Colons, Links, and (Guess What?) Greek

Every now and then I have this thought, and usually it goes something like this:

"Greek is so awesome! Class today was so interesting. I wish [name of friend] could have been there; I bet they would have found our discussion fascinating. Maybe I'll go write about Greek on my blog. Oh wait, just about every other post on this blog is about or somehow mentions Greek. I need to write less about Greek. I thought I was an English major. Maybe I should write about something English-y. Or something about life. Or... you know. Something that's not about Greek. [At this point, anywhere from one to several minutes pass as I watch my cursor blink on my screen.] ...Curses. I'm just gonna have to write about Greek."

Here's the thing, though: I am not a Greek major. And honestly, I don't really want to change my major to Greek. (Now watch me eat my words a few months from now. It'll probably happen, knowing my track record. Maybe I'll double major or something. And now I'm getting ahead of myself. Please excuse the rabbit trail.) Don't get me wrong, I think Greek is awesome -- just look at all those posts I linked back there for a small sample -- but my real love lies in Biblical Greek. (Sorry, Plato. I'll probably put up with you for a semester so I can get my minor, but that's about it.)

As long as I'm overusing colons, here's the point of all that rambling: this post is going to be about Greek. Surprise! I'm sure I've given my if-you're-sick-of-me-talking-about-Greek warning before, but if you are, go ahead and skip to the end and read the new hagah post (which, incidentally, is entirely unrelated to Greek and to the rest of this post) linked there. If not... cool. Let's talk about Greek. Actually, let's talk about my Greek class.

Usually in Greek 205, we work on slowly translating our way through the book of Mark. Sometimes, we take rabbit trails. Sometimes, we take a lot of rabbit trails. They're usually important or relevant rabbit trails, though, and they're almost always interesting.

Example: today was a day of extended rabbit trails that took us through how Scripture is translated, the relationships between translations and interpretation, the implications and possibilities of human agency, the dating and authorship of some New Testament books that scholarship says could be vastly different from our traditional beliefs, what these verses from Revelation 22 could mean for how we look at the canon of Scripture, how the canon became canonical, the place and purpose of the Apocrypha books, and generally a big bundle of interesting things. And near the end of class we even translated a little Greek. Basically, way too many fascinating and huge topics for one fifty-minute class period or one blog post.

In short, there are a lot of things we don't know. And "a lot" is an understatement. "Things are always more complicated than we make them out to be," as our prof said near the end of our discussion. I do know this, though: I am blessed beyond what I could tell you now to be in a place where we are, as our prof frequently reminds us, a "Greek family" -- a group of people who are willing to struggle through texts and interpretations and ask deep questions about things we value and are just beginning, in some small way, to understand.

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New hagah post: Remember (poetry)

Kick-Off

That's the opening track from the first CD I ever owned by my favorite band. It seemed appropriate for this post, and there's a number of reasons for that. It's a new school year. I haven't posted anything for a month or so. I do hope you're not sick of me. And, well, I'm thinking of trying something new here to see where it goes.

So let's be more specific: this year, I'm starting two different series of posts on this blog.

The first series I'm calling inner soundtrack. I've had a number of ideas lately surrounding various songs that I know, and so I'd like to frame some of my thoughts on this blog with those songs. Those posts will all accordingly be labeled "inner soundtrack," and you can find a link to all the posts with that label off to the right below the blog archive.

The second series is a little bigger, as it's one I've been thinking of for quite some time and have finally decided to give a try. Between college and a dry creativity well, I haven't written much lately. As I'm working on deciding on a major, likely in the English department, I've decided I want to start writing again, especially since that's one of the majors I'm considering. To that end, I'm starting my hagah series. Essentially, it's a place for me to share my creative writing endeavors with my friends and family. One of the reasons I've held off on this one for so long is because I have a slight paranoia about losing my works to the Internet, as it were, but I think with the settings and small audience I'm looking at, it'll be okay.

Since hagah is larger than inner soundtrack and requires a fair amount of organization (at least for my own sense of calm), it has its own site. I'll be posting links here whenever I update it, so don't feel you have to go out of your way to check it. I've been considering it long enough that I think of it more as its own project, so there's a welcome page on the site that explains a little more about the thought behind it. You can find the main page of the hagah site here.

And, as I've promised to link here whenever there's a new post on hagah, here are the pieces already available there:

• The Storyteller (essay)
• deeper and deeper... (found poem)
• Once, There Was a Place (speak aloud poem/prosetry)
• spearmint clouds (poem)
• Child of the King (short story)

I'm curious to hear your thoughts, both on this and on inner soundtrack once I get it going. Let me know, okay?