Tuesday, January 24, 2023

Cultural Artifacts: the Phone Book and Other Texts

Last night, I settled in for the one synchronous online class that I'm taking this term.  In some ways, it felt like old home week.  The professor teaching it is one of the ones who taught the first seminary classes that I took, and those were from a distance.  And some of the students taking the class are ones I only know from online classes.

It's a class that takes a deep dive into the book of Luke; I'd have been happy to take a class on any of the Gospels.  Part of that is rooted in my interest in the Gospels.  But part of it is the magic of the professor.  I told one of my on-campus fellow students that I would take a class on the phone book, if that professor taught it.  This morning, it occurred to me to wonder if the much younger student even knew what I meant.  It is possible that she's never seen a phone book; I'm trying to remember when phone books stopped being delivered to houses.  I'm not sure I've gotten one since 2003 or so, at least not a phone book in the old-fashioned sense, the kind with both white pages and yellow pages.

It makes me wonder what other cultural artifacts have quietly passed on, even as we keep referring to them.

Today is one of my heavy schedule days, but my night class has been moved to an online asynchronous mode, so I won't need to stay awake quite as long.  I'll go to chapel, then the community lunch that's going to be offered after chapel this term, and then the Queer Theology class that I'm taking.  I'm so intrigued by the Queer Theology class.  We're not going to go the route of "Does God approve of gays?  Are gays going to hell?"  It's not going to be that kind of class--the professor was very clear that we're not going to haul out the clobber texts that can get hurled when the subject of sexuality comes up.

I'm less clear about what we will be talking about, but I'm interested in the possibilities.  And I feel lucky to have this option.  It's one place where I'm glad we'll be leaving the cultural artifacts behind when we approach the topic. 

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