The last week has seemed full and busy to me, leaving me feeling tired. But I am aware that the coming week also weighs on me and that that can make me feel tired. My mother used to urge me, sometimes badger me, to let go of worry over the future. That worry was not going to help whatever was going to happen. Other things might; preparation, relaxation, even prayer. At New Beginnings training last weekend we did a warm up exercise. I was surrounded by teenagers. One of the questions we responded to was, "What do you wish you did better at?" I answered, "Do my homework." I think the comment was lost on the teenagers. But it was heartfelt on my part and worthy of a post in itself.
Over the last week I read The Looming Tower. I had heard the author I think on Fresh Air (NPR) and appreciated a certain freshness that he brought to his analysis of Iraq. As reflected below, I am interested in trying to understand what is going on in the world today, and what is going on seems to be colored a lot right now by Islam and Iran in particular. I have been repeating the name of the President of Iran to myself, almost like a mantra for the last 5 days. Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad. ... I still can't pronounce it at all correctly. Part of me wanted to learn how to pronounce the name of this prominent person. But there was also a part that was trying to understand by means of the silly repetition.
The news seems to me exceedingly depressing these days. "Temperature of earth reaches a million year mark." "What war with Iran would look like." "Secret CIA report says that the war in Iraq has made the world less safe from terrorists."
I have often repeated that I think that the slippery road to succumbing to terrorists was begun when Yasser Arafat spoke at the United Nations in the 1970's, brandishing his gun and warning the world. And the world blinked, as if to say, "Oh, we'll be good, don't you worry."
I know that's too simplistic and terrorism goes back centuries or even millenia and that none of the world's nations are innocent. But there seem to be so many "no-brainer" decisions that have been avoided over the past decades in the name of ... I don't know what.
Ahmadinejad. It makes me think of Gian Carlo Menotti's "Amahl and the Night Visitors" -- the tale of a crippled shepherd boy and his widowed mother who receive a surprise visit from the Three Kings en route to Bethlehem. Remembering back to those years when I first viewed the show, 1960's, seems like an innocent time in retrospect. And yet at the time I remember, e.g., thinking that the Vietnam War had always been and always would be.
Day after tomorrow my oldest daughter turns 24. I haven't seen her in over a year. She is the most wonderful person. I wish you could meet her. She was born on St. Michael and All Angels. As if the angels sang and danced around her birth.
So it is that we go on, in the midst of global warming that may well destroy life on earth, in the midst of threats of nuclear war and talk of "annihilation" of another country -- in this case a people that I am convinced are in fact God's chosen people. I am a Christian, but the Messiah I follow was a member of that "chosen people."
Little phrases have stood out this week. "Whenever a government strives to impose purity, terror results." I wonder to myself is that true? I know that I have long criticised the enduring Puritanism that subtly governs the people of The United States. Probably it has seemed oppressive to me because people no longer recognize its presence. When things work on us below our consciousness they are most powerful.
The state in which I have lived since Ahmadinejad's compatriots blew themselves up against the looming towers was westernized by Puritans. The effects of those efforts, almost 200 years ago, are still felt pervasively, in a variety of ways, some positive some negative. Someone asked me the other day about the impact of the early missionaries here in Hawai'i. I was only partly ficitious when said that my sense was that they made themselve wealthy. I quickly added that wasn't true of all of them and many of them were noble-minded and made great sacrifices for the good of the people with whom they lived.
Another book I have begun this week is by Garry Wills, What Jesus Meant. I haven't finished it yet. But as with everything he's written I am sucked right in. In spite of his vast learning, he seems to speak the language of the ordinary person. Someone the other day paid me that compliment after hearing me preach. I graciously accepted the words. Unfortunately the impact was colored by the fact that English was not their first language and I'm not at all sure how much they actually even understood.
But something like what Garry Wills has achieved in his life is what I have striven for during my adult life. I read my first book by him when barely out of my teens, Bare Ruined Choirs. Quickly I followed with Nixon Agonistes and I have followed with probably a dozen of his works since then. But his writing production is monumental, so I can't even say I know his writing all that well.
But his approach to the church and to his faith is one that I find compatible and inviting to my own. He is profoundly -- and learnedly -- critical of the powers-that-be in the church. But he is also not ashamed at all of his own faith. Conservatives and liberals both find fault with him. He must be doing something right.
One chord he strikes early in his book is the claim that seems so self-evident to me, but is so strongly rebutted by many, that the way to read the New Testament is entirely to find its meaning and not its historicity.
I'll write more about the book later.
For now another daughter is calling for me to "put her to bed." Off I go.
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Thursday, September 21, 2006
A child's longing
Tonight at Zippy's I was sitting across the table from my 11 year old daughter. She launched into a banter that produced a huge grin on me that wouldn't quit.
She went on for about 5 minutes. My smile got bigger and bigger. She was running through one stock phrase after another, drawn from things that she, her sister and her mother say to one another. But each one was said with some kind of twist to it. Or it was side with a funny, twisted, facial expression. She was like a clown. Or a stand-up comedian. And she was displaying a very quick mind and delightful creativity. At one point she said, "Work with me here," with a subtle twang in her voice. She was quoting her mother, who uses the phrase to try to motivate people to pay attention to her. Sometimes she succeeds with the phrase and sometimes not. Here, my daughter was playing off the phrase, using a grown-up mother's phrase, trying to get the smile or affirmation she desparately wanted.
All the time her gaze was fixed on her mother sitting next to her. The purpose of the monologue was to get a smiling response from her mother. She didn't get it; her mother remained stuck in her skin with the things that weighed on her.
I thought my daughter was displaying the kind of quick wit that I had always wished I could muster but never did. She showed a flare and a dramatic talent that was magnetic and hot. I loved it.
But here's the thing that I don't get. Two days ago we went over her grades and school and she's getting a D in English/Language Art.
One clue I have came yesterday as I was helping her with some homework. It was really easy stuff that she knew well enough, she just wanted to share it with me, really. I simply read the questions and asked her about what she saw on the page. She understood all she needed to know. She answered one of the questions correctly then moved to the next one, which was kind of a mirror image of the first. Since the answer to the first was "down", Emma immediately said that the answer to the second was "up". But it wasn't. The right answer was also "down". But something in Emma's training to date had told her that things like needed to "match." She had developed a habit of answering tests not by understanding the questions but by memorizing patterns.
Now what I am describing is very like what I have read is done by children with learning disabilities. And it may well be that is part of the answer here. But my suspicion is that it also has something to do with the style of education that my daughter has received these past few years. Emphasis has been very heavy on standardized testing. Often the best way to get through them is by relying on "patterns." Not that it gives the best results, but that it's the path of least resistance, at least for my daughter.
There are some signs that this year she is finally figuring out some of the mis-steps she has made and the habits may get changed. I hope so.
In the meanwhile, I so hope that the magical energy she commanded in her banter at the restaurant will not be lost and that she will find a channel to exercise it and keep it alive.
She went on for about 5 minutes. My smile got bigger and bigger. She was running through one stock phrase after another, drawn from things that she, her sister and her mother say to one another. But each one was said with some kind of twist to it. Or it was side with a funny, twisted, facial expression. She was like a clown. Or a stand-up comedian. And she was displaying a very quick mind and delightful creativity. At one point she said, "Work with me here," with a subtle twang in her voice. She was quoting her mother, who uses the phrase to try to motivate people to pay attention to her. Sometimes she succeeds with the phrase and sometimes not. Here, my daughter was playing off the phrase, using a grown-up mother's phrase, trying to get the smile or affirmation she desparately wanted.
All the time her gaze was fixed on her mother sitting next to her. The purpose of the monologue was to get a smiling response from her mother. She didn't get it; her mother remained stuck in her skin with the things that weighed on her.
I thought my daughter was displaying the kind of quick wit that I had always wished I could muster but never did. She showed a flare and a dramatic talent that was magnetic and hot. I loved it.
But here's the thing that I don't get. Two days ago we went over her grades and school and she's getting a D in English/Language Art.
One clue I have came yesterday as I was helping her with some homework. It was really easy stuff that she knew well enough, she just wanted to share it with me, really. I simply read the questions and asked her about what she saw on the page. She understood all she needed to know. She answered one of the questions correctly then moved to the next one, which was kind of a mirror image of the first. Since the answer to the first was "down", Emma immediately said that the answer to the second was "up". But it wasn't. The right answer was also "down". But something in Emma's training to date had told her that things like needed to "match." She had developed a habit of answering tests not by understanding the questions but by memorizing patterns.
Now what I am describing is very like what I have read is done by children with learning disabilities. And it may well be that is part of the answer here. But my suspicion is that it also has something to do with the style of education that my daughter has received these past few years. Emphasis has been very heavy on standardized testing. Often the best way to get through them is by relying on "patterns." Not that it gives the best results, but that it's the path of least resistance, at least for my daughter.
There are some signs that this year she is finally figuring out some of the mis-steps she has made and the habits may get changed. I hope so.
In the meanwhile, I so hope that the magical energy she commanded in her banter at the restaurant will not be lost and that she will find a channel to exercise it and keep it alive.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
a pope's words - part 2
From Sept. 5, 2006 The Christian Century this notice: The title of a session in Scotland on Western ignorance of Islam was titled "We don't know Shi'ite."
_________________________________________________________________
The Pope gave a speech/lecture at the University of Regensburg on Sept. 12. The media reported on a minor section of the talk and the Muslim world exploded with vituperation, demands for an apology, rioting, and the murder of an elderly nun. I wrote yesterday of how surreal it all seemed to me.
What adds to the strangeness of it all is the subject matter of the lecture itself. For myself, the Pope seems to exist in a time-warp and a disconnect from the world. We might attribute that to the disconnect expected of an other-worldly mystic. And so it might be. Joseph Ratzinger, however, has not usually been described that way, but rather as an academic-minded theoretician. That would be how I read him.
What makes the talk strange is who the Pope understands his polemical partner(s) to be. He is speaking against a process of de-hellenization that he tracks in the western world through 3 major stages. The first is the Reformation, the 2nd is in liberal theology of the 19th and 20th century, and the last an ongoing stage of the assimilationism inherent (as he sees it) in "cultural pluralism."
Pope Benedict perceives a threat in all of this. But it's not a threat he sees coming from Islam. It's a threat that has been developing, as he sees it, over 500 years in the "west", namely Europe and the Americas. The threat he perceives is to the "catholic" faith, again as he sees it. As a consequence, it is for him a metaphysical threat to the truth claims of Christianity itself.
The issue for Benedict is whether or not Hellenistic ways of thinking are inherent to the gospel and hence inherent to reality itself.
The New Testament was written in Greek and forged in an environment in which Greek thinking was omnipresent if not utterly dominant. The debate had raged in Judaism from the time of the Maccabees over how much Hellenism to allow into Judaism. The result was a back and forth power struggle stretching through 100's of years and thousands of violent deaths. Peace was forged in that debate with the rise of the rabbis in the post-Temple period.
The New Testament reflects some of the debate from a Christian perspective with the tension between Paul's version of the gospel and James' (or even Peter's) vision. The debate was ultimately answered in Paul's favor, though only in post-New Testament times. Hellenism won.
The rabbis and Christians took different paths in post-New Testament times. The rabbis could appropriate Hellenistic thinking when that suited them, but they could also adopt Babylonian ways or Egyptian, then later eastern European. Christianity proceeded to appropriate a variety of cultural influences through the centuries, but kept its primary allegiance to the hellenism reflected in the New Testament. Only in recent centuries has Christianity been able to be self-critical in appraising these developments. The result is the "threat" that the pope sees in efforts to "dehellenize" the New Testament and Christianity.
One can sense the high degree of abstract thinking going on in this lecture by the way Benedict equates without explanation Platonism and Cartesianism, 2 philosophical traditions with nearly 2,000 years separating them. The equation is intriguing, and perhaps the pope has written of it elsewhere. But he sees no need to reference that in his talk.
His conclusion as he puts it is a critique of modern reason "from within." But he claims not to be arguing for some kind of magical return to a time before the Renaissance and the Reformation, a mythical ideal time. But it seems to me that claim follows the familiar pattern of "Yes, but ..." While outwardly saying yes, the speaker is really saying "no."
Pope Benedict seems to want a return to a time that never was, when reason (logos) was recognized as central to God's creation, when understanding and dialogue could transpire between people who disagreed, precisely because they both acknowledged that reason was the final arbiter.
He looks out on a world where reason is not recognized as the final arbiter, where understanding one another is not experienced as a high priority, where getting one's way is. The Muslim reactivity to the Pope's remarks seems to be a wonderful illustration of this pervasive reality in our world. The realistic expectation is that these forces are only going to become more destructive than they have already proven to be. Not a pretty sight.
Benedict is trying to argue against these developments. And I applaud him for that. But he is so far removed from the world in which I live and the reality which I perceive that his words are nearly meaningless. (Worth killing a nun over?) Even from the vantage point of an Anglican with some connections to Roman Catholic influences, I can see that Benedict's own church is vastly more than the one that he seems to live in.
It all seems so strange. But a wonderful illustration of the power of words and their elusive nature. Thank you.
_________________________________________________________________
The Pope gave a speech/lecture at the University of Regensburg on Sept. 12. The media reported on a minor section of the talk and the Muslim world exploded with vituperation, demands for an apology, rioting, and the murder of an elderly nun. I wrote yesterday of how surreal it all seemed to me.
What adds to the strangeness of it all is the subject matter of the lecture itself. For myself, the Pope seems to exist in a time-warp and a disconnect from the world. We might attribute that to the disconnect expected of an other-worldly mystic. And so it might be. Joseph Ratzinger, however, has not usually been described that way, but rather as an academic-minded theoretician. That would be how I read him.
What makes the talk strange is who the Pope understands his polemical partner(s) to be. He is speaking against a process of de-hellenization that he tracks in the western world through 3 major stages. The first is the Reformation, the 2nd is in liberal theology of the 19th and 20th century, and the last an ongoing stage of the assimilationism inherent (as he sees it) in "cultural pluralism."
Pope Benedict perceives a threat in all of this. But it's not a threat he sees coming from Islam. It's a threat that has been developing, as he sees it, over 500 years in the "west", namely Europe and the Americas. The threat he perceives is to the "catholic" faith, again as he sees it. As a consequence, it is for him a metaphysical threat to the truth claims of Christianity itself.
The issue for Benedict is whether or not Hellenistic ways of thinking are inherent to the gospel and hence inherent to reality itself.
The New Testament was written in Greek and forged in an environment in which Greek thinking was omnipresent if not utterly dominant. The debate had raged in Judaism from the time of the Maccabees over how much Hellenism to allow into Judaism. The result was a back and forth power struggle stretching through 100's of years and thousands of violent deaths. Peace was forged in that debate with the rise of the rabbis in the post-Temple period.
The New Testament reflects some of the debate from a Christian perspective with the tension between Paul's version of the gospel and James' (or even Peter's) vision. The debate was ultimately answered in Paul's favor, though only in post-New Testament times. Hellenism won.
The rabbis and Christians took different paths in post-New Testament times. The rabbis could appropriate Hellenistic thinking when that suited them, but they could also adopt Babylonian ways or Egyptian, then later eastern European. Christianity proceeded to appropriate a variety of cultural influences through the centuries, but kept its primary allegiance to the hellenism reflected in the New Testament. Only in recent centuries has Christianity been able to be self-critical in appraising these developments. The result is the "threat" that the pope sees in efforts to "dehellenize" the New Testament and Christianity.
One can sense the high degree of abstract thinking going on in this lecture by the way Benedict equates without explanation Platonism and Cartesianism, 2 philosophical traditions with nearly 2,000 years separating them. The equation is intriguing, and perhaps the pope has written of it elsewhere. But he sees no need to reference that in his talk.
His conclusion as he puts it is a critique of modern reason "from within." But he claims not to be arguing for some kind of magical return to a time before the Renaissance and the Reformation, a mythical ideal time. But it seems to me that claim follows the familiar pattern of "Yes, but ..." While outwardly saying yes, the speaker is really saying "no."
Pope Benedict seems to want a return to a time that never was, when reason (logos) was recognized as central to God's creation, when understanding and dialogue could transpire between people who disagreed, precisely because they both acknowledged that reason was the final arbiter.
He looks out on a world where reason is not recognized as the final arbiter, where understanding one another is not experienced as a high priority, where getting one's way is. The Muslim reactivity to the Pope's remarks seems to be a wonderful illustration of this pervasive reality in our world. The realistic expectation is that these forces are only going to become more destructive than they have already proven to be. Not a pretty sight.
Benedict is trying to argue against these developments. And I applaud him for that. But he is so far removed from the world in which I live and the reality which I perceive that his words are nearly meaningless. (Worth killing a nun over?) Even from the vantage point of an Anglican with some connections to Roman Catholic influences, I can see that Benedict's own church is vastly more than the one that he seems to live in.
It all seems so strange. But a wonderful illustration of the power of words and their elusive nature. Thank you.
Monday, September 18, 2006
a pope's words - part 1
After reading my post on "Words", a good friend of mine sent me an email, pointing me in the direction of the recent lecture of the Pope that has caused reactivity in large parts of the Muslim world. I was really intrigued, having only engaged the Pope's words through the reporting in the media.
I found a copy of the lecture, read it, and saw immediately the connection that my friend had made. The Pope's words didn't really have anything to do with relations between Christianity and Islam, but were addressed to (largely western) Christianity and the culture that surrounds it (us -- for everyone living in the United States.) The lecture drew on the classical Greek meaning of the word "logos", i.e. "word" or "reason" or "rationality". He made reference to the prologue of John's gospel, just as my article had.
His logic was dramatically abstract in nature. By which I mean it was so abstract it would be easy to lampoon it with concrete silly gestures. Maybe something like a cartoon of a teacher in pope's garb, floating high in the air, talking to himself, with a crowd of students below, wondering why they can't understand him. abstract in nature.
Before I respond more to the argumentation of the lecture, I must respond to the other aspect of the words -- shall I call it the political impact of the words.
First let me acknowledge that my own political sensitivities are about as low as they can get and still allow me to reasonably function in society. It's not to say that I'm not politically engaged, I am. It's that my intuition absolutely does not function when it comes to politics. Bill Clinton's political sensitivies (whether you like him or don't) are obviously off the chart. He instinctively knows. I instinctively don't know.
That said, the responses of the Muslim world to the Pope's words seem to me utterly bizarre. An example I think of the Pope's argument that in today's world, rationality is not given very much stature. But it occurred to me that the response of people to the pope's quote of a quote from the 15th century was profoundly ironic. The reference of the Byzantine Emperor was to a belief that Muslims too much rely on violence and "the sword" in the propagation of their faith. The Pope was arguing against such a use of violence in the furtherance of "faith", but not particularly applying it to the Muslim world. In fact, as I've said, the whole lecture was really addressed to the western world.
So let me say it. The response of Muslims to the quote, with violence, destruction and murder where possible, death threats and the like, seems surreal to me. It is like a minor variation on the surreal that surrounded the watching of passenger jets crashing into the World Trade Center. Words like, "What is the world coming to?" do not begin to convey it.
Now I have thought the world was a mysterious place for a long time. And religions hold a special place in the mystery quotient. When I was a teenager, 40 years ago, my mother acquired a book from Readers Digest on World Religions. The pictures captivated me. Enough that I am still in possession of the book. A photo of a yogi, alone in the stance of a stork. The weird Hindi statues that made no sense to me whatsoever. The blood running down the Filipino pilgrims as thet cut themselves and nailed themselves to a cross. I was fascinated by the utter inexplicableness of the phenomena depicted in the book.
Looking back now 40 years later, it is interesting to me that the pictures of Muslims -- even less the essays -- were of little interest to me. Pictures of huge crowds of men, bowing on mats in prayer, just didn't carry the drama of the other accounts. Little could I have guessed that in my 50's it would be that group of people who would most grip my interest. I really want to understand. But I am persuaded that many Muslims, and certainly the most vocal, do not want understanding. That would be "logos" stuff. And that I think they think is western corruption. So the Pope was without knowing it defending the primacy of western culture, albeit a form of western culture that is supported and lived by only a minority.
One of the news reports from the middle east quoted a Muslim as saying the Pope doesn't understand Islam. I thought to myself, "Well, duh! Of course he doesn't. He only understands a narrow range of Christianity. How could he hope to understand Islam." I am quite sure he meant no insult or harm to Muslims. But I don't think he quite "gets it."
He doesn't "get it" that Catholicism is hugely bigger than the part of it that he defends as the only truth. His metaphysics is based on Thomism which is in turn based on classical Greek philosophy. There was a time in my life that I was convinced that such philosophy was the only way to understand truth and reality. I worried about the health of my soul because I wasn't an expert on Thomism. I tried to familiarize myself with it. I wouldn't call it being a student of Thomism. But I eventually concluded that this philosophy left out far too much reality, both the kind you can see and touch and feel -- as well as the kind of reality that is beyond seeing, touching, feeling. The ineffable. There was too much that Thomism just didn't "get". And so I moved on in my life, carrying with me real sympathy for the magisterial pieces that Thomism does get about reality.
But I don't claim for myself that I "get it". I am a student, still learning. I think the Pope is too. Many Muslims also.
I found a copy of the lecture, read it, and saw immediately the connection that my friend had made. The Pope's words didn't really have anything to do with relations between Christianity and Islam, but were addressed to (largely western) Christianity and the culture that surrounds it (us -- for everyone living in the United States.) The lecture drew on the classical Greek meaning of the word "logos", i.e. "word" or "reason" or "rationality". He made reference to the prologue of John's gospel, just as my article had.
His logic was dramatically abstract in nature. By which I mean it was so abstract it would be easy to lampoon it with concrete silly gestures. Maybe something like a cartoon of a teacher in pope's garb, floating high in the air, talking to himself, with a crowd of students below, wondering why they can't understand him. abstract in nature.
Before I respond more to the argumentation of the lecture, I must respond to the other aspect of the words -- shall I call it the political impact of the words.
First let me acknowledge that my own political sensitivities are about as low as they can get and still allow me to reasonably function in society. It's not to say that I'm not politically engaged, I am. It's that my intuition absolutely does not function when it comes to politics. Bill Clinton's political sensitivies (whether you like him or don't) are obviously off the chart. He instinctively knows. I instinctively don't know.
That said, the responses of the Muslim world to the Pope's words seem to me utterly bizarre. An example I think of the Pope's argument that in today's world, rationality is not given very much stature. But it occurred to me that the response of people to the pope's quote of a quote from the 15th century was profoundly ironic. The reference of the Byzantine Emperor was to a belief that Muslims too much rely on violence and "the sword" in the propagation of their faith. The Pope was arguing against such a use of violence in the furtherance of "faith", but not particularly applying it to the Muslim world. In fact, as I've said, the whole lecture was really addressed to the western world.
So let me say it. The response of Muslims to the quote, with violence, destruction and murder where possible, death threats and the like, seems surreal to me. It is like a minor variation on the surreal that surrounded the watching of passenger jets crashing into the World Trade Center. Words like, "What is the world coming to?" do not begin to convey it.
Now I have thought the world was a mysterious place for a long time. And religions hold a special place in the mystery quotient. When I was a teenager, 40 years ago, my mother acquired a book from Readers Digest on World Religions. The pictures captivated me. Enough that I am still in possession of the book. A photo of a yogi, alone in the stance of a stork. The weird Hindi statues that made no sense to me whatsoever. The blood running down the Filipino pilgrims as thet cut themselves and nailed themselves to a cross. I was fascinated by the utter inexplicableness of the phenomena depicted in the book.
Looking back now 40 years later, it is interesting to me that the pictures of Muslims -- even less the essays -- were of little interest to me. Pictures of huge crowds of men, bowing on mats in prayer, just didn't carry the drama of the other accounts. Little could I have guessed that in my 50's it would be that group of people who would most grip my interest. I really want to understand. But I am persuaded that many Muslims, and certainly the most vocal, do not want understanding. That would be "logos" stuff. And that I think they think is western corruption. So the Pope was without knowing it defending the primacy of western culture, albeit a form of western culture that is supported and lived by only a minority.
One of the news reports from the middle east quoted a Muslim as saying the Pope doesn't understand Islam. I thought to myself, "Well, duh! Of course he doesn't. He only understands a narrow range of Christianity. How could he hope to understand Islam." I am quite sure he meant no insult or harm to Muslims. But I don't think he quite "gets it."
He doesn't "get it" that Catholicism is hugely bigger than the part of it that he defends as the only truth. His metaphysics is based on Thomism which is in turn based on classical Greek philosophy. There was a time in my life that I was convinced that such philosophy was the only way to understand truth and reality. I worried about the health of my soul because I wasn't an expert on Thomism. I tried to familiarize myself with it. I wouldn't call it being a student of Thomism. But I eventually concluded that this philosophy left out far too much reality, both the kind you can see and touch and feel -- as well as the kind of reality that is beyond seeing, touching, feeling. The ineffable. There was too much that Thomism just didn't "get". And so I moved on in my life, carrying with me real sympathy for the magisterial pieces that Thomism does get about reality.
But I don't claim for myself that I "get it". I am a student, still learning. I think the Pope is too. Many Muslims also.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Words
I started a blog this week. Maybe it's because I don't want to be left behind as the world whizzes into the future. Maybe it's because I have had a glimpse of the way "networking" creates power. My late friend John Hornbuckle told me back in the middle of the 1980's, when I bought my first computer, that I wouldn't really have experienced computers until I had experienced networking. (This was before the invention of the "world wide web" and before I had first experienced the internet which was in 1988.) Maybe it's because I have been involved in "open-source" software for 8 years, and I believe in the empowerment that comes from a community working together.
Whatever the reason, I did it. I'm letting you know about it. And herewith some reflections on my rash action.
When I was in high school I assumed that I would become a scientist or engineer. Mathematics and Physics seemed to come naturally to me. I could relate to numbers, shapes, the relationships between things. I once dreamed of making an ultra-accurate pendulum clock that had been featured in Scientific American. (This was just before the invention of quartz crystal, and then atomic, clocks that are the basis for time-keeping these days.)
But there was another side that I couldn't ignore. Maybe it was related to my abilities with music. I had been good at that, too. It wasn't as much the technical ability of making music - that has to do with "numbers, shapes, and relationships", together with coordination - but it had more to do with a sensitivity to a more elusive side to music. It was the beauty, the spirit, of the music that I could sense.
This same side of me could be seen in the response I made to church summer camp when I was 13 and 14 years old. I caught a glimpse of the spirit that was associated with the Holy Spirit and I wanted to know (or experience) more of it.
Now these impulses may be no more than is present in every adolescent, but these were mine. So by the time I got to college, I abandoned the assumption that I would be an engineer and I began to explore language, both formally and informally.
What captivated me about language was not the scientific or quantifiable aspect of language. It was the power of language to point to what was beyond. Language, words, have the power to point us beyond language itself, to what can not be said.
It is a strange thing that as human beings, the only way we can talk about the ineffable is with words. From that age onward, words have seemed to me to be most valuable when they express what words cannot express. They reach beyond themselves to the world of spirit.
During these years I became especially aware of the power of words. They were able to express something beyond the bare meanings of individual words. It was in images that could be evoked. It was in a harmony that could be made to "play" when certain words were brought together.
Words could be used for good and for ill. They were behind the power of demagogues and tyrants as well as providing us the link to saints and mystics. Poets could be intolerable as human beings and at the same time use words that lifted others into the neighborhood of God. It was possible to get the meaning of words profoundly wrong. At one point "bad" came to mean "good."
An example for me was the time I made what I thought were wonderful, special Christmas greetings. I had been pursuing the link between various Greek philosophers and the use of the word "word" (logos) in the opening of John's gospel. I spent weeks carving a linoleum block with the Greek of John's prologue. And only at the end of my labors did I realize that I had forgotten to carve the whole thing backwards. (So that when printed it would come out right.) The experience has been a reminder to me that it is possible to get the impact of words precisely and radically wrong!
Words are slippery. They seem so solid, but they're more like mercury. Useful and powerful, yes. But mercurial, yes, too. You can't really pin them down.
God spoke and it was. Through the word, the world came to be. Through the Word, the light beyond light came into the world. But no word or words can pin this Word down.
Words seem to be one of the essential features of human beings. Though elements of language and communication can be found throughout the natural world (something we know only from the advances of science in recent years), language as such seems to be distinctly human. Our words link us to one another, perhaps because we can call one another by name. We have a name. And you can know my name. We can have a relationship. We are linked.
I opened a blog this week because of my own conviction that words have power to link us in communion. That words have the ability to unite us. I am not under the illusion that my words, or my blog, are in any special way powerful. But as of now I have put them out there for you to read. You can also comment on any of my words if you would like. May God's Word, the living One, bless you.
Whatever the reason, I did it. I'm letting you know about it. And herewith some reflections on my rash action.
When I was in high school I assumed that I would become a scientist or engineer. Mathematics and Physics seemed to come naturally to me. I could relate to numbers, shapes, the relationships between things. I once dreamed of making an ultra-accurate pendulum clock that had been featured in Scientific American. (This was just before the invention of quartz crystal, and then atomic, clocks that are the basis for time-keeping these days.)
But there was another side that I couldn't ignore. Maybe it was related to my abilities with music. I had been good at that, too. It wasn't as much the technical ability of making music - that has to do with "numbers, shapes, and relationships", together with coordination - but it had more to do with a sensitivity to a more elusive side to music. It was the beauty, the spirit, of the music that I could sense.
This same side of me could be seen in the response I made to church summer camp when I was 13 and 14 years old. I caught a glimpse of the spirit that was associated with the Holy Spirit and I wanted to know (or experience) more of it.
Now these impulses may be no more than is present in every adolescent, but these were mine. So by the time I got to college, I abandoned the assumption that I would be an engineer and I began to explore language, both formally and informally.
What captivated me about language was not the scientific or quantifiable aspect of language. It was the power of language to point to what was beyond. Language, words, have the power to point us beyond language itself, to what can not be said.
It is a strange thing that as human beings, the only way we can talk about the ineffable is with words. From that age onward, words have seemed to me to be most valuable when they express what words cannot express. They reach beyond themselves to the world of spirit.
During these years I became especially aware of the power of words. They were able to express something beyond the bare meanings of individual words. It was in images that could be evoked. It was in a harmony that could be made to "play" when certain words were brought together.
Words could be used for good and for ill. They were behind the power of demagogues and tyrants as well as providing us the link to saints and mystics. Poets could be intolerable as human beings and at the same time use words that lifted others into the neighborhood of God. It was possible to get the meaning of words profoundly wrong. At one point "bad" came to mean "good."
An example for me was the time I made what I thought were wonderful, special Christmas greetings. I had been pursuing the link between various Greek philosophers and the use of the word "word" (logos) in the opening of John's gospel. I spent weeks carving a linoleum block with the Greek of John's prologue. And only at the end of my labors did I realize that I had forgotten to carve the whole thing backwards. (So that when printed it would come out right.) The experience has been a reminder to me that it is possible to get the impact of words precisely and radically wrong!
Words are slippery. They seem so solid, but they're more like mercury. Useful and powerful, yes. But mercurial, yes, too. You can't really pin them down.
What a Wonderful symbol
for God's Son.
for God's Son.
God spoke and it was. Through the word, the world came to be. Through the Word, the light beyond light came into the world. But no word or words can pin this Word down.
Words seem to be one of the essential features of human beings. Though elements of language and communication can be found throughout the natural world (something we know only from the advances of science in recent years), language as such seems to be distinctly human. Our words link us to one another, perhaps because we can call one another by name. We have a name. And you can know my name. We can have a relationship. We are linked.
I opened a blog this week because of my own conviction that words have power to link us in communion. That words have the ability to unite us. I am not under the illusion that my words, or my blog, are in any special way powerful. But as of now I have put them out there for you to read. You can also comment on any of my words if you would like. May God's Word, the living One, bless you.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Knowing what we don't know
For several days now I have found myself referring to the old teaching that wisdom is found in "knowing what we don't know." It came up in the context of talking to my daughters. One of them has repeated the theme that she's stupid or she's not good at math -- you know the sort of thing. I have tried to respond to both girls about the process of learning. We pray at night about the things that we learned during the day and I try to give thanks for the things that were a challenge. Because, of course, I think that it is in the things that feel and appear to us to be barriers or walls against which we so obediently bang our heads -- that it is in just those things that we are most likely to learn something important.
Then the phrase "knowing what we don't know" came up again in a Bible class at church. It was in the context of challenging the group to look at our church, at the exterior, at the responses of our members, etc. -- with the eyes of a newcomer, a stranger to us. It was a challenge to look with new eyes. But as simple as that is to say, it is not an easy thing to do. To look at something familiar to us the way someone completely new might see it. It means shutting off our normal sight. Seeing with a different set of eyes. Or at least a side-set of eyes. I thought of the experience of looking for stars in the sky, or in my growing up in Colorado, looking at the distant horizon. If you tried to look directly at something you couldn't see it. Only by using your peripheral vision would the thing become visible.
Now "knowing what we don't know" is that kind of thing only taken to a much higher level. Most of the world, it seems to me, goes through the day "knowing what they know." Now they may actually "know" something or they may just have firm opinions. But in this case it's the same thing. An engineer may well know a lot about engineering -- maybe even be an expert at some part of engineering. On the other hand a viewer of "American Idol" may know quite well which performer is "the best." Certainly the judges on "American Idol" know what they know.
I believe that the knowledge of what we don't know is far more important than our expert knowledge, opinions, or truth from God. Working in the church as I do, I am especially sensitive to the way people of faith are "experts" at what they know. And it drives me crazy. I, myself, am drawn to those persons who have some sense of what they don't know. It means they are learners. It means they are listeners. It means they are open to wonder and awe.
The last experts I heard expressing "awe" was on an NPR report some months ago. They were reporting on a group of scientists who had dropped a camera into the very mouth of an active volcano -- at the bottom of the ocean. The dynamics of the ocean meant that the volcanic eruption was slowed down enough that it was physically possible to do what they did. But on the radio you heard these scientific experts begin their observation the way you would expect experts to do. It was a non-emotional accounting of what was happening. But as the images came into view of the earth giving birth, before their eyes, their objectivity dropped away and they sounded like teenagers, with, "Oh, wow! Oh my God! Oh, man!" They were suddenly being exposed to what they didn't know.
Learning to know what we don't know is worth it.
Then the phrase "knowing what we don't know" came up again in a Bible class at church. It was in the context of challenging the group to look at our church, at the exterior, at the responses of our members, etc. -- with the eyes of a newcomer, a stranger to us. It was a challenge to look with new eyes. But as simple as that is to say, it is not an easy thing to do. To look at something familiar to us the way someone completely new might see it. It means shutting off our normal sight. Seeing with a different set of eyes. Or at least a side-set of eyes. I thought of the experience of looking for stars in the sky, or in my growing up in Colorado, looking at the distant horizon. If you tried to look directly at something you couldn't see it. Only by using your peripheral vision would the thing become visible.
Now "knowing what we don't know" is that kind of thing only taken to a much higher level. Most of the world, it seems to me, goes through the day "knowing what they know." Now they may actually "know" something or they may just have firm opinions. But in this case it's the same thing. An engineer may well know a lot about engineering -- maybe even be an expert at some part of engineering. On the other hand a viewer of "American Idol" may know quite well which performer is "the best." Certainly the judges on "American Idol" know what they know.
I believe that the knowledge of what we don't know is far more important than our expert knowledge, opinions, or truth from God. Working in the church as I do, I am especially sensitive to the way people of faith are "experts" at what they know. And it drives me crazy. I, myself, am drawn to those persons who have some sense of what they don't know. It means they are learners. It means they are listeners. It means they are open to wonder and awe.
The last experts I heard expressing "awe" was on an NPR report some months ago. They were reporting on a group of scientists who had dropped a camera into the very mouth of an active volcano -- at the bottom of the ocean. The dynamics of the ocean meant that the volcanic eruption was slowed down enough that it was physically possible to do what they did. But on the radio you heard these scientific experts begin their observation the way you would expect experts to do. It was a non-emotional accounting of what was happening. But as the images came into view of the earth giving birth, before their eyes, their objectivity dropped away and they sounded like teenagers, with, "Oh, wow! Oh my God! Oh, man!" They were suddenly being exposed to what they didn't know.
Learning to know what we don't know is worth it.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Looking out of portals
I haven't seen the movie. I'm not even sure that I will. But I know of a scene in it that I am very interested in seeing. My friend Cass shared it with our group this morning: around the table a handful of different characters reveal that they really treasure the image of Jesus that they carry around with them, but the images are wildly different and vividly off-the-mark as compared to a traditional presentation of Jesus. One prefers the "baby Jesus", another a "Ninja" Jesus, and on it goes. All this was a reflection on the Marcan "Confession" passage. Jesus asks his followers, "Who do you say that I am?" It seems that we all of our own versions of an answer to that question, even as we may know what the "right and proper" answer might be.
A similar kind of observation was passed on to me through a book -- a kind of "assigned reading" for another fellowship group I am in. The book is The Practicing Congregation by Diana Butler Bass. There is much in there seems rich and new/old and invigorating to me, but the point at the moment is the observation that we (at least we in the mainline churches) are often defending competing versions of "tradition." Not so long ago it was commonplace to argue that conflict in the church was between those who wanted change in the church and those who wanted to preserve the tradition. Ms. Bass would claim (I think rightly) that in fact those who want "change" are arguing in favor of tradition also. It's just a different understanding of tradition. She says everybody in the churches is a defender of tradition. We just have a different take on what "tradition" is.
I intuitively think this is right. And it's related to my growing conviction that no human being has a complete take on Truth. As a human being we only have a partial vantage point. Whoever we are. Wherever we are. Whatever the "Truth" is that we would defend. I owe something of this most recently to Barbara Brown Taylor in her interview on Fresh Air.
A similar kind of observation was passed on to me through a book -- a kind of "assigned reading" for another fellowship group I am in. The book is The Practicing Congregation by Diana Butler Bass. There is much in there seems rich and new/old and invigorating to me, but the point at the moment is the observation that we (at least we in the mainline churches) are often defending competing versions of "tradition." Not so long ago it was commonplace to argue that conflict in the church was between those who wanted change in the church and those who wanted to preserve the tradition. Ms. Bass would claim (I think rightly) that in fact those who want "change" are arguing in favor of tradition also. It's just a different understanding of tradition. She says everybody in the churches is a defender of tradition. We just have a different take on what "tradition" is.
I intuitively think this is right. And it's related to my growing conviction that no human being has a complete take on Truth. As a human being we only have a partial vantage point. Whoever we are. Wherever we are. Whatever the "Truth" is that we would defend. I owe something of this most recently to Barbara Brown Taylor in her interview on Fresh Air.
Monday, September 11, 2006
My opening
Today seems to me to be the day to begin my planned blog. It is the 5th anniversary of the new life we began in Hawai'i. Technically we arrived here on Sept. 7th. But of course 9/11 changed everything.
My hope for this blog is to provide a dynamic and active contact space for St. Mary's Episcopal Church. This will provide up-to-date information and responses for the church members to consult.
At the same time, I hope for a space to reflect on the times. The times that are now a part of a new century, a new era, and the death of the presumptions that governed my life that began at the mid-point of the 20th c.
My hope for this blog is to provide a dynamic and active contact space for St. Mary's Episcopal Church. This will provide up-to-date information and responses for the church members to consult.
At the same time, I hope for a space to reflect on the times. The times that are now a part of a new century, a new era, and the death of the presumptions that governed my life that began at the mid-point of the 20th c.
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