Christian Century, Postmodernism, and a Dinner

How cool to discover that Susan Olson from Yale Divinity School wrote an article on blogging in the current issue of Christian Century in which she mentioned the RevGalBlogPal webring! Check it out here!

I've been drenched this past week in some great readings on postmodernism and the emergent church in preparation for our class tomorrow. (The class I'm teaching, not simply taking. Still a big celebration in my life.) One of the readings by Stanley Grenz says the following:

The advent of 'the screen'--whether the movie, the television, or the computer screen--epitomizes the postmodern blurring of the traditional contrast between the subjective self and the objective world. The screen is not merely an external object that we look at. What happens on the screen is neither wholly 'out there' (merely on the screen), nor wholly in us; rather, it seems to occur in some space between the two. The screen brings us into its world just as it enters into ours. As what happens on the screen becomes an extension of ourselves, we become an extension of it. The screen thus becomes an embodied form of our psychic worlds"

I kid you not--the moment I finished reading this paragraph on Saturday morning, Monk came into the living room and flopped on the couch next to me. He said, "Mom! I just noticed I wasn't playing, so I checked my stats and saw that I'm out for four to six weeks." He was talking about his Playstation hockey game in which he's created a player with his own name.

"Why are you out?" I ask him.

"I broke my leg!" he declared. Then hopped off the couch and headed back in to keep playing. I couldn't help but think of Playstation's slogan: "Live in your world. Play in ours."

That's a glimpse into postmodernism for you right there.

Finally, D and I are having dinner with Jim Wallis tonight. Thanks to srf who managed to get us an invite to the rather intimate affair. So what questions do you think I should ask him?