A rather lengthy excerpt from In Our Poverty the book, which waits patiently until I get around to getting it published:
I WAS staring at an advertisement taped to a coffee shop window. I was looking at its words, but I wasn't really reading them. They were about some kind of presentation being given in town, on the subject of writing and getting published. I was thinking something about the idea that if I was serious about writing I needed to start living more like a writer but I didn't really have the time, and I was wondering what it means to be true to oneself and true to others and what, if anything, is the difference between the two. From the coffee shop emerged a college student I knew by casual acquaintance. The advertisement led us to a discussion of writing, and she wanted to know what I write about. I said that I try to write about the spiritual reality of life, that God's Love is all there is, that what we each need is to find God, to experience him in his reality, and so forth. I am used to people being less than comfortable with topics like these, so when she said nothing for several seconds, I assumed that she was going to change the subject or continue on her way.
Instead, she looked over her shoulder as if someone might be listening, and with a subdued voice began to tell me a story. Almost in a whisper, she told me that once while she was praying she felt as though she were lifted up into the air, with a presence of love all over and around and through her—a love incomparable to anything she had ever experienced. Her story brought chill bumps to my skin, and with her voice still hushed as though I might be wearing a hidden microphone she asked, "Is that what you're talking about?" I smiled seriously and nodded my head. "You know," she said, "If people could feel that just once, all they would ever want is God."
She was absolutely right, of course; it is a beautiful thing to truly feel the Love of God. It can be so overwhelmingly powerful and blissful that a person can spend the rest of her life wanting nothing else but to relive the experience in every waking moment. But her final comment to me betrayed something of what she had already realized about her moment of being touched by God: She said that she had never told her story to anybody in her church, because they would think she was crazy.
The experience of God, for all of its splendor, is also a kind of curse: The totality of life seems very much different afterwards. Life becomes different in a way that is joyous yes, but also in a way that brings a profound and unavoidable sorrow. It is a sorrow over the sufferings of life, a sorrow over those who are lost in the middle of everything, and a sorrow over religion that does very little to help. It is a sorrow caused by the realization that not everyone knows its beauty. But most of all, it is a sorrow so noble that it is heavenly. It is a knowing that you have been found by God, and so now you belong to everyone who has not. In a word, it is a sorrow we call compassion.
WE KNOW very little about Jesus, but we can know enough to begin to be like him. We can know that the message of his life was one of utmost simplicity and tremendous depth, and we can know that he called people to love—to love God, to love our neighbors, and to love our selves.
But to understand this fully, to love well and to love well in all circumstances, our love cannot be something we do because we feel like doing it at the moment, or because we decide it is a good idea, or because philosophically it seems like a good way to live. And certainly, necessarily being a true and universal love, it cannot be merely what you or I define love to be. Therefore, more importantly, more essentially, and more finally we are called to become the love that is God. We are called to become this love and, since by its nature it is boundless, we are called to a path of endless becoming that never ceases to deliver us further and further into the limitless depth of the reality of life.
The love we are called to manifest and become, become and manifest, is a love so numbingly profound and so far beyond all other things in beauty, that on behalf of people the world ignores, we may well die as innocent persons, in poverty and ridicule and pain, at the hands of hate-filled, prideful, ignorant men. This is what the formula knows can happen, and this is what the message proved does happen.
ALL ROADS to God merge in the end, joining the singular path of true compassion. Any road that does not lead to this compassion does not lead to God. Until we come close enough to God that we feel compassion within us the way Jesus felt compassion within himself, we will never really understand the Jesus story. We will never really understand why Jesus lived the way he lived, and we will never really understand why he died the way he died. We will never have the focus that serves to keep our lives out of the darkness.
Until we come into meaningful contact with the compassion of Jesus, and welcome it for what it is, we will forever live our lives thinking in terms of what is wrong—what is ugly and contemptible and shameful and evil—with other people and with ourselves. We will never learn to live our lives thinking in terms of everything that is made right—beautiful and noble and honorable and good—in the purifying love of God.
True compassion requires and nurtures a depth within us, a profound unearthly depth that comes from God and God alone, but it also requires a simplicity that allows compassion alone to be enough for us, and that stops our intellect from questioning the decency of everyone and everything around us. Compassion is the determinant of all that is truly moral and selfless, but a prideful human morality and the selfishness of man strive every moment of every day to hold compassion in contempt—to belittle and control and limit it. Therefore, if we want to be compassionate people, if we want to have the heart of God, at some point in our lives we have to draw a line in the sand, surrender many things, make a stand, and say with all our resolve, This is where I will live and die. We have to make up our minds that our own lives do not matter at all, that we will be satisfied with a strange and foreign depth of being that most people will never comprehend, and that we will never care nor notice if everyone around us thinks we are foolish, stupid, idealistic or demented. We have to deeply believe, and will eventually come to know, that what the world and our friends call living is nothing of the sort, and that we live a different kind of life that is hidden from the world behind the shadows of everyday living.
THE THING man needs most is certainly not what the world offers him in foolish philosophies, childish physical distractions and cheap entertainment. Those things are little more than lies, and certainly man does not any more of those than he already has. But neither does man need to sit in a chair and study himself blind concerning himself with insignificant details of religion or think about what he can do to make himself more approved by other men. Least of all what he needs is to go through his day wondering if he appears holy enough to everybody else that God is sufficiently pleased with him. There are ten thousand things in the world and probably that many more in religion that man does not need and is therefore better off without. What man needs most is the touch of God, and a heart that is open and pure enough to feel it when it comes.
This recent blog post notes yet another example of a not uncommon story. It reminded me of something I wrote some years back, and have likely posted at least in part before…
To many people the Bible is more important than God. They consider the Bible to be the only validation of anything man can possibly have to do with God. They believe there is no point in believing there is a God unless you believe in the Bible. To them there is no useful God apart from the Bible, and there would be no point to God's existence without the Bible. Reduced to its pure practicality, their view is that without the Bible there is no God.
If this is what I believe, then I will tend to defend the literal factuality of the Bible to the last crossed tee, dotted I, semicolon and comma. I will think that by this I am defending my faith, and in a sense I am doing so because my faith will not stand if a legitimate question is left in my mind concerning the absolute incorruptibility and historical accuracy of these little printed symbols. I may even come to defend this faith so adamantly I will convince myself that if the millennia have seen the least stroke of a pen altered in this book then my entire faith is meaningless. It will become essential that I believe such a thing could never have happened, and if need be I will devote my life to proving so. I will create an entire system of thought and an almost endless catalog of arguments and apologies to prove to myself my faith is valid because each and every printed word is unquestionable, and then I will be happy that I have a faith I can consider to be deep and strong.
On the other hand, sooner or later the book may fail me in some way, and if I have made the book my god, I will end up thinking God himself has failed me.
Or, maybe someday I will be holding my new baby in my arms and as she awakens and squints her eyes and wrinkles her nose and twists her mouth as if to cry, she notices the familiar contours of my face and instead she kicks her feet and wriggles her arms and coos and smiles as her eyes look up at mine. And I will carry her down the quiet street of my neighborhood in all of the joy and humility that only a parent knows, and I will sit with her on a park bench and watch all the children there laugh and play and I will think that if there is a God then children are reason enough for him to create man, and I will know something I have not known before. I will know that the word of God is in this tiny bundle in my arms and in the innocent gaiety of those children and in the moist Fall air I breath into my body and the exquisite beauty of the little gray birds who hop amongst the fallen leaves beneath the trees. I will know that what I am witnessing is God speaking to me like a hundred harmonized voices telling me at once a hundred truths I cannot deny and need not defend. I will know that if the truth and holiness of this moment were in any way dependent upon indubitable logical perfection in a particular book, then most certainly there is no real truth at all. I will know that if I require such a defense to have faith in what I see before me then I have no faith at all and I have no faith at all because I am absolutely blind. And the next time I pick up my book in which I thought I had such great faith I will forget all about my childish clinging based in human fear and instead I will see within the book a movement and current of God's spirit revealing itself in images deep and profound. I will know it is not a book of millions of inarguable strokes of pens but rather it is one part of a painting whose subject is truth orchestrated upon the canvas of all creation. When I come to believe in this painting with my heart, rather than believing in its paint with my mind, I will know true faith in the word of God.
I sympathize with the fellow who stood amazed that he once believed the Bible in the way that he had. I hope that eventually the break that occurred within him will not be an end, and will instead be a beginning. I hope he will come to see that the Word of God is not paint, but a painting, and that he will come to find himself on God's canvas.
I haven't offered up a good disjointed ramble in a while, so here comes one…
I typically talk about Discourse and consistency in terms of building bridges between Discourses, as though building the bridges is the main goal. I'd like to open up the question of consistency more broadly for a moment, to help note that the question is more far reaching than one might initially think. The can opener works something like this:
It has been claimed, by Dr. James Paul Gee, that Discourses are "identity kits" that we put on and wear. I have no problem with this concept, and it seems perfectly reasonable to view it as Gee says. In each distinct context of our lives, we're a bit different. We have different language, with different meanings, nuances and history in its lexicon, depending upon the social context of our speech. We have different attitudes and ways of being, depending upon the social context of where we are, when, with whom. Placing all the contexts side by side would reveal at least slightly different versions of a single person's identity, or we might even say it would reveal several different identities. This is not rocket science to consider, and everyone who has found themselves speaking and acting differently in different contexts is familiar with what I'm saying. The obvious questions are, which identity if any is the (more) real one, or more generally, are all of the identities simply parts of an overall monolithic identity an individual possesses? There are many reasons such questions are consequential, but to me there is a particular area that rises to the top in importance:
According to the heights of traditional spiritual views, we each indeed possess (or, at least, potentially possess) a singular and ultimate identity, and an ultimate goal rests in discovering and living from this singular identity—exclusively. But at this point, the worms begin to crawl out of the can. Here are a few of them:
First and perhaps most obvious of all, "spirituality" is a Discourse in its own right, and it must first be privileged above all others if we are to take seriously the very basis of this discussion. Further, spirituality is not so much a single Discourse as it is a conversation made up of many related Discourses. What do we do with those, and how do we group them and apply privilege to them? What meta-language, itself a Discourse, would we use to accomplish such assignment of privilege?
Second, the consistency problem. Gee notes that many of the multiple Discourses we each inhabit are in tension one with another, and some are downright contradictory. Gee would say that people act consistently in a given Discourse, but are not always consistent across Discourses. Gee would say people are consistent locally but not globally. Gee would also say the people tend to believe, however, that they are consistent globally as well. People like to believe that everything in their skull fits together consistently, even though it doesn't. To me, this is a huge point; as I've noted in previous posts.
Third, we must ask why people tend to believe they are consistent globally. Gee would talk to me at this point about theories of the mind and the incredibly understated ability of humans to be self deceptive and believe they are globally consistent. But my point rests in a question: Given all that, why is it even important to us, in the first place, to believe we are consistent? What is the magical, be all and end all, importance we place on being consistent creatures? Why do we believe we must be consistent? Why should that be the end goal of our self deception? My theory is that all this goes on because we believe: (1) that if we are consistent, then we obviously possess the truth, (2) that if we possess the truth we are therefore right, and (3) if we are right, we are validated as a (good, decent, proper, correct, even saved) human being.
Fourth, but what if consistency is a fallacy? What if it is a red herring? What if, in truth, it doesn't exist? Where, then, are we left in the middle of the human condition? What if our entire conscious, as well as self-deceptive, quest for consistency is of no point at all? What if the very foundation of what we believe validates us is a crock? If identity is bound up in Discourse, and if Discourse is founded in consistency, and if consistency is a contestable notion, what are we left to do with the idea of identity? The problem of "who am I?" is not simply anymore the rather complex quest for a stable and ultimately consistent being, but is now the problem of considering who I am in the absence of a foundational concept (i.e., consistency) granting stability itself. The problem of defining myself is now a problem of finding a way to define myself.
Fifth, why do I say, how can we say, that consistency is a contestable notion? For one, it doesn't appear to exist, either empirically or theoretically. In short, what Gee claims about local versus global is similar to academic philosophical critiques of the coherence theory of truth, which is pretty much the idea that consistency and truth go hand in hand. These critiques grant that the coherence theory holds up in local systems, but nothing else. Additionally, and this work has seen a renewed interest in the past few years, minds like that of the mathematician Godel have pointed out quite handily that even within very precise local systems, consistency eventually breaks down somewhere. It seems clear to me that while consistency is a useful concept and even a worthy goal, it isn't a litmus test for… well, much of anything.
Staring at the worms, I've lost my momentum and am asking myself, what's my point so far? I think it's something like this:
In the realm of being concerned with things spiritual, we need to reconsider the long-presumed value of "consistency." It seems to me to be a bit too scientific and mechanical. It seems to carry far too much weight, while at the same time being inadequate to the task of considering the weightier matters of human existence. It seems that in this way it folds inward on itself and nears collapse; it is unable to accomplish what it implies is essential. It seems to me that consistency is little more than a measuring stick, and a rather dubious one that is very relative but assumed absolute, for judging the presence or absence of truth in another. In this way, consistency is akin to moral legalism, with all of its incumbent pitfalls, snares and fallacies. It seems to me that we need to think differently.
Just what "differently" may be, I'm not sure yet. But I'm pretty much convinced that consistency as any measure of a person is quickly moving out of my thinking. It's quite liberating, I am finding, to let go of yet another method within which I have been expecting people to live according to my own questionable standards. It is also quite liberating, I am finding, to let go of yet another method within which I pathologically expect too much from myself.
With due respect to my post immediately preceding this one:
My seminar paper for this past semester was a brief study of a small part of James Paul Gee's Discourse theory, applied to an online debate concerning a particular Christian doctrine. In a related sense, while reading some news today I was reminded that I'm pathetically, morbidly fascinated by the profound polarization of opinion expressed by folks who supply online comments to political stories.
One of the most popular attacks in these polarized situations, including the debate I was studying, is the claim that people from the "other side" are hypocritical. This is a pretty interesting phenomenon once you start to pull it apart. It's worth mentioning that "hypocrite" gets thrown around quite a lot, but I think the words "inconsistent" and "self-contradictory," which are also thrown around a lot, are closer to covering the majority of the cases. So let's stick with the idea of consistency for the rest of the post.
Gee (1989: Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction. Journal of Education , 171 (1)) notes that when we speak (or write, which is first speaking in our heads, I would say), the words we use are accompanied by values, beliefs, gestures, postures, and a myriad of other things, and are part of "saying (writing)-doing-being-valuing-believing combinations," he calls Discourses. You can name these combinations anything you want; in my work I call them "meme complexes," but you can make up your own name if you like. The point is, to be a credible, accepted, card-carrying member of a Discourse, you have to get all the talking, doing, being, valuing, and believing worked out just right. Mess one of them up, come up short in one area, and members of that Discourse will spot in short order that you don't belong. You're not a member of their Discourse. You don't fit in. You're an outsider. Gee claims that we each acquire at least one Discourse for free; it's our primary Discourse that we acquire early in our human development. After this one, most of us pick up additional "secondary" Discourses as we are exposed to various groups and institutions. There are Discourses associated with government and politics, work and careers and professions and crafts, various educational fields, religion, hobbies, and et cetera. Gee notes also that the Discourses which we acquire or attempt to acquire don't always fit together perfectly, and they cause tensions within us. For example, the beliefs of a woman's religious Discourse might conflict with her academic Discourse of Women's Studies. Somehow she has to manage the tension between the two, and she may well figure out how to do so, or if not then one of the Discourses will suffer and possibly be abandoned. So, oftentimes whenever two or more Discourses are competing for our action and demanding that we inhabit them, there's a problem. How do we act consistently in our living? The easy answer would be to avoid being part of a Discourse that creates this tension, but this is not easily done. To do so, really, one would have to remain a child, with only a primary Discourse, for his or her entire life. Long story short, in regard to this reality Gee makes the following statement, which seems fairly innocuous at first: "…humans are not consistent and well integrated from a cognitive or social viewpoint, although most Discourses assume that they are." As I was proofing my paper this past week, it struck me just how vital this passing point (a few sentences in the referenced work of Gee) really is. People are not consistent, but most Discourses assume that they are. This just strikes me, in its brutally simplistic observation, as vitally important in regard to how we try to communicate with one another. Here are the thoughts that have occurred to me so far:
When I am acting from within a Discourse (which I cannot avoid doing), it is assumed by the Discourse (and myself at the moment) that I am being consistent.
Discourses, also, assume that they themselves are consistent—or are made consistent by nature of their being held within a (presumed) consistent individual.
If I, with my repertoire of Discourses, cannot make a "logical" connection between two points for which another person claims that such a connection exists, I assume that person is being inconsistent.
There is a grand narrative, underlying most of our Discourses, that equates consistency with truth.
I assume, therefore, that what I say, value, believe is based in truth. I assume my actions are based in truth.
I assume, then, the other person's are not.
Given my assumption and because the other person defends his position, I assume he is ignorant, stupid, foolish, evil, etc.
Discourses contain lattices of beliefs that arise either: (1) for the sole purpose of making a Discourse appear consistent, or (2) because the Discourse is already assumed to be consistent.
A major portion of our belief systems is composed of these lattices.
We consider the links which compose these lattices to be fundamental elements, fundamental truths, which are on par with the major claims of the Discourse; that is, with the Discourse nodes which the links connect.
Your inconsistency is readily apparent to me because (1) your are inconsistent, and (2) I lack the lattice(s) that makes you appear consistent to yourself.
Notice that this is all based upon nothing more than the mere assumption of consistency.
This assumption is likely nothing more than a link in a latticework of a governing Grand Discourse.
While consistency of systems should remain something we value at a certain level, we must realize that absolute consistency does not exist and should not be the litmus test of "true" views.
If we could get past the idea that truth necessitates something referred to as "logical consistency," a whole bunch of interpersonal and intellectual overhead would cease to exist.
Next week work will be taking me to LA. The week after that I'll be heading to… well, someplace else. Geez. I hate flying. I have a phobia. It terrifies me. Think "Rain Man." Anyway…
This week I've met a few well-travelled folks, people who are retired and spend their time travelling about the country building homes with Habitat for Humanity. My boss has extended me the luxury of working on a Habitat house in the day, and working my real job at night. I think I'm not wise for assuming this schedule, but I am thoroughly, thoroughly enjoying helping build the house. I get to do physical labor, I meet generous folks, I do something good for another family, and I feel like I'm living like I'm supposed to. And, you know, it's a good thing for one's humility to do something you know little about. I have no idea how many times this week I've been shown what I've done wrong. But there are some really fine, practical, hands-on educators doing this stuff. I've been working with a guy and I'll ask him, "So, how do I do this? What am I doing wrong here? How do I fix this?" He'll show me how to do it, and then have me do it myself. Then he'll say, "Do you want me to tell me you why?" and if you answer in the affirmative, he'll explain the reasoning behind the action. I am always fascinated that there's a reason behind pretty much everything, and that a zillion little things are discovered throughout history, preserved and passed down and taught, becoming common knowledge in a particular community. Anyway, I like this approach to teaching. Tell somebody how to do something. If they're happy with that, so be it. But then offer to explain why that's how it's done. If they want to know, tell them. Either way: easy, efficient, done.
One of my kids asked me why I'm doing this. So I explained, again, that everything we have, and everything we can do, has been given to us for a reason: to help other people. Hopefully, one of these days it will stick. And hopefully, one of these days I'll do a better job of living up to it myself.
Here's the interesting theoretical aspect to the experience: you've got the two poles of American socioeconomic political theory coming together in a way that works very well. The company sponsoring this house is a big-business capitalistic enterprise which just so happens to have invested one and a half million dollars into Habitat, and on this gig is pitching in big time. On the other hand, there's an element going on concerning the haves and the have-nots, about socioeconomics and about what's fair and what's not, and about people who aren't worried about getting their hands dirty and their knuckles busted. It's a really interesting mix of various ideologies coming together both in theory and in individual people. The frameworks battling it out silently and far behind the scenes are enormously complex. But, I like my version: everything we have, and everything we can do, is to help other people.
This basic understanding and agreement is part of what I'm preaching in life.
As noted previously, when I was typing my post on Plato's Dilemma, I got to the two words "be humble" and was suddenly struck by the idea of my religious faith being a metaphor for the issues surrounding Plato's Dilemma. The parallel runs something like this:
God exists. God is truth. God is knowable, but only as something unknowable; what we ultimately come to know of God is God's ultimate un-knowable-ness. So, we acknowledge that there is Truth, we acknowledge that somehow it can/should/does guide our lives, but we also acknowledge we cannot fully ascertain nor articulate it. We must address the idea of God, of relationship with God. We must decide notions of faith for ourselves. But doing so involves making claims. It involves abiding in an ideology. We cannot/should not/must not make absolute claims. We cannot say our faith is superior to another person's faith without claiming to be God ourselves, which we most certainly are not. We must not judge another. In the face of this, we form a faith of our own (as Paul said, we work our salvation "with fear and trembling") and we hold it in the utmost of humility. We know it is frail because we have worked it out. We know it is precious because God has made it so. The key comes down to holding our faith in deep, profound humility before God and other human beings.
In other words, faith involves living according to a personal ideology concerning Truth, one that we must value, therefore live by, and therefore in some way espouse for it to be a faith worth having. Yet, we cannot universally verify or validate a given faith in human terms. And, since we cannot verify or validate it, we understand that each person's humble faith is just as valid as our own. Yet from a particular point of view, to say that every faith is valid is to negate the idea of Truth, and therefore the value of faith. Plato's Dilemma.
However, after years of wrestling with this issue in terms of faiths, I have resolved it to my satisfaction with this idea of humility; with this idea that it is not the intellectual particulars of faith which make it faith. Rather, it is the heart, the spirit, the humility of the faithful which is the key. The view needs to be elaborated upon to explain well, but it is a workable solution. I like to say in metaphorical terms that we religious folks spend a lot of time arguing over what kind of clothes (causal, dress, business) we are supposed to wear in the sight of God, but God only cares about the fabric; not the style or cut of the garments. Likewise, God cares about our heart, our humility, our submission and devotion to him at a deeply personal level. I don't think God is interested in doctrine and dogma.
And so. Reading Gee's work on Plato's Dilemma, when I understood Gee's point intuitively, as if it were a long lost friend suddenly formally introduced, and when I recognized that (contrary to Gee's claim) a solution exists, and it rests in intellectual humility, I was thunderstruck by the parallel to my personal view of faith. And I had to ask myself, which is the chicken, and which is the egg? As a born existentialist, have I worked out my faith as a response to a pre-existing intuition of Plato's Dilemma, or is my intuitive grasp of Plato's Dilemma, and the solution to it that I see as perfectly natural, born of my pre-work performed in working out my faith?
An interesting question, and one that could be asked more directly by asking if my view of God, Man and faith is based largely (merely?) in my existentialist mind. At present, I would wager that both my faith, and my grasp of Plato's Dilemma, are based in my existentialist nature. Which gets back to my posts of this year regarding belief, reality, and faith. We truly believe only what are minds of capable of truly believing; we can do nothing else.
A closing point? A takeaway? I left it sitting on a doorstep in my previous post: be humble. To read, to hear, to interpret, to speak is to take a stand. Our stand may not be superior to any other. Or perhaps it may be. We may never know. This doesn't make our stand unimportant. But it does mean that we should stand humbly in a humility that recognizes it may be wrong, and in an even greater humility that recognizes it may be right.
AH HAH! So now I understand my hand-wringing and vacillation about posting my opinions on debatable matters. Now I understand in a simply-stated way what for years I've been fussing with and dancing around. Now I know that this middle ground has a name. Now I've seen it in print. In an academic work. And everybody knows that makes it official: Plato's Dilemma. Yep. Plato's Dilemma.
Literacy scholar Dr. James Paul Gee briefly describes what he terms Plato's Dilemma, and my summary of his brief description follows presently. Plato's argument against the written word was that it could not answer back to a questioning reader. A reader could not ask the text itself, "What do you mean?" and receive a newly phrased answer, as could be done in oral dialogue. Furthermore, a text could make no decision as to whom it presented itself; crudely meaning, somebody too ignorant to have any business reading it. On the other hand, if one simply presented texts with an official interpretation that was unquestionably authoritative, this was no better than the history of oral myth (which is to say, Homeric myth) which blindly guided the society of Plato's time and place. The dilemma in short is this: (1) To force an interpretation upon a text is to exercise mind control, authority, etc. over the people and dupe them as fits your needs rather than theirs, but (2) to allow every reading of a text to be considered legitimate is to at once say no reading of the text is legitimate, and therefore have no need of the text.
I realized immediately as I read Gee's presentation that this paradox plagues us on many levels. Consider that "text" is not necessarily a written sheet of paper, but can be any discourse. One can see that if we look at religion, the same point arises. If "anything goes" as far as views of Man and God, then there is not much point in talking about Man and God, for there is no Truth. On the other hand, to claim a view as "correct" or "incorrect" or more or less one or the other is to align oneself with an ideology and claim its supremacy over others. It is to privilege oneself implicitly; and who has this right, to claim to know the Truth?
And so we must do what we should not do. In my terms, this is the dilemma restated. Where does a person place her or himself vis-à-vis this situation? Is there no truth to be rightly claimed anywhere, or do we risk the arrogance to claim that we, few or one among many, possess it? Gee states there is no way out of this dilemma; to "read" a "text" is to instantly form an opinion and align with an ideology. Certainly, as Gee points out, Plato was not innocent. His solution, offered in The Republic, was that texts should be limited in distribution and always "correctly" interpreted by philosopher-kings; people like… Plato, of course. The issue comes down to how we deal with this; what do we do in facing the fact that our choice is either nihilism or privileging ourselves above others?
In two words: Be humble.
… … …
[*cough.* It just struck me that my faith-based, existentialist thinking views (uses?) religion as a giant metaphor built upon this basic problem of human existence. *cough. * ]
If you don't have at least one deep dark, shameful and terrifying secret to be shared with other people, there are only three possibilities as to why. Either you have already shared with others everything about yourself, or you are completely blind to your own humanity, or you are the most plain, most boring, most un-human person to have ever lived. May God save us from being the third, deliver us from being the second, and know us as the first.
In this season (unfortunately, more like year) of political campaigning, this general subject seems timely. The other day one of my classmates brought up the realm of a writer's voice as related to a writer's identity. Noting right from the start that voice and identity are both subjects that a person could spend a lifetime studying and theorizing about, I'd still like to cover some points about them.
There is a tension within me that results from various concerns and forces tugging and pulling at some nebulous, ill-defined center called 'my identity.' A few of them are involved with the subject of this post. Several years back, I worried a great deal about finding my writing voice, which in my thinking concerned style and content. "Oh if I could just figure out my innate style" I would lament. I sort of got over that, realizing that a writer doesn't have to have a single style. This alleviated some issues with style, but didn't do much for identity. So then I thought of identity in terms of confession and subject matter, until I wrote the essay "Deconstruction, Truth, Meaning." It was then I admitted to myself that neither writing, nor anything else, will ever result in a full presentation of one's identity. "This I confess," is possible; "Now you know me," is not.
These are part of the tension. An additional part is the ages-old spiritual quest for contact with one's singular, "true" identity, which nominally is expressed, with no façade or fiction, in every moment of life—versus the theoretical view that we each have multiple identities. We are different, in some ways, depending upon the context of the moment. Are we talking to children, our own children, coworkers, fellow students, folks at church, etc.? On the one hand, it seems each of us should "just be me" in all of life's varied circumstances. But on the other, are we really the same? Do we, can we, should we, must we show the same self to everyone in all cases? In theory I have an ultimate true identity in God. In theory identity is merely a malleable social construct.
Reiterating, voice and identity are subjects we could spend a lifetime analyzing and theorizing about. Likewise with our social interactions. None of these are simple. But just to try to place something onto somewhat firm footing, it's pretty safe to say that nearly all of us act a bit differently depending upon social context. We say different things, and we say things differently. And this is the small point of the moment, in this post. Do we each reveal a fundamentally different identity in each case, are we revealing different voices of the same identity, both, or neither? What determines what? Can we answer this, at all?
I think we should try. When at the Abbey of Gethsemani, I talked to an aged monk who was long ago a friend of Thomas Merton. Naturally, we talked about Merton. So this monk's voice was the voice of a friend and historian. When this same monk talked to my daughter, his voice was more like that of a loving father. I would assume that his voice when speaking to his superiors in confession would be different. Yet, I tend to think that in this man's discipline and age and wisdom, all of these voices are from a singular, integrated identity. There is no contradiction; no false implications. No pretending. No self deception. On the other hand, consider a political candidate who travels from venue to venue. There is a speech in the northwest about gun-toting rednecks, perhaps. There is a speech in the south about the right to bear arms. There is a speech in the Midwest about the working man and woman struggling to make ends meet while the rich get richer. There are talks behind closed doors, about making the rich richer. And in each venue, not just the vocabulary, but the literal physical accent, inflection and cadence of speech, and the stories, change. What does this person believe? Who and what are they? What is false, pretend, real, genuine? What, if anything, do the answers tell us about identities? That the politician has many identities, or actually only one, which has nothing to do with being genuine and everything to do with wanting to be elected? This example is more personal than we might think, if we ask ourselves the same questions, only substitute "liked," "admired" or "loved" for "elected."
I am somewhat aware that there is code-switching in discourse, such as I might say, "I view this as a very positive development" to a group of professionals, and just plain "Sweeeeet!" to my pre-teen child. I can say to my younger coworkers, "Owned!" and they understand that which with an older audience requires, "Wow, the other party clearly attained the upper hand in this situation, and at your expense." This is natural in the sense that almost all of us do it every day, to some greater or lesser extent. There are people I know who don't, but they typically come across to others as boring, stuck-up, out of touch, or just plain frightening. A bit of code-switching is necessary, and is a positive aspect of discourse. To me, code-switching means I want to communicate with somebody at whatever level they communicate. And I think here is the crux of the issue. Why do I want to communicate, and what do I want to communicate? Are my motives selfish or no? Is my communication for good or ill? It is for the benefit of the other, or for me? And I can ask myself, should ask myself, if the communication is true to "who I am" regardless of the code.
And this leads me to a few concluding thoughts. When we communicate, we make statements explicitly and implicitly. We are also aware (I hope) that inferences will be made. True enough, inferences are largely the responsibility of the audience and cannot be controlled by us. But this is not entirely the case. We perceive at least the possibility of particular inferences. Sometimes we encourage them. Certain rhetorical forms depend upon them. In such cases, do we manipulate the inferences, and to what end? In all of these cases (explicit claims, implicit claims, and cajoled inferences), are we speaking from a single identity that controls our speech keeping it consistent to our "true self" no matter what the voice, no matter what the code? I have no firm conclusions. But one thing that seems promisingly useful is to remember that our actions are valuable in that they reflect our state of being. If our speech acts, properly translated from various voices and codes, are contradictory, we are not speaking from a single identity—or, our single identity is behaving dishonestly. It doesn't take a genius to realize that there are cases where we are genuinely, and for the good, being all things to all people—and cases which cross the line to where we are simply being false.
I was sitting around tonight thinking of music, and this idea I have once in a while of including music videos in this blog. Usually I stop short of doing so, because I find that sort of thing distracting when I read other blogs that are concerned primarily with the arena of spiritual discussion. Admittedly, I face the same thing when I put posts in here about Spadefoots, complete with photos, but hopefully I've written enough explanations as to how the Spadefoots fit into my discussions of faith.
At any rate, I was thinking of music and also of my desire to present something a little less rambling and thrown-together than my recent posting trend. And then along came to my mind a short, informal assignment from my first class in grad school. It covers both of the bases I was looking for tonight, so here it is. (I'm making my first attempt at embedding video in the blog, so let's hope it works. And I will mention, as a reminder to myself, that this song is intriguing in its own right for its appeal to Heaven in the wake of a friend's suicide. It deserves a post of its very own, some day.)
And, uh, I recognize that the claim I'm making, to place this song into anywhere near the same realm as Nietzsche and Greek tragedy may seem absurd, but—I dunno; think about it. Here's the paper:
The professor asserts:
I see [Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy] as an argument about culture and the role language plays in the shaping of culture. I include literature and rhetoric within the broad category of language. The relics of language including literature and recorded oratory map the progress or degeneration of culture. This assertion, however, comes close to being a tautology. (If only a tautology, would Nietzsche have spent so much time writing, rewriting, and qualifying The Birth of Tragedy?) There must be a greater purpose.
Response:
MY ANSWER begins with an image of war. Nietzsche mentions briefly in—but significantly, at the beginning of—An Attempt at Self Criticism that The Birth of Tragedy was conceived during the Franco-Prussian War. What Nietzsche does not note is that he was serving in that war, in the Prussian army, as a medical orderly. At the time he placed pen to paper, a young Nietzsche was witnessing first-hand the horrors of war. This is far from trivial, and in attempting to wager what The Birth of Tragedy's greater purpose may be, we must consider Nietzsche's immediate situation as a possible causal element in his thought process. If we attempt to place the imagery of warfare, the dead and the dying, the blood on Nietzsche's hands and garments into our minds, it begins to make perfect sense that, as he further notes in An Attempt at Self Criticism, he finds himself pondering science, life, religion, art and morality(3). In the middle of man's greatest horrors, horrors often intensified by the genius of science, legitimized by morality and sanctioned by religion, his staggering intellect is brooding with a depth few of us will ever fathom. It is brooding over some thing he considers to be "of utmost importance and… deeply personal." And the nagging question haunting his classical mind is, "What is the Dionysian?" The greater purpose of The Birth of Tragedy (and let us pretend there is only one) is an idea born from a synthesis of all these constituents; an amalgam formed in a crucible heated by the fires of war. In what proportions it is mixed we cannot say, but we can make some sense as to the type of product the synthesis produces.
NIETZSCHE'S PRESENTATION and analysis of Greek tragedy demonstrates Dionysian art as an art that transports the artist beyond himself, to "become art itself" and into the eternal nature of the world. This alone, according to Nietzsche, is man's escape from illusion and mask. Art is the greatest expression of humanity; Man's only pure expression and experience of what it means to contact existence itself(4). But against this salvation stands a modern science, which in gestation destroyed Nietzsche's beloved tragedy and in middle age is advancing the horrors wrought by an ever more modernized warfare. Allied in effect with this science is a sterile morality that seeks to destroy art and thereby nullify Man. Both science and morality appear as anti-life, and therefore as young Nietzsche's enemies. In a calculated response born of his romantic mind, Nietzsche creates and chooses for himself a discipline of life that is anti-moral and pure art. He names it The Dionysian.
It would be an obvious mistake to take this summary and label Nietzsche's presentation as simple, uncomplicated or straightforward. But it is not unfair to say that The Birth of Tragedy is verbose enough to obscure the fact that Nietzsche is being very human in the face of a timeless and very human dilemma. For all its riches, The Birth of Tragedy remains, in large part, a scene taken from a perennial play; the struggle of the individual to find its relationship to, and place within, the Universal. It is typical that this struggle is born of or greatly intensified by the worst of conditions, and wartime strongly qualifies as one. We see Nietzsche traveling, as each of us do, his own unique path to a resolution. Nietzsche's path was simply, but not merely, more intellectually stellar than that of the average person, and held Greek tragedy as one of its annotated waypoints. What we have in The Birth of Tragedy is Nietzsche's working out for himself a view of self vis-à-vis God; at least, a god-like spiritual reality that Nietzsche can acquiesce to consider God. For Nietzsche, it is The Dionysian that delivers one to such a place(4). This, I contend, is the greater purpose of The Birth of Tragedy. And can there be any greater?
WITH A NOD to [the professor], this analysis may well be tautological in its own right, and in a related sense I note that The Birth of Tragedy remains fully relevant for us today.
Contemporary culture in America abounds with analogs to the Dionysian concept, bringing to mind the words "extreme" and "edgy," especially in relation to trends such as body modification and radicalized performance art. Videos of alternative rock band members throwing themselves into crowds of frenzied fans come to mind, and it is difficult to deny that the very heavily tattooed and pierced person is not attempting to go beyond the performance of art to become art itself. Such practices can be attempts to take humanity beyond humanity, into the realm that lies beyond (or under) humanity; to loose one's self of self. Not surprisingly, they are often intellectually unrecognized as such, and placed under the labels of trend and fashion.
When applied to our culture, Nietzsche's view of morality is most clearly represented in fundamental religion of monotheistic faiths, and in the less radical yet conservative evangelical Christian faith. These continue to exert the same art-nullifying influences against which Nietzsche rails. Nietzsche is correct in saying these influences are anti-art; which is to say, they are intent on stifling the creative urge in humanity. This remains today one of the great ironies of such religions; that ostensibly in the name of a Creator, they seek to attenuate the inherited Creative Urge gracefully breathed into the soul of the created. This nullifying element is represented by media in iconic form as America's religious right.
While both "Dionysian" and "moral" elements flourish in our culture, the Apollonian seems to be suffering. Fine art in "plastic" forms is relegated to museums, visual arts are limited to moving imagery and are often only in tertiary support of other mediums, and the higher ideals inspired by Apollo are mistakenly equated to morality per se. The resulting vacuum remains a tremendous weakness in our society: pundits incite the populace to reduce everything into binary quantities of the Dionysian versus the moral. Missing are Nietzsche's Apollonian, and a second form of mysticism Nietzsche himself had likely encountered yet happens to ignore completely(5). We are left in a state far less than ideal, for when the Apollonian does not exist to temper Dionysian, and other forms of mysticism are ignored, it remains far too easy to believe that everything capable of loosing us from ourselves is unquestionably expedient. This tendency is exacerbated by the intuitive realization that our society's only advertised alternative is an arid, life-limiting morality few find appealing.
The Creative, Artful Urge within us is telling us to run from that which stifles it and into the arms of its eternal source, and indeed we are often quick to run. But I am afraid our running is frequently blind, and not always to God.
Notes and points of discussion:
1. An example of contemporary Dionysian art?
Say Hello 2 Heaven, by Temple of the Dog. Seriously open to debate (and even more so to musical taste), but listen to the ending chorus, as the singer begins to loose himself of any concern of being a singer. The art is overtaking the artist. In the spirit of this paper, listen to the song while imagining a battlefield. I think one can begin to get an idea of art transporting us to a place that science and morality cannot:
2. Sources
Quotations below are from The Birth of Tragedy translated by Ian Johnston of Malaspina University-College, Nanaimo, BC, last revised June 2003. An etext is available at:
3. Excerpts noting the constituents of Nietzsche's dilemma
"Whatever might have been be the basis for this dubious book, it must have been a question of the utmost importance… a deeply personal one… Testimony to that effect is the time in which it arose… that disturbing era of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71… The issue which that bold book dared to approach for the first time… to look at scientific enquiry from the perspective of the artist, but to look at art from the perspective of life…"
"…above all the issue that there is a problem right here and that the Greeks will continue remains, as before, entirely unknown and unknowable as long as we have no answer to the question, 'What is the Dionysian?' Indeed, what is the Dionysian? This book offers an answer to that question…"
"We see that this book was burdened with an entire bundle of difficult questions. Let us add its most difficult question: What, from the point of view of living, does morality mean?"
"… art, and not morality, was the essential metaphysical human activity, and in the book itself there appears many times over the suggestive statement that the existence of the world is justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon… the entire book recognizes only an aesthetic sense and a deeper meaning under everything that happens..."
"And what about morality itself? Isn't morality… the greatest of all dangers? And so, my instinct at that time turned itself against morality in this questionable book, as an instinctual affirmation of life, and a fundamentally different doctrine, a totally opposite way of evaluating life, was invented, something purely artistic and anti-Christian. What should it be called? As a philologist and man of words…I called it the Dionysian."
4. Excerpts supporting the idea of Dionysian art as contact with the ground of being
"…it is possible for us to imagine how he sinks down in the Dionysian drunkenness and mystical obliteration of the self… his own state now reveals itself to him, that is, his unity with the innermost basis of the world…"
"Only this 'I' is not the same as the 'I' of the awake, empirically real man, but the single 'I' of true and eternal being in general, the 'I' resting on the foundation of things. Through its portrayal the lyrical genius sees right into the very basis of things."
"But insofar as the subject is an artist, he is already released from his individual willing and has become, so to speak, a medium through which a subject of true being celebrates its redemption… We should really look upon ourselves as beautiful pictures and artistic projections of the true creator, and in that significance as works of art we have our highest value…"
"This is the most direct effect of Dionysian tragedy… the gap between man and man give way to an invincible feeling of unity which leads back to the heart of nature."
"The ecstasy of the Dionysian state, with its destruction of the customary manacles and boundaries of existence, contains, of course, for as long as it lasts a lethargic element, in which everything personally experienced in the past is immersed. Through this gulf of oblivion, the world of everyday reality and the Dionysian reality separate from each other."
"The sphere of poetry does not lie beyond this world as the fantastic impossibility of a poet's brain. It wants to be exactly the opposite, the unadorned expression of the truth, and it must therefore cast off the false costume of that truth thought up by the man of culture. The contrast of this real truth of nature and the cultural lie which behaves as if it is the only reality is similar to the contrast between the eternal core of things, the thing-in-itself, and the total world of appearances."
"Hence our entire knowledge of art is basically completely illusory, because, as knowing people, we are not one with or identical to that being who, as the single creator and spectator of that comedy of art, prepares for itself an eternal enjoyment. Only to the extent that the genius in the act of artistic creation is fused with that primordial artist of the world, does he know anything about the eternal nature of art, only in that state in which (as in the weird picture of fairy tales) he can miraculously turn his eyes and contemplate himself. Now he is simultaneously subject and object, all at once poet, actor, and spectator."
It seems reasonable to view these types of images as analogs to concepts of God we find in systems of spiritual and religious thought: non-duality in select Eastern religions, and God as "the ground of being" in Paul Tillich's Systematic Theology.
These lead me to believe that Nietzsche's concern is really one of (his) humanity in experience of and/or relation to true deity (i.e., God).
5. The mysticism that Nietzsche neglects
It's interesting that Nietzsche comments on Christianity yet limits his observation, apparently, to Orthodox and/or reformed orthopraxis. Nowhere is there mention of Christian mysticism, although can't we assume that Nietzsche would have been familiar with Meister Eckhart? Perhaps not, though, in his twenties?
Christian mysticism, and the spirituality it represents, are a missing element in Nietzsche's thought. Perennially, there are two basic approaches to mysticism in Man's spiritual traditions. There is the inward, meditative, emptying tradition (e.g., Christian mysticism, Zen Buddhism) and there is the super-man, beyond man, I have become God approach. This latter approach is foreign to me except for having read about it. I wonder if the Dionysian is an example of this. At any rate, both approaches have the same end: dissolution of the individual into the eternal; not Man as God, but Man in God.
If I had to claim at present an area of research for my degree, I'd say that ostensibly it's about "Building bridges and spanning spaces." Supposedly I concern myself with internarrative spaces and the breakdown of communication between discourse communities. And, of course, magical ways of forming connections across these gaps: a little something I impressively label "memetic bridging." Yeah. Thumthin like that.
I truly do find internarrative spaces fascinating. But I have to admit that sometimes they're just plain disheartening. When you study the differences of frameworks in ardent opponents, sometimes it's simply frustrating and you just wonder why the groups can't see what each other is saying. But what's really unsettling is when you try to grasp the supporting structures of each framework in certain cases, and also examine, on each side, the critiques of the respective opponent's framework. This is not so much frustrating as it is simply mind-numbing. It becomes obvious why, in certain meetings of certain communities, the end result is that each group decides the best thing is to just do their own "thing" and leave one another alone.
I've been reading a present debate on the internet between two guys who belong to one Protestant tradition, one guy in the Bible Belt and one guy way out west. The former is, in my point of view, a dyed-in-the-wool, card-carrying fundamentalist, while the latter is… well, more conservative than I am but a flaming, hell-bound liberal in the eyes of the former. Same religious tradition, same Bible, and about 170 degrees off from one another. This could be considered the intriguing, even frustrating, part. But, the reading of the interpretations that each has of the other's words, and the comments of people who are reading the debates, is the mind-numbing part. Beyond the fact that everybody is writing in English, there is almost no framework which exists to support effective dialogue.
Yet both these groups fit into a big bucket the secular world hears say, "Come unto us in the name of Christ, and find the Truth."
Time for me to go sit and rock in a corner, hugging myself, trying to find a happy place.
The few lines of today's Merton Monday are deceptively simple; the ideas of "true" self and "false" self may not, in the end, cover all the bases. At the very least, I think the false self can be broken into false selves as far as I tend to view it. And then there's the idea in my mind that all this disunity within me, this propensity to foster the disunity by breaking things down, is a (if not the) problem. At the very least, walking a path of discovering one's "true" self in God involves not only casting false selves aside, but also integrating them—or parts of them—into a whole. In other words, part of my true self is the very fact that false selves tend to exist within me; I cannot ignore them, pretend they don't exist. I must recognize them and—in a certain sense and for a certain moment in my life—accept them. After all, there's no way to acknowledge them, to identify them, to bid them farewell, unless I first agree that they exist and then converse with them. And most likely, it is only some aspect of my true self that can accomplish this. Just thinking out loud for a minute.
What I like most about this Merton Monday is the idea of the immense tension which exists between the humility to be ourselves and the pride of our false self (or selves). Merton is correct that this is a struggle of heroic proportions. The idea of it reminds me of intuitions I feel when I'm around other people. At one end of the spectrum are folks who are totally immersed in false selves (their own and those of other people). At the other end are the rare breed who seem to have found their true self and are amazingly humble and peaceful. In the middle is all the rest of us. Toward the people along this spectrum, I confess, I hold various opinions and feel various emotions. I feel compassion for those who are so mired in falsehood they don't even think about truth. I am amazed by those few who seem to have found their true selves. Honestly, I think the ones I just can't stand are those who are fully bound up in falsehood yet spend their time proudly proclaiming it to be the singular Truth. And honestly, I think the ones I identify with the most are those who at some level understand the struggle and are fighting gallantly, against the whole world, to win it. Some of them appear as total freaks to the rest of the world, but I really think that many of them are attempting something quite noble—whether they fully realize it or not. The role of humility in this latter case is to recognize that being considered a freak may at times be necessary—unavoidable, even—in the quest for truth, but it is not an end in itself. Being a freak for the sake of being a freak is a pride which is just as ignoble and ugly as any other of its more common, accepted forms.
Walking about our property with a keen eye will reveal little froglets hopping about the plants and shadows. I guess we did our job okay, and it's in nature's hands now.
Out of the hundred or so frogs we released, we kept these three: three kids, three frogs, naturally. These three are relatively small ones from the overall project; they are a bit less than half an inch long. The photographs were taken in super macro mode with a Canon S3; the lens is two inches or less from the frogs. As you can see, the natural camouflage is quite good: peering into the little environment we have set up, it takes the four of us a minute or so to find these little tikes...
Call me a little mixed up priority-wise if you must, but I'm frustrated that today I had to go to work instead of staying home and… taking care of froglets.
I didn't have time to pursue the grand media compilation I wanted for this year's Spadefoot Project, but overall the project has been successful, and started out with a great show. Two weekends ago we had rain for two solid days; probably leftover from a tropical storm as it pushed its way northward. This resulted in a lot of standing water two Saturday nights ago; the water filled up our ponding areas and flowed into the street. So imagine me outside at midnight, in the rain, soaked through and through, holding a camera, an umbrella and a flashlight. It was Spadefoots galore, with my favorite part being the group of frogs who came hopping determinedly down the street (just where do they all come from?), making a beeline toward those in the pond who sat and bellowed their sheepish-sounding mating calls. I have some good audio I'll try to make available, and some poor, grainy but somewhat recognizable video of a frog or two croaking. I wasn't about to take the spouse's nice camera out into the rain, so the video is from my kid's cheaper camera; lighting and resolution leave a lot to be desired. And, admittedly, trying to hold an umbrella to protect the camera, while trying to point a flashlight, while trying to video, is a bit beyond my skill level. But, trust me: there were frogs everywhere. Very cool.
The ponding area where the frogs gather doesn't hold water long enough to sustain the eggs deposited there, and I had a hard time convincing the kids that we can't "save all of them." There's a larger lesson here I'm trying to fit into all the other items in my brain, but the fact is, if you try to save all of them, you end up losing most of them. We learned this last year, but of course this didn't keep us from still taking too many; each kid had to grab a clutch, so we wound up with a lot of eggs. But, I can say that last summer I learned a few things about being a frog raiser, and this year we're currently dealing with a whole bunch of little froglets that we're setting free around the property.
The lessons recorded from last year are:
1. In this case, it was sixteen to twenty-three days from egg to froglet.
2. Next time, collect a much smaller number of eggs.
3. Next time, place them in a much larger container.
4. Exchange a portion of the water at least daily to keep it clean.
5. Next time, once the tadpoles as a population begin to get front legs, check them as often as possible, as the transformation is extremely rapid from this point.
6. Next time, try to create an environment that includes a smooth and shallow transition from water to land.
7. Fish flakes seem to be an acceptable food.
8. Record dates and times again, and see if the lessons learned produce a shorter elapsed egg to froglet time.
9. Don't get so emotionally involved, or, just decide to leave nature well enough alone in the first place.
The lessons learned this year are:
1. Take still fewer eggs.
2. Reptile stick food works very well; better than fish food.
3. As far as containers, it looks like the width and length of the container need to each be about twice as much as the depth of the water. Pans work well, buckets do not. This year I used a kiddie pool in addition to pans and buckets, and it was the best approach of the three. The tadpoles in the dish pans did well enough, but tadpoles did not grow well in the buckets. Buckets should be avoided.
Items 5 and 6 above are the challenge we're dealing with right now. I didn't get a chance to develop the smooth transition area, and as soon as the tadpoles sprout front legs that are mature enough to have an "elbow," they need to come out of the water or they'll drown fairly quickly. From all appearances, they are fully capable of hopping off into the great unknown with their short little tails at this point. (I tested this by creating a very shallow area of water that led to a flower garden and placing a couple dozen froglets into it. They all made their way out of the water and onto the land by themselves.) Because the metamorphosis of Spadefoots is so rapid, this takes nearly constant vigilance if the froglets can't walk or hop out of the water and onto land. The job of removing such froglets from the water every hour is a job I left entrusted to the girls today.
I'm presuming that a point of data indicating improvement in the overall care of the tadpoles this year is that the earliest frogs formed only ten days after the eggs were deposited. This is getting closer to nature, which I've read takes seven to ten days in this species. (Don't know if this is factual or not.)
That's about it for the project this year. We'll continue fishing froglets out of the kiddie pool until there are none left. If you ever find a clutch of eggs after the rains, and they're in an area you know is going to dry up, try the process out (just don't take them from a pond where they would be fine on their own!). It's an interesting experiment concerning the lives of one of Earth's little creatures; guaranteed to bring a smile or two to your face.
For your consideration, my opening notes in in our poverty, the book:
THE JESUS story began for me many years ago, and it was a story that began with a given: Jesus is the Son of God. From the given flowed many claims, demands and concerns; claims of what was right and wrong, demands to be good, and concerns of not being good enough. For a while, that approach worked for me. The given was enough, and I could be good enough. Yet in time it ceased to be—perhaps because I ceased to be.
I think that my problem with the story was that it was too big in all of the small places, and too small in all of the big places. It increasingly became a story that seemed to have itself backwards. Somewhere along the way, I decided it was all but completely wrong.
But by that time it had already become a story that I could never fully let go, and maybe this was the point of it all in the first place. If so, it served its purpose well, and to it I will forever be in debt. Whatever the case may be, I have had to rewrite the story for myself—a process that I now realize will continue for the rest of my life.
I will always think of God in terms of particular ancient stories and with the accent of a particular religious language, but I have learned that what matters far more than the stories and the language is the meaning of the stories, and the messages the language is trying to convey. I have learned that finding a way to see God clearly is the only thing that matters—that in the midst of a world that can seem ambiguous, arbitrary, pointless and even malevolent, we are in fact awash in a sea of immeasurable love. This I have come to know beyond any shadow of doubt.
What we must do is discover the vision to see this love, and find the courage to submerge ourselves and drown within it. This is the great challenge of the Jesus story, and it is the sheer depth of this challenge, rather than any intellectual debate, that has caused serious emphasis upon Jesus' story to often be viewed with great skepticism. Jesus called us to accept more than we are willing to accept, to reject more than we are willing to reject, to love more than we are willing to love, and to give more than we are willing to give. Jesus called us to live within the reign and rule of God, and we are typically unwilling to do so. This is why people like you and me killed him.
Yet while most of Christianity focuses upon Jesus' death, I believe we must choose to think instead of his life. I fully understand that as far as Christian doctrine is concerned, the death and resurrection of Jesus are of paramount importance. But I can never escape the feeling that to focus upon them to the exclusion of everything else is a way to cheat at believing the story. It seems to me all too convenient to say that Jesus died for us, and that is the end of that—than to say Jesus called us to live like he did, and that this is the beginning of everything.
The opening and concluding paragraphs of in our poverty, chapter 10:
To many people the Bible is more important than God. They consider the Bible to be the only validation of anything man can possibly have to do with God. They believe there is no point in believing there is a God unless you believe in the Bible. To them there is no useful God apart from the Bible, and there would be no point to God's existence without the Bible. Reduced to its pure practicality, their view is that without the Bible there is no God.
If I am to live in this physical world and see it rightly, see each created thing as a manifestation of God's glory, I must see that the world, both in its visible forms and in its hidden forms, is part of the word of God. I must then take what I see and I must love what I see; not love a particular thing as if for its own sake, but love it for the particular word or words of God it is. I do not need to love the things of this world, but I must come to dearly and passionately love the spirit of God as it shows itself to me within and through them. Once I have seen and learned to love what is before me, I must welcome this love into my heart that it may compel me to act in accord with God's word all around me. If I cannot do this, the meaning of all these things will be lost to me and I will not hear his voice. Each utterance of God around me will fall upon my deafness, and if I hear anything at all it will only be because I mistake my own voice for that of God.
I received a couple of requests to make this essay available, so here it is. I've placed it over on the writings & projects pages, but you can grab a pdf here.
IT’S BEEN a crazy summer, at least in my head. I’m sure this has something to do with why I’ve veered in the blog over the past couple of months and done things I haven’t before. I was a little more opinionated in one of the posts, and I started to have regular posts on The Spadefoot Project, before I moved them elsewhere. There have been a number of ideas going through my mind this summer, and for the most part my internal efforts in such times are all about tying everything together into something not necessarily whole, but at least related. I’m not sure I’ve accomplished that this summer, but I am trying to get the major ideas online before classes start.
I’d like to start with the Spadefoots. I’m sure people watch me do things, and they take them pretty much at face value. Usually that’s a good thing, because most of the time I have some underlying motive behind what I’m doing and, for the most part, the motive is not something with which most people want to be involved. But here’s my attempt to start tying this summer’s thoughts together. If nothing else, I think I deserve an “A” for effort.
SINCE I live in the desert, I guess the little frogs have taken on the burden of being as close to sea turtles as I can get for now. And so they, like the turtles, have a little something to do with this: I was walking along one day a few years back, my brain minding its own business, when into it popped—in an instant and quite unbidden—the following challenge: (1) Traditional Christianity as I’ve been taught says (a) God won a certain and complete victory over sin and death through Jesus, (b) Few are they who find eternal life with God in Heaven. (2) Unhappy conclusion: (a) This isn’t much of a victory, especially considering the cost, and (b) I think I have a serious problem with this.
Now, before I go any further let me say I’ve read a fair amount about the Arminians, the Calvinists and the Universalists. To pick down-to-earth terms, the Free Will, the Predestination and the God-saves-everybody crowds. Each makes biblical sense in some ways, and each fails biblically in some ways. Welcome to religion. But I purposely decided to look at the point as posed to myself differently; at least for a while. It’s not particularly philosophical or theological or even clever. It’s more just (gasp!) the way I tend to feel about it. I call it the Big God, Little God view.
On the one hand, if you really think that God defeated sin and death, if Jesus really died once and for all, if God is all powerful and all loving (I know, it crosses over into the problem of evil), then why not just accept that God is a Big God, and will work it out so that everyone makes it to Heaven? And I do mean, everyone; even Satan. In the Big God theory, given enough time, God will bring every being unto himself, into his loving arms, and unto salvation. This is the universalist ideal and, I have to admit, I like this view quite a lot.
On the other hand, if you really think that God sent Jesus to die for our sins, once and for all, but that the fact of the matter is that relatively few people will be saved from sin, then why not just admit that God is a Little God? I don’t mean this badly and in fact I mean it in a very positive way, but one which begs that we first ask ourselves what we might mean by the “victory” God claims through Jesus. Enter the turtles and frogs.
The vast majority of turtle eggs never result in an adult turtle swimming for countless years through the ocean depths. The vast majority of Spadefoot eggs never result in an adult frog. But is this defeat? Perhaps not and to the contrary, the extreme cost incurred by the species is what makes their beauty so compelling. It costs something to bring an adult sea turtle or frog into the world. It costs the death of scores or hundreds or thousands of intricate, delicate, beautiful little creatures. This can’t be taken lightly, but in the most mundane of terms there is a victory we call the perpetuation of species—species that, especially in the case of the turtles and to me, are movingly glorious. The victory is not in the life of each and every turtle or frog, but in the being of turtleness and frogness; It’s an ontological thing. The glory of the victory is that turtles and frogs continue to grace creation. It is the victory of a Little God who is beyond a concern for numbers. It is the victory of a God who is holy and righteous and victorious in the quality of his being and in the being of those who enter into relationship with him. Victory is not in quantity, but quality. Victory was obtained in Jesus because it ensured the perpetuation of holy relationship in the eternity of the human creature. It was victory because of its unfathomable grace, and as such it would be victory even if only one soul who ever walked the earth was saved by it. I like this too. I like it quite a lot.
[Tangentially, the Achilles heal in the Little God view, one that most Christians deny as being a weakness in any view, is the idea of eternal torment in hell for the wicked. Following my amphibian metaphors all is lost if, say, every little hatchling which never made it to the sea were in a stasis of endless pain as a gull’s beak pierces its shell for one eternal, agonizing instant. All is lost if, say, every little froglet which ever existed but never became an adult were trapped in a forever-moment of drying in the desert sun. The image of endless suffering (if you will allow me the concept applied to simple, voiceless creatures) nullifies the beauty of the species. It ceases to be glorious and becomes simply and purely tragic. I would choose instead to have no turtles, no frogs ever, than to know that millions are stuck ceaselessly in the throws of death’s agony, for then turtle-ness and frog-ness would come to symbolize ugliness, cruelty and suffering. Likewise, if we are to believe that the majority of human souls are to be locked in some eternity of unimaginable agony, then there is no possibility of God’s victory in any sense.(It’s at this point that I should mention I don’t view Christianity as predominately about Heaven and Hell, but when forced to do so, my stand is that I don’t accept eternal torment; it’s inconsistent with the concept of God’s victory. I can sometimes accept the idea of a purgatory, and I can sometimes accept the idea of a “final destruction” of a soul, but never the idea of an eternal torment.)]
So where has this rambling brought us? For a moment, back to the Arminians, the Calvinists, and the Universalists. I have spent a number of years as an Arminian. There is a lot about it that makes sense. Free will must be considered for a practical acceptance of the individual, human experience. To deny free will is to open up a can of worms that is very difficult to deal with. Yet there are times when I cannot fully fault the Calvinist view. Some things happen in life that convince you there has to be a destiny, a fate, a providential choosing beyond the capacity of human will. Sometimes the Arminians seem exactly right. Sometimes the Calvinists do. But then, in either case, what about victory? I mean, what about Victory? What about the Big God?
I have an idea for now. I may not have it ten, five or two years from now, but it’s the best idea I’ve come up with. I think that each great religious idea of man has its root in the Truth of God. I also think that every great religious idea of man is pathetically incomplete—infantile even—compared to the Truth of God. And so when it comes to Free Will, Predestination and Universalism, I think it’s all three. I think all three are true. I believe in the ability to choose; at least to an extent. I believe God wants us to choose him; to genuinely have a choice for good or evil, and exercise it. I believe that love must be chosen in order for it to truly be love. I also believe God chooses some of us with a grace that is irresistible. There is seemingly no other explanation why some of us are literally pulled toward God no matter how hard we try to go the other way. And, I believe that somehow God will save everyone.
Now here’s the trick: I believe the first two are so that we—you and I—can be a part of bringing about the third. I think you and I are hatchlings who in the end of all things are to be sacrificed for the sake of all our human siblings. We are the tiny, delicate, beautiful little ones, the children of a holy but (apparently) little God, who will eventually help bring about the complete and utter victory of the (now obviously) Big and Glorious God. I think that’s the victory of the Big Little God. I think that’s the meaning of the Jesus Story. I think it is victory in every beautiful, mysterious way imaginable. I think it’s the true victory, and I like this view most of all.
In my heart this year, I give myself to God for this image of his present and eternal Kingdom. Choose me irresistibly. Or if you do not, then I give myself to you of my own free will. Either way, from this day forth I give myself to die in your Kingdom for the sake of all who don’t fit the first two.
I REALIZE it’s an idea that most likely seems silly to everyone. I understand that you can argue against it from every side. I know it’s not logically formed. But I think part of what has been going on in my mind this summer is the idea of letting go enough to be willing to openly say things that perhaps nobody will agree with. And even if the idea of all three views being true is completely absurd, there is still something important in this post. Perhaps it is actually the complete point of this post, and so I must ask (I mean, I really must ask) of my fellow Christians a question: Forgetting everything else I’ve said, if you reject the idea of salvation for all, then what is your reason? Why do you reject the idea that every soul can and will be saved? If it’s your doctrine and/or your theology and you’ve searched your heart and you’re humble before God in your conviction, then no problem. This is the best any of us can ever do, and you are still my sibling in God. But I wonder how many of us reject the Universalist ideal for a far more base reason; that, to put it bluntly, we want people to go to hell. I wonder if some of us want to see those we consider vile, immoral, disgusting, sinful—in short, not enough like ourselves—to suffer for forever. Do you think? Do you think that we have no better reason for rejecting Universalism than we want “justice,” which is to say we want some serious Godly anger and vengeance poured out like molten metal upon the heads of those we think deserve it? I hope not. I seriously hope not.
Jesus gave his life to save a people. Jesus asked God to erase the guilt-slate of those who killed him. I cannot help, when I think of the cross and the one who died upon it, that the truly Christian thing is to want all people to be saved. And I cannot help, when I think of the cross and the one who died upon it, that the truly Christian thing is to be willing to die to make sure they are. In the end of all things, perhaps God will sacrifice me to save a bunch of people who really don’t deserve to even be in his presence. Come to think of it, I can die for that. And I can live for that. After all, Jesus did it for me. And he’s the only one I need to follow.
AS THE heavy summer rains are here again, so are the Spadefoot frogs, Scaphiopus couchii. Last fall I wrote about the Spadefoots, and recently decided to follow up this year with some additional thoughts. What’s different this year, and a first for this blog, is the inclusion of some media files to chronicle an impromptu household project I’ve dubbed The Spadefoot Project. It should last about ten days, sometime after which I’ll post my latest God/humankind ramblings built around the Spadefoots.
Now, had I had the presence of mind, I would have recorded some video of this past Thursday night’s storm that brought out the Spadefoots. It was a real winner, and if you haven’t ever been in one of our desert monsoons, you’re missing a treat. The lightning is almost blinding, the thunder is startling enough to make you instinctively hunch your shoulders, and the rain comes down upon your roof so heavily that as you stand inside staring out the window, the downpour creates a literal roar upon your roof. Within minutes ponds have formed in any low-lying areas, and as the storm cell moves on its way, out come the frogs.
A ponding area outside our house became this week’s science project for myself and the kids. Well, mostly for me I suppose. I’ll provide some media and information for each day's progress available via link from here in the blog. And although I’m missing any coverage of the storm, to get things started I have some decent audio of two male Spadefoots in our ponding area shortly after the rain. You can find the daily (well, or so) progress in this pdf file.
I would like to speak for a moment, to speak in very loose and non-technical terms, about a clash of races. Less generally, I would like to speak of the black race—of what have been called black identity and the fact of blackness. More specifically, I would like to speak of these things in the contexts of culture, of my self as a member of the white race, and of a confluence of personal histories, identity and blackness. I would like to speak, in truth, of my own arrogance and ignorance.
I WILL call him John: a man who was once a security officer at my place of employment. On occasion he and I would talk about jobs, cars, the weather or whatever else might come to mind. We always smiled and waved at one another and were, for all practical purposes, good-natured acquaintances. All of this changed, though, on a day we were talking about careers, efforts to progress and succeed in one’s own field, and the associated attention to appropriate dress and physical appearance. John mentioned something about being annoyed by having to shave regularly, and (unfortunately) I had recently read a news article concerning discussions in the United States military about requirements for the shaving of facial hair. At issue in the article was that the facial hair of African-American men, when submitted to close and repeated shaving, in a majority of cases leads to a medical condition whose symptoms include painful and sometimes disfiguring inflammation of the skin. My reply to John’s simple statement was, approximately, “Yeah you know I’ve heard that black people have a hard time with shaving because their hair curls under the skin…” Somewhere near the completion of my thought, John’s demeanor changed drastically and the conversation abruptly ended. Our association remained strictly “professional” for the rest of the time we worked together. Undoubtedly and yet with the best of intentions, I had committed an act I abhor: I had deeply insulted a fellow human being.
IN THE shadow—for the word seems much more appropriate than “light”—of this story, I would first like to consider the word Black to be “a historical category, a political category, a cultural category” as presented by Jamaican writer Stuart Hall when he refers to hearing the word “for the first time in the wake of the Civil Rights movement (149).” This recollection of Hall’s is important at several levels, of which I will mention two. It is most importantly seen as what Hall claims it was: a performative use of language wherein Black was taken out of its tragic and horrendous history and rearticulated in a new and positive way (149). But it is also important presently and to me personally, albeit in a very ironic way, because it was this re-articulation in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s which became an articulation that framed and solidified what “Black” meant to me in my history—a history that for some thirty-five years has remained naively unrevised.
As a student in a fully integrated primary school outside of Washington, D.C. in 1970, I was daily exposed to the phrase “Black Power” by my classroom peers. I knew what the colors black, red and green appearing together on a shirt, bumper sticker or notebook represented. I knew that a plastic or steel pick carried about in one’s hair was “bad,” which is to say, “cool.” It was not uncommon for the good-bye gesture between friends at the end of the day to be an outstretched hand clenched—with the thumb held just so—as a symbol of black power. It was a gesture shared even between friends of mixed races, and I used it myself. The overall impression upon my childhood sensibilities, as I recall it today, was that some of us are white, some of us are black, and there is no difference between us.
But time changes things. It fades photographs and it effaces the monuments of children. I am beginning to learn that within myself the remaining, potent remnant of the history I have just recounted is simply and no more than this: Some of us are white, and some of us are black. So what? So I must now painfully consider the present result of my personal history in terms of what Frantz Fanon articulates powerfully in his essay “The Fact of Blackness:”
Nausea… for my body, for my race, for my ancestors. I discovered my blackness, my ethnic characteristics; and I was battered down by tom-toms, cannibalism, intellectual deficiency, fetichism, racial defects, slavery, and above all else, above all: “Sho’ good eatin.”
On that day, completely dislocated… I took myself far off from my own presence and made myself an object. What else could it be for me but an amputation, an excision, a hemorrhage that spattered my whole body with black blood? But I did not want this revision, this thematization. All I wanted was to be a man among other men (259).
It was upon a slow reading of this section of Fanon’s that I sat chilled in the warmth of my office, a new dictionary turning in my mind, recalling my conversation with John: Sho’ good eatin. To be a man among other men. Sho’ good eatin. To be a man among other men. Your hair curls under your skin. You can’t even shave clean. Sho’ good eatin, right John?
While to me my comment about shaving one’s beard was prompted by a personally historical and conceptually positive view of blackness, it was to John more likely a commentary regarding black vis-à-vis white; which is to say it was a claim made by me concerning his blackness vis-à-vis my whiteness. Some of us are white, and some of us are black. So what? So I meant nothing other than to manifest an attempt to recognize, to sympathize with and to connect to, a man’s blackness. I was stuck somewhere long ago with little Tony and Jimmy playing 45’s at a Valentine’s party. I was implying awareness and acceptance that was easy and uncomplicated; like the first grade was always supposed to be. But since then I should have learned something else simple and uncomplicated: that implication has precious little to do with inference. I realize now, with newfound dismay, that what I “successfully” connected with in the soul of John was more akin to Fanon’s fact of blackness as it existed in John’s history; not in my own. In my arrogance and ignorance I had attempted to show John a white man’s view of Black Man’s history, but had simply reminded him of his own, black, man’s history. I had said to him that, all in all, he was first and foremost black—before anything else.
IN ACADEMIA, one is guilty of plagiarism even when it is accidental. My confession today is that one is similarly culpable for his own racism. And so the question remains as to how we can extract from this story something good; something applicable positively in the realm of race relations. A brief and clever answer would be nice; perhaps something sublime about the need to responsibly loose, claim, revise and apply histories both universal and personal. In this vein, we may do well to note that while history demonstrates that one group of people tends to define all other groups in terms of itself, we must remember that such an act is just as wrong in the small and current cases as it has always been in the monumental and historical cases—for the latter begins with the former. We might also do well to remember that race is not in skin color, nor in our genes, but only in our social constructions (Haney López, 166-71). And with this in mind we might also try to understand that as culture changes, so does race and our outdated views of it. You and I must continually review our own histories small and large, holding them up to the light of current society and reinterpreting them as necessary for the dignity of one another. This is all well and good. And yet I am still left cold, and frustrated, and ashamed.
All of this seems too sterile, too clean and too safe to me today. It looks all too much like a bar of Ivory soap sitting freshly unwrapped in a powder room of privilege. I cannot escape a feeling within my white self concerning black identity, the fact of blackness, and Sho’ good eatin’. To be sure, the belief that race is constructed in relation to others can bring many positive changes in our thinking. But to end with this belief is to run the grave risk of making an implicit, privileged claim within one’s white self that since I have defined blackness, I therefore and obviously understand what it means. It seems imminently logical, after all, that if I define a concept then I determine its meaning. But again, implication has precious little to do with inference. For me today, and for all my talking, the lesson is brutally simple: It is never the place of the White to speak as if he understands Blackness.
Works Cited
Fanon, Frantz. “The Fact of Blackness.” Theories of Race and Racism. New York: Routledge, 2000. 257-266.
Hall, Stuart. “Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities.” Theories of Race and Racism. New York: Routledge, 2000. 144-153.
Haney López, Ian F. “The Social Construction of Race.” Critical Race Theory. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999.
