I note this week a fella at the fundamentalist church I used to attend who'd say, every year, at this time, "Santa re-arranged spells Satan." He was one of 'the reason for the season' men.
He's not alone. An AP article by Tom Breen draws attention to folks like Pastor John Foster in Charleston, West Virginia, who says, "People don't think of it this way, but it's really a secular holiday," and Clyde Kilough, President of the United Church of God, who opines "The theological question is quite simple: Is it acceptable to God for humans to choose to worship him by adopting paganism's most popular celebration and calling them Christian?" Breen adds, "In colonial New England, this disapproval extended to actually making the holiday illegal, with celebration punishable by a fine."
How does one go from chuckling at the man, with a belly like jelly, to Satan? Now, if some different fundamentally-minded folk had their way, Christmas wouldn't be illegal, or ascribed to the devil, rather, it'd be illegal not to "recognize the importance of Christmas and the Christmas faith," 'as a House resolution recently recognized - though not without dissenters, as the Family Research Council (FRC) pointed out (Democrats, by name; one lonely Republican, identity withheld).
I'm confused - are we damned if we do, and damned if we don't? I made it a point never to attend office Christmas parties after a Director lectured it was good for business to attend. Could even I be a closet reason-for-the-season man?
Maybe I can't make sense of it because what I'm hearing and reading appears to omit certain things that my brain instinctively attempts to make whole. An editorialist on the local rag, for one, recently gushed with admiration for Jim Dobson, the founder of the above-cited FRC, who "will always be the man who taught me to parent." Fair enough if that works for her. However, when she writes, "This was a man, I realized, who took his faith seriously, whose care for the smaller, weaker members of society was evident," my cerebral cortex cries foul.
This is the point where my mind insists on filling a hole, patching a leak, mortaring the cracks - is the special care reserved for 'smaller, weaker members of society,' only if they're children of families deemed legitimate, natural, or, 'traditional,' in FRC-talk? What if what's protected, exclusively, then, has intended or unintended consequences which creates discrimination or persecution by default for 'smaller, weaker members of society' who don't fit within the restricted, glorified, mold; which is indirectly acknowledged, but lightly dismissed, with, "Sometimes it takes a little noise on the battlefield to get the job done." Noise? Battlefield? Parenting is war? Battlefields produce casualties. Who are they? What's the allowable range and extent of their wounds?
Injuries aren't always overt. I was initially attracted to an editorial by M.J. Andersen entitled "Elder Care >> The Benefits of Staying Home," about "a new program called Choices for Care allowing government dollars to pay for home care rather than nursing homes," since I'm likely on that road myself sooner than I'd like to think, when, like the burst of a shell on another battlefield, Andersen writes, "Gay elderly people who have felt themselves shunned in traditional nursing homes - and sometimes packed off to live with the severely disabled - are finding more adult facilities specifically geared toward them." Elderly gay folk categorized, segregated, severely disabled? Classifications of this sort sound depressingly familiar. Where is such everyday evil instilled, perpetuated, generation after generation? Parenting class?
Whether theologically correct, or not; Christian or non, Christmas holds a power that exceeds, even suspends, logic. A letter to the editor, a week ago, tapped into it. Carolyn R. Jones-Kelly, an inmate at the Rappahannock Regional Jail, writes about "some pretty heartless crimes I'd committed. I've talked bad about good people, stolen their property, and just generally violated every honor code imaginable." She continues, "Now that my trials are over, I'd like to publically apologize. I've accepted my guilt and have worked my way into understanding just how much hurt I've caused people, some I don't know and others I care very much about." Through the recognition of her 'heartlessness,' and acknowledgement of consequences, to those known and unknown, she elegantly patches the holes in the logic leaking from the Dobson portrayal; plus aren't we inclined, to grant Carolyn the benefit of the doubt, and accept her apology, more at Christmas time, as opposed to say, on July 4th?
There's a tradition in the family I married into where holidays and birthdays are celebrated together regardless of the distance required to overcome the absence. On the three and a half hour drive home from the Shenandoah Valley, after eating dinner at the sister-in-law's, I spotted a rusting, decrepit tin trailer off the side of the road, festooned with Christmas lights, hung from every conceivable angle, not to mention the plastic blow-up Santa's in the yard. No matter their theology, this was a house that hadn't given up hope.
The Roman orator Tacitus is famous for saying, "They make a desert and they call it peace." There are those that'd make a desert out of Christmas by likening Santa to Satan, or passing laws that enforce their own reason for the season, so that others of not like mind are shunned and abandoned to a lonely solitude.
The power of Christmas, whether religious or secular, stands in their way, like an unexpected plea for mercy from a prisoner, or an amazing ramshackle trailer, in the middle of nowhere, that illuminates the dark, as did a Star, one December night, two thousand years ago.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Friday, December 21, 2007
A Question of Loyalty
I note this week, as last time, another incident in the office (perhaps this reflectational fixation has something to do with the impending new year being my last before retirement) when, twenty years ago, a senior executive, even for senior executives, floated a notably bad idea. When it inevitably drifted towards and hit the fan, he, along with other species of the breed like him, ducked for cover. When missiles of consequence were targeted in my direction, a lowly drone, four levels below the instigator on the organizational chart, I reviewed, with my boss, the merits of falling upon a metaphorical sword for the sake of the company. In that instance, I argued the firm had not instilled such a willingness in its employees by acting repeatedly to place its staff in such a dishonorable predicament.
Over the years, I've entertained repeated discussions with colleagues over the question of whether one should 'respect the position,' regardless of the occupant. I find I can not separate the two. It would seem, over the last half of the American 20th century, I'm not alone. For liberals, Viet Nam and Watergate were but the most recent confirmational turning points in establishing a mistrust of persons in authority. There was a even a rather bizarre editorial in the local rag two weeks ago castigating Walter Cronkite for allegedly stabbing troops in the back during Tet; in its perpetual quest to assign grades in non-definitive shades of loyalty and patriotism, Vietnamese anguish rages on, forty years later, with no end in sight.
Over the past five years, we've observed another scene of vehement linguistics, equal the propaganda of the best wars, manufactured by Episcopal seccesionists, the presumed conservatives of the struggle, against persons in authority, such as Archbishops and Bishops, while presumed liberals and progressives, stress loyalty and obedience to the institutional Church, its officers and canons.
As much as I can't separate the person from the position, there is still something instinctive, no matter the situation, that digs deep and calls for a modicum of loyalty despite circumstances. Perhaps it's a remnant of a tribal DNA defense mechanism. When I attended a fundamentalist church, I was appalled by the anti-Americanism espoused within the relentless criticisms hurled at the country. Qualms are also stirred now when someone in our Adult Sunday school castigates America from a position on the Left. There is something buried inside the conscience that reacts to criticism in a way that indicates something is out of order and needs to be put right.
Perhaps loyalty is a matter of timing. I note a book on tape on the life of Fritz Kolbe, a minor German bureaucrat in the Foreign Ministry, who served as an American 'spy in the heart of the Reich.' Up until mid-1943 into 1944, his secrets were highly valued. When it became clear the Germans were losing the war, less so. After 1945, he was shunned, by his countrymen as a tainted carrier of disloyalty, no matter the nature of the regime he betrayed.
In contrast, as observed here last week, Helmuth James Von Moltke, a conspirator in the plot to kill Hitler, executed by the Gestapo, is unambiguously honored, in retrospect, as a hero. Is this partly because he never had to face an aftermath where fellow countrymen might have regarded his actions as traitorous? Perhaps it was deliberate ruse, but I sense, even in Von Moltke's letters to his wife, there was still a 'we,' invested when writing of victorious German battles, as if he couldn't help loyally cheering his country despite working simulataneously to defeat it. (A lesser magnitudinal feeling similar to the one I have when I watch the beloved New York Yankees of my childhood play the downtrodden local Baltimore Orioles -- I want both to win when they don't play each other.) How long was it, in the end, anyway, before the post-war policy of De-Nazification was reversed when the West sought and found that former foes were useful allies in the new Cold War? How would Von Moltke reacted to that unforseen development?
In Voices of Morebath, Eamon Duffy, examines the impact of great events upon everyday parish life through looking at a small village in the English countryside during the Reformation. Prior to the 1530's, the village, as it had for over a millenium, was Roman Catholic. Mid-way through Henry the VIII's reign, it moderately blended old ritual with the liturgy of the oncoming new religion. Changes introduced by reformers, working under Henry's son, Edward VI, were more radical. His sister, Mary, reversed direction, restoring Catholicism, but so brutally, there was a backlash stirred throughout the general populace. Elizabeth I, of course, reversed course again, establishing England as a Protestant nation.
Most poignantly, in one viginette, Duffy writes of parish priest Father Christopher Trychay, who when he, "finally achieves the purchase of a new set of black vestments for requiem masses, the crowning achievement of twenty years painstaking effort, it is hard not to rejoice with him. The sense of loss is palpable, therefore, when the images, vestments and traditional trappings are removed, under the new Protestant order."
How could any priest or parishioner not turn cyncial in times like these? What constant is left to which to be loyal? An answer might be found in noting Father Christopher's tenure of service lasted from 1520 to 1574. In order to accomplish that, he might, indeed, have allowed himself to be carried 'any way the wind blows,' in national affairs over which he had no control, but dedicated himself, pastorally, to the myriad duties a parish priest attends to guide his flock through all their travails and needs of daily life.
Did Father Christopher bury his head in the sand or take care of more important business? Was it his small flock, or as the ghost of Jacob Marley screams to Scrooge every Christmas, "mankind was his business?" Where does the greater loyalty lie? My country right or wrong? Loyalty to the Church, the parish, or 'Spiritual Authority' as discerned through personal discernment? If individual conscience guides you to dissent, is this loyalty of another stripe to a higher calling, or betrayal? Or is it all simply a matter of timing?
I don't know for sure. What I do know is when our re-constituted Episcopal church gathers for its first Christmas Eve service, this Monday night, in reduced material circumstances, what someone might see as deprivation and loss, feels richer and more abundant than ever before, fulfilled by the simple parish pleasures of fellowship, common human, no, extraordinary human, decency, and unbreakable bonds of affection.
The good people of my parish, like those in medieval Morebath, remain honorably loyal to old Mother Church. It's a loyalty that's global, national and local in its implications; globally and nationally, in terms of symbolizing securing justice, dignity and human rights for marginalized peoples by warmly elcoming them in from the cold; locally, in an existence that sustains itself through steadfast goodness, intentional hospitality, and sacrificial charity, values of Jesus Incarnate, who we presume to imitate, humbly and naturally, despite existing in a world of constantly shifting, conveniently personal, loyalties.
Our re-constituted congregational birth and renassiance reflects another ancient local birth that purchased renewal for the entire world. Since taking a baptismal vow of Church loyalty, in 1997, I've opened myself to amazing new possibilities, harboring no questions or doubts on that course, and unlike my worldly career, not reflecting upon the past with dismay and regret, but awakened to a new life, filled with optimism, hope and faith, just like Ebeneezer Scrooge, on Christmas morning.
Over the years, I've entertained repeated discussions with colleagues over the question of whether one should 'respect the position,' regardless of the occupant. I find I can not separate the two. It would seem, over the last half of the American 20th century, I'm not alone. For liberals, Viet Nam and Watergate were but the most recent confirmational turning points in establishing a mistrust of persons in authority. There was a even a rather bizarre editorial in the local rag two weeks ago castigating Walter Cronkite for allegedly stabbing troops in the back during Tet; in its perpetual quest to assign grades in non-definitive shades of loyalty and patriotism, Vietnamese anguish rages on, forty years later, with no end in sight.
Over the past five years, we've observed another scene of vehement linguistics, equal the propaganda of the best wars, manufactured by Episcopal seccesionists, the presumed conservatives of the struggle, against persons in authority, such as Archbishops and Bishops, while presumed liberals and progressives, stress loyalty and obedience to the institutional Church, its officers and canons.
As much as I can't separate the person from the position, there is still something instinctive, no matter the situation, that digs deep and calls for a modicum of loyalty despite circumstances. Perhaps it's a remnant of a tribal DNA defense mechanism. When I attended a fundamentalist church, I was appalled by the anti-Americanism espoused within the relentless criticisms hurled at the country. Qualms are also stirred now when someone in our Adult Sunday school castigates America from a position on the Left. There is something buried inside the conscience that reacts to criticism in a way that indicates something is out of order and needs to be put right.
Perhaps loyalty is a matter of timing. I note a book on tape on the life of Fritz Kolbe, a minor German bureaucrat in the Foreign Ministry, who served as an American 'spy in the heart of the Reich.' Up until mid-1943 into 1944, his secrets were highly valued. When it became clear the Germans were losing the war, less so. After 1945, he was shunned, by his countrymen as a tainted carrier of disloyalty, no matter the nature of the regime he betrayed.
In contrast, as observed here last week, Helmuth James Von Moltke, a conspirator in the plot to kill Hitler, executed by the Gestapo, is unambiguously honored, in retrospect, as a hero. Is this partly because he never had to face an aftermath where fellow countrymen might have regarded his actions as traitorous? Perhaps it was deliberate ruse, but I sense, even in Von Moltke's letters to his wife, there was still a 'we,' invested when writing of victorious German battles, as if he couldn't help loyally cheering his country despite working simulataneously to defeat it. (A lesser magnitudinal feeling similar to the one I have when I watch the beloved New York Yankees of my childhood play the downtrodden local Baltimore Orioles -- I want both to win when they don't play each other.) How long was it, in the end, anyway, before the post-war policy of De-Nazification was reversed when the West sought and found that former foes were useful allies in the new Cold War? How would Von Moltke reacted to that unforseen development?
In Voices of Morebath, Eamon Duffy, examines the impact of great events upon everyday parish life through looking at a small village in the English countryside during the Reformation. Prior to the 1530's, the village, as it had for over a millenium, was Roman Catholic. Mid-way through Henry the VIII's reign, it moderately blended old ritual with the liturgy of the oncoming new religion. Changes introduced by reformers, working under Henry's son, Edward VI, were more radical. His sister, Mary, reversed direction, restoring Catholicism, but so brutally, there was a backlash stirred throughout the general populace. Elizabeth I, of course, reversed course again, establishing England as a Protestant nation.
Most poignantly, in one viginette, Duffy writes of parish priest Father Christopher Trychay, who when he, "finally achieves the purchase of a new set of black vestments for requiem masses, the crowning achievement of twenty years painstaking effort, it is hard not to rejoice with him. The sense of loss is palpable, therefore, when the images, vestments and traditional trappings are removed, under the new Protestant order."
How could any priest or parishioner not turn cyncial in times like these? What constant is left to which to be loyal? An answer might be found in noting Father Christopher's tenure of service lasted from 1520 to 1574. In order to accomplish that, he might, indeed, have allowed himself to be carried 'any way the wind blows,' in national affairs over which he had no control, but dedicated himself, pastorally, to the myriad duties a parish priest attends to guide his flock through all their travails and needs of daily life.
Did Father Christopher bury his head in the sand or take care of more important business? Was it his small flock, or as the ghost of Jacob Marley screams to Scrooge every Christmas, "mankind was his business?" Where does the greater loyalty lie? My country right or wrong? Loyalty to the Church, the parish, or 'Spiritual Authority' as discerned through personal discernment? If individual conscience guides you to dissent, is this loyalty of another stripe to a higher calling, or betrayal? Or is it all simply a matter of timing?
I don't know for sure. What I do know is when our re-constituted Episcopal church gathers for its first Christmas Eve service, this Monday night, in reduced material circumstances, what someone might see as deprivation and loss, feels richer and more abundant than ever before, fulfilled by the simple parish pleasures of fellowship, common human, no, extraordinary human, decency, and unbreakable bonds of affection.
The good people of my parish, like those in medieval Morebath, remain honorably loyal to old Mother Church. It's a loyalty that's global, national and local in its implications; globally and nationally, in terms of symbolizing securing justice, dignity and human rights for marginalized peoples by warmly elcoming them in from the cold; locally, in an existence that sustains itself through steadfast goodness, intentional hospitality, and sacrificial charity, values of Jesus Incarnate, who we presume to imitate, humbly and naturally, despite existing in a world of constantly shifting, conveniently personal, loyalties.
Our re-constituted congregational birth and renassiance reflects another ancient local birth that purchased renewal for the entire world. Since taking a baptismal vow of Church loyalty, in 1997, I've opened myself to amazing new possibilities, harboring no questions or doubts on that course, and unlike my worldly career, not reflecting upon the past with dismay and regret, but awakened to a new life, filled with optimism, hope and faith, just like Ebeneezer Scrooge, on Christmas morning.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Bureaucrats
I note this week an incident which occured in the office fifteen years ago. A new boss asked I do something a bit dodgy ethics-wise. My response, upon pondering the request, was: 'interesting.' His ballistic reply: "It wasn't a question, it was an order." The counter-response once again, 'interesting,' only infuriated him more. He recognized, in his heart of hearts, as I knew in mine, I wasn't going to do it, no matter what.
The eventual consequence of the exchange was that I was denied work of any significance for a period of ten years. In fact, a cadre of three, this boss, his superior, and one toady underling, eventually took upon themselves, the work of sixty people, leaving nothing but rote crumbs for the rest of us, until, damage done, they left, together.
People reacted to forced idleness in various ways. One staffer, previously distinguished by his workaholism, as demonstrated through emails written at 3 a.m., suffered a breakdown and retired on a medical disability. Others had no problem with being paid for inactivity. My response, after a decade of deep devotion to the firm, was to fortify my heart against office politics, releasing energy for activities elsewhere.
I arrived at 5 a.m., leaving eight straight hours later, to attend afternoon classes at a local seminary. (I constantly worried the trio might, one day, attempt contact, while I was out of the office, on a work-related matter; no matter, in three years, not once.) I worked evenings on tasks related to opening a homeless shelter. Whereas any bureaucratic talents I possessed went unused at the office, here they were here tested to the limit, interacting with politicians, the police, hospital administrators, clergy, corporations, the media, and other shelter directors (especially, them, since they resented competition for limited financial resources and acted accordingly).
This period of life came to mind, this past week, as I read letters written, during World War II, by Helmuth James Von Moltke to his wife Freya. The scion of a revered German military family, whose reputation initially offered some protection, Helmuth served the Reich as a otherwise clandestine lawyer in a bureaucracy that posed considerably more ethical dangers, in the extreme, than my office, but in some ways, contained similar characteristics, to all bureaucracies.
As an attorney assigned to produce opinions related to international law, Motlke reports in September 1941, "The following landed on my desk yesterday: An officer reports that ammunition produced in violation of international law was found on Russians: dum-dum bullets. That they were such could be proved by the evidence of the Medical Officer, one Panning, who used the ammunition in a large-scale experimental execution of Jews. This produced the following results: such and such was the effect of the projectile when fired at the head, such when fired at the chest, such in abdominal shots, such when limbs were hit. The results were available in the form of a scientific study so that the violation of international law could be proved without a doubt."
In matters of no great consequence, I often offered, as a good bureaucrat, and in way of intellectual exercise, "let me know what you want to prove, or not, and I'll produce statistics either way." The absolute depravity of the Third Reich is encapsulated, in the above 'proof', where such documentation is considered allowable and compelling (such as it is today, perhaps, when presented by ethically untroubled lawyers, who employ the 'gay defense,' tactic, alledging justifiable self-defense, to win release of murderous homophobic clients).
Von Moltke is cognizant of his predicament. He writes, "The realization that what I do is senseless does not stop my doing it, because I am much more firmly convinced than before that only what is done in the full recognition of the senselessness of all action makes any sense at all." Even so, in the case of the dum-dum bullets, he willfully envisions a future of justice as he concludes, "That surely is the height of bestiality and depravity and there is nothing one can do. But I hope one day it will be possible to get the reporting officer and Herr Panning before a court of law."
The inextinguishable hope of Von Moltke got him killed, in the end, for complicity in the circles of men and women rounded up and killed by the Gestapo, after the plot on Hitler's life failed, in July 1944.
At our shelter for those with active addictions or criminal records of violence, who can not enter other shelters, for the protection of women and children, we were frequently accused, by competitors (even though they didn't allow admittance of our guests to their facilities) of enabling the clients. Friend Mark, and I, considering, in retrospect, our high death rate, have discussed many times whether our work did any good, or at least, more good than harm. Some days, I think it enough, in the endeavors someone undertakes, to be 'a fool for Christ,' other days, less so.
Von Moltke tells the story of a priest whose job it was to spend the night with prisoners before their execution. After commenting on the suprisingly consistent good nature of the fellow under such conditions, Von Moltke writes, "I made him describe such a night; it is horrible and yet, somehow, sublime. He said that no-one is so well prepared to face death as these people; and he said that in the 8 years of his work, there was not one . . . who did not go to the scaffold calmly. What an accomplishment such a night means! It is gruesome and frightful; but such a night poses questions which are not put otherwise so starkly, so nakedly and absolutely." It brought back the night I spent bonding with a previously remote, alternatively violent and gentle guest, watching the sunrise, the morning after a hurricane.
Nothing in my experience approaches the horror Von Moltke faced, nor the courage he demonstrated - I pray he won't mind then if I apply any lessons garnered by his struggle to my life. I do grasp, though, from limited experience, that when you encounter life and death on such stark terms, much of the facade of detail, falls away, so that what is left, is magnified, and counts all the more.
Yet, throughout the war, he retreated, to the family farm, or even just to his apartment, with a book, whether a biography of Charles XII, or (so ironically delicious, a book by the great Jewish philosopher) Spinoza, for solace, and for strength, since any text you approach in circumstances like these, seems to carry a serendipitous relevance (reminding me further of the time I took a Catholic Worker farm phamphlet on organic toilets to surrpeticiously read at a meeting of high-ranking company executives). Von Moltke's revelation alleviates guilt and permits me not only to excuse time I spend reading, as not time taken away from more important work, but to value reading, in itself, as a quiet act of self-preservation, or even subversion, when no other means is permitted.
Some letters included exchanges with his wife on whether the recitiation of grace should be imposed upon their children before meals. Bonfoeffer, in similar circumstances, wrote from prison, on the significance of regular Sunday church attendance. Perhaps, likewise, I discern the parable of the rich young man who sulks away after Jesus tells him he must discard his worldly goods to follow Him. I have the feeling He was trying to tell us He realized this wasn't possible for most folks, and that as the man walked away, He still gazed upon Him with tenderness, because He knew, in the weakness and helplessness of all people, it's enough that we do little things in our lives, to preserve the dignity of those around us, as well as our own, especially under conditions we can't control, so that we remember our reliance remains upon Him, the Great Transcender. Our spirit, aligned with His, is the only thing, temporally and eternally, unconquerable.
Von Moltke wrote in November 1941: "We must, it seems to me, do all we can to instill into their very flesh and blood, the principle that there must be an accounting for every action, and that all men are equal before God, so that whatever happens to one human being concerns all others too, and that no-one can hide behind some notion that any human being is in a different category."
I'll leave him with the last word.
The eventual consequence of the exchange was that I was denied work of any significance for a period of ten years. In fact, a cadre of three, this boss, his superior, and one toady underling, eventually took upon themselves, the work of sixty people, leaving nothing but rote crumbs for the rest of us, until, damage done, they left, together.
People reacted to forced idleness in various ways. One staffer, previously distinguished by his workaholism, as demonstrated through emails written at 3 a.m., suffered a breakdown and retired on a medical disability. Others had no problem with being paid for inactivity. My response, after a decade of deep devotion to the firm, was to fortify my heart against office politics, releasing energy for activities elsewhere.
I arrived at 5 a.m., leaving eight straight hours later, to attend afternoon classes at a local seminary. (I constantly worried the trio might, one day, attempt contact, while I was out of the office, on a work-related matter; no matter, in three years, not once.) I worked evenings on tasks related to opening a homeless shelter. Whereas any bureaucratic talents I possessed went unused at the office, here they were here tested to the limit, interacting with politicians, the police, hospital administrators, clergy, corporations, the media, and other shelter directors (especially, them, since they resented competition for limited financial resources and acted accordingly).
This period of life came to mind, this past week, as I read letters written, during World War II, by Helmuth James Von Moltke to his wife Freya. The scion of a revered German military family, whose reputation initially offered some protection, Helmuth served the Reich as a otherwise clandestine lawyer in a bureaucracy that posed considerably more ethical dangers, in the extreme, than my office, but in some ways, contained similar characteristics, to all bureaucracies.
As an attorney assigned to produce opinions related to international law, Motlke reports in September 1941, "The following landed on my desk yesterday: An officer reports that ammunition produced in violation of international law was found on Russians: dum-dum bullets. That they were such could be proved by the evidence of the Medical Officer, one Panning, who used the ammunition in a large-scale experimental execution of Jews. This produced the following results: such and such was the effect of the projectile when fired at the head, such when fired at the chest, such in abdominal shots, such when limbs were hit. The results were available in the form of a scientific study so that the violation of international law could be proved without a doubt."
In matters of no great consequence, I often offered, as a good bureaucrat, and in way of intellectual exercise, "let me know what you want to prove, or not, and I'll produce statistics either way." The absolute depravity of the Third Reich is encapsulated, in the above 'proof', where such documentation is considered allowable and compelling (such as it is today, perhaps, when presented by ethically untroubled lawyers, who employ the 'gay defense,' tactic, alledging justifiable self-defense, to win release of murderous homophobic clients).
Von Moltke is cognizant of his predicament. He writes, "The realization that what I do is senseless does not stop my doing it, because I am much more firmly convinced than before that only what is done in the full recognition of the senselessness of all action makes any sense at all." Even so, in the case of the dum-dum bullets, he willfully envisions a future of justice as he concludes, "That surely is the height of bestiality and depravity and there is nothing one can do. But I hope one day it will be possible to get the reporting officer and Herr Panning before a court of law."
The inextinguishable hope of Von Moltke got him killed, in the end, for complicity in the circles of men and women rounded up and killed by the Gestapo, after the plot on Hitler's life failed, in July 1944.
At our shelter for those with active addictions or criminal records of violence, who can not enter other shelters, for the protection of women and children, we were frequently accused, by competitors (even though they didn't allow admittance of our guests to their facilities) of enabling the clients. Friend Mark, and I, considering, in retrospect, our high death rate, have discussed many times whether our work did any good, or at least, more good than harm. Some days, I think it enough, in the endeavors someone undertakes, to be 'a fool for Christ,' other days, less so.
Von Moltke tells the story of a priest whose job it was to spend the night with prisoners before their execution. After commenting on the suprisingly consistent good nature of the fellow under such conditions, Von Moltke writes, "I made him describe such a night; it is horrible and yet, somehow, sublime. He said that no-one is so well prepared to face death as these people; and he said that in the 8 years of his work, there was not one . . . who did not go to the scaffold calmly. What an accomplishment such a night means! It is gruesome and frightful; but such a night poses questions which are not put otherwise so starkly, so nakedly and absolutely." It brought back the night I spent bonding with a previously remote, alternatively violent and gentle guest, watching the sunrise, the morning after a hurricane.
Nothing in my experience approaches the horror Von Moltke faced, nor the courage he demonstrated - I pray he won't mind then if I apply any lessons garnered by his struggle to my life. I do grasp, though, from limited experience, that when you encounter life and death on such stark terms, much of the facade of detail, falls away, so that what is left, is magnified, and counts all the more.
Yet, throughout the war, he retreated, to the family farm, or even just to his apartment, with a book, whether a biography of Charles XII, or (so ironically delicious, a book by the great Jewish philosopher) Spinoza, for solace, and for strength, since any text you approach in circumstances like these, seems to carry a serendipitous relevance (reminding me further of the time I took a Catholic Worker farm phamphlet on organic toilets to surrpeticiously read at a meeting of high-ranking company executives). Von Moltke's revelation alleviates guilt and permits me not only to excuse time I spend reading, as not time taken away from more important work, but to value reading, in itself, as a quiet act of self-preservation, or even subversion, when no other means is permitted.
Some letters included exchanges with his wife on whether the recitiation of grace should be imposed upon their children before meals. Bonfoeffer, in similar circumstances, wrote from prison, on the significance of regular Sunday church attendance. Perhaps, likewise, I discern the parable of the rich young man who sulks away after Jesus tells him he must discard his worldly goods to follow Him. I have the feeling He was trying to tell us He realized this wasn't possible for most folks, and that as the man walked away, He still gazed upon Him with tenderness, because He knew, in the weakness and helplessness of all people, it's enough that we do little things in our lives, to preserve the dignity of those around us, as well as our own, especially under conditions we can't control, so that we remember our reliance remains upon Him, the Great Transcender. Our spirit, aligned with His, is the only thing, temporally and eternally, unconquerable.
Von Moltke wrote in November 1941: "We must, it seems to me, do all we can to instill into their very flesh and blood, the principle that there must be an accounting for every action, and that all men are equal before God, so that whatever happens to one human being concerns all others too, and that no-one can hide behind some notion that any human being is in a different category."
I'll leave him with the last word.
Friday, December 7, 2007
Text in Context
I note this week the Spotsyltuckian myth of a little boy, riding on a bus, in Brooklyn, to Sheepshead Bay, hand in hand with mother, to sign up for a library card. In the beginning there are always words; the first thing a Spotsyltuckian always does when he moves to town is march wife and clan to the library for cards; this last time, knowing we were newlyweds, the wise librarian announced, 'if this is what's most on his mind, more than all the other myriad duties common to moving, he must be a keeper,' --(good for the new mother-in-law to hear this kind of news in person).
During a holiday craft show in an elementary school, last weekend, we wandered around the pint-sized library. The same kind of books lined the shelves that started my journey four decades ago: ghost story compendiums (in the day it was an Alfred Hitchcock Presents...these were uniformly Potter-ish), and legendary stories of Jim Thorpe, Knute Rockne, the Four Horsemen, Babe and Lou.
Garrison Keillor, in a Post essay, captures the feeling well, writing, "I leaned my bike against the wall and snuck inside. I didn't take the elevator for fear the lady operating it would ask me the purpose of my visit and I would stammer and turn pale, so I climbed the stairs past the Egyptian mummy on the third floor landing and headed for the children's room and the toasty smell of brand-new books. I plopped down and read them, one after the other. Nobody yelled at me, nobody told me to stop reading..."
Sounds like a holy sanctuary, eh? Yet, that word today, sanctuary, turns as all words, on context. It's been that way since the beginning of recorded time. The original tribal inhabitants of Palestine, the Canaanites, initially communicated in the 800-symbol cuneiform fashion developed by the Mesopotamians, where every syllable required a symbol of its own. It didn't work efficiently, as a language for use in contracts and bureacracy (though, come to think of it, we use a similar form of shorthand in emails today), so the Canaanites reduced the alphabet to 24 characters by elminating vowels. Usage became conditioned on context: for example, if you were implying an object belonged to 'our' family, writing "or," unless the object in question was martime-related, meant 'our,' not 'oar.'
The context of sanctuary became crucial when I had to decide whether to welcome or turn away a guest at our faith-based shelter if I possessed the undesired knowledge he was a wanted man. The deciding ethical factor usually turned on the context of the crime, whether outstanding warrants for driving on a suspended license, say, as opposed to murder, or as to what danger he presented to the surrounding community of which I was also a responsible member. In 19th century France, Hugo's Quasimodo employed the word in 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame," within a similar church/state context. In the context of recent political debates, politicians accused of governing a 'sanctuary city,' for example, have rendered an otherwise noble word into an ignoble epithet.
According to the Times, prosecutors "questioned the Turkish publisher of the book "The God Delusion," by a British author, Richard Dawkins, after a young reader complained that it was offensive." In that context, if I was in power, it's not the tack I'd take since I haven't understood anything yet this brilliant scientist has written. I'd leave the book on the shelf, knowing even if someone discovered it, amongst millions of other books in massive public libraries (like the crate containing the Ark of the Covenant in a huge warehouse at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie) they'd more than likely attempt the first chapter and quit in total confusion.
In the New York Review of Books, the equally brilliant, but more readable British author, William Dalrymple, described a time in 16th century India where "in an atmosphere comparable to Lorenzo de' Medici's Platonic Academy in Florence a century earlier, these enlightened Mughal rulers invited scholars and priests from around the world to their court, hosting them in their palaces and fielding weekly interfaith debates into the small hours of the morning."
That's the university context of learning for which I'm totally nostalgic; all night political debates, capped by the publication of a manifesto, the likes of which you might only be able to purchase today for fifty cents from a cart in the alcove of the City Lights bookshop in North Beach. Friend Mark writes of a time at UNC-Chapel Hill when a mandatory reading assignment for freshman on the story of a young Muslim caused a brouhaha. As Mark reports, the chancellor, responding to reporter's questions, said "what they learned from the book, and subsequent discussions, meant that the assignment had been successful in generating the thoughtful and analytic discussions they were seeking from students preparing for college." Or was it, for the chancellor concluded, that while he knew the course hadn't caused anyone to convert from Christianity to Islam, the "official religion of UNC had always been, and always continue to be, basketball."
As I age, I reject something I once read that "there are no lessons to be learned from sports," since I carry much that is noble from those first stories, in the elementary school library, of Rockne and Gehrig. I find, to gain the most from reading, like Thomas Merton, the Benedictine monk, who'd go to bed by 6 p.m. and awaken at 2 a.m. (rather than the college students I know today who go to bed at 2 and awaken at 6.), "it is necessary for me to see the first point of light which begins to dawn. It is necessary to be present alone at the resurrection of Day, in blank silence when the sun appears. In this completely netural instant, I receive from the eastern woods, the tall oaks, the one word "Day" which is never the same. It is never spoken in any known language."
Sitting in the soft enveloping recliner, facing the north window, at sunrise, under a quilt, coffee in hand, book in lap, gazing up at our woods, I welcome the day, with newly discovered ideas. This is the context of personal sanctuary; the holy duality of peace and learning. What began in the bustling Brooklyn neighborhood of Sheepshead Bay continues in our home in Virginia, fed and enriched beyond measure, by the seven far-flung town and country branches of the regional public library system.
During a holiday craft show in an elementary school, last weekend, we wandered around the pint-sized library. The same kind of books lined the shelves that started my journey four decades ago: ghost story compendiums (in the day it was an Alfred Hitchcock Presents...these were uniformly Potter-ish), and legendary stories of Jim Thorpe, Knute Rockne, the Four Horsemen, Babe and Lou.
Garrison Keillor, in a Post essay, captures the feeling well, writing, "I leaned my bike against the wall and snuck inside. I didn't take the elevator for fear the lady operating it would ask me the purpose of my visit and I would stammer and turn pale, so I climbed the stairs past the Egyptian mummy on the third floor landing and headed for the children's room and the toasty smell of brand-new books. I plopped down and read them, one after the other. Nobody yelled at me, nobody told me to stop reading..."
Sounds like a holy sanctuary, eh? Yet, that word today, sanctuary, turns as all words, on context. It's been that way since the beginning of recorded time. The original tribal inhabitants of Palestine, the Canaanites, initially communicated in the 800-symbol cuneiform fashion developed by the Mesopotamians, where every syllable required a symbol of its own. It didn't work efficiently, as a language for use in contracts and bureacracy (though, come to think of it, we use a similar form of shorthand in emails today), so the Canaanites reduced the alphabet to 24 characters by elminating vowels. Usage became conditioned on context: for example, if you were implying an object belonged to 'our' family, writing "or," unless the object in question was martime-related, meant 'our,' not 'oar.'
The context of sanctuary became crucial when I had to decide whether to welcome or turn away a guest at our faith-based shelter if I possessed the undesired knowledge he was a wanted man. The deciding ethical factor usually turned on the context of the crime, whether outstanding warrants for driving on a suspended license, say, as opposed to murder, or as to what danger he presented to the surrounding community of which I was also a responsible member. In 19th century France, Hugo's Quasimodo employed the word in 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame," within a similar church/state context. In the context of recent political debates, politicians accused of governing a 'sanctuary city,' for example, have rendered an otherwise noble word into an ignoble epithet.
According to the Times, prosecutors "questioned the Turkish publisher of the book "The God Delusion," by a British author, Richard Dawkins, after a young reader complained that it was offensive." In that context, if I was in power, it's not the tack I'd take since I haven't understood anything yet this brilliant scientist has written. I'd leave the book on the shelf, knowing even if someone discovered it, amongst millions of other books in massive public libraries (like the crate containing the Ark of the Covenant in a huge warehouse at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie) they'd more than likely attempt the first chapter and quit in total confusion.
In the New York Review of Books, the equally brilliant, but more readable British author, William Dalrymple, described a time in 16th century India where "in an atmosphere comparable to Lorenzo de' Medici's Platonic Academy in Florence a century earlier, these enlightened Mughal rulers invited scholars and priests from around the world to their court, hosting them in their palaces and fielding weekly interfaith debates into the small hours of the morning."
That's the university context of learning for which I'm totally nostalgic; all night political debates, capped by the publication of a manifesto, the likes of which you might only be able to purchase today for fifty cents from a cart in the alcove of the City Lights bookshop in North Beach. Friend Mark writes of a time at UNC-Chapel Hill when a mandatory reading assignment for freshman on the story of a young Muslim caused a brouhaha. As Mark reports, the chancellor, responding to reporter's questions, said "what they learned from the book, and subsequent discussions, meant that the assignment had been successful in generating the thoughtful and analytic discussions they were seeking from students preparing for college." Or was it, for the chancellor concluded, that while he knew the course hadn't caused anyone to convert from Christianity to Islam, the "official religion of UNC had always been, and always continue to be, basketball."
As I age, I reject something I once read that "there are no lessons to be learned from sports," since I carry much that is noble from those first stories, in the elementary school library, of Rockne and Gehrig. I find, to gain the most from reading, like Thomas Merton, the Benedictine monk, who'd go to bed by 6 p.m. and awaken at 2 a.m. (rather than the college students I know today who go to bed at 2 and awaken at 6.), "it is necessary for me to see the first point of light which begins to dawn. It is necessary to be present alone at the resurrection of Day, in blank silence when the sun appears. In this completely netural instant, I receive from the eastern woods, the tall oaks, the one word "Day" which is never the same. It is never spoken in any known language."
Sitting in the soft enveloping recliner, facing the north window, at sunrise, under a quilt, coffee in hand, book in lap, gazing up at our woods, I welcome the day, with newly discovered ideas. This is the context of personal sanctuary; the holy duality of peace and learning. What began in the bustling Brooklyn neighborhood of Sheepshead Bay continues in our home in Virginia, fed and enriched beyond measure, by the seven far-flung town and country branches of the regional public library system.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Upon Figuring Authority
I note this week a letter from a fella we'll call "E." Mostly, he lives in a tent in the woods with other like-minded men and women. As is their wont, E and his set, from time to time, obtain accomodations, as a consequence of certain misdeameanors, lasting from a few days to several months, in the local hoosegow. It is over-crowded, and reservations for what's enviously called '3 hots and a cot,' are hard to get, especially around the holidays. Many's the time I drove a guest, desirous of such luxury, to the police station, to turn himself in on an outstanding warrant, only to be told there's no room at the inn.
When E's on the street, he boasts of higher education, yet doesn't exhibit much drive nor purpose (he must have come across Maslow's 'hierarchy of needs,' since the theory's endlessly trotted out for show as proof of his learning -- perhaps he picked it up in group therapy or through a parole officer - but it stuck for future use in attempts to manipulate conversations with authority figures like shelter managers and social workers). Otherwise, he lives the lifestyle of the average tent-dwelling consumer: fights, feuds, alcohol; a chaotic riotous existence.
When E's incarcerated, all that changes. He writes of the glory of God, how he's found the Lord, and of One Way. My responses suggest when he's next released, he not return to his more or less vacant tent, but join a community where he might perform works so that others may be influenced to live a less harmful life. Upon release, conversely, he resumes his pagan forest revels, until re-arrested, and born again, for the duration of his next sentence.
The phenonmenon is not unknown. The most notorious criminal recidivists of our community, are conspicuous Bible-thumpers, carrying Scripture everywhere within waterproof covers, while reciting verse from memory. Indeed, if they manage to achieve advanced adulthood (age 45 in our neck of the woods), it's likely we'll provide a large-print edition so they may better read The Word in a tent at night by the light of a flickering Coleman one-burner propane gas lamp.
Why is it that E functions behind bars yet can not when free? It brings to mind, once again, the journey of John Henry Newman. As a young Evangelical, he expounded the doctrine of sola scriptura, the Spiritual Authority of the Bible alone. As a Roman Catholic convert, since he longer believed the laity competent to discern Scripture, he wrote of the Bible as a subordinate appendage to an authoritarian Church.
E does not expound upon Scripture a great deal when he's free; he finds worldy freedom more alluring. He only achieves a spiritual freedom when bodily confined. Do we likewise require Authority in our less illict lives where jail does not provide the same desirable accomodation; should Church figuratively and necessarily perform the same function for us as prison does for E?
At many classes in seminary, there's a clique of vocal doctrinal hardliners. I wondered how they'd function as priests when confronted by a parishioner with a serious personal problem. While attending those classes, I also taught a suicide hot-line seminar. When a prospective listener announced she'd refer all callers to Jesus, she wasn't recommended for hire.
At that time of my life, a friend had bulemia. In my way of trying to help, (not surprising to those who know me), I wrote her a report on the subject. While researching the topic, I combed the seminary library for materials. I found one small book, outdated, of not much use.
As I've researched on-line, since then, on similar subjects, I've been likewise frustrated. If I search, on the keywords 'pastoral ministry' for example, I hit peripheral topics, such as advertisements for the minister's pre-written sermons handbook, or multitudinous listings for non-demonimnational churches with the word 'community,' in their name -- like Dunwiddie Restored Light and Harvest Community Church.
In the shelter business, it's not unusual to attend a meeting of one hundred professionals, as the only male. Reading of Jane Aadams, and her work at Hull House, I noticed she'd been criticized by the feminists of her day for suggesting that it was a natural function of women to operate such places. In pondering that, it led to searching under keywords 'feminist theology' instead of pastoral ministry.
I hit upon Rosemary Radford Ruether, described as a feminist theologian, by the on-line Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology. She was quoted, "This Jesus is an iconoclastic prophet who proclaims the reversal of the social order, a reversal which does not simply introduce new inequalities, but which aims at a new reality in which hiearchy and dominance are overcome as principles of social relations. Jesus speaks a liberating word which disupts the patriarchal structuring of society with its entrenched relations of hiearchy, dominance and opression; in this sense, Jesus can be understood as the kenosis (relinquishment) of partriarchy."
In response to a letter I'd written on our Church troubles, published in the local rag, in November, a correspondent responded he "does not admit that the Episcopal Church began departing from scriptural authority and doctrine years before gay bishop Gene Robinson's consecration in 2003, which ignited the separation action." It's not a far stretch of the imagination to consider he may be referring to the ordination of women.
Meryl Streep was quoted recently in the last of three excellent special 40th anniversary issues of Rolling Stone, "next to climate, the changing status of women in the last hundred years is the most destabilizing thing that's happened on earth. It's precipitated so many seismic changes and reactions in cultures. I think you can lay all the fundamentalism that's been rearing its ugly head in the world at the feet of that change. It's better for Western women, but that idea, that women have rights, hasn't permeated much of the world, even today. The forces that don't want to consider it are going down hard."
The saddest news story I note this week is that its now believed, upon new discoveries, all the graves of Czar Nicholas II and his entire family have been accounted for. I don't know why that story has always carried such poignance - in the middle of the night, this former royal, his wife, and children, seemingly naieve and innocent concerning their dread fate, were rousted from their beds, and so cruelly executed by the Communists. Perhaps it's the stark juxtaposition of a family in the path of an onrushing inhuman doctrinal Authority, so utterly swept away and destroyed, that is so mournfully disturbing.
In G.W. Bromiley's "Thomas Cranmer, Theologian," I read in my devotions this morning as to how Cranmer and Luther agreed, "There are two kinds of faith. The one is a dead belief, which accepts the facts and doctrines of the Christian faith, but does not have the inward trust in Christ, or live out the Gospel in daily obedience. The other includes an acceptance of the facts and doctrine of Christianity, but it also involves a sure trust and confidence in God's merciful promises, which necessarily expresses itself in life and conduct. It is only the latter faith, the true, lively, and Christian faith of the second homily, which avails for justification."
This circles round to "E." His outward expression of faith is conditioned upon confinement in an authoritarian environment. Is that what's behind those who march under the rigid banner of Spiritual Authority? Are they like E in that the expression of their faith must be conditioned within a hiearchy endowed with the image of patriarchical authority? Is that what makes the existence of women or a Gene Robinson as a new kind of authority figure so threatening?
I must admit during my time at shelter, I was intermittingly disappointed that guests never altered their lifestyle despite of what we thought of as providing a good Christian example. We did not establish an environment emphasizing Authority. We strove, rather, to create a family-like community, to which people might respond in love. In recognizing that you can't save another person through works - only the gift of God's grave can accomplish that -- is not the intentional willingness to love, uncoerced by Authority, despite a lack of immediate returns, the central act of faith, parish and family? If a gift, radiating steadfast hope and redemption, is not freely given or willingly received, it's as hollow as a faith that only comes alive when it's imprisoned.
When E's on the street, he boasts of higher education, yet doesn't exhibit much drive nor purpose (he must have come across Maslow's 'hierarchy of needs,' since the theory's endlessly trotted out for show as proof of his learning -- perhaps he picked it up in group therapy or through a parole officer - but it stuck for future use in attempts to manipulate conversations with authority figures like shelter managers and social workers). Otherwise, he lives the lifestyle of the average tent-dwelling consumer: fights, feuds, alcohol; a chaotic riotous existence.
When E's incarcerated, all that changes. He writes of the glory of God, how he's found the Lord, and of One Way. My responses suggest when he's next released, he not return to his more or less vacant tent, but join a community where he might perform works so that others may be influenced to live a less harmful life. Upon release, conversely, he resumes his pagan forest revels, until re-arrested, and born again, for the duration of his next sentence.
The phenonmenon is not unknown. The most notorious criminal recidivists of our community, are conspicuous Bible-thumpers, carrying Scripture everywhere within waterproof covers, while reciting verse from memory. Indeed, if they manage to achieve advanced adulthood (age 45 in our neck of the woods), it's likely we'll provide a large-print edition so they may better read The Word in a tent at night by the light of a flickering Coleman one-burner propane gas lamp.
Why is it that E functions behind bars yet can not when free? It brings to mind, once again, the journey of John Henry Newman. As a young Evangelical, he expounded the doctrine of sola scriptura, the Spiritual Authority of the Bible alone. As a Roman Catholic convert, since he longer believed the laity competent to discern Scripture, he wrote of the Bible as a subordinate appendage to an authoritarian Church.
E does not expound upon Scripture a great deal when he's free; he finds worldy freedom more alluring. He only achieves a spiritual freedom when bodily confined. Do we likewise require Authority in our less illict lives where jail does not provide the same desirable accomodation; should Church figuratively and necessarily perform the same function for us as prison does for E?
At many classes in seminary, there's a clique of vocal doctrinal hardliners. I wondered how they'd function as priests when confronted by a parishioner with a serious personal problem. While attending those classes, I also taught a suicide hot-line seminar. When a prospective listener announced she'd refer all callers to Jesus, she wasn't recommended for hire.
At that time of my life, a friend had bulemia. In my way of trying to help, (not surprising to those who know me), I wrote her a report on the subject. While researching the topic, I combed the seminary library for materials. I found one small book, outdated, of not much use.
As I've researched on-line, since then, on similar subjects, I've been likewise frustrated. If I search, on the keywords 'pastoral ministry' for example, I hit peripheral topics, such as advertisements for the minister's pre-written sermons handbook, or multitudinous listings for non-demonimnational churches with the word 'community,' in their name -- like Dunwiddie Restored Light and Harvest Community Church.
In the shelter business, it's not unusual to attend a meeting of one hundred professionals, as the only male. Reading of Jane Aadams, and her work at Hull House, I noticed she'd been criticized by the feminists of her day for suggesting that it was a natural function of women to operate such places. In pondering that, it led to searching under keywords 'feminist theology' instead of pastoral ministry.
I hit upon Rosemary Radford Ruether, described as a feminist theologian, by the on-line Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology. She was quoted, "This Jesus is an iconoclastic prophet who proclaims the reversal of the social order, a reversal which does not simply introduce new inequalities, but which aims at a new reality in which hiearchy and dominance are overcome as principles of social relations. Jesus speaks a liberating word which disupts the patriarchal structuring of society with its entrenched relations of hiearchy, dominance and opression; in this sense, Jesus can be understood as the kenosis (relinquishment) of partriarchy."
In response to a letter I'd written on our Church troubles, published in the local rag, in November, a correspondent responded he "does not admit that the Episcopal Church began departing from scriptural authority and doctrine years before gay bishop Gene Robinson's consecration in 2003, which ignited the separation action." It's not a far stretch of the imagination to consider he may be referring to the ordination of women.
Meryl Streep was quoted recently in the last of three excellent special 40th anniversary issues of Rolling Stone, "next to climate, the changing status of women in the last hundred years is the most destabilizing thing that's happened on earth. It's precipitated so many seismic changes and reactions in cultures. I think you can lay all the fundamentalism that's been rearing its ugly head in the world at the feet of that change. It's better for Western women, but that idea, that women have rights, hasn't permeated much of the world, even today. The forces that don't want to consider it are going down hard."
The saddest news story I note this week is that its now believed, upon new discoveries, all the graves of Czar Nicholas II and his entire family have been accounted for. I don't know why that story has always carried such poignance - in the middle of the night, this former royal, his wife, and children, seemingly naieve and innocent concerning their dread fate, were rousted from their beds, and so cruelly executed by the Communists. Perhaps it's the stark juxtaposition of a family in the path of an onrushing inhuman doctrinal Authority, so utterly swept away and destroyed, that is so mournfully disturbing.
In G.W. Bromiley's "Thomas Cranmer, Theologian," I read in my devotions this morning as to how Cranmer and Luther agreed, "There are two kinds of faith. The one is a dead belief, which accepts the facts and doctrines of the Christian faith, but does not have the inward trust in Christ, or live out the Gospel in daily obedience. The other includes an acceptance of the facts and doctrine of Christianity, but it also involves a sure trust and confidence in God's merciful promises, which necessarily expresses itself in life and conduct. It is only the latter faith, the true, lively, and Christian faith of the second homily, which avails for justification."
This circles round to "E." His outward expression of faith is conditioned upon confinement in an authoritarian environment. Is that what's behind those who march under the rigid banner of Spiritual Authority? Are they like E in that the expression of their faith must be conditioned within a hiearchy endowed with the image of patriarchical authority? Is that what makes the existence of women or a Gene Robinson as a new kind of authority figure so threatening?
I must admit during my time at shelter, I was intermittingly disappointed that guests never altered their lifestyle despite of what we thought of as providing a good Christian example. We did not establish an environment emphasizing Authority. We strove, rather, to create a family-like community, to which people might respond in love. In recognizing that you can't save another person through works - only the gift of God's grave can accomplish that -- is not the intentional willingness to love, uncoerced by Authority, despite a lack of immediate returns, the central act of faith, parish and family? If a gift, radiating steadfast hope and redemption, is not freely given or willingly received, it's as hollow as a faith that only comes alive when it's imprisoned.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
The Saluda Homecoming
I note this week I've taken a shine to baking cookies. When the green landscape transforms to the bleak gray suffusion of a Virginia countryside winter, left to my own devices, it's soft oatmeal raisin, not plumbing the depths of theology or politics, that comforts the soul.
Basic training requires slamming open a tube against the counter to free a squidgy slab of dough(?); then slice and bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for 9 minutes. Feeling, at times, more confident, I graduate to: blending one egg, one tbsp water, 3 tbsp canola oil and mix; then bake on a greased pan for 14 minutes. Brimming, other times, with the sure to be proven false pride of past success, I download a 'scratch,' that requires mysterious bottles of strange elixers called vanilla extract and powdered nutmeg that stand in rows amongst armies of fragrant spices like a regiment of red-helmeted soliders guarding a female skirmish line in the wife's territorial cupboard.
Is this whimsy or practicing to be old? Lennon's, 'Watching the Wheels lyrics, 'surely you're not happy now you no longer play the game,' keeps playing in my mind. I've also taken to dusting, vaccuuming, swiffing, perhaps obeying the triggered concept of nesting: as you age, you organize, or forget everything. That could be it, or maybe not.
Whenever we're driving at night, the glow of lights within the passing houses make me wish I was home. I don't think I'm alone in this growing awareness. I note an article in the local rag on how mixed-use development is thriving; where a new town is built from scratch, resembling best what we idealize about small town life. My favorite ball park, Camden Yards, the archetype for stadiums erected in the last decade, is built new, to resemble old.
The local hardware store still carries the original name, but sells only crafts, instead of the black and white speckled notebooks and text book covers with university seals, like Dartmouth and Brown, that I miss. Whenever the choirmaster at church entertains requests for long forgotten hymns, I always ask for 'Church in the Wildwood,' even though I never attended the 'little brown church in the vale.'
I note a report in the NY Times that the 'Latin Mass Draws Interest After Easing of Restrictions.' One woman is quoted, "I have no memory of the Latin Mass from my childhood, but for me it's so refreshing to see him facing the east, the Tabnernacle, focusing on Christ." Is her non-existant memory of a Latin Mass the same as my non-historical nostalgia for a Church in the Wildwood?
The day I actually attended a Latin Mass, the ancient stone church was damp, dark and cold. The priest faced forward so all that could be seen was a shadowy black presence. I couldn't hear anything as I suppose he prayed quietly in Latin. Was this, indeed, the same kind of experience attending the little brown church in the vale? Rather than a communal ritual experience, there's no corporate existence in the Latin Mass of a beloved community; each parishioner "looked instead to their missals or prayed on their own."
One windbag in the Times bellowed the all too wearying diatribe that "the Mass was like this for 1,500 years, and it was changed by subcommittee in the 1960's; when you can change the liturgy, you can change anything." So, you stand for an hour in a damp dark space; no clue as to what's happenning; no connection with another human being; yet you've made your point. This spiritual equivalent of a civic 'bowling alone,' leaves me as cold as a church built of stone. I'd rather bake cookies every Sunday than ever attend another Latin Mass.
A letter writer to our local rag, making another sort of point, wrote he'd never make a donation to the shelter, since as he was driving by, he observed children wearing new shoes. In despair, after reading it, I re-examined the file of papers that held essays composed by children who'd stayed there. One child wrote, the hardest thing wasn't that her father had abandoned the family, that they'd lost everything and were living in their car. The hardest thing, by far, was when they'd moved into the shelter, she'd had to give her dog away.
On the day after Thanksgiving, Connie and I are driving down east to tag the last of seven affiliated libraries within our rural system. Every time we drive onto the peninsula called the Northern Neck, we end the journey at land's end, in a tiny place called Saluda, just as when I write, I always end the literary journey at what will count at life's end: compassion was more important than making points.
It doesn't make a lot of sense to drive fifty miles. It won't accomplish much to call on seven librairies. The Saluda Homecoming only seems like the right place to be for no good reason at all. Sometimes life doesn't need to make a point. It's just about baking oat meal raisin cookies in a warm kitchen on a cold winter's day. It's about connecting with another human being, reclaiming meaning in life, even if it's part of what looks like an otherwise pointless journey.
Basic training requires slamming open a tube against the counter to free a squidgy slab of dough(?); then slice and bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for 9 minutes. Feeling, at times, more confident, I graduate to: blending one egg, one tbsp water, 3 tbsp canola oil and mix; then bake on a greased pan for 14 minutes. Brimming, other times, with the sure to be proven false pride of past success, I download a 'scratch,' that requires mysterious bottles of strange elixers called vanilla extract and powdered nutmeg that stand in rows amongst armies of fragrant spices like a regiment of red-helmeted soliders guarding a female skirmish line in the wife's territorial cupboard.
Is this whimsy or practicing to be old? Lennon's, 'Watching the Wheels lyrics, 'surely you're not happy now you no longer play the game,' keeps playing in my mind. I've also taken to dusting, vaccuuming, swiffing, perhaps obeying the triggered concept of nesting: as you age, you organize, or forget everything. That could be it, or maybe not.
Whenever we're driving at night, the glow of lights within the passing houses make me wish I was home. I don't think I'm alone in this growing awareness. I note an article in the local rag on how mixed-use development is thriving; where a new town is built from scratch, resembling best what we idealize about small town life. My favorite ball park, Camden Yards, the archetype for stadiums erected in the last decade, is built new, to resemble old.
The local hardware store still carries the original name, but sells only crafts, instead of the black and white speckled notebooks and text book covers with university seals, like Dartmouth and Brown, that I miss. Whenever the choirmaster at church entertains requests for long forgotten hymns, I always ask for 'Church in the Wildwood,' even though I never attended the 'little brown church in the vale.'
I note a report in the NY Times that the 'Latin Mass Draws Interest After Easing of Restrictions.' One woman is quoted, "I have no memory of the Latin Mass from my childhood, but for me it's so refreshing to see him facing the east, the Tabnernacle, focusing on Christ." Is her non-existant memory of a Latin Mass the same as my non-historical nostalgia for a Church in the Wildwood?
The day I actually attended a Latin Mass, the ancient stone church was damp, dark and cold. The priest faced forward so all that could be seen was a shadowy black presence. I couldn't hear anything as I suppose he prayed quietly in Latin. Was this, indeed, the same kind of experience attending the little brown church in the vale? Rather than a communal ritual experience, there's no corporate existence in the Latin Mass of a beloved community; each parishioner "looked instead to their missals or prayed on their own."
One windbag in the Times bellowed the all too wearying diatribe that "the Mass was like this for 1,500 years, and it was changed by subcommittee in the 1960's; when you can change the liturgy, you can change anything." So, you stand for an hour in a damp dark space; no clue as to what's happenning; no connection with another human being; yet you've made your point. This spiritual equivalent of a civic 'bowling alone,' leaves me as cold as a church built of stone. I'd rather bake cookies every Sunday than ever attend another Latin Mass.
A letter writer to our local rag, making another sort of point, wrote he'd never make a donation to the shelter, since as he was driving by, he observed children wearing new shoes. In despair, after reading it, I re-examined the file of papers that held essays composed by children who'd stayed there. One child wrote, the hardest thing wasn't that her father had abandoned the family, that they'd lost everything and were living in their car. The hardest thing, by far, was when they'd moved into the shelter, she'd had to give her dog away.
On the day after Thanksgiving, Connie and I are driving down east to tag the last of seven affiliated libraries within our rural system. Every time we drive onto the peninsula called the Northern Neck, we end the journey at land's end, in a tiny place called Saluda, just as when I write, I always end the literary journey at what will count at life's end: compassion was more important than making points.
It doesn't make a lot of sense to drive fifty miles. It won't accomplish much to call on seven librairies. The Saluda Homecoming only seems like the right place to be for no good reason at all. Sometimes life doesn't need to make a point. It's just about baking oat meal raisin cookies in a warm kitchen on a cold winter's day. It's about connecting with another human being, reclaiming meaning in life, even if it's part of what looks like an otherwise pointless journey.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Tradition
I note this week an editorial printed in the local rag the day before Veterans Day that was certain to greatly disturb the waters. The writer posited that those who'd attended Woodstock were morally superior to those, like John McCain, who'd served in Viet Nam.
I don't buy into any argument that advocates a moral superiority of any person or group over any other. Notions of that sort were quashed after my time managing the homeless shelter. As we've discussed many times before, short of allying yourself with 'ism's carrying the potential or actuality for genocide, most situations aren't so easy to classify in terms of a morally superior good or non-circumstantial evil.
Though it was surpisingly bold and intentionally provocative (if not a bit tactless) for the paper to publish the piece on the day before the holiday), it certainly had stir-the-pot impact, enticing the usual rabid attack dog suspects to launch the wearying Goebellian tactics practiced by despots and muttonheads throughout the ages.
Painting with a wide brush of stereotypically based ridicule is the easy way here, to quote, "How can he say that those who participated in the perverted debauchery of Woodstock...," and "drug-induced escapism is not morally superior," and on and on. Then there are those, unlike me, who find it very easy to identify good and evil through elminating all the gray inbetween, such as, "You can't have it both ways. Either America is a country to be proud of...or it should be allowed to be destroyed by left-wing liberals who believe nothing is worth dying for," ending, obligatoriliy, of course, with a dig at a Clinton, doesn't matter which one.
Life negates the absence of gray. The deepest tendencies I hold are to what would be defined, minimally as liberal, and maximally, as far left, by the attack dogs above. Recognizing that, I served in the Navy, on the principle that in order to legitimately hold such views, it was necessary to participate within the civic framework constructed to protect the right to express them.
As far as countering the ridicule, events like Woodstock, were much more than a party-binge. As a barometer of the times, contrast the message and accompanying peaceful behavior observed in 1969 to the violent alcoholically fueled flames of mindless rage-driven riot at the 30th anniversary concert.
A non-consistently debauched, rather mysterious, group appeared in 1966 San Francisco called the Diggers, who engineered 'street happenings,' such as planting a 12 X 12 yellow square at the intersection of Haight and Ashbury Streets, urging people to look through so they could experience street theater through their own frame of reference. They opened a store where everything was free, including the contents of a cashbox labelled 'free money,' guarded by a sign that read, "No Stealing."
The Digger's goal was to portray American lives as if they were constructed by actors in a play, of which, alternative endings were possible - one theological current, leading to the idea that a person could be 'born again.' This is not 'drug-induced,' escapism - indeed, there were many in San Francisco, at the time, and elsewhere, that subscribed to the idea that drugs could only take you so far, and as Tom Wolfe wrote, it was time to pass the acid test and graduate, with new insights gained, moving on to a higher ground.
The Diggers didn't appear out of thin air. In another tumultuous time, 17th century England, the original band arose, along with other 'Dissenters,' fighting with their very lives for a religious liberty, denied not only to Roman Catholics, but to anyone not ultimately subscribing to the commonwealth of Puritanism established by Oliver Cromwell. They desired a Jeffersonian, Peter Maurin/Catholic Worker agrarian communal society, based on the book of ACTS, that proposed a society much as envisioned later by the 20th century Diggers of the same name and trans-cultural ideology.
It's interesting to note when Cromwell was fighting for power, he was very tolerant and ecumenical in enlisting those who served his cause; but once, power was secured, dissent was eliminated. Is there any movement, ever in time, that doesn't produce this effect; where it isn't like The Who song, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
This is what we've been studying in Adult Sunday School as we examine the lives of the prophets - the great irony, of which Walter Brueggemann writes: when Israel was at the height of it's Solomonaic empire and power, it was most like, for the common people, living back in the pre-Exodus time of Pharaoh, from which God delivered His chosen ones. Can the fresh promise of any organizational exodus survive for long without the stultifying imposition of a new bureaucratic self-vested army of organizers who necessarily construct and protect, but, within the process, destroy the original freedom that gave birth to new ideas? In other words, to place it in the San Francisco context of the day, do anarchic child-like hippies always require the services of an authoritarian father like Bill Graham to stage the concerts?
Out of all historical context, the promise of America and Christianity is that within the framework of country and religion, an alternative vision continuously beckons away from the power of status quo and co-optive consumption to something new without destroying the steady yet yielding platform upon which it stands, pointing inevitably further to the shining city on the distant hill of America in the morning, and even beyond, over yonder, to the idyllic land of heavenly milk and honey.
Veterans day is not only about honoring the past; I have no doubt that those who died must have desired a better future worthy of a sacrifice of the magnitude they made. If not, then each death diminishes without raising us to the higher ground of the promised land; those places of which the Woodstockian dreamers sing their songs.
I don't buy into any argument that advocates a moral superiority of any person or group over any other. Notions of that sort were quashed after my time managing the homeless shelter. As we've discussed many times before, short of allying yourself with 'ism's carrying the potential or actuality for genocide, most situations aren't so easy to classify in terms of a morally superior good or non-circumstantial evil.
Though it was surpisingly bold and intentionally provocative (if not a bit tactless) for the paper to publish the piece on the day before the holiday), it certainly had stir-the-pot impact, enticing the usual rabid attack dog suspects to launch the wearying Goebellian tactics practiced by despots and muttonheads throughout the ages.
Painting with a wide brush of stereotypically based ridicule is the easy way here, to quote, "How can he say that those who participated in the perverted debauchery of Woodstock...," and "drug-induced escapism is not morally superior," and on and on. Then there are those, unlike me, who find it very easy to identify good and evil through elminating all the gray inbetween, such as, "You can't have it both ways. Either America is a country to be proud of...or it should be allowed to be destroyed by left-wing liberals who believe nothing is worth dying for," ending, obligatoriliy, of course, with a dig at a Clinton, doesn't matter which one.
Life negates the absence of gray. The deepest tendencies I hold are to what would be defined, minimally as liberal, and maximally, as far left, by the attack dogs above. Recognizing that, I served in the Navy, on the principle that in order to legitimately hold such views, it was necessary to participate within the civic framework constructed to protect the right to express them.
As far as countering the ridicule, events like Woodstock, were much more than a party-binge. As a barometer of the times, contrast the message and accompanying peaceful behavior observed in 1969 to the violent alcoholically fueled flames of mindless rage-driven riot at the 30th anniversary concert.
A non-consistently debauched, rather mysterious, group appeared in 1966 San Francisco called the Diggers, who engineered 'street happenings,' such as planting a 12 X 12 yellow square at the intersection of Haight and Ashbury Streets, urging people to look through so they could experience street theater through their own frame of reference. They opened a store where everything was free, including the contents of a cashbox labelled 'free money,' guarded by a sign that read, "No Stealing."
The Digger's goal was to portray American lives as if they were constructed by actors in a play, of which, alternative endings were possible - one theological current, leading to the idea that a person could be 'born again.' This is not 'drug-induced,' escapism - indeed, there were many in San Francisco, at the time, and elsewhere, that subscribed to the idea that drugs could only take you so far, and as Tom Wolfe wrote, it was time to pass the acid test and graduate, with new insights gained, moving on to a higher ground.
The Diggers didn't appear out of thin air. In another tumultuous time, 17th century England, the original band arose, along with other 'Dissenters,' fighting with their very lives for a religious liberty, denied not only to Roman Catholics, but to anyone not ultimately subscribing to the commonwealth of Puritanism established by Oliver Cromwell. They desired a Jeffersonian, Peter Maurin/Catholic Worker agrarian communal society, based on the book of ACTS, that proposed a society much as envisioned later by the 20th century Diggers of the same name and trans-cultural ideology.
It's interesting to note when Cromwell was fighting for power, he was very tolerant and ecumenical in enlisting those who served his cause; but once, power was secured, dissent was eliminated. Is there any movement, ever in time, that doesn't produce this effect; where it isn't like The Who song, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
This is what we've been studying in Adult Sunday School as we examine the lives of the prophets - the great irony, of which Walter Brueggemann writes: when Israel was at the height of it's Solomonaic empire and power, it was most like, for the common people, living back in the pre-Exodus time of Pharaoh, from which God delivered His chosen ones. Can the fresh promise of any organizational exodus survive for long without the stultifying imposition of a new bureaucratic self-vested army of organizers who necessarily construct and protect, but, within the process, destroy the original freedom that gave birth to new ideas? In other words, to place it in the San Francisco context of the day, do anarchic child-like hippies always require the services of an authoritarian father like Bill Graham to stage the concerts?
Out of all historical context, the promise of America and Christianity is that within the framework of country and religion, an alternative vision continuously beckons away from the power of status quo and co-optive consumption to something new without destroying the steady yet yielding platform upon which it stands, pointing inevitably further to the shining city on the distant hill of America in the morning, and even beyond, over yonder, to the idyllic land of heavenly milk and honey.
Veterans day is not only about honoring the past; I have no doubt that those who died must have desired a better future worthy of a sacrifice of the magnitude they made. If not, then each death diminishes without raising us to the higher ground of the promised land; those places of which the Woodstockian dreamers sing their songs.
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