I note this week a fella at the fundamentalist church I used to attend who'd say, every year, at this time, "Santa re-arranged spells Satan." He was one of 'the reason for the season' men.
He's not alone. An AP article by Tom Breen draws attention to folks like Pastor John Foster in Charleston, West Virginia, who says, "People don't think of it this way, but it's really a secular holiday," and Clyde Kilough, President of the United Church of God, who opines "The theological question is quite simple: Is it acceptable to God for humans to choose to worship him by adopting paganism's most popular celebration and calling them Christian?" Breen adds, "In colonial New England, this disapproval extended to actually making the holiday illegal, with celebration punishable by a fine."
How does one go from chuckling at the man, with a belly like jelly, to Satan? Now, if some different fundamentally-minded folk had their way, Christmas wouldn't be illegal, or ascribed to the devil, rather, it'd be illegal not to "recognize the importance of Christmas and the Christmas faith," 'as a House resolution recently recognized - though not without dissenters, as the Family Research Council (FRC) pointed out (Democrats, by name; one lonely Republican, identity withheld).
I'm confused - are we damned if we do, and damned if we don't? I made it a point never to attend office Christmas parties after a Director lectured it was good for business to attend. Could even I be a closet reason-for-the-season man?
Maybe I can't make sense of it because what I'm hearing and reading appears to omit certain things that my brain instinctively attempts to make whole. An editorialist on the local rag, for one, recently gushed with admiration for Jim Dobson, the founder of the above-cited FRC, who "will always be the man who taught me to parent." Fair enough if that works for her. However, when she writes, "This was a man, I realized, who took his faith seriously, whose care for the smaller, weaker members of society was evident," my cerebral cortex cries foul.
This is the point where my mind insists on filling a hole, patching a leak, mortaring the cracks - is the special care reserved for 'smaller, weaker members of society,' only if they're children of families deemed legitimate, natural, or, 'traditional,' in FRC-talk? What if what's protected, exclusively, then, has intended or unintended consequences which creates discrimination or persecution by default for 'smaller, weaker members of society' who don't fit within the restricted, glorified, mold; which is indirectly acknowledged, but lightly dismissed, with, "Sometimes it takes a little noise on the battlefield to get the job done." Noise? Battlefield? Parenting is war? Battlefields produce casualties. Who are they? What's the allowable range and extent of their wounds?
Injuries aren't always overt. I was initially attracted to an editorial by M.J. Andersen entitled "Elder Care >> The Benefits of Staying Home," about "a new program called Choices for Care allowing government dollars to pay for home care rather than nursing homes," since I'm likely on that road myself sooner than I'd like to think, when, like the burst of a shell on another battlefield, Andersen writes, "Gay elderly people who have felt themselves shunned in traditional nursing homes - and sometimes packed off to live with the severely disabled - are finding more adult facilities specifically geared toward them." Elderly gay folk categorized, segregated, severely disabled? Classifications of this sort sound depressingly familiar. Where is such everyday evil instilled, perpetuated, generation after generation? Parenting class?
Whether theologically correct, or not; Christian or non, Christmas holds a power that exceeds, even suspends, logic. A letter to the editor, a week ago, tapped into it. Carolyn R. Jones-Kelly, an inmate at the Rappahannock Regional Jail, writes about "some pretty heartless crimes I'd committed. I've talked bad about good people, stolen their property, and just generally violated every honor code imaginable." She continues, "Now that my trials are over, I'd like to publically apologize. I've accepted my guilt and have worked my way into understanding just how much hurt I've caused people, some I don't know and others I care very much about." Through the recognition of her 'heartlessness,' and acknowledgement of consequences, to those known and unknown, she elegantly patches the holes in the logic leaking from the Dobson portrayal; plus aren't we inclined, to grant Carolyn the benefit of the doubt, and accept her apology, more at Christmas time, as opposed to say, on July 4th?
There's a tradition in the family I married into where holidays and birthdays are celebrated together regardless of the distance required to overcome the absence. On the three and a half hour drive home from the Shenandoah Valley, after eating dinner at the sister-in-law's, I spotted a rusting, decrepit tin trailer off the side of the road, festooned with Christmas lights, hung from every conceivable angle, not to mention the plastic blow-up Santa's in the yard. No matter their theology, this was a house that hadn't given up hope.
The Roman orator Tacitus is famous for saying, "They make a desert and they call it peace." There are those that'd make a desert out of Christmas by likening Santa to Satan, or passing laws that enforce their own reason for the season, so that others of not like mind are shunned and abandoned to a lonely solitude.
The power of Christmas, whether religious or secular, stands in their way, like an unexpected plea for mercy from a prisoner, or an amazing ramshackle trailer, in the middle of nowhere, that illuminates the dark, as did a Star, one December night, two thousand years ago.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Friday, December 21, 2007
A Question of Loyalty
I note this week, as last time, another incident in the office (perhaps this reflectational fixation has something to do with the impending new year being my last before retirement) when, twenty years ago, a senior executive, even for senior executives, floated a notably bad idea. When it inevitably drifted towards and hit the fan, he, along with other species of the breed like him, ducked for cover. When missiles of consequence were targeted in my direction, a lowly drone, four levels below the instigator on the organizational chart, I reviewed, with my boss, the merits of falling upon a metaphorical sword for the sake of the company. In that instance, I argued the firm had not instilled such a willingness in its employees by acting repeatedly to place its staff in such a dishonorable predicament.
Over the years, I've entertained repeated discussions with colleagues over the question of whether one should 'respect the position,' regardless of the occupant. I find I can not separate the two. It would seem, over the last half of the American 20th century, I'm not alone. For liberals, Viet Nam and Watergate were but the most recent confirmational turning points in establishing a mistrust of persons in authority. There was a even a rather bizarre editorial in the local rag two weeks ago castigating Walter Cronkite for allegedly stabbing troops in the back during Tet; in its perpetual quest to assign grades in non-definitive shades of loyalty and patriotism, Vietnamese anguish rages on, forty years later, with no end in sight.
Over the past five years, we've observed another scene of vehement linguistics, equal the propaganda of the best wars, manufactured by Episcopal seccesionists, the presumed conservatives of the struggle, against persons in authority, such as Archbishops and Bishops, while presumed liberals and progressives, stress loyalty and obedience to the institutional Church, its officers and canons.
As much as I can't separate the person from the position, there is still something instinctive, no matter the situation, that digs deep and calls for a modicum of loyalty despite circumstances. Perhaps it's a remnant of a tribal DNA defense mechanism. When I attended a fundamentalist church, I was appalled by the anti-Americanism espoused within the relentless criticisms hurled at the country. Qualms are also stirred now when someone in our Adult Sunday school castigates America from a position on the Left. There is something buried inside the conscience that reacts to criticism in a way that indicates something is out of order and needs to be put right.
Perhaps loyalty is a matter of timing. I note a book on tape on the life of Fritz Kolbe, a minor German bureaucrat in the Foreign Ministry, who served as an American 'spy in the heart of the Reich.' Up until mid-1943 into 1944, his secrets were highly valued. When it became clear the Germans were losing the war, less so. After 1945, he was shunned, by his countrymen as a tainted carrier of disloyalty, no matter the nature of the regime he betrayed.
In contrast, as observed here last week, Helmuth James Von Moltke, a conspirator in the plot to kill Hitler, executed by the Gestapo, is unambiguously honored, in retrospect, as a hero. Is this partly because he never had to face an aftermath where fellow countrymen might have regarded his actions as traitorous? Perhaps it was deliberate ruse, but I sense, even in Von Moltke's letters to his wife, there was still a 'we,' invested when writing of victorious German battles, as if he couldn't help loyally cheering his country despite working simulataneously to defeat it. (A lesser magnitudinal feeling similar to the one I have when I watch the beloved New York Yankees of my childhood play the downtrodden local Baltimore Orioles -- I want both to win when they don't play each other.) How long was it, in the end, anyway, before the post-war policy of De-Nazification was reversed when the West sought and found that former foes were useful allies in the new Cold War? How would Von Moltke reacted to that unforseen development?
In Voices of Morebath, Eamon Duffy, examines the impact of great events upon everyday parish life through looking at a small village in the English countryside during the Reformation. Prior to the 1530's, the village, as it had for over a millenium, was Roman Catholic. Mid-way through Henry the VIII's reign, it moderately blended old ritual with the liturgy of the oncoming new religion. Changes introduced by reformers, working under Henry's son, Edward VI, were more radical. His sister, Mary, reversed direction, restoring Catholicism, but so brutally, there was a backlash stirred throughout the general populace. Elizabeth I, of course, reversed course again, establishing England as a Protestant nation.
Most poignantly, in one viginette, Duffy writes of parish priest Father Christopher Trychay, who when he, "finally achieves the purchase of a new set of black vestments for requiem masses, the crowning achievement of twenty years painstaking effort, it is hard not to rejoice with him. The sense of loss is palpable, therefore, when the images, vestments and traditional trappings are removed, under the new Protestant order."
How could any priest or parishioner not turn cyncial in times like these? What constant is left to which to be loyal? An answer might be found in noting Father Christopher's tenure of service lasted from 1520 to 1574. In order to accomplish that, he might, indeed, have allowed himself to be carried 'any way the wind blows,' in national affairs over which he had no control, but dedicated himself, pastorally, to the myriad duties a parish priest attends to guide his flock through all their travails and needs of daily life.
Did Father Christopher bury his head in the sand or take care of more important business? Was it his small flock, or as the ghost of Jacob Marley screams to Scrooge every Christmas, "mankind was his business?" Where does the greater loyalty lie? My country right or wrong? Loyalty to the Church, the parish, or 'Spiritual Authority' as discerned through personal discernment? If individual conscience guides you to dissent, is this loyalty of another stripe to a higher calling, or betrayal? Or is it all simply a matter of timing?
I don't know for sure. What I do know is when our re-constituted Episcopal church gathers for its first Christmas Eve service, this Monday night, in reduced material circumstances, what someone might see as deprivation and loss, feels richer and more abundant than ever before, fulfilled by the simple parish pleasures of fellowship, common human, no, extraordinary human, decency, and unbreakable bonds of affection.
The good people of my parish, like those in medieval Morebath, remain honorably loyal to old Mother Church. It's a loyalty that's global, national and local in its implications; globally and nationally, in terms of symbolizing securing justice, dignity and human rights for marginalized peoples by warmly elcoming them in from the cold; locally, in an existence that sustains itself through steadfast goodness, intentional hospitality, and sacrificial charity, values of Jesus Incarnate, who we presume to imitate, humbly and naturally, despite existing in a world of constantly shifting, conveniently personal, loyalties.
Our re-constituted congregational birth and renassiance reflects another ancient local birth that purchased renewal for the entire world. Since taking a baptismal vow of Church loyalty, in 1997, I've opened myself to amazing new possibilities, harboring no questions or doubts on that course, and unlike my worldly career, not reflecting upon the past with dismay and regret, but awakened to a new life, filled with optimism, hope and faith, just like Ebeneezer Scrooge, on Christmas morning.
Over the years, I've entertained repeated discussions with colleagues over the question of whether one should 'respect the position,' regardless of the occupant. I find I can not separate the two. It would seem, over the last half of the American 20th century, I'm not alone. For liberals, Viet Nam and Watergate were but the most recent confirmational turning points in establishing a mistrust of persons in authority. There was a even a rather bizarre editorial in the local rag two weeks ago castigating Walter Cronkite for allegedly stabbing troops in the back during Tet; in its perpetual quest to assign grades in non-definitive shades of loyalty and patriotism, Vietnamese anguish rages on, forty years later, with no end in sight.
Over the past five years, we've observed another scene of vehement linguistics, equal the propaganda of the best wars, manufactured by Episcopal seccesionists, the presumed conservatives of the struggle, against persons in authority, such as Archbishops and Bishops, while presumed liberals and progressives, stress loyalty and obedience to the institutional Church, its officers and canons.
As much as I can't separate the person from the position, there is still something instinctive, no matter the situation, that digs deep and calls for a modicum of loyalty despite circumstances. Perhaps it's a remnant of a tribal DNA defense mechanism. When I attended a fundamentalist church, I was appalled by the anti-Americanism espoused within the relentless criticisms hurled at the country. Qualms are also stirred now when someone in our Adult Sunday school castigates America from a position on the Left. There is something buried inside the conscience that reacts to criticism in a way that indicates something is out of order and needs to be put right.
Perhaps loyalty is a matter of timing. I note a book on tape on the life of Fritz Kolbe, a minor German bureaucrat in the Foreign Ministry, who served as an American 'spy in the heart of the Reich.' Up until mid-1943 into 1944, his secrets were highly valued. When it became clear the Germans were losing the war, less so. After 1945, he was shunned, by his countrymen as a tainted carrier of disloyalty, no matter the nature of the regime he betrayed.
In contrast, as observed here last week, Helmuth James Von Moltke, a conspirator in the plot to kill Hitler, executed by the Gestapo, is unambiguously honored, in retrospect, as a hero. Is this partly because he never had to face an aftermath where fellow countrymen might have regarded his actions as traitorous? Perhaps it was deliberate ruse, but I sense, even in Von Moltke's letters to his wife, there was still a 'we,' invested when writing of victorious German battles, as if he couldn't help loyally cheering his country despite working simulataneously to defeat it. (A lesser magnitudinal feeling similar to the one I have when I watch the beloved New York Yankees of my childhood play the downtrodden local Baltimore Orioles -- I want both to win when they don't play each other.) How long was it, in the end, anyway, before the post-war policy of De-Nazification was reversed when the West sought and found that former foes were useful allies in the new Cold War? How would Von Moltke reacted to that unforseen development?
In Voices of Morebath, Eamon Duffy, examines the impact of great events upon everyday parish life through looking at a small village in the English countryside during the Reformation. Prior to the 1530's, the village, as it had for over a millenium, was Roman Catholic. Mid-way through Henry the VIII's reign, it moderately blended old ritual with the liturgy of the oncoming new religion. Changes introduced by reformers, working under Henry's son, Edward VI, were more radical. His sister, Mary, reversed direction, restoring Catholicism, but so brutally, there was a backlash stirred throughout the general populace. Elizabeth I, of course, reversed course again, establishing England as a Protestant nation.
Most poignantly, in one viginette, Duffy writes of parish priest Father Christopher Trychay, who when he, "finally achieves the purchase of a new set of black vestments for requiem masses, the crowning achievement of twenty years painstaking effort, it is hard not to rejoice with him. The sense of loss is palpable, therefore, when the images, vestments and traditional trappings are removed, under the new Protestant order."
How could any priest or parishioner not turn cyncial in times like these? What constant is left to which to be loyal? An answer might be found in noting Father Christopher's tenure of service lasted from 1520 to 1574. In order to accomplish that, he might, indeed, have allowed himself to be carried 'any way the wind blows,' in national affairs over which he had no control, but dedicated himself, pastorally, to the myriad duties a parish priest attends to guide his flock through all their travails and needs of daily life.
Did Father Christopher bury his head in the sand or take care of more important business? Was it his small flock, or as the ghost of Jacob Marley screams to Scrooge every Christmas, "mankind was his business?" Where does the greater loyalty lie? My country right or wrong? Loyalty to the Church, the parish, or 'Spiritual Authority' as discerned through personal discernment? If individual conscience guides you to dissent, is this loyalty of another stripe to a higher calling, or betrayal? Or is it all simply a matter of timing?
I don't know for sure. What I do know is when our re-constituted Episcopal church gathers for its first Christmas Eve service, this Monday night, in reduced material circumstances, what someone might see as deprivation and loss, feels richer and more abundant than ever before, fulfilled by the simple parish pleasures of fellowship, common human, no, extraordinary human, decency, and unbreakable bonds of affection.
The good people of my parish, like those in medieval Morebath, remain honorably loyal to old Mother Church. It's a loyalty that's global, national and local in its implications; globally and nationally, in terms of symbolizing securing justice, dignity and human rights for marginalized peoples by warmly elcoming them in from the cold; locally, in an existence that sustains itself through steadfast goodness, intentional hospitality, and sacrificial charity, values of Jesus Incarnate, who we presume to imitate, humbly and naturally, despite existing in a world of constantly shifting, conveniently personal, loyalties.
Our re-constituted congregational birth and renassiance reflects another ancient local birth that purchased renewal for the entire world. Since taking a baptismal vow of Church loyalty, in 1997, I've opened myself to amazing new possibilities, harboring no questions or doubts on that course, and unlike my worldly career, not reflecting upon the past with dismay and regret, but awakened to a new life, filled with optimism, hope and faith, just like Ebeneezer Scrooge, on Christmas morning.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Bureaucrats
I note this week an incident which occured in the office fifteen years ago. A new boss asked I do something a bit dodgy ethics-wise. My response, upon pondering the request, was: 'interesting.' His ballistic reply: "It wasn't a question, it was an order." The counter-response once again, 'interesting,' only infuriated him more. He recognized, in his heart of hearts, as I knew in mine, I wasn't going to do it, no matter what.
The eventual consequence of the exchange was that I was denied work of any significance for a period of ten years. In fact, a cadre of three, this boss, his superior, and one toady underling, eventually took upon themselves, the work of sixty people, leaving nothing but rote crumbs for the rest of us, until, damage done, they left, together.
People reacted to forced idleness in various ways. One staffer, previously distinguished by his workaholism, as demonstrated through emails written at 3 a.m., suffered a breakdown and retired on a medical disability. Others had no problem with being paid for inactivity. My response, after a decade of deep devotion to the firm, was to fortify my heart against office politics, releasing energy for activities elsewhere.
I arrived at 5 a.m., leaving eight straight hours later, to attend afternoon classes at a local seminary. (I constantly worried the trio might, one day, attempt contact, while I was out of the office, on a work-related matter; no matter, in three years, not once.) I worked evenings on tasks related to opening a homeless shelter. Whereas any bureaucratic talents I possessed went unused at the office, here they were here tested to the limit, interacting with politicians, the police, hospital administrators, clergy, corporations, the media, and other shelter directors (especially, them, since they resented competition for limited financial resources and acted accordingly).
This period of life came to mind, this past week, as I read letters written, during World War II, by Helmuth James Von Moltke to his wife Freya. The scion of a revered German military family, whose reputation initially offered some protection, Helmuth served the Reich as a otherwise clandestine lawyer in a bureaucracy that posed considerably more ethical dangers, in the extreme, than my office, but in some ways, contained similar characteristics, to all bureaucracies.
As an attorney assigned to produce opinions related to international law, Motlke reports in September 1941, "The following landed on my desk yesterday: An officer reports that ammunition produced in violation of international law was found on Russians: dum-dum bullets. That they were such could be proved by the evidence of the Medical Officer, one Panning, who used the ammunition in a large-scale experimental execution of Jews. This produced the following results: such and such was the effect of the projectile when fired at the head, such when fired at the chest, such in abdominal shots, such when limbs were hit. The results were available in the form of a scientific study so that the violation of international law could be proved without a doubt."
In matters of no great consequence, I often offered, as a good bureaucrat, and in way of intellectual exercise, "let me know what you want to prove, or not, and I'll produce statistics either way." The absolute depravity of the Third Reich is encapsulated, in the above 'proof', where such documentation is considered allowable and compelling (such as it is today, perhaps, when presented by ethically untroubled lawyers, who employ the 'gay defense,' tactic, alledging justifiable self-defense, to win release of murderous homophobic clients).
Von Moltke is cognizant of his predicament. He writes, "The realization that what I do is senseless does not stop my doing it, because I am much more firmly convinced than before that only what is done in the full recognition of the senselessness of all action makes any sense at all." Even so, in the case of the dum-dum bullets, he willfully envisions a future of justice as he concludes, "That surely is the height of bestiality and depravity and there is nothing one can do. But I hope one day it will be possible to get the reporting officer and Herr Panning before a court of law."
The inextinguishable hope of Von Moltke got him killed, in the end, for complicity in the circles of men and women rounded up and killed by the Gestapo, after the plot on Hitler's life failed, in July 1944.
At our shelter for those with active addictions or criminal records of violence, who can not enter other shelters, for the protection of women and children, we were frequently accused, by competitors (even though they didn't allow admittance of our guests to their facilities) of enabling the clients. Friend Mark, and I, considering, in retrospect, our high death rate, have discussed many times whether our work did any good, or at least, more good than harm. Some days, I think it enough, in the endeavors someone undertakes, to be 'a fool for Christ,' other days, less so.
Von Moltke tells the story of a priest whose job it was to spend the night with prisoners before their execution. After commenting on the suprisingly consistent good nature of the fellow under such conditions, Von Moltke writes, "I made him describe such a night; it is horrible and yet, somehow, sublime. He said that no-one is so well prepared to face death as these people; and he said that in the 8 years of his work, there was not one . . . who did not go to the scaffold calmly. What an accomplishment such a night means! It is gruesome and frightful; but such a night poses questions which are not put otherwise so starkly, so nakedly and absolutely." It brought back the night I spent bonding with a previously remote, alternatively violent and gentle guest, watching the sunrise, the morning after a hurricane.
Nothing in my experience approaches the horror Von Moltke faced, nor the courage he demonstrated - I pray he won't mind then if I apply any lessons garnered by his struggle to my life. I do grasp, though, from limited experience, that when you encounter life and death on such stark terms, much of the facade of detail, falls away, so that what is left, is magnified, and counts all the more.
Yet, throughout the war, he retreated, to the family farm, or even just to his apartment, with a book, whether a biography of Charles XII, or (so ironically delicious, a book by the great Jewish philosopher) Spinoza, for solace, and for strength, since any text you approach in circumstances like these, seems to carry a serendipitous relevance (reminding me further of the time I took a Catholic Worker farm phamphlet on organic toilets to surrpeticiously read at a meeting of high-ranking company executives). Von Moltke's revelation alleviates guilt and permits me not only to excuse time I spend reading, as not time taken away from more important work, but to value reading, in itself, as a quiet act of self-preservation, or even subversion, when no other means is permitted.
Some letters included exchanges with his wife on whether the recitiation of grace should be imposed upon their children before meals. Bonfoeffer, in similar circumstances, wrote from prison, on the significance of regular Sunday church attendance. Perhaps, likewise, I discern the parable of the rich young man who sulks away after Jesus tells him he must discard his worldly goods to follow Him. I have the feeling He was trying to tell us He realized this wasn't possible for most folks, and that as the man walked away, He still gazed upon Him with tenderness, because He knew, in the weakness and helplessness of all people, it's enough that we do little things in our lives, to preserve the dignity of those around us, as well as our own, especially under conditions we can't control, so that we remember our reliance remains upon Him, the Great Transcender. Our spirit, aligned with His, is the only thing, temporally and eternally, unconquerable.
Von Moltke wrote in November 1941: "We must, it seems to me, do all we can to instill into their very flesh and blood, the principle that there must be an accounting for every action, and that all men are equal before God, so that whatever happens to one human being concerns all others too, and that no-one can hide behind some notion that any human being is in a different category."
I'll leave him with the last word.
The eventual consequence of the exchange was that I was denied work of any significance for a period of ten years. In fact, a cadre of three, this boss, his superior, and one toady underling, eventually took upon themselves, the work of sixty people, leaving nothing but rote crumbs for the rest of us, until, damage done, they left, together.
People reacted to forced idleness in various ways. One staffer, previously distinguished by his workaholism, as demonstrated through emails written at 3 a.m., suffered a breakdown and retired on a medical disability. Others had no problem with being paid for inactivity. My response, after a decade of deep devotion to the firm, was to fortify my heart against office politics, releasing energy for activities elsewhere.
I arrived at 5 a.m., leaving eight straight hours later, to attend afternoon classes at a local seminary. (I constantly worried the trio might, one day, attempt contact, while I was out of the office, on a work-related matter; no matter, in three years, not once.) I worked evenings on tasks related to opening a homeless shelter. Whereas any bureaucratic talents I possessed went unused at the office, here they were here tested to the limit, interacting with politicians, the police, hospital administrators, clergy, corporations, the media, and other shelter directors (especially, them, since they resented competition for limited financial resources and acted accordingly).
This period of life came to mind, this past week, as I read letters written, during World War II, by Helmuth James Von Moltke to his wife Freya. The scion of a revered German military family, whose reputation initially offered some protection, Helmuth served the Reich as a otherwise clandestine lawyer in a bureaucracy that posed considerably more ethical dangers, in the extreme, than my office, but in some ways, contained similar characteristics, to all bureaucracies.
As an attorney assigned to produce opinions related to international law, Motlke reports in September 1941, "The following landed on my desk yesterday: An officer reports that ammunition produced in violation of international law was found on Russians: dum-dum bullets. That they were such could be proved by the evidence of the Medical Officer, one Panning, who used the ammunition in a large-scale experimental execution of Jews. This produced the following results: such and such was the effect of the projectile when fired at the head, such when fired at the chest, such in abdominal shots, such when limbs were hit. The results were available in the form of a scientific study so that the violation of international law could be proved without a doubt."
In matters of no great consequence, I often offered, as a good bureaucrat, and in way of intellectual exercise, "let me know what you want to prove, or not, and I'll produce statistics either way." The absolute depravity of the Third Reich is encapsulated, in the above 'proof', where such documentation is considered allowable and compelling (such as it is today, perhaps, when presented by ethically untroubled lawyers, who employ the 'gay defense,' tactic, alledging justifiable self-defense, to win release of murderous homophobic clients).
Von Moltke is cognizant of his predicament. He writes, "The realization that what I do is senseless does not stop my doing it, because I am much more firmly convinced than before that only what is done in the full recognition of the senselessness of all action makes any sense at all." Even so, in the case of the dum-dum bullets, he willfully envisions a future of justice as he concludes, "That surely is the height of bestiality and depravity and there is nothing one can do. But I hope one day it will be possible to get the reporting officer and Herr Panning before a court of law."
The inextinguishable hope of Von Moltke got him killed, in the end, for complicity in the circles of men and women rounded up and killed by the Gestapo, after the plot on Hitler's life failed, in July 1944.
At our shelter for those with active addictions or criminal records of violence, who can not enter other shelters, for the protection of women and children, we were frequently accused, by competitors (even though they didn't allow admittance of our guests to their facilities) of enabling the clients. Friend Mark, and I, considering, in retrospect, our high death rate, have discussed many times whether our work did any good, or at least, more good than harm. Some days, I think it enough, in the endeavors someone undertakes, to be 'a fool for Christ,' other days, less so.
Von Moltke tells the story of a priest whose job it was to spend the night with prisoners before their execution. After commenting on the suprisingly consistent good nature of the fellow under such conditions, Von Moltke writes, "I made him describe such a night; it is horrible and yet, somehow, sublime. He said that no-one is so well prepared to face death as these people; and he said that in the 8 years of his work, there was not one . . . who did not go to the scaffold calmly. What an accomplishment such a night means! It is gruesome and frightful; but such a night poses questions which are not put otherwise so starkly, so nakedly and absolutely." It brought back the night I spent bonding with a previously remote, alternatively violent and gentle guest, watching the sunrise, the morning after a hurricane.
Nothing in my experience approaches the horror Von Moltke faced, nor the courage he demonstrated - I pray he won't mind then if I apply any lessons garnered by his struggle to my life. I do grasp, though, from limited experience, that when you encounter life and death on such stark terms, much of the facade of detail, falls away, so that what is left, is magnified, and counts all the more.
Yet, throughout the war, he retreated, to the family farm, or even just to his apartment, with a book, whether a biography of Charles XII, or (so ironically delicious, a book by the great Jewish philosopher) Spinoza, for solace, and for strength, since any text you approach in circumstances like these, seems to carry a serendipitous relevance (reminding me further of the time I took a Catholic Worker farm phamphlet on organic toilets to surrpeticiously read at a meeting of high-ranking company executives). Von Moltke's revelation alleviates guilt and permits me not only to excuse time I spend reading, as not time taken away from more important work, but to value reading, in itself, as a quiet act of self-preservation, or even subversion, when no other means is permitted.
Some letters included exchanges with his wife on whether the recitiation of grace should be imposed upon their children before meals. Bonfoeffer, in similar circumstances, wrote from prison, on the significance of regular Sunday church attendance. Perhaps, likewise, I discern the parable of the rich young man who sulks away after Jesus tells him he must discard his worldly goods to follow Him. I have the feeling He was trying to tell us He realized this wasn't possible for most folks, and that as the man walked away, He still gazed upon Him with tenderness, because He knew, in the weakness and helplessness of all people, it's enough that we do little things in our lives, to preserve the dignity of those around us, as well as our own, especially under conditions we can't control, so that we remember our reliance remains upon Him, the Great Transcender. Our spirit, aligned with His, is the only thing, temporally and eternally, unconquerable.
Von Moltke wrote in November 1941: "We must, it seems to me, do all we can to instill into their very flesh and blood, the principle that there must be an accounting for every action, and that all men are equal before God, so that whatever happens to one human being concerns all others too, and that no-one can hide behind some notion that any human being is in a different category."
I'll leave him with the last word.
Friday, December 7, 2007
Text in Context
I note this week the Spotsyltuckian myth of a little boy, riding on a bus, in Brooklyn, to Sheepshead Bay, hand in hand with mother, to sign up for a library card. In the beginning there are always words; the first thing a Spotsyltuckian always does when he moves to town is march wife and clan to the library for cards; this last time, knowing we were newlyweds, the wise librarian announced, 'if this is what's most on his mind, more than all the other myriad duties common to moving, he must be a keeper,' --(good for the new mother-in-law to hear this kind of news in person).
During a holiday craft show in an elementary school, last weekend, we wandered around the pint-sized library. The same kind of books lined the shelves that started my journey four decades ago: ghost story compendiums (in the day it was an Alfred Hitchcock Presents...these were uniformly Potter-ish), and legendary stories of Jim Thorpe, Knute Rockne, the Four Horsemen, Babe and Lou.
Garrison Keillor, in a Post essay, captures the feeling well, writing, "I leaned my bike against the wall and snuck inside. I didn't take the elevator for fear the lady operating it would ask me the purpose of my visit and I would stammer and turn pale, so I climbed the stairs past the Egyptian mummy on the third floor landing and headed for the children's room and the toasty smell of brand-new books. I plopped down and read them, one after the other. Nobody yelled at me, nobody told me to stop reading..."
Sounds like a holy sanctuary, eh? Yet, that word today, sanctuary, turns as all words, on context. It's been that way since the beginning of recorded time. The original tribal inhabitants of Palestine, the Canaanites, initially communicated in the 800-symbol cuneiform fashion developed by the Mesopotamians, where every syllable required a symbol of its own. It didn't work efficiently, as a language for use in contracts and bureacracy (though, come to think of it, we use a similar form of shorthand in emails today), so the Canaanites reduced the alphabet to 24 characters by elminating vowels. Usage became conditioned on context: for example, if you were implying an object belonged to 'our' family, writing "or," unless the object in question was martime-related, meant 'our,' not 'oar.'
The context of sanctuary became crucial when I had to decide whether to welcome or turn away a guest at our faith-based shelter if I possessed the undesired knowledge he was a wanted man. The deciding ethical factor usually turned on the context of the crime, whether outstanding warrants for driving on a suspended license, say, as opposed to murder, or as to what danger he presented to the surrounding community of which I was also a responsible member. In 19th century France, Hugo's Quasimodo employed the word in 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame," within a similar church/state context. In the context of recent political debates, politicians accused of governing a 'sanctuary city,' for example, have rendered an otherwise noble word into an ignoble epithet.
According to the Times, prosecutors "questioned the Turkish publisher of the book "The God Delusion," by a British author, Richard Dawkins, after a young reader complained that it was offensive." In that context, if I was in power, it's not the tack I'd take since I haven't understood anything yet this brilliant scientist has written. I'd leave the book on the shelf, knowing even if someone discovered it, amongst millions of other books in massive public libraries (like the crate containing the Ark of the Covenant in a huge warehouse at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie) they'd more than likely attempt the first chapter and quit in total confusion.
In the New York Review of Books, the equally brilliant, but more readable British author, William Dalrymple, described a time in 16th century India where "in an atmosphere comparable to Lorenzo de' Medici's Platonic Academy in Florence a century earlier, these enlightened Mughal rulers invited scholars and priests from around the world to their court, hosting them in their palaces and fielding weekly interfaith debates into the small hours of the morning."
That's the university context of learning for which I'm totally nostalgic; all night political debates, capped by the publication of a manifesto, the likes of which you might only be able to purchase today for fifty cents from a cart in the alcove of the City Lights bookshop in North Beach. Friend Mark writes of a time at UNC-Chapel Hill when a mandatory reading assignment for freshman on the story of a young Muslim caused a brouhaha. As Mark reports, the chancellor, responding to reporter's questions, said "what they learned from the book, and subsequent discussions, meant that the assignment had been successful in generating the thoughtful and analytic discussions they were seeking from students preparing for college." Or was it, for the chancellor concluded, that while he knew the course hadn't caused anyone to convert from Christianity to Islam, the "official religion of UNC had always been, and always continue to be, basketball."
As I age, I reject something I once read that "there are no lessons to be learned from sports," since I carry much that is noble from those first stories, in the elementary school library, of Rockne and Gehrig. I find, to gain the most from reading, like Thomas Merton, the Benedictine monk, who'd go to bed by 6 p.m. and awaken at 2 a.m. (rather than the college students I know today who go to bed at 2 and awaken at 6.), "it is necessary for me to see the first point of light which begins to dawn. It is necessary to be present alone at the resurrection of Day, in blank silence when the sun appears. In this completely netural instant, I receive from the eastern woods, the tall oaks, the one word "Day" which is never the same. It is never spoken in any known language."
Sitting in the soft enveloping recliner, facing the north window, at sunrise, under a quilt, coffee in hand, book in lap, gazing up at our woods, I welcome the day, with newly discovered ideas. This is the context of personal sanctuary; the holy duality of peace and learning. What began in the bustling Brooklyn neighborhood of Sheepshead Bay continues in our home in Virginia, fed and enriched beyond measure, by the seven far-flung town and country branches of the regional public library system.
During a holiday craft show in an elementary school, last weekend, we wandered around the pint-sized library. The same kind of books lined the shelves that started my journey four decades ago: ghost story compendiums (in the day it was an Alfred Hitchcock Presents...these were uniformly Potter-ish), and legendary stories of Jim Thorpe, Knute Rockne, the Four Horsemen, Babe and Lou.
Garrison Keillor, in a Post essay, captures the feeling well, writing, "I leaned my bike against the wall and snuck inside. I didn't take the elevator for fear the lady operating it would ask me the purpose of my visit and I would stammer and turn pale, so I climbed the stairs past the Egyptian mummy on the third floor landing and headed for the children's room and the toasty smell of brand-new books. I plopped down and read them, one after the other. Nobody yelled at me, nobody told me to stop reading..."
Sounds like a holy sanctuary, eh? Yet, that word today, sanctuary, turns as all words, on context. It's been that way since the beginning of recorded time. The original tribal inhabitants of Palestine, the Canaanites, initially communicated in the 800-symbol cuneiform fashion developed by the Mesopotamians, where every syllable required a symbol of its own. It didn't work efficiently, as a language for use in contracts and bureacracy (though, come to think of it, we use a similar form of shorthand in emails today), so the Canaanites reduced the alphabet to 24 characters by elminating vowels. Usage became conditioned on context: for example, if you were implying an object belonged to 'our' family, writing "or," unless the object in question was martime-related, meant 'our,' not 'oar.'
The context of sanctuary became crucial when I had to decide whether to welcome or turn away a guest at our faith-based shelter if I possessed the undesired knowledge he was a wanted man. The deciding ethical factor usually turned on the context of the crime, whether outstanding warrants for driving on a suspended license, say, as opposed to murder, or as to what danger he presented to the surrounding community of which I was also a responsible member. In 19th century France, Hugo's Quasimodo employed the word in 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame," within a similar church/state context. In the context of recent political debates, politicians accused of governing a 'sanctuary city,' for example, have rendered an otherwise noble word into an ignoble epithet.
According to the Times, prosecutors "questioned the Turkish publisher of the book "The God Delusion," by a British author, Richard Dawkins, after a young reader complained that it was offensive." In that context, if I was in power, it's not the tack I'd take since I haven't understood anything yet this brilliant scientist has written. I'd leave the book on the shelf, knowing even if someone discovered it, amongst millions of other books in massive public libraries (like the crate containing the Ark of the Covenant in a huge warehouse at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie) they'd more than likely attempt the first chapter and quit in total confusion.
In the New York Review of Books, the equally brilliant, but more readable British author, William Dalrymple, described a time in 16th century India where "in an atmosphere comparable to Lorenzo de' Medici's Platonic Academy in Florence a century earlier, these enlightened Mughal rulers invited scholars and priests from around the world to their court, hosting them in their palaces and fielding weekly interfaith debates into the small hours of the morning."
That's the university context of learning for which I'm totally nostalgic; all night political debates, capped by the publication of a manifesto, the likes of which you might only be able to purchase today for fifty cents from a cart in the alcove of the City Lights bookshop in North Beach. Friend Mark writes of a time at UNC-Chapel Hill when a mandatory reading assignment for freshman on the story of a young Muslim caused a brouhaha. As Mark reports, the chancellor, responding to reporter's questions, said "what they learned from the book, and subsequent discussions, meant that the assignment had been successful in generating the thoughtful and analytic discussions they were seeking from students preparing for college." Or was it, for the chancellor concluded, that while he knew the course hadn't caused anyone to convert from Christianity to Islam, the "official religion of UNC had always been, and always continue to be, basketball."
As I age, I reject something I once read that "there are no lessons to be learned from sports," since I carry much that is noble from those first stories, in the elementary school library, of Rockne and Gehrig. I find, to gain the most from reading, like Thomas Merton, the Benedictine monk, who'd go to bed by 6 p.m. and awaken at 2 a.m. (rather than the college students I know today who go to bed at 2 and awaken at 6.), "it is necessary for me to see the first point of light which begins to dawn. It is necessary to be present alone at the resurrection of Day, in blank silence when the sun appears. In this completely netural instant, I receive from the eastern woods, the tall oaks, the one word "Day" which is never the same. It is never spoken in any known language."
Sitting in the soft enveloping recliner, facing the north window, at sunrise, under a quilt, coffee in hand, book in lap, gazing up at our woods, I welcome the day, with newly discovered ideas. This is the context of personal sanctuary; the holy duality of peace and learning. What began in the bustling Brooklyn neighborhood of Sheepshead Bay continues in our home in Virginia, fed and enriched beyond measure, by the seven far-flung town and country branches of the regional public library system.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Upon Figuring Authority
I note this week a letter from a fella we'll call "E." Mostly, he lives in a tent in the woods with other like-minded men and women. As is their wont, E and his set, from time to time, obtain accomodations, as a consequence of certain misdeameanors, lasting from a few days to several months, in the local hoosegow. It is over-crowded, and reservations for what's enviously called '3 hots and a cot,' are hard to get, especially around the holidays. Many's the time I drove a guest, desirous of such luxury, to the police station, to turn himself in on an outstanding warrant, only to be told there's no room at the inn.
When E's on the street, he boasts of higher education, yet doesn't exhibit much drive nor purpose (he must have come across Maslow's 'hierarchy of needs,' since the theory's endlessly trotted out for show as proof of his learning -- perhaps he picked it up in group therapy or through a parole officer - but it stuck for future use in attempts to manipulate conversations with authority figures like shelter managers and social workers). Otherwise, he lives the lifestyle of the average tent-dwelling consumer: fights, feuds, alcohol; a chaotic riotous existence.
When E's incarcerated, all that changes. He writes of the glory of God, how he's found the Lord, and of One Way. My responses suggest when he's next released, he not return to his more or less vacant tent, but join a community where he might perform works so that others may be influenced to live a less harmful life. Upon release, conversely, he resumes his pagan forest revels, until re-arrested, and born again, for the duration of his next sentence.
The phenonmenon is not unknown. The most notorious criminal recidivists of our community, are conspicuous Bible-thumpers, carrying Scripture everywhere within waterproof covers, while reciting verse from memory. Indeed, if they manage to achieve advanced adulthood (age 45 in our neck of the woods), it's likely we'll provide a large-print edition so they may better read The Word in a tent at night by the light of a flickering Coleman one-burner propane gas lamp.
Why is it that E functions behind bars yet can not when free? It brings to mind, once again, the journey of John Henry Newman. As a young Evangelical, he expounded the doctrine of sola scriptura, the Spiritual Authority of the Bible alone. As a Roman Catholic convert, since he longer believed the laity competent to discern Scripture, he wrote of the Bible as a subordinate appendage to an authoritarian Church.
E does not expound upon Scripture a great deal when he's free; he finds worldy freedom more alluring. He only achieves a spiritual freedom when bodily confined. Do we likewise require Authority in our less illict lives where jail does not provide the same desirable accomodation; should Church figuratively and necessarily perform the same function for us as prison does for E?
At many classes in seminary, there's a clique of vocal doctrinal hardliners. I wondered how they'd function as priests when confronted by a parishioner with a serious personal problem. While attending those classes, I also taught a suicide hot-line seminar. When a prospective listener announced she'd refer all callers to Jesus, she wasn't recommended for hire.
At that time of my life, a friend had bulemia. In my way of trying to help, (not surprising to those who know me), I wrote her a report on the subject. While researching the topic, I combed the seminary library for materials. I found one small book, outdated, of not much use.
As I've researched on-line, since then, on similar subjects, I've been likewise frustrated. If I search, on the keywords 'pastoral ministry' for example, I hit peripheral topics, such as advertisements for the minister's pre-written sermons handbook, or multitudinous listings for non-demonimnational churches with the word 'community,' in their name -- like Dunwiddie Restored Light and Harvest Community Church.
In the shelter business, it's not unusual to attend a meeting of one hundred professionals, as the only male. Reading of Jane Aadams, and her work at Hull House, I noticed she'd been criticized by the feminists of her day for suggesting that it was a natural function of women to operate such places. In pondering that, it led to searching under keywords 'feminist theology' instead of pastoral ministry.
I hit upon Rosemary Radford Ruether, described as a feminist theologian, by the on-line Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology. She was quoted, "This Jesus is an iconoclastic prophet who proclaims the reversal of the social order, a reversal which does not simply introduce new inequalities, but which aims at a new reality in which hiearchy and dominance are overcome as principles of social relations. Jesus speaks a liberating word which disupts the patriarchal structuring of society with its entrenched relations of hiearchy, dominance and opression; in this sense, Jesus can be understood as the kenosis (relinquishment) of partriarchy."
In response to a letter I'd written on our Church troubles, published in the local rag, in November, a correspondent responded he "does not admit that the Episcopal Church began departing from scriptural authority and doctrine years before gay bishop Gene Robinson's consecration in 2003, which ignited the separation action." It's not a far stretch of the imagination to consider he may be referring to the ordination of women.
Meryl Streep was quoted recently in the last of three excellent special 40th anniversary issues of Rolling Stone, "next to climate, the changing status of women in the last hundred years is the most destabilizing thing that's happened on earth. It's precipitated so many seismic changes and reactions in cultures. I think you can lay all the fundamentalism that's been rearing its ugly head in the world at the feet of that change. It's better for Western women, but that idea, that women have rights, hasn't permeated much of the world, even today. The forces that don't want to consider it are going down hard."
The saddest news story I note this week is that its now believed, upon new discoveries, all the graves of Czar Nicholas II and his entire family have been accounted for. I don't know why that story has always carried such poignance - in the middle of the night, this former royal, his wife, and children, seemingly naieve and innocent concerning their dread fate, were rousted from their beds, and so cruelly executed by the Communists. Perhaps it's the stark juxtaposition of a family in the path of an onrushing inhuman doctrinal Authority, so utterly swept away and destroyed, that is so mournfully disturbing.
In G.W. Bromiley's "Thomas Cranmer, Theologian," I read in my devotions this morning as to how Cranmer and Luther agreed, "There are two kinds of faith. The one is a dead belief, which accepts the facts and doctrines of the Christian faith, but does not have the inward trust in Christ, or live out the Gospel in daily obedience. The other includes an acceptance of the facts and doctrine of Christianity, but it also involves a sure trust and confidence in God's merciful promises, which necessarily expresses itself in life and conduct. It is only the latter faith, the true, lively, and Christian faith of the second homily, which avails for justification."
This circles round to "E." His outward expression of faith is conditioned upon confinement in an authoritarian environment. Is that what's behind those who march under the rigid banner of Spiritual Authority? Are they like E in that the expression of their faith must be conditioned within a hiearchy endowed with the image of patriarchical authority? Is that what makes the existence of women or a Gene Robinson as a new kind of authority figure so threatening?
I must admit during my time at shelter, I was intermittingly disappointed that guests never altered their lifestyle despite of what we thought of as providing a good Christian example. We did not establish an environment emphasizing Authority. We strove, rather, to create a family-like community, to which people might respond in love. In recognizing that you can't save another person through works - only the gift of God's grave can accomplish that -- is not the intentional willingness to love, uncoerced by Authority, despite a lack of immediate returns, the central act of faith, parish and family? If a gift, radiating steadfast hope and redemption, is not freely given or willingly received, it's as hollow as a faith that only comes alive when it's imprisoned.
When E's on the street, he boasts of higher education, yet doesn't exhibit much drive nor purpose (he must have come across Maslow's 'hierarchy of needs,' since the theory's endlessly trotted out for show as proof of his learning -- perhaps he picked it up in group therapy or through a parole officer - but it stuck for future use in attempts to manipulate conversations with authority figures like shelter managers and social workers). Otherwise, he lives the lifestyle of the average tent-dwelling consumer: fights, feuds, alcohol; a chaotic riotous existence.
When E's incarcerated, all that changes. He writes of the glory of God, how he's found the Lord, and of One Way. My responses suggest when he's next released, he not return to his more or less vacant tent, but join a community where he might perform works so that others may be influenced to live a less harmful life. Upon release, conversely, he resumes his pagan forest revels, until re-arrested, and born again, for the duration of his next sentence.
The phenonmenon is not unknown. The most notorious criminal recidivists of our community, are conspicuous Bible-thumpers, carrying Scripture everywhere within waterproof covers, while reciting verse from memory. Indeed, if they manage to achieve advanced adulthood (age 45 in our neck of the woods), it's likely we'll provide a large-print edition so they may better read The Word in a tent at night by the light of a flickering Coleman one-burner propane gas lamp.
Why is it that E functions behind bars yet can not when free? It brings to mind, once again, the journey of John Henry Newman. As a young Evangelical, he expounded the doctrine of sola scriptura, the Spiritual Authority of the Bible alone. As a Roman Catholic convert, since he longer believed the laity competent to discern Scripture, he wrote of the Bible as a subordinate appendage to an authoritarian Church.
E does not expound upon Scripture a great deal when he's free; he finds worldy freedom more alluring. He only achieves a spiritual freedom when bodily confined. Do we likewise require Authority in our less illict lives where jail does not provide the same desirable accomodation; should Church figuratively and necessarily perform the same function for us as prison does for E?
At many classes in seminary, there's a clique of vocal doctrinal hardliners. I wondered how they'd function as priests when confronted by a parishioner with a serious personal problem. While attending those classes, I also taught a suicide hot-line seminar. When a prospective listener announced she'd refer all callers to Jesus, she wasn't recommended for hire.
At that time of my life, a friend had bulemia. In my way of trying to help, (not surprising to those who know me), I wrote her a report on the subject. While researching the topic, I combed the seminary library for materials. I found one small book, outdated, of not much use.
As I've researched on-line, since then, on similar subjects, I've been likewise frustrated. If I search, on the keywords 'pastoral ministry' for example, I hit peripheral topics, such as advertisements for the minister's pre-written sermons handbook, or multitudinous listings for non-demonimnational churches with the word 'community,' in their name -- like Dunwiddie Restored Light and Harvest Community Church.
In the shelter business, it's not unusual to attend a meeting of one hundred professionals, as the only male. Reading of Jane Aadams, and her work at Hull House, I noticed she'd been criticized by the feminists of her day for suggesting that it was a natural function of women to operate such places. In pondering that, it led to searching under keywords 'feminist theology' instead of pastoral ministry.
I hit upon Rosemary Radford Ruether, described as a feminist theologian, by the on-line Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology. She was quoted, "This Jesus is an iconoclastic prophet who proclaims the reversal of the social order, a reversal which does not simply introduce new inequalities, but which aims at a new reality in which hiearchy and dominance are overcome as principles of social relations. Jesus speaks a liberating word which disupts the patriarchal structuring of society with its entrenched relations of hiearchy, dominance and opression; in this sense, Jesus can be understood as the kenosis (relinquishment) of partriarchy."
In response to a letter I'd written on our Church troubles, published in the local rag, in November, a correspondent responded he "does not admit that the Episcopal Church began departing from scriptural authority and doctrine years before gay bishop Gene Robinson's consecration in 2003, which ignited the separation action." It's not a far stretch of the imagination to consider he may be referring to the ordination of women.
Meryl Streep was quoted recently in the last of three excellent special 40th anniversary issues of Rolling Stone, "next to climate, the changing status of women in the last hundred years is the most destabilizing thing that's happened on earth. It's precipitated so many seismic changes and reactions in cultures. I think you can lay all the fundamentalism that's been rearing its ugly head in the world at the feet of that change. It's better for Western women, but that idea, that women have rights, hasn't permeated much of the world, even today. The forces that don't want to consider it are going down hard."
The saddest news story I note this week is that its now believed, upon new discoveries, all the graves of Czar Nicholas II and his entire family have been accounted for. I don't know why that story has always carried such poignance - in the middle of the night, this former royal, his wife, and children, seemingly naieve and innocent concerning their dread fate, were rousted from their beds, and so cruelly executed by the Communists. Perhaps it's the stark juxtaposition of a family in the path of an onrushing inhuman doctrinal Authority, so utterly swept away and destroyed, that is so mournfully disturbing.
In G.W. Bromiley's "Thomas Cranmer, Theologian," I read in my devotions this morning as to how Cranmer and Luther agreed, "There are two kinds of faith. The one is a dead belief, which accepts the facts and doctrines of the Christian faith, but does not have the inward trust in Christ, or live out the Gospel in daily obedience. The other includes an acceptance of the facts and doctrine of Christianity, but it also involves a sure trust and confidence in God's merciful promises, which necessarily expresses itself in life and conduct. It is only the latter faith, the true, lively, and Christian faith of the second homily, which avails for justification."
This circles round to "E." His outward expression of faith is conditioned upon confinement in an authoritarian environment. Is that what's behind those who march under the rigid banner of Spiritual Authority? Are they like E in that the expression of their faith must be conditioned within a hiearchy endowed with the image of patriarchical authority? Is that what makes the existence of women or a Gene Robinson as a new kind of authority figure so threatening?
I must admit during my time at shelter, I was intermittingly disappointed that guests never altered their lifestyle despite of what we thought of as providing a good Christian example. We did not establish an environment emphasizing Authority. We strove, rather, to create a family-like community, to which people might respond in love. In recognizing that you can't save another person through works - only the gift of God's grave can accomplish that -- is not the intentional willingness to love, uncoerced by Authority, despite a lack of immediate returns, the central act of faith, parish and family? If a gift, radiating steadfast hope and redemption, is not freely given or willingly received, it's as hollow as a faith that only comes alive when it's imprisoned.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
The Saluda Homecoming
I note this week I've taken a shine to baking cookies. When the green landscape transforms to the bleak gray suffusion of a Virginia countryside winter, left to my own devices, it's soft oatmeal raisin, not plumbing the depths of theology or politics, that comforts the soul.
Basic training requires slamming open a tube against the counter to free a squidgy slab of dough(?); then slice and bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for 9 minutes. Feeling, at times, more confident, I graduate to: blending one egg, one tbsp water, 3 tbsp canola oil and mix; then bake on a greased pan for 14 minutes. Brimming, other times, with the sure to be proven false pride of past success, I download a 'scratch,' that requires mysterious bottles of strange elixers called vanilla extract and powdered nutmeg that stand in rows amongst armies of fragrant spices like a regiment of red-helmeted soliders guarding a female skirmish line in the wife's territorial cupboard.
Is this whimsy or practicing to be old? Lennon's, 'Watching the Wheels lyrics, 'surely you're not happy now you no longer play the game,' keeps playing in my mind. I've also taken to dusting, vaccuuming, swiffing, perhaps obeying the triggered concept of nesting: as you age, you organize, or forget everything. That could be it, or maybe not.
Whenever we're driving at night, the glow of lights within the passing houses make me wish I was home. I don't think I'm alone in this growing awareness. I note an article in the local rag on how mixed-use development is thriving; where a new town is built from scratch, resembling best what we idealize about small town life. My favorite ball park, Camden Yards, the archetype for stadiums erected in the last decade, is built new, to resemble old.
The local hardware store still carries the original name, but sells only crafts, instead of the black and white speckled notebooks and text book covers with university seals, like Dartmouth and Brown, that I miss. Whenever the choirmaster at church entertains requests for long forgotten hymns, I always ask for 'Church in the Wildwood,' even though I never attended the 'little brown church in the vale.'
I note a report in the NY Times that the 'Latin Mass Draws Interest After Easing of Restrictions.' One woman is quoted, "I have no memory of the Latin Mass from my childhood, but for me it's so refreshing to see him facing the east, the Tabnernacle, focusing on Christ." Is her non-existant memory of a Latin Mass the same as my non-historical nostalgia for a Church in the Wildwood?
The day I actually attended a Latin Mass, the ancient stone church was damp, dark and cold. The priest faced forward so all that could be seen was a shadowy black presence. I couldn't hear anything as I suppose he prayed quietly in Latin. Was this, indeed, the same kind of experience attending the little brown church in the vale? Rather than a communal ritual experience, there's no corporate existence in the Latin Mass of a beloved community; each parishioner "looked instead to their missals or prayed on their own."
One windbag in the Times bellowed the all too wearying diatribe that "the Mass was like this for 1,500 years, and it was changed by subcommittee in the 1960's; when you can change the liturgy, you can change anything." So, you stand for an hour in a damp dark space; no clue as to what's happenning; no connection with another human being; yet you've made your point. This spiritual equivalent of a civic 'bowling alone,' leaves me as cold as a church built of stone. I'd rather bake cookies every Sunday than ever attend another Latin Mass.
A letter writer to our local rag, making another sort of point, wrote he'd never make a donation to the shelter, since as he was driving by, he observed children wearing new shoes. In despair, after reading it, I re-examined the file of papers that held essays composed by children who'd stayed there. One child wrote, the hardest thing wasn't that her father had abandoned the family, that they'd lost everything and were living in their car. The hardest thing, by far, was when they'd moved into the shelter, she'd had to give her dog away.
On the day after Thanksgiving, Connie and I are driving down east to tag the last of seven affiliated libraries within our rural system. Every time we drive onto the peninsula called the Northern Neck, we end the journey at land's end, in a tiny place called Saluda, just as when I write, I always end the literary journey at what will count at life's end: compassion was more important than making points.
It doesn't make a lot of sense to drive fifty miles. It won't accomplish much to call on seven librairies. The Saluda Homecoming only seems like the right place to be for no good reason at all. Sometimes life doesn't need to make a point. It's just about baking oat meal raisin cookies in a warm kitchen on a cold winter's day. It's about connecting with another human being, reclaiming meaning in life, even if it's part of what looks like an otherwise pointless journey.
Basic training requires slamming open a tube against the counter to free a squidgy slab of dough(?); then slice and bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for 9 minutes. Feeling, at times, more confident, I graduate to: blending one egg, one tbsp water, 3 tbsp canola oil and mix; then bake on a greased pan for 14 minutes. Brimming, other times, with the sure to be proven false pride of past success, I download a 'scratch,' that requires mysterious bottles of strange elixers called vanilla extract and powdered nutmeg that stand in rows amongst armies of fragrant spices like a regiment of red-helmeted soliders guarding a female skirmish line in the wife's territorial cupboard.
Is this whimsy or practicing to be old? Lennon's, 'Watching the Wheels lyrics, 'surely you're not happy now you no longer play the game,' keeps playing in my mind. I've also taken to dusting, vaccuuming, swiffing, perhaps obeying the triggered concept of nesting: as you age, you organize, or forget everything. That could be it, or maybe not.
Whenever we're driving at night, the glow of lights within the passing houses make me wish I was home. I don't think I'm alone in this growing awareness. I note an article in the local rag on how mixed-use development is thriving; where a new town is built from scratch, resembling best what we idealize about small town life. My favorite ball park, Camden Yards, the archetype for stadiums erected in the last decade, is built new, to resemble old.
The local hardware store still carries the original name, but sells only crafts, instead of the black and white speckled notebooks and text book covers with university seals, like Dartmouth and Brown, that I miss. Whenever the choirmaster at church entertains requests for long forgotten hymns, I always ask for 'Church in the Wildwood,' even though I never attended the 'little brown church in the vale.'
I note a report in the NY Times that the 'Latin Mass Draws Interest After Easing of Restrictions.' One woman is quoted, "I have no memory of the Latin Mass from my childhood, but for me it's so refreshing to see him facing the east, the Tabnernacle, focusing on Christ." Is her non-existant memory of a Latin Mass the same as my non-historical nostalgia for a Church in the Wildwood?
The day I actually attended a Latin Mass, the ancient stone church was damp, dark and cold. The priest faced forward so all that could be seen was a shadowy black presence. I couldn't hear anything as I suppose he prayed quietly in Latin. Was this, indeed, the same kind of experience attending the little brown church in the vale? Rather than a communal ritual experience, there's no corporate existence in the Latin Mass of a beloved community; each parishioner "looked instead to their missals or prayed on their own."
One windbag in the Times bellowed the all too wearying diatribe that "the Mass was like this for 1,500 years, and it was changed by subcommittee in the 1960's; when you can change the liturgy, you can change anything." So, you stand for an hour in a damp dark space; no clue as to what's happenning; no connection with another human being; yet you've made your point. This spiritual equivalent of a civic 'bowling alone,' leaves me as cold as a church built of stone. I'd rather bake cookies every Sunday than ever attend another Latin Mass.
A letter writer to our local rag, making another sort of point, wrote he'd never make a donation to the shelter, since as he was driving by, he observed children wearing new shoes. In despair, after reading it, I re-examined the file of papers that held essays composed by children who'd stayed there. One child wrote, the hardest thing wasn't that her father had abandoned the family, that they'd lost everything and were living in their car. The hardest thing, by far, was when they'd moved into the shelter, she'd had to give her dog away.
On the day after Thanksgiving, Connie and I are driving down east to tag the last of seven affiliated libraries within our rural system. Every time we drive onto the peninsula called the Northern Neck, we end the journey at land's end, in a tiny place called Saluda, just as when I write, I always end the literary journey at what will count at life's end: compassion was more important than making points.
It doesn't make a lot of sense to drive fifty miles. It won't accomplish much to call on seven librairies. The Saluda Homecoming only seems like the right place to be for no good reason at all. Sometimes life doesn't need to make a point. It's just about baking oat meal raisin cookies in a warm kitchen on a cold winter's day. It's about connecting with another human being, reclaiming meaning in life, even if it's part of what looks like an otherwise pointless journey.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Tradition
I note this week an editorial printed in the local rag the day before Veterans Day that was certain to greatly disturb the waters. The writer posited that those who'd attended Woodstock were morally superior to those, like John McCain, who'd served in Viet Nam.
I don't buy into any argument that advocates a moral superiority of any person or group over any other. Notions of that sort were quashed after my time managing the homeless shelter. As we've discussed many times before, short of allying yourself with 'ism's carrying the potential or actuality for genocide, most situations aren't so easy to classify in terms of a morally superior good or non-circumstantial evil.
Though it was surpisingly bold and intentionally provocative (if not a bit tactless) for the paper to publish the piece on the day before the holiday), it certainly had stir-the-pot impact, enticing the usual rabid attack dog suspects to launch the wearying Goebellian tactics practiced by despots and muttonheads throughout the ages.
Painting with a wide brush of stereotypically based ridicule is the easy way here, to quote, "How can he say that those who participated in the perverted debauchery of Woodstock...," and "drug-induced escapism is not morally superior," and on and on. Then there are those, unlike me, who find it very easy to identify good and evil through elminating all the gray inbetween, such as, "You can't have it both ways. Either America is a country to be proud of...or it should be allowed to be destroyed by left-wing liberals who believe nothing is worth dying for," ending, obligatoriliy, of course, with a dig at a Clinton, doesn't matter which one.
Life negates the absence of gray. The deepest tendencies I hold are to what would be defined, minimally as liberal, and maximally, as far left, by the attack dogs above. Recognizing that, I served in the Navy, on the principle that in order to legitimately hold such views, it was necessary to participate within the civic framework constructed to protect the right to express them.
As far as countering the ridicule, events like Woodstock, were much more than a party-binge. As a barometer of the times, contrast the message and accompanying peaceful behavior observed in 1969 to the violent alcoholically fueled flames of mindless rage-driven riot at the 30th anniversary concert.
A non-consistently debauched, rather mysterious, group appeared in 1966 San Francisco called the Diggers, who engineered 'street happenings,' such as planting a 12 X 12 yellow square at the intersection of Haight and Ashbury Streets, urging people to look through so they could experience street theater through their own frame of reference. They opened a store where everything was free, including the contents of a cashbox labelled 'free money,' guarded by a sign that read, "No Stealing."
The Digger's goal was to portray American lives as if they were constructed by actors in a play, of which, alternative endings were possible - one theological current, leading to the idea that a person could be 'born again.' This is not 'drug-induced,' escapism - indeed, there were many in San Francisco, at the time, and elsewhere, that subscribed to the idea that drugs could only take you so far, and as Tom Wolfe wrote, it was time to pass the acid test and graduate, with new insights gained, moving on to a higher ground.
The Diggers didn't appear out of thin air. In another tumultuous time, 17th century England, the original band arose, along with other 'Dissenters,' fighting with their very lives for a religious liberty, denied not only to Roman Catholics, but to anyone not ultimately subscribing to the commonwealth of Puritanism established by Oliver Cromwell. They desired a Jeffersonian, Peter Maurin/Catholic Worker agrarian communal society, based on the book of ACTS, that proposed a society much as envisioned later by the 20th century Diggers of the same name and trans-cultural ideology.
It's interesting to note when Cromwell was fighting for power, he was very tolerant and ecumenical in enlisting those who served his cause; but once, power was secured, dissent was eliminated. Is there any movement, ever in time, that doesn't produce this effect; where it isn't like The Who song, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
This is what we've been studying in Adult Sunday School as we examine the lives of the prophets - the great irony, of which Walter Brueggemann writes: when Israel was at the height of it's Solomonaic empire and power, it was most like, for the common people, living back in the pre-Exodus time of Pharaoh, from which God delivered His chosen ones. Can the fresh promise of any organizational exodus survive for long without the stultifying imposition of a new bureaucratic self-vested army of organizers who necessarily construct and protect, but, within the process, destroy the original freedom that gave birth to new ideas? In other words, to place it in the San Francisco context of the day, do anarchic child-like hippies always require the services of an authoritarian father like Bill Graham to stage the concerts?
Out of all historical context, the promise of America and Christianity is that within the framework of country and religion, an alternative vision continuously beckons away from the power of status quo and co-optive consumption to something new without destroying the steady yet yielding platform upon which it stands, pointing inevitably further to the shining city on the distant hill of America in the morning, and even beyond, over yonder, to the idyllic land of heavenly milk and honey.
Veterans day is not only about honoring the past; I have no doubt that those who died must have desired a better future worthy of a sacrifice of the magnitude they made. If not, then each death diminishes without raising us to the higher ground of the promised land; those places of which the Woodstockian dreamers sing their songs.
I don't buy into any argument that advocates a moral superiority of any person or group over any other. Notions of that sort were quashed after my time managing the homeless shelter. As we've discussed many times before, short of allying yourself with 'ism's carrying the potential or actuality for genocide, most situations aren't so easy to classify in terms of a morally superior good or non-circumstantial evil.
Though it was surpisingly bold and intentionally provocative (if not a bit tactless) for the paper to publish the piece on the day before the holiday), it certainly had stir-the-pot impact, enticing the usual rabid attack dog suspects to launch the wearying Goebellian tactics practiced by despots and muttonheads throughout the ages.
Painting with a wide brush of stereotypically based ridicule is the easy way here, to quote, "How can he say that those who participated in the perverted debauchery of Woodstock...," and "drug-induced escapism is not morally superior," and on and on. Then there are those, unlike me, who find it very easy to identify good and evil through elminating all the gray inbetween, such as, "You can't have it both ways. Either America is a country to be proud of...or it should be allowed to be destroyed by left-wing liberals who believe nothing is worth dying for," ending, obligatoriliy, of course, with a dig at a Clinton, doesn't matter which one.
Life negates the absence of gray. The deepest tendencies I hold are to what would be defined, minimally as liberal, and maximally, as far left, by the attack dogs above. Recognizing that, I served in the Navy, on the principle that in order to legitimately hold such views, it was necessary to participate within the civic framework constructed to protect the right to express them.
As far as countering the ridicule, events like Woodstock, were much more than a party-binge. As a barometer of the times, contrast the message and accompanying peaceful behavior observed in 1969 to the violent alcoholically fueled flames of mindless rage-driven riot at the 30th anniversary concert.
A non-consistently debauched, rather mysterious, group appeared in 1966 San Francisco called the Diggers, who engineered 'street happenings,' such as planting a 12 X 12 yellow square at the intersection of Haight and Ashbury Streets, urging people to look through so they could experience street theater through their own frame of reference. They opened a store where everything was free, including the contents of a cashbox labelled 'free money,' guarded by a sign that read, "No Stealing."
The Digger's goal was to portray American lives as if they were constructed by actors in a play, of which, alternative endings were possible - one theological current, leading to the idea that a person could be 'born again.' This is not 'drug-induced,' escapism - indeed, there were many in San Francisco, at the time, and elsewhere, that subscribed to the idea that drugs could only take you so far, and as Tom Wolfe wrote, it was time to pass the acid test and graduate, with new insights gained, moving on to a higher ground.
The Diggers didn't appear out of thin air. In another tumultuous time, 17th century England, the original band arose, along with other 'Dissenters,' fighting with their very lives for a religious liberty, denied not only to Roman Catholics, but to anyone not ultimately subscribing to the commonwealth of Puritanism established by Oliver Cromwell. They desired a Jeffersonian, Peter Maurin/Catholic Worker agrarian communal society, based on the book of ACTS, that proposed a society much as envisioned later by the 20th century Diggers of the same name and trans-cultural ideology.
It's interesting to note when Cromwell was fighting for power, he was very tolerant and ecumenical in enlisting those who served his cause; but once, power was secured, dissent was eliminated. Is there any movement, ever in time, that doesn't produce this effect; where it isn't like The Who song, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
This is what we've been studying in Adult Sunday School as we examine the lives of the prophets - the great irony, of which Walter Brueggemann writes: when Israel was at the height of it's Solomonaic empire and power, it was most like, for the common people, living back in the pre-Exodus time of Pharaoh, from which God delivered His chosen ones. Can the fresh promise of any organizational exodus survive for long without the stultifying imposition of a new bureaucratic self-vested army of organizers who necessarily construct and protect, but, within the process, destroy the original freedom that gave birth to new ideas? In other words, to place it in the San Francisco context of the day, do anarchic child-like hippies always require the services of an authoritarian father like Bill Graham to stage the concerts?
Out of all historical context, the promise of America and Christianity is that within the framework of country and religion, an alternative vision continuously beckons away from the power of status quo and co-optive consumption to something new without destroying the steady yet yielding platform upon which it stands, pointing inevitably further to the shining city on the distant hill of America in the morning, and even beyond, over yonder, to the idyllic land of heavenly milk and honey.
Veterans day is not only about honoring the past; I have no doubt that those who died must have desired a better future worthy of a sacrifice of the magnitude they made. If not, then each death diminishes without raising us to the higher ground of the promised land; those places of which the Woodstockian dreamers sing their songs.
Friday, November 9, 2007
Editorializing
I note this week, with Thanksgiving only two weeks away, a cornucopia of recent editorials, articles and quotes, in the 'comment-upon-later-file,' some of which, are to be very thankful for, others, not so much.
Last recently, during the week of October 12th, an editorial in the local rag marked the golden anniversary of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." The editorialist wrote, Rand became "a guru to millions with a novel that doubles as a guide to a new morality, one in which self-interest becomes not only the rational standard for a successful society, but a moral imperative."
Yesterday, reading the beloved Catholic Worker for October-November, which arrived this week, blessing the very mailbox itself (am I tipping my hand?), I noted the ususal comings and goings at Peter Maurin Farm, appended this time by: "There are always new people-it seems a miracle-just when we need them. We will disappoint some, our failures are more apparent than our successes. But others will see here the germ of that new society within the shell of the old in which it wil be easier to be good, formed upon an idea so old that it looks new, that is the gentle personalism of traditional Christianity."
Our story thus far: a Randian atheistic morality of self-interest versus the Maurian gentle personalism of an idealized Christianity.
Editorialist, Michael Gerson, extolling the late Governor of Pennsylvania: "Bob Casey called an absolute pro-choice position the cult of the imperial self - a belief that violated his sense of fairness and justice, rooted in the Catholic faith. And he set out to build a consistent culture of life, which included the poor, the elderly, and the handicapped. This kind of agenda could have a powerful appeal to many evangelicals, who are looking for a broader model of public engagement - a larger vision of social justice - than the Relgious Right has provided."
Speaking of evangelicals, editorialist Michael McManus, noted how Richard Cizik, VP of the National Association of Evangelicals, led the NAE, against much fundamentalist opposition, to publish a broader than usual position paper, 'An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility.' He quoted Cizik: "What evangelicals can do is help people come through a huge intellectual shift on every level. We as Americans will have to change the ways we think if we are to win on such issues as climate and poverty."
Page II: Does the second matched set of editorials establish a plausible big tent between extremes of Randian economic self-interest and Maurian communal personalism, in which some of us who read this blog may comfortably fit?
Onward, literary soldiers, to storm the next twin battlements perched on the editorial horizon -
The Anglican Communion Official Website presents a report from the Church of Nigeria entitled, problematically, The Listening Process: "The Western idea of human rights is subservient to the service of the common good. The so called 'right' to homosexual orientation threatens the order of society because the continuation of the race is threatened by gay practice. In Nigeria, the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act of 2006 is passing through the legislature. It bans same sex unions, all homosexual acts and the formation of any gay groups. The Standing Committee of the Church of Nigeria has twice commended the act in their Message to the Nation."
We end our battlefield tour with a contrasting interview to the press release above. The question: I think it's hard to classify anybody, really, if you look at their whole spectrum of opinions, but for the most part how would you label yourself politically? The reply: I think what they would call me is a bleeding-heart liberal, because I love the environment, I love the animals, I want to help old people, I want to help kids. I want to help all the ones who can't help themselves."
The interviewee is a magnificent athelete who's inspired millions to strive towards physical fitness by continuing to play well beyond the ages of most, if not all, the other professionals within her sport (and the rest of us who had to give up softball at 40). She's involved in a faithful and monogamous relationship; nary a hint of any sort of scandal during a very long career. Who is it? Martina Navratilova.
To sum the cornucopia file review: 1) Randian atheistic self-interest; 2) Maurian Christian personalism; 3) Caseyian big tent; 4) Cizikian big tent; 5) Akinolistic religous and legislative exclusionism; 6) Navratilovian liberalism.
If we play the match game, could Akinoliisticism find any other match than allied with an amoral self-interest (though there is still a dark corner within Cizikianism where Akinolisticism finds a home as well). There is no possible match between Navratilovianism with Akinolisticism. Navatilovianism can not be excluded, likewise, from co-existence with Maurianism or Caseyianism. If Navratilovianism yet finds a match in Cizikianism (they already jibe on climate and poverty as you can see), the final score is 4 to 2, it's game, set and match, and the Spotsyltuckian will host a big tent revival in which to celebrate and praise God.
In some editorials, like Gerson's above, Dr. Martin Luther King is portrayed as an icon as to how Christians can influence politics. If you would venture to describe him so, you omit the language of his brilliant Letter from a Birmingham Jail. He wrote when religion serves to upgrade humanity, it is just, but when its employed to degrade humanity, it is unjust. You can make a case with great certainty, citing all we've discussed here today, that what Dr. King sacrificed his life to achieve, would find little in common with Randianism, and no match at all with Akinolisticism.
Dostoyevsky wrote out of all revoluntionary groups in 19th century Russia, anarchist, communist, socialist, etc., Christian socialists were by far the most dangerous due to their unshakable, yet humble, self-assurance that their utopian vision would some day result in the Kingdom of God on earth. If Dr. King was just embarking on his struggle for Civil Rights, in opposition to a Biblically-justified segregation, he'd not only ignite the wrath of atheistic Randians, but a far more dangerous and wealthy media-savvy Randian fundamentalist zealotry, that'd stop at nothing to preserve the economic self-interests of their authoritarian-minded cultural status quo.
The Latina I wrote of last week did not win election to the Board of Supervisors within a frenzied County atmosphere of anti-immigrant hysteria. Her campaign bore similarities to early civil rights marches. Reflecting upon that, friend Mark and I debated the nature of prejudice and apathy in suburbia. As far as prejudice goes, it may be most like what the famed Supreme Court justice once said about pornography: I know it when I see it.
Of the 'ism's cited in this week's blog, Akinolisticism is the only one where I have no qualms plainly describing it as an inherently evil theology that masks its prejudice and degrades humanity - of such a nature and degree that Mark and I draw instinctively away. Rather than point the way to a society where its easier for humanity to be good, it creates all the familiar conditions to bring out the worst, as other like exclusionary movements that carried the potential for genocide, did throughout the 20th century. It finds no match in our churches, families, or lives. I pray one day it finds no match anywhere.
Last recently, during the week of October 12th, an editorial in the local rag marked the golden anniversary of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." The editorialist wrote, Rand became "a guru to millions with a novel that doubles as a guide to a new morality, one in which self-interest becomes not only the rational standard for a successful society, but a moral imperative."
Yesterday, reading the beloved Catholic Worker for October-November, which arrived this week, blessing the very mailbox itself (am I tipping my hand?), I noted the ususal comings and goings at Peter Maurin Farm, appended this time by: "There are always new people-it seems a miracle-just when we need them. We will disappoint some, our failures are more apparent than our successes. But others will see here the germ of that new society within the shell of the old in which it wil be easier to be good, formed upon an idea so old that it looks new, that is the gentle personalism of traditional Christianity."
Our story thus far: a Randian atheistic morality of self-interest versus the Maurian gentle personalism of an idealized Christianity.
Editorialist, Michael Gerson, extolling the late Governor of Pennsylvania: "Bob Casey called an absolute pro-choice position the cult of the imperial self - a belief that violated his sense of fairness and justice, rooted in the Catholic faith. And he set out to build a consistent culture of life, which included the poor, the elderly, and the handicapped. This kind of agenda could have a powerful appeal to many evangelicals, who are looking for a broader model of public engagement - a larger vision of social justice - than the Relgious Right has provided."
Speaking of evangelicals, editorialist Michael McManus, noted how Richard Cizik, VP of the National Association of Evangelicals, led the NAE, against much fundamentalist opposition, to publish a broader than usual position paper, 'An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility.' He quoted Cizik: "What evangelicals can do is help people come through a huge intellectual shift on every level. We as Americans will have to change the ways we think if we are to win on such issues as climate and poverty."
Page II: Does the second matched set of editorials establish a plausible big tent between extremes of Randian economic self-interest and Maurian communal personalism, in which some of us who read this blog may comfortably fit?
Onward, literary soldiers, to storm the next twin battlements perched on the editorial horizon -
The Anglican Communion Official Website presents a report from the Church of Nigeria entitled, problematically, The Listening Process: "The Western idea of human rights is subservient to the service of the common good. The so called 'right' to homosexual orientation threatens the order of society because the continuation of the race is threatened by gay practice. In Nigeria, the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act of 2006 is passing through the legislature. It bans same sex unions, all homosexual acts and the formation of any gay groups. The Standing Committee of the Church of Nigeria has twice commended the act in their Message to the Nation."
We end our battlefield tour with a contrasting interview to the press release above. The question: I think it's hard to classify anybody, really, if you look at their whole spectrum of opinions, but for the most part how would you label yourself politically? The reply: I think what they would call me is a bleeding-heart liberal, because I love the environment, I love the animals, I want to help old people, I want to help kids. I want to help all the ones who can't help themselves."
The interviewee is a magnificent athelete who's inspired millions to strive towards physical fitness by continuing to play well beyond the ages of most, if not all, the other professionals within her sport (and the rest of us who had to give up softball at 40). She's involved in a faithful and monogamous relationship; nary a hint of any sort of scandal during a very long career. Who is it? Martina Navratilova.
To sum the cornucopia file review: 1) Randian atheistic self-interest; 2) Maurian Christian personalism; 3) Caseyian big tent; 4) Cizikian big tent; 5) Akinolistic religous and legislative exclusionism; 6) Navratilovian liberalism.
If we play the match game, could Akinoliisticism find any other match than allied with an amoral self-interest (though there is still a dark corner within Cizikianism where Akinolisticism finds a home as well). There is no possible match between Navratilovianism with Akinolisticism. Navatilovianism can not be excluded, likewise, from co-existence with Maurianism or Caseyianism. If Navratilovianism yet finds a match in Cizikianism (they already jibe on climate and poverty as you can see), the final score is 4 to 2, it's game, set and match, and the Spotsyltuckian will host a big tent revival in which to celebrate and praise God.
In some editorials, like Gerson's above, Dr. Martin Luther King is portrayed as an icon as to how Christians can influence politics. If you would venture to describe him so, you omit the language of his brilliant Letter from a Birmingham Jail. He wrote when religion serves to upgrade humanity, it is just, but when its employed to degrade humanity, it is unjust. You can make a case with great certainty, citing all we've discussed here today, that what Dr. King sacrificed his life to achieve, would find little in common with Randianism, and no match at all with Akinolisticism.
Dostoyevsky wrote out of all revoluntionary groups in 19th century Russia, anarchist, communist, socialist, etc., Christian socialists were by far the most dangerous due to their unshakable, yet humble, self-assurance that their utopian vision would some day result in the Kingdom of God on earth. If Dr. King was just embarking on his struggle for Civil Rights, in opposition to a Biblically-justified segregation, he'd not only ignite the wrath of atheistic Randians, but a far more dangerous and wealthy media-savvy Randian fundamentalist zealotry, that'd stop at nothing to preserve the economic self-interests of their authoritarian-minded cultural status quo.
The Latina I wrote of last week did not win election to the Board of Supervisors within a frenzied County atmosphere of anti-immigrant hysteria. Her campaign bore similarities to early civil rights marches. Reflecting upon that, friend Mark and I debated the nature of prejudice and apathy in suburbia. As far as prejudice goes, it may be most like what the famed Supreme Court justice once said about pornography: I know it when I see it.
Of the 'ism's cited in this week's blog, Akinolisticism is the only one where I have no qualms plainly describing it as an inherently evil theology that masks its prejudice and degrades humanity - of such a nature and degree that Mark and I draw instinctively away. Rather than point the way to a society where its easier for humanity to be good, it creates all the familiar conditions to bring out the worst, as other like exclusionary movements that carried the potential for genocide, did throughout the 20th century. It finds no match in our churches, families, or lives. I pray one day it finds no match anywhere.
Friday, November 2, 2007
Take a Bite out of Hate
I note this week a friend is running for office in a county that's just passed strong anti-immigrant legislation. Originally from El Salvador, she's been in the US for decades. She's risen from custodial work to professional advocacy. A few years ago I witnessed an inspirational rally she organized on Capitol Hill to raise awareness and funds to fight breast cancer. Why did she decide to run? When this accomplished American citizen, by choice rather than birth, drove around the town where she's lived for years, without incident, with her daughter by her side, other drivers, frenzied imbeciles stirred up either by the anti-immigrant legislation debate, the sight of her Latina appearance, her quaint Kerry for President bumper stickers, or the combination of all three, shouted curses and insults.
I note another story this week in the New York Post where a swastika was painted on the door of a Jewish professor at Columbia University which may have been a result of his opposition to the visit on campus by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In contrast, I read a letter from a lawyer who works at the Rutherford Institute, as well as an article by its founder, John Whitehead, who both argue against the passage of hate crimes legislation by citing the rights of religious people "to take positions and to express them in politics or anywhere else."
The Institute argues, for example, in the case of Matthew Shepherd, that since the murderers are in jail as a result of laws against killing already on the books, there's no need for hate crimes legislation. As I've surfed cable channels recently, I've watched several televangelists exhort their number one priority at this time is halting the passage of hate crimes legislation.
I'll grant murder is a heinous crime despite the reason and there are severe penalties already on the books for this extreme form of violence. Let's return, however, to the crime of the swastika on the door. In that case, do you think it sufficient to charge the perpetrator with vandalism alone? Would that not miss the point of the crime and deleterious example of its prosecution and punishment?
Back in the county where my friend is running for election, there's been a concurrent hate crime that may or may not be related in these ferentic days of politician-driven anger. A noose was tied to a tree in the yard of an African-American family. If the perpetrator is caught and tried, what charge other than a hate crime, could there be? Indeed, perhaps the local police may also have pondered whether there's a penalty for the crime since they've chosen to dismiss the deed as a teenage prank.
Examining the Rutherford article further, I came across, "Despite some differences in theology, the Framers generally agreed that just laws were God-given, absolute and revealed to human beings through Scripture (such as the Ten Commandments), nature and conscience." Further on, he writes, in comparison, "Secularists generally claim human happiness as the sole measure by which to make moral, and thus religious, judgments."
Let's deal with the sly secularist slur first. A quick look-up in the first two dictionaries I reached provided these definitions for secularism: (1) one who is concerned with the interests and welfare of humans; (2) affirms our ability and responsibility to lead meaningful, ethical, lives capable of adding to the greater good of humanity.
Happiness in itself isn't mentioned, let alone, in the not so subtle selfish way Whitehead portrays. It's as if he doesn't recognize humanitarian ethics at all outside of a religious context; therefore if hate crimes legislation, a secular and ethical matter, contrasts with what he discerns as a superior religious mandate, it follows in his logic and advocacy that some violations of civil and human rights are acceptable, protected and incorporated within the freedoms guaranteed to the majority unless otherwise defined in another way as a strictly criminal violation. Hate crimes, defined by self-appointed Constitutional protectionists like Whitehead are not only victimless crimes, despite the emotional toil taken by the Jewish professor and African-American family, they're perpetratorless crimes too, since no offense has been committed; only the non-physical First Amendment came truly under assault.
Concerning the Framers, most historians describe them as Deists rather than religious absolutists. In general, according to Wikipedia, "Deism is a religious philosophy and movement that derives the existence and nature of God from reason and personal experience, in contrast to theism which relies on revelation in sacred scriptures or the testimony of other people. Deists typically tend to assert that God does not interfere with human life and the laws of the universe."
I've wondered from time to time, if I might be one. Deists are defined negatively and positively. The four constructive elements are: (1) God exists and created the Universe; (2) God wants human beings to behave morally; (3) Human beings have souls that survive death; that is, there is an afterlife; (4) In the afterlife, God will reward moral behavior and punish immoral behavior. So far, so good, I could be a Deist, just like Jefferson, Franklin and Washington.
The four negative elements are: (1) Rejection of all religions based on books that claim to contain the revealed word of God; (2) Rejection of reports of miracles, prophecies and religious "mysteries;" (3) Rejection of the Genesis account of creation and the doctrine of original sin, along with all similar beliefs; (4) Rejection of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and other religious beliefs. Uh Oh. As far as negative elements 1, 2, 3 and 4: No, no, no and no. I reckon I'm not a Deist, after all.
So, what am I? Hard to describe, really. If I had a dollar for everyone that's called me "unique," in the past month, I'd be a wealthy man. When that friend who's running for office told me she intended to hold a solidarity press conference with other minority candidates, I asked, "what about minority group's x, y and z?" She said, "who are you, Noah?" Might that mean I'm an-Ark-ist?
I'm more concerned about civil and human rights for minorities than the unrestricted rights of a majority unconcerned about the consequences of their speech and actions. I love to intellectually engage Scripture and commentaries of every translation and discernment, imagine who might have wrote it, and why; what it meant in its original context, and what ancient and modern interpretators claim it means today. I don't envision a small God carrying a clipboard of rules, like a referee; I locate a divine God of immanence in my heart, the grandeur of nature, and, especially, within the scope of the reason and intelligence with which I've been blessed that allows me to contemplate truth, beauty and a just world. I pray; most prayers have been answered by a God Who listens and responds. I'm at my very best in church, amongst people, who through their example, elevate my behavior so that I understand consequences for good and bad behavior, and make more good conduct choices than bad as a result. I know it's the vilest of sins to create a hell on earth for anyone, like my friend the candidate, the Jewish professor, and that African-American family, despite any other intentions, and that the attainment and enshrinement of dignity, human rights and justice, for all, here and now, is the way of faith, redemption and salvation for humanity. Rather than religious absolutism, I believe this is what the Framers had in mind for the position of an exclusive religion within a pluralistic republic: after all, they were Episcopalians.
Why is it so 'unique,' to believe these things? As written in the materials I've read in preparation to teach the upcoming Sunday school class on the Prophets, it's much easier to describe evil, as they did, then to prophecize what God's Kingdom on earth might resemble. Indeed, that's the most elusive concept of all. I'm all for hate crimes legislation. It's a matter of responsibility over rights; a choice necessary in order to supersede the unchecked rights of a majority inaccurately portrayed as the threatened entity rather than the actual victim.
I note another story this week in the New York Post where a swastika was painted on the door of a Jewish professor at Columbia University which may have been a result of his opposition to the visit on campus by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In contrast, I read a letter from a lawyer who works at the Rutherford Institute, as well as an article by its founder, John Whitehead, who both argue against the passage of hate crimes legislation by citing the rights of religious people "to take positions and to express them in politics or anywhere else."
The Institute argues, for example, in the case of Matthew Shepherd, that since the murderers are in jail as a result of laws against killing already on the books, there's no need for hate crimes legislation. As I've surfed cable channels recently, I've watched several televangelists exhort their number one priority at this time is halting the passage of hate crimes legislation.
I'll grant murder is a heinous crime despite the reason and there are severe penalties already on the books for this extreme form of violence. Let's return, however, to the crime of the swastika on the door. In that case, do you think it sufficient to charge the perpetrator with vandalism alone? Would that not miss the point of the crime and deleterious example of its prosecution and punishment?
Back in the county where my friend is running for election, there's been a concurrent hate crime that may or may not be related in these ferentic days of politician-driven anger. A noose was tied to a tree in the yard of an African-American family. If the perpetrator is caught and tried, what charge other than a hate crime, could there be? Indeed, perhaps the local police may also have pondered whether there's a penalty for the crime since they've chosen to dismiss the deed as a teenage prank.
Examining the Rutherford article further, I came across, "Despite some differences in theology, the Framers generally agreed that just laws were God-given, absolute and revealed to human beings through Scripture (such as the Ten Commandments), nature and conscience." Further on, he writes, in comparison, "Secularists generally claim human happiness as the sole measure by which to make moral, and thus religious, judgments."
Let's deal with the sly secularist slur first. A quick look-up in the first two dictionaries I reached provided these definitions for secularism: (1) one who is concerned with the interests and welfare of humans; (2) affirms our ability and responsibility to lead meaningful, ethical, lives capable of adding to the greater good of humanity.
Happiness in itself isn't mentioned, let alone, in the not so subtle selfish way Whitehead portrays. It's as if he doesn't recognize humanitarian ethics at all outside of a religious context; therefore if hate crimes legislation, a secular and ethical matter, contrasts with what he discerns as a superior religious mandate, it follows in his logic and advocacy that some violations of civil and human rights are acceptable, protected and incorporated within the freedoms guaranteed to the majority unless otherwise defined in another way as a strictly criminal violation. Hate crimes, defined by self-appointed Constitutional protectionists like Whitehead are not only victimless crimes, despite the emotional toil taken by the Jewish professor and African-American family, they're perpetratorless crimes too, since no offense has been committed; only the non-physical First Amendment came truly under assault.
Concerning the Framers, most historians describe them as Deists rather than religious absolutists. In general, according to Wikipedia, "Deism is a religious philosophy and movement that derives the existence and nature of God from reason and personal experience, in contrast to theism which relies on revelation in sacred scriptures or the testimony of other people. Deists typically tend to assert that God does not interfere with human life and the laws of the universe."
I've wondered from time to time, if I might be one. Deists are defined negatively and positively. The four constructive elements are: (1) God exists and created the Universe; (2) God wants human beings to behave morally; (3) Human beings have souls that survive death; that is, there is an afterlife; (4) In the afterlife, God will reward moral behavior and punish immoral behavior. So far, so good, I could be a Deist, just like Jefferson, Franklin and Washington.
The four negative elements are: (1) Rejection of all religions based on books that claim to contain the revealed word of God; (2) Rejection of reports of miracles, prophecies and religious "mysteries;" (3) Rejection of the Genesis account of creation and the doctrine of original sin, along with all similar beliefs; (4) Rejection of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and other religious beliefs. Uh Oh. As far as negative elements 1, 2, 3 and 4: No, no, no and no. I reckon I'm not a Deist, after all.
So, what am I? Hard to describe, really. If I had a dollar for everyone that's called me "unique," in the past month, I'd be a wealthy man. When that friend who's running for office told me she intended to hold a solidarity press conference with other minority candidates, I asked, "what about minority group's x, y and z?" She said, "who are you, Noah?" Might that mean I'm an-Ark-ist?
I'm more concerned about civil and human rights for minorities than the unrestricted rights of a majority unconcerned about the consequences of their speech and actions. I love to intellectually engage Scripture and commentaries of every translation and discernment, imagine who might have wrote it, and why; what it meant in its original context, and what ancient and modern interpretators claim it means today. I don't envision a small God carrying a clipboard of rules, like a referee; I locate a divine God of immanence in my heart, the grandeur of nature, and, especially, within the scope of the reason and intelligence with which I've been blessed that allows me to contemplate truth, beauty and a just world. I pray; most prayers have been answered by a God Who listens and responds. I'm at my very best in church, amongst people, who through their example, elevate my behavior so that I understand consequences for good and bad behavior, and make more good conduct choices than bad as a result. I know it's the vilest of sins to create a hell on earth for anyone, like my friend the candidate, the Jewish professor, and that African-American family, despite any other intentions, and that the attainment and enshrinement of dignity, human rights and justice, for all, here and now, is the way of faith, redemption and salvation for humanity. Rather than religious absolutism, I believe this is what the Framers had in mind for the position of an exclusive religion within a pluralistic republic: after all, they were Episcopalians.
Why is it so 'unique,' to believe these things? As written in the materials I've read in preparation to teach the upcoming Sunday school class on the Prophets, it's much easier to describe evil, as they did, then to prophecize what God's Kingdom on earth might resemble. Indeed, that's the most elusive concept of all. I'm all for hate crimes legislation. It's a matter of responsibility over rights; a choice necessary in order to supersede the unchecked rights of a majority inaccurately portrayed as the threatened entity rather than the actual victim.
Friday, October 26, 2007
I, Robocrat
I note this week I sat in on an interview panel, as a civil rights advisor, for the open position of an accountant at our firm. As one of the applicant's attributes, she advertised a Master's degree, not just in accounting, but in the way it's performed as an IT function. It turned out the job qualifications weren't how a person might calculate a ledger of assets and expenses but how to perform as a project manager skilled in the successful compilation of performance measures, not to pass financial audits, but to accreditate security credentials, and to acquire passing grades mandated by legislative acts (though I'm not sure who ultimately marks the pass/fail grades - I suspect there may be no wizard behind the curtain).
It's yet one more sign the world's passed me by. There's no longer a place on any shelf for those oversized leather volumes of economic activity with the year embossed on a binding that resembles a guitar neck. The only use they serve now is to capture the ancient daily life of a parish or firm, for a specialized historian, where other than a name, date, event description and transaction amount, the lives of a corporate tribe have long vanished from the stage.
Ledgers can tell a dramatic story if there are eyes to see and ears to listen. When parish pledges in sixteenth century England, for example, no longer funded the construction of dedicated chapels and statues of saints, it meant the idea of praying to those residing in the limbo of purgatory had passed, and all of those monies and energies were secuarly freed to build an English nation able to resist the Armada.
At my company, I've nurtured and championed machines installed thirty years ago, that still outperform more modern equipment. They are German-built; all mechanical parts and electrical lines; not a chip to be found. Despite their established success and dependability, there's a plan afoot and well advanced to culminate their many years of useful service. One of our directors said in an open forum that the firm was looking for something other than dependability - the very quality I've devoted my career to achieving and maintaining. Although I've cast every bureaucratic trick from out from under my viser of spells to ward off the impending armageddon, the end draws near.
My machines are fast and dumb. Their downfall from grace is accredited to their lack of intelligence. Although, they require special skills of their own to run efficiently, those talents are no longer admired or appreciated. The men that installed them were rough and tough mechanical cowboys. Some carried, not papers, but bottles of Schnapps in their briefcases; some were 'white-tie' mechanics - those that could wear a white shirt whilst repairing a machine and rise from the job without a speck of grease upon them. Some were 'hammer' mechanics whose motto was, don't force it, get a bigger hammer; these hardy machines of case-hardened steel could withstand even the foulest of tempraments.
After work, we'd repair to a local tavern, argue till the wee hours over the best oil to apply to a chain, then take the discussion outside for resolution. Such exciting times are finished forever: there's no room for anything today that resembles even mock-agreesive behavior, even if it's borne of a deep passion not possible if you'd been otherwise debating which button to best push on a computer console control module.
Fifteen years ago, or so, I visited a factory where other long abandoned machines were made. At dusk one day, while the sunlight filtered in from a skylight, a man stood in front of a music stand upon which stood an illuminated manuscript. The craftsman slowly, expertly, carved raised arabic letters onto a steel print drum, a job that today would be programmed on a computer. There's no longer any need now for high-speed, large volume impact printers, anyway. What have we lost?
To blow off steam after finals in college, we'd drive to clay pits in the country, to shoot historical weapons we'd collected as period pieces. When you slid the bolt on a standard German Army-issue Mauser rifle, took aim and fired, the gun became an extension of your body - the entire action was elegantly bio-mechanical. It's simply a manufacturing story of a factory task well executed by the loving hands of experienced craftsmen, not the tale of a box assembled by anonymous laborers in a pristine germ-free lab.
I note the story this week of a woman who called for a cable upgrade installaion. No one came on the appointed day. When a technician arrived, two days later, he failed to complete the set-up. The next day, the company cut off the service altogether. She drove to the office. She waited two hours, only to be told the manager had left for the day. She went back the next day, hammer in hand, and smashed a keyboard, monitor and telephone. She was charged with disorderly conduct, received a 3-month suspsended sentence and a $345 fine. She said, "many people have called me a hero. But no, I'm just an old lady who got mad. I had a hissy fit."
It'd be too ironic if I was complaining about technology while writing on a blog in cyber space. Yet, the anger I feel when I can't access something, or if its to slow, is of a degree I don't experience with any other usual frustration in my life. I'm not sure why that is and I know it's not healthy. Maybe it's because there's no chance I can act like a hammer mechanic with this equipment, though there are times I've come awfully close.
I'm sure glad I'll retire prior to the final destruction of my beloved machines. I suppose that's the way people felt when machines replaced artisians in the early 1800's, and trains replaced horses. They wouldn't have thought machines or trains had souls. I don't think computers have souls; I think they may be the devil. Yet those early machines and trains are the subject of much love and devotion today. I'm the last one around the firm that can relay the venerable stories of my machines - when I leave, and the machines are gone, these old dependable warhorses will possess no history to speak of and will pass unmourned unless a historian, 500 years from now, uncovers their record of unblemished dependability in the production and on-time delivery of billions of units and marvels at how that may have been possible.
Will someone love the computers that are killing my machines like I love what they're replacing? It's hard to envision. When you grow old, your way of life passes you by. You go along for the ride as much as you can and throw a hissy fit now and then when it all becomes too much. That may be all you can do, for time and tide, wait for no one.
It's yet one more sign the world's passed me by. There's no longer a place on any shelf for those oversized leather volumes of economic activity with the year embossed on a binding that resembles a guitar neck. The only use they serve now is to capture the ancient daily life of a parish or firm, for a specialized historian, where other than a name, date, event description and transaction amount, the lives of a corporate tribe have long vanished from the stage.
Ledgers can tell a dramatic story if there are eyes to see and ears to listen. When parish pledges in sixteenth century England, for example, no longer funded the construction of dedicated chapels and statues of saints, it meant the idea of praying to those residing in the limbo of purgatory had passed, and all of those monies and energies were secuarly freed to build an English nation able to resist the Armada.
At my company, I've nurtured and championed machines installed thirty years ago, that still outperform more modern equipment. They are German-built; all mechanical parts and electrical lines; not a chip to be found. Despite their established success and dependability, there's a plan afoot and well advanced to culminate their many years of useful service. One of our directors said in an open forum that the firm was looking for something other than dependability - the very quality I've devoted my career to achieving and maintaining. Although I've cast every bureaucratic trick from out from under my viser of spells to ward off the impending armageddon, the end draws near.
My machines are fast and dumb. Their downfall from grace is accredited to their lack of intelligence. Although, they require special skills of their own to run efficiently, those talents are no longer admired or appreciated. The men that installed them were rough and tough mechanical cowboys. Some carried, not papers, but bottles of Schnapps in their briefcases; some were 'white-tie' mechanics - those that could wear a white shirt whilst repairing a machine and rise from the job without a speck of grease upon them. Some were 'hammer' mechanics whose motto was, don't force it, get a bigger hammer; these hardy machines of case-hardened steel could withstand even the foulest of tempraments.
After work, we'd repair to a local tavern, argue till the wee hours over the best oil to apply to a chain, then take the discussion outside for resolution. Such exciting times are finished forever: there's no room for anything today that resembles even mock-agreesive behavior, even if it's borne of a deep passion not possible if you'd been otherwise debating which button to best push on a computer console control module.
Fifteen years ago, or so, I visited a factory where other long abandoned machines were made. At dusk one day, while the sunlight filtered in from a skylight, a man stood in front of a music stand upon which stood an illuminated manuscript. The craftsman slowly, expertly, carved raised arabic letters onto a steel print drum, a job that today would be programmed on a computer. There's no longer any need now for high-speed, large volume impact printers, anyway. What have we lost?
To blow off steam after finals in college, we'd drive to clay pits in the country, to shoot historical weapons we'd collected as period pieces. When you slid the bolt on a standard German Army-issue Mauser rifle, took aim and fired, the gun became an extension of your body - the entire action was elegantly bio-mechanical. It's simply a manufacturing story of a factory task well executed by the loving hands of experienced craftsmen, not the tale of a box assembled by anonymous laborers in a pristine germ-free lab.
I note the story this week of a woman who called for a cable upgrade installaion. No one came on the appointed day. When a technician arrived, two days later, he failed to complete the set-up. The next day, the company cut off the service altogether. She drove to the office. She waited two hours, only to be told the manager had left for the day. She went back the next day, hammer in hand, and smashed a keyboard, monitor and telephone. She was charged with disorderly conduct, received a 3-month suspsended sentence and a $345 fine. She said, "many people have called me a hero. But no, I'm just an old lady who got mad. I had a hissy fit."
It'd be too ironic if I was complaining about technology while writing on a blog in cyber space. Yet, the anger I feel when I can't access something, or if its to slow, is of a degree I don't experience with any other usual frustration in my life. I'm not sure why that is and I know it's not healthy. Maybe it's because there's no chance I can act like a hammer mechanic with this equipment, though there are times I've come awfully close.
I'm sure glad I'll retire prior to the final destruction of my beloved machines. I suppose that's the way people felt when machines replaced artisians in the early 1800's, and trains replaced horses. They wouldn't have thought machines or trains had souls. I don't think computers have souls; I think they may be the devil. Yet those early machines and trains are the subject of much love and devotion today. I'm the last one around the firm that can relay the venerable stories of my machines - when I leave, and the machines are gone, these old dependable warhorses will possess no history to speak of and will pass unmourned unless a historian, 500 years from now, uncovers their record of unblemished dependability in the production and on-time delivery of billions of units and marvels at how that may have been possible.
Will someone love the computers that are killing my machines like I love what they're replacing? It's hard to envision. When you grow old, your way of life passes you by. You go along for the ride as much as you can and throw a hissy fit now and then when it all becomes too much. That may be all you can do, for time and tide, wait for no one.
Friday, October 19, 2007
The Crazy Uncle
I note this week everyone I know has at least one crazy uncle in the family. After my sister's wedding, we were lined up, per usual, outside the chapel, ready to throw rice, and here comes Uncle J, drunk as a lord, who stumbles a few feet and falls flat on his face.
This startling event happens all the time when I read the First Things magazine. There are brilliant letters and articles on history, theology and culture throughout, before the end-piece, The Public Square, where Father Neuhaus comments on the news of the day. It's like watching Uncle J plow through those doors and drop, over and over again.
Such was my experience in reaching the end of Norman Podhoretz' The Prophets which I studied in preparation to teach an upcoming class in our Adult Sunday School. All's well from page 1 through 344; during the final 14 (only .038% of the book), Podhoretz not only falls, but he flies, over the barriers, right off the road, like an out-of-control DUI.
Uncle Pod, consistently, before the accident, coherently synthesizes much serious scholarship. Like how the Prophets running commentaries on society, politics and history drew the attention of their audience to what they could and couldn't control in their lives and Who ultimately was in charge. How manners count if not elevated to self-righteousness, and how all those who nominate for sainthood should be closely watched. How there are Barthian-style limits, as we've been discussing in the past few week, to applying Biblical principles, in the creation of a perfect society on earth, and how secular prophets always fail when they establish a new regime devoid of any religious principles.
That last point is a tricky, if not downright ironic, where Uncle Pod is concerned for he's a founding neo-con if not theo-con. In one sense, he denounces appeasement with nations he can clearly identify as evil, even if others disagree, just as the ancient rulers of Israel unsuccessfully concluded alliances that thwarted God's plans. In another sense, though, isn't his advoacy of the idea that one country can import and impose its way of life upon another, an example of the idealism to which he contends is very limited in application?
It's a debate that could be, and is presently, conducted by people of good will, albeit an area where opinions and subsequent government policies have deadly consequences. At this point, though, Uncle Pod and I are still driving down the road civilly discussing these points. It's at the next intersection that the car starts to shake like we might have hit someone lying in the road.
U.P. contends, and I fully agree, that the Prophets never advocated not fulfilling the law when it came to Temple ritual. He writes convincingly that God's greatest desire was that the ritual not be rote, but sincere and meaningful, since if it wasn't, then the hypocrites offering the sacrifice revered other idol's than God.
Uncle Pod insists this is the primary Law that must be fulfilled above all others, and not to perform and conform in this way, labels one 'antinomian,' or anti-law. I'll digress a bit here and note this week it's the 60th anniversary of Levittown. I didn't live there but did reside for three years in its sister city on Long Island, Hicksville (famed mostly as the hometown of Billy Joel). Those affordable starter homes for the Greatest Generation were subsequently mocked and derided as ticky-tacky "Little Boxes," the very symbol of suburban conformity. Gosh, my memories are anything but - those summer days, in the backyard, lying literally under the apple tree, reading Superman and Sports Illustrated, are the fondest times in my memory of overwhelming warmth and peace.
Anyhow, back to the story of my harrowing drive with crazy Uncle Pod for this is the point where he veers suddenly and violently to the right. He blurts out, screaming at the top of his lungs, that the entire counter-culture generation is antinomian since "it attempted to invert the moral order of the middle class which had itself grown out of the biblical tradition." Say, what? The Bible foretold of the establishment of the Kingdom of God and a Davidic dynasty on a city on the hill named Levittown?
My crazy uncle is frothing at the lips, hollerng about Black Masses, and that most awful of awfulest compendium, the very essence of the liberal agenda of sin: tolerance, multi-culturalism, diversity, conservation, gay rights, featuring, of course, Adam and Steve, and horror of all horrors, working mothers, who in their neglect of children, are no better than the pagans of ancient days that sacrified their children in the fires of Molech.
By this time, I'm clawing at the door locks, leaping from the car. Guess I'll have to hitchhike home. Yet, try this on, Uncle Pod: what the counter-culture was saying, just like the Prophets you revere, is that the emptiness of living a life of habitual ritual while the world offered so much potential for sincere joy, love and meaningful existence, is a waste of time.
All those labels you pin upon us as sin, we carry proudly: wise stewardship of the environment; liberating women to be good mothers, if that is there choice, and anything else they want to be if they choose another path; freeing our glbt brothers and sisters from a life of prejudice and violence so they can live in peace on equal terms with everyone else; celebrating a natural world wide diversity and multi-culturalism where there is no need for agressive adventures by any one nation over another.
We believe in the strength of a nuclear family, and the spiritual extended family of humanity, even if our family may look a little different than those in your day. Even you are still a part of our family, dear Uncle Pod, and we love you; we just wish you'd get some help.
This startling event happens all the time when I read the First Things magazine. There are brilliant letters and articles on history, theology and culture throughout, before the end-piece, The Public Square, where Father Neuhaus comments on the news of the day. It's like watching Uncle J plow through those doors and drop, over and over again.
Such was my experience in reaching the end of Norman Podhoretz' The Prophets which I studied in preparation to teach an upcoming class in our Adult Sunday School. All's well from page 1 through 344; during the final 14 (only .038% of the book), Podhoretz not only falls, but he flies, over the barriers, right off the road, like an out-of-control DUI.
Uncle Pod, consistently, before the accident, coherently synthesizes much serious scholarship. Like how the Prophets running commentaries on society, politics and history drew the attention of their audience to what they could and couldn't control in their lives and Who ultimately was in charge. How manners count if not elevated to self-righteousness, and how all those who nominate for sainthood should be closely watched. How there are Barthian-style limits, as we've been discussing in the past few week, to applying Biblical principles, in the creation of a perfect society on earth, and how secular prophets always fail when they establish a new regime devoid of any religious principles.
That last point is a tricky, if not downright ironic, where Uncle Pod is concerned for he's a founding neo-con if not theo-con. In one sense, he denounces appeasement with nations he can clearly identify as evil, even if others disagree, just as the ancient rulers of Israel unsuccessfully concluded alliances that thwarted God's plans. In another sense, though, isn't his advoacy of the idea that one country can import and impose its way of life upon another, an example of the idealism to which he contends is very limited in application?
It's a debate that could be, and is presently, conducted by people of good will, albeit an area where opinions and subsequent government policies have deadly consequences. At this point, though, Uncle Pod and I are still driving down the road civilly discussing these points. It's at the next intersection that the car starts to shake like we might have hit someone lying in the road.
U.P. contends, and I fully agree, that the Prophets never advocated not fulfilling the law when it came to Temple ritual. He writes convincingly that God's greatest desire was that the ritual not be rote, but sincere and meaningful, since if it wasn't, then the hypocrites offering the sacrifice revered other idol's than God.
Uncle Pod insists this is the primary Law that must be fulfilled above all others, and not to perform and conform in this way, labels one 'antinomian,' or anti-law. I'll digress a bit here and note this week it's the 60th anniversary of Levittown. I didn't live there but did reside for three years in its sister city on Long Island, Hicksville (famed mostly as the hometown of Billy Joel). Those affordable starter homes for the Greatest Generation were subsequently mocked and derided as ticky-tacky "Little Boxes," the very symbol of suburban conformity. Gosh, my memories are anything but - those summer days, in the backyard, lying literally under the apple tree, reading Superman and Sports Illustrated, are the fondest times in my memory of overwhelming warmth and peace.
Anyhow, back to the story of my harrowing drive with crazy Uncle Pod for this is the point where he veers suddenly and violently to the right. He blurts out, screaming at the top of his lungs, that the entire counter-culture generation is antinomian since "it attempted to invert the moral order of the middle class which had itself grown out of the biblical tradition." Say, what? The Bible foretold of the establishment of the Kingdom of God and a Davidic dynasty on a city on the hill named Levittown?
My crazy uncle is frothing at the lips, hollerng about Black Masses, and that most awful of awfulest compendium, the very essence of the liberal agenda of sin: tolerance, multi-culturalism, diversity, conservation, gay rights, featuring, of course, Adam and Steve, and horror of all horrors, working mothers, who in their neglect of children, are no better than the pagans of ancient days that sacrified their children in the fires of Molech.
By this time, I'm clawing at the door locks, leaping from the car. Guess I'll have to hitchhike home. Yet, try this on, Uncle Pod: what the counter-culture was saying, just like the Prophets you revere, is that the emptiness of living a life of habitual ritual while the world offered so much potential for sincere joy, love and meaningful existence, is a waste of time.
All those labels you pin upon us as sin, we carry proudly: wise stewardship of the environment; liberating women to be good mothers, if that is there choice, and anything else they want to be if they choose another path; freeing our glbt brothers and sisters from a life of prejudice and violence so they can live in peace on equal terms with everyone else; celebrating a natural world wide diversity and multi-culturalism where there is no need for agressive adventures by any one nation over another.
We believe in the strength of a nuclear family, and the spiritual extended family of humanity, even if our family may look a little different than those in your day. Even you are still a part of our family, dear Uncle Pod, and we love you; we just wish you'd get some help.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Do as I do, not as I say
I note this week an on-line Vanity Fair article by Christopher Hitchens where he faces the reality a solider killed in Iraq was inspired to fight by what he wrote. When the Gospel is read on Sunday in Church, it's my custom to genuflect at my head, lips and heart. It's become mere habit. In light of the Hitchens piece, and recent continued studies of theologian Karl Barth, the act's taken on renewed meaning.
Who has more of a right to speak, and who would we respect more, than consequential victims, like that soldier? I'm always interested to read the words or listen to the music of those who've experienced grief or those about to die. I thought McCartney might have emparted something deeper after the death of Linda. Warren Zevon's album, the Wind, produced as he died of terminal cancer, had its moments. I've just purchased Etheridge's new post-breast cancer record. When I worked at Hospice, I listened for the profound from those about to die; I discovered greater and more astonishing profundity from surviving children when we spent weekends in group therapy at grief and loss camp.
My starting point on Barth was that while it's greatly pleasurable to read such brilliant theology, and derive theological insights of searing intellectual significance, it would be troubling if this man, who'd been courageously dismissed from his professorial post in 1935, in Germany, for standing up to the Nazi's cn the supremacy of Jesus Christ, never was affected either before, during or after, by the persecution unto genocide occuring around him.
Theologically, I now understand how that may be possible. Barth see's the people of the covenant, ancient Israel, as the chosen elect, there to reveal God's plans for humanity, not only for themselves, but through them, to all the nations of the world. Since he also see's the Church, after Jesus, as the subseqeuent elect, for the same purpose, it follows, in his view, that Israel was subsumed into the Church, since they both hold the one ultimate purpose. That doesn't leave room for a separate destiny for the original elect who may indeed still hold a distinct purpose from the Church: the idea that the Old and the New hold dual covenantal destinies.
I examined the Barth-authored "Theological Declartion of Barmen," composed in 1934, the primary confessional statement of the anti-Nazi German Church. Indeed, while the statement boldly professes the supremacy of Jesus Christ, there is not a single word in reference to persection of non-Christians.
Like a shining yet tarnished nugget in a gold mine, I did discover his mea culpa, written many years later, "I have long since regarded it as a fault on my part that I did not make this question a decsive issue, at least publicly in the church conflict (e.g., in the two Barmen declarations I drafted in 1934). A text in which I might have done so would not, of course, have been acceptable to the mindset of even the "confessors" of that time, whether in the Reformed or the general synod. But this does not excuse the fact that since my interests were elsewhere I did not at least formally put up a fight on the matter."
Is a statement that his 'interests were elsewhere,' in the midst of horrific persecution, sufficient on behalf of a man who possessed great public influence? Can a Christian like Barth have acted otherwise if his otherworldy theology worked against the necessary worldly public political action?
In a belated response to the Holocaust, the Catholic Church, in the person of Pope Paul VI, addresses the merits of other religions in relation to Christianity. The jury is still out on whether Nostra Aetate is adequate to that task, for like Barth, the document can be discerned between the lines as maintaining one universal theological solution that negates the destinies of all other sects. If, in the end, the religion you profess is delineated as exclusive in its claims, how can it ever be otherwise? Yet, I am determined to continue to explore that critical nexus point in the instinctivly optimistic belief and hope this is somehow possible.
I've been preparing Adult Sunday School materials for a class on the Prophets. One thing is a constant: while God employs Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian agressors, amongst others, as His hammers to rain theological blows upon His elect, He always leaves a remnant, upon whom He anoints His consistently ultimately disappointed hopes to create a renewed people. As with secular movements, I reject any direct political application of that concept outside of the theological world due to the misery produced and real victims claimed.
Yet, then, let's still look prophetically at today's schism in the Episcopal Church from God's vantage point as if He was in control at every stage:
1) God ensures Gene Robinson is elected causing opponents great dismay;
2) God ensures Bishop Katharine is elected thereby further hardening hearts;
3) God sends Englishmen and Africans, some invited, some not, to lay siege;
4) God creates Episcopal remnants, such as my parish; this is His purpose.
(Isn't it always that those who go around saying "God is in control," who are the most manipulative control freaks?) - anyway, what would God's purpose be for His remnant, my parish, now we've established it, at least, as one of His purposes, in either an interim or permanent way? Perhaps, like the surviving children of grief and loss at Hospice camp, the greater wisdom inevitably comes from the remnant of a once unified community family, just as God always promised to preserved a remainder, as a light to the world, in the time of the Prophets.
Prophetically speaking, we are (a) required to attend to Temple practice (will regular attendance on Sundays suffice?); (b) exhibit ethical business practices - don't swindle, take care of the widow, the orphan, etc.; (c) through our particular existence as a remnant, be a light unto the world in a universal way. Since we are here, it has to be in God's plan, that we are significant - and this, in its circular logic, is very Barthian, since we are only discerning Scripture, not to create history on earth, on human terms, but as practicing stewards of what we best discerned as God's instructions on how to live.
This merely 'being,' isn't natural to my activist inclination. Neither patience, nor reconciliation, are as attractive as achieving the justice of full inclusion within our Church now. Something has to translate into political action if human lives, as well as eternal souls, are at stake, as they are, in our struggle. This much we can learn from Barth's story.
On the other hand, I've referred to the legacy of tactics on this blog before - our parish remnant is incapable of being anything but extraordinarily kind and desirous of re-establishing the old community of friends as it once was; is that what God intends for us, in lieu of, or alongside achieving justice?
Barth made his bones on the famous post-World War I framed commentary he wrote on Romans. There, in 11:22, Paul writes, "Note then the kindness and the severity of God; severity toward those who have fallen, but God's kindness toward you, provided you continue in his kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off."
Kindess is what naturally distinguishes our parish - discovering the balance point between exhibiting kindness and achieving justice is where I inevitably return to, again and again, no matter what I do, no matter what I write here. I don't believe anyone will fight and die after reading this blog; I don't believe, either, anyone else will be killed. It will not be necessary, twenty years later, to write a mea culpa for anything written here. This may be, more than anything, separates those who struggle for the justice of inclusion versus those who wage war against it.
The atheist Hitchens faced up to his own arrogance with a genteel humility to be admired. I profess to believe in God as a member of an exclusive religion - there must be a place carved out within this sect where humility is enshrined as a great gift that counteracts individual and corporate compulsions toward superiority and dominance. This is the shining city on the hill visible in the distance through the mist. It's the road upon which we'll continue to travel.
Who has more of a right to speak, and who would we respect more, than consequential victims, like that soldier? I'm always interested to read the words or listen to the music of those who've experienced grief or those about to die. I thought McCartney might have emparted something deeper after the death of Linda. Warren Zevon's album, the Wind, produced as he died of terminal cancer, had its moments. I've just purchased Etheridge's new post-breast cancer record. When I worked at Hospice, I listened for the profound from those about to die; I discovered greater and more astonishing profundity from surviving children when we spent weekends in group therapy at grief and loss camp.
My starting point on Barth was that while it's greatly pleasurable to read such brilliant theology, and derive theological insights of searing intellectual significance, it would be troubling if this man, who'd been courageously dismissed from his professorial post in 1935, in Germany, for standing up to the Nazi's cn the supremacy of Jesus Christ, never was affected either before, during or after, by the persecution unto genocide occuring around him.
Theologically, I now understand how that may be possible. Barth see's the people of the covenant, ancient Israel, as the chosen elect, there to reveal God's plans for humanity, not only for themselves, but through them, to all the nations of the world. Since he also see's the Church, after Jesus, as the subseqeuent elect, for the same purpose, it follows, in his view, that Israel was subsumed into the Church, since they both hold the one ultimate purpose. That doesn't leave room for a separate destiny for the original elect who may indeed still hold a distinct purpose from the Church: the idea that the Old and the New hold dual covenantal destinies.
I examined the Barth-authored "Theological Declartion of Barmen," composed in 1934, the primary confessional statement of the anti-Nazi German Church. Indeed, while the statement boldly professes the supremacy of Jesus Christ, there is not a single word in reference to persection of non-Christians.
Like a shining yet tarnished nugget in a gold mine, I did discover his mea culpa, written many years later, "I have long since regarded it as a fault on my part that I did not make this question a decsive issue, at least publicly in the church conflict (e.g., in the two Barmen declarations I drafted in 1934). A text in which I might have done so would not, of course, have been acceptable to the mindset of even the "confessors" of that time, whether in the Reformed or the general synod. But this does not excuse the fact that since my interests were elsewhere I did not at least formally put up a fight on the matter."
Is a statement that his 'interests were elsewhere,' in the midst of horrific persecution, sufficient on behalf of a man who possessed great public influence? Can a Christian like Barth have acted otherwise if his otherworldy theology worked against the necessary worldly public political action?
In a belated response to the Holocaust, the Catholic Church, in the person of Pope Paul VI, addresses the merits of other religions in relation to Christianity. The jury is still out on whether Nostra Aetate is adequate to that task, for like Barth, the document can be discerned between the lines as maintaining one universal theological solution that negates the destinies of all other sects. If, in the end, the religion you profess is delineated as exclusive in its claims, how can it ever be otherwise? Yet, I am determined to continue to explore that critical nexus point in the instinctivly optimistic belief and hope this is somehow possible.
I've been preparing Adult Sunday School materials for a class on the Prophets. One thing is a constant: while God employs Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian agressors, amongst others, as His hammers to rain theological blows upon His elect, He always leaves a remnant, upon whom He anoints His consistently ultimately disappointed hopes to create a renewed people. As with secular movements, I reject any direct political application of that concept outside of the theological world due to the misery produced and real victims claimed.
Yet, then, let's still look prophetically at today's schism in the Episcopal Church from God's vantage point as if He was in control at every stage:
1) God ensures Gene Robinson is elected causing opponents great dismay;
2) God ensures Bishop Katharine is elected thereby further hardening hearts;
3) God sends Englishmen and Africans, some invited, some not, to lay siege;
4) God creates Episcopal remnants, such as my parish; this is His purpose.
(Isn't it always that those who go around saying "God is in control," who are the most manipulative control freaks?) - anyway, what would God's purpose be for His remnant, my parish, now we've established it, at least, as one of His purposes, in either an interim or permanent way? Perhaps, like the surviving children of grief and loss at Hospice camp, the greater wisdom inevitably comes from the remnant of a once unified community family, just as God always promised to preserved a remainder, as a light to the world, in the time of the Prophets.
Prophetically speaking, we are (a) required to attend to Temple practice (will regular attendance on Sundays suffice?); (b) exhibit ethical business practices - don't swindle, take care of the widow, the orphan, etc.; (c) through our particular existence as a remnant, be a light unto the world in a universal way. Since we are here, it has to be in God's plan, that we are significant - and this, in its circular logic, is very Barthian, since we are only discerning Scripture, not to create history on earth, on human terms, but as practicing stewards of what we best discerned as God's instructions on how to live.
This merely 'being,' isn't natural to my activist inclination. Neither patience, nor reconciliation, are as attractive as achieving the justice of full inclusion within our Church now. Something has to translate into political action if human lives, as well as eternal souls, are at stake, as they are, in our struggle. This much we can learn from Barth's story.
On the other hand, I've referred to the legacy of tactics on this blog before - our parish remnant is incapable of being anything but extraordinarily kind and desirous of re-establishing the old community of friends as it once was; is that what God intends for us, in lieu of, or alongside achieving justice?
Barth made his bones on the famous post-World War I framed commentary he wrote on Romans. There, in 11:22, Paul writes, "Note then the kindness and the severity of God; severity toward those who have fallen, but God's kindness toward you, provided you continue in his kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off."
Kindess is what naturally distinguishes our parish - discovering the balance point between exhibiting kindness and achieving justice is where I inevitably return to, again and again, no matter what I do, no matter what I write here. I don't believe anyone will fight and die after reading this blog; I don't believe, either, anyone else will be killed. It will not be necessary, twenty years later, to write a mea culpa for anything written here. This may be, more than anything, separates those who struggle for the justice of inclusion versus those who wage war against it.
The atheist Hitchens faced up to his own arrogance with a genteel humility to be admired. I profess to believe in God as a member of an exclusive religion - there must be a place carved out within this sect where humility is enshrined as a great gift that counteracts individual and corporate compulsions toward superiority and dominance. This is the shining city on the hill visible in the distance through the mist. It's the road upon which we'll continue to travel.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Ambivalence
I note this week, for the first time, I needed to mail a note to the Catholic Worker to stay a subscriber. Before, if you'd sent in 25 cents, once, you were in for life. Even now, they're not asking for the money to cover their higher printing and mailing costs, just committment. How very like these naieve fools for Christ.
Ric Rhetor, for one, writes in this edition's Book of Notes column, "If you come in the front door, or up the dining room steps at Maryhouse, and continue apace to the first floor, your eyes are likely to catch sight of a banner hanging way down toward the end of the auditorium stage. It reads, in large black letters, "WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE."
Are we? For what? Connie asked last Saturday I buy 8 shrimp at Giant. As I stood at the fish counter, a fella ahead in line ordered 2 lobsters drawn live from the tank. On the scale, their antenni twitched; their claws grasped until they were taped shut. They'd soon be boiled alive. I'm no vegetarian; am I responsbile for their sufferring?
I love to shop at Wal-mart. I own an extensive wardrobe of $7 shirts, $14 pants and $19.99 boots. On a recent newsworthy tv show, they said in order for Wal-mart to sell clothes at that price, they force wholesalers to produce goods in China. In an interview, a man in Ohio said his factory shut down. I refuse to buy a foreign car. I own a Ford Ranger. Am I responsible for the unemployment of the Ohio man and the employment of Ford employees in Minnesota?
Alan Dershowitz has a compelling theory of rights. He writes while people can disagree on cases such as the merits of vegetarianism or shopping at Wal-mart, i.e., what does or doesn't constitute perfect justice, it's easier to start from the bottom up. Most of us agree on what constitutes perfect injustice: genocide, torture, dictatorship, etc. So if we focus on the rights of citizens that prevent perfect injustice, our system will leave room for open debate on important but less vital issues.
I've been reading the works of theologian, Karl Barth. From out of the university library treasure trove, I first read a 1930 general explanation of his theology. Then I happened across a mid- 1960's little book called "Why I Changed My Mind." This had me excited and I'll tell you why.
As far as an independent reading can take a person, I'm led to understand he's a proponent of a Great Gap - that there can be no analogy between God and man other than an analogy of faith. Believers can aspire at best to receive the Word of God. History proves, indeed, there are no ideologies or 'ism's that humanity can create which approach a perfect concept of what constitutes God's actions of creation or ideas of justice. I know also that Barth was forced to resign his professor's post in Germany in 1935, and leave the country, for his insistence on the supremacy of God over any other gods of human imagination.
Yet, I was disappointed Why I Changed My Mind contained no mention of the Holocaust. It's indicative of the nagging criticism of the Hitler-era German Confessional Church that it's otherwise courageous members, even Bonhoeffer, never adamantly condemned the Jewish persecution. Their advocacy addressed the supremacy of the Christian God, and some paid for that with their lives, but it skirted the travails of non-Christians. (I've mentioned before on this blog, I've personally encountered this underlying festerng literlist malevolence when I attended a once-Episcopal, now Nigerian-Anglican, fundamentalist church.) Though, Barth, mentioned in passing a 'German' cultural problem extending from Frederick the Great through Bismarck, through Hitler, and referred to some assistance to someone else who aided Jewish refugees from within the safety of his exile in Switzerland, he failed utterly to confront genocide head on (or anywhere else, as far as I can yet ascertain, though I've just checked out Prospects for Post-Holocaust Theology which contains a Barth-chapter, so more on this later...).
There is nothing more inviting than reading, discerning and writing theology even if it's merely an end in itself. In this, and more, if I understand him correctly, I agree with Barth and his advice to get serious about God; also that people would do well to concentrate on Last Things (and I'd add) rather than First Principles. Since I already philosophically accept the existence of God (and oh my, Barth would hate that notion), and sense and revel in the presence of the Holy Spirit in community and at prayer, my relevant, rather than simply enjoyable, studies must consist of post-Holocaust literature. It doesn't have to be addressed forthrightly, but if the book was written prior to it, it's absence as one critical event renders a certain incompleteness to any work, espcially if there's no 'after,' to complement the 'before.'
At an Elie Wiesel lecture, he answered the, 'I'm-sure-not-unexpected,' question at every event, about belief in God after the Holocaust, by saying, "I don't know." That doesn't equate with a desire to end theological studies; it means rather than certitude, any answers to questions you derive, may only be ambivalent at best.
I note this week on the anniversary of the deaths of the Amish schoolchildren, the unmarked land upon which the school once stood, has been allowed to remain fallow. How unlike the modern world not to erect a public memorial. I always stop to wistfully read the obituaries in our local rag that proclaim "Joe was a farmer all his life," or in the recent case of a nun, "she did domestic work for her order." Those are well lived lives of honest labor and prayer that did not overtly touch on the larger issues of the day, but beckon, as gentle and organic.
Is that farmer, this nun, myself, or are you, implicitly responsible for cruelty to animals, unemployment in Ohio, the Holocaust? I don't know. Perhaps, the next batch of books, from Kierkegaard, Pannenberg, Lewis, hold keys to unlock the mystery. It's fall; school's in - the thrill of discovery permeates the air; let's find out together. We'll hold our own on-line 'discussions for the further clarification of thought,' as the Catholic Workers have done every week for decades despite the fact we'll never know what we know for sure.
Folks like the Workers embody service; no one is turned away from their houses, their farms; no one judged; all welcomed and affirmed. In their world, responsibility is justice, personified; no ambivalence.
Ric Rhetor, for one, writes in this edition's Book of Notes column, "If you come in the front door, or up the dining room steps at Maryhouse, and continue apace to the first floor, your eyes are likely to catch sight of a banner hanging way down toward the end of the auditorium stage. It reads, in large black letters, "WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE."
Are we? For what? Connie asked last Saturday I buy 8 shrimp at Giant. As I stood at the fish counter, a fella ahead in line ordered 2 lobsters drawn live from the tank. On the scale, their antenni twitched; their claws grasped until they were taped shut. They'd soon be boiled alive. I'm no vegetarian; am I responsbile for their sufferring?
I love to shop at Wal-mart. I own an extensive wardrobe of $7 shirts, $14 pants and $19.99 boots. On a recent newsworthy tv show, they said in order for Wal-mart to sell clothes at that price, they force wholesalers to produce goods in China. In an interview, a man in Ohio said his factory shut down. I refuse to buy a foreign car. I own a Ford Ranger. Am I responsible for the unemployment of the Ohio man and the employment of Ford employees in Minnesota?
Alan Dershowitz has a compelling theory of rights. He writes while people can disagree on cases such as the merits of vegetarianism or shopping at Wal-mart, i.e., what does or doesn't constitute perfect justice, it's easier to start from the bottom up. Most of us agree on what constitutes perfect injustice: genocide, torture, dictatorship, etc. So if we focus on the rights of citizens that prevent perfect injustice, our system will leave room for open debate on important but less vital issues.
I've been reading the works of theologian, Karl Barth. From out of the university library treasure trove, I first read a 1930 general explanation of his theology. Then I happened across a mid- 1960's little book called "Why I Changed My Mind." This had me excited and I'll tell you why.
As far as an independent reading can take a person, I'm led to understand he's a proponent of a Great Gap - that there can be no analogy between God and man other than an analogy of faith. Believers can aspire at best to receive the Word of God. History proves, indeed, there are no ideologies or 'ism's that humanity can create which approach a perfect concept of what constitutes God's actions of creation or ideas of justice. I know also that Barth was forced to resign his professor's post in Germany in 1935, and leave the country, for his insistence on the supremacy of God over any other gods of human imagination.
Yet, I was disappointed Why I Changed My Mind contained no mention of the Holocaust. It's indicative of the nagging criticism of the Hitler-era German Confessional Church that it's otherwise courageous members, even Bonhoeffer, never adamantly condemned the Jewish persecution. Their advocacy addressed the supremacy of the Christian God, and some paid for that with their lives, but it skirted the travails of non-Christians. (I've mentioned before on this blog, I've personally encountered this underlying festerng literlist malevolence when I attended a once-Episcopal, now Nigerian-Anglican, fundamentalist church.) Though, Barth, mentioned in passing a 'German' cultural problem extending from Frederick the Great through Bismarck, through Hitler, and referred to some assistance to someone else who aided Jewish refugees from within the safety of his exile in Switzerland, he failed utterly to confront genocide head on (or anywhere else, as far as I can yet ascertain, though I've just checked out Prospects for Post-Holocaust Theology which contains a Barth-chapter, so more on this later...).
There is nothing more inviting than reading, discerning and writing theology even if it's merely an end in itself. In this, and more, if I understand him correctly, I agree with Barth and his advice to get serious about God; also that people would do well to concentrate on Last Things (and I'd add) rather than First Principles. Since I already philosophically accept the existence of God (and oh my, Barth would hate that notion), and sense and revel in the presence of the Holy Spirit in community and at prayer, my relevant, rather than simply enjoyable, studies must consist of post-Holocaust literature. It doesn't have to be addressed forthrightly, but if the book was written prior to it, it's absence as one critical event renders a certain incompleteness to any work, espcially if there's no 'after,' to complement the 'before.'
At an Elie Wiesel lecture, he answered the, 'I'm-sure-not-unexpected,' question at every event, about belief in God after the Holocaust, by saying, "I don't know." That doesn't equate with a desire to end theological studies; it means rather than certitude, any answers to questions you derive, may only be ambivalent at best.
I note this week on the anniversary of the deaths of the Amish schoolchildren, the unmarked land upon which the school once stood, has been allowed to remain fallow. How unlike the modern world not to erect a public memorial. I always stop to wistfully read the obituaries in our local rag that proclaim "Joe was a farmer all his life," or in the recent case of a nun, "she did domestic work for her order." Those are well lived lives of honest labor and prayer that did not overtly touch on the larger issues of the day, but beckon, as gentle and organic.
Is that farmer, this nun, myself, or are you, implicitly responsible for cruelty to animals, unemployment in Ohio, the Holocaust? I don't know. Perhaps, the next batch of books, from Kierkegaard, Pannenberg, Lewis, hold keys to unlock the mystery. It's fall; school's in - the thrill of discovery permeates the air; let's find out together. We'll hold our own on-line 'discussions for the further clarification of thought,' as the Catholic Workers have done every week for decades despite the fact we'll never know what we know for sure.
Folks like the Workers embody service; no one is turned away from their houses, their farms; no one judged; all welcomed and affirmed. In their world, responsibility is justice, personified; no ambivalence.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Hello Newman
I note this week the phrases 'exerise restraint,' and 'not to authorize public rites,' in the House of Bishops post-New Orleans statement.
I'm loathe to agree with Akinola on anything yet his description of this language as 'not a whole-hearted embrace,' and 'merely a temporary adjustment,' is spot on. Just as it was a simple matter to drive holes through Mark Lawrence's language on whether he'd stay loyal to TEC if elected Bishop of South Carolina, this old bureaucrat could cruise a Buick through the gaps on the HoB highway. Akinola and his henchmen may be wicked; they're not stupid.
Appeasement is a rascally charge for those who quite rightly and nobly advocate negotiations and are otherwise partial to peaceful means under the vast majority of circumstances. It can certainly be employed to justify pre-emptive reckless behavior. Here, though, it plays to form: "In international relations, the Lesson of Munich asserts that adversaries will interpret restraint as indicating a lack of capability or politcal will or both; appeasement discredits the defenders' willingness to fight, and encourages the agressor to escalate his demands.'
The HoB statement, decidedly rejected by Akinolista's everywhere, also didn't play well with those it was its round-about intention to defend. Reactions of some here-to-fore faithful gay and lesbian Episcopalians, as reported on the Inch at a Time website, include resignation of ordination, departures to the UCC, and conversions to Judaism. I've always told Connie that after a last stand at an Episcopal Dunkirk, it's the Unitarians that beckon an escape to a theological England. When I was but a lad growing up in pre-Disney Orlando, it was exposure to that idealistic sect which formulated the progressive religious and political ethics I uncompromisingly carry fifty years later.
Friends, like Mark, temper caution, and I'm not ready to depart the beloved parish to which we've returned as it rebuilds after the majority voted to join the Akinola-Minns-Duncan axis of evil. So it's time to step back from the emotional precipice - my way, as always, is to seek solace in the timeless stepstones that calm and deliver. As revealed last week, the study of John Henry Newman's, 'The Development of Christian Doctrine,' lays out a path which demonstrates time is on our side if we but have the patience to wait, even though our patience is wearing thin.
First, though, a provisio: Newman would likewise have been disdainful not only of the HoB statement but the process. He wrote, "Sometimes discordant ideas are for a time connected and concealed by a common profession or name. Such is the case of coalitions in politics and comprehensions in religion, of which commonly no good is to be expected. Such is an ordinary function of committees and boards, and the sole aim of conciliations and concessions, to make contraries look the same, and to secure an outward agreement where there is no other unity."
The aforementioned Mark once gravely warned against an acceptance of a vestry nomination to serve. How right he was: after enduring an unending series of 9 to 1 votes on whether to move the parish from a low-income immigrant-friendly neighborhood to an affluent suburb so we could 'more effectively minister to the wealthy who were more like us,' I resigned in disgust one and a half years into a three year term. Did you know that despite being described as magnificantly healthy, Robert E. Lee mysteriously took ill and mysteriously died immediately after a two-hour vestry meeting? (This comes as no suprise to any current/past vestry member...)
Anyhow, John Henry projects ideas as corporeal - they grow or die, following an organic eleven-step process:
1) after birth, they are initially expressed inadequately;
2) agitation ensues a -
3) period of confusion;
4) new lights emerge;
5) judgments emerge/aspects accumulate;
6) a teaching arises -
7) that's contrasted against existing teachings -
8) the new is interrogated, criticized, defended;
9) opinions are collectd, sifted, selected, rejected;
10) the idea interjects itself into our lives, changing public opinion, strengthening or undermining the established order;
11) to become a theology - "a being in substance - what the idea meant from the first, with the corrections of many minds, and the illustrations of many experiences."
Who can deny that the idea of the societal justice of full inclusion has reached step 10 and is gaining fast on step 11 - the Akinolistic last remaining redoubt of reactionary opinion? This final barricade won't fall through appeasement; it must be stormed.
Newman is one of those iconic figures, like Bonhoeffer, like Lewis, who are revered and claimed by progressive and reactionary partisans. Perhaps that's the sign of true greatness. When John Henry writes, "In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below, to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often," it naturally appeals to those who aspire towards justice; yet, there are those who read Newman and would emphasize a life that appears on the surface to resist all change in practice, and that would characterize most change as corruption rather than right development.
During a recent parish hall meeting this month, voices were raised as to whether stronger local action is desirable in terms of action to regain the church property illegally seized by those who voted to leave TEC. Although I agree with those that said no action should be unoppposed that conveys itself to public opinion and the courts that the squatters possess property rights, I agree also that our primary job as foot soliders is to dedicate our energies to rebuilding the parish which in itself stands as a rebuke to all those who discount our existence.
Ideas, like evolution, don't evolve in a straight line. From a single point of introduction, branches emerge and grow in all directions depending on the circumstances that create them. Newman writes, "Christianity is dogmatical, devotional, practical, all at once; it is esoteric and exoteric; it is indulgent and strict; it is light and dark; it is love and it is fear." All of that has been, and is, on display in this struggle.
Newman also wrote, "Growth is the only evidence of life." The conflaglatory schism we are struggling through is growth. It is the evidence of an active Church life. When do we boldly stride beyond appeasement to justice? How many of us will be left? How long, how long?
I'm loathe to agree with Akinola on anything yet his description of this language as 'not a whole-hearted embrace,' and 'merely a temporary adjustment,' is spot on. Just as it was a simple matter to drive holes through Mark Lawrence's language on whether he'd stay loyal to TEC if elected Bishop of South Carolina, this old bureaucrat could cruise a Buick through the gaps on the HoB highway. Akinola and his henchmen may be wicked; they're not stupid.
Appeasement is a rascally charge for those who quite rightly and nobly advocate negotiations and are otherwise partial to peaceful means under the vast majority of circumstances. It can certainly be employed to justify pre-emptive reckless behavior. Here, though, it plays to form: "In international relations, the Lesson of Munich asserts that adversaries will interpret restraint as indicating a lack of capability or politcal will or both; appeasement discredits the defenders' willingness to fight, and encourages the agressor to escalate his demands.'
The HoB statement, decidedly rejected by Akinolista's everywhere, also didn't play well with those it was its round-about intention to defend. Reactions of some here-to-fore faithful gay and lesbian Episcopalians, as reported on the Inch at a Time website, include resignation of ordination, departures to the UCC, and conversions to Judaism. I've always told Connie that after a last stand at an Episcopal Dunkirk, it's the Unitarians that beckon an escape to a theological England. When I was but a lad growing up in pre-Disney Orlando, it was exposure to that idealistic sect which formulated the progressive religious and political ethics I uncompromisingly carry fifty years later.
Friends, like Mark, temper caution, and I'm not ready to depart the beloved parish to which we've returned as it rebuilds after the majority voted to join the Akinola-Minns-Duncan axis of evil. So it's time to step back from the emotional precipice - my way, as always, is to seek solace in the timeless stepstones that calm and deliver. As revealed last week, the study of John Henry Newman's, 'The Development of Christian Doctrine,' lays out a path which demonstrates time is on our side if we but have the patience to wait, even though our patience is wearing thin.
First, though, a provisio: Newman would likewise have been disdainful not only of the HoB statement but the process. He wrote, "Sometimes discordant ideas are for a time connected and concealed by a common profession or name. Such is the case of coalitions in politics and comprehensions in religion, of which commonly no good is to be expected. Such is an ordinary function of committees and boards, and the sole aim of conciliations and concessions, to make contraries look the same, and to secure an outward agreement where there is no other unity."
The aforementioned Mark once gravely warned against an acceptance of a vestry nomination to serve. How right he was: after enduring an unending series of 9 to 1 votes on whether to move the parish from a low-income immigrant-friendly neighborhood to an affluent suburb so we could 'more effectively minister to the wealthy who were more like us,' I resigned in disgust one and a half years into a three year term. Did you know that despite being described as magnificantly healthy, Robert E. Lee mysteriously took ill and mysteriously died immediately after a two-hour vestry meeting? (This comes as no suprise to any current/past vestry member...)
Anyhow, John Henry projects ideas as corporeal - they grow or die, following an organic eleven-step process:
1) after birth, they are initially expressed inadequately;
2) agitation ensues a -
3) period of confusion;
4) new lights emerge;
5) judgments emerge/aspects accumulate;
6) a teaching arises -
7) that's contrasted against existing teachings -
8) the new is interrogated, criticized, defended;
9) opinions are collectd, sifted, selected, rejected;
10) the idea interjects itself into our lives, changing public opinion, strengthening or undermining the established order;
11) to become a theology - "a being in substance - what the idea meant from the first, with the corrections of many minds, and the illustrations of many experiences."
Who can deny that the idea of the societal justice of full inclusion has reached step 10 and is gaining fast on step 11 - the Akinolistic last remaining redoubt of reactionary opinion? This final barricade won't fall through appeasement; it must be stormed.
Newman is one of those iconic figures, like Bonhoeffer, like Lewis, who are revered and claimed by progressive and reactionary partisans. Perhaps that's the sign of true greatness. When John Henry writes, "In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below, to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often," it naturally appeals to those who aspire towards justice; yet, there are those who read Newman and would emphasize a life that appears on the surface to resist all change in practice, and that would characterize most change as corruption rather than right development.
During a recent parish hall meeting this month, voices were raised as to whether stronger local action is desirable in terms of action to regain the church property illegally seized by those who voted to leave TEC. Although I agree with those that said no action should be unoppposed that conveys itself to public opinion and the courts that the squatters possess property rights, I agree also that our primary job as foot soliders is to dedicate our energies to rebuilding the parish which in itself stands as a rebuke to all those who discount our existence.
Ideas, like evolution, don't evolve in a straight line. From a single point of introduction, branches emerge and grow in all directions depending on the circumstances that create them. Newman writes, "Christianity is dogmatical, devotional, practical, all at once; it is esoteric and exoteric; it is indulgent and strict; it is light and dark; it is love and it is fear." All of that has been, and is, on display in this struggle.
Newman also wrote, "Growth is the only evidence of life." The conflaglatory schism we are struggling through is growth. It is the evidence of an active Church life. When do we boldly stride beyond appeasement to justice? How many of us will be left? How long, how long?
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