Churches Searches III-V

Pursuant to our Advent purposes we’ve continued to try out high church services, or, as the Presbyterians call it, Traditional worship. It’s been kind of nice to do the same denomination three weeks in a row, since things begin to look a little familiar (though even today when they read verses from the New Testament I confusedly poured over the program trying to see how I missed the “Old Testament Lesson”—but that’s apparently a Roman-Catholic/Episcopalian thing.)

The first of these was easily our favorite of any church thus far. It was in the city just north of us in this large, beautiful building. One of the cool things about this church was that they had brochures in the pew explaining the scenes and symbology and history of the stained glass windows and other art work like statues and banners around the sanctuary. Some of the earliest ones, which had decidedly art nouveau characteristics such as flowery patterning and an antique color palette, were bought from Louis Tiffany in New York in the first decade of the 1900s. Obviously this community has been well off for a while. Many of the later windows were donated but, interestingly, their style was more classical and therefore made them look older than they were. The pastor gave a fine speech, alluding to figure from Augustine to Auden, about the mixture of trial and triumph that typifies the life of faith and ought to inform our celebration of Christmas. The weird thing about this church is that none of the maybe two-hundred attendees sat in any of the front five or six rows of pews. It gave the effect that they were either afraid of being splashed with holiness from the altar, or that the faithful had been raptured from those rows and nobody happened to notice.

At the next church the pastor doubled as the youth leader and the kids’ choir director, which made it seem like he was doing everything. It had been some years since I’d been in a church when they had a little “children’s church” segment of the service, or, as I have long thought of it, “Children’s Exploitation Theater.” I’m sure the goal is to model to parents how to teach their kids and to give the kids a sense that they have a real place in the main service, but there’s also that sense of romanticized youth where the leader repeats the cute little answers to his or her theological questions and the audience laughs and thinks how wonderful is the world of the child. Of course, even if you’re a cynic it is still very funny, and even if you’re a cynic it serves to remind you what it means to “be ye like little children.” The kids came back later in the service to sing a song which, much to our surprise, did not sound like a bunch of street urchins singing for alms but actually showed signs of training and practice.

Today’s church brought in a brass band and had a pretty quality choir sing a number of cantata-type pieces. They also had a kids’ choir, but they sounded like you expect kids to sound. The funny thing here was how no one was sure whether it was okay to clap after any of the musical pieces, though they were all so impressed that they very much wanted to.

Presbyterians around here seem to value a highly-crafted sermon delivered in a voice in imitation of Abe Lincoln. The ministers get up in their pulpits and speak slowly and soberly, full of the gravitas of their position. Often they compose their sermons with an eye to a combination of narrative and poetry that, though appreciated, can often sound merely antiquated as opposed to truly lofty. No doubt it is difficult to be truly lofty these days of increasing irony. That is to say, the idea of a high style seems to rely on a notion of something grander than the individual, something universal, even transcendent. Even those of us who believe in the transcendent feel less comfortable making claims about its nature, and therefore the “lower” style of informal speech often suits us, since it has more the tincture of personal opinion, belief, and experience. Furthermore, one needs to feel that a high style has its own merit and use it as such if it is to come off properly; its authority cannot come merely from its “sounding old.”

I’m finding it interesting to note how unsatisfying the familiar evangelical-type “contemporary” worship has been for me lately. I’m not prepared to make any prescriptive claims about the natures of the two, but at least for the moment, when we’re churchless and far from friends, traditional liturgies connect us to something larger than the people in the building, i.e., the tradition of worship, whereas evangelical services seem to work best when one feels a part of that community. Moreover, traditional liturgies do not base worship on feeling in the same way; rather, they emphasize participation as a kind of minimal virtue, as good enough if you don’t feel you can do more. And now, having written that, I smirk at myself, for it is humbling—as I think it ought always be—to realize how much one has changed.

Church Search II

This week we finally screwed ourselves up to trying another church, an Episcopalian church in the wealthy community just south of us (as opposed to the wealthy communities to the east, north and west of us). We left the house late, which could have meant trouble finding parking on the street in front of the church, except that there were only six cars there when we arrived. This was one of those grand old stone buildings with great big central doors, so there was no sneaking in. Once inside we were relieved to find maybe sixty or seventy people scattered throughout the pews, meaning there must have been a parking lot in back.

We took a seat not too far back and tried to catch up to the service. This proved no simple task since following a high church service can be like navigating a website in which all the linked pages open at once and you have to make the links yourself and you only have so much time because you’re supposed to keep up with a whole roomful of users. The main page directs you to this colored page here of this card over there or this book back here, but then you’re also supposed to stand or kneel or sit while you’re filing through all this paperwork, and sometimes you read or sing but sometimes you don’t and you kind of have to know which comes when.

In all actuality I find the high church service more meaningful as I get older. In fact, I’m pretty sure they are just the space for the meeting of God and man that many Evangelical churches consciously exclude. Liturgy is only ‘mere’ ritual for those who watch church like a TV show. Otherwise it invites one to participate in the communal activity of worship that church is meant to be, it binds one not only to that specific congregation but to all congregations who share that liturgy. Furthermore the parts of the liturgy each move one through a series of ritual modes such as confession/repentance, meditation, praise, reverence. The exteriority of the ritual means these modes are not moods, that is, not just emotional experiences that come and go. Rather, they are activities, the obedient service of the individual-in-community-before-God. Heavy.

The interim rector gave a well-crafted sermon which included some sort of connection between the Angel of Death and hitting a deer with your car, made references to Christmas, Jonathan Edwards, and the Puritans, and apparently slipped in somewhere a conclusion to be drawn from it all, which I’m afraid was beyond me. But he had a very fine, bellowing voice. We opted against going up for the Eucharist, which may have been a mistake. My old feeling was that it is a ritual of remembrance for a church body; hence it wouldn’t necessarily be appropriate to go up as a mere visitor. But now I see it as a ritual of remembrance for the church body, for the global congregation of Christ’s children. As such, we should feel free to partake in any particular congregation that invites us to it.

During the passing of the peace only the a couple people gave us the “vulture eyes,” those overly-eager, widening pupils that see in the newcomer hope for their struggling church. Relax, people. We are not your saviors. But by and large they were genial, perhaps even a little reserved. We were invited to the coffee hour, where we would no doubt learn a great deal more about them, but we weren’t quite up to it this week; we’d had to meet new people already at two separate family Thanksgivings, and were feeling greeted-out.

Going into Advent as we are, we think we’ll keep trying high church services, perhaps even return to this one. We didn’t come back with particularly powerful feelings about it, but that in itself may be a reason to return.

The Great Church Search I

I didn’t have a Halloween theme in mind today, but for anyone who has ever been in our shoes, there is something genuinely frightening about my present topic. Everyone who has asked it has asked whether we’ve found a church yet. After all (as I assume the reasoning goes), it’s been nearly three months since we moved to Extortiana, or, as it is commonly known, Illinois. For my part, I have been attending a Catholic university, and often found myself meditating upon theological subjects; Katie has not found this particularly satisfying for her own spiritual life, especially as she is not also attending a Catholic university.

So yesterday we hied on down to an Evangelical Free church in Deerfield that Katie found in the phone book. She remarked that its ad (yes, it had an ad) employed certain catchwords of the so-called Emergent church, such as “relationship” and “authenticity.” I with my usual celerity took up an ironic stance with respect to the whole church-search project, dubbing our first object of investigation the “Emergent Church of Deerfield,” and off we went.

We knew we were in trouble during the first worship song. The lyrics were projected onto two large screens on either side the stage. Fair enough. But behind the lyrics ran video footage that may or may not have been lifted from a mystical yoga video, variously treating us to the soothing sights of rushing water, blowing trees, and time-lapse-rolling clouds. Oooh-kay...

Of course everyone who spoke spoke too much, but that is true of just about everyone I know, so I couldn’t in good conscience hold that against them. The worship leader stood alone at a podium, holding a mic, before a band admirably representing high school through late middle age persons, and smiled kindly and sympathetically—that is to say, with grating condescension. The pastor then got up and, not unlike a parody of a Baptist minister, sought to make us feel the profundity of his brief message by forcing it out through his gleaming teeth while pulling his lips unnaturally back toward his ears so to stretch them to a paleness even as his cheeks turned red under the compression. Happy Halloween.

Okay, so I didn’t enjoy the Emerging Church of Deerfield, which I didn’t think had emerged very far, or, if it did, was coming out backward with its head still below ground. Katie was not a big fan, either. In fact, if it could have an enlivening effect, I’d just as soon the place were submerged, demerged, unmerged or dismerged as the case required.

Oh ye powers of positivity, aid me now in my insufferable cynicism!

No doubt many, no doubt most, of the congregants deeply believe on Christ and have felt his hand on them. Indeed, three teens testified to that effect during a brief baptism service, and the crowd was so enthusiastic it clapped after anything anyone said: “We’re over half-way to our third-quarter goal of $400,000!” (clap clap clap) “Please be seated.” (clap clap clap).

Our overwhelming sense was that these weren’t our people. Brothers and sisters in faith, okay, but different still as the hand from the...femur. We may just have to get used to that until we get to know a congregation well enough to understand in what ways we are united. But I doubt it could be this congregation, and unfortunately it is because I can’t take the pastor or worship leader seriously. Just sing. Just preach. Please, please, don’t smile at me as though you think you have to convince me that I, too, feel abnormal accesses of bliss and wellbeing. Please, please, don’t grin at me as though you don’t think we’ll take your words seriously unless you demonstrate how good they ought to make us feel. The most authentic acting can never be authenticity when it comes to faith, and even children can perceive the difference.

Not to get dramatic, but let me just get dramatic and say there’s a heresy infecting many Protestant congregations that takes the form of the faith of feeling, the belief that God makes us feel good. Sola fides, yes, sola scriptura, sure, but if you don’t feel good, you’re doing something wrong. Christ suffered so we don’t have to.

One of my professors argues that after Vatican II Catholicism lost its sense of limitation and therefore its sense of tragedy. I tried to hide my consternation as I tried to think of the last time I’d seen the true pathos of tragedy in a Protestant church. What would it look like for us to imagine God not as an on-call handyman, but as the life behind and in the finite world before us, as the Father awaiting us on the other side of the too-real pain and weakness that we otherwise sell off to our careers and TVs?

And yet, I wonder if I could even handle it myself.

If you've read this far, now go to publicintellectual for October 26, 2005, where my friend takes on some similar ideas. We totally came to this topic independently--really.

On the Origin of Man...sort of

I found you can play with the publish date and make it look like you published a thing earlier than you did. This piece I wrote in response to a Chicago Tribune article. I threw it together in a hurry because I wanted to be au courant, but they didn't want it anyway. Sorry for the tiny print, but it's kinda long.

Origin Debate Overlooks its Origin

It is perhaps too much of a truism nowadays to suggest that finding answers depends on asking the right questions, but the notion goes at least as far back as Aristotle, who spent a great deal of time in his works laying foundations on the belief that finding the origin gets one well on the way to the answer.
Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne’s recent Perspectives piece (September 18, 2005) on the place of intelligent design in the science classroom typifies the kind of misunderstanding of origins that has stagnated this and so many other debates. Their brief article covers most of the standard arguments against intelligent design, which tend to take the line that ID is not good science: it is not scientific because it is not a testable theory; it critiques but offers no positive proof; it is really a means to sneak the supernatural into science class.

I have no wish to question Dawkins and Coyne on their position from the viewpoint of science itself. In fact, so far as I understand the theoretical underpinnings of empirical, positivist science, I have to agree with them that intelligent design does not meet the criteria for a scientific theory. But I think something else is at the heart of the debate, which becomes clearer in the ways Dawkins and Coyne identify intelligent design with creationism. That is, they bring the discussion back around to religion, which is to recognize the connection of the evolution debate with fundamental explanations of life and, more specifically, suffering. The Tribune itself emphasizes this relationship by placing the article in a series alongside a piece on the implications of Hurricane Katrina on American civilization.
But this is not as self-evident an association as one might think. Creationism is a theory about the origins of life; Darwin, on the other hand, entitled his book The Origin of Species. Whatever Darwin did or did not say, it is clear that many have applied his theory to a story about the origins of life itself, and then gone on to oppose that story to religious stories as the fact behind the fictions. This has understandably irked (and still irks) the religiously minded. Enlightenment science began as a practice independent of theology and its claims, but with Darwin it seemed to overstep its bounds.

In the November 2004 National Geographic, David Quammen tried to reinforce this opposition by crafting a sort of Enlightenment myth of awakening from supernaturalism to naturalism in the life of Charles Darwin, making him a sort of Buddha (since enlightened), or Christ (since crucified), for evolutionists. At the same time he inserted, in a nod to the lofty humanist values of understanding, compassion, and political correctness, patronizing remarks about those religious people who still disbelieve evolution, seemingly blissfully ignorant of the offensive character of his words.

Dawkins and Coyne unhelpfully follow in this tradition, though I think quite consciously. At their most generous, they allow intelligent design a place in a history of ideas classroom, or shove it back to the church with a sneer. At their most condescending, they consign it to “a philosophy class on popular logical fallacies,” comparing the teaching of intelligent design to teaching alchemy in a chemistry class or “the stork theory in a sex education class.” “Opposition to intelligent design is laughable to all who are acquainted with even a fraction of the published date,” they go on to say.

It seems clear to me that the debate about intelligent design is really about theological (or, rather, anti-theological) claims made by science, and about scientific (or, again, anti-scientific) claims made by theology. And it seems further clear that this has to do with the fundamental structure of both areas of study. Science observes and attempts to account for the visible; its methods are thus suited to this study. Theology observes and attempts to account for the invisible inhering in the visible; its methods are thus suited to this study. Each has its own sort of evidence—sacred texts or observable, natural phenomena—and it is usually when one denounces the evidence of the other that problems arise.

Because theology’s object includes in some part science’s, we can understand how theology might conflict with science, for the one will make explanations based on human desire, will and frailty, while the other will make explanations based on impartial laws of matter and energy. And insofar as the theologians are right in attributing something like a soul to the human being, we can understand how science might conflict with theology, for whatever the soul may be, it must be something that resists material reductionism, and even a reductionistic story of our origins is still a story, and all stories by their nature reach beyond the material in search for a higher unity: animals do not tell stories.

I have not been able to spend the time to find parallel examples in religious opinion of the kind of condescending and disrespectful rhetoric Quammen, Dawkins and Coyne use against their opponents, but I do not at all doubt they are out there, because the debate hits close to home for both science and religion. Both seem intent on holding their ground in opposition to the other, and this is probably due to the fact that, though individuals here and there have tried, no one has yet compellingly reconciled them—at least, not in a way comprehensible to the American public. But this is precisely what is required if my locating of the origin be at all accurate. Theology and science each need to establish for themselves and the rest of us just what kinds of claims they are capable of making, and avoid making other kinds.

This will not be an easy task(indeed, has not been, for again, many have been working on it for ages, and I in no way want to be glib or simplistic) because neither can simply draw a circle around itself and forbid the other cross, for, as we saw with Katrina, both must at times wrestle with understanding the same phenomenon—they are not mutually distinct, which may very well be a clue to the importance of each. Room will have to be made in the one for the other, and in such a way so as to respect the valid claims the other has to make, and so that the collaborative data reveal what neither alone could. The theologian declaiming vice, overlooking the fact that the sun shines, and the rain falls, on the good and the wicked alike, does not take us very far toward understanding how to better prepare for the terrifying powers of nature. Nor does the scientist describing the impassive and destructive forces at work in Katrina take us very far toward understanding why it hurts us so much to see the suffering of strangers on our TVs. As the third article in the Tribune’s series points out, there are also things we are doing to nature that will come back to bite us and which must therefore be attended to. As an illustration of the way I imagine this reconciliation may work, I suggest that the Judeo-Christian tradition has within its origin story perhaps the most powerful and helpful image the scientist could ask for in encouraging people how to interact with the earth: that of the garden.

Poor Poor People

All the people from New Orleans who had money enough to own a car or hire one deserve a pat on the back for being affluent enough to save themselves. Or so apparently goes the logic of Bill O'Reilly in his recent online column. All those poor people stranded on their rooftops should be icons to us, and our children, of what happens when you trust your government rather than working hard and making something of yourself. Those poor poor people are also apparently stupid, since they've allowed themselves to be victimized by "charlatan ideologues and dishonest politicians" who have made promises the government cannot keep - nor should.

In all fairness, I don't believe O'Reilly has a vendetta against the poor, nor does he desire that anyone remain poor - he just doesn't think his poverty ought to be your problem (or would he put it a different way?) In fact he says Jesus was wrong: we don't always have to have the poor with us "here in America" because we have "options all over the place." He sums up:

Here's the end zone on this: the government can force your parents to send you to school but can't force you to learn. If you do not educate yourself or develop a marketable skill, the chances are you will be poor and powerless. If you react to that situation by committing crimes or becoming addicted, you will sink further into the swamp of hopelessness and your life will be largely meaningless.

Let the kids see the poor in New Orleans and the suffering they endured. Then prod the children to connect the dots and wise up. Educate yourself, work hard, and be honest. Then when disaster occurs you will have a fighting chance to beat it.
If you don't do those things, the odds are that you will be desperately standing on a symbolic rooftop someday yourself. And trust me, help will not be quick in coming.

My problem is with the rhetoric of selfish individualism, which amounts to something like "we've got all these options, take care of yourself; haven't I paid enough taxes?" Setting aside the fairness of the tax code and the powers and proper domain of the government, it should be troubling that the kind of American character advocated by O'Reilly is one that looks on human suffering from a distance, objectifying persons into a moral message, saying in effect, "I'm glad I'm smart enough to be successful" - not unlike the Pharisee who thanked God he was neither poor nor a woman.

From O'Reilly's homepage you can link to the Red Cross or to a number of charities he supports. He is not, then, by any means ignorant of the place of charity within a liberal democracy. He would, presumably, simply argue that the government should not be one of those charities. Fair enough. However, contribution to charity would seem to in itself contradict an attitude that says look after yourself so you won't be one of those poor victims.

I don't pretend to a thorough grasp of economics (in fact I've heard most economists have to hedge all their predictions and explanations with considerations of human unpredictability), but I do know that whole systems of legitimate government power can still be blind to their own faults, that great numbers of people working less than full-time do so involuntarily, that in an evolving job market even educated people can be hard-pressed to stay afloat, and that a capitalist economy cannot be amoral simply because it is constituted by moral beings. "Private vice is public virtue," that Enlightenment mantra applauding greed and ambition, has long since sunk below the surface of public discourse and become the arsenic that laces our water, infecting our ability to think straight about the moral determinants of economics. Some would have us believe we can purify the stream - these are the idealists, who have lost the ability to recognize evil. Others would have us believe the poison benefits us - these are the pessimists, who have despaired of a moral order and retreat into the ego.

I'll not offend the plight of New Orleanders and other victims of Katrina by offering up a simplistic and condescendingly obvious fix-all solution to future disasters, or by blaming so-and-so and such-and-such (who are always the troublemakers). But I would suggest that we as human beings can do better than O'Reilly in interpretting recent events. None of us is immune to the effects of natural disasters, nor can we all be safe from the violence of others. As individuals and as a society we can work toward improving our chances of survival, but we cannot expect to create an absolutely safe, sterile world. Rather than pity and moralize over one another's suffering, we ought to react - as many, many people have - with compassion, charity, and care. Even the TV pastor who says to do no more than pray has said more than the one who shakes his head and says, "Oh, those poor poor people.

Apartments and Landlords

Looking for a new home always involves complicated emotions. On the one hand, there seem so many possibilities. On the other hand, it takes time and energy, and one has to see a lot of poor, discouraging places. And in our case there were so many great things about our old place to compare to.

Our first day out was ill-omened. One place was expensive, and ugly. Another was spendy yet loveably quaint—but far too small. And another was the right price but both ugly and small. Moreover one of the cities we had been considering simply wasn’t going to cut it—it was like Land of the Yuppies. We had hoped for something a little more urban.

The second day we thought we’d try the drive from Loyola to Lake Villa to see how long a trip it would be for Katie should we live in Chicago proper. The primary problem with this plan was that, even should the trip be short enough (it wasn’t), East Rogers Park didn’t look like the kind of neighborhood where we’d want to live either. A little too urban.

Evanston had everything we wanted. Beautiful apartments in vintage buildings at prices that at least fit the appearance, in a city very like Portland. We saw perhaps a dozen or more places in Evanston, fell in love with two of them, but ultimately had to face the fact that the drive was still too far.

Landlords are at once the most interesting and more frustrating part of the hung. One guy kept talking up his place like a dodgy used-car salesman, obviously exaggerating the details of features we were standing there looking at, as though he could make his fabulations true by speaking them. Another guy hardly talked at all, just moved to a new room every time we followed him to the previous one as though to avoid us. When he did speak, he told us how a friend of his rented to a Chicago Bear (a football player, not an angry highway driver) who left the place looking like he had been throwing free weights at the wall, and therefore he (the landlord) now always required a security deposit. I couldn’t help looking down at my modest physique in ironic critique of his concern. Yet another guy sounded like he had a porcupine stuck in his throat, all hoarse and grating, though otherwise healthy-looking.

The most interesting landlords turned out to be the ones we chose. For some reason. They have a strange habit of saying they will call and then not calling. Yet, so far, whenever they say they will do something, they do it. Eventually. My theory about the husband—call him, oh, Gonzo—is that he just doesn’t like to talk. Ask him a question and he gives a brief, impatient answer as though to say, “Yeah, whatever you want. Just leave me out of it.” This would be a great trait in a roommate, but not in the person who actually owns the place and can withhold your deposit.

I’m not sure yet about the wife—let’s call her Drisella. Drisella is a short, wide-eyed lady with thin, dandruffy hair who can’t seem to look in one direction for more than a second and a half, so sometimes she’s talking to you but you’re not always sure right away. To their credit they’ve been very accommodating and friendly, but they just won’t communicate with us, which doesn’t gel well with people who intend to make careers of studying people and language.

The trick then will be to figure out how to manage our managers. What seems to work moderately well is to leave a message with them stating what we would like, then to wait a week, and usually they will just do it without saying they plan to. It’s not ideal, but it gets the job done. I sometimes think I should bring up this communication gap to Gonzo, but I’m worried he’ll say, “Yeah, yeah, whatever you want,” and I’ll never hear from him again.

Last Day: Illinois Ill-Omened

There was literally nothing interesting about our last day. We woke up late since the motel alarm clock was reversed PM to AM, but we got going quickly. We learned that Iowa can claim rolling hills and forested countryside enough to be more interesting than Nebraska or Illinois, which was a welcome relief, at the time, from endless miles of cornfield. Driving through Nebraska is like playing one of those really old video games where they keep replaying the same scenery and you really can’t be sure that you’re not looping through the same few moments of the space-time continuum and not making any progress at all and probably will be stuck in this enmaddifying cycle for the rest of your life and you don’t care if you never make it so long as someone ends the madness!!!!

Hmm.

Our entry to Illinois was ill-omened. After hundreds upon hundreds of miles at 70mph we were now instructed, as a truck with a trailer, that we had to drive ten miles slower than all other traffic. Thinking to cut down on distance, we took I-88, the Reagan Memorial Highway – and _Toll_ Road, as it turned out. We paid – sit down for this – _$5.35_ at the first tollbooth, which I’m pretty sure is a form of extortion. Our money bought us a thirty-mile trip through single-lane construction at 45mph, and Katie had to keep the phone from me after encountering a sign saying, “Thank you for driving the Reagan Memorial Highway. Any comments? Call…etc.”

But the trip ended with a homemade barbecue rib dinner at my parents’ place, everyone safe and workably sane. It remained an adventure despite the stress and time constraints, and the difficulty of leaving our old home. On the way we listened to three books on tape, played a number of hangman games, nearly died a few times, and saw such remarkable road signs as “Eagles on Highway” and “Occasionally Blinding Dust Storms.”

I would also at this time like to recommend the Edwards, CO, rest stop at exit 163, which featured fine, clean and modern facilities in a lovely mountain setting.

For a transcript of our in-transit conversations please send $4 and a SASE. You’ll hear me use such words as “buffufalo,” “falafelo,” and “cry-my-crikey.”

Lastly, after checking the contents of our truck at the journey’s end, I need to thank our good friend, Blake, whose spatial and structural skills were instrumental in the shiftless packing of our belongings. If you ever need a good man to help you load a truck, look up Blake, and tell him Brad and Katie sent you.

Day 4: You Can See Chicago From Here

Day 3 was actually Day 4, as we stayed a day in Cedaredge relaxing and, as is unavoidable at my grandmother’s, eating. We were concerned this day for the passage over the Rockies, given the circumstances of driving the truck outlined previously. Uncle Tom and Aunt Pam advised us as to our route, which was a highway following the Colorado River toward Vail before climbing a couple passes and dropping us down in Denver. Dawn in the Rockies takes one’s breath away as quickly as in the Gorge, only with a harder, drier feel like giants turning into stone. Sometimes the river just narrowly cut through the mountains, taking us through tall, jagged gorges that hid us from the sun. Other times it opened up into wide flood-plains that grew green and lush and provided ground for small villages and homesteads to dig in.

At Vail the road climbs some thousands of feet to the summit of the pass over 10,000 feet – that means we were nearly as high up as Hood’s peak. It seemed all our truck could do to hang out at a steady 35mph the whole ten-mile climb. We rolled down the windows, flipped on the hazards, and just sat back for the ride as everyone else – including a horse and a couple kids on skateboards – passed us up. If the question of even making the climb wasn’t exciting enough, there was the additional question of having enough fuel. Uncle Tom recommended a filling station some miles after Vail Pass, which, considering only the miles, should have been within reach. However, on a climb that truck chugs gas like a sloppy lush – one can just see the engine in there, tipping its head back and letting the fuel spill all out of the hose all over its fat, greasy mouth. I don’t think it caught my sardonic tone when I patted the dash and told it, “Drink up, buddy, for tomorrow we’ll die!”

Obviously, we made it, or there would be more violence in my description of the trip to this point. And it was really the last exciting bit. On the far east side of the mountains the road lifts one last time, and one can see where the rocks stop and the plains begin spreading out, flat and plain and dull for as far as the eye could see, which, one was inclined to believe, had to be very far. Katie put her hand to her brow, peering at the horizon, and cried, “I think I can see Chicago!” to which I replied, “No, Chicago’s right there, those are the Appalachians.”

To prove that I’m only slightly exaggerating about the prairie states: when we checked into our motel that night, we asked the clerk about the storm clouds that appeared to be already pulling in overhead, and she showed us on the news how they were really _two-hundred miles_ north of us, though moving in quickly. So there. It’s really flat.

Day 2: Us v. Utah

Compare now Day 1 to Day 2. After a long night’s rest and a leisurely breakfast at a café in downtown Evanston, we headed out to Cedaredge, CO, which required heading first west to Salt Lake City, UT, then south and a little west until finally doubling back east to our destination – about a 9 ¼ hour drive for us.

The ten miles or so leading into Salt Lake City run steeply downhill, which is trouble when you’re carrying all your world’s possessions, and your car, behind you. On the advice of Click and Clack, the Tappit brothers, we downshifted rather than riding our brakes. If you’ve never done this, or if you’re not afraid of loud noises, you may not appreciate the significance of this. When a large truck traveling 70 mph downhill shifts into second gear, its engine suddenly begins to scream with such anguish you are sure its life must be now too painful to endure and that it will blow itself up rather than continue another second.

Then we hit the highway around the city. First off, the roads may or may not have been paved with cobblestones painted to look like asphalt, but they certainly felt like it. Second, Utah drivers, assuming them all Mormon, are so anxious to get to Heaven that they drive with an absolute lack of self-concern. Besides the entering and exiting people trying to run into us, most of the lane-changers were trying to run into one another. In a space of about ten miles we witnessed no less than five near-fatal near-accidents and a slew of close-calls that, cumulatively, created about the most stressful driving conditions I’ve ever experienced.

We picked up I-70, which cuts directly east across the state through a landscape more deserving of the modifier “desolate” than most I’ve seen. Stopping at Devil’s Canyon viewpoint, I expected to see a map situating us somewhere between Nowhere and The Edge of the World. I remarked to my wife that it seemed this land was a place where God just went nuts with his most dramatic natural forces, thinking, “there’s no one who’s gonna want to live here, anyway,” to which she pointed out that no one did in fact live there, there were only those fool enough to drive through it.

Our constant goal was Green River, whose name promised an oasis of green shade trees, cool river breezes, and gasoline. In fact it was two gas stations in the midst of the desert, with no river in sight, and no green taller than my ankle. As we approached the exit it seemed to begin raining, but in fact it was bugs. When I stepped out of the truck at the gas station I could see swarms of mutant ant-flies crawling all over the ground and pumps, and flying all over our heads. After filling up we said, “This place is infested with some God-sent damnable plague. Let’s get outta here.” And we did.

But when we pulled up to my Grandma’s house, we had cashews and mostaccioli and margaritas (an unusual combo, I know) awaiting us, as well as my grandmother, aunt and uncle, who warmly welcomed us, and hence Day 2 closed on us once again comfortably abed and peaceful.

Day 1: Initiation

As I told Susannah when we got to her apartment in Evanston, WY, the first night of our move, driving that U-Haul truck feels something like sitting on a couch and driving one’s apartment. Besides its cumbersome bulk, it accelerates just a little more quickly than grass grows.

Despite such encumbrances we hauled ourselves some 15 hours to our first destination, feeling pretty good about ourselves and our progress. En route we saw the sun come up and illuminate the Columbia Gorge before us, enjoyed the subtler beauty of the Blue Mountains in eastern Oregon, and listened to LeGuin’s Wizard of Earthsea, which, for all its weaknesses, compelled our generosity enough via its energy and ambition to be still rather enjoyable.

Many people thoughtfully helped us with gas money, for which we are deeply grateful, but we were not quite prepared to blow through it all the first day; the only consolation was that we were in fact getting near the truck’s best gas mileage. We also discovered that the car-dolly can in fact handle speeds above 45—as high as 80, in fact. Whenever we look in the mirrors, we see the little sticker on the trailer that says speed limit 45, but it has become like a post-it your mom sticks on your mirror that says “Remember to brush your teeth thrice a day,” which after a while you begin to scoff at, but, when something goes wrong you’ll go, “I should have listened to me mum,” or, “I hate it when she’s right.”

The day’s highlight, however, was having a bed, a beer, and a homemade meal waiting for us at our hospitable friend Susannah’s place. Once again we were able to receive a friend’s love and thoughtfulness, and we slept the better for it.

On Leaving Friends

When we moved out to Newberg, OR, four years ago, we knew the day would come, before long, when we would have to leave. We also knew how difficult it is to become a part of a community and then to uproot yourself from it. Nonetheless, we made a conscious, if wary, decision to invest ourselves in our new home. And we did. And then, after but a year, we moved to Portland, and, fools that we were, we did it again.

Our last week in Portland was busy but exhilarating: I had friends in from out of town; we had another friend’s birthday party; my work threw me a good-bye party; our Home Community prayed over us; Esther, Katie and I went to an art ‘event’; Katie P threw us a good-bye party; and a whole slew of people helped us load the truck before meeting us over at the Horse Brass for a last-night hurrah. The whole week, then, was thematized by people loving one another, and we went to bed Sunday night feeling full, like God was trying to prepare us to love a new set of people.

By the same token, there was a little of, “Why in the world would we ever leave all this!” About the best take I could make of it was something Blake mentioned to me—that our leaving, and the events leading up to it, gave us all a chance to reflect on and celebrate the relationships we had all formed here as a church and Home Community. Without breaches of this nature, one rarely formally marks one’s friendships, though they be among the most important relationships of one’s life.

So, even though I wanted to hug so many people into myself and take them along with us, I also felt blessed by the strength and depth of my friendships, all of which must now change – grow, hopefully – with this new geographic distance, but none of which will be regretted an instant.

Especially for Dot

I’ve determined I must have one of the least rewarding blogs to pay attention to: not only are the posts few and far between, they are all abstract and somewhat impersonal. I suppose I need to work on a theme, like my other blogging friends.

My friend asked of my “Stories” post whether there wasn’t room for the exuberant depiction of the mundane and extra-narrative:

‘I read "White Teeth" last week, and rather liked it. It was colorful and fast paced, informative while still building a tale of sorts. Shiny bits of words that keep me interested.

What can you say in regard to just portraying something? Lacking the plot to put a judgement or reaction on the actions, but instead putting words to something someone else has seen so they say "Ah! That is it."?
Like a painting of something that the viewer didn't realize that anybody else noticed. A greater awareness of existence?

There's a single sentence in a Jonathan Lethem book that describes exquisitely the motions of a squirrel running along a telephone line and down a pole, and I love it because it renders in words an action I had previously only experienced in reality. Nothing happens to the squirrel, it just exists as a bit of prop in a larger story line, but I still point it out to anyone I lend the book to.

What room is there for this sort of thing, in your opinion?’

A good question, a fine question, and a fair. This kind of thing, I think, belongs to the “pleasure of the part,” the little evocative bits that make the journey of reading pleasurable, in addition to and in conjunction with the “pleasure of the whole.” Dickens has some great descriptions of the dog, Diogenes, in Dombey and Son which sound just like your squirrel. One goes, “Yes, that’s it! I’ve seen just that thing!” and it is enjoyable – but it is not a story, just a part. I read a short that was just a dream narrative, with a brief introduction, “I had a dream the other night” and a brief conclusion, “That was my dream. It probably doesn’t mean anything.” Even if the dream had been interesting, it wasn’t a story – it wouldn’t even have made good poetry. Try writing down a dream for an unknown audience as opposed to telling it to a friend over coffee – you’ll see a big difference in its interest and power.

I just read Babel Tower by A.S. Byatt, a book that doesn’t spend much time with description of setting or characters’ appearances, but relies primarily on the interest of the action and its characters’ behaviors. For a British novel the prose is surprisingly terse, and only a few characters have compelling personalities, which works against the “pleasure of the part,” on my reckoning. The motive force of my reading actually lay in the ideas thematized by the action: license and liberty, sex and sensuality, morality and fiction, etc. Compare that to White Teeth, which sets up a vibrant, if somewhat disagreeable, world with skillful characterization and a powerful narratorial voice – but which tanks in the final pages and turns into a weak essay on conclusions. It would be interesting to cross Byatt’s mind with Smith’s pen.

Then I wrote a review of the book, and started to realize how little I generally care for reviewing, especially if I don't care for a piece. I find merit in it as a kind of exercise, and it gets my name and work out on the web (for what that's worth), but there are so many other things, writing and reading, and friendships, that feel more important, particularly when considering that I haven't committed to writing as a career, in which case reviews would figure as a kind of due-paying - not unlike this blog, I suppose.

Stories

What is it breaks my long silence? A blog is more difficult to keep up than one might assume. Unless one just journals on-line, one must discover topics of adequate interest and relevance. My tendency is to the philosophical and speculative, but this I sense puts people off as too cerebral and not personal enough. So.

But the philosophical sometimes (hopefully often) intersects with the personal, that is, if the philosophical is more than mere mind games. For instance, I have recently gotten involved with a poetry group and with a start-up literary review. In both cases I’ve been asked to review poems and stories by various people, some friends, some strangers, and to comment on them. This has required me to more adequately articulate my aesthetic principles and to try to expand my tastes to accommodate modern productions. I can’t say I’ve gotten as far with the latter as with the former.

I’ve confused some people by saying that we are still, popularly, in an essentially romantic age of literature. What I mean is that we still view most poetry as being the expression of personal experience in broken lines – perhaps with some rhythm or rhyme, but probably not. Novels we expect to be about individuals learning about life and having some kind of revelation, or at least learning to “follow their hearts.” Trust me: that’s romantic. There are good and bad aspects to this. The bad is that it frequently expresses itself as effusion of emotion without any discipline and craft, or, in other words, and ironically, as cliché. The good is that it values intimacy and relationship, however understood.

Reading some of the stories people write, I have discovered that many of them aren’t actually stories. That is, a story has a beginning, a middle and an end, which many of these lack. Even your ‘po-mo’ films like Pulp Fiction and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, for all their temporal tricks, still fall together into a narrative whole. This is the second thing I look for: a thematic and narrative whole, and a pleasurable one at that. The best way to get that often involves writing pleasurable parts, but in such a way as they essentially interrelate. Someone put it once that, if there’s a gun in the beginning, it had better go off by the end. The Victorians were pretty good at this, especially Dickens, who tried his durndlest to bring everything and everyone all together in a stunning ending – which, frankly, can be a little too much, even granted his theatrical style. But Dickens is a good example of someone who makes the trip as enjoyable as the destination. His technique is the use of a strong, ironic narratorial voice and the creation of exaggerated characters.

But some of the stuff I’ve seen lately doesn’t hardly have characters. Rather we get disembodied, unnamed voices reflecting in highly allegorized language on largely emotional experience, with little reference to one’s being-in-the-world. A friend and I were once comparing stories, and we discovered that, while she gave her characters bodies, they often lacked names, whereas my characters were often named in the first line or first words. Huh.

If a story is art, and if art has any truth, it must locate its truth in a way essential to its nature. Stories are words describing people doing things (basically). Their truth then must be a part of the people and their actions. The words are the medium, and usually the story suffers if the words try too much to speak the story’s “moral” explicitly. The story’s moral exists in the story, not in the words – just as a painting’s exists in the picture.

That’s why I don’t like a lot of modern novelry; it wears an agenda on its sleeve – or in its conclusion (see John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany, or Zadie Smith’s White Teeth). I have an agenda, too, but that’s why I have a blog (which so far has argued for the slightness of any agenda). When I write a story I hope it first engages the reader’s imagination and then her intellect and moral self. But then, I believe I’m more than a mere self, and more than a merely political self, with which provocatively ambiguous observation I will conclude my moralizing.

Proceedings of the Belmont Aristotelians - 03/09/2005

So I had a continuation post planned, but I’ve decided to reorient things for the sake of the lay reader. Suffice to say that Plato’s ethics are grounded in a universal Good. Aristotle doesn’t require a universal; indeed, he suggests it wouldn’t be helpful anyway. Ethics, or character, is about the activities of the rational human soul that aim at well-living and express the human virtue. Activities expressing virtue are crafts like shoemaking, pottery or generalship, but they come from the specifically human capacity to reason and express a virtue peculiar to humans.

As an activity, the good life is only minimally dependent on outside factors like the stock market, natural disasters, and the malicious actions of others. The completely happy life, however, will probably require good outside things more than bad. The point is that we have power to discover and practice virtue; we do not require college degrees because virtue is an expression of our essential natures as human beings. Aristotle’s ethics are therefore very democratic because the “system requirements” for a full, good human life are few and generally present in most people.

The trick is they have to be practiced. Just as the cobbler must make many shoes before he can consistently make good shoes, humans must perform many courageous or just actions before they can consistently act courageously or justly.

I recently had an opportunity to act justly or unjustly with a person I do not even know. I had submitted a review of a book to a website run by a friend of mine and one of his friends. His friend objected to much of the tone of the piece and because he felt it assumed a certain worldview which he felt was inappropriate to the nature of the site. A variety of options presented themselves to me. I could accept the criticism and change the piece to suit his preferences as editor. I could obstinently refuse and accuse him of restricting my freedom as a writer. I could simply withdraw the piece.

I took about a week to settle my emotions, then reread the piece, and decided that I in fact disagreed with the editor’s objections – not that they were inappropriate objections, but that they didn’t apply to my piece. The hard part was writing the e-mail that argued against those objections while still trying to respect the objector, as is his dessert. This, I suppose, would be an ensemple of humility, generosity and maybe even a little courage. The point is not so much that I’m a virtuous person (though I hope I am) but that situations calling for virtuous behavior often appear in the mundane day-to-day events of our lives. As Jacob reflected this evening, some of us may be more inclined naturally to such and such virtues, while finding others difficult, and some of us will be just the reverse, but if virtues are crafts then we can all learn them – but we must do them.

Proceedings of the Belmont Aristotelians - 03/02/05

Aristotle says that humans are political animals. Plato seems to assume the same. Even today, we still struggle with the relation of the individual to the group. How should my “private” self relate to my “public” self?

Jonathan, one of our “founding” members, having read my last Proceedings post, rightly objected that Plato’s imaginary city in the Republic was created, in Socrates’s terms, “playfully,” and on analogy with the human soul, and it is not clear Plato thought the specific arrangement of the rational, spirited and instinctual parts of the soul could really be extended to the city. That is, it's basically about the "private" self. Socrates is often ironic in the text, and many developments of the city must have struck even the Greeks as absurd. On the other hand, to the Greek mind the individual’s identity existed meaningfully only as a part of the state, that is, as part of the group, defined constitutionally according to that group’s values. So the Greek character is always and necessarily considered with reference to the group, and not merely within the individual. But, as our visitor, Bobby, pointed out this week, for the Greeks, character was also a kind of absolute ideal to live up to and participate in. Not a set of rules, but also not a mere personal, or even social, decision.

The Republic can be read as a kind of philosophical justification and exploration for character, broken down into its component parts of justice, moderation, courage and wisdom. The people involved in the dialogue assume these are desirable traits, but want to establish their intrinsic desirability, and not just their usefulness for obtaining other goods.

To draw this all together, then, we might say that if Plato considers democracy the third stage of decay of the ideal city, he does so rhetorically and only on terms of the analogy between the city and the human soul. For a city of people with good characters, we would hope, would be a healthy city no matter what its constitution. However, if you read Plato it is difficult to really get away from his references to actual democracies and their faults. I, too, resist his priority of the aristocratic state over the democratic. If this is the case, it must be because I, we, do not believe in this same absolute character that the good man will find – or we do not believe humans fundamentally good. If there is a good, we should not object to good men and women leading our society. If there is no good, we are left to defending our own desires and wishes, but then we cannot demand of society that it protect those desires without showing how such and such will protect everyone’s desires – and this is the beginning of the modern state. (To Be Continued...)

It happens in community

Last night two worlds intersected. In one world I am a “leader” on a team of leaders for our church Home Community (see the Imago Dei link). In the other world I am a member of a philosophy discussion group. Both groups talk about similar subjects, but in different ways. When I knew my friend Walter from the Belmont Aristotelians was coming to my Home Community, there was at first some small anxiety. I like Walter; I like my Home Community. I wanted the two worlds to like one another.

Now this is a normal thought to have – who wouldn’t be nervous of the success of such a meeting, if those worlds really are so important? But in the event – my anxiety quickly dispelled! By the end of the night I realize that in fact I implicitly trusted, and rightly, in the integrity, openness and friendliness of both Walter and my Home Community. And both he and they are independent enough that these worlds could meet without any great “connecting” efforts on my part.

It was fantastic! I felt completely at ease, and it made me love all my friends more, for it meant they were true friends, persons in their own right (of course they are!) with something to give and a desire to give it. It meant I could be a friend and a person and not just an “emcee.”

My friends, thank you!

Justification, iParody, Proceedings of the Belmont Aristotelians

Check out my friend's site here for something like the best justification I can agree with for why someone would blog at all. Still, I keep the title, because it still must be true to some extent that, without knowing who my audience is, or even that I have one, writing to "the web" becomes somewhat comic. If I write, it is at some level in hopes that I may be, if nothing else, incidentally wise, like one of Shakespeare's fools.

Last night was the fourth or fifth meeting of the Belmont Aristotelians (I just made that title up; we don't really call ourselves anything, but everyone in Portland who calls themselves anything makes reference to a street or landmark or mountain, it seems), a group of five or six guys who are reading Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. Last year three of us read Plato's Republic and had many fine late-night discussions about the nature of justice, the soul, and the political order. Aristotle is taking up a similar subject in his Ethics, but explicitly disagreeing with Plato.

The basic questions for ethics are, of course, (a) 'why be good?' and (b) 'what is the good?' Even today these questions are not definitively answered, and they merit consideration by anyone who makes claims to thoughtfulness. Briefly, Plato believes justice ('being good') is good for its own sake and for the sake of its benefits as well. It is intrinsically good because it requires the most ordered state of the soul, such that our reason, spirit, and drives are all related to one another to promote the most health to the soul. It is extrinsically good because it promotes a just order of society analogous to the order of the soul, so that all the members have their roles and responsibilities.

One consequence of this that bothers people is that it means society's most wise and moral members are granted the most power, while the masses have comparatively little. Plato is explicitly antidemocratic because democracy illogically (if implicitly) assumes that the majority opinion will be just, good and true, i.e. the right one. Rather, since reason is our human tool for discerning the good and right, political power ought to be given to those most capable of using reason.

This may rub you the wrong way, but I would challenge the thoughtful reader (I hope, if I have only one reader, s/he is a thoughtful reader) to consider: while the majority will always vote according to its perception of its best interest, where is the logical necessity that the majority's perception of its best interest will in fact be in its best interest? Plato believed the wise could perceive what was true and real and share it with the city. In our secular age, when we do not believe in any transcendent truth, must we then believe in the majority?

Discomfort is not Persecution

Last week a man named Celestine spoke at our church. He comes from Rwanda and spends half his year living in Dallas while he studies for his ministry degree. Here is a man who has been arrested and beaten for talking about his faith – just like an apostle. Here is a man who has been saved from death in a Rwandan torture-chamber because a man in Dallas woke up at three in the morning and prayed for him the precise amount of time he was being tortured.

It’s very humbling to hear a man such as that speak. For one, I cannot comprehend torture, cannot understand that my body could be used against me by another’s malice. For another, I cannot comprehend such faith, cannot understand what if feels like to suffer in the flesh for faith. I tremble at the thought of being awoken in the middle of the night by God’s voice – not because I fear God, but because I fear that I would prefer sleep to obedience. What do we, what do I, know of suffering?

C.S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain suggests that Christianity created the problem of pain in the way we understand it. It was Christ’s assurance that the world was supposed to be a loving and peaceful place that made it possible for us to challenge God as to why it isn’t. Job challenged God, sure, but because he, Job, was a righteous man, and therefore had done all within his power under the Law to earn God’s mercy. We who spurn authority in any shape cannot make such a challenge on the grounds of our own merit.

Somewhere along the line we have assented to the suggestion that if God’s world doesn’t look like him, He doesn’t exist – or at least we don’t need him. Though one sacrifice has sufficed for all for all time, we have raised the idol of our god, Reason, and sacrificed our souls and our imaginations to it.

But this has all been said before (read Dostoevsky, Lewis, Chesterton, etc.). Reason, of course, has limited resources within itself to offer the soul, and so the soul atrophies, even as the self discovers an exalted idea of itself. So when I meet with friends in a Bible study, we’ve all learned to speak about ‘sin’ and ‘struggles’ as problems belonging to the understanding alone, requiring a ‘right way of thinking,’ or a more powerful will. But lately I think we need rather more powerful prayers – or more earnest. We need to repent that we obsess about ourselves when we think about faith, and do not think of others and reach out to them in love and faith alike.

When I say such things, you cannot truly understand me if you merely ‘agree’ with me, nay, not even if you generously explain my views to another. Even I myself cannot be said to understand myself on such things unless it dramatically affects my prayer life, which is to say, the essence of my faith.

What does society owe mothers?

While I'm on a Wendell Berry kick, here's a link to a Newsweek article about harried mothers. No doubt there are many pressures, personal, familial and social, for mothers to overdo things. No doubt the loss of community supports makes it more difficult yet. This article links the current generation of mothers' malaise to being taught an economic model of motherhood in during the "Reagan Revolution" that is based on competition and intrepid individual achievement. It also goes on to say that "[i]nstead of blaming society, moms today tend to blame themselves."

Well, I may be a grumpy guy, but I'm not about to put myself out there by suggesting mothers should blame themselves. But this article raises questions about the proper way of helping mothers in society. The author lists five particular solutions, all of which are public policy-level. What worries me about only focusing on the public sphere is that one must then assume that the current relation of individual to society is the appropriate or inevitable one, that though, as the author admits, "life happens," and it is hard, the individual nonetheless should have as many policy-supports to allow her to choose the life she desires.

Berry bemoans the fact that men have been forced to work away from the home, and would certainly disapprove of the idea of developing child care so women can follow them "freely." If I could get a little philosophical, how free can one be when pursuing the desires of the self when those desires have already been constructed by an external, inhumane system of power (I assume that capitalism, left to its own devices, without intentional human intervention, will be inhumane). Aristotle says we are social beings by nature, and so whatever happiness is, it will include within it the network of our social relations - that is, it will not be an individualistic attainment. But Aristotle never met Rush Limbaugh or "W"...or Hobbes or Machievelli for that matter.

All journeys...

must begin somewhere,
must end somewhere,
and may be long or short.

I have a feeling this one will be short, b/c it is not in my nature to speak my mind to an unknown audience. But perhaps I will find an audience knowable and worthy to be known. Mostly I expect to link to interesting articles and sites.

This first post links to an article relevant to Wendell Berry's calls for economic secession, for reinvesting ourselves and our work in our communities to develop local economies capable of caring for the land. You can find a review of Berry's Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community at The Society for Reflective Consumption of Media page.