NEW POEM

Latte Art

…A double cappuccino to go—

your card is declined for lack

of cash.  I pull your shots anyway, and you

shift weight in denim curves, from left

to right, lip whispering Italian,

same as when I rang you yesterday. 

Always you order like that, and stir in

the rosetta ‘til it breaks into dashes, like one

of Joyce’s dialogues.  Kinch without teeth,

the pattern with no leaves, and the barista

knowing at the end of this, you will shift

from left to right, and stir, and leave

no image topping the tazza, nearest

your lips, where I have endeavored

with some skill to set it.  You only stir

a double cappuccino to go… 

New Poem

On Praying the Psalms Back

Your hands do not close.

For your hands are beautiful, and we held

within them whether we writhe or rest.

            It is repose

from the furious contingent, healed

            permanence, that you released

                        in such opening,

a hand, like a book, to record much

            more than the scars the pen inflicts,

                        you record also the uninflected

margin, much larger, awaiting the smallness

            of our hands, rising up after

                     inking the page.

Telegraph, Athens to Jerusalem: Philosophy for Understanding Theology by Diogenes Allen pt. I

Often misapplied, Tertullian's famous question, "what has Athens to do with Jerusalem," was actually an invitation as much as a refutation.  The question was intended to point out not that Athens and Jerusalem had nothing to say to each other, but rather that faith in the Jewish Messiah was introducing something completely novel into the Gentile world.  The categories through which Hellenic philosophy had typically viewed the world were about to be strained to their outer limits (broken, in some cases), pushed at least as far intellectually as the Roman state would be pushed civilly in reckoning with the people of the Jesus way.

This is only just as well, because the conversion of thousands of gentiles, among them some very brilliant people, was sure to inject something new into Jerusalem as well.  Indeed, Allen shares a perspective I have heard N. T. Wright discuss (if only verbally):  that the thing called Theology is a thing that the Hebrews never did as such.  I did not expect that correlation, silly as that is.  Wright is such a formidable presence in Christian thought these days, and he opines on so many things outside of his forte, that I just assume specialists in fields he wanders to will be lining up to kick him in the ass.  So points of correspondence are wonderful.  Allen sees the Hellenic mind as necessary to the discipline of theology, because the Hebrew investigation of God's acts in history left them with a picture of a God who was manifest primarily in his revelation of Himself to them.  The answer then was not so much "who is God" but "what Has He done?"  The Hebrew mind, Allen argues, is the mind that states "Amen," bows before the Mystery, and moves on, whereas the Greek mind prizes coherence in a unique way.  The fathers thus would definitely want to preserve a sense of the mystery of God, but they would also want to derive principles for understanding God, concepts for exploring revelation to find out "how and why is that so?" (xviii).  Thus, a certain familiarity should be expected to exist between theology and western philosophy:  a certain common mode of investigation.  It might even be possible that terms would be shared.  And this is exactly the point and purpose of Allen's book, reflections on which I will be posting here from time to time over the next week or so as I finish it. 

It may even be, so Allen says, that it is nearly impossible to understand certain theological doctrines, formulations, or reactions without recourse to some of the philosophy that is being wrapped up into them.  A helpful example from Chapter 4 is the way an understanding of Aristotle's categories may help to prevent a misreading of Gregory of Nyssa's understanding of the trinity.  In his view, the terms ousion (being) and hypostasis (person) are not to be confused when discussing the unity and diversity of God.  Ousion, he says, is a qualifier, such that it can be shared by multiple persons.  The word "man," for example, does not change in definition or content when it describes Paul, Peter, Apollos, or any other man.  Insofar as these are all men, there is something common to them.  It is not necessary to redefine "man" in the case of each one.  Hypostasis, on the other hand, is a particularity, like "Paul," or "Peter."  In defining Paul, one has excluded everything that is not Paul.  Paul can be a man, but insofar as there are other men, Paul cannot be only a man.  The definition doesn't help.  Furthermore, to call "Peter" a Paul is incorrect.  Thus, Gregory says, The trinity share a unity of ousion, such that there is a commonality that can be said to exist in all of them, but their hypostases, their particularities, are maintained as separate realities.  If one has no recourse to Aristotle, it would be possible merely to assume that Gregory is saying the unity that binds the trinity is the same as the "unity" that binds all men under the name "man."  There would thus be three gods, in addition to a strange unity of all other creatures who can assume the same qualifiers. 

No such thing, however, is intended by Gregory.  Once we have access to Aristotle's categories of beings, we have a quick recognition that Gregory is making a different point entirely.  He is concerned that the readers of his letter avoid category mistakes.  Thus, it is not description of the unity that is his purpose, but a proper division of the unity from the separation that is at issue.  Once that particular understanding is in view, it is quite easy to see that Gregory, like Augustine and so many other early theologians, is merely analogizing for the Trinity rather than describing it.  It is indescribable, as he knows as well as anyone.  But the letter we have just analyzed would seem to say something other than what Gregory and the other Cappadocian fathers fought for at the Council of Nicea.  The philosophical context thus gives help that is quite timely, considering the scandal that could exist if Gregory were taken to be fully descriptive of the unity and particularity within God.

It may be objected (indeed I have already objected and repented the objection) that this is an unnecessary injection of erudition into theology.  After all, one should not have to understand an entire other discipline comprehensively in order to master one's own.  And both disciplines' merits could be argued regarding their actual effectiveness in bringing people to the knowledge of God.  But it is worth mentioning in light of these possible objections that a) people do not know God in some atheoretical vacuum, for indeed even the statement that theology is not really helpful for knowing God is predicated upon a particular theological understanding; and b) the Aristotelean context was probably not as much of a reach for Gregory as it was for us.  It is doubtful to me that Gregory went looking for some obscure reference point so that later readers would have to work harder than they wanted.  Rather, it is likely that Aristotle was merely in the conceptual air.  In theory, if my own experience with latent modernism in the conversations of some philosophically untrained atheist friends is any indication, Gregory could possibly have co-opted those categories without conscious reference to Aristotle.  An interesting point in this regard is that he does not define the kinds of terms he uses with Aristotelean tags.  They are his own, or possibly those of his culture.  That is to say that every word and concept whose meaning seems self-evident in this culture will likely have to be mined for context and correlated to other concepts by those who come after us, in order to avoid misunderstanding.  And it will not be that we were searching to make our views inaccessible; rather, that we were fish who swam in the waters we knew and did not question their particular wetness relative to other waters.  Words mean what they mean here and now.  And this issue itself is part of another philosophical conundrum, the understanding of which will illuminate certain modern theological reflections.  But first, we must pass through the paradise of classical and medieval thought. 

Which we will do, God willing, in upcoming posts.  At this point, it is only necessary to reiterate that theology is not a veiled discipline.  It happens in the open air of each age's intellectual inquiry.  It is therefore hopefully not too much to ask that we immerse ourselves a little in the questions of those who came before, in order to understand exactly what their theologies were (and were not) intended to say of the God that was sought and found by them. 

Next post, we'll look at Allen's understanding of how Plato's creation myth in the dialogue Timaeus was woven into Christian theology's attempt to understand the God whose perfections were revealed but not shared by his creations.

Until then, I'd recommend a double cortadito, a little on the sweet side.  Shalom ya'll.

7/31/11

I live in a predominantly black neighborhood.  I find, even as I type this, that I’m saying it as if I have been diagnosed with a disease.  I moved here because I felt like the Lord told me to—pure and simple.  Different circumstances added up to it, and I felt and feel called here, although this is not easy.  However much it bothers me, I see the Lord’s hand all over it.

He often works this way with me.  Months ago, I realized that although I had prayed a thousand prayers of forgiveness for my father, I had not actually forgiven him for the years of abuse, neglect, lies, and abandonment.  I was living in a community of Christian people who, among other things, spent a good deal of time and effort in care for the homeless people of Gainesville.  Because it has a VA hospital, homeless people flock to Gainesville.  There is a larger-than-normal proportion of homeless people relative to the rest of the population.  I noticed in myself an enormous reluctance to go out to serve them.  At some point, I noticed a strange correlation:  most of the homeless people in Gainesville were my father’s age and station.  Many of them had sons whom they had abandoned in a way similar to the way my father had done.  I had also recently learned that my own father was homeless himself.  After years of surfing on couches, he ran out of other people’s good graces. 

What God showed me was that serving these people was exposing the grudge I was still holding.  So there is no surprise that He commanded me to serve them.  In their faces I saw everything I still hated and resented about my father.  In their faces I saw how my father stood in need of mercy and compassion.  Over time, by God’s grace, I served my father in those men.  It was him to whom I extended warm food and a good conversation, him I came to know in their stories of success, failure, and the ongoing struggle to outlive their regrets.  It was him I extended compassion to when I told them “I’m sure they’d just be glad to know you’re warm tonight.”  And, before I knew it, I was healed. 

The ancient church practice of penance has been deeply misunderstood by protestants.  The church fathers recognized that sin involves a certain amount of denial, a pulling the cloak over one’s own face, so as not to see things as they are or be seen for what one is.  Penance revisits the place of denial, where the deception began, and tells the truth at that place.  It is the closest thing humans can experience to time travel.  By going back to the deception and telling the truth, we can create an alternate reality predicated on that truth.  So, as Lewis says, we unsay the spell, word by word.  It is for this reason that the tax collector, after dinner with Jesus offers to give back four times what he had defrauded others.  It is not a matter of buying redemption; that price only One had the means to pay.  It is rather a matter of telling the truth where one had believed a lie.  

Let no one tell you different, because this is the truth:  racism is still pervasive in this country, and particularly in the south.  Towns and cities that were segregated by unjust laws are now segregated almost as sharply by unjust economic conditions and the kind of systemic racism that shows itself in neighborhood zoning decisions and gentrification.  I knew none of these things as a child, when I explicitly resisted whatever I recognized as racism on all fronts.  In downtown Gainesville, I tried to extend a hand of fellowship to people of all races and backgrounds.  I did what I could.  A few days in my new neighborhood reveals to me that those interactions cost me nothing.  There was virtually no risk in showing benevolence from the implicit position of power I was in.  Here, outnumbered, I realize that if I was never consciously racist, I was practically so.  I internalized beliefs I was unaware of.  I am seeing them now for what they are; and I am repenting.  I am begging that God will give me grace to follow him into this discomfort extract the lies that have rooted themselves invisibly into my soul. 

And so, here, in the middle of a Durham night, I hear the Lord’s voice in the empty sanctuary that is my living room, saying he will not be content that his children should be oppressed by lies.  The devil is a liar, for he has lied from the beginning.  But God has called me into his fellowship, and into neighborhood with those he loves, without asking whether it would comfort me.  I find him here in Durham as he was once found in Bethel, And I struggle wth him.  I will do so until He releases me; I will stay here, desperate for the blessing for which he brought me out of my country.  I will find a way to sing the songs of God in exile and look forward to the days when all nations and tribes sing his praise.

Sweet Poeticizing

Reading Hart Crane

Call the emperor of ice cream, your love
intoned, but you tongued at the infinite
apostrophe of height, your genitive
O's not birthing for all that sound. And that

rhythm of his play, all its comedy
concealed, the laughter eluding the frame
you held your subjects into by force--Be
serious!--you were a child, and no rhyme

could bear the sulking syllable you
bent with the weight of white buildings, with all
the humor of him, loosing that through
which you sought high water. Who saw you fall,

or heard the long vowel in the words that veiled
the reasons why his laughter made you wail?

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PC Culture and the Destruction of Difference

The upcoming NewSouth version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn will excise controversial language, specifically replacing the word "nigger" with "slave."  And the furor over this news has cast Mark Twain's work, which raised the collective bloodpressure even in his day, back into the center of the public buzz, revealing that the United States still stumbles over history and has not yet found a way to deal soberly with what it has done and been.  Indeed, movie critic Roger Ebert has dramatized this unresolved tension in recent days--reacting initially against the edition and later retracting his comments.  As a southern, white Christian, lifelong student of history, and man of letters, I have not been surprised by the indigestion revealed in Ebert's comments and their aftermath.  I must confess that, much like Ebert, I am not likely to be called either nigger or slave in my lifetime.  I am therefore completely unaware of the pain this causes in those who hear it.  It is common these days to pretend that race is no longer sensitive business.  But I cannot act as if I haven't received certain privileges wholly on the basis of my race.  That is quite simply how it is, and pretending otherwise actually would disqualify whatever I might say about this issue a priori.  I hope, having admitted this, I can offer my voice honestly in a conversation that must happen if we are not to be controlled by a past we cannot change and cannot, thus far, reconcile.  About all this, therefore, I posit the following:  contemporary American culture, obsessed as it is by political correctness, has actually dispossessed itself of the tools it might use to effectively process its history and make peace.

Ironically, the processing of difference is exactly the theme of Huck Finn that will be destroyed by the edition soon to be released in February.  Huck Finn is as unpretentious as he is memorable, and probably his most defining trait is an openness to the education of experience, coupled with a distrust of theory as a means of knowledge.  His disinterest in either school or religion comes in favor of a hands-on practicality that makes him far more malleable than most of his readers would wish him.  Critics, much like Huck's own aunt, have wanted to civilize Huck, to force him to be an emblem of something; to stand still and bear the meaning they themselves would ascribe to him.  Huck, as both character and novel, resists pigeonholing; as with the river he rambles, one never steps into the same Huck twice.  But this new edition will rob Huck of the stakes of change.  Indeed, it is hard not to see how the book will not merely appear ridiculous if published as NewSouth plans to do. 


Ridiculous!--Take the famous King and Duke fraud in chapter 24, for example.  Huck's disgust at the way the King and Duke pretend to be brothers of the dead Peter Wilks would be totally meaningless if written thus:

Well, if I ever struck anything like it, I'm a slave.  It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race.

The word "slave" is utterly meaningless in that context, even as a veiled insult.  The sentence after it makes reference to the human race, written in contrast with the original's nigger.  Thus, the one and the other are put on opposite poles of reality.  Twain does it masterly--Huck's unconscious formulation of these poles reveals that these categories are beneath his conscious organizing of the world.   They are self-evident to him, and they must be.  The word nigger places an entire race of people, regardless of status, into one docket.  The word "slave," denoting an institution (and excluding freed blacks) would be less painful, only because it would have no meaning.  But stripping Huck's implicit racism away from him lobotomizes the entire relationship he develops with Jim.  And then what is to be made of Huck's summation of Jim:

I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their'n.

If race is not allowed its full divisory power in this story, this statement is robbed of all its force.  And Huck is robbed of his goodness; and the story of its polemic; and history of its educative potential; and humanity of its....

It is a credit to Twain that Huck never ceases to be of his own time.  From beginning to end, he never stops either saying nigger or making racially-based assumptions.  The categories that exist in his subconscious remain that way, even as his conscious mind begins to process new data.  This is the crucial interpretive fact of the story.  The categories by which humans understand the world are formulated based on enormous amounts of information digested before it is even articulable.  The process of unlearning that information is a lifelong endeavor, requiring nearly innumerable conscious admissions like that of Huck in the quote about Jim's caring for his own people.  That Twain respects the almost unbearable slowness of the process is part of why Huck Finn is an immortal novel and Remember the Titans is an already-forgotten piece of kitsch cinema.

The ironic turnabout of this is that Huck, refusing to stand still, endures forever as a character even so.  The vividness of the currents of opinion concerning the NewSouth release testify to this.  Huck is still speaking, and his words still cut the veins of the culture, whether we like it or not.  His insistence on being his own man, on adapting to his experience, on fluidity, means that he faces every era the same.  His timelessness is absolutely a product of his profound rootedness in his own culture.  And the ways he adapts are robbed of their power to address and teach, let alone to entertain, if we divorce him from his world. 

The intent of those who have aimed to release the book this way is not despicable in the least--they are merely advocating for a book whose language has kept it out of schools.  But if this is what needs to happen for Huck to get in, it is better to keep the book out.  Huck himself would agree, given the indigestion he caused his own teachers.  And the dirty secret is that despite his refusal of his teachers, Huck learns if only by his own humility.  His education leaves us with a word on its way to redemption.  Huck never stops calling Jim nigger; rather, the word changes its meaning.  And it is this change that the politically correct elimination of difference prevents from ever happening.  It is by facing the past that we move beyond it:  by letting our experience teach us, redefine us, and become part of us.  The healing of human trama consists not of changing what the past is, but what it means, and we cannot learn from what is not acknowledged.  If that seems unbearable, it is likely because a secular culture has grown unaccustomed to confession.  Experience will teach that it is confession (read acknowledgment) that heals the wounds we have inflicted, but a culture obsessed with pretending it is healthy stands in great need of someone to open the wound occasionally.  And dulling the sharp edges of the past will do nothing to help with the wounds they have already caused. The removal of differences prevents all possibility of change, and no growth will come of denial.  A sterilized Huckleberry learns nothing and teaches nothing, a perfect emblem of those who would rob him of maybe his most important word.

Political Potshots and the Erosion of Dialogue

I am furious.   

...for two reasons, both of which I will elaborate over the next couple of days in a three-part series concerning signs by which a breakdown of our social engines is recognizable.  In the first two, I will discuss two symptoms, both tragic in varying degrees, and in the third will attempt to delve into ways forward if our society is to continue and heal.  For healing is what this madness needs.  Thus, as before, I'm furious. There is no other way to say what I felt when I heard this:  an Arizona congresswoman shot (perhaps fatally) in her own state.  Along with the rest of the nation, I think I am in a state of civic shock.  I would like to go ahead, in the strongest possible terms, and ask those who do not respect the democratic process by which our country is governed to go ahead and leave it--don't let the TSA agent hit you on the way out!

Our country was founded on the idea (which I confess I doubt sometimes) that the collective voice of the people would nearly always make the best of possible decisions at critical junctures.   It is not a perfect way to govern; it is still better than most other ways I know about.  The popular voice delivered a drubbing to the democratic party this past November, in a country whose political climate was in such flux that, for a democrat to win, it would have to have been pretty clearly the vox populi that did it.  It does not matter whether I like it, although from what I can see I wouldn't have minded the Arizona congresswoman much at all.  Rather, it matters whether I believe in this country's founding principles enough to endorse the rule of those I did not vote for, simply because I believe in the instruments of this country's governance.

Not that I believe politics is much more than a blanket full of holes:  I don't.  I confess to doubting approx. 95% of what I am told by politicians, because the nature of their profession makes it advantageous to lie to such a degree that I tremble to think of how I'd respond to such temptation.  Corruption is almost always the human response to power.  And yet we in the US have been protected for the most part from the worst abuses of power by a Constitution that results, albeit imperfectly, in the balance of corrupting interests against each other.  I am not naive; I am merely savvy enough to see that things are not as bad as they could be (note:  see Venezuela, Afghanistan, and Iran for as bad as it can be).  Our republic has led a charmed life, but we are mistaken if we believe that the fact of privilege ensures or implies its continuation; all societies can break. 

Politics is what happens when human relationships are forced beyond communities of which individual humans can be an active part.  It is therefore necessarily generalizing and diminutive.  And although our ability to harness seemingly infinite amounts of information has given us the appearance of greater connectedness, the vital signs of human community have grown not stronger but weaker in the advent of network.  The human mind simply is not as capable of processing information as a computer is of receiving it.  This has had the strange effect that we are now insufficiently knowledgable about even more stuff.  And let us call this like it is:  there is a very good possibility (in fact I predict it will prove to be true) that the motive of this shooting will turn on some point of political discussion about which this shooter was ill-informed.  It is clear that he was unstable, yes; but it is also clear that the pitch of rhetoric in the state of Arizona during the last year has produced a pressure cooker of ignorant rage.  Indeed, for some time ignorance and rage have seemed to be all the two parties shared.  Both sides of the immigration debate have concentrated far more on talking past each other than on defining their terms and trying to reason in those of the other.

This abortion of communication roots most profoundly in the narcissism of which people are all in some measure possessed.  People who are successful in relationship have learned to mistrust that narcissism and criticize themselves with others.  The inability to do that is the quintessence of childishness.  We recognize the beginnings of adulthood in young people who are learning empathy, concern, compassion, and responsibility.  We naturally do not trust anyone in a dispute who assumes none of the responsibility for it.  For reasons I will discuss in part three of this series, life in the public sphere has divorced itself from these basic expectations, and it has become common to treat political discourse as a simple game of us vs. them, such that parties have been able to assign a perfect blame for every societal ill to their opponents.  This has the appearance of critical thought, and those who engage in it often claim they are merely being reasonable.  Yet critical thinking is that which helps us see that in most human conflict, blame is not unilateral.  Contemporary politics is just not done this way.  And we must all own our part of this problem, if we are to engage it correctly.

I pray this congresswoman will survive all this.  I know my anger at it is justified; I also know that whether or not I have learned from this will be displayed not in how I declaim the taking of political shots but in how I participate in and assist the creation of a more mature conversation in the future.  Lord, make it so--and my anger will have served a worthy purpose.

For a blanket with holes is better than none at all.

Poeticizing

Scene from Jeff's Deli
           ~for Chelsea Glass

I’ll taste the soup, her laugh
    explains. But where’s the spoon?
        No matter where

if not here, I stress. For soon, I know
    she will leave, a glance from over
        her coffee convinces me,

and the sip of soup is the tenor
    or will be, of her remembrance. Her
        without spoon, slurping the curve

of a need, to live outside
    the dish she thinks me
        unwilling to break, whatever

the spoon on purpose left out
           of the stir.
     Not of soup, but her,

not stirring me, though I would wish
    to swirl in the broth of how
        she quickens,

she, the necessary silver,
    the tone of her taking always
        parts of something left whole

only when she is
        heard
    hastening within it.

(c) William Glass