of this blog.  I originally wanted to go with -ee-apachitayaan ninagataweyihchigan, which translates as "as I am using my mind" and is in the Michif language, one of the unifying tropes I use across my blogs.  On second thought (after being reminded that it's not really that easy to remember [only 14 syllables!]) I went with Taanshi, meaning Hey! or How's it going?, also in Michif, but roughly twelve syllables shorter.

The main reason I chose it here is because it seems that most blogs dealing with this sort of subject matter go for Latin names referring to some sort of religious concept, and I think it's silly.  Unfortunately the convention is so well established that I can't really think of an English title that I could use! So my act of rebellion has been to reject Latin in favour of a language that is the beautiful bastard child of French and Nehiyawewin, preserving many of the strengths of both, and differing most significantly from Latin in that it is not friendly to metaphysics of any kind, as in its syntax, morphology and culture it tends to ground discussion in bodily action, and concrete implementation.  I'll probably talk about this at some point.

Finally, please interact! If you post interesting questions here, and we find them interesting, we'll probably try to find our own answers to them and post them either as posts or as podcasts.

update: we have a new title! "Storying Life" so although I still love "taanshi", it's going to be the url, not the title from here on in.