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.
Friday, October 26, 2007
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)