(frequently asked questions)
OK: SAQ
(seldom asked questions)
So on with the FAQ (or SAQ(*n1))
“…this is it, we’ll hit the heights, and oh what heights we’ll hit, on with the show this is it!” (*n2):
What is a Salon?
From the 17th century France through the 18th century the philosophical salon was a popular phenomenon among intellectuals.
An influential hostess or host would have a regular meeting of friends, visiting correspondents, and other acquaintances in their ‘living room’ (in French: salon) to discuss ideas, science, philosophy, innovations and events.
This practice caught on among the leisured, intellectually curious of Europe much as the classical citizens of Athenians, and the foreigners who lived there, would spend their time discussing ideas. (Acts 17:21)
So, alas, you cannot get your hair or your nails done here.
You need another sort of salon for that, and another set of barber shop community discussion traditions.(*n3)
In this Salon we have a virtual space for conversation, and a real, albeit invisible, Host.
Who is the Host?
Jesus is.
Who is Jesus?
He is our host.
He is also so much more.
Ask Him who He is.
He is more than JCJ’s invisible friend and His reality is beyond imaging.
I’m not Big Bird and He’s not pre-1985 Snuffleupagus.(*n4)
Though to receive Him, to see Him, it helps to be like a little child (Mark 10:14-16).(*n5)
Additionally, now that He is risen and ascended to His Father and has sent the Holy Spirit, Jesus is closer than we can imagine.
Reading Luke and Acts, and John and Genesis and Exodus in that old but still best selling library of books known as the Holy Bible will help to orient you.
He is our influential Host in this Salon of His, a virtual living room for conversation.
And His Influence is beyond astonishing, extending far beyond those who will actually acknowledge Him for who He truly Is.
Who is the King?
Jesus!
What is the Kingdom?
The whole of Creation, seen and unseen.
In the terrestrial realm much of the Heavens and the Earth the seen and the unseen have been corrupted against the Creator’s eternal purpose through the rebellion and disobedience of our first human progenitors.
Sound like gobblety gook?
I apologize.
I am hopelessly stuck in 25-cent words, complex sentences, and stacked allusions that run off topic like gopher burrows.
God help me, I’m an academically inclined, neurologically divergent intellectual.(*n6)
If “….the terrestrial realm….” stuff sounds like gobblety-gook I have two suggestions. The second one is better than the first.
1. If we are curious and patient then Gobblety-gook that is over our heads is a learning opportunity.
If you have made it this far in this post you are likely both curious and patient.
So find yourself a nice dictionary of theology and a perhaps a nice dictionary of philosophy: Online or paper.
I like paper.
Our son, 19, prefers Google for [Most*] everything but I think Old School paper still has a role (or virtual paper in an eBook.) [And so, it proves, does he when it comes to classic novels*]
[*Correction, Clarification May 2, 2025: in brackets above and here below. Our son, now 21, does prefer paper novels. He is selecting some classics, (1984, Uncle Tom’s Cabin he actually put me on to that one. I’d ignored it for 53 years. WOW. Important. Thank you ‘sheep dude’ your name for yourself not mine.) devouring them and integrating their wisdom into his world view. BRAVO ‘sonny woggle’ (Big C reminds you that only the cool kids get nick names). Additionally, since I have teased him for lugging public domain print books around continents I’ve got to clarify to help him against the traumatic complexes even the most well meaning parents unwittingly inflict on our progeny (O ADAM why did you eat that thing and break us all?). We all have our peculiarities. Lord knows I’m odd, don’t let me freak shame you, son. Hopefully, in time to come when the season is ripe, you will begin to experience the parental end of this sad process. But thank God for grace, sanctification, forgiveness and healing “full atonement can it be that thou O Lord shouldst die for me!”]
Much easier to lug eBooks around continents than paper books.
Don’t forget public libraries, much easier on the wallet than Ama*on. If you like lugging tons of paper there’s always 2nd hand.)(*n11)
[May 2, 2025 I really dislike Ama*on even more now. Seeking ways to break my addiction to its convenience]
2. Read Frank Viola’s Insurgence:
Frank Viola has a gift for simple expression. He writes clearly so that a high school student can follow him. This is very skillful and he leads us all into the depths.
Insurgence: Reclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom.
NOTES (rabbit trails, divergent thoughts, disorganized compulsive utterances….)
*n1 Je suis désolé Québec, et mes jeunes amis d’Ottawa, pas d’alcool. That would make it A Jesus Saloon and I forgot my spitoon. (sawdust not included).<click HERE to go back to main text>
*n2 Yep, Looney Tunes, song by Mack David & Jerry Livingston <click HERE to go back to main text>
*n3 Reference to Afro-American traditions of community forum in the neighbourhood barber Shop.<click HERE to go back to main text>
*n4 Before 1985 in Sesame St. Only Big Bird and children could see Mr. Snuffleupagus. He would vanish at the approach of adults. Snuffleupagus | Origin and History | Dictionary.com—<click HERE to go back to main text>
*n5 A little child is totally dependent on the loving kindness of others, unashamedly ignorant, and curious to learn. A little child has no notion of being self-made, deserving, independent, authoritative, knowledgeable, important, or earning a living.<click HERE to go back to main text>
*n6 Thus, I’m trapped tight in a salon, not foot loose and fancy free in a decent Barbershop (see *n3 above) or Liming Yard*n7.
Additionally, I have not met a concept that I can’t expound upon in a way that overwhelms my audience with a steady fire hose (in link 23:31 mark) type blast of over detailed complex sentences. Alas, I am a natural born lecturer who gets so interested in the minutia of his subject that he doesn’t even notice that his audience has slipped away or fallen into comas. Pray for me.
I am a hopeless intellectual. Although I want to grow food, build things, and enjoy renewable energy I only seem to be able to organize thoughts. And I use the word organize rather loosely to mean obsess repetitively, repeat compulsively, and diverge on rabbit trails.
Help!
I need a community of practice!
No count or carpenter in sight but I long for a contemporary expression of something like Hernhut.
Help, I need somebody, Help not just anybody. Won’t you please please Help me. (The Beatles, Help, released 1965).
Help! I need the body of Christ for more than a pleasant polite hour of passively under-functioning by starring at each others necks while a pastor, a choir, a worship team, some readers and some others over-function ‘on stage’ err in the chancel.
Help! I need something like Hernhut. O wait, ‘carpenter’ ‘sighting.’
We can’t see him but Jesus is a tecton (Matthew 13:55). Adam was a gardener and Jesus was mistaken for a gardener. And who needs a mere count when we have direct unmediated access to our King. (Zinzendorf himself knew the King.) Hmmm. (I’ll leave you and Google to sort out Hernhut, Zinzendorf, count and carpenter if you wish.)
*n7 Liming Yard: Reference to the Caribbean traditions of Liming (practicing Old talk) in the Yard (the public space away from the rulers between residences and work places. On a Barbados plantation the so-called ‘Negro’ Yard was where the deluded ‘white’ ‘masters’ lodged enslaved field hands. (apparently an academic reference for the terms Liming Yard & Old Talk is required here, please stand by. <== Got it Click HERE to Link to academic paper))
Hey, Christopher, why all the single quotes around the words?
Because ‘negro’ and ‘white’ are social constructs motivated by power and greed to divide and conquer the masses. Additionally, there is only ONE Lord, ONE Master and while He has every right to treat us creatures as slaves, He does not do so. (Who is the only Lord and Master? Jesus, our Host, our Prophet, Priest, & King. Our Liberator.)
Smell CRT *n8?
NOPE!
Not a Marxist.
Not even NEO.
Err, ya, so, nope not a Marxist. Not even a neo-marxist.
I follow a Liberator who takes and took *n9 the violence of humanity upon himself at the cross.
Unlike Marxists I do not follow or believe in a supposedly necessary and inevitable, purportedly liberative process of violence in history.
*n8 CRT = Critical Race Theory.
Which apparently has been banned by the thought police in the state of Florida. weird world we live in. Who in the USA, ‘land of the free’, of all places, would try to legislate theories out of conversations? Leonard Cohen is right, the USA is “….the cradle of the best and the worst….”.(Leonard Cohen, Democracy, 1992).
*n9 takes and took. Eternal God entering into history in human flesh messes up our tidy grammatical tenses in any language. Though the way Hebrew handles ‘tenses’ is cool for eternal things.
<click HERE to go back to main text>
*n11 When I was studying plant biology as an undergrad I found the Oxford dictionary of Botany to be very helpful in digesting technical, intellectual gobblety-gook. (9 years later when my sister was sorting through her biology gobblety-gook at university I think she acquired, err, ‘stole’ my dictionary. Lord I forgive. Lord I renounce bitterness. (When it comes to books I’m a bit like Smaug and treasure.) Thumbs up, JAJ, on reuse, recycle, reduce!)
When I came to an adult faith in Jesus between my 2 & 3rd year at Uni I quickly got a good dictionary of theology. (not sure if it was an Oxford. I’ve long released that paperback to the second hand market. It’s not good to be Smaug or to entertain my incipient hoarder tendencies. So gladly and sadly, frequent cross continental and trans-oceanic moves will do that to one’s library.