posting

I was working on the post for April 30 something for so long, never publishing it, that I finally gave up. Suffice it that there are many things worth talking about, writing about, and that being selective, which is the same as having the energy for, can be difficult to come by. Lately I've undertaken reading Heidegger's Being and Time. Placher, in his Narrative of a Vulnerable God, mentions this as useful in discussion with Barth on time, which is scattered throughout the Dogmatics. Also I'm still working through Zizek's Ticklish Subject and Kristeva's New Maladies of the Soul. I'm beginning to understand Lacan and how the differences between Freud and Jung show up in describing the human condition. Don't think I've given up on reading Fretheim's Suffering of God. I see that book as very important, along with Brueggemann's Old Testament Theology, for understanding and crafting theologies that touch our lives today. The problem is knowing God, and knowing God through Jesus: all the while being aware of my own projections and transferences. Again and again I confront the impossibility of knowing, which spurs me into understanding the process of knowing and knowability. I ask: how can I know God and not just be knowing some projection of myself? A scan of church history suffices to show how all too often the church projects society's goals and fears onto its program of salvation and its depiction of Jesus.
I've discovered a key in Lacan's and Freud's concept of Jouissance: that is our drives are structured to what gives us joy or pleasure.
I'm still reading and studying how laughter is used in the Old and New Testaments. The word for delighting before the Lord, used by Wisdom, in Proverbs 8:30 is the same as for David dancing before the Lord in 2 Samuel 6:5. The word is translated "play" but more purely means "laughing."