So, we're well into the 'holiday season' here in America. Thanksgiving last week already seems like a distant memory and Christmas, in three and a half weeks, is just round the corner.

For Thanksgiving, my flatmate and I went with some friends down to Maryland to visit their family who live near Annapolis. In less than two and a half hours, we were in 'the South'. I'm surprised at how far north the south extends. I don't know who Mason and Dixon were, but when they drew their line, I don't think geography was their primary concern.

Anyway, my friend's family are definitely from the South and they had relatives visiting from Virginia, so everyone spoke with proper southern drawls, I was introduced to the children as 'Miss Ros', and most of the food was fried.

And boy was there a lot of food!

Ten adults sat down to a table groaning under the weight of large dishes of:
Turkey
Ham
Sweet potato souffle with pecan and cornflake topping
Sweet potato souffle with pecan topping
Squash 'casserole' - which seemed to me to be a kind of mashed squash, maybe with other things in it too, but not resembling anything like a casserole!
Stuffing
Fried okra
Green beans with garlic
Carrots with horseradish
Macaroni cheese
Salad
Two kinds of cranberry sauce
Gravy
Blueberry cream pie (no, I don't know why this was served with the main course).

It's possible I may have forgotten something...

The conversation mainly revolved round food. About half way through the first course it transpired that we had seven pumpkin pies waiting for dessert. These varied according to crust (pastry or biscuit crumb(Graham cracker)) and filling (canned or from an actual pumpkin).

After we'd eaten and cleared away, we had dessert a couple of hours later. Then, a little later still, out came the turkey sandwiches.

There's something lovely about a holiday that doesn't revolve around presents. It does just seem to be about being with your family. And eating. A lot.

As soon as we returned to Glenside, the Christmas decorations appeared. On our street there is a particularly tasteless inflatable Santa riding an inflatable motorbike. Our own front door has mysteriously sprouted a tinsel snowman and some intensely irritating bells that hang over the door handle and ring whenever you go in or out.

Bah, humbug!

Reading through this week's edition of the 'Weekly Telegraph' that I have sent to me, I was stopped short by the article announcing the death of Desert Orchid.

Now, if you'd asked me yesterday, I'd have said that I thought he probably died years ago - he was 27 and retired from racing in 1991.

But as I read the brief summary of his career, I remembered the time when I watched him race (and lose!) at Sandown in the Whitbread Gold Cup. And the time when I sneaked into the common room at school in the middle of the afternoon to watch him win the Cheltenham Gold Cup. He was a beautiful grey horse, not with a flashy turn of speed, but just brave and strong and genuine.

The writer of the article claims that 'Weeping over the death of a racehorse is probably going too far, even for the anthropomorphic British.' Well, I didn't exactly weep. And maybe it's as much to do with being far away from home as anything else. But there were certainly tears in my eyes as I read about the card from Australia addressed to 'Desert Orchid in his warm stable in England' that found its way to the right place. And I'm not ashamed to admit it.

How's this for an alliterative line:

darkata data dardarika

In the consonantal text this reads:

drktdtdrdrk

Which makes the poetic technique very obvious.

It means 'the kingdom which is to everlasting'.

... or, 'is my name really that hard to grasp?'

I think I've mentioned before the tendency for people to call me 'Rose' when introduced to me. In light of recent events, I'm thinking that's not such a bad thing...

Last week, when I registered at the hotel in DC, the clerk asked for my name:
'Clarke.'

'Bark?'

'No, Clarke.'

'Oh. No, ma'am. I can't find that.'

'Maybe it's under my room-mate's name. Traphagen.'

'Traphagen. Clarke. Brinks.'

'Yes, that's it.'

'No, ma'am. Only those three names are listed.'

Me, a little confused. 'Yes?'

'You're not registered. Do you want to call them?'

'I'm sorry?'

'Brinks?'

'No. Clarke.'

'I've only got Traphagen, Brinks and Clarke.'

'Yes. That's me.'

'You didn't say that, ma'am.'

'Yes. I did.'

He was still a bit uncertain and asked for my ID card, which finally convinced him that my name was indeed Clarke.

But that's nothing...

A couple of days ago I emailed someone I've never met. I signed my name 'Ros Clarke'. My name also appears as the sender of the email 'Ros Clarke' and in my email address.

He replied promptly:

'Dear Ross,'

Oh yes. Just to make certain:

'Are you the guy at Westminster?'

No. I'm the girl. Called Ros Clarke. Not Ross Park. Or even Rose Barks.

Hope that's clear now.

Regular readers will not be surprised that I was very excited when I came across a programme with this title on Radio 4 today. It's actually a short series of programmes on the place of gardens in different religions. Today was Judaism - beginning with Adam and Eve.

You can listen again to the 15 minute programme here.

This is lots of fun.

On biblical scholarship, here.

While I was in the hotel room at the weekend I saw about twenty minutes of the film 'Madagascar'. This is a film which breaks several of my normal rules - it's about animals and it's a cartoon.

Anyway, the scene that intrigued me was the reunion scene on the beach when the lion and the zebra run in slow motion, with the theme from Chariots of Fire in the background. The facial movements of the lion precisely replicated those of Jules Beauchamp in the classic 'Chariots of Fire' sketch known to all LR campers and leaders of the last twenty or thirty years.

Is this coincidence or direct influence? Maybe Jam would know?

Things I went to:

Saturday
Peter Miscall on 'Function of imagery in Isaiah'
Response by Francis Landy
John Holladay on 'The Israelite family and their neighbours.'
Norman Habel on 'Retrieving the voice of the earth in Gen 1'
Melissa Tubbs Lyon on 'The Grievance of the land in Hosea 4:1-3.'
Richard Hays 'Can Narrative Criticism recover the unity of Scripture?'
Michael Pasquarello 'The problem of the unity of Scripture: reading the bible for the love of God.'

Sunday
Jocelyn McWhirter on 'Messianic Exegesis in Rom 9:30-11:32'
Jeremy Punt on 'Sarah's Presence in the NT - Gal 4 and 1 Pet 3'
Preston Sprinkle on 'Why can't the one who does these things live by them? Paul's use of Lev 18:5 in Gal 3:12.'
Julia Myers O'Brien on 'Recurring themese in Nahum-Habakkuk-Zephaniah'
Michael Stone on 'Exegesis on the Song of Songs in 4 Ezra.'
Christina Bucher on 'Canticles 1:3 in late mediaeval visual art.'
IVP reception for N.T.Wright 'Evil and the justice of God.'

Monday
'Drama, Doctrine and Evangelical Theology: Exploring Kevin Vanhoozer's "Canonical-Linguistic" approach to doctrine and its implications for evangelical theology.'
Papers by Hans Boersma, John Perry and Jay Smith and a response by Kevin Vanhoozer.

If anyone's interested in hearing more about any of these sessions, let me know, but I assume they're not of general enough interest to bother blogging about! Some of my thoughts arising from them, on the other hand, will be the subject of blogs in days to come.

In general, I think it would be fair to say that biblical scholars are not good oral communicators. There were some notable exceptions (Julia Myers O'Brien, Tom Wright, Richard Hays among others) but often papers were mumbled, sped through or stumbled over and little thought had been given to the fact that hearers rather than readers were being addressed. Reading a list of half a dozen bible references too fast for them to be noted, let alone looked up or reflected on, is no use to anyone.

I went home after lunch on Monday, partly because I had lectures at 8.30 on Tuesday morning and partly because I'd had enough! There were a couple of things I wished I'd been able to go to if I'd had more time/hadn't clashed with other things - a discussion of 'Mere Christianity' and a paper on ambiguous personae in Hebrew poetry. I didn't go to the Freer gallery to see their exhibit of biblical manuscripts nor the Library of Congress to see the St John's Bible. But I feel like I did enough and I'm glad I went.

I'd forgotten how much I hate being in the same place as 5000 other people, herded like sheep from one room to the next, queueing for hours to buy an overpriced and unpleasant sandwich. And I was overwhelmed by the professional, academic atmosphere - which places like Oak Hill and Westminster help to shelter you from. There was part of me that was sickened by the amount of people making their living from study of the bible. And doing so in ways that are self-promoting at the expense of others. For many of these scholars, winning the argument and publishing more papers seem to be the only goals.

So by about 4pm on Saturday I was ready to go home.

However, things did get a little better after that. Some of the general good things over the last couple of days were: catching up with Thomas and hearing how things are at Oak Hill; spending time with Karyn, my room-mate, and also with some other WTS students who I didn't know well before I went; and buying some bargain books!

Some of the other highlights included:

Richard Hays speaking on narrative criticism and the unity of the bible. He spoke clearly and well of the danger of relying on method and of the need for biblical interpretation to be a task for the church, not the academy.

Tom Wright talking about his latest book 'Evil and the Justice of God'. This was the only meeting I went to which opened in prayer - with acknowledgment that what we were doing here mattered to God. He spoke wonderfully clearly, with an obvious pastoral concern - and some great jokes. I wished that Steve Chalke and Joel Green had been there to hear an evangelical who still holds to penal substitutionary atonement also outlining the way the cross deals with the larger problem of evil in the world. Wright explained how his book had arisen out of a political context in which Tony Blair, George W. Bush et al were talking about evil as if it were a new thing they'd discovered in the world, and as if it were something that they could eradicate by political and military forces. He also talked about responding to 'natural' disasters such as the tsunami. It was a wonderfully challenging and moving talk, but no less scholarly for all that.

Kevin Vanhoozer at the panel discussion of his latest book 'The Drama of Doctrine'. He's a cleverer man than me and, although I've read bits of the book, lots of the discussion went over my head. But what was wonderful was the tone of the discussion - not the academic infighting that seemed so prevalent elsewhere - but a genuine desire to get to grips with these questions of scripture and the church.

But none of these was the highlight...

The highlight
So I arrived for the Vanhoozer meeting about quarter of an hour late so the room was already pretty full. I squeezed past someone sitting at the end of a row and sat down, leaving one empty seat. A few minutes later, another man arrived to greet the man I'd passed and sit in the empty seat. At which point I noticed their name badges and suddenly realised I was sitting next to Peter Leithart and James Jordan!!!

I'll just say that again:

I was sitting next to Peter Leithart and James Jordan.

Anyway we did have a couple of minutes break after the third paper, so feeling like a complete groupie, I did introduce myself to them and thank them for their work. We chatted for a bit about David Field and Sarah Field, and they asked what I was studying and they told me what I should read on Song of Songs and we talked a bit about 'The Drama of Doctrine.' I was pretty incoherent, I expect, and heard very little of the next paper because I was sitting next to Peter Leithart and James Jordan.

So it was definitely worth going!

And thanks to Clare, Anna, Neil, Pete, Pete, Dawn, Sarah and Helen for sending goodies. I'm not sure how many books Thomas was planning on buying but he certainly had some space left in his suitcase after passing on all your treats!

On Friday morning I caught a train to DC where the annual meeting of the Society for Biblical Literature (SBL) was being held. The train journey took about 2 hours, through Baltimore and over several unfeasibly wide rivers. It felt like it would have been a beautiful journey a few weeks ago when the leaves were still on the trees, but on Friday it was fairly bleak and grey.

Anyhow by the time we were in the city the sky was blue and the sun was shining and I spent several hours wandering round, looking at the sights...

 
The White House seen through iron bars.  Our hotel was only a couple of blocks from the White House but we didn't get an invitation.  And when I went to the visitor centre they wouldn't let me in because I had a packet of crisps in my bag!  Dangerous things, crisps.

The monument.  I didn't actually walk right up to it and I'm not precisely sure what it commemorates, but it is an impressive column!

Capitol Hill through the traffic.

One of the things that surprised me was how European the city felt - and indeed how similar to London so much of it was.

I loved the sculpture garden.  The spider is by the same artist who made the spider that used to be in Tate Modern.  This one felt very different because of its outdoor, garden setting by contrast with the indoor, industrial space of Bankside.  I loved the Roy Lichtenstein house which at first appears to be a 2D cartoonish representation of a house, but when you get close you can see is actually a 3D inverted house, so that the central corner is furthest from you and the edges are nearest.

 
This was outside the national archives.  The legend proclaims 'What is past is prologue.'

One of the things that was different from London is the way that the different elements of the city: the political buildings, the financial and business district, and the tourist spots are all mixed up together.  So although on Saturday and Sunday the place was quiet, it didn't have the same eerie feeling that you get in the square mile at the weekend.  But it was pretty hard to find anywhere to buy a sandwich near the convention centre!

And the fish and chips in the 'Irish Pub' were nothing like the real thing.

Someone suggested a while ago that I might make various of my essays and other things available on the internet. Having experimented with one or two ways of doing this, I have now discovered the very wonderful Google docs and spreadsheets which lets me do this easily, conveniently and quickly with no limits.

So, to begin, you can find my short dissertation on Leviticus 25-26 and the function of the land in the relationship between God and his people here.

I will try at some point to make a catalogue and have these easily accessible in a single place...

This morning I went to buy a bottle of wine for this evening's neighbourhood pizza night. You can't do this at the supermarket (grocery store), you have to go the special 'Wine and Spirits Shoppe' (not sure if that spelling is a legal requirement, but it's certainly commonplace!). If you decide that your guests might like a choice between wine or beer, you have to make a further trip to the 'Beer Distributors', which are usually drive-through.

Anyway, I went to the 'Wine and Spirits Shoppe', selected my bottle of choice and took it to the till. Whereupon I was asked for ID to prove my age. You have to be 21 to buy alcohol here. I'm 32.

The shop assistant looked at my ID card (which I had to get to buy the car - I never expected to need it for proof of age!), then looked at me, then looked very embarrassed.

I was quite pleased!

Next week I'm going to Washington, DC for the Society of Biblical Literature conference. I think this will be fun. Lots of meetings about dull academic things; quite a lot of social events with dull academics - sorry, why am I going?

Well actually I am quite interested in the dull academic things and not all academics are dull. My room-mate, Karyn, for instance, isn't dull at all.

Plus, I've just been looking at directions to the hotel on the internet and suddenly I'm quite excited about the idea of doing some sightseeing while I'm there.

And it'll be nice to catch up with Thomas too. So if anyone at Oak Hill wants to send me chocolate...

Okay, so I failed my driving test this morning. I did the parallel parking perfectly, despite the steamed up back windows that made it quite difficult to see where I was.

So what did I fail on?

Reaching 22mph at one point in the 15mph test centre, in which 90% of the 10 minute test was conducted.

Not stopping at the Stop signs. Or at least not stopping for long enough and not having a proper jerk to indicate that I'd stopped. And being a little bit too close to the line when I stopped.

Not indicating when I was doing the parallel park. Okay, so someone had warned me about that and I forgot. But honestly. In the test centre. No other moving vehicles anywhere within sight. It hardly strikes me as a major disaster.

Taking a left turn a little bit tight and a right turn a little bit wide. Actually, on the right turn I was turning onto a dual carriageway and wasn't quite sure which lane I wanted to be in.

And that's it.

The examiner said that I was clearly able to handle the car and that it was obvious I'd been driving for years. Great. So now I have to go through the whole ridiculous thing again. Think I'll wait until the spring.

Andrew Sach has a Wikipedia page complete with photo.

I wonder what you have to do to deserve that. Are any of my other readers on Wikipedia?

Okay, so I've never read any. But this snippet found in Kevin Vanhoozer's excellent 'First Theology' does make me wonder if I should.

'Tis writ, "In the beginning was the Word."
I pause, to wonder what is here inferred.
The Word I cannot set supremely high:
A new translation I will try.
I read, if by the spirit I am taught,
This sense: "In the beginning was the Thought."
This opening I need to weigh again,
Or sense may suffer from a hasty pen.
Does Thought create, and work, and rule the hour?
'Twere best: "In the beginning was the Power."
Yet, while the pen is urged with willing fingers,
A sense of doubt and hesitancy lingers.
The Spirit comes to guide me in my need,
I write, "In the beginning was the Deed."

From 'Faust' by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Sometime ago I mentioned in passing that in the UK 75p in every pound spent on petrol goes to the government in tax.

Now, people here in the US think they pay a lot for what they call gas. But I found it very pleasing to fill up my Mazda for less in dollars than I would have spent to fill up my Fiesta in the UK in pounds.