weekly quotables - cows and more.

I just started weekly quotes last week, but I'm already off the Monday schedule. Oh well. Quotables from my classes in lecture or reading:

If we are really In Christ - we even stand in his place in the Trinitarian relationship. It doesn't look like us standing to the side of the Trinity, or below it, but drawn into it inside Christ. The Trinity is not a checklist doctrine for good Christians as much as the grammar for what salvation actually is."

~ Prof. Brent Laytham, THEO 6330 (Christian Theology) lecture

(read as if 70 year old professor is talking (cause he is)):
My dad used to give me lectures about how to walk in a cattle yard.

Have you been around cattle? If they taught you anything in school about Physics, you learn about something called momentum. Cows, they weigh a whole lot. And if you spook them, they start, rather quickly, to move away from you. Not just one, all of them. 1000 pounds each moving away from you - that's a lot of momentum. You know what happens the fence? There is no more fence.

When I was a kid, my dad didn't let me go in the cow pen, because he didn't want to rebuild the fence every year.

Eventually he taught me how to do it. You go quietly, slowly… you open the gate, walk in, and just stand there. If you're lucky, one or two will slowly approach you. Check you out. See what you are. Smell. Their noses are always wet. If you're really lucky, you'll get the tongue. Taste you. But you're not one of them. And if you aren't careful, you'll spook them.

The ministry is always carried out on somebody else's turf. Meaning this: People are always in various stages of suspicion of who you are. I mean, you really aren't one of them. You must approach carefully.

~ Professor C. John Weborg on growing up in central Illinois in the 1940s. SPFM 5201 (Spiritual Formation)

LOLcat.

~ Dr. Kevin Vanhoozer on his smiling definition of a cultural meme, CC 5610 (Cultural Hermeneutics) lecture (google it if you're not sure).