Hauerwas has me intrigued with this “Narrative” thing. It seems, from my initial understanding of it (and if it is indeed as true as I believe it to be, then my “initial understanding of it only represents my “narrative” on narrative; that “aha” and “I alwways felt that but didn’t know how to articulate it” kind of deals; that I have been immersed in it and “redeemed” by it and “formed” by it for the last 30 years or so, from my Youth Minister and Youth Group in Owensboro KY in the 70’s, to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the late 70’s and early 80’s (again, making sure to include the pre-qualifier: WHEN IT WAS STILL AN INSTITUTION OF HIGHER LEARNING), to my stints in Youth Minsitry, to my “Second Seminary” era where I studied media and technology and eventually, online community (on which I did my final thesis for the Master of Arts of Religious Communications— known to us alum as the MARC degree, where I caught some of the narratives of Dennis Benson, who held his students spellbound by his narrative). And now, in blogging, I am being directed, prodded, CALLED into placing maximum effort to find, stumble upon, create, enable , or all the above, a face to face community where this kind of blogging can become a part of a NARRATIVE ; a narrative from which it originally sprang (sprung?) and a narrative wghich has , in combination with my particular gifts and passions, brought me to this point. See there, I just “did a narrative”. No, you don’t exactly “do narrative” …..But placing this present day reality, and the Deitrich Bonhoeffer, Stanley Hauerwas, Church of the Saviour reading and blogging (Church of the Saviour’s “narrative” was SO ABLY and BEATIFALLY handled and written by Elizabeth O’Connor…..her writings and their very power is very much related , I think, to this narrative thing. The Story and history of intersection between a community and God, in a particular place and time. She captured more of that than I believe any book abnout any Church or faith journey story/narrative ever has (that I have read).

This post continues the thought started in :

Movable Theoblogical: Peaceable Kingdom

I just realized that if I want to continue a thought in one post in another one, I can bring up the otiginal, and click my “Post to MT Weblog” bookmarklet, and it will open a new post window with the URL and Title already in the entry. Cool realization. I’ll be doing that a lot more.