Meeting with Hal. The volatility of identity.
Today Hal and I got together to talk about my work in Greek Bible.
He told me that there was going to be a group selected by him and Brigitte Kahl (4 or 5 of us) that are 2nd year M. Div.'s to work with the doctoral students in the spring. He is disappointed I can't come. I am too.
I talked about the ways things are growing in me around a dissertation. Oh, shit. I actually meant to write thesis. But then it came out of my fingers dissertation. Phooey.
I want to talk about negotiated selves, especially as negotiated selves work themselves out in interpreting the Bible. I want to talk about the layers of interpretation - of the "self" as a mediated, negotiated, permeable-boundaried thing, who does this act of interpretation that is both a part of it and a projection of it, to a text that is removed in every subjective way (every way), and then takes what the text does in that act of interpreting, and comes back to (that's wrong, because it's a part of it already, because the interpreting IS it too) the self changed, with change in hand, with change in mind.
I want to talk about the feasibility of transtemporal communication. (Or lack thereof.) I want to talk about what it is we CAN do when the reciprocal layers of being/interpreting are doing their work, and what is lifted out of that. (I have to slip into metaphor when I start to draw conclusions. think that may be the only way to work.)
I want to talk about why this matters. (It matters to prevent proof-texting. It matters because interpreters from the dominant paradigm need to back the fuck up and check ourselves. It matters because it foregrounds human persons in relationship to one another and to everything. It matters because we need to back up from assumptions about supernatural intervention, because assumptions about supernatural intervention disenable us from action.)
There is another student here who is hyped about Judith Butler Bible studies.
It was great processing today to talk about both my stuff and to be grounded in affirmation about my work. This is the first time in my life I feel like I'm doing something new, I'm cutting new ground. And Hal supports me. He thinks I'm fascinating. And smart. That's a good place to be grounded.
He told me that there was going to be a group selected by him and Brigitte Kahl (4 or 5 of us) that are 2nd year M. Div.'s to work with the doctoral students in the spring. He is disappointed I can't come. I am too.
I talked about the ways things are growing in me around a dissertation. Oh, shit. I actually meant to write thesis. But then it came out of my fingers dissertation. Phooey.
I want to talk about negotiated selves, especially as negotiated selves work themselves out in interpreting the Bible. I want to talk about the layers of interpretation - of the "self" as a mediated, negotiated, permeable-boundaried thing, who does this act of interpretation that is both a part of it and a projection of it, to a text that is removed in every subjective way (every way), and then takes what the text does in that act of interpreting, and comes back to (that's wrong, because it's a part of it already, because the interpreting IS it too) the self changed, with change in hand, with change in mind.
I want to talk about the feasibility of transtemporal communication. (Or lack thereof.) I want to talk about what it is we CAN do when the reciprocal layers of being/interpreting are doing their work, and what is lifted out of that. (I have to slip into metaphor when I start to draw conclusions. think that may be the only way to work.)
I want to talk about why this matters. (It matters to prevent proof-texting. It matters because interpreters from the dominant paradigm need to back the fuck up and check ourselves. It matters because it foregrounds human persons in relationship to one another and to everything. It matters because we need to back up from assumptions about supernatural intervention, because assumptions about supernatural intervention disenable us from action.)
There is another student here who is hyped about Judith Butler Bible studies.
It was great processing today to talk about both my stuff and to be grounded in affirmation about my work. This is the first time in my life I feel like I'm doing something new, I'm cutting new ground. And Hal supports me. He thinks I'm fascinating. And smart. That's a good place to be grounded.