Marginal Christianity

May 12, 2015 by Lee C. Camp, host of Tokens I am learning to fly sail-planes . It is a fine hobby for someone who enjoys an adrenaline rush. I feel like a little kid, a 48 year old kid, when I am coming in on final approach, and know that there is no throttle which can be advanced, no engine upon which I might rely.  There is just gravity, and a glide path, and the energy stored up in height and velocity, the graceful lines of the sail-plane gliding toward the almost mile long grass strip at Puckett Field, Eagleville, Tennessee. Sitting in the cockpit before our second or third tow one day, my instructor asked me to run through the check-list. He is a very fine instructor, and I come away every time having learned something. I was particularly pleased in the immediate flight prior to have learned how to do wing-overs, a marvelously graceful move in a sailplane, that makes a novice like myself feel all the sudden like I’m flying a fighter jet. So I dutifully and quickly ran ...

http://percaritatem.com/2014/04/20/jazz-as-an-example-of-macintyres-notion-of-practice/?fb_action_ids=10202466926689079&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=288381481237582#sthash.yH2kMSDW.dpbs By Cynthia R. Nielsen 20‑Apr‑2014 No comments In his work,  After Virtue ,  MacIntyre  provides a multifaceted definition of practice as well as a helpful discussion of a practice’s internal and external  goods. As he explains, a practice is any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative  human activity  through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity.[1] Clearly, jazz qualifies as a complex, socially created, communal human activity. The excellent jazz improviser, for example, must achieve a  high level  of technic...