The Theos Project

New Blog: The Big Move

2011-07-31T19:54:00.002-04:00

I am sad to close the Theos Project, and I have been delaying this post for quite sometime. Most of you probably know that I started a new blog, A Love Supreme. I felt like I needed a new blogging start and a new forum. It's helped me a good deal. Turns out that the medium is, in fact, the message.

Whereas my blogging at Theos Project was primarily theological, my blogging at Love Supreme is an attempt to blog about a greater number of subjects and to be a more narrative blogger, reflect a bit more on the events of my life. This is a bit of a challenge for me, but it's been going well so far. Blogging at Theos Project put pressure on me to come up with things that were deep or intellectually vigorous, and at the same time, blogging at Theos Project also made me hesitant to blog about myself.

Blogging here at Theos Project has served me well, and I am thankful to all who have followed me here, read my posts, and left stimulating comments. (Never fear, though, because this blog, like all things in The Cloud, will remain online for eternity!)

Thank you and good night,
Jon

P.S. I will still be sharing theological thoughts on my new blog. =)

Deep Economy by Bill McKibben

2011-06-01T17:01:00.001-04:00

Most Americans, even those who consider themselves educated and fairly intelligent, find it difficult to navigate the intricate complexities of today's economy, especially as one wades through the muck and mire of the current economic recession. For me, reading Deep Economy was a refreshingly human way to contemplate the best elements of what makes economies work: the way they can pull together communities and provide us with a meaningful way to work and toil. McKibben's description of deep economy is actually about deep community. Local community, that is. McKibben's suggestion is that it is time to think about decentralization, creating local communities that are self-sustaining.

Deep Economy begins by criticizing the current economic axiom that we all take for granted: that our economy should expand. He questions our national obsession with growth, for three reasons. First, McKibben asserts that our current system has produced inequality and insecurity. The rich and powerful keep getting more rich and powerful, and the poor remain poor. The current system is also prone to the up turns and down turns that make us all feel insecure.

His second criticism is ecological. Our current global economy runs on cheap oil. What happens when the oil runs out? Or when oil becomes more and more difficult to find? Furthermore, we must ask if we can deal with the pollution caused by our current mode of operation. Further still, can we afford to fill the air with more carbon, thus contributing to greater and more devastating consequences from climate change.

McKibben's last criticism is the most simple: are we happy? Is our approach to work and economy enriching our lives. We may be producing more, we may be buying and selling more. We may be pushing ourselves to work harder and smarter, but is this all really translating into a full life?

Still, McKibben is understanding. "Up to a certain point, more really does equal better." He continues, "money buys happiness right up to about $10,000 per capita income, and after that point the correlation disappears." In other words, we are wired to think that more is better, and that is understandable; but after a certain point, the law of diminishing returns kicks into high gear.

McKibben's solution is to localize. We should, as a society, reduce our consumption while at the same time locally producing most of what we consume. This is where McKibben is folksy and old fashioned, in the very best way, because by moving economies to a smaller scale and relying on locally produced goods and services, communities will be more closely bound to each other, working together and becoming more neighborly in the process. This is the antithesis, says McKibben, of the hyper-individualism that now dominates and controls our national psyche.

Food is a good example of the main arguments of Deep Economy. "The average bit of food an American eats has traveled fifteen hundred miles before it reaches her lips." This requires oil to ship this food around. It also requires oil to fuel the machinery that runs the farms. Americans have gone from having half the population farm to now only 1%. Machines have replaced the human worker, with the profits not going to farmers but to owners, distributors, retailers. Farmers get "less than 10 cents of the typical food dollar."

What if we produced our food locally? It would keep the profits in the hands of the farmers, keep more of us busy with farming, and reduce our dependency on oil (with its resulting harm to the environment). It might feel better, too, to get to know your local farmer. After all, McKibben says, people who shop at farmers markets are 10 times more likely to stop and chat. This is the good old fashioned community values that is so refreshing to read.

One of the icons of our current growth-motivated economy is Wal-Mart. I was interested to read McKibben citing a study showing that Wal-Mart makes communities poorer. "As University of Pennsylvania researchers concluded in a particularly comprehensive study, counties with Wal-Marts have grown poorer than surrounding counties, and the more Wal-Marts they had, the faster they grew poor." (See cecd.aers.psu.edu/pubs/povertyresearchsm.pdf) Wal-Marts (and the global economy in general) also rely on cheap oil and contribute to sustaining sweatshop workers and exploited labor.

McKibben, though, is no economist. Dealing with the complexities of the current economy is not his area of expertise. So, in a world that is already running in this direction, it is unclear exactly how (and if) we could make a transition from the current economic engines to a more localized model. McKibben himself seems to acknowledge that such a transition would likely take a while and move slowly. Still, for those who are really schooled in economic theory, Deep Economy would leave much to be desired; but then again, the book was not written for those schooled in economic theory. It was written to motivate average people to act in practical ways, changing the way they buy and sell: to buy less stuff (that we don't really need), to live a life that is fulfilling, to support local artisans and food growers, and to get people out of Wal-Marts and into farmers markets.

Deep Economy seems to be suggesting that we can succeed and live a rich life without the cut throat competition that marks our current economics of globalized capitalism. This doesn't mean that McKibben wants to do away with markets or the market system. It's just that he sees it working better (in a more sustainable way that is more life giving) in localized contexts where neighborliness and community are rediscovered as an important element of a sustainable economy.

I found this book refreshing and hopeful. It is also very empowering, because there are very simple things that individuals can do to impact the economy in positive ways while at the same time making life a little bit richer and more fulfilling.

A few pics from AK

2010-11-15T20:35:00.004-05:00

http://owlrainfeathers.blogspot.com/2010/11/well-wouldnt-you-know-it.html

Sermon: Life Without Limits

2010-11-12T15:30:00.002-05:00

Sermon from 11/7/2010 at the Unitarian Universalist fellowship in Kodiak, Alaska.

We have always strived to be immortal, haven’t we? We have always struggled with our mortality. This struggle is central to any religion, and it is written into the myths of the Greeks, where the boundary between “god” and “human” is oftentimes blurred.

For a group who calls themselves “Transhumanists,” immortality is not an ancient speculation but a modern reality. Transhumanists anticipate a day in the not-too distant future when the contents of our minds—our memories, intelligence, emotions, and consciousness—can be uploaded into a new, machine-body, something that could extend our lives indefinitely.

It is a riveting idea—incredible and unbelievable really. The stuff that excites the imaginations of novelitsts and filmmakers. Yet this group of Transhumanists are credible philosophers and technology experts. They are MIT grads and university professors, not comic book writers.

Our rate of technological advance is so profound and exponential, that what was once a fantasy is now a credible theory and movement. For example, one dedicated and convinced Transhumanist, Ray Kurzweil, takes 250 supplements a day and undergoes six intravenous therapies a week. Other like-minded intellectuals possess Alcor cryogenic-suspension contracts. For the price of $120,000, one can have one’s body cryogenically frozen. It’s a bit of a gamble, a bet that at some point in the future, when human mind can merge with machine, their minds can be revived and transferred into a machine.

We hear a good deal these days about “growing our economy.” Few stop to ask if we can continue such “growth” indefinitely.

As a culture and society, we seem to be intent on limitless growth and eternal progress. We want to push to push the boundaries of possibility and pursue not only a life without limits, but a life without end.

** **

They were one in their purpose and plan. Their vision was to build a tower that would reach high, into the heavens. Their desire was to “make a name” for themselves, to a leave a legacy.
This is the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, found in the eleventh chapter of Genesis. It is the last of what is called the “primeval passages,” the old stories, like the creation of the world, life in the Garden of Eden, the strife of Cain and Abel, and the Flood narrative. After the Tower of Babel story, the book of Genesis shifts the focus to the life of Abraham and his descendents.
The desire of the people in Babel was that their tower would “reach the heavens” (sh¹mayim). This was likely a divine aspiration. In ancient cosmology, within the ancient worldview, the heavens and the underworld were the homes of the gods. To reach these heavens would, indeed, make a name for them; and what a name it would be!?
So, the people are united in their language with a common goal: build a great city with a tower to the heavens. At this point in the story, the biblical narrative pokes fun at the project. God says, essentially, “Let us go down and see what they are up to.” The implication is that their tower to the heavens wasn’t quite high enough for God (who lived in the heavens) to notice. So, God had to come down from heaven to see about the progress.
After surveying the situation, God says, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.” (NRS) There is a shift here: God expresses a concern. Now, presumably there is no sense of threat. The ancient Hebrew God had no rival. My interpretation is that the Tower, itself, is not a problem. On my reading, the text is teaching that there is a danger in a collective spirit to pursue a project without limits. The residents of Babel are pursuing a society of unlimited expansion. Put simply: growth is their primary objective, expansion for the sake of expansion.

** **

For a few days this week, I enjoyed a personal getaway. I spent some time in front of a wood stove in a cabin some forty miles or so away from Kodiak. The first day I was fortunate to have some good weather and great hiking, and I’ll tell you something, it was gorgeous and inspiring. The next day it rained. As such, I spend a good deal of time indoors, working on this very sermon, and watching the fire burn in the wood stove.
Speaking of fire…In Greek mythology, the wily Prometheus tricked Zeus into allowing humans to keep sacrificial meat for themselves, only offering the fat and bones to the gods. Not happy about this turn of events, Zeus took fire away from human beings. Prometheus responded by stealing fire and giving it back to mortals. Having reached his limit with Prometheus, Zeus chained him to a rock and vultures ate out his insides every day. Every night Prometheus grew them back, and the next day the vultures returned.
Mary Shelly wrote her classic gothic novel Frankenstein as part of a summer contest. Shelly and friends were spending the summer in the country, and they found themselves surrounded by an exceptionally rainy and cold summer. (Sound familiar?!)
Frankenstein was written as a warning against tampering with nature. Victor Frankenstein is a young, gifted scientist who learns to create life. Yet he is incapable of caring for this new life, of nurturing its soft and gentle heart. In fact, Dr. Frankenstein abandons his creation, horrified by the appearance. Eventually, the creature becomes vengeful and wreaks havoc on Dr. Frankenstein’s loved ones.
The novel is instructive, I think, in this way: it takes more than ingenuity and scientific acumen to nourish the human spirit. Life is fragile, and the soul is delicate.

** **

I think that we tend to think, to presume, that technology is neutral. We can use it for good or for evil. Is this really so?
My friend Bob Doede is a philosopher at Trinity Western University in Langely, British Columbia. What he says on this count is insightful, if not a bit provocative: “…technologies not only do things for us, they also do things to us. Moreover, they not only do things for us and to us, they also and at the same time undo things; they give and take away, often giving us something we desire (ease, efficiency, convenience, etc.) and taking away something we need (friction, concrete contact with nature, a sense of our limitations, etc.). For example, as they enable us to do more without as much physical exertion, they at the same time weaken our bodies.” DISCUSS A FEW EXAMPLES
This is not a sermon bashing technology. I like technology. And technology has done good things for our world, and it can do many more good things. The point is that our technological progress has extracted a price, it has changed us radically both in positive and negative ways, and my suggestion is that we be brave and wise enough to discern the impact of our “progress.”
Well, all of this—Prometheus and Zeus, Frankenstein and technology—it all brings me back to the cabin and the wood burning stove: Fire may be a gift of the gods, but it is only a gift if we respect and fear its capacity to destroy us.

** **

The story of the Tower of Babel ends by God “confusing the language” of the residents of Babel. With this confusion of the language, the community is unable to continue with their plans for expansion, and they abandon their lofty aspirations for the Tower as well as their city-building, scattering across the face of the earth.
“Look, they are one people,” God had said, “and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.” (NRS) This was God’s appraisal of the situation, and I find it to be a fascinating assessment of the potential of human beings: united by language and a common goal, we are unstoppable, nothing is impossible.

Certainly human history testifies to this capacity to accomplish extraordinary feats. Sometimes humanity has united to advance evil and oppressive ends, while at other times we have come together to advance justice and equality, stand up for human dignity, give relief to the poor and oppressed, and usher in times of peace and harmony.

“Nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.” (NRS) The question, then, is this: what are the ends to which we aspire?

I recently read an article in the local paper, the Kodiak Daily Mirror, stating that there are 6,910 documented languages in our world. I would add one more: the language of consumerism. This is a shared language of advertising, of image and sounds, designed to motivate us to buy more products and services and to continually “upgrade” our lives. This motivation most often comes by a subtle (or not so subtle) method of making us discontent with what we have, to create within us a sense that we need something more in our lives.

A recent Disney Pixar film, Wall-E, has a humorous take on our consumeristic, disposable society. Set in the future, all of the human beings have left because there is too much trash. Wall-E, the little robot who is the hero of the movie, has a job: compressing and stacking the trash in piles as high as small sky scrappers. So, there are these massive monuments of trash. Perhaps our culture’s Tower of Babel might be the massive amounts of waste we are collecting in the dumps and landfills.
What are the ends to which we aspire? Have technology, progress, and consumerism become ends in themselves? Jon Kabat-Zinn is a medical professor Emeritus who has spent a good bit of his career merging eastern spirituality with medical science. Recently I heard him interview with Krista Tippett on the NPR radio show Speaking of Faith. He says that our technology is in some sense getting more sophisticated than our understanding of ourselves as human beings. (Speaking of Faith) “I'm not saying,” says Kabat-Zinn, “sort of like we should go back — I'm not taking a Luddite position on this. I think that technology is incredibly beautiful, and it's going to get more and more and more powerful and more and more beautiful. But there are issues associated with it…”
He continues: “You know, we're moving towards a very strange world in some ways, at least so far that we don't know what it's going to be. But one piece of it hasn't developed yet and that is our intimacy, our deep understanding of what it means to be human. We're still in our infancy as a human species. And before we start to talk about wet/dry interfaces where you start putting chips inside of the skull..to regulate certain things or upgrade our memory or whatever it is that might seem so attractive, that we really in the next few generations need to reclaim the full dimensionality of our humanity.”
I think this is a nuanced and instructive position. I would only add this: whatever it is that we call technological or economic “progress,” it must run a distant second to religious, moral, and humanistic concerns, because progress is only progress if it is life-giving and increases the fullness of our human experience: caring for each other, deepening our appreciation for the sacred and mysterious, and developing our awareness of ourselves.
I recently read through Herman Melville’s great classic novel, Moby Dick. It is not small feat! =) Melville narrates a grand and epic tale in an equally magnanimous prose. One of my favorite lines speaks of the growing insanity of Captain Ahab, who has long harbored anger and maddening malice against the whale, Moby Dick, who left him with a peg leg the last time they met on the high seas. The narrator of the tale, who is also a crewman, says this, “God help thee old man, thy thoughts have created a creature within thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart forever; that vulture the very creature he creates.”
Ahab has built a tower of anger in his soul, he has created a creature of bitterness, and this creature will feed on him.

What creatures do our egos create? What towers do we seek to build within ourselves? Henry David Thoreau said, “only that day dawns to which we are awake.” Whatever inner towers we construct, whatever creatures our egos create, their primary limitation is that they keep us asleep to the beauty and possibility of the present moment. That is to say, there is something profound, indescribable really, about being able to fully engage each moment of our existence.
We so often become so caught up in every thing except what is happening around us. Consequently we fail to appreciate the limiteless beauty that our limited moments bring.
Thomas Merton, a monk and Roman Catholic spiritual writer said, “Most growth in religious understanding is the deepening of the experience of what we already know.” [cited by James Finley in Merton’s Path to the Palace of Nowhere, audio CDs]
James Finley, an author, psychotherapist, and spiritual teacher who was also a monk for a period of time, at the same monastery as Merton asks, “What would it mean to walk into a room and instantly become aware of the inherent holiness of everything that’s there, and to inherently reverence it and to honor it and to be faithful to it?”
There is a paradox here: By being faithful and awake to the limited nature of ourselves, the world, and others, we discover something truly unlimited, infinite.

** **

We feel all around us the impulse to add more and more, to live a life without limits or boundaries. This impulse is a part of the air we breath, it has been the primary motivation of our American society since Europeans first walked on the soil. But it isn’t just an American impulse. Perhaps we magnify it and make it into a central psychological and spiritual motivator; but it didn’t start with us. It is written in our oldest religious texts, in the Greek myths, and in our recorded histories. We want to build towers that reach the heavens, to have unlimited potential.
We could walk the path of the Transhumanists who look forward to a merger of human and machine, shedding our mortal, physical bodies. We could go the way of those who push to make more money, to eternally expand the economy. We could seek to make ourselves gods, limited by nothing.
Or we could seek to understand what it truly means to be human before we seek to become superhuman, deepening our understanding of living with limits before we live without limits.
And isn’t this the impulse of the artist? The artist begins by limiting herself to modest tools—a canvass and brush, a camera, paper and pen, or clay. The artist then attunes herself to something beautiful, or something true, or something profound. She expands herself, she learns from her art, and she deepens her understanding. When she is finished, her creation fixes our attention to something important about human life. Paradoxically, through a finite and limited creation of an artist, we can catch a glimpse of something infinite.
This glimpse of the infinite goes through the finite, not around it. It does not seek to circumvent our mortal humanity but is content and grateful simply for what is. We can only “reach the heavens” by being grounded on this earth, through a humble bow of thanksgiving.

Sermon: Blessed are the Poor

2010-10-17T20:18:00.003-04:00

This is a copy of the sermon that I preached this morning. It is an exploration of my time teaching creative writing (with Tamie) in the Kosciusko County Jail.

It was a surreal sensation. The first time I walked through the cell blocks of the Kosciusko County Jail in the small town of Warsaw, Indiana, I felt like I was walking through the film, The Shawshank Redemption. I was immersed by concrete and steel, surrounded by walls that were ugly and unforgiving. The walk through the blocks was short, and before I knew it I was at the center, the small room where the watchman sits. In this space every cell is visible, the camera transmits all of the movements and behaviors of the incarcerated and projects them upon screens: to monitor, to regulate the jail and its inmates.

Walking by the cells, I can see through the glass, into the cells. I can see in, but they cannot see out, except if they come really close.

The inmates wear stripes. For some reason, I was anticipating orange jumpsuits. But here, stripes. Black and white for the men, pink and white for the women.

All of the men wear ink on their skin and hardened expressions on their faces, especially the younger ones. They want you to know that on no uncertain terms they are not ones to be trifled with. Their situation is ironic, of course, because they are almost completely powerless, trapped behind walls, stripped of their civil rights, subjected to a schedule, and subjugated to the orders of the guards. So, perhaps, this is all the more reason for some to assert their manhood.

There are exceptions to this machismo, this harder-than-nails exterior shell. Some are broken and haggard. These are the ones that have nothing to prove, who are resigned to a system that has beaten them. The name they have for this system is "life." It takes me a while to see these men. It is the tough guys who most often make their way to the glass, who assert themselves, make themselves visible. It is their broad shoulders and prominent tattoos that greet me on this my first visit to the Kosciusko County Jail.

It's a funny thing. After living in this small Indiana town most of my life, it is only at the age of 31 that I first make my way through these cell blocks. I have been to countless suburban homes and visited many respectable places of business. I have darkened the doors of the churches hundreds of times and listened to as many sermons. I am thoroughly familiar with the ins and outs of the local college, the grocery stores, and I am intimately familiar with all of the spaces in the natural world where one can retreat to in order to enjoy a bit of quiet reading time.

But these cell blocks? They are another world to me.

***

They were seated on a sloping hill, most scholars say. This is the setting for The Sermon on the Mount. Of all of Jesus' teachings, this homily is his most well-known. It is both instructive and poetic. It is somehow both familiar and simple, yet at the same time provocative and perhaps even revolutionary.

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
⁴Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
⁵Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
⁶Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
⁷Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
⁸Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
⁹Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called sons of God.
¹⁰Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Most of what Jesus says is directed toward the future: "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." It is a future hope and a promise to come. Yet Jesus begins his sermon by saying "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." This is no promise delayed for a day to come. Jesus speaks in the present tense: "theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

For Jesus, the kingdom of heaven, if it is anywhere here on earth, is to be found with those who are spiritually poor, those impoverished souls.

But can it really be this way? Who builds a kingdom of the poor, made up of poor spirits and broken souls?

Who does this?

***

Within a few months of moving to my small, Indiana town, Tamie, now my fiancé, was restless, ready to do something significant and to give. She decided that she wanted to volunteer for the local literacy council, maybe teach English as a second language to local Hispanic people. She called the local director, who in turn asked Tamie if she would like to start a literacy class at the jail. That literacy class quickly evolved into a creative writing class that we taught together. Our incarcerated students were soon composing poetry, writing their life stories, even crafting persuasive essays. We taught two classes each week—one for women and one for men. The women came in wearing their pink stripes, the men in black and white.

Each week they would write. They would process their lives through words. Almost to a person, our class was made up entirely of people from the lower class, the poor. We encouraged them to push the boundaries, the boundaries of their social class and the boundaries that they set up within themselves. Be creative, use your imagination. Don't settle for words and sentences that you've heard before, create your own.

We knew that they already were creative. They tear out threads of their clothing and other material, use dye made of crushed pencils to color the threads, then weave the threads together and create necklaces. One of our students fashioned a necklace complete with a Christian cross pendant. With nothing but time on their hands, they could create these beautiful things. Some of our students were incarcerated for their creativity, like creating a clever or smarter way to cook methamphetamine (or just "meth" for short). For those who grow up with an expectation for failure and live their lives in poverty and violence, creating meth is a way to kill that reality, to escape and live high. Meth only promises death, and it delivers every time: death to pain and poverty, and a deteriorating but inevitable death to the body and the spirit.

It occurs to me to ask: what do we do with this incredible gift, this gift we have to create? Is it possible that one of the most fundamental human characteristics is our imagination?

Our students could imagine and they could create. Last Christmas they assembled a collection of their poetry in a small journal. We printed a few hundred copies or so and sold them, using the proceeds to purchase books for the jail. The poetry was raw and it was well-formed. It was free of pretense, simple but at the same time complex because of this simple pain that they were exploring.

Together, our classes discussed a name for the poetry collection. They eventually settled on "the guilty's innocence." They all really liked this title. For them guilt is one of the most fundamental powers of the soul, a force to be reckoned with. That they were guilty was the given. What they wanted to do with their poetry is let the reader see into their innocence. Looking back now, I think that it's their innocence that surprised me more than anything. There was a certain guilelessness that permeated each class and every written assignment. For example, Tamie and I quickly learned that our postmodern irony was lost on the class. For all of the ways in which they were wise to the world—much wiser than ourselves—for all of their soul-numbing experiences of abuse, violence, and oppression, oddly, they were too sincere for irony.

***

From my observations, I've found that many Christians these days prefer the version of the Sermon on the Mount found in the Gospel of Matthew. There is, however, another lesser-read version of the Sermon found in the Gospel of Luke. Matthew's account is what we might call a more "spiritual" interpretation. Luke's version isn't so lofty. It's raw and more prophetic, a bit more blue collar. It is also more compact. My earlier reading was from Matthew, which pronounces nine blessings. Luke slims down and gets to the point with only four.

There is certainly much to learn from Matthew's version. For example, I want to think about how the kingdom of heaven is to be found with those whose spirituality is poor. These days, there's money to be made in the business of promoting spiritual richness, and there are churches to be filled with congregants ready to hear a message about becoming spiritually wealthy. What might it mean to flip this paradigm? I want to learn how to identify with this poverty of the soul and see what it is that Jesus saw.

Turning to Luke, however, I can see that the interpretation and application of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount opens up….with a bit of a bite you might say.

woe to you who are rich,
for you have already received your comfort.
²⁵Woe to you who are well fed now,
for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will mourn and weep.
²⁶Woe to you when all men speak well of you,
for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets.

These are the words that follow right on the heels of Jesus' blessings. It has all the fight of the ancient Hebrew prophets who denounced oppression and injustice in the land. The emphasis here is almost "economic." The blessing is not for the "poor in spirit," but for "the poor." Period. The version in the Gospel of Luke omits the term "in spirit" and simply states,

Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.

When Jesus speaks in this prophetic tone, he is tapping into his Jewish roots. These are deep roots. The Jewish holy writings overwhelmingly speak for the poor.

That these scriptures advocated for the poor was something I knew, but in preparing for this sermon, in reviewing again the writings, I was surprised when I read again the uncompromising emphasis of this message.

For example, the law made explicit provisions for the poor and vigorously forbade taking advantage of the weak and powerless:

For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, ¹¹ but during the seventh year let the land lie unplowed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it…ex23:10-11

Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan. ²³ If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry…. If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not be like a moneylender; charge him no interest….ex. 22:22-27

Do not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits. ⁷ Have nothing to do with a false charge… "Do not oppress an alien…ex. 23:6-9

The poetry of the Psalms also speaks on behalf of the poor, saying in no uncertain terms:

He will defend the afflicted among the people
and save the children of the needy;
he will crush the oppressor… For he will deliver the needy who cry out,
the afflicted who have no one to help. ps. 72:4, 12

Lastly, there are the Prophets. They are aflame with righteous indignation on behalf of the poor and against those who oppress the poor and do not provide for them:

You trample on the poor
and force him to give you grain.
Therefore, though you have built stone mansions,
you will not live in them;
though you have planted lush vineyards,
you will not drink their wine. Amos 5:11

The LORD enters into judgment
against the elders and leaders of his people:
"It is you who have ruined my vineyard;
the plunder from the poor is in your houses.

¹⁵ What do you mean by crushing my people
and grinding the faces of the poor?"
declares the Lord, the LORD Almighty. Isaiah 3:14-15

Woe to those who make unjust laws,
to those who issue oppressive decrees,

² to deprive the poor of their rights
and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people,
making widows their prey
and robbing the fatherless.

³ What will you do on the day of reckoning,
when disaster comes from afar?
To whom will you run for help?
Where will you leave your riches? Isa. 10:1-3

Now, my objective this morning is not to preach a hell-fire-and-brimstone sermon against the rich, but to simply draw attention to the way in which the ancient Hebrew faith aligns love for God and love for neighbor. There is no "love of God" without compassion and care for one's fellow human soul. Love for God cannot exist without love for the neighbor. It cannot. This religion has deep roots in the real world of caring for others, and Jesus, the orator of the Sermon on the Mount, practiced what he preached.

Jesus was poor. Jesus was homeless. Jesus was also a prisoner, a prisoner who died on death row.

***

As we read through our student's writings each week, we started to see definite trends. One thing in particular was that there were certain ways in which they wrote about themselves that revealed a very low sense of self-worth, particularly amongst the women. Many of our students had done things to cause themselves and others great suffering, and they had to live with that. As convicts and soon-to-be ex-convicts, they also had to live with highly negative (and often unforgiving) societal stigmas.

In light of this, Tamie came up with an assignment for the women's class: write something about yourself that is both true and kind. Only two, simple requirements: it has to be true and it has to be kind.

The next week the women had nothing to turn in. A misunderstanding? "Okay class, it's simple: a writing about yourself that is kind and true. Any questions? Alrighty then, try it again this next week."

The next week came, and still nothing. What then began to sink in, for us, was the fact that after two weeks, the women in our class could not conceive of a true kind thing to say about themselves. Not a one of the ten women could do it. After dialoging a bit with the class, Tamie responded by saying, "You think that you have nothing kind or good to write about yourselves, but I've read your writings…." She then went on to tell the class how as a young teenager, one of our students found herself with a child and in the midst a difficult marriage, and yet in the midst of all of the turbulence and chaos of her life, she was trying to make her house a home: cleaning, lighting candles, and scrubbing the kitchen floor until after a long while she realized it was in fact a dirt floor. In the middle of abuse and violence, fear and uncertainty, she was lighting candles.

After Tamie shared her story, the women in the class all had tears in their eyes, their homemade mascara running down their faces.

This story reminds me of another passage in the Christian scriptures, a rhetorical question really, with a certain echo: "Has not God chosen the world's poor to be rich in faith and heirs to the kingdom?" (James 2)

***

I think that much of the reason why we do not align ourselves with the poor is because we don't see the poor. Poverty, both material and spiritual, is so difficult to look at; it is unsettling and disturbing to the eyes and to the spirit. We fear poverty, we run from poverty, we protect ourselves against poverty. It was a difficult thing, even for a few hours each week, to go into the Kosciusko County Jail, to enter this new world where everything is so hard and yet so fragile. In our class, we saw the concrete dissolve into a fine powder, and we saw souls of steel become as breakable as dried twigs.

That's a scary thing to see. It makes me want to ask: who builds a kingdom with sticks and dust?

A rich young ruler once came to Jesus asking about eternal life. Had he kept all of the commandments, Jesus asked? Check. Okay, then sell all of your possessions. This was too much for the young man, and he left saddened in his heart.

***

In all of this, somehow I feel like we are talking about inverting the paradigm, turning common-sense on its head. To deepen the soul and widen the spirit, become humble. For humility, go to the poor, those impoverished hearts. Jesus puts it this way, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

It's like the spiritually and materially rich must go to the poor to seek deliverance and salvation from their riches. Like any religion that is authentic has to be a poor one. That sounds strange to my ears, I admit, and it certainly doesn't sound like any kingdom I've ever heard of. These are also teachings that are very disturbing, because to identify with the poor in spirit is to identify with heartbreak, violence, and brokenness in such a way that one weeps the tears of desperation.

There were many times when being teachers in the jail took its toll on us. Over the course of the one year we taught in the jail, we saw students create spaces for joy, hope, and truth, but we also saw students descend into depression, spiral into cynicism, and even one who was found dead in a ditch only weeks after being released. The unsettling nature of the poor in spirit leads to a good deal of questioning and speculation about one's religion.

For myself, the answers to these questions are often found wanting. There is one thing that seems true, however; and it is that suffering, pain, and poverty are one of the most fundamental realities I know; it's so fundamental to our economic, spiritual, emotional, mental, and societal existence. Therefore, any religion or view of life that does not confront suffering, pain, and poverty only becomes "an opiate for the masses," as Karl Marx put it. What is religion, or what is life for that matter, if it does not align itself with the poor.

****

I would like to close by sharing a poem written by one of our students, the same woman I mentioned above earlier who lit candles and scrubbed the dirt floor as a young, abused teenager. She was transferred from the Kosciusko County Jail to a maximum security prison, where she still resides up to this very morning.

I'm sitten here at Rockville Prison looking out the bars thinking to myself, "When will this end?" "Will I learn my lesson and never get into trouble again?" This is not somewhere I would want to stay longer than I have to. "Girls!" Not women! They are so rude & loud & disrespectful. I don't want to say nothing because I don't want to get into trouble this is very hard for me "to shut my mouth." I daydream a lot. I think of all the memories I have or I sleep so I can dream. The dreams take me in to a different world, a better place than this.

Some of the girls date each other, most of the time all this means is girls write love letters to other girls. I think it helps them cope with this place. Maybe they need love or just want to fit in. I don't do this, it's not in my world to be something I'm not.

I know one girl who pulls her hair out just because this other girl cuts her arms. Yes, this is not a place I want to be. But here I sit.

None of my friends write me anymore. They all forgot about me months ago. My family don't care. They know I will survive. It's very lonely here. I miss my kids, I miss my life. When will this end? I'm in a fog, drifting by, I'm numb but I hurt on the inside at the same time. This is a nightmare. Someday I will wake up and it will all be over but for now I have to stay in hell until God blesses me. Here I wait.

Love and the natural world

2010-08-16T23:58:00.003-04:00

“No doubt a particular beautiful landscape supports by its peculiar charm a particular moment of love, as do the particular brilliance of a picture, a particular moment of music, a particular elegance of dress or dwelling; but these marvels only frame: if no love had by chance turned them into a momentary resting place, their gathered splendors never would have been able to produce the least movement of love….Venice becomes beautiful only because one loves there, and not the inverse, despite appearances.” Jean-Luc Marion, God without Being

Recent days have found me contemplating the beauty of landscapes. Currently I find myself in Alaska, which certainly lends itself to a greater awareness of the marvels that confront the soul in wild spaces. I feel at times as though my soul has had a certain spaciousness that awaits to be filled by the natural world in its peculiar beauty.

Jean-Luc Marion is a French philosopher, a phenomenologist who has been accused of pushing the boundaries of phenomenology too far. I have been reading his God without Being as I have continued to research grace and the gift. Marion has a good deal to say, theologically, about the gift.

I find that this quote shifts my paradigm: “Venice becomes beautiful only because one loves there, and not the inverse, despite appearances.” Love of the natural world is what fills it with its particular wonder and awe, although it certainly feels as though the natural world fills us with awe. In reality, “these marvels only frame,” they only support the moment of love.

Alaska

2010-08-16T00:39:00.001-04:00

Quick blog explaining my whereabouts....well, a blog that links to a blog that explains my whereabouts....
http://owlrainfeathers.blogspot.com/2010/08/alaska.html

Capitalism in financial crisis

2010-08-03T12:43:00.003-04:00

Check out this video by David Harvey. It is a provocative analysis of capitalism in crisis by a Marxist theorist. However, I think you will be intrigued by the presentation style. I love it. I think it is a fabulous way to take in information. I will refrain from commenting on the style of the video and just allow you to view it. But please do leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

Two of his main points (for those who wish to discuss the substance of the presentation):

"Capitalism never solves its crisis problems, it moves them around geographically."

History of capitalism is about financial ingenuity and innovation. "Financial innovation has the effect of empowering the financiers."

The Future of Advertising - The Game of Life

2010-07-28T15:11:00.002-04:00

This video is a short, ten minute lecture on the future of advertising if gaming merges with marketing. I tend not to pay attention to gaming all that much, but there is reason to pay attention to this industry and the way in which it could influence human behavior.

This excited lecturer reflects on how our entire lives could become a gaming module, where we score points based on our behavior, particularly in relation to what we purchase. He concludes by saying, "I do know that this stuff is coming. Man, it's gotta' come. What's gonna stop it?!"

This discussion reminded me of Spielberg's 2002 film, Minority Report. Here is a short, 45 second video. "John Anderton, you could use a Guinness about now!"

Fire and Desire, Madness and the Spirit

2010-07-26T18:03:00.001-04:00

"We do not wake up in this world calm and serene, having the luxury of choosing to act or not act. We wake up crying, on fire with desire, with madness. What we do with that madness is our spirituality." -Ronald Rolheiser

(Continuing to borrow from Tamie's posts.)

Conservation, Eugenics, and Reconciliation

2010-07-26T07:22:00.005-04:00

I love Orion magazine. To those who classify and categorize, Orion would likely be labeled as "environmentalist" or "conservationist." However, it is concerned with broader questions of existence that have to do with place, the space that we inhabit and the ethical and philosophical questions surrounding it. It jives well with me because it places environmental concerns within the question of "what kind of human beings do we want to be?"

My interest in environmentalism and conservation of the natural world stem from my concern for the heart and soul of a consumeristic culture. I wonder what kind of damage we do to ourselves if the primary force behind most of our lives (from the big decisions to the little decisions) is an impulse to consume, to have more and more stuff. I also have fallen in love with natural beauty and with the kind of "silence" that only things like trees, streams, mountains, chipmunks, moose, lakes and oceans can provide.

I also appreciate Orion even more after this article by Charles Wohlforth in the July|August issue. It is an honest evaluation of the connection between conservation efforts and eugenics. Check it out.

"The American environmental movement remains predominantly white and middle class, detached from minorities, immigrants, and the poor along the same lines of class and color that existed a century ago....More broadly, our political language for protecting the environment is about conflict between forces of good and evil, the fear of annihilation, and the exaltation of purity. It's the language of war, with dark undertones of racism we've inherited but no longer recognize."

Wow.

The article traces the dark side of the history of environmentalism. For some, conservation of the natural world was rooted in a belief in the dream of early twentieth century eugenics: that Americans should breed a strong race of rugged, hard-working individualists, "oddly, the improvement of the dominant race meshed with the New Nationalism's utopia for a merit-based society." For Progressives like Teddy Roosevelt, it meant sticking up for the average guy, uh, white guy of course. So, preserving the average, strong working (white) man from the dominance of government and corporate powers that might impose on his freedom and destroy the land.

"Roosevelt was worried about the loss of a special American quality of strength and ingenuity that supposedly had evolved among whites on the frontier."

Said Roosevelt: "If our nation cares to make any provision for its grandchildren and its grandchildren's grandchildren, this provision must include conservation in all its branches--but above all, the conservation of the racial stock itself."

It gets worse, not better.

"Roosevelt wrote, 'I wish very much that the wrong people could be prevented entirely from breeding; and when the evil nature of these people is sufficiently flagrant, this should be done. Criminals should be sterilized, and feebleminded persons forbidden to leave offspring behind them. But as yet there is no way possible to devise which could prevent all undesirable people from breeding. The emphasis should be laid on getting desirable people to breed.'"

Well, that's one approach. It's the eugenics way, of course. And, actually, there was someone who tried to devise a way for a eugenics vision. Heir Hitler and the Nazis....which brings up more oddity, absurdity, and downright idiocracy, because "Nazi officials who slaughtered human beings in death camps also passed some of the world's most advanced legislation to protect the environment and endangered species, even outlawing cruelty to animals, including the sort of medical experimentation they performed on their human victims."

Weird. Very weird. But back to Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressives, whose perspective on the environment was couched within an overall worldview of superiority. It begs the question: "How could progressives who world for conservation, national insurance, and the rights of the workers adapt an ideology of hatred against the weak?"

Indeed. What is clear is that imperialistic thinking thoroughly permeated the heart and soul of the white race, even amongst reformers like T.R. and other Progressives.

The article has an interesting conclusion. "Power won't help us....This is a better job for the weak, who often have more at stake in the loss of nature, a closer relationship to its gifts, and a greater capacity to recognize when a certain level of material wealth is enough." This conclusion is intriguing because the article begins by suggesting that the environmental movement is a project of the white middle class, presumably those who want to protect nature (and the ecosystem) for their enjoyment (and safety). It is a movement detached from the marginalized, the poor, minority races, or immigrants. In this sense, it can become another "cause" that benefits the existing benefits of those who are higher in the power structure.

"Understanding the history of racism in the conservation movement is important, not to assign blame, but to diagnose our unhealthy relationships with each other and with nature, learn from our mistakes, and begin cooperating in the ways that we must in order to reverse our destruction of the Earth's ecosystems."

Agreed. But in order to cooperate with the marginalized, there must be something at stake for them, some benefit to their cooperation. These divisions between us are deep in the United States, and it is important to our power structure that we maintain them. As such, I imagine that the conservation movement will continue to be a project of the white middle class. In order to enlist the marginalized, they have to receive something in return, a greater share in the power and wealth of the nation, and a breakdown of the stigmas that make them marginalized. Cooperation means that the marginalized are no longer perceived as less than. Enlisting their cooperation means that the white power structure has to give something, something economic in return.

Knowing that this is the case, I doubt that such a cooperation will occur. More than likely, the environmental movement will continue to be a project of the white middle class. I will support it, of course. But these days, I am more inclined to think in wider terms; specifically, I want to ask about reconciliation in the broadest sense, the type of reconciliation that is at the core of the Christian faith, though it is often not recognized as such: "In Christ there is neither Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female." This passage and others suggest that the ultimate end for Christian reconciliation is the obliteration of all hard divisions based on ethnic groupings, class and social status, and gender privilege. All exist together, unified under Jesus the Christ.

Environmental and other causes often exist in isolation from greater philosophies of reconciliation. Articulating such a greater philosophy is one of the great opportunities for religion in general and Christianity in particular.

more bumper stickers

2010-07-24T07:18:00.002-04:00

This quirky bumper sticker had Tamie and I in stitches:

"Support your right to arm bears"

Environmental bumper stickers

2010-07-23T19:14:00.002-04:00

An interesting bumper sticker I came across:

"Environmental bumper stickers don't mean shit when they are stuck to CARS."

(Thanks to Zach and Amy.)

Catching up with the world

2010-07-23T18:58:00.003-04:00

Tamie and I are spending a bit of time in Vermont. One look at the handy road atlas reveals that Vermont is loaded with scenic highways and byways. It is a beautiful area of the country. Of the entire continental U.S., I would say it ranks at the top of my personal scenic charts. I also love the feel of Montana. Vermont has its own style: great cheese; Ben & Jerry's ice cream; it was green before green was cool; life moves at a slow pace; strip malls are kept to a minimum; and the Wal-martization of the world is kept at bay. So, I love the style.

Tamie has a short, humorous post on the subject:
Vermont: So beautiful it's offensive

For now, I'm trying to catch up a bit on the 'ole blogging front. So, more to come. For the moment, I've been enjoying the New England area.

Portland, Maine

2010-07-15T16:46:00.002-04:00

No great ideas. Not even any pictures, unfortunately.

I'm just hanging out here in Portland, Maine, scoping out the possibility of Tamie and I moving here to this wonderful little coastal city. I am couchsurfing with a wonderful host, John. He's been great, and today we bicycled around the city. It's only a city of 60,000 or so folk (not including hamsters), but it has a nice, artists/creative community, and the scenery is lovely. Maine has many islands and a beautiful, rugged stone coast. Ferries (the boats, not gay men or the little enchanted girl creatures with wings) shuttle people out to some of these islands, or just take you around for a few hours or a day of taking in the salt air and the inspiring sights.

Try as I might, it's hard to find anyone give the city a negative review, or say anything disparaging about it. It's like pulling teeth. (Or, perhaps, it's a lot like answering that infamous interview question, "Tell us two or three of your weaknesses." You know the one? Where you try to say something "negative" about yourself, but it actually turns into a positive. Like, "Well, ya' know. One of my weaknesses is that I just get so wrapped up in my work that I can get burned out. Yeah. It can be a real draw back, I tell ya.")

So, I dig Portland, and I think moving here is now in the works. The price of living is a bit higher than living in the cornfields of northern Indiana; but, ya know, we expected that sort of thing.

Oh, and by way of a P.S. We camped in the Adirondacks on our way here to Maine. That was good times. And the drive through Vermont was tops. I mean tops. It was gorgeous. Right through central Vermont, through the Green Mountains. Oh yes. Vermont is tops. And New Hampshire has the absolutely best state motto you shall ever hear. "Live free or die."

Amen.

Calling All Fanatics: Protecting nature should be more important than enjoying it

2010-07-02T15:39:00.003-04:00

Derrick Jensen is a provocative environmental activist and writer. His basic point: save the planet at any cost. If it costs your integrity? Yes. If it costs your life? Check.

He has a short column with Orion magazine. In the recent July|August edition, "Calling All Fanatics" he starts by saying, "there aren't nearly enough of us working anywhere near hard enough to stop this culture from killing the planet."

Should we be enjoying our hikes, kayaking trips, and nice camping trips when our entire society is continuing to allow the destruction of the natural world, polluting the air and water, sending carbon into the atmosphere, and cutting down the forests (and other overharvesting), all to feed the need for greed--our demand for more and more stuff.

"For anyone not to devote her/his talents and energies to defending the planet is a betrayal of the worst magnitude, a gesture of contempt against life itself. It is unforgivable."

I am inclined to agree. Although I am a theologian by trade, a thinker, I want my theory to be grounded in the reality and workings of the world. From my volunteer work teaching in the local county jail it has become clear to me that there are problems that require immediate action, and words without deeds are dead. People's lives are being stolen and abused. We can sit back and pontificate on incarceration, but I know the names of people who need support because every night they get shut up in cages like animals with other desperate people. They need friends, mentors, and they need activists.

I feel the same way about the environment. I agree with Jensen that there is a "contempt against life itself" at work somewhere in all of this.

Yet as a theologian and spiritual thinker, I also want to ask the deeper questions. I want to ask, where does this "contempt against life" come from. I want to take Jensen's militarism, his do-or-die attitude, his courage, and join it with some intelligent spiritual analysis. By "spiritual" I mean that I want to ask about the "spirit" or "mood" or "attitude" that animates this culture of contempt against life. I do believe, for example, that consumerism is based on contempt. We have to first despise ourselves. Once we despise our lives, then we are vulnerable to advertising and marketing manipulation.

In the past, advertising and marketing was simple: for a content, satisfied, or self-actualized life, just purchase [insert product/service]. The sophistication of our current consumerism is such that we are well aware of our own self-content, and yet we continue to consume. This interests me. Self-contempt is celebrated, in often very subtle ways. Of course we still sell cereal by showing happy kids, but its also hip to be angsty: "yeah, I'm a jaded consumer, and to prove it I wear this jacket and these shoes." Even protests against the system necessitate that we participate in the system.

There's a market for the anti-system crowd. These are the saavy, self-aware types. The advertiser can tap into the contempt and bring it to the surface, no problem. An advertiser can use anything to sell a product or service.

How do we respond to this contempt for life? If our consuming impulse is based on contempt and a discontented consumer, how do we stop the consuming impulse before it begins? How does a person (or a society for that matter) become content, undoing our conditioning toward contempt?

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

2010-07-01T21:52:00.001-04:00

"At one moment we deplore our birth and state and aspire to an ascetic exaltation. The next, we are overcome by the smell of some old garden path and weep to hear the thrushes sing."

Were I to comment on the novel, in a very general sense, I would say that Virginia Woolf's Orlando was rather uncompelling. Of course, one might rightly call me to task for using the term "uncompelling," due to the fact that it is not a word--it is not a word in the sense that it cannot be found in a major dictionary. However, if you were to suggest that my word was not a word merely because it was not in the dictionary, I would say that this matters little because you get the gist of what I am attempting to communicate. Or, alternatively, in response to your criticism that my word is not a word, I might respond by saying that Woolf's novel is not a novel.

Orlando is in fact a displaced genre. It is written as a biography and intended by the author as a biography. It is shelved under "fiction," and more importantly, it is being reviewed by this writer as a novel....but not quite a novel....but when you read it, you get the gist of what Woolf is trying to say.

The novel is a biography of "Orlando." It is a loose interpretation of the life of one of Virginia Woolf's intimate friend, Vita Sackville-West, also a writer. Yet it is free and easy with the truth, very "unhistorical," if you will, "unfactual." But then again, you'll get the gist of what is going on. Woolf is taking liberty with the biography to better understand the person. It's like painting a tree that doesn't quite look like a tree but at the same time gives us a better sense of the tree than we would have if we had looked at the tree itself. Or said differently, it's like the fact that what we see in the mirror is never quite what is being mirrored.

Orlando, the one being biographied, if that's a word, which I am sure it is not...oh, but we've had that conversation before....Orlando, subject of this biography, is like Woolf's friend in that s/he is a writer. However, unlike Vita Sackville-West, Orlando is ageless and sexless. Well, not quite sexless. We are treated to a discourse on the life of Orlando, and then we find that while Orlando is in the prime of his life, he falls into a deep sleep and wakes up to be a woman. The "he" becomes a "she," but retains her (or his) prior impressions and understanding of what it is like to be a he. So she understand he, as perhaps no she has ever understood a he. And to top it all off, she sometimes acts like a she and sometimes acts like a he.

Orlando also feels out of place in his/her class. S/he is an aristocrat who can't quite give his/her heart to the life of an aristocrat, but who also on the other hand cannot quite escape the life of an aristocrat. Orlando isolates himself from his aristocratic peers, never managing to quite form any intimacy with them. Later, as a woman, Orlando finds herself living with Gypsies, but she longs for the comforts of her aristocratic lifestyle.

"For what more terrifying revelation can there be than that it is the present moment? That we survive the shock at all is only possible because the past shelters us on one side, the future on another."

Our subject also belongs to no era. As the story progresses, centuries pass and Orlando does not age. S/he is somehow lifted out of time and space, yet s/he seems at the same time to embody each era, be it the Elizabethan Era of the Victorian Age or the modern industrialized city.

In short, this novel is the story of a subject displaced from time, class, and gender. And all of this displacement occurs within a novel that is deliberately displaced as a biography by its author who (despite being a novelist) insists that we approach her novel as though it were a biography.

"How little she had changed over the years....she had remained fundamentally the same."

"I have sought happiness over many ages and have not found it, fame and missed it, love and not known it....I have known many men and many women, none have I understood."

The text is experimental. The prose is beautiful. Yet for me, the novel lacked a truly compelling element. The subject is lifted out of the world such that s/he lacks context. Orlando becomes a sexless character without any true affiliation to any particular era or even alignment with a class. Orlando, the protagonist, remains static, and as such, there is nothing to invest, emotionally or otherwise. The best the reader can do is to sympathize with this character for the extreme displacement that s/he finds his/herself living.

"Morning James," she said. "there's some things in the car. Will you bring them in?" Words of no beauty, interest, or significance in themselves it will be conceded. But now so plumped out with meaning that if they fell like ripe nuts from a tree and proved that when the shriveled skin of the ordinary is stuffed out with meaning it satisfies the senses amazingly....to see Orlando change her skirt for a pair of whip cord britches and leather jacket, which she did in less than three minutes, was to be ravished with the beauty of movement, as if Madame Lopokova were using her highest art."

The protagonist is distant and inaccessible. S/he seems to live in a sleep-like state, unable to awaken to a strong sense of identity. In the above quote, Orlando is in here eleventh hour, nearing her demise, and she experiences an awakening of sorts. The prose is beautiful, but somehow I remain unconvinced. Orlando still seems distant, as if she is experiencing a moment of fullness, when life is being experienced in all of its richness and the heart is full. Yes, she may be living a few moments of being in tune with the wonder of the world, but the reader still is somehow being kept at bay, closed out. As for myself, my sense is that Orlando is not only closed off to the reader but ultimately she is closed off to herself. And perhaps that is the point of the novel, itself, a character unable to ever quite wake up.

The world seeks to establish and settle identity: gender, era, class and social standing. Orlando is displaced in this world, and somehow his/her displacement paralyzes his/her ability to awaken. She remains trapped in a dream.

"Illusions are to the soul as atmosphere is to the earth. Roll up that tender air, and the plant dries, the color fades. The earth we walk on is a parched cinder...by the truth we are undone. Life is a dream. 'Tis waking that kills us..."

But how many of us truly wake from this dream?

Quote of the Day

2010-06-25T11:06:00.002-04:00

"If I hadn't shot poor Delia, I'da had her for my wife."

- From the Johnny Cash song "Delia"

Let your gentleness be evident to all

2010-06-23T01:02:00.000-04:00

"Let your gentleness be evident to all." (Philippians 4:5)

There are several issues that press the collective spirit of the United States: A decade of war, an economic collapse and recession, an environmental catastrophe, and an inability to address immigration issues. Taken together, we have become more divisive and distrustful, more protective and territorial. As a collective, we want to insist on our rights, we feel the need to fight for what is "ours." It is a spirit of grasping and clinging, we are suspicious of others whom we believe are trying to steal from us: terrorists abroad, immigrants within our boarders, the government, or corporate powers.

"Tolerance" is a word that has been debated in our society for a while. Some mock the idea of tolerance: this isn't a tolerant world for the weak, you have to fight for what is rightfully yours. At this point, the sense of tolerance, civility, and gentleness seem only to be words devoid of substance, political rhetoric to give us a moral sense of superiority.

Paul's exhortation to the Philippians is to "let your gentleness be evident to all." The Greek word here, epieikes, is a difficult one to translate. The idea has to do with gentleness, but it has to do with the type of gentleness that yields and surrenders its right of law over others. The lexical definition is as follows (BDAG): “not insisting on every right of letter of law or custom, yielding, gentle, kind courteous, tolerant.”

The scholar R.P. Martin translates this word as magnanimity: "Aristotle contrasted it with akribodikaios 'strict justice.' For him it meant a generous treatment of others that, while demanding equity, does not insist on the letter of the law. Willing to admit limitations, it is prepared to make allowances so that justice does not injure. It is a quality, therefore, that keeps one from insisting on one’s full rights, 'where rigidity would be harsh' (Plummer, 93; cf. Aristotle, Eth. nic. 5.10 §1137b.3), or from making a rigorous and obstinate stand for what is justly due to one."

Whereas a political or cultural climate such as ours would encourage a person to insist on getting their due and asserting their rights, a spirit of magnanimity or gentleness spoken of by the Apostle Paul would be yielding, kind, tolerant, and pull back from insisting on getting one's full due. What is more, Paul's exhortation to the Philippians is that this spirit of gentleness be "evident to all." In other words, it is not merely a private disposition without public ramifications. The idea is that one's magnanimity overflow into public life such that a person is distinctly marked as a tolerant and kind individual.

I do not think this means that one defers from standing up for justice or righteousness, nor do I think that a person need not express strong opinions related to current day political issues. Nor do I even think it is out of place to discuss one's rights or what is due us. However, such ideological discussions should never turn us against another in such a way that we harshly insist on getting our due without any sense of compassion for others. In other words, "let your generosity be evident to all" ultimately means that a person does not hesitate to pull up short of demanding their rights in deference to others. It is a stance of gentleness as opposed to a harsh and inflexible insistence that right is right.

This spiritual teaching from the Apostle Paul is the mark of one who lives markedly different from the prevailing culture of violence that marks our day and age. "Let your gentleness be evident to all."

Recession, War, and Environmental Catastrophe

2010-06-21T05:55:00.000-04:00

"For decades, we have known the days of cheap and easily accessible oil were numbered. For decades, we’ve talked and talked about the need to end America’s century-long addiction to fossil fuels. And for decades, we have failed to act with the sense of urgency that this challenge requires. Time and again, the path forward has been blocked -- not only by oil industry lobbyists, but also by a lack of political courage and candor.

The consequences of our inaction are now in plain sight. Countries like China are investing in clean energy jobs and industries that should be right here in America. Each day, we send nearly $1 billion of our wealth to foreign countries for their oil. And today, as we look to the Gulf, we see an entire way of life being threatened by a menacing cloud of black crude.

We cannot consign our children to this future. The tragedy unfolding on our coast is the most painful and powerful reminder yet that the time to embrace a clean energy future is now." - President Obama, June 15, 2010

On this blog we have discussed the fact that in order to move our nation in a different direction, we ultimately need a change to the system--a change in the way we think and live and move about in our lives. Yet we have also noted that such a systematic change will not happen until individuals and communities are willing to sacrifice in the short term to make this happen.

It appears as though the political will may be here for the immediate future to commit to taking steps toward systematic change. Will the people be willing to make sacrifices? To change our way of being? And what specifically will be asked of them?

For me, the discussion is not just about being more energy efficient but also about the deeper spirit to consume, the consumeristic impulses that seem to motivate our behavior. It is, I think, a spiritual struggle, a battle for the way we will orient our souls and our collective national self.

President Obama began his speech by discussing a "multitude of challenges" that have faced the nation: "At home, our top priority is to recover and rebuild from a recession that has touched the lives of nearly every American. Abroad, our brave men and women in uniform are taking the fight to al Qaeda wherever it exists. And tonight, I’ve returned from a trip to the Gulf Coast to speak with you about the battle we’re waging against an oil spill that is assaulting our shores and our citizens."

He notes the three areas of disaster: economic recession, war, and environmental catastrophe. I see the consumeristic impulse causing or motivating all of these. I wonder if these three events and concerns will shape our political landscape for the next few decades. I wonder if people of faith will respond with enthusiasm.

A Quick Musing on Politics and Powers

2010-06-18T04:25:00.003-04:00

Generally speaking, the dominant political power on the right (Republicans) tend to be suspicious of the growth and scope of governmental powers, but they turn a blind eye to any of the damages of corporate powers--environmental abuses, corporate fraud, low compensation toward workers, manipulation via advertising, and pushing out smaller businesses and sole proprietors (i.e., Walmart's destruction of our nation's downtown small businesses).

Generally speaking, the dominant political power on the left (Democrats) tend to be suspicious of the growth and scope of corporate powers, but they turn a blind eye to any of the damages of governmental powers--excessive and ineffective bureaucracy, fraud, corruption and misuse of public funds, the power of political machines, imposition on personal liberties, etc.

I'd be interested in a political movement that was suspicious of all dominant powers, be they corporate or governmental. I would be disposed to supporting a movement that empowered local governments, local communities, and individuals. Not a movement that promotes bare individualism at the expense of community, mind you.

Because bigger is not always better....and it's often worse.

Patriotism of the soil

2010-06-17T05:21:00.000-04:00

Tamie and I have been watching the most recent Ken Burns documentary series on the National Parks of the United States. It's been quite amazing to realize just how beautiful the United States is. It is also humbling to realize that many of our most scenic locations were almost raped and ruined. If brave and steadfast souls had not stood up to some of the corporate powers-that-be, then the Grand Canyon might be invested with mines and hotels, under the control of entities trying to extract a profit from her; the grand sequoias, thousands of years old, might have been leveled; the buffalo might be completely extinct....etc.

There is a fantastic quote that I came across. It connects patriotism with the soil.

"What is it that inspires love of the flag, that tunes the ear of America to sing 'My Country 'Tis of Thee'? Is it industrial efficiency, irrigation statistics or trade output? Is it the hideous ore dumps of the sordid mining camp? Is it the blackened waste that follows the devastation of much of our forest wealth? Is it the smoking factory of the grimy mill town? Is it even the lofty metropolitan skyscraper that shuts out the sun and throws its shadow over all below? No, our devotion to the flag is inspired by love of country. Patriotism is the religion of the soil, and the national parks are our richest patrimony."

Patriotism if often cited these days. Patriotism is often placed alongside abstract ideas, like "democracy" or "equality." It is used to advance ideologies. Or it is justification for war. In extreme cases, patriotism is a reason to revoke civil liberties. But what about a patriotism of the soil? What about being patriotic to the land? "Sweet land of liberty"?

I sent the DVD back to Netflix, so I am uncertain who to attribute this quotation to. I had thought it was Stephen Mathers, but surfing the net I also see that someone credits John Wesley Hill. No matter. What I appreciate about this idea is that it questions whether patriotism can be sustained if there isn't an organic source of inspiration. Perhaps so many of the other reasons for our patriotism wind up dividing us because they are ideologically driven, they don't grow out of the earth.

Along with this is a quote (that I did not write down) regarding legislation something to the tune of: every legislator and government official in the U.S. should ask themselves if their bill or plan is worthy of the Grand Canyon. In other words, is the direction of our nation worthy of our greatest and most inspirational natural wonders? There's a certain perspective that one gets, I think, from the natural world; it's something that kind of reorients us back to what is truly important.

Church of the Blessed Life

2010-06-14T05:36:00.000-04:00

It's all well and good to guilt people into a more sustainable lifestyle; and perhaps it is even inspiring to discuss a way of life that is fulfilling and integrated. However, the realityis that it is extraordinarily frustrating and taxing to attempt to swim against the current of U.S. consumerism; it feels impossible for one individual to do it--like swimming against the rapids. And, after all, what difference can one individual really make, in the long run? The reality is that we need community. We need local support and networks of people committed to living the blessed life.

How about the church?

It's an intriguing time in the life of the church. Most churches are having a hard time maintaining enthusiasm among the young, particularly singles. The numbers I have seen show that young folks are leaving the churches in a mass exodus, of sorts, although most still describe themselves as spiritual or religious in some way.

Hhhhmmm....what about the church....

Here's the positive thing. Churches are already set up as support groups for local individuals. This is particularly true of "neighborhood churches" that are located in densely populated areas (where people actually live!), allowing people to be within walking distance of the building.

Furthermore, if churches want to imitate their founding member (and subsequent disciples and apostles), which seems to be a common theme among churches, then they will already have an interest in creating a supportive community for living an alternative lifestyle--this could be lifestyle in alternative to the consumeristic matrix within which the greater Western world now participates.

Just imagine it, my friend. (Personally, I have a difficult time not feeling some surge of optimism in writing about the possibility.) Just think of the revolutionary possibilities if churches dedicated themselves to the path of anti-consumerism, to integrity, and to the blessed life. These churches could create new, local markets for goods, for everything from locally produced food to locally made clothes, furniture, cookware, and art. What kind of new employment opportunities might this open up? Might more people be able to quit their jobs on the assembly lines and behind desks and follow their talents and creativity? Working the soil or creating beautiful and useful products?

Such a shift would also create strong relational bonds within a faith community--striving and struggling together for a crucial mission at a critical time. It would be a shift from surviving the world to working together for a new vision. Consumeristic thinking necessarily leads to objectification. Those of us who "work jobs we hate to buy shit we don't need" end up feeling a little bit like we've sold our souls to the devil. And maybe we have, but it isn't too late to change. Such a transformation would be about the blessed life--approaching the world in a life-giving manner. This is a shift about the way we interpret ourselves, no longer as "consumers" or "human resources" but as relational and responsible human beings--with an emphasis on "being," on being dynamic and alive. This kind of life and this new relational energy could then be used to reach out a hand to those on the margins of the consumeristic society: the disabled, the poor, the addicts, prisoners, prostitutes, undocumented immigrants, and others who are considered a burden by the wider society--but those to whom that Jesus dude tended to gravitate.

Structurally the church is set up to be the catalyst for the blessed life, to turn our attention from thoughtless Walmart, fast food, and strip-mall consumers to becoming informed people of integrity. The system can be changed, we could become spiritually, relationally, and environmentally sustainable people via the church.

So, what's stopping us?

Structurally, the church is set up to be

A Mass of Impersonal Human Beings

2010-06-11T01:44:00.002-04:00

"When men are merely submerged in a mass of impersonal human beings pushed around by automatic forces, they lose their humanity, their integrity, their ability to love, their capacity for self-determination." - Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

This quote by Merton relates to my recent musings on the blessed life. A life of integrity means that our values and humanity are integrated into every element of our lives. When our work, recreation, religion, buying habits, addictions, or other activities of our lives cut us off from what is most human about us, then our lives become fragmented and frustrated.

Perhaps the awkward thing about our age is that we are being "pushed around by automatic forces," like advertising or other media, but many of us are okay with it. We know that advertisers are deliberately manipulating our psyche to get us to buy products, but we like it well enough that we don't protest. We understand that our favorite cable news channel program presents a very slanted spin on events, but it's what we want to hear (and after a while we forget that it's a slanted spin, and then we assume it's all more or less fact).

Merton points out the loss of humanity, integrity, ability to love, and the capacity for self-determination. I would say that these four losses are definite manifestations of a life of frustration that comes out of being objectified as a consumer within the spirit of a consumeristic society. Consumerism is the kind of "automatic force" that can drain us of very vital spiritual and human qualities.

The Blessed Life

2010-06-09T10:24:00.005-04:00

It is often the case that our own ill-conceived strategies for life often make us the most unhappy. The world is a chaotic place, and we develop strategies to cope. These strategies evolve into habits, many of which we are not even aware of. There are times, though, when we run into problems in our lives that confuse us, that cause us to step back and reevaluate ourselves. The idea of reaping what we sow seems to have to do with this very thing—ill-conceived strategies for life, lifestyles and habits that come back to cause us grief and pain.

Here in the U.S., we are nearing nearly a decade of war, our economy is in the midst of “the Great Recession,” and we are in the process of dealing with an ecological catastrophe. It may be a critical time in the history of our nation, a time to ask the most basic of questions regarding our way of life: is it working for us?

Clearly our choices of lifestyle have had a devastating impact on the environment. From an economic perspective, it is a matter of debate whether we can continue to push for more growth. But more to the point: our economic push for expansion and growth is coming into conflict iwht our environment’s ability to sustain it. This is due in part to the fact that our deconomy depends so heavily on iol. Eventually the supply will run out. Additionally there is the concern about global warming. Can our environment sustain the impact of all of the world’s carbon emissions? In the meantime, we deal with the oil spills and the environmental destruction from drilling on land.

But let’s bracket these concerns for a moment. Let’s assume that these natural resources are unlimited and that extracting them is not a problem. (After all, most people continue to live as though there were no problems—even those who believe that our way of life is devastating to the planet.)Let’s assume global warming is not happening and that the resources are unlimited. Let’s ask a fundamental question: are we really happy? Do we live a blessed life?

The biblical texts speak a good deal about the blessed life.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” “Blessed are the merciful.” “Blessed is the one who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.” “Blessed are the pure in heart.” “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

As I understand them, the basic premise is that if a person or society walks with integrity, then they will be blessed; conversely, those whose ways lack integrity can expect negative consequences to come their way. This is certainly not an absolute formula for success, and those who use it as such will find themselves disappointed. For example, there are those who walk with integrity but are exploited, abused, die of disease, are pushed off their land, etc. This is historical fact. Still, there is something important about living a blessed life, about being blessed, and it isn’t about living out a formula for a successful life.

What is the standard for a blessed life? Material possessions might be our first response. Or we might perhaps associate blessings with entertainment or other sensual stimulations. Further, we might define success (and blessedness) in terms of achievement—building a career, establishing a ministry, attaining personal goals, or having an accomplished family. Perhaps also we might define a blessed life as some mix of the above.

My understanding of the biblical texts, taken as a whole—the Hebrew scriptures along with the Christian New Testament—is that the blessed life is one that is lived with integrity. The word “integrity” having to do with an “integration”: that all of the activities and relationships of one’s life work together in a harmonious, beautiful, and virtuous way.

For example, we admire a business man or woman as a “person of integrity” if this person is consistently honest in all of his or her dealings, whether professional or personal. If a person is religious at church, but they are dishonest in their work life, we say that such a person lacks integrity, that they have not integrated their values into a harmony. Similarly, if a member of the clergy has a public persona of virtue but a private life of vice, we would say that this inconsistency is evidence of a lack of integrity.

If the blessed life is seen in this way, then we realize that success, achievement, or even survival is of secondary importance. Integrity has a profit all its own.

If the blessed life is a life of integrity, then how does the U.S. fair? The outlooks is certainly bleak. I would say that the reason for this does not necessarily have to do with evil intentions by the majority of average citizens, but more to do with a way of living and a system that promotes fragmentation. Fragmentation is the opposite of integration, or the reverse of integrity. For example, if we want to own a pair of running shoes, we go to Foot Locker or some other chain store and buy a pair. We do not usually think farther than this. But what if our shoes were made in an Asian sweatshop? What if our shoes were produces with exploited labor? Even children? “Well,” we might respond, “how should I know? I’m not deliberately trying to screw Asian workers, I just want a pair of shoes.” But you see, this response presumes that our behavior (buying a pair of shoes) can be an isolated event. We isolate this event and fragment it from any other considerations and from any of our life’s values. We live in a sort of willful ignorance of where our products come from. This is a breakdown of integrity because it is a failure to integrate our values (things like fairness, goodness, kindness, etc.) with our purchase of a pair of shoes.

This kind of thing, though, is a part of life in the U.S. We purchase most of our products without knowing their source, even our food. We work for companies and corporations that isolate us into departments, cubicles, and offices, to do isolated tasks without knowledge of whether our work is contributing to a virtuous cause or causing suffering in the world.

We live in a system that encourages fragmentation, that refuses to allow us to live integrated lives, lifestyles of integrity. And more and more we are seeing the impact of our lifestyle on other people, animals, and the environment. This means that the general public is being confronted with the fact that we have not been living the blessed life.

And are we even happy? Do we live fulfilled and satisfied lives? The advertising industry, which is the force behind so much of our drive for economic expansion, by definition creates dissatisfaction in consumers. If everyone were satisfied with their life, then there would be no reason to buy the latest ipod, purchase a larger television, invest in a larger house, get that second car, or keep one’s self dressed in the latest fashions. Who in the U.S. is truly content? Who is truly satisfied with what they have? It is almost true, by definition, that we are unhappy.

It is also my belief that living a fragmented life without integrity is itself dissatisfying on a deep spiritual level. We see this in the sarcastic and bitter cynicism that many people have toward working in isolated offices and cubicles. The Dilbert cartoon satirizes this approach to life. How can one feel satisfied working in a glorified assembly line that we call an office space? We are often bored and fragmented, and our entertainment industry is so wealthy because it serves to distract us from this deep spiritual discontent.

To live with integrity. To live a contented life. This is the blessed life. This is the life that can extend itself outside of self and engage the world in a meaningful way. A person who is content and lives with integrity does not need to be another consumer in the market to find happiness or some measure of peace, for peace is found within and as a result of one’s virtues put into action. There is an abiding strength of soul and spirit, a renewed “inner person,” and this transformed individual is free to integrate their values with their lifestyle. And it works in reverse: the person who has transformed their behavior in the world can experience an inward satisfaction and freedom from being bound within the consumeristic cycle of discontentment.

There is freedom in this life. This is a pilgrimage that is not of this world, and yet so deeply engaged in the world so as to challenge its deepest darkness. This is the blessed life.

Who is to blame for the oil spill in the Gulf

2010-06-07T06:43:00.000-04:00

BP has taken taken a lot of heat for the oil spill, and understandably so. Sarah Palin's approach seems to be a bit different: it's the fault of environmentalists. In a post to "Extreme Enviros" on Facebook, Palin said the following: "Extreme deep water drilling is not the preferred choice to meet our country's energy needs, but your protests and lawsuits and lies about onshore and shallow water drilling have locked up safer areas. It's catching up with you. The tragic, unprecedented deep water Gulf oil spill proved." (cited from PD)

The logic seems to go as follows: (1) We can't drill for oil on U.S. soil or in shallow water areas. (2) We have to have oil....so....(3) We must drill offshore. Given (1) and (2), then (3) seems to follow.

Of course it's completely illegitimate to suggest that conservationists and environmentalists are responsible for the oil spill. We all know this. It's political posturing. We live in an era where polarization is the normative response to any crisis. Only in the spin zone contexts of cable tv, talk radio, and internet social forums could a case be made that those who exist to conserve our earth are the people who are responsible for the oil spill.

No, BP is to blame; they are directly responsible, that is. What I want to say, however, is that BP is at fault only in a very narrow sense. Back to the above logic: given (1) and (2), then (3) follows. I think the logic is sound, and I think (2) is my point of interest: we need oil. We as U.S. consumers demand oil. It's a point that should not be missed, because it deals with the economic cause and effect matrix: consumers demand oil, companies like BP provide it.

Would we really have chosen, individually and collectively, to drastically cut our oil usage if we knew that the oil spill was going to occur?

In a very real sense, there is only one answer to the question Who is to blame for the oil spill?

The answer.

I am.

If you live in the U.S. and you use oil, then you are to blame. You create the demand. I created the demand. I have taken travel for granted--driving and flying. I buy products that are flown in from around the world.

Personally, I have worked to make changes in my life over the last few years, and changes I have made. Let's face it though: it's damn hard to live in the U.S. without using oil--either directly through transporation or indirectly by purchasing goods that were transported from around the nation or around the globe.

People talk about our society, our lifestyle in the U.S., as an "addiction" to oil. I think that's the wrong term. The problem is that we have made oil a fundamental necessity to our economic and spiritual well-being. Our whole way of life--our entire way of being--revolves around oil. It's not an addiction because we don't notice it. The substance itself is something we take for granted. Most of the time we don't even see the stuff. But let it be known that our lives as we know it depend on oil--even our very souls. It's like the air we breathe, or the water we drink, which makes for a certain perverse irony when we view pictures from the Gulf.

What would we do if we couldn't commute to work? Fly on a business trip? Run the kids to dance class? Take that vacation to where ever or visit Grandma at Christmas? Hop in the car to go grab a beer or eat out? Or drive to church or other religious activities?

What would happen if the grocery stores all closed because they could no longer ship food in from all over the U.S. or the world? Most of the food we buy is not grown or processed locally. We rely on mass transportation for our food supply. In short, we need oil in order to eat, to survive.

Here is the point I am getting at: our most meaningful activities in U.S. society necessitate that we consume oil. That's what I mean when I say that our economic and spiritual well-being depends on oil.

So, who's to blame for the oil spill in the Gulf?

I am.

But I'm also tired of this mess, and it really hurts my soul to see the entire Gulf of Mexico devastated by this oil spill. Our lifestyle must change, and a real change will only occur when we decide individually and as a collective to be different. It's difficult to change, but it has to happen. I am at fault. I must take responsibility.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

2010-06-01T22:37:00.002-04:00

There's something stirring in the soul of Ishmael, the narrator of this "great and enduring volume." When civilization becomes an anchor on the soul, it's time to cut the line, to cast off to sea. It's time to reawaken "that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it." He says "call me Ishmael" in the opening line of the text. He is the bastard of civilization, out of place in his own father's house, but perhaps all the better for it. He is not "the son of the inheritance," and he shrugs off all societal responsibility and obligation, in search of adventure.

As I read Moby Dick I found that I had a certain fellowship and kinship with Ishmael, a fellow pilgrim in search of a life of deeper mystery and awe, a life somehow connected with exploring the wild of the natural world, a life a bit less comfortable but a bit more terrifying. Civilization can make one "grim about the mouth." Civilization values its domestication and the easing of any human exertion. It is, in a word, boring.

I've been chatting with some folks, and I've found that many of us in the States read Moby Dick as required reading in high school. It's unfortunate, I think. (Perhaps it is unfortunate that any text is required reading for students.) It can be a difficult read. Melville's great work was a forerunner to the modern novel. It cuts from plot to poetic and philosophical musings, or it breaks off of the narrative to attempt an encyclopedic-type entry on whale classifications, these sometimes spawning several chapters at a time. This disregard for strict narrative in a novel, however, was ahead of its time. In fact, it took a generation of two to really recognize that Moby Dick is one of the great American novels; indeed, one of the greatest novels of all time.

I think Moby Dick is a novel for a mature soul to savor, and to do so with a certain joy. I found it to be insightful, informative, breath-taking in its scope, and above all quirky and irreverent. Melville's Shakespearean prose does not take itself too seriously, but in the process, I find it to be a sweeping commentary on the entirety of western civilization. My review, then, will follow the epic nature of this great text and tease out how Melville, in his subtle and sly way, re-imagines civilization: with its imperialism, religious dogmatism, philosophical foundationalism, its life of comfort, its mastery of nature, and our conception of free will, necessity, and chance, with chance being the dominant force.

A Grand Epic

The Greek tragedy warns o the passions of a human being. The grasp exceeds the reach. Be wary of overstepping the boundary of morality. Live within your nature and all will be well.

The primary story line of Moby Dick reads like a Greek tragedy, and it is epic in its scope. We see two essential characters throughout the novel: Ishmael, the insightful, if somewhat idiosynchratic, narrator of the tale, and Ahab, the monomaniacal Captain of the Pequod. Ishmael has been taken aboard the Pequod for his first whaling expedition. Not long after setting sail, Captain Ahab reveals his true intentions for the Pequod: "Death to Moby Dick," the famed white whale who kills men and once took Ahab's leg. The two perspectives of Ahab and Ishmael are woven together throughout the tale. Ishmael, the investigative, thoughtful, and poetic novice, alongside Ahab, the seasoned old captain, a "grand, ungodly, godlike man."

"The chick that's in him pecks the shell. 'Twill soon be out." Ahab is intent on his vengeance of Moby Dick. "He piled up on the white whale's hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race, from Adam down." Ahab's was a "supernatural revenge," an anger that pursued the whale with a divine fury!

One of the crew speaks prophetically, even desperately to Ahab as the chase for the whale threatens the whole ship: "Let Ahab beware of Ahab. Beware of thyself, old man." Beware of thyself could not be more Greek, that sense that one's passions mixed with hubris--an arrogance that exceeds its proper limits--might produce a monstrosity of desire. "God help thee, old man. Thy thoughts have created a creature in thee!"

Melville's intent is to create a story that is on a grand scale. As such, even his long detours on the whale, the nature of the whaling equipment, and any other fact that strikes his fancy--all of these are meant to draw the reader into the epic tale. The true-to-life detail creates a greater-than-life narrative, something worthy of the full awfulness of the sea; something to inspire awe and dread.

"To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme: No great enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it."

A Critique of Western Civilization

Where does one begin, to distill the spiritual, religious, and metaphysical musings of Moby Dick? Is it an act of hubris and madness, like the quest of the cracked old Ahab? Perhaps. And yet it may also be the case that Melville gives us the modus operandi for interpreting his text. In the interrogative words of Ishmael, "Why then do you try to enlarge your mind? Subtleize it." Melville works in a poetic, subtle, and even silly manner as he pokes at the fabric of the civilized world and the imperialistic worldview of the West.

What better place to start than with religion? Melville's imagination recasts and reinventS our conception of faith and the spiritual. He works with the same clay as the rest of us, for Melville is constantly alluding to Christian scriptures, motifs, and characters. His interest is primarily with the Hebrew scriptures, almost exclusively. Even when mentioning Jesus, Melville refers to him as "the man of sorrows," the prophetic title given in the book of Isaiah. In this way, Melville is writing his own Christian scriptures. Like a modern Apostle Paul, he recontextualizes the Hebrew faith into something new.

The best example of this work is found when Ishmael is caught in a bit of a bind. His new friend Queequeg is a "savage" and a pagan; yet Queequeg beckons Ishmael to join with him in worshiping his little idol, Yojo. Ishmael wants to be polite, friendly, and accommodating, but he is also a Presbyterian and knows that this act would make him an idolater. It is well worth citing the text at length, to see Melville's recontextualization in action.

"I was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with the wild idolater in worshiping his piece of wood? But what is worship? thought I. Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and earth--pagans and all included--can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! But what is worship?--to do the will of God?--that is worship. And what is the will of God?--to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me--that is the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I wish that this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him in his; ergo, I must turn idolater."

Not quite the same conclusion that the Apostle Paul would reach; however, in this wonderful paragraph, Melville recasts all of Christianity in light of goodwill toward one's fellow traveler. It's a sort of practical, organic Christianity that meets its neighbor where its neighbor is, even if smack in the middle of idolatry. And what is more, this interpretation seems to foreshadow the theological issues facing Christianity in the coming era of globalization. Melville's novel, as you know, was first published in 1851.

I also see Melville as developing a new (or perhaps very old) interpretation of God. I think Melville conceives of God as he conceives of the whale--as a being that is most fundamentally beyond our grasp. I suppose I ought to cite the novel again at length, to get the full sense of this idea.

"You must needs conclude that the Great Leviathan is that one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait may hit the mark much nearer than another, but none can hit it with any considerable degree of exactness so there is no earthly way of finding out precisely what the whale really looks like, and the only mode in which you can derive even a tolerable idea of his living contour is by going a whaling yourself. But by so doing you run no small risk of being eternally stove and sunk by him."

This conception of God strikes me as a very Hebrew idea. Again, I see this as Melville's reach back to the Jewish roots of Christianity. The allegorical link between God and the whal is almost made explicit when Melville says of the whale, "He has no face," and we must only see his tail. It is a clear allusion, as I see it, to the passage in Exodus chapter 33 where Moses asks to see God's glory, and God says, "you will see my back; but my face must not be seen," because, "you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live."

As has been alluded to, my read of Moby Dick is that it is not only a reinterpretation of the Christian faith but also the whole of of Western Civilization. Melville seems to take the lessons of the Greeks, with their warnings against hubris and untamed passions, and merge them with the Hebrew wisdom tradition and their conception of God as a God of awe and mystery.

There are two very notable passages where this merger seems most explicit to me. The first is in Father Maple's sermon on Job. God is not to be trifled with. Beware the disobedience of Job, Shipmates! Melville gives us an entire sermon on Job, a sermon that Ishmael listens to before embarking on his voyage. The whale narrative of Job is inverted, when rather than a whale swallowing a sinner-prophet on the run, Ahab is "chasing a Job's whale around the world." This is the switch from Hebrew narrative to Greek tragedy, but they both seem to bring the reader to the point of a healthy fear and trembling. This sense of awe is clearly lost on Western Civilization, in its imperialistic, monomaniacal quests to conquer and master the natural world.

Western Civilization in the modern era borrows its philosophical concepts from Greece and creates a new Christian God who charges her with conquering the nations in the name of Jesus. So, the pursuit of land, wealth, and glory merges with an evangelistic zeal. Melville inverts these. He takes the very human wisdom of Greece and carries over the God who cannot be contained in temples made by men.

This Greek and Hebrew merger also comes together in Ishmael's musings on the book of Ecclesiastes. Ishmael calls this "unChristian Solomon's wisdom," insights that the Christianity of Western Civilization knows nothing of.

"Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with they hand on the helm! Turn not they back to the compass." In other words, the darkness can overwhelm. But on the other hand, "that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true--not true, or underdeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe. 'All is vanity!' All. This willful world hath not yet got hold of unChristian Solomon's wisdom yet."

This "willful world" is the imperialistic force of modern civilizations, which like Ahab would cry out, "I'd strike the sun if it slighted me!" But again, we must keep in mind, that Melville's text is not a sermon. It's philosophical themes and words of instruction are tucked away in a subtle manner, with a sense of humor and a wink of the eye. Melville isn't looking for converts. He isn't even seeking to undo Western Civilization: he's only deconstructing it through is novel, using its words and story to exaggerate it. He only wants to play with it and work it out with a crazy old captain, a massive and mythological whale, and a witty observer to record it all. Ishmael records it all as such:

"Here goes for a cool, collective dive at death and destruction, and the devil fetch the hindmost."

Conclusion: A Desperado Philosophy

If Melville stirs up a sense of awe and fear toward the world, he does so with the advice that we ought to still dive into it. There's something of the best of all practical wisdom in that. The world, with all its grandeur and greatness can swallow you, like the deep sea. God is great and beyond us; but don't let all that stop you. If you have a sturdy back and a noble soul, then take that cool, collective dive. "I would rather feel your spine than your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist of a spine never yet upheld a full and noble soul."

So, Melville's "desperado philosophy" emerges from all of this. "There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange, mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own....That sort of wayward mood....comes in the midst of his earnestness....There is nothing like the perils of whaling to breed this free and easy sort of genial desperado philosophy."

I do think that it is fairly clear that on some points, Melville may be guilty of a bit of over-romanticizing. He seems to believe, for example, that whales will never be driven to extinction. The whale is "immortal in his species, however perishable in his individuality." The estimation that I am familiar with is that in the last 200 years, the whale population has been reduced by 90%. Ecosystems, we are now learning, are fragile things. Wiping out a species can have a devastating effect on the world, to say nothing of being deprived of the beauty of a species. Technology is powerful enough to wipe out even the mighty Leviathan.

We live in fascinating times. Our world now has the technological capability to either create "a new heavens and a new earth" or completely destroy it. This extreme is perhaps unknown in all of human history. The tower started at Babel is finally complete. Still, for all of our mastery, it is our humanness that holds us back. "Sayest all of us are Ahabs."

"Heaven have mercy on us all--Presbyterians and pagans alike--for we are all cracked about the head and sadly need mending."

Physicians and the high cost of healthcare

2010-05-31T16:23:00.003-04:00

John Doyle has a short post that I thought I would link to. He discusses the role of Physician costs that contribute to the high cost of U.S. healthcare.

"According to this governmental report, primary care physicians in the US earn about $186,000 per year on average; for specialists it's $340,000. Not surprisingly there's a shortage of primary care docs nationwide, while the vast majority of med school students plan to train as specialists. Physicians in the US are paid more than 5 times the average wage; French physicians, in contrast, make more than twice the national average. Is American doctoring worth it? According to most empirical studies with which I'm familiar, health outcomes and adherence to evidence-based practices are no better in America than in France. And, as has been widely observed, population health is worse in the US than in France."

Here is the link for the full post:
Greedy Physician Bastards

Lake Michigan Sunsets

2010-05-27T13:13:00.004-04:00

Only I a few days ago, I found myself sitting atop a sand dune, I was looking down onto the beach of Lake Michigan, then up and out at the horizon as the sun set. For some reason, the sun was pushing its orange glow upward, not down. Only ten minutes ago, however, the lake reflected the sun all the way across, like a laser beam.

I was wondering, as I sat watching the sun set: how do cultures develop in relation to the natural environment. I admire how the Native Americans, as a collective whole, developed a cultural philosophy and way of life that sought to live in harmony with nature. They respected the environment and lived as a part of it, as one species in the ecosystem, so to speak.

I suppose that one never knows how a sunset is going to go down. As the sun was sinking, the clouds hid the bottom half, leaving an orange half-circle visible.

In contrast to the Native Americans, Europeans who "settled" the Americas sought to dominate nature, to "subdue" her and extract as much of her resources as possible. With increasingly sophisticated and more powerful technology, it became possible to take more and more. We hunted with a religious fervor, with a fanatical energy. Each generation seeking to better the prior generation. Each new generation seeking to produce more, build more wealth, to become more prosperous, where "prosperity" is measured in terms of profitability.

I suppose that as a theologian, I'm tempted to say that ideas have consequences, then to trace the theological threads that hold together the fabric of a particular cultural zeitgeist. Usually this is my approach--it's the way I'm wired. But to hell with that for now. I think there is more to it, there certainly is; but I don't know how to describe it. (Perhaps that's why it's easier to stick with ideology.) Yet more and more I'm thinking in terms of a "spirit," a more general term that I think does more to capture the holistic sense in which a group of people "live and move and have their being."

What developments led the Native peoples to view their world as a dynamic, interconnected whole? what forces conspired such that the white man became obsessed with domination and control of the natural world? What is the inherited spirit of those who feel the innate drive to consume, whose identity is success-driven and defined within the marketplace? And perhaps we could discuss yet another group of peoples, the Tibetans, who dedicated their culture to spiritual pursuits, to understand the quiet mind, to grow peaceful and serene, to cultivate compassion.

What's the motion of it all? It's all a dynamic movement, because culture is always changing, evolving. I think that from the divine perspective, each cultural era must appear as diverse--and also as fleeting and ephemeral--as a sunset over Lake Michigan.

A Sunday "Amen"

2010-05-16T05:26:00.000-04:00

“If protest depended on success, there would be little protest of any durability or significance…Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.” -Wendell Berry

Firmly rooted in life

2010-05-13T05:09:00.000-04:00

"This is an age that, by its very nature as a time of crisis, of revolution, of struggle, calls for the special searching and questioning which are the work of the monk in his meditation and prayer....the monk abandons the world only in order to listen more intently to the deepest and most neglected voices that proceed from its inner depth." from Thomas Merton's Contemplative Prayer

I really appreciate a spirituality that is grounded. Even the monk who seems to have abandoned the world is for Merton merely listening more intently to its deepest needs.

"Meditation" and "revolution" are not typically two words discussed together, but I am intrigued by the correlation. What would a revolution look like, if it were born out of meditation, silence, reflection, and prayer? What might our solitary spiritual practices become if they were energized with revolutionary impulses?

Merton wrote Contemplative Prayer as a reflection for monks, but he also recognized that the contemplative path is embraced by individuals outside the monastery.

"Nothing is more foreign to authentic monastic and 'contemplative' tradition in the Church than a kind of gnosticism which would elevate the contemplative above the ordinary Christian by initiating him into a realm of esoteric knowledge and experience, delivering him from the ordinary struggles and sufferings of human existence, and elevating him to a privileged state among the spiritually pure, as if he were almost an angel, untouched by matter and passion, and no longer familiar with the economy of sacraments, charity and the Cross. The way of monastic prayer is not a subtle escape from the Christian economy of incarnation and redemption...

"The dimensions of prayer in solitude are those of man's ordinary anguish, his self-searching, his moments of nausea at his own vanity, falsity and capacity for betrayal."

Again, I really appreciate how Merton's spirituality is a means of going deeper into life and ordinary experience, not a means of rising above it or going beyond it. True spirituality is not a means to an end--it is not a way to escape from the individual struggles of our flesh and bone--true spirituality becomes more aware of its frailty and human struggle.

Merton puts all this in a concise way: "Meditation has no point and no reality unless it is firmly rooted in life."

Contemplative Prayer

2010-05-11T11:44:00.003-04:00

I have been reading Thomas Merton's little book Contemplative Prayer, and I would like to share some quotes on Theos Project, perhaps combined with a few short thoughts of my own. For those who have an interest in contemplative Christianity, there are few figures as influential as Thomas Merton. Merton was a Trappist monk, a poet, and a deeply engaged intellectual. He combined the passion of an activist with his love for the contemplative life in the monastery.

My interest in contemplative prayer has developed in the last year. For me, prayer had been an empty exercise for many years. My prayer life in the past centered on bringing my list of petitions, along with some form of emotional exercise of "connecting" with God. The latter often felt like I was trying to force my heart into a particular state of being, one in which I either felt energized by the feeling of God's presence or else some sense of sinfulness, that I had fallen short somehow and needed to experience a sense of guilt. What was most lacking, I think, is the sense of letting myself be, to come just as I am to prayer.

For me, silence has been something that I have been exploring over the last year. I began with a short meditation practice, spending five or ten minutes each morning in silence and stillness. Over time, this lengthened. Many months later, I began to combine this meditation with a ritual of prayer, eventually re-incorporating petitions and requests to God as part of my prayers.

Contemplative prayer seems to me to be the combination of conscious elements of prayer with a certain stillness. The term "contemplative prayer" is seeks to engage God in a stance of openness. I'll save more on defining contemplative prayer for Merton. For many Christians in the U.S., prayer can lack this reflective and contemplative openness. My inclination is to say that such reflection and openness necessitates grace, an unconditional acceptance of everything we are. It may take on many moods, but if prayer does not in some way root itself in grace, then it risks becoming empty activity and routine, and further, without grace we tend to hide certain elements of ourselves from God, from others, and from ourselves. Contemplative prayer, then, is an exercise in grace.

The Guiltys Innocence

2010-05-08T18:16:00.003-04:00

Tamie and I teach a creative writing class each week at the Kosciusko County Jail. One is a men's class, the other is a women's class. Each week we try to read the writings of each of our students and type up a response to their writing (not a grade). The goal is to help them become expressive of themselves and alert to their experiences, their "world." We try to stir up creativity and imagination.

Through listening to the stories of these inmates, I have been shaped, in no small way. One starts to see patterns of how people react to lives of domination, exploitation, manipulation, and low expectations. I am forced to deal with the reality that some people simply are left behind in life, from the moment of their birth to the moment of their death. They suffer neglect and abuse as children, they turn to crime and drugs as teens and adults, and then they wind up doing time. What are the ramifications of this for my spirituality and my theology? It's an ongoing answer-less question. One thing is true, though: I am far more sensitive to the context from which a person emerges. We are so fragile.

Through this experience I also find myself with added energy in my contemplation of the system and the powers that run this system. Many people need help. They are addicts, or they are in need of education, self-reflection, spiritual attention, jobs, and a bit of grace. Deprived of some or all of these things, people sit in cages like animals for years on end. When they get released, many go back to the same life. Often they are more hardened than before, hardened by the brutality of their lives in prison or jail.

We have been accumulating a good deal of writings, and we have been posting many of them on a blog. I may have linked to the blog before, a few months back, but I thought I would call it to your attention again, so that you also may be able to hear their voices and listen to their stories.

The Guilty's Innocence

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

2010-05-03T10:12:00.001-04:00

“They’s somepin worse’n the devil got hold a the country, an’ it ain’t gonna let go till it’s chopped loose.”

John Steinbeck’s Nobel Prize winning novel The Grapes of Wrath has helped to shape the perspective of an era. It is the story of exploited peoples; as a novel it uses the power of human story to stir something in the soul—an outcry against injustice. History, it is said, is written by the winners. While this may be true in a general sense, it is equally true that it only takes on powerful and passionate voice to humanize and dignify “the tears of the oppressed.” Steinbeck succeeds in this effort. He tells us the fictional story of the Jode family, and in doing so he speaks for hundreds of thousand, perhaps millions, of souls who were displaced by exploitation and the passivity of the U.S. government during and before the Great Depression.

Steinbeck wrote about the Jode family as they are driven off of their land in Oklahoma and seek work in California, only to find themselves homeless and near starvation, exploited by large land owners. California was Steinbeck’s home. Published in 1939, Steinbeck drew a good deal of opposition and backlash from many in his home state. However, Grapes of Wrath spoke for the dispossessed of its time, and the novel still to this day forces its reader to reflect on the state of the nation—both on its moral and ethical direction, but also on the wisdom of the system in its entirety: its economic sustainability, the justice of its laws, the shape of its politics, and its movement into the age of the machine. While it raises all of these issues, it is its story that is most compelling, the humanizing of a family struggling to survive.

The Machine Man

The first part of Steinbeck’s novel centers on the technological and economic shift in the U.S.: the small farm is obsolete. This is the age of the machine. A tractor can do the work of ten or twenty farm families. The Jode family is one such clan. They are working land during a drought. They can’t pay the bank, so they have been displaced. Their house is jus in the way now, and it’s time for the Jode’s to move on.

The novel does not accept this technological shift. The man driving the tractor can’t love the land, says Steinbeck. He’s just a “machine man.” He is cut off from the soil. The land is not a living and breathing entity to the machine man. For him, a crop is a matter of science: chemistry and land management. The land is an object, a job, a profit margin, a thing to be manipulated.

“But the machine man, driving a dead tractor on land he does not know and love, understand only chemistry, and he is contemptuous of the land and of himself.”

This new technological age is now normative and unquestioned in the 21st century. Thomas Jefferson’s vision for the nation was small, local farms spread across the fruited plain. Technology has changed this. Technology combined with an obsession with mass production and wealth building. The Jeffersonian vision of life has been replaced by a nation of machine operators and an army of paper pushers living in offices and cubicles.

Why did technology not develop as a support to local farms and local communities? Was this a conscious choice? Or was it out of the hands of anyone? Perhaps it was a force and power with its own volition and will, operating without the resistance necessary to stop it.

Revolution of the Repressed

The Joes have to pack up as much of their belongings as they can inside of their truck. They are heading west! To California! They know there is work in California, because they have handbills that say so—printed handbills—handbills that say there is a need for workers: fruit pickers and farm hands. Why, a fella’ could work for a while, picking oranges and grapes, then buy himself a nice plot of land. Those handbills wouldn’t have been printed out if there were no jobs. That’d just be a waste of money.

So the Joes follow the handbills to California. It’s a difficult journey. Grandma and Grandpa die, and some desert the family when times get tough.

When they arrive in California, things go from bad to worse. There are no jobs in California. The land owners printed the handbills in order to flood the state with desperate, hungry workers. With a massive surplus of labor, land owners can hire workers to work for food, or in some cases for less than enough to feed a family. The plan works great for the land owners. The only problem is that there are now hundreds of thousands migrant workers hungry and virtually homeless. Oops. This could cause a public reaction—it will cause a reaction and public protest; and it is for this reason that the land owners must demonize the migrant workers. “Why, Jesus, they’re as dangerous as niggers in the South! If they ever get together there ain’t nothin’ that’ll stop ‘em.” So local cops burn down the migrant camps and harass the workers. The workers have to keep on the move, live in fear and shame.

Steinbeck consistently alludes to the power of repressed groups: “If they ever get together…” There is a power in the collective. This is a revolutionary tone that runs through the novel. It’s like the revolution is right there, waiting for leaders and organization. “The little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.”

The novel ends with the young Tom Jode running from the law. He is a fugitive, having struck down a man who killed Casy the preacher, when Casy was trying to organize a worker strike. The suggestion is that Tom could lead the revolution. Meanwhile, the Jode family is without yet another member of their shrinking and starving family. Like a turtle in the wasted, dry land, they move slowly and hopelessly, always on the verge of another tragedy. The novel ends without resolve, like the lives of so many.

"One Big Soul"

Steinbeck’s portrait of free market capitalism is bleak: if each person works for their own immediate gain, everyone works against each other and against the common good. In a truly free market, what is to stop the wealthy from exploiting the poor? And what’s to stop the poor from rising up and overthrowing the rich? It’s like an endless cycle of violence, a form of economic Darwinism: survival of the fittest, might makes right. Grapes of Wrath never suggests that the government should intervene, it’s a bit more radical: the people should rise up and take the land back from their oppressors.

Also at play is the idea that economic individualism fails because it does not take into consideration the interconnectedness and interdependence of all people with each other. The people’s dependence on each other and their mutual dependence on natural resources. A system only works when it is a system that works for all. This is the theological conclusion, voiced by Casy the preacher: “‘Maybe all men got one big sould ever’body’s a part of.’ Now I sat there thinkin’ it, an all of a suddent—I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true.”

The novel also chides the failure of technology: “Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over the State.” Technology can create bigger fruits and bumper crops, but it all goes to waste without an economic system that distributes the produce. It is something intriguing that before and during the Great Depression, crops would be wasted and destroyed in some parts of the U.S., while in other parts people starved.

Then, As Now

The trajectory of the U.S. has changed little since the writing of Grapes of Wrath. The disconnect is complete. Technology and economical sophistication have helped to fix the system. People do not starve quite so much, and we have some checks and balances in place to prevent the kind of wide-scale worker exploitation (of U.S. citizens, but not all peoples) that occurred in California during the 1930s. But what have we really gained?

We are more cut off than ever from the basic, essential needs of our lives: we do not know who farmed the food we eat (or often who even prepared our food). We do not know the source of our clothing, much of it made by exploited workers overseas. We have a massive entertainment industry, but as such we find ourselves fairly disconnected from our neighbors. Our work is usually not something life-giving or truly meaningful. We are all either Steinbeck’s “machine man” or office paper pushers or fast food workers or cashiers. All that said, our lives, by and large, are good. We have food to eat, houses, cars, and entertainment. There may be a disconnect, but who really cares?

But someone has to pay. This is as true now as it was in Steinbeck’s day. We may not see the exploited laborer in Asia or India, who makes us a sweatshirt with our favorite team’s logo, but they are there. And illegal immigration from Mexico has created a heated national debate. These starving migrant workers are the result of our “success” in at least some very significant ways: our excessive use of the Colorado River has dried up Mexican farm land that depended on it; our government has subsidized corn (the corporate machine man now actually gets paid by the government), and this corn has been sold to Mexico putting more farmers out of work; and our taste for drugs has put big money into the hands of drug cartels, which has created a dangerous, violent nation, funded by our dollars. The Mexican migrant workers risk their lives, like the Joes, for the money to feed their families, and it shames us at a fundamental level. Is this part of the irrational hatred and fear of the Mexican immigrants? Is this why we are so eager to chase them out, to “crack down” on “illegals?

Why do we need drugs in the land of the free? For recreation, for entertainment, for pleasure, for boredom, and to heal the hole that apathy creates. We live in a system of individuals. There is no concept of “one big soul.” Loving our neighbor means writing a check or creating a new government program. We live with this deep disconnect and sense of fragmentation, a wound that we have not been able to heal. Our contemporary priests and Levites can’t be dirtied by the bloody bodies strewn along the Jericho Road. But the consequences of this turning from our neighbors is an inner vacuum that stubbornly refuses to go away, even in a culture that has invented the most sophisticated psychological and religious language to describe it.

Did anyone create this system? Does anyone control it? Does anyone defend it? Or is it ratified and energized by a mass of individuals with no capacity left for true imagination and creativity?

Steinbeck’s solution was to revolt. In Grapes of Wrath he envisions a collective revolution, but it must come from a movement of the poor as a whole. Isolated, they stand no chance, even in small groups they can be chased out of towns by angry town folks and deputies with guns. But if they were to rise up as a collective? If they were to speak as one voice? That would crush the system.

Postmodern Cyberspaciality

2010-04-26T12:31:00.004-04:00

"Surfing the net is the ultimate postmodern experience."

This post is the beginning of a series of posts in which I will work through The Postmodern God. This is an assembly of essays on the relationship between postmodernism and theology. What I appreciate about this volume, what sets it apart, is that it is a combination of anthology and commentary. It is a collection of writings from major postmodern thinkers, with extended introductions and commentaries. These introductions reflect on the possible relationship between postmodern theory and theology.

It is no easy task to discuss the relationship of postmodernism to theology. To start with, it requires understanding "postmodernism." From my experience most of the popular Christian literature and discussion on postmodernism either miss the nuance of various postmodern theorists, at best, or at worst they simply assume general popular stereotypes about "postmodernism."

Graham Ward edited this volume, and he writes an extended introduction. He immediately stimulates the reader with one sentence, to open his essay and to open the book: "Surfing the net is the ultimate postmodern experience."

We will take another post or two to expand some of Graham Ward's thoughts, but I want to focus on this connection between internet technology and the postmodern experience. How does the internet change our way of being? How does online connectivity define us in this postmodern time period?

"Cyberspace is undefined spatiality, like the contours of a perfume, and you are an adventurer, a navigator in unchartered waters, discovering the hero inside yourself. You act anonymously, simply as the unnamed, unidentifiable viewpoint of so many interactive network games, and where an identity is needed, you can construct one."

Our experience of cyberspace is the experience of a postmodern world, and Ward's essay is now nearly 15 years old. Instant connectivity is now available 24-7. With cell phones and internet plans, we can remain constantly connected. Our old notions of time and space are being re-written. Our idea of "reality" is being reconstructed.

To suggest that the "postmodern" is lived out through the experience of the internet and virtual connectivity is to suggest that the questions and issues of postmodernity are not a passing fad, but that they are being lived out through the developing technology. Theoretical discussions of the postmodern, then, are living themselves out through our every experience of text-messaging, Facebooking, emailing, online shopping, internet porn, and blogging, to name a few.

"The drug of the ever new, instant access to a vast sea of endless desire which circulates globally; browsing through hours without commitment on any theme imaginable; dwelling voyeuristically in one location until the pull of other possibilities reasserts the essentially nomadic lifestyle of the net-surfer: these are the characteristic experiences of living in cyberspace."

While all of this remains true of the internet experience, what has evolved since Ward's essay is that technology has also funneled many toward more "localized" or "familiar" online destinations. What I mean by this is social networking, like Facebook. With Facebook, one uses internet technology to connect with many friends and family that one knows "in person." I have interacted with my Auntie Carol in person, but Auntie Carol lives on a small farm in the middle of Oklahoma, a place I seldom travel to. Through Facebook, Auntie Carol and I can dialog, check on each other's status, send messages, or chat on instant messenger.

The same idea applies to cell phones and text-messaging. We can send little bytes of text back and forth. A few words, a few sentences at a time. We stay connected in a virtual way.

Although technology is keeping us connect with real, human people, what is still true is that we are living in a virtual world. We are still living "the essentially nomadic lifestyle of the net-surfer." Our reality is now a combination of "real" and "virtual." Our relationships are both physical and electronic. Our identities are now organic as well as computerized constructions.

"In this land of fantasy and ceaseless journeying, this experience of tasting, sampling, and passing on, truth, knowledge, and facts are all only dots of light on a screen, evanescent, consumable."

Some thinkers, scientists, and philosophers even speculate that we will reach a point at which our minds and consciousness will be downloaded into a mechanized body that will last forever. This is no longer purely the realm of science fiction novels, but is being discussed as a real possibility, given the exponential rate at which technology is expanding.

What are the consequences of living in such a world?

Hybrids are all the rage these days, in the automobile world. We live in a sort of hybrid world: we are both embodied and organic, but we are also virtual and omnipresent. We log in, and when we are online, we can travel anywhere, everywhere. Time stands still.

What are the ramifications of living as a hybrid?

Over the course of our lives, how many millions and billions of web pages will we browse? How many different virtual locations will we visit? How many virtual beings will we friend?

"Surfing the net is the ultimate postmodern experience."

Self, Pilgrimage, and Vocation: A short Sunday meditation

2010-04-25T01:49:00.003-04:00

Here is a lengthy quote from Parker Palmer, a Quaker, writer, teacher, and activist. He has a good deal to say about vocation, particularly in his small book, Let Your Life Speak.

In this quote he equates the search for vocation with the search for self, which is the journey of a pilgrim. We've talked a good deal on this blog about self and pilgrimage. So, I thought I might share this quote:

"Most of us arrive at a sense of self and vocation only after a long journey through alien lands. But this journey bears no resemblance to the trouble-free 'travel packages' sold by the tourism industry. It is more akin to the ancient tradition of pilgrimage--'a transformative journey to a sacred center' full of hardships, darkness, and peril.

"In the tradition of the pilgrimage, those hardships are seen not as accidental but as integral to the journey itself. Treacherous terrain, bad weather, taking a fall, getting lost--challenges of that sort, largely beyond our control, can strip the ego of the illusion that it is in charge and make space for true self to emerge. If that happens, the pilgrim has a better chance to find the sacred center he or she seeks. Disabused of our illusions by much travel and travail, we awaken one day to find that the sacred center is here and now--in every moment of the journey, everywhere in the world around us, and deep within our own hearts."

I like that he links the search for self with a pilgrimage. I appreciate the rather unromantic, realistic appraisal: the pilgrimage is hard. It's tough. It ain't easy going. Perhaps that's why so many of us fail to feel like we are doing something truly vocational, even though the U.S. affords us so many more job opportunities than others have. Most of us end up pushing paper for a living. It ain't all bad, of course, but it isn't a vocation, not a true sense of calling, not something a pilgrim has struggled to find.

I also like how Palmer mentions that these trials of the pilgrimage work something important in us, something we could get in no other way: striping the ego of the illusion that it is in charge. Can we get to this place without pain? Without failure?

On undocumented immigration laws in Arizona

2010-04-24T13:41:00.004-04:00

I thought I might share a short response I wrote on facebook about the Arizona Immigration Bill that passed on Monday, now awaiting the signature (or possible veto) of the Governor.

Here's a description of the bill from FoxNews: "The bill contains several provisions. Among them, it would create a new state misdemeanor crime for failing to carry alien registration documents; allow officers to arrest immigrants unable to show documents proving their legal residence; allow people to sue if they feel a government agency has adopted a policy that hinders immigration enforcement; prohibit people from blocking traffic when they seek or offer day labor services on street corners; and make it illegal for people to knowingly transport illegal immigrants."

Some have applauded the effort to "crack down" on illegal immigration.

Here was a short thought of mine on facebook, while conversing with some folks on the issue:

"Let's stop making it such a simplistic issue and recognize that the problems in Mexico are our problems too. They are our neighbors. We have exploited them, and that's part of the reason their nation is in trouble. We have damned up the Colorado River and used it's resources so that much of it no longer gives water to Mexican farmers. We have subsidized corn and other grains in the U.S. so that we can sell them for less than cost, and we have exported these cheap grains to Mexico, putting yet more farmers out of work. We have allowed the cartels to grow strong and powerful because we have purchased so many of their drugs.

We have impoverished the farmers and made the criminals wealthy. Let's take stock of our sins before we condemn starving undocumented immigrants who risk death to feed their families."

Freedom in the hopeless

2010-04-21T06:16:00.002-04:00

"Losing all hope was freedom."

From Fight Club (film), 1999. After Jack cries for the first time in the testicular cancer recovery group. So, he starts to attend support groups every night. "Every evening I died, and every evening I was born again, resurrected."

God is Power

2010-04-19T04:19:00.000-04:00

I want to continue blogging about this month's novel of the month. In this entry, I want to share a few thoughts and raise a few questions on how power relates to faith and our theology about God.

Big Brother is the symbol of absolute power in Orwell's novel 1984. In the story, all citizens are under constant watch by Big Brother. Big Brother sees all, knows all, is everywhere, and holds all power. The rule of Big Brother is, in fact, an exercise of power for power's sake. "God is power."

Love, on the other hand, empowers the other. Love sets free the lover; love risks being wounded by the one loved. Love is vulnerable and open, never coercive or controlling. Love "keeps no record of wrongs" and "always hopes," as it is put in 1 Corinthians 13.

So, what of God?

Theological conceptions of God are often mixed. God is omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnipresent (in all places). God is the enforcer of justice, in the sense of keeping score of humanities virtues and vices. But God is also love.

I find that our conception of God often contains theologies of God as both all-powerful and loving. In God, power and love are conflated. God may punish us, but it is only for our good, to bring us back to our senses.

But notice that this is also the approach of Big Brother. When Winston is being tortured, he is told it is to shake him out of his confusion and make him sane. From Winston's perspective, he just wants to be free. He hates living under the gaze of Big Brother. For Big Brother, on the other hand, "freedom is slavery," a slogan that has an eerie similarity to many religions and many versions of Christianity.

To me it seems that if love is to be love, then it must relinquish any hold it has on power. This seems to me to be one of the most fundamental meanings of the cross. And I'm not alone in thinking this way. Paul in his letter to the Philippians says that Jesus Christ did not consider "being equal to God" as something to be grasped. Instead, he humbled himself into the "form" (morphe) of a servant. The Greek here is interesting, and I think it carries over into most English translations. Christ was in the "form" (morphe) of God, but chose to take on the "form" (morphe) of a servitude. Theologically, Philippians 2 presents the doctrine of "kenosis," that Christ "emptied" himself. God, in the form of Jesus Christ, empties himself. This is, I think, an exchange of power in an act of love.

Although the scriptures and the Christian tradition present a God of weakness, they also contain references to the God of power. How does one interpret this theologically? How does one appropriate this in life and spiritual practice? For many in the States (and in the modern West in general) the God of power is the sexiest and most dynamic theology to appropriate. It also fits well into an imperialistic philosophy of conquest and strength that has been one of the defining characteristics of the modern world. Even in the last decade, we in the States have been told that it is our duty to use power to spread democracy to the world.

Is God a God of power? Or a God of weakness? Does God take on the strategies of Big Brother? Does God act toward people like Big Brother toward Winston: using his power to break us and force us into “sanity.”

Is it possible that we read our own desires for power into God and religion? That God/religion/ideology becomes a front for our need to dominate and control?

On being a lesbian and a Christian....and laying low for a decade or so

2010-04-16T12:11:00.005-04:00

I was on a recent facebook exchange with some people who were discussing Jennifer Knapp. Knapp is a Christian music artist who left the biz. a decade ago and has been hiding out in Australia. She says she left because of the strain of the business, perhaps disenfranchised and disillusioned. However, it also turns out that she is a lesbian, which would have been a difficult thing to deal with a decade ago. It still is, of course; but Knapp is recording a new album in the States, and she is fully disclosing her sexual orientation.

When I was in college, I liked Knapp's first album, but shortly thereafter I kind of lost all interest in Christian music. I liked Knapp's style, and I'll probably try to find that album and listen again. She always struck me as kind of raw and real.

The aforementioned facebook discussion was a long battle between those who were sympathetic to Knapp's sexual orientation and those who said that the Bible condemns homosexuality. The discussion quickly turned into a debate on what-does-the-Bible-say-about-homosexuality. Here was my brief response:

Many Christians on the issue of homosexuality are looking to turn to the Bible for an "answer" to the question "is homosexuality wrong/sinful, or is it okay?" But why do we use the Bible in this way?

Perhaps the Bible was meant to guides us into the tradition of the sacred faith, to demonstrate the differing and diverse ways that people of faith have dealt with their humanness and with God's God-ness and with the world's world-ness.

Maybe the Bible wasn't meant to be an answer key. Why do we feel such a pressure to "justify that position biblically!"? I think such an attitude is mistaken from the start. It cuts us off from the heart of faith, which is a spirit-led life. In my opinion, the New Testament was meant to anchor us in Jesus (the Gospels) and in the early church teachings and praxis (the rest of the NT). These stories and teachings are diverse. Early Christianity was very diverse.

The faith needs to be reinvented by each generation, by each person. It always has been this way, and it always will be.

So, I suggest that we both dig into the scriptures but also use the wisdom, love, and discernment of the spirit as a guide...all of this in dialog with each other.

What are your thoughts?

How does religion or Christianity relate to one's sexual orientation?

Do you agree with my thoughts on how the scripture texts should be used in the debate about sexuality?

Derdy Dancing

2010-04-14T10:38:00.002-04:00

My brother (code name Derd) has achieved some small amount of YouTube fame. He's had almost 37,000 hits on this video.

I think you will find it to be sweet.

My Corporation. Your Big Brother.

2010-04-05T15:06:00.002-04:00

We are continuing on in this month of BIGNESS. This, of course, in honor of Big Brother, George Orwell’s symbol of totalitarian domination in his novel 1984. In my review, I made a few societal comparisons between the world of Big Brother and our own, contemporary Western culture.

In the recent March-April issue of Orion, Christopher Ketcham writes about the “Bigness worship” in our culture. Here is his take:

“We prefer our Big Macs and our Whoppers, our food portions supersized, our big cars and sprawling cities, our enormous football players (growing bigger every year, the average offensive lineman now topping three hundred pounds), our big breasts and big penises and big houses (up from an average of 1,200 square feet in 1950 to 2,216 square feet today), our big armies with big reach, and, though we complain about it incessantly, big government that spends big money running up big debt (more now than at any other period in our history). That we allow corporations to grow to outrageous size is just another symptom of the disease. Bigness worship permeates every layer of the culture; it is racked into our brains with every turn of the advertising screw; it is a totalizing force.” (17, “The Curse of Bigness”)

I was intrigued to see that he uses the word “totalizing force” to describe our situation. Ketcham’s idea here is that worship of all things big, itself, turns into a totalizing force, one which does not seem dissimilar to Orwell’s Big Brother.

In 1984, those with creativity are continually suppressed by torture and execution. Even those who are loyal to the Party will disappear if they show too much of a creative impulse. The modern big corporation of the West operates on the same model, says Ketcham. It looks for an “Organization Man”:

“Creativity, in any case—the radical’s creativity, which is the only kind—is not what the corporation looks for. Rather, it pursues what William Whyte called ‘the fight against genius.’ It looks for Whyte’s ‘Organization Man,’ who seeks protection, safety, succor in bigness, who can be relied on to conform and submit. What it lacks in creativity, of course, the big corporation makes up for in coercion.” (19)

In point of fact, Ketcham says, small is better. Small is more efficient. Smaller groups are “more cohesive, effective, creative in getting things done.” He continues, “Hundreds of studies in factories and workplaces confirm that workers divided into small groups enjoy lower absenteeism, less sickness, higher productivity, greater social interaction, higher morale—most likely because the conditions allow them to engage what is best in being human, to share the meaning and fruits of their labor.” (22)

There seems to be a psychology of meaningfulness at work. When workers integrate themselves with their workers and their works in a way that does not reduce them to a number or to a title, then they have a healthier psyche, and this results in better results…..which everyone kind of already knows. It is also why every contemporary big corporation will make it their top HR priority to create a “meaningful” environment. While this is the stated purpose, it cannot ever truly be achieved, or at least it is rare. In the end, more human workers are still only a means to an end, with profitability and growth being the ultimate objectives.

In the old days, at least the corporations were a bit more straight-forward in their goals and objectives: you are a cog in the machine. Like it or get out. Today’s corporation undergoes a form of what Orwell calls “doublethink.” Doublethink is “to tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them.” It is not only to say one thing and do another, but to psychologically learn to immediately forget that one is engaging in doublethink: “to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.” So, the HR person at a big corporation truly believes they are working for the good of the worker, while simultaneously working for the good (and drawing their paycheck from) the corporation.

Ketcham says that the result is “one of alienation, powerlessness, meaninglessness.”

“Large groups develop quickly into a committee structure, with an executive or leadership that directs and often dominates the decision-making process. Power, in other words, is centralized, hierarchies are built, authority is increasingly top-down, consent is gently coerced or it arrives by default, as members of the group simply stop participating—not speaking, or initiating, or deciding, or acting, their invisibility growing in proportion as the group grows in size. In short, the experience of most members of the big group could accurately be described as one of alienation, powerlessness, meaninglessness.” (22)

For the subjects of Big Brother, powerlessness is of course the primary reason for being. Big Brother exists solely and only for power. The subtle but serious point that needs to be made here, however, is that Big Brother is the only one with power. In reading 1984 it is clear that even those who are higher up in the Party must somehow shut down their humanness. There is madness in their eyes, even if they are far and away more intelligent than anyone else in the society. As such, there is the same alienation, powerlessness, and meaninglessness even among the most powerful. Those who abuse power, who impose de-humanization on the masses, cannot escape the same fate themselves.

The result of any Big Brother approach to society, culture, religion, family, or any other institution is that the power resides in the symbol. All others become de-humanized in various ways. This, I think, is part of the genius of Orwell’s 1984. He never really rests power in the hands of any one person or in any group of people. The power resides in the Party, or in the abstract Big Brother. The Party is immortal, because it is a symbol and an institution.

In our contemporary society, technology is crucial to the process of dehumanization. Ketcham cites Ghandi: “Every machine that helps every individual has a place, but there should be no place for machines [that] turn the masses into mere machine minders.” (23)

It is beyond dispute, of course, that our modern 20th century obsession with all things big has been aided by the machine. It is also beyond dispute that globally we divide ourselves, roughly, into two processes: slave labor from poor and banking and paper-pushing done in other nations. The white-skinned people, mostly, are the bankers and paper-pushers, those of brown skin from poor countries are the cheap labor force. The other important ingredient in this equation, of course, is the technology to pump cheap oil out of the ground.

Regardless of one’s place, we all are mostly expected to fill roles that contribute directly or indirectly to the growth of big institutions, which themselves fit into this new, global economy.

But there is hope. Orwell’s dystopian is bleak. In the end, the hero breaks down, the last man falls. Big Brother is immortal. But Ketcham’s point is that bigger is not better, by definition. Smaller is more efficient. There is creativity and imagination in smaller groups, something that is suppressed in Big Brother corporations. The use of power to trample creativity ultimately backfires; it exposes the weakness and vulnerability of Big Brother.

“The bigger and more complex our institutions become, the weaker and more vulnerable they really are.” (22)

Rebellion, then, must come through creativity. Apathy only contributes to Big Brother’s domination. This is what I always enjoy when I read or watch the novel/film Fight Club. The creativity of the displaced and malcontents ultimately can work underground to destroy the system.

What kind of creativity is necessary to bring human-ness back to Western society? What kind of imagination is needed to break the cycle?

How can we create a world that is decisively smaller? Less reliant on people feeling like cogs in the machine?

Does creativity become a spiritual force? Is creativity one of the most fundamental spiritual virtues? Is this spiritual creativity, in itself, a form of anarchy?

The State of Fiction

2010-04-05T05:16:00.000-04:00

Special thanks to my friend Aeyn, for loaning me his copy of The Point, issue two, from which I take this quote, about the state of the novel in today's world:

It is perfectly fair--and what's more, manifestly accurate--to say that social and cultural conditions are presently antithetical in lots of ways to creating literature that resonates with the times....The novelist is caught in a double bind: in order to properly capture the feel of a kinetic, overloaded modern world she must pack more, and more varied, material into her work, but does so for an audience that has less and less inclination to engage with it. Alternatively, the novelist simplifies and straightens her work in order to win readers, but at the expense of representing the world as she truly perceives it to be (i.e. "selling out"). There is a concern that the novel is simply unable, structurally, to harmonize with an era where the written word has been so heavily marginalized by sound and image." (p. 50, "Hard Feelings" by Ben Jeffery)

My friends, why did I embark on the Human Narrative Project? If only I had known that the novel was extinct! Perhaps it is not too late. We can make a subtle change: change the Human Narrative Project from a review of the great novels to an exploration of the world's greatest Youtube videos.

1984 by George Orwell

2010-04-01T15:16:00.005-04:00

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake”

George Orwell’s 1984 is a novel exploring power. As literature, I found the writing good but not particularly compelling. The novel was clearly written to discuss political and philosophical points of view. From a purely literary perspective, one might object to such a practice. In the case of 1984, however, I find that Orwell’s imagination and creativity overcomes any objection to writing a novel for the sake of theoretical discussion. In actual practice, I do not think that it is possible to divide the message from the media, the content of writing from its language. The two are inseparable.

The genius of 1984 is Orwell’s ability to create a totalitarian world that explores power, politics, and the human subject. The Orwellian world of Oceania sets its characters in a context of absolute power and domination. The Party differs from the Fascist or Communist powers of the modern world in that they do not pretend to embody any humanistic ideals. Their objective is clear: “power entirely for its own sake.” The undoing of German Fascism or various Communist regimes is their ideological pretense. The Party recognizes that it must root all of its activities in terms of power, stated explicitly.

The symbol of The Party is Big Brother. Big Brother is a giant face that can be seen on posters, walls, and screens throughout Oceania; but Big Brother is also the representation of the power of the state, the symbol of its strength, the divine and eternal metaphor.

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU. Big Brother is omnipresent. Big Brother is ever-present, keeping watch to be sure that there is no one who will oppose the power of the Party. Through technology, Big Brother is able to monitor the masses and every individual. Everyone at every time knows that they are being watch.

Big Brother is given credit for his benevolence. If the economy grows, manufacturing forecasts are surpassed, or food rations increase (as they always do), this is due to the wisdom and foresight of Big Brother. Big Brother provides all that is needed.

Big Brother is omniscient, all-knowing. Big Brother demands that your speech be controlled by controlling language. The language is continually being reduced so that the fewest words may be used. As language is reduced, the capacity for consciousness, reflection, and critical thought decrease accordingly. Free thought is a vice. Big Brother can do all of the thinking necessary for the world. Big Brother knows all.

Big Brother is the one who is everywhere, monitoring your movements. Big Brother is the all-knowing one, controlling your speech and thought. In addition to these two exercises of power, there is a third method of domination: the power to crush any rebellion. Big Brother is the omnipotent, all-powerful one who can unleash a force that will bend any will. Big Brother can use violence to exterminate any act or expression of freedom. This is not just any independent act that threatens the Party; rather, Big Brother will destroy any act of a free self. Through violence, torture, and pure force, Big Brother will break the mind and will of any rebel. What is most shocking, however, is that Big Brother will even unleash such immense power as to force a person into loving Big Brother.

“Winston, you are no metaphysician”

Within this context of absolute power, there are two individuals who dare to assert themselves as human beings, each in a different way. Winston Smith is the primary character, the main protagonist. Winston is the everyman, and as such he is not a philosopher of surpassing intellectual powers. Nonetheless, he is no slouch, and his self-discovery is a theoretical and ideological one.

Winston works for the Party. His job is to rearrange the “facts” of the past so that Big Brother is always correct and always looks good. Winston changes history. It is through this that he begins to question the Party and desire to defy Big Brother.

Julia’s path is not ideological. Winston was born before the Party took power; Julia was not. All that she knows is the power of Big Brother. So she plays along with the whole thing as though it were a game, and she looks for opportunities to slip outside of the watchful eye of Big Brother and live her life as fully as she can. Her sensuality and lust for life are her way of rebelling and asserting herself as a self.

Together Winston and Julia seek to defy the Party by meeting in secret. They become lovers, friends, and co-conspirators.

Orwell’s world in 1984 is one in which technology advancement allows the government a level of god-like omniscience, monitoring the movements and speech of each person. Technology is also used to transmit a continuous stream of media propaganda, to keep all citizens aware of the power and glory of the Party. Controlling the language and speech of individuals is important to Big Brother. There is a word, “duckspeak” that is praised by the Party. It is not speech in the true sense; rather it is “noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck.”

If Orwell’s world appears to be one in which technology has invaded the freedom of individuals, is the situation all that different in our contemporary, Western world. The Orwellian totalitarian future is one in which there is a centralized intelligence that controls the media stream and monitors the speech and actions of citizens. Our media world is perhaps much more random and chaotic. There is no centralized control of media, but does this mean there is more freedom?

The contemporary discussion usually presumes that because we can choose to shut of the television or log off of the internet that we are free. However, the fact remains, that most of us in the developed tech-savy West we are no less plugged in than the members of Orwell’s dystopian society. It begs the question of whether we are really more free. Are we more free because most of our populace can choose between Fox News or CNN? Or is this choice more a matter of illusion. Perhaps the point is not that we can choose between cable news or the internet, perhaps the greater point is that we are constantly plugging in to media, a media that always seeks to capitalize on ratings by selling advertising.

In a sense, our current climate is sort of a voluntary limiting of freedom, based on a perceived choice between which media we want to be our Big Brother for the day. While we often praise ourselves in the U.S. for being the land of the free, there is a disturbing parallel between Big Brother and the media.

Every society and culture has its mechanisms of control and manipulation. What perhaps is most disturbing about life in the States is that we seem to be under the naïve assumption that our perceived freedom of choice with regard to media means that we are less subject to manipulation. In reality, our nation has become polarized into two ideologies, both of which are often inconsistent and seemingly random. On any particular issue, we can be sure that the same people will line up on either side, and that the discussion will be less rational or fact-based, resembling more the quacking duckspeak of Orwell’s novel.

This all raises a very serious question of what it means to be free in an era of our eternal news-byte media. If the result of media submersion is the same in Orwell’s novel as it is in today’s Western society, a sort of “duckspeak,” then how much “freedom” do we truly have? When public discussion is more about “noise uttered in unconsciousness” than it is about creative and original thought, then what right do we have to say that our freedom (so-called) is really and truly all that superior to Big Brother. That we choose to submit our minds to hours a day of connectivity does not make us any more free. In fact, it is probably more the perception of choice, much as an alcoholic may have a momentary sense of freedom in choosing between spirits for his next drink.

“God is Power”

Reading 1984 is helpful to me because it states that the Party’s explicit aim is to power for its own sake. Our modern Western ideals center on democracy as a control measure for power. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” So we assume in the United States that if we have appropriate checks and balances, then we can gain more freedom. Many in the U.S. are disturbed by any perceived expansion of government power. An expansion of governmental power means a loss of freedom. It is an equation that is a given in many circles of thought.

Friedrich Nietzsche believed strongly in the will to power. He criticized democracy. Democracy, Nietzsche believed, will limit the ability of great people to do great things. It will, in essence, make everyone mediocre and prohibit the rise of great creative people. Democracy, says Nietzsche, merely gives rise to a herd mentality.

Looking at the current state of political discourse in the U.S. today, with its tone of “duckspeak,” groupthink, and talking points, it is clear that there is a marked inability for individuals to cultivate their own unique perspectives. For me, this speaks in favor of Nietzsche’s critique of democracy.

While Big Brother pursues power for its own sake, in our democratic society the power plays are more subtle but no less real. The lesson of 1984 in light of our contemporary society is to understand that power is always at work. Power is no less controlling or manipulative in democratic societies as it is in Orwell’s totalitarian state. In democracy, the masses must simply perceive themselves as making their own choices. Because democracy requires the illusion of choice, the manipulation and control mechanisms cannot be overtly manipulative, as they are in 1984.

What seems to me to be the commonality between Big Brother and contemporary society is that both evidence a lack of rationality and love in public discourse. We tend to see the worst in our opponents, the various sides being convinced that other political parties are out to limit their freedoms or otherwise do harm to their fellowman. This intense fear and suspicion, ironically, makes one most vulnerable to manipulation by those who are presumably “on my side.” When one proceeds in public discourse with humility, reasoned arguments, and charity toward those who disagree, one is far less inclined to fall into duckspeak, and far more likely to create a society where members are far less naïve to the workings of power.

Power is always with us. Power is god, in the lower “g” sense.

“You must love Big Brother”

In the end, Winston and Julia are caught by the Party. They undergo torture to cleans their minds. By sheer force, Big Brother forces Winston to believe what they want him to believe.

But belief is not enough.

“To die hating them; that is freedom,” Winston thinks to himself. If he can retain this thought, this private, inner rebellion, then at his death he will have reserved for himself a moment of freedom and independence.

Big Brother knows this, and so it is not enough to merely bend the will and mind, Big Brother will use his power to force Winston to love him. And it works. In works because Big Brother breaks down his body and soul, forcing Winston to deny Julia, his only true love. After months of torture, Winston is completely broken. There is nothing left. He spends most of his days drinking. Everyone pities him. The Party no longer monitors him. There is no need, because Winston’s psyche has no power left in it to assert itself in anyway.

Striped of all power of the mind, will, and heart, Winston is sitting in a café, drinking some filthy gin. He hears a report of a military victory of Big Brother. He is genuinely cheered by the news. And finally, something clicks in Winston. He realizes the folly of his rebellion. He understands now. Everything is clear.

“Oh cruel, needless misunderstanding. Oh stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast…but it was all right…he had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

With this the novel closes. Winston loves Big Brother. Big Brother, of course, does not love Winston; but even if he did, the love was gained by force. Here, at the end of the novel, we find the correlation between love and freedom. We understand, at a fundamental level, that love gained by power, by brute force, is not love. Love without the freedom to choose love is still brutality. Love is only true when the lovers are free to reject or embrace the other.

On their own, these sayings can seem cliché. As such, it is the narrative of 1984 that brings to life phrases that have been overused. The story, the characters, the world that is created through fiction can bring us to really see love and freedom in real life. This brings me back to my first point in this review: that the form of writing and the content are inseparable. The ability for ideals to stir us through story is directly related to the ability of the writer to take us into the narrative and into the minds and hearts of the characters. There are certain things that we have to be shown, not merely told.

I believe 1984 to be an important novel. By carrying power to an extreme, we can reflect on the ways in which power is always working, in ways that are subtle but no less extreme. It would only be a superficial and shallow reading that would presume that the control and manipulation of Big Brother is no less present in all societies. This tends to give support to the idea that power itself is not the issue. Rather, power must be discusses in the context of a society whose modus operandi for public discourse is charity, humility, and rationality.

Chastity and Political Orthodoxy in 1984

2010-03-26T07:56:00.000-04:00

Unlike Winston, she had grasped the inner meaning of the Party’s sexual Puritanism. It was not merely that the sex instinct created a world of its own which was outside the Party’s control and which therefore had to be destroyed if possible. What was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war fever and leader worship. The way she put it was:

“When you make love you’re using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything. They can’t bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour….”

That was very true, he thought. There was a direct, intimate connection between chastity and political orthodoxy.

From next month's novel of the month, 1984 by George Orwell

Meditation and the turn outward

2010-03-25T18:04:00.002-04:00

Some speak of meditation as being a practice that brings us into awareness with our "true self." The idea of a true self seems tricky to me. Tricky I say, because the notion of a true self seems to be the self that is buried deep beneath the rubble of all of the external influences that have shaped us. The true self is the self that is deeper that the part of us that has been molded by our culture, society, and environment.

While I do not deny the existence of a “true self,” in some form or fashion, I find it problematic to draw a hard and fast line between “true self” and “conditioned self.” Whatever the true self is, it isn’t what it is without the conditioning of our lives. Nor do I think a self is less true if it is conditioned. Living a contemplative life, engaging in a deeper spiritual and psychological awareness, should not be a practice of seeking to bypass the concrete realities around us or to despise the part of us that has been conditioned by the experiences of life. In short, meditation should not simply be an escape. If it becomes mostly about escape, then it differs little from other methods that people use to hide or themselves to the world.

Meditation seems to me to be as much about connecting to the external world as it does to go deeper into one’s self. I do believe that meditation should be an experience of going deeper into one’s self. Yet it is simultaneously a way in which a person develops a deeper awareness of what is going on around them.

In the hectic ebb and flow of life in our highly connected Western society, many people appear rather checked out, disengaged from life. They be unable to really be present to someone else’s thoughts and emotions, or, conversely, they may be unaware of the thoughts and emotions that they have, becoming lost in the world of others. Ironically, losing one’s self in the world also tends to miss a vital connection with others, since others in the world are serving as an escape route.

Meditation seeks to develop a greater sense of awareness. To become aware of one’s own thoughts and feelings as well as the thoughts and feelings of those around them. As such, it is not merely a practice that allows one to become lost in one’s self. It is a way of practicing an acute sense of ourselves, carrying over into an ability to tune in to others in a meaningful way.

Personally, my method of dealing with the world is to seek to escape it, to withdraw and distance myself from it. Sitting in meditation comes easy for me, but not necessarily for all of the right reasons. It can become merely an avenue for escape. However, what I have certainly noticed since I began practicing regular meditation (almost a year or so ago?) is that I have very gradually developed a better awareness of what is going on in and through others. I can be in groups or in one-on-one conversations and drop out of sight, disconnect.

For me, meditation has been a way that I have been able to concentrate on my awareness of the present moment, and to become aware of the times when I am disconnecting or want to withdraw from what is going on around. So, for me the benefits of meditation have had as much to do with going outside of myself as it has for going within myself. The experience of growing in awareness, I believe, is different for various people and personality types. For all, though, awareness is both of self and of the external world outside of one's self; and, there is a very real sense in which there is no difference.

Coming Attractions -- 1984

2010-03-24T13:21:00.003-04:00

The novel for next month is George Orwell's 1984. I read Animal Farm in the context of attending a private, Christian (evangelical) high school. The general vibe I was always given is that Animal Farm was a treatise against both Communism and Socialism (the two were often conflated). Interestingly, Orwell was a Democratic Socialist. His critiques were not leveled against socialism or capitalism but against the abuses of totalitarianism found in 20th century forms of Communism and Fascism.

I think that our discussion of 1984 will be particularly timely, in light of many of the debates that take place in the current U.S. political climate. I often see ideological debates about the merits of socialism or capitalism. Discussions of the abuse of government are usually merely an attempt to criticize someone else's ideology. That is, I find it rare that we can put the labels "liberal"/Democratic or "conservative"/Republican aside long enough to have honest discussions about the degree to which government is intruding on freedom and civil liberties.

Jean Francois Lyotard some thirty years ago wrote his classic The Postmodern Condition, which has become a definitive postmodern text. Lyotard says that information will be central in the years to come. He goes so far as to say, "It is conceivable that the nation-states will one day fight for control of information, just as they battled in the past for control over territory, and afterwards for control of access to and exploitation of raw materials and cheap labor. A new field is opened for industrial and commercial strategies on the one hand, and political and military strategies on the other."

The central character of 1984 is Winston Smith. He works as in the "Ministry of Truth" to revise historical records in order to advance the propaganda of The Party. Knowledge, information, politics, government, and the struggle for freedom are all interconnected. This is as true today as it ever has been.

Happy reading.

Works of the Law

2010-03-08T17:13:00.003-05:00

I am going to deliberately confuse my translation of Paul:

"Knowing that a person is not dikaioutai through the works of the law but only through (the) faith(fulness) in/(of) Jesus Christ, and we have believed in Christ Jesus, in order that dikaiothomen might be of (the) faith(fulness) in/(of) Christ and not of the works of the law, because by the works of the law no flesh will be made dikaiothesetai." (Galatians 2:16)

This post continues my commentary on Paul's book of Galatians. I deliberately confuse the translation, because interpretation is not a straightforward venture for this passage. Is Paul talking here (and in the whole letter to the Galatians) about "justification," a legal declaration? Or is there something deeper? And how do we get this righteousness/justification? Is it through faith in Jesus Christ, an action on our part of having faith or the possessing faith? Or is Paul here saying that we have righteousness/justification through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ? In which case, it has more to do with Christ than with us?

What does Paul mean by these dikai- words, words we usually translate as "justification" or "righteousness"? Is it a mere forensic "justification," that God is saying "you are now justified," and then slams his hammer upon the gavel? I don't like that take. I don't like it because it makes righteousness a one-and-done process. Taken as a whole, Paul's theology is more focussed on living a life of transformation. For me, seeing faith primarily as a forensic declaration makes it very transactional and less transformative. I don't mean to say that there is not some sense of forensic justification in Paul's theology, but the real heart of Paul is the life of the Spirit, ushering a radical "new creation." Paul's vision is for something radical.

As I write more about Galatians, I will discuss more what I think the dikai- words mean. For this post, I wanted to discuss "the works of the law" (ex ergon nomou). Whatever this righteousness/justification is, it is not to be sought through the works of the law. Christianity was a Jewish faith, in the beginning; but it spread to the Gentiles, and Paul saw his mission as aimed at spreading the Gospel to Gentiles. There was conflict, though, between Jews and Gentiles. Jews tended to see their Jewishness as an essential component of Christianity. This new "Way" of Jesus was not a radical break from being a Jew, so observing the law and customs of Judaism was natural for a Jewish Christian. Naturally, as Gentiles came into the churches, Jews just expected them to adopt a Jewish Christianity, complete with Jewish observations of the law. This, again quite naturally, turned into a somewhat legalistic thing: you can't be real member of the church without adopting Jewishness. Paul takes exception to this.

For Paul, though, "the works of the law" can probably be extended to any religious practice that attempts to gain righteousness, justification, or goodness based solely on doing. Paul is clear about this later in his life when he writes to the Christians in Rome. In Romans 4, Paul says that when a person works for a wage, the payment given them is based on what they have done. But this isn't the way faith works. It isn't a quid-pro-quo.

For Paul, faith isn't a transaction. This is central to Paul's Gospel of Jesus Christ.

But if we cannot get this righteousness/justification based on a concrete transaction, then it leaves things quite up in the air. Everything is suddenly a bit less defined. The life of faith becomes a bit less concrete......which seems to be the point of much of Paul's discussion of the Gospel.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

2010-03-01T14:12:00.001-05:00

Thus far in my novel project, I have not yet encountered a novel that illustrates so tragically the brokenness of a single individual. In Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Humbert Humbert is that individual: a pedophile, a poet, and a depraved predator. In January, I reviewed A Thousand Splendid Suns, a tale of the heroism of women who are victims of abuse and objectification. Nabokov’s novel is the reverse perspective.

There is much to discuss in this novel, but the one theme that I wish to stress in this review is the role of the reader. What responsibility does a reader have? Lolita forces on us certain ethical concerns; ethical concerns, yes, but there are also certain human concerns, or even spiritual, I might say. More than any novel that I have reviewed thus far, I am impressed with how much interpretation hinges on the reader. I think this is always the case, but Lolita demands something from the reader, not allowing the reader to remain ambiguous or apathetic in interpretation.

In light of my recent readings of Afghan women in A Thousand Splendid Suns, I was delighted that my intellectual partner (and my new fiancé) Tamie recommended to me a book by Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran. This is a memoir of a book club for women in Tehran, who met in secret to discuss the great works of western fiction. I resonate with much of Nafisi’s thinking about Lolita, so I will be citing her throughout the review.

Humbert Humbert fantasizes about young girls. “Nymphets” he calls them.

“My mind rejected my body’s every plea.”

“Taboos strangled me.”

Humbert is an academic with a poetic imagination. In private, he obsesses about his desires; his “excruciating desires and insomnias” torture him. The novel is his private memoir of his encounter with Lolita.

The following quote describes well the way desire shapes Humbert. He describes a “gap” between what he has and what his imagination promises him. With desire, the gap between reality and possibility is ever-present, which makes desire a lustful quest that never ends.

“It may well be that the very attraction that immaturity has for me lies not so much in the limpidity of pure young forbidden fairy child beauty as in the security of a situation where infinite perfections fill the gap between the little given and the great promised—the great rosegray never-to-be-had.”

Art? Or Pornography?

On this blog, we have discussed the question of how to define pornography. What is the line between art and pornography? Is all erotic film and literature pornographic, by definition?

Nabokov himself addresses this question. For Nabokov, art is beautiful regardless of subject matter. Pornography is cheap and commercialized. There is a formula approach that lacks any sense of the artistic. “…in modern times the term ‘pornography’ connotes mediocrity, commercialism, and certain strict rules of narration. Obscenity must be mated with banality because every kind of aesthetic enjoyment has to be entirely replaced by simple sexual stimulation which demands the traditional word for direct action upon the patient.” (Cited on p. 69-70 of “Lolita Turns Thirty,” in What Do Women Want? by Erica Jong) Pornography is a means to an end: “simple sexual stimulation” resulting in “direct action upon the patient.”

Pornography, according to Nabokov is also formulaic. In this sense, it is not unlike other forms of commercialized entertainment, like the popular detective stories of his day. “Old rigid rules must be followed by the pornographer in order to have his patient feel the same security of satisfaction as, for example, fans of detective stories feel—stories where, if you do not watch out, the real murderer may turn out to be…artistic originality…” Pornography, like all mass produced art, is cheap and cliché. “Thus, in pornographic novels, action has to be limited to the copulation of clichés. Style, structure, imagery should never distract the reader from his tepid lust.”

Erica Jong agrees with Nabokov, but puts it a bit more bluntly: “Those who can’t tell the difference between masturbatory stimulation and imaginative literature deserve, I believe, the garbage they get.” (p. 70 of “Lolita Turns Thirty”)

I think Nabokov is onto something here. Pornography is produced as a means to an end: sexual gratification. In this sense, however, much of what we call “entertainment” fits the bill as porn. In fact, many of the products we purchase that we believe we “need” would become porn. The books we buy and never read, the gadgets for the kitchen and garage that we use once or twice, the DVD’s that we only watch a few times or none at all. So much of our economy turns on impulse buys that gratify our itch to have a cool new something-or-other….but I digress….

There is a sense in which I would add to Nabokov’s definition, because I think there is a bit of a problem with defining good art as non-pornographic; namely, that this definition fails to take the reader into account. In other words, even if a piece of erotica is tasteful, beautiful, and poetic, I think it is still reasonable to suggest that it could be used as porn and not appreciated as art.

What I am suggesting is that the question of porn does not have to do with the text (or film, etc.) itself. It isn’t isolated to the novel in question or the movie in question. I am suggesting that something does not really become pornographic until there is a reader to make it so.

Whether cheap or artful, I suggest that pornography is in the eye of the beholder, which puts responsibility on the reader. How are we reading a work? Pornography is not just a matter of good or bad taste: there is something else going on, a more sinister and lustful intention by those who are reading or viewing the material.

I think good art is more beautiful than cheap, instant-gratification entertainment. The latter can easily be called “pornographic” when compared with the former. This is a good start; but we cannot let the reader off that easily. Readers are a part of the artistic process. We have the power to turn good art into a cheap commodity.

Lolita, The Double Victim

Many readers find that they sympathize with Humbert. A female friend of mine, Nicole, recently read the novel. When we talked about Humbert as a sympathetic character, she was blunt and to the point: No. Humbert was not a sympathetic character. Yet it is also true that many readers find something charming about Humbert.

Humbert is funny and self-deprecating, he is poetic and wistful, and he comes to us as someone who seems mostly harmless, at least at the beginning of the novel. Humbert has desires like anyone else. He lost his love at a young age, and he has been sort of stuck in those pre-adolescent years.

The desire to create a sympathetic character is no doubt the intention of the author, but this creates a serious ethical concern, especially as the novel progresses and Humbert is transformed into a maniacal predator. How can we sympathize with Humbert when he objectifies a person? Lolita, in a unique way, makes the reader reckon with themselves as a reader. What is the appropriate way to read?

The structure of the novel itself seems intent on putting the reader in an awkward situation. Even as the novel progresses and Humbert becomes evil and abusive, the reader might be tempted to sympathize with him, because he does in fact repent. Humbert himself finds to be reprehensible. But as I see it, the problem is that it is not merely Humbert, but the structure of the novel itself, that objectifies Lolita. As such, the reader is put into an ethically compromising situation, for to sympathize with the structure of the novel seems to be an immoral act.

Azar Nafisi comments on this from the perspective of the underground women’s reading circle in Tehran. “The first thing that struck us in reading Lolita—in fact it was on the very first page—was how Lolita was given to us as Humbert’s creature. We only see her in passing glimpses. ‘What I had madly possessed,’ he informs us, ‘was not she, but my own creation, another fanciful Lolita—perhaps, more real than Lolita…having no will, no consciousness—indeed no real life of her own.” (p. 36 of Reading Lolita in Tehran)

There is a power differential, and this is crucial, between Humbert and Lolita. It is a violation. And yet the novel itself sides with Humbert. It is Humbert’s story in Humbert’s words. Lolita is whatever Humbert will make of her. The reader ratifies this at the very point that s/he sympathizes not only with Humbert the fictional character but also with the structure of the novel.

Nafisi continues: “Like my students, Lolita’s past comes to her not so much as a loss but as a lack, and like my students, she becomes a figment in someone else’s dream….Lolita on her own has no meaning; she can only come to life through her prison bars.” (p. 37)

“She [Lolita] becomes a double victim: not only her life but also her life story is taken from her.” (p. 41)

The philosopher Richard Rorty also sees this in the novel. There is a story in the novel that reveals how disconnected Humbert has become from his surroundings, so consumed by lust and drawn inward with paranoia and fear.

Rorty cites this portion of the novel. Humbert is speaking, revealing how disengaged he has become from the world around him:

“In Kasbeam a very old barber gave me a very mediocre haircut: he babbled of a baseball-playing son of his, and, at every explodent, spat into my neck, and every now and then wiped his glasses on my sheet-wrap, or interrupted his tremulous scissor work to produce new paper clippings, and so inattentive was I that it came as a shock to realize as he pointed to an easeled photograph among the ancient gray lotions, that the mustached young ball player had been dead the last thirty years.”

Rorty turns the table on the reader: "The reader, suddenly revealed to himself as, if not hypocritical, at least cruelly incurious, recognizes his semblable, his brother, in Humbert and Kinbote. Suddenly Lolita does have a 'moral in tow.' But the moral is not to keep one's hands off little girls but to notice what one is doing, and in particular to notice what people are saying. For it might turn out, it very often does turn out, that people are trying to tell you that they are suffering. Just insofar as one is preoccupied with building up to one's private kind of sexual bliss, like Humbert, or one's private aesthetic bliss, like the reader of Lolita who missed that sentence about the barber the first time around, people are likely to suffer still more" (Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, p. 163-64, emphasis added).

My suggestion is that the reader must take responsibility as a reader for his or her sympathies. The structure of the novel is no doubt intentional, to put the reader into this bind. It is as if the novel were carefully crafted in order to force the reader into responsibility for the very manner in which the novel is read.

“Obsession has a life of its own”

“Obsession has a life of its own: the object, however irreplaceable and particular it seems, can change, though it is in the nature of obsession to recognize that.” (Erica Jong, p. 73 of “Lolita Turns Thirty”)

Let us take a more careful look at the progression of Humbert’s desire. I think that the progression of lust is an objectification of Lolita and an increasing disconnect from Lolita as a person. Lolita is Humbert’s object, and she becomes increasingly so the more Humbert acts on his lust. The result, however, is that Humbert becomes increasingly disconnected from himself. He changes and morphs into something grotesque and vile.

“Humbert is the hero with the tragic flaw. Humbert is every man who is driven by desire, wanting his Lolita so badly that it never occurs to him to consider her as a human being, or as anything but a dream-figment made flesh—which is the eternal and universal nature of passion.” (Elizabeth Janeway’s review in the New York Times Book Review, cited on P. 77 of “Lolita Turns Thirty” in What Do Women Want? By Erica Jong)

Throughout the novel, Humbert’s desire for Lolita drives him mad. Increasingly, Humbert disconnects from Lolita, as he increasingly objectifies her. As his objectification increases, he also disconnects from himself. The result is a downward spiral of abuse, terror, and psychosis.

At the beginning of the novel, Humbert thinks of himself in gentile terms. He is not a violent killer, rather “the majority of sex offenders that hanker for some throbbing, sweet-moaning, physical but not necessarily coital, relation with a girl-child, are innocuous, inadequate, passive, timid strangers who merely as the community to allow them to pursue their practically harmless, so-called aberrant behavior, their little hot wet private acts of sexual deviation without the police and society coming down upon them. We are not sex fiends! We do not rape as good soldiers do. We are unhappy, mind, dog-eyed gentlemen, sufficiently well integrated to control our urge in the presence of adults, but ready to give years and years of life for one chance to touch a nymphet. Emphatically, no killers are we. Poets never kill.”

And yet by the end of the novel, Humbert is both a rapist and a murder.

Also early in the novel, Humbert describes his relationship with Annabel Leigh, his young first love: “The spiritual and the physical had been blended in us with a perfection that must remain incomprehensible to the mater-of-fact, crude, standard-brained youngsters of today.” Humbert ironically becomes more of a “mater-of-fact, crude” character when his relationship with Lolita descends into a deep disconnect with her mind, heart, and anything spiritual in her soul. He clearly becomes a “mater-of-fact, crude” kind of person that he sneers at.

Even as he progresses in his kidnapping, Humbert still wants to think of himself one way (“I am not a criminal sexual psychopath taking indecent liberties with a child….I am the therapist.”), all the while acting in another way. Humbert’s original intention was to molest Lolita while she was drugged and in a deep sleep, so as to make her as innocent as possible…but he abandons even this smallest of good intentions. The result is an increasing disconnect of himself from himself.

Humberts desires and lusts increase, gradually; and because of this, Lolita increasingly disconnects from him. Eventually he becomes abusive, not just sexually but physically. He enters “a new stage of persecution” while all the while not seeming to recognize what he is doing. Humbert becomes obsessive, paranoid, controlling, and irrational. After he loses Lolita, he has a psychological breakdown. He follows every shred of clue he can find for years…he nearly guns down a professor on only a hunch, then checks himself into a sanatorium…he becomes a maniac.

By the end of the novel, Humbert is both a rapist and a killer, two things that he, as a “poet,” swore he was not. There is a sinister transformation.

I find the Humbert’s act of murder significant, for several reasons. It is the point at which he transgresses his emphatic declaration that he is not a killer. However, it is also an extreme act of clutching at the past.

“I was weeping again, drunk on the impossible past.”

Humbert could never let go of his desire. Desire, almost by definition, cannot be satisfied. It is the gap (as Humbert says) “between the little given and the great promised—the great rosegray never-to-be-had.” As such, Humbert’s murder of Quilty (the man who managed to free Lolita from Humbert’s talons) becomes his desperate attempt to reach back into the past and once again posses Lolita as his own. The murder is an act of revenge, yes. It is a psychopathic shooting, true. It is complicated. But it is significant that after Humbert is arrested, he seems to find some sense of relief, a brief sense of peace. It is as if there is nothing left for him to cling to.

There is something here, I think, that is significant about desire. The ability to truly appreciate anything is compromised by clinging to it, by clutching it with all of our might. Only by setting the object free can we truly appreciate it on its own terms, and by doing so enter into an engagement with what is most truly precious about the person or thing.

This is what differentiates love from lust. Lust objectifies the other, it possesses it and owns it for its own gratification. This is what is pornographic.

But love is artistic. Love sets the person or thing free to be appreciated for what it is, not as a means to an end. Lust demands that full attention be given to its object of desire. Love, on the contrary, engages the person on their own terms.

Finding Love

Humbert dehumanized Lolita. She disconnected from him, and she disconnects from her own desires and her own sexuality. During intercourse, she would read magazines, while Humbert was in the midst of his ecstasy. Lolita has a promising role in the school play and quits just before the opening night. It is as though she cannot reach the climax of the event, as though she is disconnected from the climax of her own desires.

Most tellingly for Humbert, every night Lolita weeps when she thinks Humbert has fallen to sleep. She has no place to go. She is trapped.

Eventually, Humbert begins to gain some measure of clarity and insight into what he has done to Lolita, or “Dolores Haze,” her real name. He realizes how cruel he was to her. He realized how little he knew of her heart and mind. Humbert consults with a priest to gain some measure of relief. Though he finds some solace, he has a profound realization that haunts him:

"Unless it can be proven to me that in the infinite run it does not matter a jot that a north American girl-child named Dolores Haze had been deprived of her childhood by a maniac, unless this can be proven (and if it can, then life is a joke), I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art."

Humbert realizes, at last, the deep interconnectedness of all things, of all people. When he turned inward, to cultivate desire, he turned away from the human reality of others. The more he did this, the more he went mad, and the results were casualties that could not be reversed. Who Humbert was and what he did mattered significantly, especially to Delores Haze. “Life is a joke” if our actions are isolated from others.

Spiritual enlightenment (or the life of the “Spirit” as it is called in Christianity) seems to be precisely that process whereby we recognize that our spiritual fate is bound up with how we relate to others. Our spiritual and psychological state cannot be cultivated in isolation, apart from others; rather, it is defined as we relate with others.

Concluding Thoughts

“Oh my poor, bruised child. I loved you….I was despicable and brutal….There were times when I knew how you felt, and it was hell to know it.”

Even in his repentant state, even in his moments of deepest regret, I still cannot find it ethically acceptable for a reader to sympathize with Humbert. Oddly, though, I do think we can love Humbert. To sympathize with Humbert and with the novel is to lend credence to the notion that we can objectify and dehumanize another; but love is different. Love can respond with a broken heart to the brokenness of others, no matter what their frame of mind.

Nabokov’s novel is written to make the reader reckon with how s/he reads. So I read Humbert’s life as a tragedy. I read Lolita’s life as the voiceless victim. There are lessons to be learned from Humbert, lessons of lust, desire, and true love. Ultimately, true love escapes Humbert, and his desire consumes him. Although I cannot sympathize with Humbert, or with the structure of the novel, I believe that there is some sense in which we can read the novel with love. This may be something of an agape hermeneutic, to use the Christian term. A hermeneutic that can love both the victim and the victimizer, and in doing so understand the tragedy that occurs when we objectify and dehumanize others.

Though a tragedy, this is a deeply human novel, if the reader approaches it in order to humanize its characters. To love is to humanize.

A few thoughts on grace....and Lolita

2010-02-24T17:33:00.001-05:00

I just finished my reading of Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita. It was better than I had expected, more powerful and even (dare I say it) redemptive, in its own way.....more on that later.....I thought I would post some extended thoughts from Herman (my future brother-in-law), who has a very thoughtful blog. His perspective is Christian, but Eastern Orthodox. The Eastern view of faith is quite different, and for many in the U.S. (particularly from evangelical backgrounds), the Eastern take on faith can be so unfamiliar as to even seem non-Christian.

So, here are a few of Herman's thoughts on sin, atonement, brokenness, and grace that might remind me of my readings of Lolita:

Let's say there's a murder, and we know who committed the murder.

We human beings didn't know it was going to happen before hand. We can't do anything about it afterwards. We can't raise the victim from the dead. We undo their relatives' exerience of sorrow. We don't know if the murderer will ever do it again. We don't know if the murder was overcome by an uncontrollable rage, or if he plotted for months. We are all fragile human beings, who could be murdered ourselves, and we are afraid.

And given those facts, it's actually pretty logical that human beings tend to react by punishing, imprisoning, or even executing the murderer. That is the only thing we can do. We're pretty powerless in the situation otherwise.

But God isn't. God knew it was going to happen. He knows what is going to happen in the future. He was there. He knows what it's like to be murdered. He can raise people from the dead. He knows the person's motives, state of mind etc. He can prevent the murderer from ever doing it again. God cannot be murdered as God, and as a resurrected man, Jesus can no longer be hurt. His approach to wrong-doers, whether murderers or shoplifters is radially different to ours.

We re-act. God is. I can't express strongly enough my horror and dilike for the western idea that God is angry with us, in the same sense as humans get angry. Yes, we have to use metaphores from human life to express truths about God, but the truths cannot be contained in our metaphores. God is, he does not get angry.

Or, as an Orthodox priest once put it (I may have already said this, but it bears repeating): "Orthodoxy is the lack of one-sidedness."

I think that whatever suffering we experience now, or after death (hell), is the product (like a chemical reaction, or a law of nature) of our own opposition to God. All death, sickness and sorrow here on earth are the product of our collective sinning because we sin when we are hurt.

Or, but another way, our turning away from God, on its own, is a sufficient cause for all suffering, whether now or later. God doesn't need to interfere, or subject us to something more than the direct results of our own actions. We're doing that just fine on our own.

We are wounded by the fallen world, and in our woundedness we contribute to the ongoing fallenness. All suffering is suffering at the hands of each other and ourselves, not at the hands of God. God is.

So grace, on this account, is the process where we learn how not to contribute to the fallenness, and where we can become healed from our wounds. Grace is God teaching us how not to be hurt, and how not to hurt.

[From the comment section of Holistic Christian Sexuality and Community]

Revelations and religious experience

2010-02-17T18:10:00.000-05:00

Speaking in tongues. Ecstatic prayers. Calm assurance. Visions. Revelations.

What to make of religious experience. Neurosis, psychosis, or psychopathology? A real connection with God, the angels, the spirit world, or the demonic? Something of both?

Paul is no stranger to dealing with the question of religious experience. To the Church at Corinth, he advises that it is good to go after the lofty spiritual experiences, such as speaking in tongues; but to love, however, is greater by far.

Paul tells the Galatian church that his gospel was received by a revelation, directly from the boss:

For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me was not of human origin; for I did not receive it from human beings nor was I taught it, but I received it by a revelation of Jesus Christ. Galatians 1:11-12

After a bit of a delay, I am continuing with my reflections on the book of Galatians, one of Paul’s more radical epistles. In Galatians, Paul sweeps the entire “law” aside in favor of freedom, breaks down ethnic, gender, and class distinctions, and mercilessly attacks anyone who opposes his gospel.

Yet before we get into these issues in more depth, I want to pause and look at Paul’s radical individualism. He bases his presentation of the gospel on an isolated revelation from Jesus Christ. This idea of personal revelation has been present in Christianity ever since Paul, with many throughout the centuries believing that they have received something directly by God: through visions, by an intense study of the inspired scriptures (as though directly given by God), through intense religious feelings, or by being taken up in trances.

When Paul says that he received his gospel by a revelation of Jesus Christ, he is clearly talking about a direct transmission of some sort. What is less clear is what this implies. Is Paul saying that his gospel should be given special consideration because it was transmitted directly from Jesus? The answer would seem to be “yes,” at first glance; however, Paul himself never actually makes the connection. Paul never says, “Look, I heard this gospel from Jesus, so that establishes it’s authority.”

In his commentary, Dieter Lührmann, takes pains to say that Paul is not developing an argument for the truth of his position based on religious experience: “Theology for Paul is not a retreat into his own religious experiences, which could perhaps establish his authority, but as such would not be transmittable. Theology, rather, is the unfolding of the content of the gospel, which has eschatological meaning for his own existence, as his interpretation of the Damascus experience as a ‘revelation of Jesus Christ’ shows. The gospel can also acquire such meaning for others, because its convincing power lies not in the personality of the preacher but in its content, which brings salvation.” (page 19)

What Lührmann says above is interesting. If one appeals to one’s own religious experience, then it is not transmittable. I think this is a good point. The only way a personal religious revelation is transmittable is if someone else seems to have the same experience. But what happens in the church, or in any faith community, if the religious experiences start to vary? Bob feels that God spoke to him and told him that the church needs to spend more money on electric guitars for the worship service. What if others hear different voices?

Many contemporary evangelicals believe that this is precisely why we need an objective text like the Bible: The Bible can resolve differences and provide us with “the answers.” But this experiment has failed for at least two reason. First, there are as many different interpretation of the Bible as there are people reading it. Next, the Bible itself doesn’t come to us as the book of answers, but only as a collection of scriptures that present diverse approaches to faith. This does not, in my opinion, make the Bible less appealing or even truthful, but in fact gives us texts that are dynamic.

As we read through Galatians, it is clear that Paul doesn’t appeal to his revelation experience to make his case. He cites the Hebrew scriptures, he develops arguments, he appeals to the Galatian congregation’s own religious experience. Paul does not use his revelations as grounds for the truth of his gospel….but still….he does mention it. His gospel is not of human origin. It’s directly from Jesus Christ. Despite the fact that Paul does not directly use his revelation to push his gospel in terms of making an argument, the fact of the matter is that revelation from Jesus Christ does seem to give a person a bit of spiritual credibility.

This leads us into a discussion of the tension between personal/individual religious and the community. On the one hand, the personal nature of faith is very important. Religious experience can be deeply meaningful and transformative for each individual. On the other hand, an important element of religious experience is being a part of a religious community. That is, a believer finds that simply being a member of a greater whole is itself meaningful. For many, isolated religious experiences are secondary to the participation in a religious tradition that may span hundreds and even thousands of years. One feels a historical communion with saints and sages of the past.

The tension is in the book of Galatians itself. Clearly individual revelation is important to Paul. He sets himself apart from any received tradition, presumably as a superior form of communication. However, Paul does stand in the Jewish tradition, and it is the Hebrew scriptures that become central in his argument for a gospel that is based on the “promise” not law. This promise/law discourse is found in 3:15-25. At the end of chapter three, Paul says that “you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus,” and that all were baptized into Christ. As such, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” In 5:6 Paul says that circumcision nor uncircumcision are of any value. The only thing that counts is faith “being at work” (energoumene) through love.

So, while Paul places incredible emphasis on his own personal revelations, he stands in a tradition, argues from that tradition, and encourages those in the congregation to be one in Christ through the expression of love. This last point is somewhat astounding, considering how much Paul rails against his opponents. He suggests, ironically, that those who oppose him by emphasizing circumcision should go all the way with the knife and castrate themselves. At the close of his letter he suggests that his opponents only want to look good. They don’t keep the whole law, even if they suggest that others do so. And while Paul bears the marks of Christ on his body, his opponents sell out the real gospel in order to avoid persecution.

Things at this point are quite muddled and confused. Do we each just go our own way, according to our own personal revelations and individual religious experiences? Or do we try to hold together some sort of community of diversity? The book of Galatians just kind of leaves things confused. Paul condemns his opponents in no uncertain terms, and yet he doesn’t have a detailed plan for what happens next? Do the Galatian churches kick out these folks? If so, what is the litmus test? Paul himself isn’t entirely clear on defining what such a litmus test should be. Or do the churches try to work things out so that they can all stay in fellowship together, respecting differences and disagreements? Based on Paul’s letter alone, any number of possibilities would work.

On this point, I interpret Paul’s letter to the Galatians as an example of how difficult it is to work out our individual religious experiences within the context of a faith community. Experiences come into conflict with each other; our ethics and values might be in conflict; and our entire perspective on “faith” might be so different from someone else that we just have a difficult time finding any common ground. We all think that we are right. Those of us who are religious usually relate with Paul in some way, believing our revelations or ideas of faith are that which should prevail.

Sometimes we should stick it out with the community. Over the long run we find that it is worthwhile to stay together, and maybe over time differences become less and less important, as the relationships form into something that is much more substantial that our individual perspectives on faith. And yet at other times it is in fact necessary to break the ties and go our separate ways. It might be easier to stay, it might take courage to leave. Sometimes faith communities are together, but nothing seems to be gained (for anyone) by that union.

It’s tricky, but the tension is in the text, and I’m glad for that. In reading Galatians (and many of the other epistles of Paul), I am comforted by the complexity at work in the lives of individuals (like Paul) and the greater faith community. We do the best with the wisdom and discernment that we have, and try through all things to love each other, whether that means working things out together or going our separate ways.

Religious experience is often a mystery, even to those who experience; perhaps especially to those who experience it. As far as I can see, navigating these experiences in the context of others is a delicate and complicated matter. Even Paul seems to run into the complexities.

Kinesthetic Prayers

2010-02-09T10:11:00.003-05:00

As far as I understand, most contemporary theories of education understand that there are different learning styles and different learners. Some people learn by listening, these are audio learners; others are visual learners, so they best retain information that they read or see with their eyes; still others learn best through their body, by actively engaging in an activity, such as writing out information or putting together a puzzle.

Yesterday while conversating with Tamie, I began to wonder about the history of prayer. The Hebrew Scriptures are filled with very kinesthetic prayers; prayer is an experience of the body. People will weep and lament in loud voices, they will rip their clothing and sit in dust and ashes. They will dance to express prayers of joy and thanksgiving. They will set up physical representations of faith (such as digging a well or some form of a memorial). They bow and prostrate their bodies. They lift up their voices.

Somewhere along the way in the Christian tradition, prayer was turned into a mental/cognitive activity or into an inner emotional experience. This is why I wonder about the history of prayer. How did prayer get to be an exclusively inner experience? When did Christians decide that the physicality of prayer was no longer important?

I'm not sure what the answer is, but I imagine it has to do with the modern Western obsession with the "inner life" of the mind. Descartes famously (or infamously) withdrew himself from the outer world to discover a more pure, foundational truth in the rationality of his mind.

There is also something intriguing in this discussion related to gender. Traditionally, the mind has been related to the male, while the body is feminine. Women have been the ones who bear the children and nurture them, a physical activity. Men are the decision makers, the masters of mental processing. Men are the educated ones. Women take care of the "practical," physical matters.

Body energy seems to be something that is related to all forms of Eastern religious expression. Buddhism and Hinduism developed yoga and trantric practices to bring the body and the inner person into proper alignment. Muslim practice dictates prostration in prayer, stopping five times a day to physically demonstrate devotion and surrender to God. And, as I mentioned earlier, the Hebrew scriptures use many words to illustrate the intense kinesthetic energy that goes into prayer.

I tend to be someone naturally inclined toward the inner life of the mind and the emotions, primarily focusing on the mental processes. For me, it has renewed me to incorporate physical motion and acts of devotion into my acts of prayer. It becomes a time for me to let go of my thoughts and feelings and engage my body in an act of faith. Physically bowing is a release; using prayer beads allows me to direct my energies of prayer into the world; and speaking my prayers also connects my inner life with the external world.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

2010-02-04T19:41:00.006-05:00

We find Alice tired and bored. Sitting on the bank on a hot day, she wants nothing to do with her sister’s book; it has no pictures or conversations, no images or dialog. The day is static and still, conventional and dull.

Then it’s down the rabbit hole and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland begin. In the next Alice book, Through the Looking Glass, it is the mirror that acts a portal, transporting Alice to another world: a world of imagination, creativity, excitement, and absurdity.

Lewis Carroll wrote his first Alice novel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (or Adventures for short) in 1865. The second, Through the Looking Glass (or Looking Glass) followed seven years later. The books were highly popular from the very beginning. Lewis Carroll, of course, was only his pen name. (A writer of nonsense fairy tales ought never to take his real name.) The tales of Alice that he writes are funny, entertaining, and charming.

The novels can be read just for the fun of it, with no strings attached. This is one of few great novels that one can just sit back and enjoy, without feeling the need to explore “the deeper” mysteries and darkness of human existence. And yet on the other hand, these texts are not without substance. After all, Carroll was a professor of mathematics and logic and Oxford. The substance of these texts, and any potential lessons they can teach, emerge through their playfulness. Not merely that play itself is valuable, but that the context of triviality can serve as fertile ground for reflection. Perhaps this itself is one of the most profound lessons of reading these novels, especially in politically polarized societies.

So, I want to proceed in a playful manner. These novels open us to imagination and absurdity in a way that can prove quite enlightening.

“Oh dear, what nonsense I’m talking!”

The adventures of Alice play with absurdity. The novels seek to loosen the edges, allowing us to be surprised and delighted. The text continually surprises us, constantly playing off of our expectations for things to be a certain way. All dialog and interaction that Alice encounters in Wonderland inverts our conventional sense of how things should be; but it does so in a way that allows us to imagine a new possibility, if only for a brief moment. Only for a brief moment, because the text wants to shake us up in a playful way, without taking itself too seriously.

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know that I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

When dialoging with the Cheshire Cat, Alice asks for a reason, for some rationality to explain why the Cat believes that Alice is insane. The Cat provides a reason, but it isn’t quite convincing: “You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

Many of the characters in Wonderland abide by their own rules, by their own set of standards. The Duchess states that, “Every thing’s got a moral, if only you can find it.” But each of the dogmas of the characters is so bizarre and so unlike any other standard that the result often becomes chaotic, exasperating, and certainly quite hilarious!

Taken as a collective whole, Alice’s experiences with the creatures calls into question the point of conventionality, of fixed and rigid systems of thinking and language. At every turn, a bizarre comment or inquiry upsets another axiom.

“Better say nothing at all. Language is worth a thousand pounds a word!” (Looking Glass)

Does language master us? Or is it the means of mastering our world? A means of mastering others?

Alice always tries. She often follows out the reasoning of the characters she meets, seeking to match wits with them. In this way, Alice can come to represent conventionality. Humpty Dumpty says as much to Alice: “You’re so exactly like other people.” (Looking Glass)

Alice presses. Language, it seems, stretches us. It stretches the creatures to the full extent of their absurdity. It stretches Alice out of her conventionality. Wonderland is not the place of books with no pictures or conversations. In Wonderland, words come alive. They do something that creates excitement and new ways of seeing the world.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

Alice asks the question of morality: who has the right to change words and make them mean such different things. Humpty Dumpty changes the question. It isn’t about what we can do, it isn’t about who has the right to change words. This misses the point. Using language is a creative process. It is about asserting one’s self.

Wonderland upsets the dogmatic world of books without pictures or conversations, and to do so it stretches language in all sorts of bizarre directions. “All events in the Alice books thus feel like non sequiturs.” (“Introduction” by Tan Lin in 2003 edition) As absurd as they are, these non sequiturs are the linguistic agents that help Alice to break out of the dullness of normality.

The non sequitur is “that which does not follow.” A non sequitur works in a way that is opposite the cliché. Clichés are trite and boring, they operate only to advance the narrative to the next sequence. Clichés are dull and lifeless. Non sequiturs, on the other hand, make us think differently. They shake things up.

Clichés are easy, and they are familiar. Because of their familiarity, they are not questioned. The reader goes through them and onto something else. The non sequitur is unfamiliar and strange. It is absurd. And as such, we have to stop. In the Alice books, they are devices to make us laugh and to question our assumptions. Clichés lock us into convention, while a non sequitur can help us break out of routine and think in imaginative and creative ways.

In the first Alice novel, the Queen inverts the typical order of the courtroom and makes the absurd assertion, “sentence first—verdict afterwards.” A similar circumstance occurs in Looking Glass, where the criminal is to be punished prior to the crime. “The crime comes last of all.”

“It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,” the Queen remarked.
“What sort of things do you remember best?” Alice ventured to ask.
“Oh, things that happen the week after next,” the queen replied in a careless tone. “For instance, now,” she went on, sticking a large piece of plaster on her finger as she spoke, “there’s the King’s Messenger. He’s in prison now, being punished: and the trial doesn’t even begin till next Wednesday: and of course the crime comes last of all.”
“Suppose he never commits the crime?” said Alice.
“That would be all the better wouldn’t it?” the Queen said…
Alice felt there was no denying that. “Of course it would be all the better,” she said: “but it wouldn’t be all the better his being punished.”

Language becomes a tool for the imagination. It refuses to settle the matter; rather, it suggests strange possibilities….even impossibilities, which paradoxically can become possible if we only try hard enough. Imagination and creative language can make the impossible seem possible.

“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.
“Can’t you?” the Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Chasing after the wind

It is the white rabbit that stirs Alice out of her boredom on that hot day by the bank. So, Alice chases after the white rabbit. But the white rabbit is chasing after someone else: “The Duchess! The Duchess! Oh my dear paws! Oh my fur and whiskers! She’ll get me executed, as sure as ferrets are ferrets!” When Alice meets the Duchess, we find that the Duchess must hurry off to play croquet with the Queen. The Queen, for her part, cannot execute her subjects fast enough: “Off with his head!” And her subjects, of course, are always anxious to avoid being the object of a beheading.

The constant motion is a circle of pursuit. We find deep meaning in the motion, in the chasing, but it all has a certain futility to it. Ah, but not futility in the sense of a brooding existentialist. This is a futility with a sense of humor. The Alice novels illustrate that the futility of our motion may be worthwhile, even in the midst of its triviality and absurdity; indeed, they are important because they are silly.

“Alice’s conversations, when they don’t end unsatisfactorily in silence, tend to go in a circle.” (Tan Lin)

In the West, we tend to live in a linear world. This is particularly true in our modern world, especially in the U.S. If our economy is not growing, then we are panicked. We must always be making progress, moving forward, ad infinitum. To truly appreciate and appropriate the circularity of the Alice novels, we must change the paradigm and realize that circularity, however absurd, allows us to center and enjoy.

The circularity means that we are circling around something in order to appreciate it. This circularity of the novel gives the text a certain lightness, a lightness that is also a spiritual and psychological virtue that is rare in a linear world obsessed with progress.

Our desire to go somewhere is parodied in Alice’s dialog with the Cheshire Cat in Adventures:

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where—” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“—so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.

In Looking Glass, Alice suddenly finds herself in a shop. An old sheep is keeping shop. There are many wonderful items to purchase, but Alice cannot actually find any of them. As soon as she tries to fix her eyes on an item, she finds that it shifts or fades away, and when she is able to fully focus her eyes on the shelf, the shelf is empty. But she can see that there are items on the shelves above and below, so she tries to fix her gaze on another shelf to see these items, but she finds that they also vanish.

The shop seemed to be full of all manner of curious things—but the oddest part of it all was, that whenever she looked hard at any shelf, to make out exactly what it had on it, that particular shelf was always quite empty: though the others round it were crowded as full as they could hold.

The Sheep’s shop illustrates that economic desires are always shifting and changing, like the shop that the Sheep is tending. As we read in Ecclesiastes, “The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.” And again, “Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the desire: this is also vanity...” Desire is that which we see, not with our eyes but with our desire. As such, the object of desire can never fully be brought into focus, and whatever shelf we fix our desire turns up empty.

“Quests for mastery are continually frustrated in the Alice books.” (Tan Lin) Mastery bows to absurdity. The true mastery comes from giving up mastery, from being able to laugh at ourselves and cultivate a lightness of spirit and a sense of humor.

Alice sighed and gave it up. “It’s exactly like a riddle with no answer!” she thought.

Haiti Relief

2010-01-28T05:11:00.000-05:00

Generosity and giving can result in a certain power over others. Such was the gist of Jean Vanier’s comments in his interview with Krist Tippet on the NPR show “Speaking of Faith.” Vanier is not saying this to be critical or cynical. He is a soft soul. A living saint who founded L’Arche communities where adults with disabilities can live together in love. He is not a cynic, but he ain’t naïve either.

One of the areas of thinking I have been deeply engaged with is the idea of giving. I am writing a book about grace, and I want to push this concept of “unconditional grace.” I don’t want to be a cynic, but I want to ask the hard question of whether or not any grace can truly be “unconditional.” There is a good deal of philosophical discussion that centers on just this point, so there is much about the gift to engage the heart and mind.

Giving, more often than not, puts others in debt. It creates a cycle of reciprocity. Can we escape it? If so, it’s certainly easier said than done! And that’s a fact, Jack. Even despite our best intentions, even if we were to have “pure motives” (which is also debatable), even then a “symbol” is created (to use the philosopher Jacques Derrida’s) in the giving. As such, the idea of “unconditional giving” is easier to conceptualize than practice, and it’s even difficult (yea, even impossible!) to actually find a true-to-life example of purely unconditional giving.

But again, my point in this post is not to approach giving as a cynic.

I was watching the NFL Playoffs last weekend, the rare bit of television viewing I do these days, and I noticed that the networks flashed a number to text for Haiti relief. To give ten dollars to the Haiti relief effort, one only need send a text message to the number. Presumably the process is streamlined such that in minutes (or less, perhaps) one can make a ten dollar donation for the people of Haiti.

I imagine that these efforts brought in many funds, all much needed for the relief efforts. This is a good thing, no doubt. But my suspicions were aroused when I saw the text message giving system on tv. And the answer was obvious to me: why can we (as citizens of the U.S.) give so much to Haiti relief and fail to engage our neighbors in need? By “neighbor” I mean, specifically, the Hispanic population in our small, northern Indiana community. Or the peoples in jail. Or the meth addicts in Syracuse. Or the “poor white trash” who live in the trailer parks scattered throughout the county. That is, there are so many people so close to home who are in need, living desperate lives. So easy to text ten dollars to Haiti and call it a day, says I. Says the part of me whose suspicions have been thoroughly aroused.

But as I mentioned, my point in this post is not to approach giving as a cynic.

In point of fact, I know that many who are involved in the Haiti relief effort are those who want to engage people. Like Jonathan. He’s a pilot. He lives about three quarters of a mile from me. He raises chickens and sells eggs. He’s a political conservative who organizes local tea parties. He is also exhausted from flying his airplane to Haiti and finding ways to get supplies to people who are in desperate, life-threatening need.

Or there’s Kristi. She had a minute a few days ago and sent me some Instant Messages through gmail. She only had a minute, but she had enough time to tell me about how a certain local insurance company is shelling out big bucks. It’s more than just a marketing, image gimmick. Kristi had to roll. She’s helping to organize. Oh, and she is also a political conservative.

I’ll wager there’s a good many stories about a good many good people doing good things. There are many stories of people who are actually engaging this relief effort and the people of Haiti. They care. There are lives touching lives. And let’s be honest, they couldn’t do what they do if it weren’t for all of those impersonal dollars that came rolling in via text message.

Did I mention that my point in this post is not to approach giving as a cynic?

And yet I think that there is still something important to ponder. I think my suspicions are not entirely without cause. The fact is that we forfeit blessings when we live fragmented lives, when we isolate ourselves from the poor and needy, choosing to live most of our lives in the office, with our friends and family, and with neighbors who have the same values and financial means as ourselves. We forfeit blessings because there is a certain human experience that can only be had when we stop for the anonymous stranger in need. We forfeit the opportunity to know love.

When asked by a man-in-the-know about what to do to attain “eternal life,” Jesus replied in a simple way: love God, love your neighbor.

Well said.

The man-in-the-know wanted to push the issue a bit further, to specify and parse words: who is my neighbor? Jesus tells the tale of a certain Samaritan man who found an anonymous stranger laying on the road side (left for dead and passed over by some of the more religiously inclined).

Emmanuel Levinas was a French philosopher who made ethics central to all of philosophy. He talked about “the face of the other.” The other is not just any other, not just any other person. It’s the other. The other that we are suspicious of, the other who threatens us and our way of life; the “Commie Bastard” of the fifties; the Muslim, fundamentalist terrorist of today who wants to destroy the “American way of life”; the meth addict who strips to support her habit, not take care of her kids; the alcoholic beggar in the ghetto who has no intention of changing and just wants to draw welfare. Yeah. That one. That’s our neighbor.

There’s a blessing in knowing those who are in need, those who are broken, those who are poor. There is a blessing in knowing them, in engaging their lives and seeing their face. To do so unconditionally, if that is possible.

Jean Vanier talks about Saint Francis of Assisi. Saint Francis hated lepers. They stunk, so he hated them. Then he visited them and his life was changed. He no longer wanted to live his life for his own esteem and riches. He walked away from a comfortable life in his father’s textile business.

Says Vanier, “We don’t want a God who is hidden in the dirt, in dirty people.”

Loving our neighbor means digging in the dirt for God. What does this mean? It seems to be a blessing found when we do our best to really identify with the other, with the dirty people, with the weak, with the poor. This is not a love based on the powerful helping the weak. This is a resignation of our superiority; it is identifying so closely with those who are in need that we realize how needy we all our. That is, there is a certain blessing only found when we look into the face of those who are most desperate and weak and we see ourselves in them. This is the moment when we are incarnated, like Christ, when we realize that we are that which we have always feared and despised. In this moment, we can then experience the greatest blessing, because we can be set free from what we have always feared and despised in ourselves. As Vanier puts it, we can at that moment welcome our own weakness.

“We don’t know what to do with our own weakness except hide it and pretend it doesn’t exist. So how can we fully welcome the weakness of another if we haven’t welcomed our own weakness?”

It seems to me that when we can fully love a neighbor, in their greatest moment of weakness and brokenness, we can love ourselves. We have engaged the other to the point of identity with them, and at that point our judgments and prejudices against them fall away, along with the many ways that we judge ourselves. This is the beauty in humility.

Let me make this perfectly unclear: the new words of Jesus

2010-01-25T04:47:00.002-05:00

Of late, my faith, my pilgrimage, seems to have been taking me in the general direction of creativity and imagination. I am starting to awaken to the realization that much of the journey of faith absolutely must involve imagination. Without it, we dry up. We wither.

Creativity is not the artist’s luxury. Pilgrimage is about movement and courage, but it must also cultivate imagination, stimulate. If a pilgrim of faith only moves, only works, then the aches and pains of the journey become our pre-occupation, and it’s easy to become bitter or to just settle down and take it easy.

In my previous post, I discussed the creative writing class that Tamie and I co-teach. We want to coax and/or challenge our students to break out of conventional language (clichés, vague writing, the received stories about yourself/others/the world). We want them to write something new. We want them to break out of convention: use new words, explore new language, tell a new story. Last week a young woman broke down into tears while I was chatting with her at the end of class. She desperately wants out of her narrative, the story that she always screws things up. The guards comes to take her back to her cage. She has to quickly wipe away her tears.

I want to transition these ideas about imagination into a discussion regarding theology and faith. What happens when the language of theology becomes fossilized? What happens when the language we use to describe faith hardens? It’s like crusty old bread that has lost its soft, moist texture.

Jesus, as it so happens, was the just the sort of chap who used new language and challenged old, prevailing assumptions. (Something about new wineskins for new wine.) Of course he did. We all know this. Yet I am wondering if there isn’t something more fundamental to be learned. Is it Jesus’ message that we should be concerned about? Or should we be imitating Jesus’ approach? Put another way, should we be concerned that we get all of the details correct when it comes to “what-Jesus-taught,” or did Jesus pass on to us a way of being-in-the-world, a way of using new language to break out of the conventional clichés that lock us into cliché lives.

Put another way, in a more universal sense, is spiritual liberation found in repeating, reciting, and reusing the words of old? Or is liberation a freedom to create and imagine new possibilities?

There is an extended passage in the Gospel of John that has many words about words, and words about Jesus’ words, and words about the words that others worded about Jesus’ words. I am thinking specifically about chapter six.

Jesus is drawing crowds.
Jesus tells the crowds that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood.
The crowd responds with a collective “Whoooooah!” “This is a difficult word, who is able to hear it?” (v. 60)
Jesus responds: “The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.” (v. 63)
Many split the scene. After all, cannibalism ain’t kosher.
Jesus turns to the twelve. His amigos. His homies. “Will you stay or will you go?”
Peter speaks for them all: “You have the words (rhemata) of eternal life” (v. 68)

The crowd responds that Jesus words were “hard/difficult” (skleyros) to understand. Some commentators suggest that the crowd understood Jesus, that is they comprehended him, they just couldn’t accept the word of Jesus. I agree with the commentator (Craig S. Keener) who agrees that the term here generally connotes something that is difficult to accept, “Nevertheless, it was hard to accept because they misunderstood it, as is characteristic of those who hear Jesus without faith…Even his disciples did not always understand initially, but they would in the end because they persevered.” (p. 693)

Jesus was of the tradition of those who throw a monkey wrench into convention language and disrupt our lives when our way of being becomes stale and stagnant. “Jewish sages, like other ancient Mediterranean sages, often spoke in riddles; the historical Jesus, like other Palestinian Jewish sages, employed parables.” (Keener, 692)

Jesus used words to do different kinds of things, to imagine new possibilities. But notice that Jesus forced his audience to engage their hearts/souls/minds to the point that they were baffled. He deliberately convoluted his message. This is very different from much of the contemporary creativity of the techno-savy church crowd. For so many, the lights, the cameras, the sound equipment, and the three point sermons are all meant to be as clear as possible about "the message." But Jesus' point was never primarily to deliver a message. It was to disturb our messages, it was to displace our conventional language so that we are pushed to the breaking point. Once we have come to the end of our selves, once our received paradigms completely fail, that's when we can start to engage our imagination. So much money is being invested to clarify. Jesus came to un-clarify, to challenge all that we thought was clear, and in doing this, Jesus seems to activate something deeper within.

But as I said, it is not in dispute that Jesus broke paradigms with his imaginative use of language. The real question for so many of his 21st century followers is whether his example should be followed. And this is no small question because so much of religion is built on Jesus’ language as the foundation. That is, Jesus’ words are used as the basis for doctrine or for practice, but Jesus’ use of imagination and creativity is often not the basis of faith. Jesus' methods of using language to break paradigms, well, this was just Jesus' crazy way. It was a means to an end. But should it be an end in itself?

Could following Jesus be construed along the lines of following our imagination? Can we hold to the words of Jesus and completely miss the point by failing to engage Jesus’ example of imagination?

Are we to follow the example of Christ and be creators of new language? Like Jesus, to create new language and push ourselves to the brink? Is that why Jesus never wrote his teachings down, because he expected those who came after him to build on his work of creativity? Why does the Gospel of John, in the famous and poetic prologue, allude to Genesis 1 and the creation? The Logos was creating with God in the beginning.

Jesus left the world, when presumably he could have stuck around for a while, but he handed on his work of imagination to his disciples and those who would follow them. Ah, but Jesus did leave a replacement….but a replacement who was even more tricky in her use of language: the paraclete (the comforter, or Holy Ghost), who contorts language even sometimes beyond recognition. The book of Acts describes the Spirit as moving people to speak in languages not their own, the languages of others.

My suggestion here is not that the words of Jesus are unimportant. I am merely speculating that if these words are not combined with imagination, then they can easily become lifeless. What is more, if we look closely we may see that our received interpretation of the words of Jesus, the interpretation handed down to us, may be unimaginative and uninspiring.

What seems to be missing in so much of faith and theology is creativity. We must not merely possess the words of Jesus, we must ignite our imaginative souls. Jesus not only passed along words, he also left us with an example of how to use language in a dynamic way, to retell our worn out stories, to challenge prevailing authorities who use religion and power to oppress, to break out of the conventional clichés that lock us into cliché lives.

“Ye must be born again.”

N.T. Wright and Cultural Masturbation

2010-01-22T05:35:00.002-05:00

Okay, here's a quickie....uhm....I mean, a quick post.

I came across a blog by Julie Clawson, Why N.T. Wright is Wrong about Social Media. (N.T. Wright is a prominent New Testament scholar who writes for academic and general audiences.) As the title implies, she takes issue with Wright's view of social media, believing that his take: "I was disappointed to hear someone so knowledgeable about history and faith jump on the 'caution people about the perceived dangers of the Internet' bandwagon." She also cites a Pew study that busts the myth that those of us who engage in social media will steal time away from "huggable" (N.T. Wright's term) people, that is, folks in flesh-and-blood. Says Julie, "The study also found that people who spend time on the Internet are actually far more likely to go out and be with real live people than those who don’t use the Internet. The point – social media actually builds community, even of the huggable people sort."

I initially found Clawson's blog helpful, but then I watched the short video of N.T. Wright and found that his position is a good deal more nuanced than I read in Julie's blog. And in fact, I find myself more in agreement with N.T. Wright's warnings.

Wright says that the internet can lead to isolation....that relationships need bodies....that too much internet time dehumanizes communication....he recommends implementing personal rules to spend time with "huggable" human beings and not to be spending too much time in front of a screen; internet is a good deal like tv in this regard.....it is important for online interaction to translate into action....if we are isolated from others, this can produce "cultural masturbation" where the internet becomes a forum for personal gratification (gratification intellectually, in terms of entertainment, in addition of course to sexual).....the internet can become a form of "gnosticism".

Wright says he welcomes the technology as long as we are reflecting on the "meta-issues" that stand behind the technology.

My position on the internet, social media, blogging, etc. has always been that this is a new form of communication, a new form of language. I try not to get caught up in the kind of high-minded, intense debates about whether it is "good" or "bad," "harmful" or "helpful." Instead, I tend to prefer discussing how new forms of language change the way we think, engage each other, perceive ourselves, etc. Perhaps these are the "meta-issues" that Wright is talking about.

While I tend to favor Wright's view, I think Julie Clawson's short blog post is thoughtful and useful to the discussion of the value of the internet and social media.

Here is the video of Wright:

NT Wright on Blogging/Social Media from Bill Kinnon on Vimeo.

A change of pace--the Human Narrative Project update

2010-01-21T11:20:00.005-05:00

My review of A Thousand Splendid Suns is available for your reading pleasure. We have had good discussion ensue, with insightful commentary on understanding Rasheed, the women protagonists, and the psychology underlying it all. So, feel free to join in the dialog.

So she took courage and went on again, "I didn't know that Cheshire cats always grinned. In fact, I didn't know that cats could grin."
"They all can," said the Dutchess, "and most of them do."
"I don't know of any that do," Alice said very politely, feeling quite pleased to have gotten into a conversation.
"You don't know much," said the Dutchess. "And that's a fact."

The next novel is a change of pace. Novels tend, as a general rule, to explore the darker elements of our lives and of humanity in general. This is certainly the case for A Thousand Splendid Suns, although it ends with a narrative of hope. Our next novel, Lewis Carroll's (his pseudonym) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, is a curious, playful text. It is literature that children can enjoy, full of fantasy and creative dialog between Alice and the idiosyncratic animals and characters that she meets along the way; yet the novel also plays with ideas and philosophies. It is above all a work of art, and as such it gives us food for thought (playful as well as serious) in a subtle and nuanced manner.

Reading the novel will also prepare us for Tim Burton's new Disney film, Alice in Wonderland, starring Johnny Depp. I'm always interested in how filmmakers interpret novels, and Burton is one of those, uh, creative types.....creative in that weird, creepy sort of way. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (and I will also be reading Through the Looking Glass) is our February novel, and the film is set to release on March 5.

You may read this novel/s as you like: it/they can be read as a child's book, as a trivial bit of fun, but it can also be read for the many possibilities for symbolism, metaphor, and philosophical speculation. For a taste of this, I leave you with a few quotes by Tan Lin:

"The Alice books manage to show both these quests--that of the child to look forward, and of the adult to look back--simultaneously, as mirror logics of each other....

"The quandry of a logically grounded knowledge constituted out of an illogical universe pervades both books. The questions that Alice asks are not answered by the animals in Wonderland nor by anyone after she wakens. It is likely that her questions don't have answers or that there are no right questions to ask....

"Nearly all the players in Wonderland, with the exception of the Duchess and the Queen, are male, older than Alice, and contentious, imperious, or condescending in their adherence to strict rules. Even in play, logic reigns rigidly in Wonderland in a kind of spoof of the analytical philosophical logic popular at Oxford in Carroll's day....

"Lewis Carroll was a teacher of symbolic logic at Oxford, and he love to make mathematical knots for his pupils to wriggle out of...."
(Quotes from Tan Lin's Introduction, 2003 Barnes & Noble Classics edition, pp. xi-xxxiii)

New words

2010-01-18T04:32:00.002-05:00

Tamie and I teach a creative writing class at the county jail every Wednesday afternoon. In the last two classes, we discussed clichés, vague writing, and how we can challenge the standard stories we tell about ourselves. This all has to do with thinking carefully about the language we use.

If we use cliché language, then the reader is not going to be moved by our writing. Clichés are tired, overused words and phrases that become somewhat trite. Not only are clichés uninspiring to the reader, they can also create a cliché life for the writer. In other words, if our language is cliché than our lives can become cliché as well. It’s hard to avoid clichés, though. It can be damned difficult sometimes.

Vague writing is similar. Rather than being specific with our writing and language, we can just kind of generalize things. Too much generalization leaves the reader wanting more. Of course, vague writing can be very powerful when used properly. It can leave the reader with many diverse thoughts. It can put interpretation in the hands of the reader. It can create mystery. But it can also be an escape, a means of non-engagement. It’s hard to be specific in writing. Sometimes it’s damned hard.

In our last class we talked specifically about telling a different story about ourselves. We all have a personal narrative: a story about ourselves that describes me. This may not be one narrative, it can be as simple as a phrase or a few sentences that make sense of who we are, our identity. For example, many of our students in the jail write about their lives (particularly about the behavior that led to their incarceration) with language like this: “I made poor personal choices because I am a bad/broken person.” In our recent class, we tried to challenge our students. Is this the story you want to tell about yourself? In a paper I read recently, one of the students said that as soon as something good happened in his/her life, s/he did something to screw it up. That’s a story s/he is telling. It defines. It creates identity. What about the story a doctor tells himself: My father and grandfather were doctors and that’s what I was born to be. What about the little voice inside, deep down, that wanted something different?

What I said about clichés and vague writing, I say again about re-telling our stories: It’s hard. Damned hard. Most of us, regardless of class/status/gender/education/etc. don’t perceive that the story we tell ourselves about our lives is just a story. Most of us think of our story as fact. It isn’t a story. It’s just the way things are. Every time things are going good in my life, I do something to screw it up. We live with our stories, and they shape us. Our stories form us into their image.

On just about any dimension you can think of, humans tend to clump together. Go farther and farther away from the center and you see fewer and fewer people. It’s hard not to see evidence of some sort of force at work, pulling everybody toward the center. Maybe the force emanates from a particular point in the world, like gravity, pulling people in. Maybe it’s a force that’s embedded within individuals, impelling them to move toward each other. (John Doyle's novel The Stations)

What forces us into clichés? What is it that makes us pass over our vague notions and not explore things in greater depth? What fossilizes our stories, hardening them into “fact”? Over time, it can squeeze the life out of us, but knowing how this process occurs is almost an impossible task. This isn’t just about writing, per se—the act of scratching out words on paper or typing in letters on a keyboard. This is a commentary on life.

In our culture, marketing advertising has created a homogenous culture while convincing everyone that they are special and unique: you’re not just one of the millions who listen to an ipod, you “customized” yours by choosing a green one and by putting all of your favorite tunes onto it. Mass media contributes to our inability to get beyond cliché. We all listen and watch the same things. Mass production is creating a world in which we all buy the same products. The same Ikea tables in the same box houses in the same suburban neighborhood plan. These are strong forces, and yet there is more to this whole process of differentiation, more than just social and culture conditioning, as important as that is.

We are born, we grow, we learn, we adapt. We take on a received language, a received culture. We trust that our parents are telling us the truth. We trust that they love us. This naïveté is very human. We’ve got to start somewhere. So we work with what we have. But we can’t stop there. We can’t just let our lives be dictated to us, not without some resistance.

But how?

How to escape? How do we break out of clichés, vague descriptions, and

No easy answers. We have to use new language. It takes creativity, imagination, hard work, persistence, hope, joy, sacrifice, love, encouragement from others, community, and a good deal of faith. By “faith,” I simply mean that mysterious opening, the point at which we step out into the unknown. Sometimes something breaks in from the outside. Sometimes we break out, with a sheer force of the will.

Ultimately, this is a task that is beyond us, and yet for the survival of our souls, it’s a process we must engage with all of our hearts and minds. It is the pilgrimage for new language.

Love and spiritual practice

2010-01-14T10:06:00.001-05:00

A.H. Almaas is a spiritual teacher who merges modern depth psychology with spirituality. In order to familiarize myself with Almaas, I was recently listening to a Youtube lecture, and he made the comment that in spiritual practices (or spiritual disciplines), the person must love the practice.

It is interesting to me that so often we lose sight of the fact that love is the primary motivation for spiritual practice. For so many, spiritual disciplines become a means to an end: enlightenment, mental focus, peace, feeling closer to God, fulfilling one’s religious duty, changing the world via prayer, etc. There are many ways in which our spiritual practice becomes a means to an end rather than an end in itself.

Is it really all that surprising that we so easily lose sight of love? Doesn’t it seem like love is the first thing to go? Love is so fragile. So delicate. So beyond our ability to control it or capture it. Perhaps it is not “the first thing to go.” Perhaps it is just the thing we lose sight of, even if it is still there, supporting us in ways unseen.

Spiritual practice can involve so many different things. There are the usual culprits: contemplative prayer, reading of scripture, meditation, intercessory prayer, liturgical services, corporate worship, spiritual journaling, fasting, etc. But there are so many diverse ways to engage the sacred in spiritual practice: walking, painting, cycling, writing (of all kinds), washing the dishes, eating, singing, and the list can go on and on. In reality, anything one does can be an act of contemplation. Anything can be a spiritual practice.

I suppose what makes one particular spiritual practice more significant for a person is love. That is, there are some spiritual practices that we just love more than others. Why do we love one (or a few) spiritual practice(s) more than others? Well, that’s the mystery of love, I suppose. Love itself is mysterious and beyond our ability to explain it in its entire depth.

If love is the foundation of spiritual practice, then we can compare spiritual practice with love for a partner or spouse. Sure, we love certain things about people. We might think a person is beautiful, sexual, or attractive. We may enjoy the dialog and conversation that we can generate with a person. But when we love, there is some sense in which we fall. Something just happens. Something that seems best to leave unexplained. There is a mystery to love.

There is a mystery to love, and there is love in touching mystery. Spiritual practice is this merging of mystery and love.

And yet we so easily lose sight of love and mystery in our spiritual lives and practice. This is to be expected, even for the most learned theologian, the most experienced pastor/priest, or the most advanced spiritual guru. In fact, advancement seems to be one of the greatest enemies of mystery and love.

Yet when we lose sight of love, there is always grace. Grace surrounds us in practice, even when we are using practice as a means to an end, or when our minds have strayed from focus and concentration, or when we just don’t want to have anything to do with spiritual practice. Grace surrounds us. Perhaps we might say that grace is most present when we are most absent.

Based on our knowledge of a grace that surrounds us, we are free to open our hearts again to the love of practice and the joy of spiritual discipline.

Coming Attractions

2010-01-09T05:48:00.006-05:00

There's a nifty book published in 1997 called Postmodern God (edited by Graham Ward). It is an anthology of essays that discuss the connection between postmodern thinkers and theology. I find the format of the book to be very helpful. Each postmodern thinker in the anthology has an essay, writings in their own words. But each essay is introduced by a lengthy discussion on the general nature of the thinker's philosophy and how their concerns might be related to theology. The essays and selections are top notch, and as such the text lends itself well to discussion of how postmodern thought relates to theology.....which makes it a great book to blog on.....so in the upcoming months, I would like to blog on some of the selections.

(Unfortunately, the book is a bit pricey, roughly $50. I purchased it at a better price a few years back. If you want to purchase the book, but find the price tag too high, check out used copies. I found one at Abe Books for only $19.78.)

Yes, friends, I am still going to continue blog on Galatians!

I have had a difficult time getting a specific commentary, so it has slowed my progress. However, in the next few weeks, I will have another post. In the meantime, you are welcome to check out the two prior posts. In Evangelistic we discussed Paul's gospel (as seen in Galatians in particular) and compared it with contemporary popular evangelism. My contention is that Paul's emphasis is not on a who's-in-and-who's-out, it is a gospel of reconciliation, that reconciliation has already occurred, it is not something we can "get" through faith. Faith is primarily a recognition of what already is.....I take a similar position when blogging on Galatians 4. In this text, the dichotomy between "believer" and "unbeliever" begins to break down. See Slaves and Heirs.

Also of significant interest are posts by our insightful friend Ktismatics (aka "John Doyle"). Ktismatics has one post on Galatians 6 that is of particular interest and that I recommend: New Creation in Paul. (He also has a post summarizing his view of some of the key elements of Paul's theology New Creation in Paul.)

The indestructible soil

2010-01-08T08:46:00.000-05:00

"The soil is the one indestructible, immutable asset that the nation possesses," the Federal Bureau of Soils proclaimed as the grasslands were transformed. "It is one resource that cannot be exhausted, that cannot be used."

The above quote is take from The Worst Hard Time, a historical narrative of the 1930's dust bowl that devastated the Great Plains of the U.S. I started reading this just yesterday, and I highly recommend the book to anyone who enjoys reading history or to those interested in the ecological history of the U.S. Timothy Egan doesn't just narrate history, he creatively weaves together the voices of common citizens and their communities to tell the story of the destruction of one of the richest eco-systems in the U.S. and the subsequent consequences.

The Comanche, Apache, and other natives were driven off the southern Plains by force and through the extermination of the buffalo. Investors and speculators saw all of the free grass in the southern Plains and tried to turn the land into mass cattle ranches. However, the extreme temperatures and other factors led to a poor return on the investment. The investors wanted some return on their money and the governmental powers that be had a vested interest in populating the land, so no fabricated tale was too tall: they advertised the land for sale as farm land. Not enough rain? No problem. The rains will follow the plough.

So people bought the land and moved there to farm. With the advent of farming machinery, they tore up massive amounts of land, transforming the entirety of the southern plains from grasslands into wheat fields in the space of only about a decade. And for awhile, people got rich. Rain fell and the money rolled in.

The land was the constant. The soil was the absolute. It was indestructible and immutable. We could never exhaust it. Hubris had found fertile ground.

But then the rain didn't come....and then the winds began to turn up dust into thick, black storms of dirt.....wheat prices crashed and crops piled up for years at a time with no buyers.....ironically, many in other parts of the nation were starving....

The Guilty's Innocence

2010-01-06T01:57:00.001-05:00

He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets prisoners free...

For those of you who do not know, Tamie and I teach a creative writing class at the local county jail. It has been a very enlightening experience for the both of us. The students we teach have an incredible range of humanity that challenges me every week to re-evaluate my life in the light of their humility and courage.

Tamie put together a short anthology, collecting the writings of our students. It is on sale for $5, with the proceeds going to purchase new books for the inmates. If you are able to purchase a copy, I am sure that you will appreciate their writing and unique perspectives. Go to Tamie's blog to read more:

http://owlrainfeathers.blogspot.com/2010/01/read-prisoners-writingsand-help-buy.html

Recap 09

2010-01-04T01:18:00.003-05:00

In 2009 I....

Started (and stuck with!) a routine of 50 pushups a day in June.
Launched my Human Narrative Project: to read and review a list of 100 of the best novels.
Fell in love.
Began a routine of meditation and contemplative prayer each morning.
Attended church services more often than I had anticipated.
Took a seven week road trip out west with Tamie.
Made a lot of awesome new friends (particularly on said road trip).
Felt a new appreciation and deep gratitude for life.
Painted my first two paintings.
Helped (with Tamie) to start a creative writing class at the county jail.
Took a chance to leave behind my accounting career.

In 2010 I hope to....

Rock out 100 pushups a day, for a yearly total of 36,500.
Read and review 12 enriching novels.
Continue falling in love.
Continue to read, practice, and write about the contemplative approach to spirituality.
See what happens when it comes to church.....
Visit Alaska.
Meet more friends.
Grow in appreciation for life.
Paint a bit more.
Continue to watch writing transform lives in the county jail.
Begin a job that better fits with my personal vision for life.
Launch a home page where I can organize my writings.
Start a new Top 100 list for reading/reviewing/blogging.
Watch the U.S. move toward a more non-interventionist military policy.
Do more blogging on Paul's New Testament epistles.
Witness the world come together to advance the cause of environmental sustainability.
Live in a world that moves closer toward empowering the poor and oppressed.

A Thousand Slendid Suns

2010-01-01T00:01:00.002-05:00

“every Afghan story is marked by death and loss and unimaginable grief”

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a novel that is at once both brutal and beautiful. Khaled Hosseini presents us with two ordinary Afghan women whose lives are extraordinary through their response to suffering.

From a certain point of view, we can read this novel as though we were perched high in the sky observing the intersection of several crossfires. One crossfire is that of Afghanistan itself, war torn and demolished by conflict. These are the real, literal bullets that rip holes in homes and leave children fatherless and mothers childless. Yet these bullets are often provided by nations that are many miles away, safe from the destruction, safe to play political games with a faceless people group.

This larger crossfire stretches from the former Soviet Union to the United States of America. Within this larger crossfire is a smaller, more dangerous crossfire. In this restricted space, the women of Afghanistan are the targets of spiritual, psychological, physical, and religious abuse by men whose pain, frustration, and warped religious fervor find release against the most vulnerable.

But out of the suffering, true character emerges, real love.

Afghanistan

“‘And that, my young friends, is the story of our country, one invader after another,’ the driver said, flicking cigarette ash out the window. ‘Macedonians. Sassanians. Arabs. Mongols. Now the Soviets. But we’re like those walls up there. Battered, and nothing pretty to look at, but still standing. Isn’t that the truth, badar?’”

Kabul is the main backdrop for the novel. The reader walks along the streets of Kabul, visits an orphanage, a women’s prison, and even barters with the vendors in “Titanic City,” a market place that sprang up during the Afghanistan craze over the U.S. film Titanic.

The historical backdrop begins with the communist takeover in 1978, follows the mujahideen rebellion against the communist, the eventual withdrawal of Soviet Troops in 1989 and subsequent warlord rule and in-fighting of the mujahideen, traces the rise and fall of the Taliban and the United States’s post 9/11/01 war and military presence.

This background, however, comes to life. The power of the novel is to give human faces and voices to those who get lost in the political, military, and religious interests. These interests reduce human beings to a means to an end. When people become means to ends, conflict and violence resolutions come more naturally. Internationally, we in the U.S. can play chess for world domination by arming rebellions; domestically, behind the walls of Afghan homes, men can gain the upper hand over their wife with a fist to the face. The approach is the same: dehumanize the other.

Yet the recourse to violence can never deliver what we hope for. Violence begets violence. Jesus said that those who live by the sword will die by the sword. Ghandi said that an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth makes the whole world blind and toothless. Under the Reagan administration, the U.S. armed the mujahideen, which eventually resulted in the rule of the Taliban and deep-seated resentment of U.S. interference in the Middle East. The rise in militant Islam and terrorism came back to haunt the U.S., most obviously in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

But more than simply a notion of retribution, the objective of violence (if there is any) fails in that violence dehumanizes the aggressor even more than the victim. We see this clearly in Rasheed. While only a teenager, Mariam is forced to marry the much older Rasheed. At first, Rasheed is hospitable, though certainly coarse and controlling. He takes Mariam around the city and even buys her “a pure gift,” a dark maroon silk shawl with beaded fringes and edges embroidered with gold thread. At first, Mariam balks at this gift. She is reminded of her father, who purchased gifts for her only as a matter of penance, a way to absolve him of the guilt of fathering Mariam, an illegitimate child. But Mariam looks at Rasheed’s face and discerns that he has given her this gift in a moment of vulnerability. He has put something of himself on the line, opened himself with this present. However, this vulnerability and easy manner of Rasheed with devolve into cruel rage and abuse.

When Rasheed realizes that Mariam cannot have children, he sinks into hatred and contempt. He resents Mariam and beats her. His violence turns him inward, away from the possibilities of love. Love could have made him whole. Acceptance could have turned their house into a home.

Pinocchio

“Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam.”

I was intrigued by the author’s explicit reference to the Disney Pinocchio film. When Mariam is a young girl, her father Jalil enchants her with stories of the movie Pinocchio. Jalil owns a theater and the film is showing. Mariam wants to go see the movie. She wants it so badly that she walks all the way to her father’s village and waits on his doorstep for him. But he will not see her. She sleeps on his doorstep, and he will not receive her.

Through a series of events, Mariam’s trip to see her father results in her being pressured/forced to marry Rasheed. Many years later, in an attempt to reconcile with Mariam, Jalil tries to give her a Pinocchio video.

The Pinocchio motif lends itself well to many elements of the novel. In the Disney film, Pinocchio can become real only if he is brave, truthful, and unselfish. Pinocchio must navigate through temptations in a society where he is still a puppet, not yet human. Mariam, representing the women and mothers of Afghanistan, is viewed by the male-dominated society as sub-human, like a wooden puppet who is not yet a real boy. The country of Afghanistan, as well, could be said to be in pursuit of becoming real; however, having pursued this course by violent means, it has become entrenched and trapped in its own hostility.

“Seasons had come and gone. Presidents in Kabul had been inaugurated and murdered. An empire had been defeated. Old wars had ended, and new ones had broken out. But Mariam had hardly noticed, hardly cared. She had passed these years in a distant corner in her mind, a dry, barren field, beyond wish and lament, beyond dream and disillusionment. There the future did not matter, and the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake and its accomplise, hope, a treacherous illusion….”

Mariam’s existence becomes wooden. Over time, she becomes Rasheed’s puppet. He pulls the strings. She stays home. She cooks. She cleans. She becomes Rasheed’s scapegoat, and he beats her when his aggression boils over.

It is love that begins Mariam’s transformation. Laila, the other protagonist in the novel, becomes Rasheed’s second wife. At first, Mariam is jealous and resents her; but eventually Mariam is able to open to Laila and Laila’s little girl, Aziza. Holding Aziza in her arms, she realizes the wonder of the love of a child. In that moment, Mariam becomes a mother.

“Mariam had never before been wanted like this. Love had never been declared to her so guilelessly, so unreservedly….And she marveled at how after all these years of rattling loose, she had found in this little creature the first true connection in her life of false, failed connections.”

Eventually Mariam is fully transformed, and she realizes the full beauty, her true radiance. At the time of her death, she reflects, and she experiences abundant peace.

“Though there had been moments of beauty in it, Mariam knew that life for the most part had been unkind to her. But as she walked the final twenty paces, she could not help but wish for more of it…..She would have liked that very much, to be old and to play with Aziza’s children.
Mariam wished for so much in those final moments, yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world…a pitiable, regrettable accident, a weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, as a companion, a guardian, a mother. A person of consequence….This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings.
Mariam’s final thoughts were a few words from the Koran that she muttered under her breath.
He has created the heavens and the earth with the truth
He makes the night cover the day and makes the day overtake the night
And he has made the sun and the moon subservient
Each one moves on to an assigned term
Now surely he is the mighty, great forgiver”

For me, this was the most profound moment in the novel. I hesitate to include it in a review; the words feel so sacred, and taking them from their context almost feels inappropriate. Perhaps it is. But these words lead us to something deeply touching about humanity.

Love, Violence, and Hope

“Let me tell you something. A man’s heart is a wretched, wretched thing Mariam. It isn’t like a mother’s womb. It won’t bleed, it won’t stretch to make room for you.”

In our search for something more real, we human beings seem to find it in the face of love. And yet it is love that we so often cannot find. Some consciously seek love, some only seek love in very indirect ways. Some, like Rasheed, become so lost in their own despair and illusions that they wander far from love, and far from even any sense of the healing power of love.

I am struck that despite the fact that love is so often that which we seek, it is also that which so easily escapes us. We often try to control love, but love is beyond control. We try to manipulate others to gain love. We make ourselves loveable, or we give to others, hoping to earn love; but pure love will always elude manipulation. In frustration, we may try to force love, but love can never be won with violence. In resignation, we may withdraw and close ourselves to love, believing we are not worthy, believing love cannot be found.

Love is a surprise. We must open our hearts to love, but never try to grasp it.

For me, the most startling element of the story of Christ is that God would incarnate, emptying God of Deity. God chooses to demonstrate the nature of love by giving up control of love. Rather, Christ dies. This act of sacrifice asks nothing in return. Religion tries to capture this love in salvation formulas, creeds, or other forms of institutional control. But the act of love asks nothing, demands nothing, expects nothing. Christ’s love even defies Christianity’s attempt to contain it in its own religion. Christ’s love is only the openness of vulnerability. Love gives up its own love. Love opens its hands, neither clinging to others nor rejecting them. “Love always hopes.”

“It hurt to talk. Her jaw was still sore. Her back and neck ached. Her lip was swollen and her tongue kept poking the empty pocket of the lower incisor that Rasheed had knocked loose two days before. Before Mamee and Babee had died and her life turned upside down, Laila would never that a human body could withstand this much beating, this viciously, this regularly, and keep functioning.” (Laila)

Through all of the brutality of the novel, there is beauty. Mariam is “like a rock in a river enduring without complaint, her grace not sullied but shaped by the turbulance that washes over her.” There is “something deep in her core” that Rasheed and the Taliban cannot see—something hard like a block of limestone…“something that will be her undoing and Laila’s salvation.”

Despite the graphic violence, the novel ends with a sense of hope. But this hope is seasoned and wise. If Afghanistan (or any country) continues on a violent course, if the nations of the world see it as a political playground, then more violence will probably occur, more pain, more destruction and devastation. The situation is fragile. The hope, however, is living. It shines, like a thousand splendid suns in the radiance of the women who have endured the most suffering.

The novel closes with a sense from Laila about the fragile hope she has for the future and a poem by Hafiz:

Joseph shall return to Canaan, grieve not
Hovels shall turn to rose gardens, grieve not
If a flood should arrive to drown all that’s alive
Noah is your guide in the typhoon’s eye, grieve not

Next novel---A New Year's Eve event

2009-12-30T19:27:00.003-05:00

I will be posting my next novel review of A Thousand Splendid Suns on January 1st at 12:01 am. (This novel, I must say, is both brutal and beautiful. I hope you will have the opportunity to read it.)

Hope to see you here at midnight on the first!

I will probably be toasting the New Year with Tamie's wonderful family here in Winona Lake, Indiana.

Ben Bernanke

2009-12-22T12:47:00.006-05:00

I thought you all might appreciate reading about Ben Bernanke, Time's Person of the Year.

Here are a few snippets:

The overriding story of 2009 was the economy — the lousiness of it, and the fact that it wasn't far lousier. It was a year of escalating layoffs, bankruptcies and foreclosures, the "new frugality" and the "new normal." It was also a year of green shoots, a rebounding Dow and a fragile sense that the worst is over. Even the big political stories of 2009 — the struggles of the Democrats; the tea-party takeover of the Republicans; the stimulus; the deficit; GM and Chrysler; the backlash over bailouts and bonuses; the furious debates over health care, energy and financial regulation; the constant drumbeat of jobs, jobs, jobs — were, at heart, stories about the economy. And it's Bernanke's economy.....

In 2009, Bernanke hurled unprecedented amounts of money into the banking system in unprecedented ways, while starting to lay the groundwork for the Fed's eventual return to normality. He helped oversee the financial stress tests that finally calmed the markets, while launching a groundbreaking public relations campaign to demystify the Fed. Now that Obama has decided to keep him in his job, he has become a lightning rod in an intense national debate over the Fed as it approaches its second century.
But the main reason Ben Shalom Bernanke is TIME's Person of the Year for 2009 is that he is the most important player guiding the world's most important economy. His creative leadership helped ensure that 2009 was a period of weak recovery rather than catastrophic depression, and he still wields unrivaled power over our money, our jobs, our savings and our national future. The decisions he has made, and those he has yet to make, will shape the path of our prosperity, the direction of our politics and our relationship to the world.

The Depression Buff
Bernanke says his first spark of interest in the Great Depression came as a boy listening to his mother's parents on their porch in Charlotte, N.C., where his grandfather was a kosher butcher. Their family had survived pogroms in Lithuania, but the story that captivated Bernanke involved a town full of shoe factories that closed during the Depression, leaving the community so poor that its children went barefoot. "I kept asking, Why didn't they just open the factories and make the kids shoes?' " he recalls. He would devote his career to questions like that.
Bernanke calls the Depression "the holy grail of macroeconomics," the ultimate intellectual challenge. To understand geology, he says, study earthquakes; to understand the economy, study the Depression. "I don't know why there aren't more Depression buffs," he wrote in a book of essays about the period. "The Depression was an incredibly dramatic episode — an era of stock-market crashes, breadlines, bank runs and wild currency speculation, with the storm clouds of war gathering ominously in the background ... For my money, few periods are so replete with human interest."

The first thing any Depression scholar comes to understand is that nothing — not hyperinflation, megadeficits or irked Chinese creditors — is as bad as a full-on Depression....

Depression scholars — including Bernanke — tend to see the Hoover Administration's approach of balancing budgets and tightening belts during the downturn as a tragic mistake. They embrace the Keynesian view that aggressive government action backed by government money is needed to reverse death spirals by restoring confidence and reviving demand. Get people money, and they can buy shoes for their barefoot kids, so shoe factories can reopen and rehire, which gets more people money. "People saw the Depression as a necessary thing — a chance to squeeze out the excesses, get back to Puritan morality," Bernanke says. "That just made things worse." In contrast, the Roosevelt Administration's New Deal stimulus and try-everything attitude made real, albeit uneven, progress against the downturn.....

Bernanke quickly emerged as a staunch defender of the Greenspan Fed and its loose monetary policies. He suggested that raising interest rates to deflate the dotcom bubble before it popped would have been like using a sledgehammer to perform brain surgery. He delivered a call to arms against deflation, proposing ways the Fed could keep juicing the economy even if rates fell to zero. When he took over the Fed in 2006, after an uneventful eight-month White House stint leading Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, he said his top priority would be continuing Greenspan's policies. "Ben and I have never had a serious disagreement," Greenspan says.
In fact, Bernanke did make subtle changes, pushing for more transparency and clarity, speaking last instead of first at rate-setting meetings to avoid imposing his views. And while Greenspan had been laissez-faire about the Fed's oversight responsibilities, Bernanke pushed through long-overdue subprime-lending reforms in 2007. Still, Bernanke was as clueless as Greenspan about the coming storm. He dismissed warnings of a housing bubble. He insisted that economic fundamentals remained strong. In March 2007, he assured Congress that "the problems in the subprime market seem likely to be contained." The day before the global crisis erupted with a run on a French bank, the Fed was still saying its primary concern was inflation. "Bernanke had no idea what was going on," a foreign central banker tells TIME. "Once he got it, he really got it, and he acted swiftly and decisively. But wow! It took a while.".....

"We were the most aggressive central bank in the history of the world," says Fed governor and Bernanke confidant Kevin Warsh. The Fed used its magic money to shovel out more than $1.6 trillion worth of unconventional loans and is now buying over $1.7 trillion worth of unconventional assets....

In June, Bernanke was savaged on Capitol Hill for supposedly pressuring Bank of America to buy Merrill; by December, Bank of America was healthy enough to repay its $45 billion in TARP aid. In fact, all but one of the 19 financial behemoths subjected to stress tests have received decent bills of health, and taxpayers are on track to profit from TARP's wildly unpopular bank bailouts. Bernanke says major financial crises generally cost nations 5% to 20% of their national output. This panic seems likely to cost the U.S. a fraction of 1%. "How much would you pay to avoid a second Depression?" he asks. "I mean, this is a pretty good return on investment."

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1946375_1947251,00.html

Grace and health

2009-12-21T03:58:00.002-05:00

"Carl Rogers referred to the grace humans express to each other as unconditional positive regard. He claimed that it was the main factor in whether people are psychologically healthy or sick." --Radical Grace, J. Harold Ellens, p. xiii

The fires of industry

2009-12-19T03:52:00.000-05:00

"The old world will burn in the fires of industry, the forests will fall. A new order will rise. We will drive the machine of war with the sword and the spear...."
The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers (film, 2002)

Imagine

2009-12-17T01:40:00.001-05:00

"Don't play what's there. Play what's not there."
--Miles Davis

I was flipping through a new book a few days back called The Divine Commodity by Skye Jethani.

He talked about Walt Disney's vision for epcot to be a new kind of living community. When Walt died before bringing this vision into existence, the new Disney corporate heads decided to do something that pleased shareholders: just turn the whole damned epcot project into a theme park. It failed for lack of imagination. Jethani makes a parallel with today's church (in the U.S., presumably):

"Our deficiency is not motivation or money, but imagination. Our ability to live Christianly and be the church corporately has failed because we do not believe it is possible....Wanting to obey Christ but lacking imagination, we reinterpret the mission of the church through the only framework comprehendible to us--the one we've inherited from our consumer culture." p. 18

"Without imagination any solution we conceive will be rooted to the very system we must transcend." p. 19

Problems cannot be solved with the same consciousness that created them
--Einstein

I don't really recommend the book, because there wasn't too much that held my attention after Jethani made this initial point. Oddly, the rest of the book seemed to lack imagination......

What about you? How do you imagine church? What if you let your mind and heart go and just think up something crazy....I mean, something just fucking crazy!!! (Using the word "fuck" tends to stir the imagination, studies have shown.) This question is open to all, of course, the churched, the unchurched, the sincere and cynical, and everyone in between. What do you see when you let you think of "church" and just let your imagination go? What do you see?

Joel Salatin and the healing of the food industry

2009-12-15T01:26:00.000-05:00

A few clips from the recent Sojourners interview with Joel Salatin. Joel Salatin was featured in the 2009 documentary Food, Inc., which critically examined the mass production of food in the U.S.

What's the vision behind Polyface farm?
Healing--healing in all dimensions. we want to develop emotionally, environmentally, and economically enhancing agricultural prototypes throughout the world....We want to heal the land, soil, air, water, and, ultimately, the food system....

So there is a disconnect between humans and the earth??
For the first time in civilization, you can actually move into an area, plug your microwave and appliances into energy and not know where it comes from, get food from places and not know where it comes from, hook your pipe up to get water and not know where it comes from, put an outlet pipe in to take your sewage to places you don't know about, and in effect never have a sense of the ecological umbilical cord that connects you to everything that's most important.

How can we revolutionize the food industry?
Wendell Berry says that what's wrong with us creates more gross national product then what's right with us....
If you want to dream out of the box for a minute, here's an idea: If every American for a week refused to eat at a fast-food joint, it would bring concentrated animal feeding operations to their knees...
We have a sick, evil system, and a healing system, and the question is, which one are you going to feed?

What would you say to Christians who believe it is their biblical mandate to have dominion over the earth?
"You're wrong." (laughing) The scriptures are full of admonitions about creation. God knows when every sparrow falls. The Pentateuch is filled with references. Further, in 1 Corinthians 10:31, Paul says that whatsoever you eat or drink, whatsoever you do, do it all for the glory of God...He [Paul] took the most mundane, necessary things in life--eating and drinking--as his examples of how much God desires to penetrate into our lives...to the believer, all life must be sacred.

You can hear extended audio here:
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj0912&article=audio-interview-with-joel-salatin

January 2010 novel of the month

2009-12-12T18:30:00.001-05:00

Well, I hope you are all enjoying your read of Gilead. Make sure you drop by with comments and your thoughts on the novel.

We will start the new year with an important contemporary novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns. President Obama is following through on his campaign promise to focus his attention on Afghanistan. As such, he is sending more troops. Khaled Hosseini, the author of A Thousand Splendid Suns, is an Afghan, and his novel focuses on the plight of two Afghan women. The novel is of deep importance for our current times in that Hosseini tells the heroic story of Afghan women set against the historic background of Afghanistan.

Through the novel, we get a look into the nation of Afghanistan through the eyes of two oppressed women. This is "a dense, rich, pressure-packed guide to enduring the unendurable." (Lev Grossman of Time) It is a difficult read, at times, as we feel the sense of helplessness and despair, mixed with indignation. It's tough in spots, but this novel is an important experience for our times.

The title, A Thousand Splendid Suns is taken from the poem "Kabul" by 17th-century Persian poet Saib-e-Tabrizi. Here is a selection from the English translation by Josephine Davis:

Every street of Kabul is enthralling to the eye
Through the bazaars, caravans of Egypt pass
One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs
And the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls

Our novel of the month is an exploration behind the walls, to the women, those "splendid suns" who shine.

Conservapedia

2009-12-05T01:14:00.003-05:00

There has been a bit of a buzz about the new Conservapedia Bible Project. This is an attempt at a new Bible translation, a translation with a bold purpose, to boldly go where no man (gender exclusive language is preferred at Conservapedia) has ever gone before: to eliminate the "liberal bias" in the modern Bible.

Here is an outline and summary of the project, taken from the website:

Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations. There are three sources of errors in conveying biblical meaning are, in increasing amount:
lack of precision in the original language, such as terms underdeveloped to convey new concepts introduced by Christ,
lack of precision in modern language,
translation bias in converting the original language to the modern one.
Experts in ancient languages are helpful in reducing the first type of error above, which is a vanishing source of error as scholarship advances understanding. English language linguists are helpful in reducing the second type of error, which also decreases due to an increasing vocabulary. But the third -- and largest -- source of translation error requires conservative principles to reduce and eliminate. (accessed on 12/4/09; bold type not added, per website)

The first thing I notice is that the attempt here is to eliminate "liberal bias" and thereby eliminate "distortion" of the Bible. This "liberal bias" is "the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations." Such bias is one of three "errors in conveying biblical meaning."

Presumably the Conservapedia project has the honorable goal of eliminating distortions in translation to get at "biblical meaning." It is also presupposed that the "conservative" perspective will get us closer to "biblical meaning" than would a "liberal" perspective.

The first question, of course, is how do we define "conservative" and "liberal." There is much nuance in these political views. But even beyond this, why must we choose between these two perspectives? Are there not other political perspectives that do not fit neatly into such categories? Simply debating the terminology of these two terms is enough to make one realize that the Conservapedia project is based on a very tenuous foundation. But even if one were able to establish the definitions of "conservative" and "liberal," I think it remains difficult to establish that a "liberal" bias distorts the original meaning of the text, while (by implication) a "conservative" perspective unlocks the keys to the kingdom, so to speak, and gives one access to the original meaning of the text.

But let us set aside these methodological flaws, because I believe that there are far more interesting and important issues. There is an underlying assumption made by Conservapedia that I think many modern folk have: the idea that we can get at some "original meaning" of the Bible if we can only eliminate our modern biases. My position is that such an attempt is absurd.

When interpreting the Bible (or any text), one always has a certain "perspective" or "bias" that we bring. That is, one of the most fundamental things that makes us human is that we are "historical." How we think, how we take in the world, and the opinions and perceptions we have are all influences by our position within history: our social situation, economic situation, geographical situation, the traditions that we inherit, the philosophies that shape us, the stories that we are told, etc. For example, we take it for granted that the earth goes around the sun. When we look into the sky, we see the earth going around the sun. For the pre-Copernican peoples, the sun went around the earth. When they looked up at the sun, they believed that the sun was literally moving around the earth. This then is a matter of perspective.

Because we are historical, we are biased. And this is not necessarily a negative thing. The 20th century philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer points out that our historicity makes any thought or discernment possible. And he is surely correct on this.

For Gadamer (and many others), there is no neutral ground, no unbiased perspective. That's okay. We are historically conditioned. No problem. We just approach interpretation with humility. But this is precisely the point that the Conservapedia folks seem to miss. They are looking to unlock the biblical meaning via a conservative perspective.

But....then again.....most people when they approach the Bible are trying, naively, to unlock the original meaning. That is, we so often assume that we can shed our historicity and somehow unlock this original meaning. Once we do so, we lament that so many other unfortunate fools remain trapped in their historicity, unable to see what we have seen with our undistorted vision.

Gadamer (and many others) suggest that we stop being so naive. Accept the fact that we are never going to have an "undistorted text." Gadamer goes so far as to suggest that every interpretation is a new work. Every translation is a new work. If we viewed the Bible this way, this would give us a bit of humility when we put forward our own interpretations of the Bible. It would also, perhaps, allow us to be more open to the perspectives of others. Perhaps we could recognize that each interpretation tells us as much about ourselves as it does about the text.

Now, one objection to this goes as follows: Why not just give up and say, "well, anything goes!"? Why not just let all interpretations have equal validity? It's all relative, so why even care? Why even interpret at all?

This is a good objection. But in reality, this conclusion does not logically follow. Quite the contrary, the fact that when we interpret we learn as much about ourselves as we do the text seems to make the task of interpretation more interesting and engaging. It also makes interpreting the Bible a community activity. As such, interpretation done in groups can help us grow in a more dynamic way. The interpretive task can be taken up in a serious way. The text should be respected, but equally so, we should respect each other. Gadamer calls this a dialogical approach.

The Conservapedia folks are in the unfortunate position of recognizing the bias of others, but not their own. This is something of a hermeneutical hypocrisy, but it is something that many of us are guilty of as we approach the biblical text. Had the Conservapedia gang recognized that the "conservative" perspective (whatever that it) is as equally biased as the "liberals," then there would be consistency. As it is, their attempt seems contrived and quite random to me. It appears presumptuous to suggest that a so-called "liberal bias" would result in distortions. But it is even more naive to assume that we can ever completely get at the original meaning of the text. Yet this naivety is something that most Biblical interpreters seem to be guilty of. The folks at the Conservapedia Bible Project have done us the favor of presenting an exaggerated example of the mistaken mindset that many of us take when we approach the Bible, or any other text.

We cannot eliminate our modern biases, and we cannot ever completely get at the original meaning. But that's okay. It's what makes us human.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

2009-12-01T14:59:00.006-05:00

I love this town. I think sometimes of going into the ground here as a last wild gesture of love.”

[To read introduction notes about the novel, click here]

Gilead tells the story of ordinary people in a very ordinary Iowa town. John Ames is an old pastor writing to his very young son. He wants to leave a memoir, to tell his story, to trace his history. “Every life is built on the ruins of prior civilizations.” (p. 197)

There is very little that is sexy about the life of John Ames, his beloved little town of Gilead, Iowa, or the life he lived and the stories he shard. Gilead at points is sluggish and the stories lack gusto or any intense drama. Yet within it all, the novel captures the intersection of American politics, religion, and the relationships between fathers and sons in a profound way. Indeed, in a way that makes us realize that life, no matter how ordinary, is too deep for us; its sacredness is beyond the reach of our courage. The more I reflect on Gilead, the greater my sense of depth about the holiness of all of our very ordinary experiences. In fact, what is ordinary is always extraordinary. It is permeated with the sacred.

John Ames was born in 1880. He is now 76 years old and has resided in the little town of Gilead, Iowa his entire life. He married a much younger woman and now has a young son. But John Ames knows that he is dying, and so he writes to tell his son about the stories of his father and his grandfather, pass on the wisdom of the years, and open his heart in reflection. John Ames’s grandfather was a wild abolitionist, and the town of Gilead was founded (in part) as a stop for runaway slaves. His grandfather was a preacher. He was an uncompromising individual who gave to everyone in need and stole from his parishioners when he was in need. He saw visions and dreamed dreams. He was intense and a bit crazy. John Ames’s father was not impressed. He also became a minister, but he was a pacifist.

John Ames also becomes a minister. He married when he was young, but his wife dies without leaving any children. Through this his heart is deeply wounded. He becomes something of a recluse, burying himself in his books and his texts. He studies, he contemplates, he reflects. But he is deeply lonely. Years go by. He becomes wise, but he feels a deep disconnect from the world: “No matter how much I thought and read and prayed, I felt outside the mystery of it.” (21)

“You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. (7)

“I have been so full of admiration for existence that I have hardly been able to enjoy it properly.” (56)

The Prodigal Son

His close friend Boughton has a beautiful family, and in an act of love and affection Boughton names his youngest son after John Ames: John Ames Boughton. And, in a spiritual sense, he gives the child to John Ames. At the blessing, Ames was going bless the child, Boughton surprises Ames by only then revealing that the child was to be John Ames’s namesake.

“But then when I asked Boughton, ‘By what name do you wish this child to be called?’ he said, ‘John Ames.’ I was so surprised that he said the name again, with the tears running down his face.

“It simply was not at all like Boughton to put me in a position like that. It was so un-Presbyterian, in the first place. I could hear weeping out in the pews. It took me a while to forgive him for that. I’m just telling you the truth.

“If I had had even an hour to reflect, I believe my feelings would have been quite different. As it was, my heart froze in me and I thought, This is not my child—which I truly had never thought of any child before. I don’t know exactly what covetise is, but in my experience it is not so much desiring someone else’s virtue of happiness as rejecting it, taking offense at the beauty of it….

“I’ll tell you a perfectly foolish thing. I have thought from time to time that the child felt how coldly I went about his christening, how far my thoughts were from blessing him. Now, that’s just magical thinking. That is superstition. I’m ashamed to have said such a thing. But I’m trying to be honest. And I do feel a burden of guilt toward that child, that man, my namesake. I have never been able to warm to him, never.” (188)

In this novel of fathers and sons, the primary focus is on John Ames and this namesake of his, whom everyone calls “Jack.” Jack lives a troubled life and returns to see the old Boughton who is sick and dying. Much of what John Ames writes is grappling with this prodigal son, Jack. In this case, however, John Ames must confront the fact that he has never been able to open to the prodigal, even though Ames is “the father of his soul.” (123)

Old Boughton, the biological father and the one who raises the prodigal, loves Jack more than all of his other children.

“And old Boughton, if he could stand up out of his chair, out of his decrepitude and crankiness and sorrow and limitation, would abandon all those handsome children of his, mild and confident as they are, and follow after that one son whom he has never known, whom he has favored as one does a wound….he would utterly pardon every transgression, past, present, and to come, whether or not it was a transgression in fact or his to pardon. He would be that extravagant.” (238)

But what Jack needs is not the love of his biological father. What he needs is the open heart and soul of John Ames. This creates the scenario where the father (Boughton) cannot be the father. Old Boughton has extravagant love for Jack, but Jack needs extravagant love from John Ames. This is a love he never receives, and he spends his life acting out his sense of lovelessness, never able to establish love in any other area of his life.

To me this raises an important theological and spiritual question: Is God the father who cannot be a father? Is God, like old Boughton, the father who wishes to bless but cannot? God, the giver of all love, extends love unconditionally, like old Boughton. “Augustine says the Lord loves each of us as an only child, and that has to be true.” (246) But the love we search for is first and foremost from our earthly fathers and mothers. God, like old Boughton, gives children to fathers and mothers, their own namesakes. As such, the open hearts we most need are those to whose care we have been entrusted.

In this sense, the sons and daughters of humankind all live as prodigals. We need the blessing of the fathers and mothers of our soul. But the fathers and mothers of our souls are broken. John Ames coveted the sons of Boughton. This covetousness was resentment, as Ames says: “it is not so much desiring someone else’s virtue of happiness as rejecting it, taking offense at the beauty of it…” As such, even when presented with the gift of a son, Ames could only reject the son. The son was an offense. The beauty of the gift was offensive. It was too much.

But Ames had his own difficult dynamic to work out. He was the good son, not the prodigal.

“As I have told you, I myself was the good son, so to speak, the one who never left his father’s house—even when his father did, a fact which surely puts my credentials beyond all challenge. I am one of those righteous for whom the rejoicing in heaven will be comparatively restrained. That’s all right.” (238)

In the story of the prodigal son, the good son feels outside of the father’s love. He sees the good things lavished on the prodigal and he desires this extravagant expression of love.

Love, concludes Ames, has no proportion. It cannot be controlled or attained. It may be given to those who do not desire or need it, or it may be withheld from those who crave it the most.

“There is no justice in love, no proportion in it, and there need not be, because in any specific instance it is only a glimpse or parable of an embracing, incomprehensible reality. It makes no sense at all because it is the eternal breaking in on the temporal. So how could it subordinate itself to cause or consequence?” (238)

“Love is holy because it is like grace—the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.” (209)

Sacred beauty

“There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzlingly apparent, and they occur together. One is when we feel our mortal insufficiency to the world, and the other is when we feel the world’s insufficiency to us.” (245)

Many of John Ames’s observations are reflections on the sacred beauty of ordinary life. There is no more ordinary place than Gilead, Iowa. But this only enhances its depth. “To me it seems rather Christlike to be as unadorned as this place is, as little regarded.”

“You never do know the actual nature even of your own experience. Or perhaps it has no fixed and certain nature.” (95) Life for John Ames amounts to an acknowledgement of the inherent sacredness of all things. His father eventually leaves Gilead, but John loves the beauty he finds in the ordinary. Or perhaps it is partly cowardice that keeps him in Gilead. Perhaps there is something of both, but there is certainly deep love.

True religiosity and spirituality is found in the normal. In the silence of an old, unadorned chapel, for example.

“When this old sanctuary is full of silence and prayer, every book Karl Barth ever will write would not be a feather in the scales against it from the point of view of profundity, and I would not believe in Barth’s own authenticity if I did not also believe he would know and recognize the truth of that, and honor it, too.” (173)

“We participate in Being without remainder.” (178)

Even our transience and human mortality is a part of this sacred world: “our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence.” (57) This comes clearly to fore in a deeply profound way when John Ames decides he is going to burn his sermons. Every sermon he delivered was written out in full. He spent the better part of his life and energy studying and meditating in order to write out each sermon. This was an act of prayer and devotion for him. And yet he decides, as his life is nearing its end that he wants the sermons burned. In a beautiful line of simple spiritual insight he says, “They mattered or they didn’t and that’s the end of it.” (245)

Blessings

“Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave—that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm. And, therefore, this courage allows us, as the old men said, to make ourselves useful. It allows us to be generous, which is another way of saying exactly the same thing. But that is the pulpit speaking. What have I to leave you but the ruins of old courage?” (246)

This comes as John Ames closes his reflections. It takes courage to acknowledge that there is more beauty that our eyes can bear. It also takes courage to recognize that “precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm.” This is the point at which the two themes come together. This is where our openness to sacred beauty and the relationship of fathers and sons intersects. Life is a precious thing put into our hands. Sons are a precious thing put into the hands of fathers. Fathers, perhaps also, are precious things put into the hands of sons. To do nothing to honor that which is sacred is to do great harm.

But there is too much that is sacred. It is too great for us. And this is the root of much of the harm in our world: it is too sacred for us. Even the sacred beauty of the most ordinary families in the most ordinary towns is a sacred beauty too great for humanity to grasp. It requires courage. Our courage fails, and the world becomes a broken place. Generations come, generations go.

At the beginning of his memoir, John Ames says, “There is a reality in blessing, which I take baptism to be, primarily. It doesn’t enhance sacredness, but it acknowledges it, and there is power in that.” (23) There is power in blessings because they acknowledge the sacred. And yet when the time came to bless his spiritual son Jack, John Ames lacked the courage. He was caught in his “covetise,” as he puts it. He rejected what he had coveted. But as grace would have it, John Ames gets a second chance. Near the end of the novel he relays this experience:

This morning I saw Jack Boughton walking up toward the bus stop, looking too thin for his clothes, carrying a suitcase that seemed to weigh almost nothing. Looking a good deal past his youth. Looking like someone you wouldn’t want your daughter to marry. Looking somehow elegant and brave.

I called to him and he stopped and waited for me, and I walked with him to the bus stop….

Then he stopped and looked at me and said, “You know, I’m doing the worst possible thing again. Leaving now. Glory will never forgive me. She says, ‘This is it. This is your masterpiece.’ He was smiling, but there was actual fear in his eyes, a kind of amazement, and there might well have been. It was truly a dreadful thing he was doing, leaving his father to die without him. It was the kind of thing only his father would forgive him for…..

“I understand why you have to leave, I really do.” That was as true a thing as I have ever said….

He cleared his throat. “Then you wouldn’t mind saying goodbye to my father for me?”
“I will do that. Certainly I will.”…..

Then I said, “The thing I would like, actually, is to bless you.”
He shrugged. “What would that involve?”
“Well, as I envisage it, it would involve my placing my hand on your brow and asking the protection of God for you. But if it would be embarrassing—” There were a few people on the street.
“No, no,” he said. “That doesn’t matter.” And he took his hat off and set it on his knee and closed his eyes and lowered his head, almost rested it against my hand, and I did bless him to the limit of my powers, whatever they are, repeating the benediction from Numbers, of course—“The Lord make His face to shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee: The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.” Nothing could be more beautiful than that, or more expressive of my feelings, certainly, or more sufficient, for that matter. Then, when he didn’t open his eyes or lift up his head, I said, “Lord, bless John Ames Boughton, this beloved son and brother and husband and father.” Then he sat back and looked at me as if he were waking out of a dream.
“Thank you, Reverend,” he said, and his tone made me think that to him it might have seemed I had named everything I thought he no longer was, when that was absolutely the furthest thing from my meaning, the exact opposite of my meaning. Well, anyway, I told him it was an honor to bless him. And that was also absolutely true. In fact I’d have gone through seminary and ordination and all the years intervening for that one moment. He just studied me, in that way he has. Then the bus came. I said, “We all love you, you know,” and he laughed and said, “You’re all saints.” He stopped in the door and lifted his hat, and then he was gone, God bless him.

Einstein's God

2009-11-28T13:41:00.005-05:00

I have been reading through the Walter Isaacson biography of Albert Einstein. I am about halfway through, and I have enjoyed the read. It has helped me familiarize myself a bit better with the scientific transition from a Newtonian universe to an Einsteinian (if we can call it that) universe. For those interested in Einstein or the scientific advances of his time, I highly recommend this biography.

I thought you might appreciate a few of Einstein's thoughts on God and religion.

"Science without religion is lame.
Religion without science is blind."

"At the heart of this realism was an almost religious, or perhaps childlike, awe at the way all of our sense perceptions--the random sights and sounds that we experience every minute--fit into patterns, follow rules, and make sense.....'The very fact that the totality of our sense experiences is such that, by means of thinking, it can be put in order, this fact is one that leaves us in awe,' he wrote."

Even though Einstein helped lead the way in quantum theory, he balked at the results of a chaotic universe. Einstein was ever and always a determinist, believing that the universe behaved according to a pattern that was set. He differed with many of his fellow religious Jews who tended to believe in free will. Einstein's determinism also put him at odds with his colleague and friend Niels Bohr; together they engaged many lively discussions on the topic of the random nature of quantum theory versus the determinism and predictability that was Einstein's dogma. In this context, Einstein would say, "God does not play dice." Bohr would respond in frustration: "Einstein, stop telling God what to do!"

Evangelistic

2009-11-23T14:22:00.007-05:00

Galatians 1:8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed!

1:9 As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed!

1:11 For I want you to know, brothers and sisters,that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin;

1:15-16 But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being,

1:23 they only heard it said, "The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy." (NRSV)

"What is the gospel? The Greek euangelion has come into English by way of Latin and French as evangel (cf. German Evangelium, French evangile). The more common gospel derives from the Old English godspel "good talk," and--like the popular phrase good news--is based on the etymology of the Greek word....

"The gospel of Christ is accordingly an abbreviation that points to the content of the gospel, which has already been alluded to in Paul's additions to the opening (vv. 1b, 4). Thus the gospel, which in his [Paul's] view is perverted by the troublemakers in Galatia, is the proclamation that God has created salvation in the event of Jesus' death and resurrection....For Paul this understanding has consequences in regard to the law and circumcision, which he will then discuss in the following chapters....The foundation of his [Paul's] argumentation is primarily the content of the gospel, the Christology. Subordinated to it are the Scriptures (for him, only the Old Testament) and the history of the gospel in Paul's own history from his conversion before Damascus to his activity in Galatia." (Dieter Lührmann, p. 12-13, Galatians 1992)

Given enough time and energy, I hope to blog a bit through the book of Galatians....we shall see....in any event, something strikes my fancy as I read through these opening verses in Galatians. Paul is an evangelist. The Greek words that we translate as "gospel" and "proclaim" (or "preach") are very similar, euangelion and euangelizo, respectively. Why this is interesting is the link between proclamation and content, the relation between the way in which one is proclaiming the gospel and the gospel that is being proclaimed....and....of course.....that makes me think of my own prior background as an evangelical in the U.S.

From my experience in evangelical circles there has been a very rapid decline in enthusiasm for evangelism. I think that this creates a bit of an evangelical crisis. Evangelism, as it has been defined in the last fifty years or so, basically reduces to proselytizing: convince others that Christianity (or "a relationship with Jesus/God" as the contemporary language goes) is the religion of choice. As I said, from my experience, the younger set is kind of losing its steam for this kind of approach. So, most people really don't engage in proselytizing, at least not in a direct person-to-person mode.

To address this crisis of evangelism, the evangelism of choice these days is marketing manipulation. (Yes, I am negatively predisposed!) Contemporary evangelism has taken the form of media to the masses. Evangelical film, literature, and staged church performances attempt to persuade the nonbeliever of his or her need to become a believer. This seems more subtle to today's evangelical--rather than "preach" to people and put them off with a direct confrontation (as they did in the good 'ole days), the contemporary evangelical prefers the subtle, nonthreatening methods of modern media. In my opinion, however, it is simply a manipulation tool like all other manipulation tools in today's media age. This is evangelicalism in the digital age, evangelism as advertising, manipulation, and marketing.

My observation at this point is that we need to evaluate the link between the gospel message (euangelion) and the "proclamation" (euangelizo). Simply put, the reason that so many evangelicals cringe at the thought of direct evangelism is that the message itself is so threatening, uncomfortable, and just plain awkward. Things can get a bit uncomfortable when you mention to people, "Uh, there's this place called hell that you are going to....."

The received gospel that most evangelicals inherited is this: Everyone is going to hell because each individual (no matter who they are or what they have done) is a sinner, thankfully Jesus died for your sins and rose again, you need to now confess you are a sinner and have faith in Jesus so that you are no longer a hell-bound sinner. In most evangelistic presentations (and this is a crucial point), the emphasis is on the gap between God and human beings. Each individual is responsible for "repenting," "having faith," feeling really really guilty and bad, or responding in some way ("having faith," perhaps?) that will close this gap. Some gospel tracts illustrate this by showing a cross that bridges the gap. Your job is to walk across this cross that bridges the great divide.

Most "biblical evidence" for this received gospel is based on cutting and pasting verses together from various parts of the Bible. This is no accident, because the above gospel is simply not the gospel that Paul teaches. (It is Paul, incidentally, who develops the most thorough New Testament theology of the gospel.) There are verses that one can find to support this gospel, but then again, one can mix and match verses to come to most any conclusion.

Paul's actual gospel spends scant little time (if any) expounding on hell or the sinfulness of individuals. It's there, no doubt, in the classic texts like Romans 1 and Ephesians 2. But the point of such discussions, as I read them, is not to condemn people as much as it is to contrast two approaches to life: one view of life where one is consumed with themselves and ultimately destroyed by their own ego-obsessions, the other view of life is a life lived by faith, walking with the spirit in love (agape) and self-less-ness. It's not really about saving your own self from hell. Actually, this sort of spiritual narcissism ("how can I keep myself from burning in the next life?") is one of the problems.

Paul's gospel is much more progressive. Radically progressive, actually. It is about a "new creation" (2 Corinthians 5:17). It is about "reconciling all things" (Colossians 1:20). Furthermore, contrary to popular evangelistic efforts, the goal is not to elicit a spiritual experience of rebirth. Rather, the goal is to simply recognize that the fact that any person can join the happy band of the redeemed. For Paul, whatever happened on the cross took care of the gulf between God and man. So, living as a part of this merry band of new creationists is to simply recognize that you are already on the other side. The reconciliation has already taken place. There is nothing that a person needs to "do" to cross the bridge. That's been taken care of, which is why Paul spends most of his time talking about what it means to live out this new life, rather than talking about what we have to do to "get in" and "be saved."

So, maybe the reason why so many are losing interest in evangelism is because they never really had a very good gospel. And perhaps I can even be a bit more radical here: perhaps evangelism isn't about proselytizing. Perhaps it isn't about winning converts or "getting people saved." Maybe the great proclamation is simply to announce that there is no gulf between God and humanity, that God's focus for the world is reconciliation and peace, that personal and global transformation start with a gift of grace that is available to all, and that we need as many people as possible to get on board with this positive mission of reconciliation.

It's no wonder evangelism is petering out, or being relegated, impersonally, to mass media proselytizing. It's a dour, powerless gospel. Remember how Paul begins his letter to the Romans? "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for the deliverance (soterian) of all who believe." This is a racial inclusivity, not an exclusive who's-in-and-who's-out approach. In Paul's letter to the Galatians power and transformation are also the focus. The life of the spirit produces the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Perhaps evangelistic zeal could be rekindled if a gospel was proclaimed that was a bit more in line with the radical vision of Paul. What is the radical vision? Simply that there is nothing to do, nothing to do to cross a bridge or any such nonesense. Grace is the ultimate do-nothing, which paradoxically transforms. There is nothing to do except to believe in a new creation and live by this faith. This gospel must be beyond formulas, beyond definition, and even beyond words. This is so because the gospel is about grace, which is ineffable.

So, as I read the first verses of Galatians and as I reflect on the state of evangelism today, the pivotal question that arises, the absolutely crucial question for a Christian, is this: have we got the right Gospel?

Stars

2009-11-22T03:14:00.002-05:00

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television. -Paul Hawken

Life

2009-11-16T01:10:00.000-05:00

"The most fatal thing of all is to satisfy a want which is not yet felt, so that without waiting till the want is present, one anticipates it, likely also uses stimulants to bring about something which is supposed to be a want, and then satisfies it. And this is shocking! And yet this is what they do in the religious sphere, whereby they really are cheating men out of what constitutes the significance of life, and helping people to waste life."
Soren Kierkegaard
The Attack Upon "Christendom"

This is an interesting commentary. My first instinct was to think of our hyper consumeristic society, a culture where advertising and marketing anticipates and generates our desires for corporate goods and services. But it is intriguing that Kierkegaard applies this idea to "the religious sphere."

As an existentialist, Kierkegaard believes in wrestling through our own inner worlds. Faith is a personal journey, not something that can be scripted by the church. Too often religion cheats us out of the significance of faith by averting us away from the struggle. This reminds me of what King David said: I will not sacrifice to my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.

The idea of sacrificing for anything is an obsolete notion in the U.S. Here we have our lives and faith scripted out. Marketing and advertising lines it all up for us: a meaningful life = these goods and services. Just sign the dotted line. Work a job that doesn't inspire you, or even one that you hate. Sign the dotted line. Take out as much credit as you can.

The system is artificial, though. And when it collapses, perhaps then we can struggle again. Then we can have a meaningful faith, something we have to really struggle for.

Gilead: Introduction

2009-11-09T01:52:00.002-05:00

The next novel in my Human Narrative Project is Gilead by Marilynn Robinson. Gilead is a significant novel. After writing her first novel in 1980, the very successful Housekeeping, Marilynn Robinson did not publish her second novel until 2004. It was met with resounding critical success, winning the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Twenty-four years after her first novel,Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson returns with an intimate tale of three generations from the Civil War to the twentieth century: a story about fathers and sons and the spiritual battles that still rage at America's heart. Writing in the tradition of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, Marilynne Robinson's beautiful, spare, and spiritual prose allows "even the faithless reader to feel the possibility of transcendent order" (Slate). In the luminous and unforgettable voice of Congregationalist minister John Ames, Gilead reveals the human condition and the often unbearable beauty of an ordinary life. From the Publisher's website

The novel is a deeply spiritual work, written from the perspective of a minister, John Ames, who has descended from a family of clergyman. It is Ames's letter to his young son, written in from the fullness of his heart and mind; Ames is suffering from a terminal disease. He reflects on the depth of his spirituality and theology, interacting with scriptures and theologians. Yet despite the overt religious musings, Gilead has won the respect of the critical world, both secular and sacred. Somehow, the honest and personal way in which John Ames reflects on his life and occupation is disarming to both the skeptic and to the religious fundamentalist. The novel is also of historical and sociological interest, examining the ways in which religion and faith have effected the formation of American society and the individuals who have historically shared very deep spiritual convictions and dogmas.

"At a moment in cultural history dominated by the shallow, the superficial, the quick fix, Marilynne Robinson is a miraculous anomaly: a writer who thoughtfully, carefully, and tenaciously explores some of the deepest questions confronting the human species. . . . Poignant, absorbing, lyrical...Robinson manages to convey the miracle of existence itself."--Merle Rubin, Los Angeles Times Book Review

''Gilead'' is much concerned with fathers and sons, and with God the father and his son. The book's narrator returns again and again to the parable of the prodigal son -- the son who returned to his father and was forgiven, but did not deserve forgiveness. Ames's life has lately been irradiated by his unexpected marriage and by the gift of his little son, and he consoles himself that although he won't see him grow up, he will be reunited with him in heaven: ''I imagine your child self finding me in heaven and jumping into my arms, and there is a great joy in the thought.''

Gradually, Robinson's novel teaches us how to read it, suggests how we might slow down to walk at its own processional pace, and how we might learn to coddle its many fine details. Nowadays, when so many writers are acclaimed as great stylists, it's hard to make anyone notice when you praise a writer's prose. There is, however, something remarkable about the writing in ''Gilead.'' It's not just a matter of writing well, although Robinson demonstrates that talent on every page: the description of the one-eyed grandfather, who ''could make me feel as though he had poked me with a stick, just by looking at me,'' or one of a cat held by Ames's little son, eager to escape, its ears flattened back and its tail twitching and its eyes ''patiently furious.'' It isn't just the care with which Robinson can relax the style to a Midwestern colloquialism: ''But one afternoon a storm came up and a gust of wind hit the henhouse and lifted the roof right off, and hens came flying out, sucked after it, I suppose, and also just acting like hens.'' (How deceptively easy that little coda is -- ''and also just acting like hens'' -- but how much it conveys.)

Robinson's words have a spiritual force that's very rare in contemporary fiction -- what Ames means when he refers to ''grace as a sort of ecstatic fire that takes things down to essentials.'' From the excellent review in the New York Times, Acts of Devotion, by James Woods

I plan on having my review posted on December 1.

Enjoy the read!

[The review is now posted: Gilead]