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.
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