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| Against Normalcy
It feels good to be writing this entry from the patio of our new house in Chattanooga. We haven't really had a patio in about ten years, so it feels more like a vacation house than a permanent residence. There's also a sprinkler combing the treeline lackadaisically, a bench next to a campfire pit, a swingset, and beyond that, a marshy area from which come assorted chirps and mechanical whines - evidence that the natural is hemmed in by the artificial more than a first glance at the backyard would suggest. Everything works together, though, since the artificial isn't so much superficial as aedificial. The only thing out of place is the dog who won't shut up next door. There's a good feeling here, not because I'm having some sort of physical need met, but because I'm at peace, and the world seems to be at peace with me. Call it ontological equilibrium, or normalcy.
Normalcy is not a popular concept today. After a few hundred years of reformulated pagan philosophy, ethical and ontological standards have been reduced to vague statements about "helping people" and "making the world a better place." There is a lot of talk about feeling good, but only when good is colloquial shorthand for "comfortable/happy/fulfilled" and not "the presence of good things." Here on this patio, I feel good - in the weird chirps from the marsh and in the breeze sifting through suburbia. I feel comfortable and happy and fulfilled, too, but those are results, not ends.
Mother Kirk has not escaped the Cult of Good Feeling, unfortunately. Before addressing that, one tangent: Have you ever wondered whether the phrase "worship service" is oxymoronic? Worship is for God's benefit, not ours. But what about the word "service"? Does that mean our service (servanthood) before Christ, or His serving us? There should not be a division here; Christ serves us through His Eucharistic presence, just as we serve Him in our lives and collective humility. Once the idea of service becomes solely about our being served, the phrase does become oxymoronic. A worship service ought to be about the mutual relationship between the Church and God. Lose either part of that relationship, and it will become stale. Such is why both the me-centered rock-concert-patterned evangelicalism and the doctrine-centered seminar-patterned Protestantism fail; the first forgets to worship, and the second forgets to be served.
What a true worship service practices, then, is the presence of good - the presence of God. Through fellowship, we see the good in others' lives. Through the Eucharist, that sublime fellowship with God, we taste of the good things given us by Christ. After which, we feel good - feel it in a handshake or a blessed piece of bread. There are probably parallels here to Benjamin's idea of the "aura" in artwork. In any case, "good feeling" is not primarily about how we feel, but about what we feel. If we feel good without feeling a good thing, we are disconnected, or worse, deceived. Another question, from that: have you ever heard someone say they prefer "spirituality" to "religion"? That distinction is against normalcy. Spirituality is about feeling good. Religion, properly practiced, is about feeling good things.
Hundreds and thousands of years through history, there was an understanding of "God." Until the Enlightenment, one would have been foolish not to believe in a transcendent spiritual entity governing the affairs of humanity. After the Enlightenment and into the era of spirituality, this common understanding has been lost. So, too, has normalcy. The idea that "spirituality" is something one acquires, or to which one converts, is like saying that eating is something one comes to grip with after some thinking. Spirituality - an understanding of a greater spiritual being - is the bottom rung of a healthy spirit, just as eating is of good taste. The idea of a separation between spirituality and religion is anti-normalcy; it makes spirituality abnormal (in the ab sense of "coming from," not "away from") and makes religion absurdly artificial. Does this mean that "spiritualists" are right when they say religion is "binding"? Absolutely. And thank God. I would much rather have my wayward spirit tied down to good things like call-and-response and the Lord's Supper. Let the world feel good if it wants to. The Church needs to be after good things.
"I feel so fine! I feel so elated!"
--D
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| On Anonymity
There is a trend on campus (at least since I got here) to claim anonymity as a means to promote more meaningful dialogue. The one and only argument used is that anonymity in debate causes people to think about the ideas, not the person behind those ideas. I have never liked this argument - not when the "liberals" were making it, and not now while the "conservatives" are making it. (That turn, by the way, is one of the most fascinating switches in the political history of this college.) I believe anonymity not only hurts debate, but also hurts our ability to debate as Christians. Here are a few of my reasons for believing so:
(1) Anonymity is anti-sacramental. It separates flesh from spirit, universal from particular. It encourages us to think of ideas as abstract entities battling each other in ethereality, ignoring the bare fact that arguments on this earth do not occur except between people - real, living, debating people. It is speech without a mouth, thought without gray matter.
(2) The use of anonymity to facilitate debate is akin to the abundance of locks on doors to prevent stealing: both fail to address the real problem. Anonymity purports to say, "Here is this idea - take it for what it is worth, regardless of the messenger." What anonymity actually says is, "Here is this idea - I think so little of you that I do not believe you can honestly evaluate it if my name is attached to it." If that is the case, why would the messenger think the other person is intellectually honest enough to debate the opinions without a person attached? Anonymity does not encourage honest debate; it encourages the very problem it seeks to address by assuming that people cannot look past other personalities to judge the merits of the case. By assuming the fault of much of its audience, it shows itself to be essentially antagonistic, not appropriately humble.
(3) God is not anonymous. Nor were any of his prophets, apostles, preachers, messengers, priests, etc. The biblical example is always this: that men who believe the truth ought to put their names to it. Anonymity claims to say, "Here is this idea - look at it on its own merits." What it actually says is, "Here is this idea - I am unwilling to put my name to it publicly." An inability to personally support a position in the name of honest debate saps the structure of what honest debate is about - real people accepting valid arguments. In the name of a truthfulness which is not presupposed in its audience, anonymity encourages men to separate their own attraction to the argument from the attractiveness of the argument. How can one present a good position which has failed to win over the presenter himself?
(4) If one is not comfortable putting his own name to a position through fear, is there not a mediatorial paradigm in the Scriptures? Cannot another speak for you? Are we not to be as Jesus for each other, speaking for another's position if necessary?
I have a somewhat perverse image of Jesus bringing His disciples to Himself and saying, "You do realize that the world hates Me, does not believe in Me, and may kill you because of Me. So you had best give them this gospel in pamphlet form without your names attached lest you all be tortured, crucified, hung, burnt, and all the rest. In fact, you had best not even put My name on it, so people will be more inclined to read it." [Remember, too, that when the Pharisees first encountered Jesus, they said amongst themselves, "Is this not the son of Joseph?"] If there is a fault of people to judge character before message, such a fault comes with the territory. There is no basis for anonymity in the Scriptures, nor a really good case for it until the Founding Fathers. Perhaps we should review their motivations before attaching their name to this debate as if their authority proved everything. [Isn't that itself ironic, that we point to the people behind the Federalist Papers and not the content therein?]
--D
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| How to Love
Every year I notice it (in a presidential election specifically, but that's fortunately beside the point). How do we love those with whom we disagree? Or, perhaps more realistically, how do we love those not in our social group?
1. It cannot be through common etiquette. So do the Gentiles.
2. It cannot be through feeling sympathy for others' pain. So do the Gentiles.
3. It cannot be through a smile on the sidewalk, or a quick conversation, or a friendly exchange. So do the Gentiles.
Christ loved by praying for His disciples constantly, by giving them an example as a servant, and by ultimately dying on the cross for their sins. So my question again is: is the answer to "How to Love" difficult because the answer is so complicated - in our cultural and academic context, our environment of legitimate friends and suspect cliques - or because the answer is so simple? What WOULD happen if we started praying for everyone - and I mean everyone, individually, specifically, seeking out their needs, on a daily, extended basis? What WOULD happen if our love truly went beyond "like"? I wonder, and hope, for where Christ is pursued there His love will be also.
--D
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| Experiment in Iambic Pent., and Reflections
"It is standard procedure for a college’s faculty
to be relatively stable from one year to the next. Academia is not a
field wherein high turnover is the norm."
It was somewhere in the middle of March,
April was not too far off, and the smell
Of near fruit, far-off, too far to impose
Itself on the senses, blew through the dawn.
At least it looked like dawn. Some evenings are
Obstructed by windows - and appear
Through darkened (a word that always implies
Someone who darkens) glass to be growing
Lighter, while the last rays of sun sink down.
In the night sky they are stars - but this is
Too convenient a metaphor. Stars fall
(or fell) after all. Sometimes I wonder
Inwardly whether this is not God's last
Terrible blessing, or whether those who
Offer this consolation - "Perhaps things
Will be best if they go" - are not more right
Than even they had anticipated.
Time to look back and watch the stars go out.
After a while, after I have made up
My mind once again: I realize that
Through the darkened glass, evening is only
A drapery over the next dawn. Those
Machinations and slanders are but dust
Making the stars glimmer in the night sky.
Then I look harder, for I would not be
Taken in again: and realize that
The sun has come up and the stars remain.
--D
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| In memoriam Dr. Gruenke and Dr. Smith
"And he said, 'Then I beg you, father, that you send him to my father's house - for I have five brothers - in order that he may warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.' But Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.' But he said, 'No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent!' But he said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.'"
--Luke 16:27-31
[P.S. I humbly ask everyone not to use this set of resignations as an opportunity to ridicule the college or people with whom you disagree. One of the marks of a fool in the Proverbs is sloth. Such a vice is reflected not only physically but intellectually as well. It is easy to snipe from a distance, unseen. It is easy to whine about problems which everyone already recognizes. It is easy to attach ideals of justice to a new cause. But it is difficult - very difficult - to see tough situations as an opportunity to reform your own life. Apparent action speaks a great deal louder than anonymous words; the day is carried by men who would hold to the truth no matter the response of their social group, and not by sheep who feel uncomfortable conversing with the other camp's rubes.]
--D
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