A few thoughts on grace....and Lolita

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Revelations and religious experience

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kinesthetic Prayers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh dear, what nonsense I’m talking!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chasing after the wind

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Haiti Relief

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ye must be born again.”

N.T. Wright and Cultural Masturbation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is the video of Wright:

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

A change of pace--the Human Narrative Project update

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New words

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But how?

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

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

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

Love and spiritual practice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coming Attractions

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

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

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

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

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

The indestructible soil

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

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

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

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

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

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