Tuesday, September 9, 2008

In Vogue


Below is a link to an interesting and disturbing New York Times article regarding a story and photo shoot in the most recent Vogue magazine. Generally I'm not interested in fashion, though I have been known to watch Project Runway with my wife (she makes me watch it, really). I believe it does fall under the rubrick of the arts in that it is a creative constructive endeavor. I'm not looking here to define the arts, just to recognize that fashion is a far flung planet in its solar system. At any rate you should probalby read the article before you read any further so you can be conversant with what will follow...



Done? Did the article strike YOU as disturbing. I'm interested in hearing what different people took from the article. I'm intrigued that the director of Vogue India, which I wouldn't have imagined existed not because of any economic status in India, but because Vogue seems to me to be inherently a Western Institution, suggests that those critical of the shoot should "lighten up" given fashion is never meant to be something serious. I can understand his perspective, but speaking for me I'm not troubled by the fashion itself, but by the uncritical and exploitive juxtoposition of such opulence with such abject poverty. It almost seems a bit like a little fashionista insider's joke. By not even identifying those who are modeling these items one almost gets the sense that they might as well be manequins on which these items are placed. In fact since the items are identified and the models are not there is the implicit notion that these items are portrayed as of greater value than the ones wearing them.


On the plus side the photography is well done and reveals a beauty in the models, which I believe was not necessarily the intention of it creators. Oddly their humanity is affirmed in spite of the apparent objectification and dehumanization inherent to the shoot. In the process it almost feels like the dehumanization laid upon these models by these juxtopositions is actually reflected back on to Vogue and the authors of the piece. Perhaps that's just me.


At any rate my question in this very short blurb is , quoting the peasant from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a major source of deep thinking, whether there is a violence to humanity that is inherent in our system of advertising, and perhaps even inherent to our economics? I'm not going to attempt to answer that question here because that's a doozy. But I think this gives a unique voice to that question with a clarity that perhaps should be more common.
The photo above comes from the New York Times article.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Truth and Consequences


This blog does not deal directly with politics. It is at its core interested in theological questions found below the title. However there are times where the two overlap and this just happens to be one of those times. A number of weeks ago Evangelical leader/psychologist James Dobson devoted his daily radio program to critique a portion of Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s theological statements made over the course of his campaign, focusing largely on a speech given a bit over a year ago. I’m not interested here in exploring the content of either that criticism or of Mr. Obama’s statements directly, or the politics of either Mr. Dobson or Mr. Obama. I am interested in the theology that might motivate a person to devote a good bit of time and energy developing and crafting a theological critique of a political figure for the purpose of warning those within their theological tradition, and the public at large of the grave political dangers posed by this person’s theology. Granted this is entirely speculation. In reality this will be a jumping off point to think about how we in the Christian community, probably more specifically the Evangelical Protestant community, think about the notion of truth.

Here is the part of the blog where I speculate wildly about Mr. Dobson’s motivations for his criticism. In reality these are only hunches from a member (me) of Mr. Dobson’s theological community who is basing his judgments largely on his intuition, experiences, observations and reason. Let me start by saying that my interest was piqued regarding this dust-up because it was unprovoked by any immediate precipitating episode. Generally speaking this type of rhetoric seems to me to be reserved for urgent incidents of great offense, i.e. a Supreme Court decision, the boycott of a company whose actions have caused an offense, or the actions of a celebrity that cause community outrage etc… To my estimation this lack of impetus indicates that this criticism was deliberate, considered, and earnest. It seems Mr. Dobson made the determined decision to take on Mr. Obama’s theological statements; that this was not done on a whim but was something he took time to craft, consider and communicate, and that it was an accurate representation of beliefs passionately held by Mr. Dobson, convictions I believe he holds as supremely important. Both Mr. Obama’s theological statements and Mr. Dobson’s critical statements are widely available on the internet and given the content of the statements are not my scope of interest I won’t be quoting them here. I will be citing the gist of Mr. Dobson’s complaint as fairly as I can, and offering a few observations about his statements and a certain theology of truth I believe them to be emblematic of, that is that truth, particularly, but not necessarily limited to Biblical truth, lives entirely in the realm of the propositional.

Let me say first that I cut my theological teeth on this notion, and still believe it has some merits in understanding great portions of the Biblical narrative. Especially influential to my understanding in this arena was Francis Schaeffer who I believe is one of the most informed, eloquent and logical voices to lay out the understanding of Biblical truth as propositional truth within the Evangelical world. This understanding draws on a notion that can be traced back to ancient Greek philosophy that suggests that what is true is what corresponds to reality. Truth then is solid, fixed and unchanging, and only that which correctly refers to that solid, fixed unchanging reality is true. I would suggest this is the near consensus understanding of truth among Evangelicals, though it is a large field of ongoing debate within philosophical circles. Any reference to this truth then must be done in the form of propositions, for example, God is good, in order to for it to be understood, or true.

This emphasis on the proposition as almost the sole communicator of truth I would suggest begins to congeal around the ideas of the Enlightenment and Rationalism in the 18th century. There grew a notion that in order for an idea to be true it had to be reasonable, and logical, and must be able to be stated in those terms. Thus truth then must be able to be stated in a reasonable, logical form, and reduced to fit into a series of descriptive sentences. There are definite merits to this construct of describing truth. If a particular proposition can be shown to be unreasonable and illogical one can set it aside, relatively confident that it hasn’t passed the scrutiny test that truth should overcome if it corresponds to reality. Inherent here is the assumption that reality is by its nature rational and logical as the creation of a rational and logical God. This becomes a means by which truth is made manageable, in essence boiling it down in an effort to know through reason what is true and what is false. This of course isn’t unique to the thinkers of the enlightenment, but I would suggest that with them this understanding became the hub around which truth became organized. If truth didn’t pass muster with human reason and logic it could not be truth.

Fast forward to the present context, and I believe Evangelicals have adopted much of this framework for truth into their belief systems, perhaps uncritically, and often unknowingly in that often this is taught in Sunday Schools and from pulpits as Biblical thinking. God is a God of order and reason, the universe is set up to follow the laws of nature and of God, and because of this, through reason we can come to know much about God, hence the Psalmist writes, “The heavens declare the glory of God and Earth proclaims God’s handiwork.” This is the understanding of the world that gave birth to the scientific revolution according to Schaeffer. Many don’t understand that this framework is a synthesis of the bible’s truth claims with the Enlightenment’s definition and understanding of truth. I believe this is the foundation of truth from which Dobson speaks when he criticizes Obama’s theological statements. I do not assume to speak for Dobson on this, but I suspect, based on the theological teachings that come directly from him, particularly on his radio show, and the teaching that is generated by the organization he is responsible for, Focus on the Family, that he would generally agree with a good portion of the understanding of truth laid out above.

With this general framework of truth established, I think it’s important to glance at a few of the particular truths Dobson wants to defend, not for the purpose of endorsing, or criticizing them, but in order to further examine the manner in which they are defended as a means to provide further incite into some ways this understanding of propositional truth can manifest itself in to the church and the world. This list is by no means exhaustive, but will draw on a few concepts that illustrate this framework in action. First, Dobson would suggest the Bible is the absolutely true, Holy Spirit inspired word of God, and so is supreme in its authority in not only the Christian’s life, but in everyone’s lives because it is God’s directed communication to all of humanity. Second, he would suggest humanity is separated from God collectively and individually because of sin, and cannot be reconciled by their own doing given they were the ones that initiated the separation. Third, the second person of the Trinity came to Earth to become Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ in order to restore that broken relationship with God through his own perfect life, and sacrificial death, taking in his body the punishment for the sins of all who would place their faith in that action, and rising from the dead as evidence of its accomplishment.

Any observer can see that these are matters of epic, even eternal importance. Because of this Dobson’s passion and sense of urgency are understandable. If people are not reconciled to God here within this framework they will be forever separated from God after this life is over. Dobson’s aggressive criticism of Obama needs to be put within this framework of someone convinced of the truth, who believes that other’s understanding of the truth of which he is convinced will determine their eternity. Again I am not examining these beliefs themselves, much of which incidentally I hold as true, but the manner in which they are communicated, reduced to propositions in which one must place ones faith. Within this framework, if a person doesn’t assent intellectually to the inspiration of scripture, the absolute sinfulness of humanity, and the substitutionary atonement by Jesus, believing first and foremost that they are true, one cannot be a Christian and consequently remains separated from God. Again, I don’t presume to speak for Dobson, though I suspect there isn’t much with which he would disagree with the framework laid out above, and I don’t intend to criticize him as an individual, or “call him out”, rather I’m intending to use his criticism to illuminate a problem. I would suggest the framework in which these beliefs are placed create unintentional problems for those who embrace it which ripple out into their speech, actions and organizations.

The first issue that arises with this understanding of truth is that it tends to absolutize and thus confuses the individual’s understanding of truth with the truth itself. In other words truth becomes subjugated to reason and logic, and the doctrine obtained through reason becomes the only valid interpretation of scripture. When this happens reason has been made the hub around which truth must orbit, thus making truth a satellite of reason. If one must assent that a particular statement, proposition or notion is true before one places one’s faith in that statement, proposition or notion, then reason has been placed before faith, both chronologically, and necessarily.

It must be granted here that reason is a necessary relative of faith, and that ideally reason must at some point enter into the decisions made to place trust or faith in something or someone, however in this construct reason has been made necessary, excluding any faith decisions made without an intellectual surrender to propositional facts. This is a faith based on the correct facts and information; therefore if the facts and information are distorted, rearranged, or muddied one can never be sure if one is placing ones faith in the correct propositions. This is a faith that is dependent upon human reason which if it places faith in an incorrect proposition concerning God has doomed itself to be separated from God because it is a misplaced faith. With knowledge placed necessarily and chronologically before faith, any malicious person can destroy any possibility of a true faith simply by distorting, and that only slightly, the facts upon which that knowledge is based. This leads to such an emphasis on factual correctness that faith ends up more about factuality than about truth. Defending the faith becomes simply a rallying around those facts upon which the faith is based.

I believe this is why Dobson in his radio show concerning Obama is so concerned that he is “intentionally distorting scripture”. Because a valid faith in this framework is based on the proper proposition, or information, Dobson must undercut the incorrect information and inform people of the correct information, lest they be led into placing their faiths in invalid propositions. You can almost feel the weight of responsibility he feels to correct the bad information in the public arena as one who has access to both the correct information and the public airwaves. This leads to a second issue with this understanding: that it translates into at best a perceived proud, condescending attitude, if not actually reflecting one.

There is a sense in which this framework of knowledge, which depends on faith in accurate propositions, creates an inequitable relationship between the holder of the true knowledge and those who lack that knowledge, including those who profess a Christian faith. In other words truth becomes a commodity that ideally must be given away, but is still something its holder owns and others need. Thus it creates a qualitative separation between the two groups, and creates a gulf between “us” and “them”, which can be seen in much of Dobson’s basic cultural assumptions and rhetoric.

The assumption is the “us” who have the knowledge are either good because of it or the faith it produces, or are on the side of good because of it, and those who don’t possess this true knowledge are by default inherently bad, or on the side of evil or at least immorality. This manifests itself in Dobson’s attempt to correct Obama’s bad information, attempting to replace his “false” propositions with “true” propositions. Placed within a rhetorical and polemic framework of concern that people not be deceived this tends to come across as an over confident, possibly self important religious figure throwing information scattershot to and at what he apparently believes to be an untrained, uninformed audience who need this information in order to construct the correct propositions necessary to arrange their cloth of faith. The mode the argument takes comes across as both holier and smarter than thou, and seems to indicate a low estimation of the audience’s ability to weigh these statements themselves, not to mention the ability of the Holy Spirit to work in their lives. Simply put there exists at least an apparent lack of humility and possible evidence for the Proverb that knowledge puffs up.

There are other issues that could be addressed, but this will suffice for this arena (this is a blog, not a book). Speaking positively, there are a few points I believe it’s important to note in attempting to frame an alternative to what is in essence a supernatural rationalism. First, according to Hebrews, faith is, “being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” (NIV). There’s a sense here in which faith is a source of knowledge. In other words there are certain things one can only know through faith, hence the author of Hebrews emphasis on surety and certainty. Through faith in Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit one gains access into the sphere of truth that exists in God, the Three-in-One. This is knowledge unavailable to those who have yet to kneel before the crucified and resurrected One and is a knowledge graced through the Holy Spirit. I don’t doubt that Dobson would acknowledge these suggestions; however the framework of knowledge that has been discussed at least in action seems to undermine this understanding of knowledge birthed by faith.

If sure knowledge of the proper proposition comes necessarily before faith, then where is there room for the growth of knowledge? Granted there is a difference between factual knowledge and experienced knowledge, which is part of the point. There are large portions of the active relationship with a living God that can’t be captured in a proposition, and thus the original propositions one believed when one came to the faith grow and possibly even change over time. If one comes to grow in a belief which changes over time, does the person lose a valid faith in valid propositions, or was the original faith invalid because it was placed in an invalid proposition?

The second point I would like to note has already been mentioned in the first point, and that is that because this framework of knowledge attempts to “boil down” truth to its essence, making it manageable and understandable it often actually distorts that truth. The one reducing it may be able capture its essence, but you lose its context and proportions. You’re able to manage the truth, deciding what is true and what isn’t, but are unable to manage its depth and breadth. What is worse is that often these constructed propositions are confused with the truth itself. Instead of understanding that they are human constructs toward understanding a fuller truth, windows toward that end, we treat them as the truth itself, and limit ourselves to the playpen of the propositional, when the truth bound up in the Being of God lives and breathes in the wide world around us outside of what we've built to contain that truth. To quote a old T-Shirt of mine (because everyone knows the best theology comes from a good T-Shirt), “God is bigger than your box”. I would suggest the same can be said of truth.

This is a short and limited critique, and I’m sure riddled with holes in logic. The largest point here is that truth, both in and of itself, and our management of it is more than our expressions of it, and greater than our understanding of it. When we say that, “God is good”, or “God is love” or “Jesus died for your sins”, we are speaking the truth, however none of those propositions captures the whole truth behind the statement. Paraphrasing Elizabeth Johnson, theology, and for our purposes propositional truth, is simply a finger pointing to God.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Blessed With Work


Yes, the unthinkable has occurred, I am a father. I’m close to 6 weeks into this new fatherhood thing and I’ll tell you, it’s not for the feint of heart. Not that it’s bad mind you, but it is a lot of work caring for someone who can do almost absolutely nothing for himself. But before I explore my experience of fatherhood here to fore, let me share Erika’s and my experience getting to this place starting Friday May 16, Erika’s last scheduled say at work before her maternity leave.

Bump, the name given to Orion by Erika’s mom before he was born because we wouldn’t reveal his name to anyone, was due Tuesday, May 20th, the day arbitrarily assigned by the Dr. based on the size of the baby in utero and the conception date estimation at the time of the early exams. This of course is not a schedule, and we were prepared for the baby to be late given this was Erika’s first. Friday after we left work (we work together) we got some dinner and went to see Prince Caspian. We figured it was the last movie we’d be able to see in the theater for a while. We were right. The next day, Saturday, Erika began having erratic contractions during our yard sale, and into the afternoon. I was scheduled to go see Phil Keaggy in concert in Joppa MD, and Erika’s parents and some friends of the family were coming over to play games at our place. I was planning on putting my concert plans on hold, but her contractions stopped, and she said I should go. So I went, but called every hour or so to see how she was doing. I got back around midnight and found her parents in our living room with her timing her contractions, which were about 10 to 15 minutes apart. We decided to try to sleep (as if she could sleep through contractions), and her parents stayed on our sleeper sofa. When the contractions got to about 5 minutes apart at around 6 in the morning we decided to call Erika’s doula and head to the hospital. We got there around 7, were escorted to our room, and began dealing in earnest with Erika’s contractions.

The hospital was amazing. I’m inserting heaps of praise here for the nurses and doctors at Calvert Memorial Hospital (although I could never figure out what the hospital was in memorial of, unless it was Lord Baltimore himself, but I digress). Heaps of praise should also be piled upon Cheryl, Erika’s doula who was an amazing coach for Erika. Erika wanted to try to have the baby all natural, no drugs or epidurals. She also wanted to be ambulatory while in labor, which means being free for long periods of time from the tethers of the fetal baby monitor. Because they baby was doing well, they allowed that freedom, tethering her only for brief stints every couple of hours. After a roller coaster ride of ups and downs in the delivery room the baby was birthed into the world at 4:43 PM on May 18th. Cheryl later commented that the time of birth made it seem like a normal day at the office. Erika’s mom and dad were in the room, and her mom actually cut the cord, because I couldn’t bring myself to do it. My Dad and his girlfriend, and my Mom and Step Dad were also in the hospital and we all celebrated by getting Italian food and eating it in the delivery room afterward, which in retrospect seems kind of creepy and weird, but it didn’t at the time, and neither Erika nor I had eaten all day and were famished. We settled down that night and had the best night of sleep that I suspect we’ll experience for the next couple of years.

That brings us to today, almost weeks into young Orion’s life, and close to 6 weeks into our endeavor into parenthood. It has been different from what I thought it would be. I was expecting something as trying as the Mali trip, but long term. I was expecting to have to confront my selfishness, impatience, and inflexibility, and I have had to confront them from time to time, but I’ve been surprised that my sense of dread was unjustified. After the initial shock of being responsible for this utterly defenseless child who can’t even control his own limbs wore off, I found myself enjoying him, and enjoying the role of watching him so Erika can get a extra 20 minutes of sleep, or reading to him, though he can’t understand or see the pictures, or providing him with a pacifier to disperse all of that sucking energy, or even changing diapers (though enjoy probably isn’t the right word for that). I could probably think of some great theological insights in all of this, but I think I’ll just leave the theological insight at that, the joy of fatherhood.

There’s a great line in the movie “Return to Me”, probably one of the sappiest chick flick movies ever created, but as unlikely as the story is, it is a movie grounded in a nice reality (largely influenced I think by the Catholicism of Bonnie Hunt, its writer/director, but I digress). The grandfather of our ingĂ©nue in the story is cleaning up at the restaurant he owns when the granddaughter offers to help. He refuses her help and tells her, “I’ve been blessed with work”. I kind of feel that way. Orion adds a lot of work into our lives, especially Erika’s at this point, but it’s a work I don’t seem to mind as much. To quote Erika, it is “pain with a purpose”. And so far, and I imagine it will be this way down the road, it’s been very much worth it.

Saturday, May 31, 2008

The Face of the Earth

This will serve as a confirmation that I haven't fallen off the face of the Earth. I will be posting some reflections on here soon about becoming a father, which happened 5/18/08 when Orion Connor Fallin was born, which of course has taken up a lot of time and mental capacity. At any rate that will follow soon, and no I haven't abandoned my blog. Thanks for anyone's patience who reads any of these. I appreciate your interest. Stick with me and more will flow out soon.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Downside Upside Down


Most of what I’m posting here at this point has some relation to school, largely because it consumes so much of my thought and time. So what follows is another exercise in my speaking class. We were asked to give a 5 minute sermon from one of 5 passages of scripture. I chose Genesis 32 and 33, and focused squarely on Jacob’s wrestling with the angel/God, and was struck by something new, which is always nice.

In the telling of the story in Genesis Jacob leaves Haran and his Father-In-Law Laban to return to the land of his now deceased father Isaac, and his estranged brother Esau who he had cheated out of their father’s blessing some 15 to 20 years earlier. As he approaches from the east he seems to realize he has no place in this new/old land, and that he and his caravan of livestock, servants, and family, including at least 12 children with four different women were vulnerable, exposed and at his brother’s mercy. He is unsure of how he will be received by his brother, and when he learns that his brother is coming to meet him with a large, and by inference, well armed group of men he fears the worst. He fears the slaughter of his servants, and his family, and above all seems to fear his own death. In a move to dim what he perceives is his brother’s anger he sends a group of servants ahead with a portion of his flock as a gift to Esau from “your servant Jacob”. He then sends his family ahead, the two servants with whom he has children, Bilhah and Zilphah, then Leah, and her children, finally his beloved Rachael, and her son Joseph. He watches them ford the River Jabbok, and fade into the distance, and he is left there alone, dreading the dawn of the next day. The only thing separating Jacob now from his trouble is the River Jabbok.

That evening as he was alone with his thoughts, perhaps crying out to God for the safety of his family, he is blindsided by the force of something knocking him to the ground. This wasn’t an animal, and it was clear from the arms wrapped around him that this wasn’t Esau. This was a stranger attacking him; someone Jacob neither recognized nor knew. They fought, and wrestled for hours, in and out of the river, sweaty, muddy, and panting. Sometimes they found themselves just holding each other, waiting for the other to make the next move. That’s when it happens. This stranger comes down on Jacob’s hip with a force that made Jacob believe he could have done it at any time. Jacob has a new problem now; he is fighting for his life, clinging to this stranger. As morning approaches the stranger demands that Jacob let him go, but Jacob, who is in no position to make demands, demands that this man bless him. Perhaps Jacob was afraid that this man would finish him off if he let him go, or perhaps this is the same Jacob that seemed to want everyone’s blessing. In this exchange however, Jacob is given a new name, Israel, and the man’s blessing before he disappears into the morning. And Jacob is left again alone, now broken, and still in trouble.

I believe this can be classified as very strange encounter, one for which I imagine most of us have no template. It is however an encounter through which Jacob gained a strange knowledge of God. It was a knowledge that isn’t available through study or books. It isn’t available through story, or family. It is only available through struggle. Jacob wrestled, grappled, and struggled with this man, who we are left to assume from the text, is the Divine taking on human form, and is simultaneously blessed and injured. If Jacob had not encountered this man it is plausible to suggest he would not have been injured in this way, but neither would he have been blessed. It seems that neither would have been experienced apart from the other, or apart from this struggle and violence.

O’Connor in her collection of essays and speeches Mystery and Manners speaking of the characters in her stories suggests, “I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace. Their heads are so hard that almost nothing else will do the work. This idea, that reality is something to which we must be returned at considerable cost… is one that is implicit in the Christian view of the world.” This reality to which a character, or person must be returned can be seen as the strange knowledge that Jacob came to through his struggle. He came to a clear view of the reality of the fierce, free God of mercy. This knowledge was gained through struggle, breaking and blessing. In the moment of his breaking, Jacob is stripped of any notion of self sufficiency or pride, and is left to cling to this man, dependant on the grace of his blessing to keep his life, realizing he was unable to secure that life himself. The blessing he finally received was received at a great cost to Jacob. In light of O’Connor’s notion that violence, suffering, and struggle sometimes prepares us for our moment of grace, it seems the price of that blessing may have been determined by the amount of pride and self sufficiency that had to be overcome in Jacob before he allowed himself to experience the safe arms of grace and mercy.

In Frederick Buechner’s book Son of Laughter, from which this sermon/blog liberally borrowed as I laid out the storyline above, he describes Jacob’s experience of the blessing.

“I do not remember the words of his blessing or even if there were words. I remember the blessing of his arms holding me and the blessing of his arms letting me go. I remember as blessing the black shape of him against the rose colored sky. I remember as blessing the one glimpse I had of his face. I was more terrible than the face of dark, or of pain, or of terror. It was the face of light. No words can tell of it. Silence cannot tell of it. Sometimes I cannot believe that I saw it and lived but that I only dreamed I saw it. Sometimes I believed I saw it and that I only dream I live.”

In the end Jacob’s experience of grace, and by extension perhaps at times our experience of grace, came across to him as violence. This was a violence not bound up in some Divine malevolence, or a Divine desire to either discipline or correct Jacob, rather it seems that Jacob experienced God’s attempt to overcome his independent, self sufficient, self important pride as violence because that is what pride inherently is, violent. It is a supplanting of God in favor of the self. It flips reality on its head attempting to place the created ontologically above the creator. Any attempt to correct this then will have to travel through that barrier of violent pride in order to find itself again on the side of dependant obedience and faith. Our trip to pride is experienced as violence by God, and God’s effort to correct that and flip reality right side up if you will may be experienced as violence by the one who is being returned to reality. This is why even in this violence suffered by Jacob, one can view God as gentle and merciful, applying only the pressure or force necessary to attempt to turn Jacob’s world right side up.

I have often heard people describe their experience of God as God tearing their world apart, or turning it upside down. From our perspective that’s exactly what’s happening, because from our perspective as those who are upside down in our world of pride and self sufficiency, the experience of having our world rearranged by or around God feels like being turned upside down, when in fact we’re being turned right side up. A few years ago I went to see Peter Gabriel in concert, it was wonderful, and as is his tendency, very theatrical. When he performed his song Downside Up he and his daughter who was singing backup literally were latched into the superstructure of the stage and performed a good portion of the song literally upside down. Of course if they stayed there long enough that upside down perspective would come to look normal and right side up. In reality as creatures of pride and hubris that is our perspective that God attempts to right through grace.

It is important to note in this construct of the violence of God’s grace, this isn’t God forcing humanity to accept grace, but is God attempting through grace to create circumstances in which a person can come to grace on grace’s terms, empty handed and full of need. When one believes one has sufficient reserves, and an inherent ability to navigate their troubles themselves, they don’t perceive their need of God, they don’t have a proper view of their upside down horizon. Sometimes in order for us to fall on the mercy and grace of God our horizon needs to be turned upside down so we see the world as it really is. Unfortunately we have the freedom, and the inclination to return to our upside down perspective, which God allows. Thus the struggle begins all over again, with God turning our world upside down again, and again out of love and in mercy, and by grace so that like Jacob we can participate in the blessings of God, even as simultaneously beautiful and terrible as they may appear.

The image above is taken from:
http://www.papabear.com/pgsum04favgraphics/milandowns.jpg

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Palm Sunday Belated

Here is a story I had to write, and subsequently tell/embody for a class. I kind of like the shape of it. It's very short, but I thought I'd share it:



So Jesus and his disciples were on their way to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. They had lived together, traveled together, eaten meals, told jokes, exorcized spirits together. They had seen the best and worst in each other, and had grown into a tight knit group of friends. After three years they were family. And now they were to celebrate Passover together in Jerusalem as a family.

Given Jesus’ growing notoriety, or notoriousness, depending on your perspective, the larger Jerusalem grew on the horizon, the larger the crowds were that were traveling with them. Evidently word of Jesus’ teaching, healing, and love for the fatherless, the widow, the lepers, tax collectors and really anyone who crossed his path had reached the ears of many because they came out to meet him with an expectation that felt to his disciples like electricity in the air.

Jesus had told two of his disciples to go ahead into a village on the outskirts of Jerusalem to find a colt that had been tied up, which no one had ever ridden, to untie it and bring it to him. He said if anyone asks you why you’re doing this, simply tell them The Lord needs it and will send it back shortly. When they returned with the colt they spread their cloaks on it. Jesus sat on the colt and as they came upon the outskirts of Jerusalem the crowds which had continued growing larger and larger through the past several villages began laying palms on the ground in front of the Colt singing, HOSANNA, BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD, BLESSED IS THE COMING KINGDOM OF OUR FATHER DAVID, HOSANNA IN THE HIGHEST.

In this spontaneous upwelling of community adoration the disciples began to believe that these crowds were seeing the Jesus they had lived with, the one Peter had confessed as the Messiah. They had great expectations for the week ahead, and Jesus seemed to embrace their expectations rebuking a group Pharisees who were livid because of the crowd’s open declaration, reserved for Kings of Israel, telling them if the crowds kept silent the stones themselves would cry out. This was an amazing time to be one so close to Jesus.

What the disciples didn’t see was that they hadn’t embraced Jesus’ expectations. To their shock and horror they would find it would be Jesus' expectations, and his adoration and obedience to the Father that would shape the coming week and indeed each of their lives in ways they weren’t presently able to conceive of or imagine.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

We Have Seen His Glory


“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1.14 NIV)

This verse has been rolling around in my head for a few months now as I consider the incarnation. The reflection that follows was born during my trip to Mali. The six of us who were part of the team took turns preparing daily devotions, and the seed of this reflection was the devotion I shared while we were there.

John’s introduction of Jesus in his Gospel as the Divine Logos is full of rich imagery and metaphor waiting to be mined by the of believers and theologians who would attempt to grapple with John’s words in the centuries that would follow. The notion of that Divine Logos not just taking on flesh, but becoming flesh and living with and among humanity has spawned hundreds of thousands of pages of thoughts, insights and reflections. So what follows here is nothing new, just some of my insights and reflections as I work through some of these ideas, and what they mean for my life, which may speak to where others are in their lives as well.

In reading this verse I’ve always tended to focus on the tangible, that is The Word, Jesus Christ, becoming flesh and living, full of humanity here in our beautiful mess. This is the incarnation, the Divine becoming flesh and living with us, speaking in and through flesh what had already been communicated through the prophets, which is the heart of the God who, “led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love”, and who, “lifted the yoke from their neck and bent down to feed them” (Hosea 11.4 NIV). This image of the transcendent, creative God of the universe choosing to be limited to the confines of physicality as a means of sharing God’s love for and esteem of humanity provokes and humbles me, and I believe opens a window into the very nature and character of God. It moves me past the first sentence of the verse to the second.

John goes on to say that in this movement of love from transcendence to immanence, from spirit to flesh, from “light” to “darkness” we have seen God’s glory. In my own life when I’ve thought of glory, I’ve tended to default to the image aroused in my head by the second verse of the Christmas carol, “Silent Night”:

Silent night, holy night!

Shepherds quake at the sight

Glories stream from heaven afar

Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia!


I picture light streaming from heaven to Earth, as if breaking through a cloudy day, shining a light into darkness. Assuming that Jesus wasn’t actually physically beaming light, glowing as it were like Moses coming down from Sinai while on Earth, I think we’ll have to assume that our beholding of God’s glory through the incarnation must mean something different. (Although the last verse of “Silent Night” does have the newborn Christ emitting “radiant beams” from his face, but we’ll chalk that up to artistic license).

I believe John may clarify the form of this glory later in his Gospel as he shares his account of Jesus’ prayers in the Garden of Gethsemene in chapter 17. Jesus begins by praying for the 12, and the approaching storm they would have to navigate. He then goes on to pray not only for them, but, “also for those who will believe in me through their message” (17.20). He prays for the unity among these believers, and their inclusion into the inner relations of the Godhead (a notion by itself deserving of hundreds of thousands of pages of reflection), linking the world’s recognition of the authenticity of Jesus’ actions, and authority of his teaching directly to this unity. He then drops a bomb that completely unravels my “Silent Night” notion of glory. Jesus prays, “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one” (17.22 NIV). He goes on to say, “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world” (17.24 NIV). John says that humanity has seen the glory of God embodied in Jesus’ humanity; he then shares Jesus’ statement that he has given those who have believed in him the glory the Father had given him. If we follow this, then “the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” is given to us as those who have trusted in Jesus as the Christ. It seems that this glory is part of the incarnation, and a part that we can and are intended to participate in. What is this glory then, if not streams of light shining from God?

Hans Urs Von Balthasar would contend that there is a connection between the notion of glory and beauty, although I’ve heard many mainline protestants and evangelicals make that connection as well. The most notable that I’m familiar with would be Karl Barth, and John Piper. Thinking in this vein the glory of God could be equated with the beauty or attractiveness of God. Moving quickly and loosely here, then, John can speak of seeing the glory or beauty of God among us because that beauty is wrapped up in the grace of the self giving love of God, embodied in that movement from heaven to earth, from transcendence to immanence, and from “light” to “darkness”. God was, is and will always be love, but that love was communicated at a new and unique depth in the incarnation, in the Divine’s participation in our finiteness. This is the form of glory or beauty at the intersection of the Divine and the human. This grace and love is inherently striking, drawing and transporting us, perhaps even involuntarily to God, overwhelmed by God’s attractiveness, and possibly not able to articulate why. I think there may be a corollary here between our experience of the attractiveness of God and our experience of exceptional earthly beauty. Some would even argue that there is no separation between the two. There are times that we’re overwhelmed by something in a painting, or in a song, or a movie, or even a sunset or a mountain. We see and are struck by what we’ve encountered and are filled with what I can only describe as joy. I believe that the grace and love of God work in a similar fashion, in that they overwhelm our senses, fill us with joy, and therefore create a desire for the object that is the source of that joy, namely God.

So then if one grants the notion that graceful, self giving love is the form of Divine glory and beauty, then there is a sense in which Jesus’ gift of glory to us is our participation in this form. In other words our participation in and emulation of that graceful, self giving love of God is us as believers sharing in the glory and beauty of God. As we imitate God’s actions in this manner, interacting with those around us, we recreate the attractiveness of God, and so participate in God’s glory. This participation then is also how the beauty of God becomes real in the lives of those around us. In the same way the love of God was embodied in Christ in the incarnation, it is embodied in us as we imitate the self giving love of God in our incarnation. In this understanding when a person imitates this love they take on the form of Divine glory, embody the attractiveness of God, and so become a conduit for the worship of God in that God is the only true source of this attractiveness and beauty, therefore the Divine, namely Christ, is at the heart of both the action of the one loving and the worship of the one recognizing the source of the action. Therefore when a person gracefully loves they witness to and argue through their action for the preeminent glory and beauty of God.

“We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” We see it not only in the life of Christ, but also when we imitate the graceful loving actions of our Saviour. As we emulate these actions, we too embody the attractiveness and beauty of God and participate in the glory given to Christ by the Father. As I attempt to continue to understand these relationships I stand in perpetual amazement, simultaneously filled with awe and joy as I stand witness to the beauty of the grace lavished by God through the love and mercy found in Jesus Christ.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Reflections on Mali


Disclaimer: What follows may come across as an overwrought, “what I did on my summer vacation”. If it does I apologize. To be honest I think I’m still working through a lot of what I saw and experienced in Mali, and I suppose I will be for a while. But it’s been a few weeks since I returned, so I can at least share some of my ruminations thus far, for better or for worse. Let me just say first that my trip to Mali was literally the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. I didn’t expect this to be the case, which probably contributed to the difficult time I had. I had expected to be challenged, but I expected I’d be the strong one helping everyone else on our team. The reality was quite the opposite. But I’m jumping ahead; let me share what we were doing in Mali to begin with.

Around 2 years ago a member of our congregation, Jason Beach, volunteered for the Peace Corps, and was assigned to the country of Mali in West Africa. He was designated a water/sanitation volunteer and assigned to the rural village of Koumantou, the capital of its commune, the equivalent of a county in the U.S. Upon learning of Jason’s endeavors, one of the pastors of our church, Jay McKinley, proposed the possibility of leading a team from our church to help Jason with a project. Our project took shape from there. Jason’s major project in Koumantou was the creation of soak pits that keep standing water underground, thus preventing mosquitoes from using it to breed. The problem of standing water also arose from a drainage ditch that drained water from the town to a large wash containing rice fields. It had existed as a ditch around 3 feet deep, and around 3 feet wide, but had filled in over the years so that much of it was just flat ground. In the rainy season the water that would have been collected by the ditch flooded the homes and businesses along the road. When the rain let up, water would collect in the uneven places as well. This is the project Jason proposed to Jay, and that we eventually tackled.

There were 5 of us who left the church January 20th for Dulles Airport, Pastor Jay McKinley, Joel Wagner, Mitch LeFevre, Christian Hanley, and me. It felt to me like we were leaving for an adventure. I felt very sure of myself, apprehensive because I hate flying, but anticipating an amazing experience. We had been meeting once every other week or so for around 3 months preparing ourselves for this. We boarded the plane around 10 and landed in Paris about 6 ½ hours later. We then boarded our flight for Bamako, the capital of Mali, and landed there around 5 ½ hours later. Everything had been perfect thus far. I was pretty tired, I don’t sleep on planes, but that was expected. The experience at the airport was far easier than I expected. Customs was easy, retrieving our trunks was easy, and finding Jason outside of the airport was easy. We even found two cabs quickly and easily. We were planning on staying the night in Bamako at Avant Ministries, a facility that houses different ministry and missions personnel on a short term basis. On the way to the mission house we encountered a football mob. The Africa Cup was just beginning when we arrived, and Mali had won its first game, and everyone was ecstatic, so much so a group stopped our cabs opened our doors and tried to take our hats. We found out later that Jason, who had been in Mali 16 months, was pretty freaked out. At any rate I really wasn’t perhaps because I didn’t know enough to know to be afraid. Ignorance I suppose was bliss. I slept wonderfully at Avant, under my first mosquito net.

The next morning we left for Koumantou. We rented a small van outside of the mission compound which took us to the bus station. Jason purchased our tickets in our Malian names, which he had given us in the states. I was Solo Dumbia. We also had Alou Sangare, Salif Keita, a Coulabale, and a Kone’. The Malians got a kick out of the white guys boarding the bus when the names were read. Koumantou is about a 4 to 5 hour bus ride from Bamako. The Bus ride was uneventful. We left around 8, and the morning was cool, so the bus ride was very comfortable, aside from the seats.

We arrived in Koumantou around noon, and were immediately greeted by the mayor as we stepped off the bus. People from the town grabbed our trunks and bags, and we were ushered to a welcoming ceremony outside of the mayor’s offices. There was a crowd of around 200. There were drummers, and singers, a small sound system, and chairs set aside for us. We were greeted by the mayor, the adjunct mayor, the local imam, and Pastor Chaka from Jason’s Malian church. They were all very welcoming, and friendly, and full of blessings for us, which is a part of the culture. As a drummer I loved watching what they were doing with the drums, in essence as a drum chorus. Three drummers playing 3 very different, but relatively simple drum lines created these amazing beats that I’d been trying to recreate with one djembe, no wonder it never sounded exactly right to me.

From there we were escorted through very dusty, trash strewn streets or alleys to the concession that would be our home for the next two weeks. We each chose a circular mud brick hut to stay in. They had concrete floors and walls, and a thatch roof. They were actually pretty nice. I had seen them in pictures, but sitting there on my trunk in my hut was a very different experience. As I set up my tent, which we were using as portable mosquito nets, kids watched me from the outside, and I started to feel very foreign, and far away, and alone. After all of the wonderful experiences traveling to Koumantou, now that I was there I realized I couldn’t leave, and would be there for 2 weeks, half of a month.

That night I couldn’t get comfortable in the cots we brought, and ended up unsuccessfully trying to sleep in the concrete floor. I understood Rich Mullins difficulty with the dark in a new way. He sang in Hold Me Jesus that he woke up in the night and felt the dark, and in Hard to Get he asks Jesus if he could remember just how long a night could get. I just couldn’t relax, and I couldn’t get the comforts of home out of my head. I realized just how much I depend on the technology around me to numb me to myself. At home if I can’t sleep, I’d get up and watch some TV, or play a video game until I was sufficiently tired. Here I was alone with my own thoughts, fears, pains, and history, with no way to take the edge off the voices that were screaming at me. The next night was the same thing. In three days and two nights I had only gotten about 3 hours of sleep, and I wasn’t able to sleep in the day either for fear that I’d be up all night. What was even more frustrating is that I had taken sleep aids which didn’t put me to sleep. We had arrived in Koumantou on Tuesday. By Wednesday I was fraying emotionally. By Thursday, the beginning of our ditch digging project I was putting on a brave face, or at least trying to, but I was a tumult of anxiousness and fear underneath. The days were fine, but I was terrified of the night, and the hours of being alone with myself and failing to sleep.

An hour into the ditch digging project I had to hurry back to our concession because of an urgent need, only to find our contraption brought for those needs, called a luggable loo, basically a bucket with a toilet seat attached, locked in a hut. With the “need” being as urgent as it was, I was quickly acquainted with the nyegan, basically a whole in the ground with a type of concrete floor. Given I was already unraveling emotionally this pretty much sent me over the edge, and I spent the rest of the morning lying on the floor of my hut, obsessing over the comforts of home.

The next day I lost my breakfast before heading to the work sight, but made it through the morning. I didn’t eat lunch, yet when we went back to the work site I threw up all the water I had been drinking. Jay walked me back and on the way back we talked about the possibility of my early return to Maryland. I didn’t think I could take another week of this. When the team returned from the work sight they met with me and really encouraged me and suggested I would regret leaving early, and that I should at least wait until Sunday. It was the team showing me the grace of God, and I agreed to at least stick it out until then. It ended up being exactly what I needed, the possibility of leaving, and a deadline. It was the spotter in weight lifting in essence saying, “OK, 2 more reps”. I was still sick on Saturday, but began to eat MRE’s in the evenings, so as to get some calories in me. I had moved into Jay’s hut to sleep the night before and had begun to actually sleep. The next day Sunday would be the day everything turned around for me.

Sunday we slept in, got ready and went to Jason’s church, The Evangelical Protestant Church of Koumantou. It was a small concrete building, with a cross on the outside, and arched steel windows that propped open for ventilation. We were escorted to the front of the church and seated on the platform, which in and of itself was very humbling. Christian stayed back because he began to feel sick the night before. The service started with music, which consisted of 2 drummers and the people’s voices. The people brought their own hymnals, or knew the music. Many of the songs were translated English songs and I recognized the tunes. When they sang Leaning on the Everlasting Arms in their own language I recognized the tune and was able to sing along. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of singing this song in English with these believers singing the same song in Bambera. In addition I was overwhelmed by the idea in the song. Up to that point I had been so focused on my discomfort, and my problems that I wasn’t able to conceive of God’s presence there, and so I was trying to muddle through, pushing through on my own brute strength. I was moved by the love and gentleness of God who can keep me “safe and secure from all alarms” and on whose everlasting arms I could always lean. It was familiar, yet new. It was God speaking to me through my language, music. We were asked to do one of our songs, so Jason retrieved his guitar, I borrowed the djembe and the rest of the guys sang Open the Eyes of My Heart. It was wonderful to be able to play drums, it felt familiar and it enabled me to focus even more. Later Jay’s message on John 13, speaking of washing each other’s feet, and serving one another again reminded me of why I was there, to attempt to embody that self giving love of God. The church service was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. It was the first time I had sensed God’s presence in Africa, and I never felt that absence of that presence again while I was there.

Monday we returned to work on the ditch, and while it wasn’t easy, in fact the work was extraordinarily difficult; I had emotionally turned a corner and was able to at least try to focus on something other than myself, namely the project, the Malians, and the team. I had greatly over estimated my conditioning and stamina. I don’t remember having this much difficulty with manual labor at 25, let alone 30, but I worked as I could, which was less than Joel and Mitch, whose stamina and positivity made huge impressions on me, and far less than the Malians who were artists with a pick axe, and whose stamina was reminiscent of Olympic distance runners.

The second week moved far more quickly than the first. We had settled into the routine of getting up at 6:30, having breakfast at 7, working from 8-12, having lunch from 12-2, going back to work from 2-4, coming back, showering and spending time with visitors from 4-7, eating dinner sometime after 7, and going to bed by around 9:30. I finally had a rhythm. I still struggled, with lack of stamina, with heat, with the food, with the dust and smoke, with my own expectations, but because of the support of the team, and Jay’s kindness in allowing me sleep in his hut, and the sense of the presence of God, and Jason’s generosity in allowing us to play his guitar in the evenings (which was huge in giving me a sense of familiarity and a connection to my second language) I was able to begin to do more than muddle through.

I never enjoyed myself the way that Jay did. Mali seemed like a second home to him, as if he were visiting old friends and family at a church homecoming. I never enjoyed myself as much as Joel who seemed the entire time like a fish in his own pond, always smiling, always ready for the next experience. In my sickness I was never as positive as Christian was in his. I obsessed over the things from home I lacked. Christian made a list of them so as to rob them of their power. I never engaged the people with Mitch’s fervor, attempting to speak their language from day one. I never had Jason Beach’s confidence and grace. While at first I envied them of these things, I’ve come to realize I was on my own journey. It was with them, involved them, and was shaped by them and all they brought to our team. My journey wasn’t about excelling, though I would have liked it to be. My journey I think was about learning to fail.

Before we left for Mali, Jason had said that he believed the trip would be a success if we just showed up. While it was nice to accomplish as a team the completion of our ditch digging project, which was completed at sundown on our last day of work, my journey wasn’t about any accomplishments. It was about the freedom to “fail”, the freedom to fall short of my own inflated self-expectations. It highlighted to me the importance of embodying the love of God. When I made the decision to go to Mali after Jay had called and invited me along all those months ago, I saw it as an opportunity to give hands and feet to the big ideas that had been swimming around in my head. I saw it as my opportunity to go “Into the Dark with God”. What I wasn’t prepared for was how truly dark the darkness was. What is funny is that I believed the darkness I would be traveling with God into was Mali, that serving this community of mostly Muslims and a few Christians would allow me to live out Christ’s incarnation, traveling from heaven to earth so to speak. I was surprised to find that I was the darkness through which I would travel with God.

Before I left I don’t think I had sensed the pride and hubris of my thoughts. The notion of living out Christ’s incarnation, while I believe theologically sound, still smacked of my own self importance, and that nagging belief that I try so hard to shake, that I am in some way superior to those around me. My journey was about attempting to move out from that, at least in practice, and focus on the other, whether that is the Malian, or those on my team. In doing so the movement begins in emulating the self giving love of God. So my failure to meet my own high expectations of myself, and my failure to live up to my high opinion of myself actually allowed me to be the love of God with my presence, in spite of myself, as opposed to believing myself to be the love of God. To play with James’ notion, in short thinking without action is dead. In the end I think my journey was only a step, but a step I needed to take.

Friday, February 15, 2008

Out of Africa


It’s been awhile since I posted, and I’ll have a bigger post soon. I just returned from the country of Mali in West Africa after a 2 week trip. It was probably the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. I’ll write more on the experience in my next post after I’ve processed it a bit more. But here are some pictures Christian Hanley took, he’s the one on the right, while on the trip.

Monday, January 14, 2008

Settings

I wanted to pass on that I've changed my settings so that anyone can leave a comment, as opposed to having to be a member of gmail or blogspot. Thanks.

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

The Perils of Grace and Beauty

This may seem an obvious statement for all who know me, but I’m a big Flannery O’Connor fan. When I first read her work, I was struck by her insight into and representations of pride and hubris. In fact much of my understanding of human nature and theological anthropology can be traced back to her short stories. I believe it would be safe to say that my interest in the “darkness” mentioned in the title of this blog can be blamed to a large extent on her, if one would care to lay that blame.

Only more recently however have I begun to digest her understanding of God and grace, and the manner in which God interacts with the hubris in her characters. This interaction is of interest to me because it seems God is wholly silent in her stories, yet grace abounds, seeming to act as the voice of God speaking into the terrible darkness of her vision of the South. However, because her characters are emotionally, spiritually, and even sometimes physically grotesque and twisted, the grace must come in a form grotesque and twisted as well.

Inherent to this understanding of twisted grace seems to be an understanding of revelation as a shocking event in which God breaks through our impotence or indifference and grabs us at the core of our being and shakes, sometimes less gently than others. As overwhelming as this experience may be it is to O’Connor a moment of grace, though it may not seem at the time like “an undeserved kindness”. It’s in this vein I want to quote a lecture Rowan Williams gave on O’Connor in 2005. In it he refers to Tarwater, a character in her 1960 novel The Violent Bear it Away. The details of the story are unimportant for Williams’ point. But this portion of his sermon I think sums up nicely the parts of O’Connor’s depictions of grace and revelation that really resonate with me:


A God who fails to generate desperate hunger and confused and uncompromising passion is no God at all. It is not that Tarwater’s life and faith are held up as a model of or for anything; they are what they are. And they are what they are because God is as God is, not an agent within the universe, not a source of specialized religious consolation. If God is real, the person in touch with God is in danger, at any number of levels. And to awaken the hunger that Tarwater at last recognizes is to risk creating in people a longing too painful to bear or a longing that will lead them to take such risks that it seems indeed nakedly cruel to expose them to that hunger in the first place.

Taken from:
http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/sermons_speeches/2005/050210.htm


On a side note, I wonder if we consider this when we evangelize, that is the sheer terror involved in being in relation with an all powerful, devastatingly beautiful, entirely free and loving God who was willing to sacrifice a Son to be reconciled to humanity, and to individuals. We love what that means for us, it makes us feel safe that God loves us so much that “God gave his only begotten Son”, however I’m not sure we look at the flip side of that coin that often. It seems to me the flip side is that we who have trusted Christ are now also “sons and daughters of God”. If this is the manner in which God’s love is shown through the suffering and death of a Son, and we now share a son or daughtership with Christ, then what rightful expectation can we have to temporal security and safety?

A friend once told me that risk reveals love, that our love for someone is evidenced by what we are willing to risk for them. If the Father is willing to risk the Son in order to evidence that love, then should we not as fellow sons and daughters expect to walk the same path in order to communicate and embody that love? This picture of God reminds me of the manner in which Lewis writes Aslan in his Narnia books, as terrible and terrifying, yet loving, wise and good. I’m with most people who tend to love the wisdom, goodness and faithfulness of the Lion, and ignore its freedom, power and beauty.

At any rate, Williams gives wonderful voice to the dark beauty of grace, revelation, and incarnation in O’Connor’s works. It seems in her stories that God’s grace is always unexpected in its existence, timing and form. I find this resonating with my experience of God, with God’s grace often coming as a shock, perhaps because of to whom that grace is given, either myself or some person I sadly estimate is not worthy of that grace, or perhaps the manner in which it’s given. As for myself I find my passions, longings, and joy being kindled by this grace, and I sense the danger in that.

I sense in these longings a hunger that can’t be sated. It’s a hunger that seeks to encounter unmediated the beauty of God, but must experience that beauty mediated through broken, unreliable, hurting people in a world that appears unhinged. So I find myself, like Gimli after his encounter with Galadriel in Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring, desiring to experience the beauty of God again, and pursuing the paths God has blazed in which that beauty must be experienced.

That hunger to be in contact with the beauty of God however leads I think down the path in which Christ expressed that beauty in love and that’s through risking my own well being, esteem, emotions, and security in service of the least of these. I agree with Williams that on the surface it seems cruel to expose people to this, to relation with this God who calls us to follow through such danger, except that I think that perhaps there is something of the beauty of God that we will never experience until we travel these paths. Now this may seem entirely self evident to some, and of them I am truly envious, because this path is such a struggle for me to find, let alone walk. If it weren’t for the joy mediated through the beauty of God I experience when on this path in some fashion I don’t know that I’d be inclined to walk it at all…

Friday, January 4, 2008

First Time for Everything

I'm giving in and starting a blog... I know it's the trendy thing to do, but in reality, I'm doing it because I need your help. I'm hoping that I can share my gestating ideas regarding the intersection of imagination, theology and the arts, and dialogue with those who might be interested in reading those thoughts, hoping for help in finding my blind spots and the unintentional negatives my thoughts might be leaning toward.

The name of the blog might seem a bit daunting at first. You may say "God isn't about darkness." I suppose you are right, and I believe correct to feel the tension in the title, it's intentional. God is about glorifying God, the means by which God does that is what is of interest to me, thus the title, which is nicked from an early 80's Christmas medition by Hans Urs Von Balthasar (who has possibly the most pretentious name in the history of theology, and that's saying something). As an introduction I will post a portion of that meditation below. I suppose it's as good a starting point as any in kicking this off:


"But who will step out along this road that leads from God's glory to the figure of the poor Child lying in the manger? Not the person who is taking a walk for his own pleasure. He will walk along other paths that are more likely to run in the opposite direction, paths that lead from the misery of his own existence toward some imaginary or dreamed-up attempt at a heaven, whether of a brief pleasure or of a long oblivion. The only one to journey from heaven, through the world, to the hell of the lost, is he who is aware, deep in his heart, of a mission to do so; such a one obeys a call that is stronger than his own comfort and his resistance. This is a call that has complete power and authority over my life; I submit to it because it comes from a higher plane than my entire existence. It is an appeal to my heart, demanding the investment of my total self; its hidden, magisterial radiance obliges me, willy-nilly, to submit. I may not know who it is that so takes me into his service. But one thing I do know: if l stay locked within myself, if I seek myself, I shall not find the peace that is promised to the man on whom God's favor rests. I must go. I must enter the service of the poor and imprisoned. I must lose my soul if I am to regain it, for so long as I hold onto it, I shall lose it. This implacable, silent word (which yet is so unmistakable) burns in my heart and will not leave me in peace.
In other lands there are millions who are starving, who work themselves to death for a derisory day's wage, heartlessly exploited like cattle. There too are the slaughtered peoples whose wars cannot end because certain interests (which are not theirs) are tied up with the continuance of their misery. And I know that all my talk about progress and mankind's liberation will be dismissed with laughter and mockery by all the realistic forecasters of mankind's next few decades. Indeed, I only need to open my eyes and ears, and I shall hear the cry of those unjustly oppressed growing louder every day, along with the clamor of those who are resolved to gain power at any price, through hatred and annihilation. These are the superpowers of darkness; in the face of them all our courage drains away, and we lose all belief in the mission that resides in our hearts, that mission that was once so bright, joyous and peace bringing; we lose all hope of really finding the poor Child wrapped in swaddling clothes. What can my pitiful mission achieve, this drop of water in the white-hot furnace? What is the point of my efforts, my dedication, my sacrifice, my pleading to God for a world that is resolved to perish?
From a worldly point of view everything may seem very dark; your dedication may seem unproductive and a failure. But do not be afraid: you are on God's path. "Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you Good News of a great joy... This day is born the Savior", that is, he who, as Son of God and Son of the Father, has traveled (in obedience to the Father) the path that leads away from the Father and into the darkness of the world. Behind him omnipotence and freedom; before, powerlessness, bonds and obedience. Behind him the comprehensive divine vision; before him the prospect of the meaninglessness of death on the Cross between two criminals, Behind him the bliss of life with the Father; before him, grievous solidarity with all who do not know the Father, do not want to know him and deny his existence. Rejoice then, for God himself has passed this way! The Son took with him the awareness of doing the Father's will. He took with him the unceasing prayer that the Father's will would be done on the dark earth as in the brightness of heaven. He took with him his rejoicing that the Father had hidden these things from the wise and revealed them to babes, to the simple and the poor. "I am the way", and this way is "the truth" for you; along this way you will find "the life". Along "the way" that I am you will learn to lose your life in order to find it; you will learn to grow beyond yourselves and your insincerity into a truth that is greater than you are. From a worldly point of view everything may seem very dark; your dedication may seem unproductive and a failure. But do not be afraid: you are on God's path. "Let not your hearts be troubled: believe in God; believe also in me." I am walking on ahead of you and blazing the trail of Christian love for you. It leads to your most inaccessible brother, the person most forsaken by God. But it is the path of divine love itself. You are on the right path. All who deny themselves in order to carry out love's commission are on the right path."

Taken from:
http://www.godspy.com/faith/Setting-Out-into-the-Dark-with-God-A-Christmas-Sermon-for-a-Troubled-World-by-Hans-Urs-von-Balthasar.cfm

I really like this as a starting point. It's a very thoughtful medition on the what the incarnation means to us, and what it means for our action in the world. What does it look like for us to imitate Christ's incarnation? Is there a portion of the Christian experience, namely a certain joy that can't be experienced until we begin to live in this incarnational way? I want to say yes based on the meditation and scripture, but that appears to mean that there is a portion of the intended Christian experience that is off limits to much of the American culture, if not all of western culture, and that's a frightenting thought. So that's where I'll leave it now, with a question and a frightening thought, but that's just my style I suppose.