Networking Made Visible

 In the Western Church, Augustine’s dictum “The Word comes to the element; and so there is a sacrament, that is, a sort of visible word” could be the bumper sticker for sacramental understanding. Don’t mind that every tradition comes to its own interpretation of what that means. Robert Jenson, however, summarizes the foundation of that phrase as, “when the Bible’s God speaks to us… it comes to and then with some ‘element,’ some piece of the external word.”[i] For my tradition this visibility allows us to grasp, sometimes literally, grace as when bread is placed in our hands in the Eucharist.

How do we grasp other intangibles though? God makes grace tangible in sacraments, but how are we able to grasp the many ways we exist in relationship with others? Are there ways for us to understand the ecosystem of relationships that we inhabit? Let’s my personal network to think about visualizing personal networks.

Thankfully the answer is yes. While it does not involve good bread or tasty wine, the best way to visualize relationships, perhaps surprisingly, is math. Graphical techniques can help us create maps of our relationships with others, and the web those relationships weave. A very good introduction to understanding network science can be found on the website for the UC Davis Data Lab.

In thinking about my network, I am going to limit my network, because mapping my entire personal network would be a grueling, nigh-impossible task. I decided to think about the people I have interacted with through my previous podcast, that is, people whom I had brought on as guests. I also included people who had talked with me about publicly presenting a topic or leading a discussion. 

The visual representation of my personal network

 I also need to define what kind of network model I am looking at. In the introduction site I linked above, there are two kinds of networks. I decided to use a two-node network to see where the people I have interacted with have mostly been connected to me. I chose four areas of life that have been important to me. First, I looked to see who was connected to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Second, I looked to people who are active in academia. Third, I included people who have some public connection to discussing popular culture beyond mere fandom. Finally, I looked at people who have some connection to Campus Ministry. A sample of my data matrix is shown. If someone has a connection to an area, the corresponding box gets a value of one, otherwise the value is zero.

Choosing a two-node network seemed most appropriate in this case because it shows the arenas I inhabit, as a pastor and as a public theologian. This analysis felt more helpful than the way my network are connected to each other. Not surprisingly, because I looked at the guests on my podcast, almost everyone listed has some connection to popular culture. That makes sense given my podcast looked at the intersection of popular culture and theology and faith. However, because I have been asked or I have asked others to speak on topics outside of popular culture (e.g. White Christian Nationalism, Artificial Intelligence), I have a limited number of folks who have no connection to popular culture.

Likewise I have a great number of connections to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). As a pastor in that denomination, this element makes sense. Additionally, it serves as a possible warning. I do not give any data in this visualization about member node demographics. This image does not show if my connections are men or women, white or people of color. It does not give up any other religious affiliation. I could have included a node of ecumenical partners with the ELCA, but I did not. The ELCA however is in some reckoning the whitest denomination in the United States. If my network leaned as heavily toward the ELCA as it did toward popular culture, I could easily have shared only white voices. Refining this visualization in the future, I believe I would separate the people’s nodes into different sectors like “White women,” “White men,” Women of color,” “Men of Color.” This delineation could help me suss out those distinctions further.

Even rudimentary analyses like this one give us some ability to understand what values shape our networks beyond our own internal voice saying, “of course, I have a diverse network.” I could easily have deluded myself, knowing that one of my guiding principles with the podcast was including the voices of women and people of color, voices often kept out of conversations of theology or popular culture, or even the intersection. This visualization becomes a visible word of that principle.

---

[i] Jenson, Robert, (1978). Visible Words, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, p.3

Humanities Coding in the Information Age

 

"Hello, World !" code in C++ 
Wafelack, CC BY-SA 4.0 
<https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, 
via Wikimedia Commons

Coding has been consistently present in my life, particularly early on. In elementary school, my classmates and I programmed LOGOS turtles to move around a screen. I have written the traditional “Hello World!” introduction code in multiple computer languages. I copied video game code out of magazines to build fighting games or create programs to play music that I keyed in. In my junior year of college, I wrote a program to simulate the chaotic system of the driven, damped, pendulum, cranking through numerical solutions of differential equations. In graduate school, I routinely used Matlab code to analyze audio signals. As my kids grew up, I introduced them to platforms like Scratch where they could begin their own projects. One of those kids is now a software engineer.

For me, coding has always been connected to the scientific endeavor, running calculations, digital signal processes, or other such work. Whether it is hubris or subject blindness, I will confess that website development hardly counted as coding in my eyes. It always felt perhaps more like a craft project people used to show off the sweaters they made for their cats.

This misguided notion of mine was formed in the age of people pimping out their Myspace and geocities pages. In the development of an inherently online existence, coding is far more important in web design for engagement to be sure, but ever more the real power lay in one’s ability to access information. The access to information is one of the most powerful currencies in this information age.

While companies and corporations want people to be able to access information in order to maximize their profit, projects that seek to inform and edify others for their own sake, are vital partners in the work toward such goals as the common good, solidarity and justice. These projects need solid coding to offer information as well as be able to create space for people to share what they know. 

One of the Inter|Urban murals in Cleveland
 from https://arrestedmotion.com/2016/10/streets-interurban-project-cleveland/

 This understanding is especially important in the humanities, as evidenced by the Painting On Walls project. Erin Benay describes the project in her case study “Art History and Action In The Rust Belt.”[i] Benay worked in the Cleveland area, as what she called an “engaged art historian.”[ii] Cleveland, like many other Rust Belt cities that suffered decline with the crumbling of the steel industry, had a robust mural tradition. Abandoned buildings make excellent canvasses for murals, after all.

Benay started a service learning course at Case Western Reserve University, in collaboration with LAND Studio’s Inter|Urban project, where students learned the history of murals and do something with that knowledge that went beyond traditional class work. Benay wrote, “I wondered how we might connect the longer history of mural painting with the more recent trajectories of urban development and public art-making that regularly appeared in Cleveland news. Even more significantly, I was curious to see if it was possible for students of art history to do something with this knowledge, rather than to simply regurgitate it in neatly conceived seminar papers.”[iii]

As the course progressed and students documented and learned about the murals, it became evident that passersby engaged the public art visually. That each of the murals was based on Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards went largely unknown. Students in the course wanted to provide access to background material and context for the murals. The murals could move beyond an object of visual engagement and offer something more.

To accomplish this end, the students created informational text about murals and placed them in train and bus platforms. Additionally, they created QR codes that offered greater information about the art. Benay wrote, “Developing a better mobile app and more sophisticated digital mapping interface for Inter|Urban would, students believed, allow this content to be more accessible to the very underrepresented populations that the texts seek to address.” [iv]

Among all of the art history, coding underlined the work that took the information to the people of Cleveland giving a broader view of the people who lived in the city. This work of coding moved this project beyond a class assignment and connected folks outside of academia.

---

tThe Routledge Companion to Public Humanities Scholarship. Routledge.

[ii] Benay, p. 96

[iii] Benay, p.99

[iv] Benay, p. 105

Sermon from Sunday Sep. 20

Moving to a new worship space made recording my sermons a bit challenging... but I think I have it figured out. So here is my sermon from Sunday Sep. 20, "God Loves {insert_name} More".

Gentile Lepers and Religious Freedom

The Kim Davis issue seems to be dying down. Kim is out of jail. The same-sex couple has their wedding license. The media is slowly pulling away from the story. So I guess it's time for me to weigh in.

Sure, I've been weighing in on friends' meme posts who don't seem to be getting things technically correct (and getting little jabs here and there since they just thought something was funny). I am not a quick thinker and sometimes I fall behind in an instant media world. But I have thought a bit about the situation... a government official refusing to do something that is part of her job because of religious commitments... and I am somewhat surprised that I have not seen anything regarding Naaman, the gentile general who suffered from leprosy.

Why Naaman? It has less to do with Naaman being healed than his response following the healing. Naaman confesses the God of Elisha to be his only God.

So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.  Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company; he came and stood before him and said, "Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel; please accept a present from your servant."  But he said, "As the LORD lives, whom I serve, I will accept nothing!" He urged him to accept, but he refused.  (2Kings 5:14-16 NRSV)

The Sacraments and Sacra-Mentality

A friend of mine, Keith Anderson, published a blog post today reflecting on some of the response following Rachel Held Evans' new book and her entrance into the Episcopal church. Much has been made that she, a former evangelical, has found value in the sacraments (for her and some in the Episcopal church, they number seven: Baptism, Eucharist, Confirmation, Confession, Ordination, Marriage, Extreme Unction (anointing and laying on hands for the sick),  ... for others they number only two, Baptism and Eucharist... but that is an old debate that need not be rehashed here.) Keith rightly points out that many mainline churches are "breathing deep sighs of relief, patting themselves on the back, and smiling in self-congratulation." 

Keith criticizes those who think if they just keep doing what they are doing, the young adults disaffected by the rock music, or coffee bars, or light shows, or anything else that tries to make church "cool" will find their way back to their pews with the liturgical tradition that has remained largely unchanged for decades. Keith writes: 

Judging from the comments I’ve seen in the days since Held Evans’s article was posted, I’m afraid that her assertion has had the unintended consequence of reinforcing the tendency toward inertia exhibited by some Mainline ministry leaders. “See, we’re fine. We don’t need to change,” I can hear them saying. “We can keep doing what we’re doing. Let’s put on some coffee, order some new communion wafers, and wait for the young evangelicals to come pouring in.”
Good luck with that.
Such interpretations of Held Evans’s post are problematic because they reinforce our maddening fixation on matters of worship, to the detriment of extending ministry beyond our church buildings, deepening faith formation, serving the poor, and helping our neighbors.

The End is Near! Final Judgment is Upon Us!

Not THAT final judgment... those on college campuses know what I mean.

Here is a message I shared with my students this week in the weekly update for the campus ministry. I share it here as well for everyone feeling burdened by exams, papers, grades and the like...

-----
Finals are upon us... a time of focus and exams and stress and work and stress and... yeah. Finals are important to be sure. There is some need to gauge how well (or not) we have comprehended the material set before us over the course of the semester. Sometimes the exams and papers seem unfair. Sometimes they are ridiculously easy. And we prepare, hopefully diligently. We do our best and place ourselves at the mercy of the faculty and others grading us.

It is important to remember though that our ultimate worth is not determined by our GPA, or the grades we earn. We make our lives more difficult when we allow ourselves to become immersed in the messages that "EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON THIS GRADE!" Our grades are necessary and can help us reflect on our courses of study and the direction for our lives.

But at the end of the day, they are partial pictures of our lives and our identity as human beings. We are loved and deemed worthy by a God who came and dwelt with us as one of us. God's love for us shows us our worth and our value.

You are a precious child of God. period. Please never forget that... and if you think you are forgetting that during this time of judgment... call me. email me. text me. Let me remind you.

Goblins, Chupacabras, Moral Atheists and Immoral Christians

Many of the books I read, include mythical or fantastical creatures. Orcs, ents, elves, dwarfs, Martians, Vulcans, and the like. Most people likely believe these creatures are imaginary. Possibly people believe they exist as cryptids, a creature for which there is mere suggestion and little proof of existence... like Sasquatch or the Loch Ness Monster or the Pittsburgh Tunnel Monster, which feeds upon faster moving traffic which explains why everyone in the 'Burgh slows down immediately before entering one of our tunnels making the traffic jam cascade behind them.

In a recent spewing, Phil Robertson opined on an imaginary violent encounter with an atheist in which the atheist's wife and daughter were raped and  murdered, followed by the castration of the atheist. Throughout this foul reflection, Robertson follows the old motif that the atheist cannot oppose such activity because he, being an atheist, has no basis for any moral judgment. The perpetrators of the evil against the atheist say in the midst of their attack, "But you’re the one who says there is no God, there’s no right, there’s no wrong, so we’re just having fun."

The View From Here: My Daughter and My Phone During Worship

A couple of weeks ago, I brought my children with me to worship. My wife was playing organ at one church. I was leading worship at Heinz Chapel for the campus ministry. How to get the kids to the zoo for the Zoo Boo that afternoon? Yes, come with me, because I was closer. No problem, although being a campus ministry service, there is no nursery available for young children, like my four-year old daughter.

So I was leading worship, but not preaching. That task fell to my Episcopalian counterpart that morning. My daughter and eight-year old son sat with me in the front pew. My oldest child, the eleven-year old boy, found a seat several rows back, behind a pillar where he could remain apart from us. And of course my daughter got antsy. So like many parents, I handed her my phone. She played a few games, but ultimately went on to her favorite activity, taking pictures. I did not count how many pictures she took, but it was quite a few. A couple of days later, I sat there deleting them. For about half an hour. At some point during the deletion marathon, I paused and realized that these photos, bad as they were, were recording the view from my daughter's perspective. Given her perch, what exactly was there to grab her attention. It appears that several things piqued her curiosity... some of them were actually service-related... but how long could anyone expect to sit still if there wasn't something to grab... and hold... his or her attention.

Countless shots of her feet and/or the floor

The pew, my jacket and the stained glass 

Her foot again... but somehow turned it into an animated gif. How did she do that?  

 Me reading along with the lector

Brother... who appears put off by the close up 

 The lector... again. 

Brother would not do well with paparazzi 

 Worship selfie

Something caught brother's attention 

Sermon time 

 Hymnal racks

 Woodwork of Heinz Chapel, pulpit, chancel and altar

Some things clearly caught her eye. Things that were going on during the service or in the space around her. The most often snapped pictures though were of her feet and the immediate space around her.

Maybe we should set more youngsters, heck why not everyone, loose with cameras during worship to see what they are seeing. What holds their attention? Are there obstacles, both literal and figurative, in their way? Of course some of these things are natural for a four-year old. Not everything will be overcome. And we would hope that as they age they begin to participate more fully. We cannot make worship appeal only to four-year olds. We do not need a lowest common denominator worship. But it cannot hurt to ponder occasionally how everyone perceives our worship... Four-year olds included.