Saturday, June 09, 2007

A Conference and a Book

I will be gone for a few days at a conference in Northfield, MN. "Freedom and Authority in the Christian Life" is sponsored by the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology. Michael Root is the executive director, and it was founded by Carl Braaten and Robert Jensen. I am looking forward to hearing Ephraim Radner, whom I have read but never heard in person, as well as Gilbert Meilaender. When I get back I will have to comment on this weekend's synod assemblies, both on the tally of those that have approved the Goodsoil memorials and on the elections for bishop. (I hear there is a surprise out of Lower Susquehanna.)

Right now I am reading "The Pickup" by Nadine Gordimer. I have not read much by her in the last few years. I read her voraciously for a while. Then with the changes in South Africa, she had to adjust to the new situation in her fiction. I ran across this book in the local Barnes and Noble and was intrigued. It is the story of a young white South African woman, Julie, who becomes involved with a garage mechanic, a "colored" as they say there, who is in the country illegally (he overstayed his visa). Now he has been discovered and ordered to leave the country. Will she go with him? If she does, can she adjust to this new life that will be unlike anything she has known up to now? I am only one third of the way through the book, but I think Gordimer has found her footing in the changes that have occured in her country. With all of the discussions going on right now regarding our own inability to deal with immigration to this country, both legal and illegal, this may give an different twist on that question.

1 comment:

Law+Gospel said...

Quite a surprise in Lower Susquehanna. Time will tell if the office shapes the man or the man shapes the office and whether confessional theology is alive and well in the LSS or not.