I received a cross necklace for Christmas. It is made of silver from Ethiopia, and my sister-in-law (one of those wonderful people who manages to keep having quiet faith despite doubts and bad church experiences and all that) gave it to me. It's beautiful, and I love it. But when (and how) should I wear it?
I've been thinking about getting a cross for a while but kept balking for two reasons. The first was that, like Annie Dillard's monumental book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, it's not something one should just buy new from a store. It should be well-worn, or be a gift, or have a history beyond just that of a consumerist desire. My sister-in-law solved that problem for me.
The second reason why I avoided getting a cross was that I couldn't figure out how to treat it. After all, it's a visible symbol of my faith, and a pretty nasty torture implement besides -- I can't just treat it like any other piece of jewelry. So wearing it because it happens to go with my outfit is not good, I think. But on the other hand, I don't want to wear it all the time. Besides the vain objection that I like my other necklaces and want to wear them sometimes too, there's the more serious idea that I don't always want to wear my religious affiliation around my neck. Sometimes I want to 'pass' as normal, not because I'm ashamed of my religion (at least, I hope that's not the case) but because I don't want to activate someone's hangups around Christianity. I still make immediate assumptions when I see someone wearing a cross -- how am I to expect someone who doesn't share my beliefs not to do the same?
My friend Victoria suggested a possible resolution to these sort of mental gymnastics -- just wear the cross when I'm doing something particularly Christian -- going to church or giving a sermon or something. But how can I do anything and not be a Christian? If I'm right about my beliefs, if they should undergird and support everything I do and say and decide, then I shouldn't ever take the cross off. But on the other hand, my beliefs should not be so tied up in some sort of external symbol -- the cross should be a reminder and a symbol of my faith, not the source of it. And so the debate in my head rages on...
____________________________________________________
As an addendum, the title of this post is taken (slightly adapted) from Pedro the Lion's song Secret of the Yoke. I performed it once as a dramatic piece at a theology conference, and want to do so again someday. It's the closest I've seen in modern music to the laments of the psalms and Lamentations which are so tragically neglected by modern (and postmodern) churches. Here are the lyrics:
I could hear the church bells ringing
they pealed aloud your praise
the member’s faces were smiling
with their hands outstretched to shake
it’s true they did not move me
my heart was hard and tired
their perfect fire annoyed me
I could not find you anywhere
could someone please tell me the story of sinners ransomed from the fall
I still have never seen you, and somedays
I don’t love you at all
the devoted were wearing bracelets
to remind them why they came
some concrete motivation
when the abstract could not do the same
but if all that’s left is duty, I’m falling on my sword
at least then, I would not serve an unseen distant lord
could someone please tell me the story of sinners ransomed from the fall
I still have never seen you, and somedays
I don’t love you at all
if this only a test
I hope that I’m passing, 'cause I’m losing steam
but I still want to trust you
peace, be still
peace, be still
peace, be still
Friday, December 28, 2007
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Small, but persistent, ideas.
1. If I could do Communion exactly as I wanted, I would draw attention back to that part of the scriptures which most people gloss over but which sticks out like a sore thumb during the wafer-and-grape-juice rituals we have today: "When Jesus sat at supper with his friends..." If I could do communion I would have it be a simple meal with all the congregation seated around many round tables. Each table would have a fresh loaf of bread and wine/grape juice at it, as well as the various bits of the meal (a potluck, some soup, sandwiches, whatever). Each table would have one person who would repeat the words of Jesus, break the bread, and hand it around to signal the start of the meal. Then, as people were finishing up, she or or would rise, raise a glass, and everyone would drink some wine/grape juice. I don't care if this would be too expensive or too non-traditional or too difficult to organize or would interfere with regular sunday service. It's the way the Eucharist meal ought to be done.
2. If we are to truly show the Trinity as a model for the whole people of God, then we need to remake God the Father into God the Mother. To resolve gender issues, it makes sense if the Trinity is he/she/it. 'It' is obviously the Holy Spirit -- we can refer to 'it' without sounding mechanistic, which we can't do with either the other parts of the trinity. And obviously Jesus came to earth as a Man (what else could he have done in first century Palestine? -- as a woman no one would have listened to him), so that means to complete our triumvirate we need God to be She. It's not that hard really, God's always giving birth in the Old Testament, groaning in travail for her people. God is loving yet stern, laying down the law for unruly children, letting them learn how to ride their own bike (with all the skinned knees that entails) but always ready to enfold us when we come back crying from our wounds. This is not to say that I will hereafter always refer to God as 'she', but thinking of the Trinity in this way does break down that old notion of the holy boy's club.
[Addendum: Removing God from the role of Father also severs God from that pervasive deistic notion of God as a 50's father: a shadowy figure who doesn't take much personal interest in our lives, who is to be catered to and feared more than cuddled up to and chatted with. Not around very much when we need Him, although his work makes our lives of relative luxury possible, so we are taught to feel endebted to him in specific monetary and commodified/material way. Ie. "Daddy paid for the clothes you're wearing and he's very tired right now, so don't bother him with your questions." Very nasty metaphor, that.]
3. We need to find a way to make 'church' into an animate, rather than an inanimate noun. Church should be a someone, not a somewhere. Again, I'm not going to be dogmatic about this (I can't change English word usage all by myself, much as I would like to), but I think conceiving of a 'church' of people the same way we refer to a flock of birds or a school of fish would go a long way to helping Christians (and non-Christians) realize that the buildings are just empty shells, that we are what matters.
2. If we are to truly show the Trinity as a model for the whole people of God, then we need to remake God the Father into God the Mother. To resolve gender issues, it makes sense if the Trinity is he/she/it. 'It' is obviously the Holy Spirit -- we can refer to 'it' without sounding mechanistic, which we can't do with either the other parts of the trinity. And obviously Jesus came to earth as a Man (what else could he have done in first century Palestine? -- as a woman no one would have listened to him), so that means to complete our triumvirate we need God to be She. It's not that hard really, God's always giving birth in the Old Testament, groaning in travail for her people. God is loving yet stern, laying down the law for unruly children, letting them learn how to ride their own bike (with all the skinned knees that entails) but always ready to enfold us when we come back crying from our wounds. This is not to say that I will hereafter always refer to God as 'she', but thinking of the Trinity in this way does break down that old notion of the holy boy's club.
[Addendum: Removing God from the role of Father also severs God from that pervasive deistic notion of God as a 50's father: a shadowy figure who doesn't take much personal interest in our lives, who is to be catered to and feared more than cuddled up to and chatted with. Not around very much when we need Him, although his work makes our lives of relative luxury possible, so we are taught to feel endebted to him in specific monetary and commodified/material way. Ie. "Daddy paid for the clothes you're wearing and he's very tired right now, so don't bother him with your questions." Very nasty metaphor, that.]
3. We need to find a way to make 'church' into an animate, rather than an inanimate noun. Church should be a someone, not a somewhere. Again, I'm not going to be dogmatic about this (I can't change English word usage all by myself, much as I would like to), but I think conceiving of a 'church' of people the same way we refer to a flock of birds or a school of fish would go a long way to helping Christians (and non-Christians) realize that the buildings are just empty shells, that we are what matters.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Memory, Loss, and Learning from the Past
I attended a Remembrance Day service today at the school I've been supply teaching at. It was the usual motley crue of un-organized children's choirs, veterans recounting tales of heroics during the war without taking into account who their 'heroics' killed, dramatic recitals of "In Flander's Fields", and slightly bungled trumpet solos for 'Last Post'. Let me tell you, it's very different experiencing a Remembrance Day Service when one is a Christian (for a very secular school, this was a VERY religious service) and when one has been thinking about pacifism (I suddenly realized that hallowing war dead is not because killing and dying for your country is inherently heroic, but because we can't stomach the idea of people dying needlessly).
But there was one moment which made me cry -- to the accompaniment of a transcendant violin solo, the Crescent boys choir singing Ani Ma'amin, the old Hasidic song that Jews reportedly sang on their way to the gas chambers:
"I believe with a complete belief
In the coming of the Messiah
And even though he may tarry
I will wait for him, whenever he comes"
And even though he may tarry. That line breaks my heart. And I realized two things -- one, the healing power of faith at the end of all things, and two, that not enough is made of the fact that both Jews and Christians are waiting for their Savior. Christians may be waiting for a Second Coming, not a first, but we're both still waiting. And in the meantime, we're still living in the messy present with all it's wars and hatred and violence and concentration camps and genocides.
I will wait for him, whenever he comes.
But there was one moment which made me cry -- to the accompaniment of a transcendant violin solo, the Crescent boys choir singing Ani Ma'amin, the old Hasidic song that Jews reportedly sang on their way to the gas chambers:
"I believe with a complete belief
In the coming of the Messiah
And even though he may tarry
I will wait for him, whenever he comes"
And even though he may tarry. That line breaks my heart. And I realized two things -- one, the healing power of faith at the end of all things, and two, that not enough is made of the fact that both Jews and Christians are waiting for their Savior. Christians may be waiting for a Second Coming, not a first, but we're both still waiting. And in the meantime, we're still living in the messy present with all it's wars and hatred and violence and concentration camps and genocides.
I will wait for him, whenever he comes.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Tell Me a Story
I wrote this a few weeks ago. It's meant as an exercise for a small group meeting in a church, perhaps as an ice-breaker activity for the beginning of a bible study (hence the 'stage directions'). I've never actually tried it in real life -- it's just one of the many ideas I've had for creative ways to inspire church members. I hope.
Break group off into small groups (3 or 4) and say "Tell each other one story. The story must be no more than a few minutes long."
discuss
I said to tell a story, and the only restriction I put on it was a time restriction (I didn't want anyone retelling the entire Odyssey). So, what kind of story did you tell? Was it a story of your own life, or someone else's? Was it a true story, or a myth, or a fiction? Was it a story of faith, or of life? (and I recognize that those two categories are inextricably intertwined most of the time) What kind of story did you tell, and why did you tell it? Please tell each other why you told the story you did -- was it because of an assumption you made about what kind of story you should tell, about the kind of story other people would want to hear, about the kind of story I think you should be telling, or was it simply the first thing that popped into your head?
discuss
The point I'm making here (besides getting you to tell each other stories, which is an entirely useful and under-appreciated skill in today's society) is that when we tell stories (whether it written, spoken, sung, or cinematic form) we choose what to tell and how to tell it based on the audience we have and the expectations we have of that audience, as well as our own interests. When I went to Japan for a year I started up a blog, very creatively titled "Lydia in Japan". I told everyone I knew about it, my parents, my friends, my coworkers, my great-aunts and grandparents. To tell the truth, I had a blog before I went to Japan, but I wanted something new, something fresh, something where I would write knowing that everyone was reading. This is not to say that I hid things from my family and friends, just that I write differently, using different words and focussing on different things if I'm writing to my best friend as opposed to writing to my grandmother. That's not being false, that's just being human.
And so I can almost guarantee that if I had set this task to you in a pub, you would have told an entirely different set of stories than you just told now. Many of you assumed, because I was speaking in a Christian setting, that when I said "tell a story" what I meant was "tell the story of your faith". And that's fine. The point here is not that making assumptions and accommodating ourselves to our setting and audience is bad, just that we all do it almost unconsciously.
Which is why it's so very, very important to know the background of any biblical text we decide to study. What kinds of stories does Jesus tell to his trusted disciples? What kinds of stories does Jesus tell to suspicious Pharisees? What kinds of stories does he tell to unlettered fisherman and farmers? To extend this beyond the parables -- look at how Paul's letters differ in tone and content depending on which community he's writing to. Look at the different focus of each gospel and what that tells us about the audiences they were being written to.
This is just as important in the Old Testament. Scholars debate over when certain parts the Old Testament were written, because that matters in terms of their thematic thrust. Books like Samuel/Kings, which were likely written while the Jewish people were in exile following the Babylonian conquest, making the question of the text "Why are we, God's chosen people, in exile?" are very different from Chronicles, which, since it was written after the exile when the Israelite nation was being restored, is more concerned with things like "What are we to do now that we are back in the land?" and "What is our connection with Israel in the past?" (Longman and Dillard 22). The audience, as well as the writer, changes the message, just as we automatically omit telling our grandmother's the more salacious parts of our personal history. Well, at least I do -- perhaps you tell your grandmother everything!
In any case, selectivity has nothing to do with authenticity. None of the Bible writers took an oath to tell "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth", and while my faith assures me that truth has reached us despite centuries of translation and editing, that doesn't mean that everything is in there, or that there's no room for the changes made by good writers looking to create a comprehensible narrative out of something as complex and messy as the history of an entire people. Or the complicated and full life of Jesus. So remember when you read the bible, and when we interpret it together, that nothing was created in a vacuum, there's always a social, historical, and cultural context which has shaped the story, even before it began to be told.
Longman, Tremper III and Raymond B. Dillard, An Introduction to the Old Testament. Michigan, Zondervan, 2006.
Break group off into small groups (3 or 4) and say "Tell each other one story. The story must be no more than a few minutes long."
discuss
I said to tell a story, and the only restriction I put on it was a time restriction (I didn't want anyone retelling the entire Odyssey). So, what kind of story did you tell? Was it a story of your own life, or someone else's? Was it a true story, or a myth, or a fiction? Was it a story of faith, or of life? (and I recognize that those two categories are inextricably intertwined most of the time) What kind of story did you tell, and why did you tell it? Please tell each other why you told the story you did -- was it because of an assumption you made about what kind of story you should tell, about the kind of story other people would want to hear, about the kind of story I think you should be telling, or was it simply the first thing that popped into your head?
discuss
The point I'm making here (besides getting you to tell each other stories, which is an entirely useful and under-appreciated skill in today's society) is that when we tell stories (whether it written, spoken, sung, or cinematic form) we choose what to tell and how to tell it based on the audience we have and the expectations we have of that audience, as well as our own interests. When I went to Japan for a year I started up a blog, very creatively titled "Lydia in Japan". I told everyone I knew about it, my parents, my friends, my coworkers, my great-aunts and grandparents. To tell the truth, I had a blog before I went to Japan, but I wanted something new, something fresh, something where I would write knowing that everyone was reading. This is not to say that I hid things from my family and friends, just that I write differently, using different words and focussing on different things if I'm writing to my best friend as opposed to writing to my grandmother. That's not being false, that's just being human.
And so I can almost guarantee that if I had set this task to you in a pub, you would have told an entirely different set of stories than you just told now. Many of you assumed, because I was speaking in a Christian setting, that when I said "tell a story" what I meant was "tell the story of your faith". And that's fine. The point here is not that making assumptions and accommodating ourselves to our setting and audience is bad, just that we all do it almost unconsciously.
Which is why it's so very, very important to know the background of any biblical text we decide to study. What kinds of stories does Jesus tell to his trusted disciples? What kinds of stories does Jesus tell to suspicious Pharisees? What kinds of stories does he tell to unlettered fisherman and farmers? To extend this beyond the parables -- look at how Paul's letters differ in tone and content depending on which community he's writing to. Look at the different focus of each gospel and what that tells us about the audiences they were being written to.
This is just as important in the Old Testament. Scholars debate over when certain parts the Old Testament were written, because that matters in terms of their thematic thrust. Books like Samuel/Kings, which were likely written while the Jewish people were in exile following the Babylonian conquest, making the question of the text "Why are we, God's chosen people, in exile?" are very different from Chronicles, which, since it was written after the exile when the Israelite nation was being restored, is more concerned with things like "What are we to do now that we are back in the land?" and "What is our connection with Israel in the past?" (Longman and Dillard 22). The audience, as well as the writer, changes the message, just as we automatically omit telling our grandmother's the more salacious parts of our personal history. Well, at least I do -- perhaps you tell your grandmother everything!
In any case, selectivity has nothing to do with authenticity. None of the Bible writers took an oath to tell "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth", and while my faith assures me that truth has reached us despite centuries of translation and editing, that doesn't mean that everything is in there, or that there's no room for the changes made by good writers looking to create a comprehensible narrative out of something as complex and messy as the history of an entire people. Or the complicated and full life of Jesus. So remember when you read the bible, and when we interpret it together, that nothing was created in a vacuum, there's always a social, historical, and cultural context which has shaped the story, even before it began to be told.
Longman, Tremper III and Raymond B. Dillard, An Introduction to the Old Testament. Michigan, Zondervan, 2006.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
God is in the Details
I've been reading through Exodus recently -- not out of excess piety, but because I have to read the whole Old Testament for my Old Testament course -- and I've noticed some interesting things. While it's easy to parse the Bible into interesting bits (Genesis, Samuel/Kings, the Gospels, Romans, maybe some psalms) and uninteresting bits (Deuteronomy, Leviticus, many of the minor prophets, Revelation if you're not inclined to enjoy bizarre conspiracy theories, etc.), I'm starting to see the wisdom in reading all of it straight through once in a while. Buried deep in the boring bits of Exodus, I've found two fascinating tidbits:
1 Consecration and Putting Words in God's Mouth (Exodus 19:9-15)
In preparation for giving the Ten Commandments God tells Moses to get the people cleaned and washed and all purtied up in their Sunday Best. In the tradition of viewing the relationship between the God (holy) and his people (mostly unholy) as a kind of cosmic battery where touching the holy and unholy ends together would cause some rather large sparks, God also tells Moses to keep the people the hell away from Mount Sinai so that they don't, y'know, die. God tells all this to Moses and Moses goes down and reports it faithfully to the people. They get consecrated, they wash their clothes, and then (almost as an afterthought, just before we move on to Moses going up the mountain) says "Prepare for the third day; do not go near a woman"
Now, I could be missing some important historical assumption here, but I find it fascinating that Moses (who is at this point God's good little messenger, dutifully running up and down the mountain for several months) seems to add on this no-sex rule of his own initiative. God didn't say anything about it, but Moses seems to think that being in your Sunday best involves keeping away from the missus. There's an interesting lesson there in our assumptions about what's holy and what God wants, as well as the way patriarchy gets imposed on otherwise gender-neutral religious events...
2 It Shall Be Made of Acacia Wood from the Trans-Jordanian Forest Aged Exactly Four Years and Two Months, and It Shall Be Two and Half Cubits Long by One and Three-Eighth Cubits High ...
Exodus 25 through 31 are, without exception, the longest Home Hardware list EVER. Followed by what is possibly the most boring do-it-yourself account EVER in Exodus 36 to 39. First there's God saying "You shall" and telling Moses exactly how to go about making a pretty box and an even prettier tent to keep the tablets of the law in, right down to how many rings should be on the curtains and what they should be made of. Then there's a brief break for Moses to go back down the mountain, have a hissy fit (including a few plagues and massacres) because the Israelites decided to do a little idol-worship while Moses was away, then the narrative resumes with the Israelites (newly zealous about their faith) banding together to donate the gold needed for those ten specific curtain rings God asked for. It's Extreme Makeover: The Exodus Edition!
In the midst of breaking my own recently-made rule on not speed reading (see my other blog) I realized something interesting about these long, boring passages. They illustrated that the Israelites (as people all over the world, then and now) are really good at following the specific rules and instructions, but really suck at getting the larger, more important messages. Build a box two cubits wide by 3 and a half cubits long and make it out of gold? No problem. Love God and love your neighbour? Uhhh.... God could spend the rest of our lives telling us to build pretty boxes, and we'd probably get pretty good at it, but that's not going to help us figure out how to live well.
1 Consecration and Putting Words in God's Mouth (Exodus 19:9-15)
In preparation for giving the Ten Commandments God tells Moses to get the people cleaned and washed and all purtied up in their Sunday Best. In the tradition of viewing the relationship between the God (holy) and his people (mostly unholy) as a kind of cosmic battery where touching the holy and unholy ends together would cause some rather large sparks, God also tells Moses to keep the people the hell away from Mount Sinai so that they don't, y'know, die. God tells all this to Moses and Moses goes down and reports it faithfully to the people. They get consecrated, they wash their clothes, and then (almost as an afterthought, just before we move on to Moses going up the mountain) says "Prepare for the third day; do not go near a woman"
Now, I could be missing some important historical assumption here, but I find it fascinating that Moses (who is at this point God's good little messenger, dutifully running up and down the mountain for several months) seems to add on this no-sex rule of his own initiative. God didn't say anything about it, but Moses seems to think that being in your Sunday best involves keeping away from the missus. There's an interesting lesson there in our assumptions about what's holy and what God wants, as well as the way patriarchy gets imposed on otherwise gender-neutral religious events...
2 It Shall Be Made of Acacia Wood from the Trans-Jordanian Forest Aged Exactly Four Years and Two Months, and It Shall Be Two and Half Cubits Long by One and Three-Eighth Cubits High ...
Exodus 25 through 31 are, without exception, the longest Home Hardware list EVER. Followed by what is possibly the most boring do-it-yourself account EVER in Exodus 36 to 39. First there's God saying "You shall" and telling Moses exactly how to go about making a pretty box and an even prettier tent to keep the tablets of the law in, right down to how many rings should be on the curtains and what they should be made of. Then there's a brief break for Moses to go back down the mountain, have a hissy fit (including a few plagues and massacres) because the Israelites decided to do a little idol-worship while Moses was away, then the narrative resumes with the Israelites (newly zealous about their faith) banding together to donate the gold needed for those ten specific curtain rings God asked for. It's Extreme Makeover: The Exodus Edition!
In the midst of breaking my own recently-made rule on not speed reading (see my other blog) I realized something interesting about these long, boring passages. They illustrated that the Israelites (as people all over the world, then and now) are really good at following the specific rules and instructions, but really suck at getting the larger, more important messages. Build a box two cubits wide by 3 and a half cubits long and make it out of gold? No problem. Love God and love your neighbour? Uhhh.... God could spend the rest of our lives telling us to build pretty boxes, and we'd probably get pretty good at it, but that's not going to help us figure out how to live well.
Monday, September 10, 2007
We Tell Stories
[I wrote this over a year ago, so long that I can't even remember where I got the Joan Didion quote from. I don't think I've ever read a book called 'The White Album,' so it must have been quoted in another book, but what that book was I'll never know. In any case, this is one of my more polished pieces, I think]
"We tell ourselves stories in order to live...We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the "ideas" with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience."
~Joan Didion The White Album
Students everywhere realize pretty quickly that people (teachers especially) tend to overestimate the importance of their own subject. Math teachers will tell you the whole world is run by equations, Philosophy teachers believe it all depends on the ideas in our heads, and so on. It’s an old, old notion, perhaps best expressed by Philip Sidney in his Defense of Poetry: "self-love is better than any gilding to make that seem gorgeous wherein ourselves be parties."
So I probably need not tell you why I, as an English student, was interested in the quotation above. What better way to justify my love of stories than to say that stories are not just reflections of reality, but constitutive of it? If I have read Joan Didion right, then what she is suggesting is not that our life makes stories, but that our stories are life. We cannot understand what’s going on around us, and so we make narratives that cut and paste reality into a diorama of our "life".
But perhaps this theory isn’t just the rantings of someone who read too much as a child – maybe this theory actually has credibility (not that the scientists of the world don’t have a pretty good claim on Unified Theories of Everything, but at the moment, I’m the one on the microphone). Incessantly and unconsciously, we create a tv show (or a novel, or a movie, or a play – the media doesn’t matter) of our own lives – we watch ourselves to understand what it is that we’re doing here. Whether that creation is a tragedy or a comedy (or, God forbid, a slasher flick) depends on us, on our proclivities and our fears. At the end of each day, as we compose ourselves towards sleep, does the heroic music swell and the lens swing to a wide shot of our hero silently celebrating a job well done? Or does the eerie minor key and quick cut to black indicate that all is not well, that something is very rotten in the state of I?
Believing in the power of story is something what fuels my interest in (nay, obsession with) the Bible. While the debates on the authenticity of the Bible are important, I find them secondary to the importance of the story, of the way the Isrealites and the early followers of Jesus went about shaping their experiences into something intelligible (strange and bizarre, certainly, but intelligible nonetheless). We all want to find meaning in life, and the stories of the Bible give us that, give us a narrative of sin and redemption which can be applied to our own personal experiences. I screw up, I feel bad about it, I receive some kind of forgiveness. I live to screw up and be saved again another day.
The Israelites reference to the "God of Abraham and Isaac" isn’t just a way of claiming a kinship with those set apart by God, it’s also (and perhaps more importantly) saying "We believe in the God who promised things to Abraham, the God who both condemned Isaac to death and and saved him." Believing in the God of Abraham and Isaac is bound up with believing in the stories of Abraham and Isaac. Likewise, believing in Jesus means investing in the stories he tells, in understanding what it means to be a prodigal son or a lost sheep "carried home to great rejoicing" (Luke 15:5). For those of us interested in historical and literal truth, I mention the parables as an example of a story that is True (with a capital T) without needing to be factual.
But stories need not be written down to be important. In my rampant bibliophilia, I sometimes forget that the religion I believe in is called "Christianity", not "Bible-anity". In the religious sense, stories are not only past relics of what God has done, but current explanations of what God is doing. The long tradition of "testimonials" (a word now corrupted by crass tv infomercials) shows us that as believers we need to hear the stories of other believers. In times when God seems to be missing-in-action, we receive stories of healings and miraculous interventions as eagerly as the desert drinks up the rain. An inveterate skeptic, I usually hear reports of miracles and let out an internal "Hmph!", but I cannot deny my own need for stories of hope and faith justified. I knew for several years that a mentor of mine had a story of healing which he had stopped telling because he wanted to allow it to be his son’s story. While he did, finally, explain what had happened, I realized that even without knowing the story, it gave me comfort to know that someone so solid and real and normal had had an extraordinary experience of God’s love. The idea that there was a story there (even if I didn’t know it) was enough to feed my faith.
I believe, and so I, in Joan Didion’s words, select faith as "the most workable of multiple choices". I freeze the "shifting phantasmagoria of my actual experience" and I see the face of God. As people of faith, we are called to embrace the story (with all its plot twists and reversals of fortune and anguishing cliffhangers) and acknowledge that as much as we may speak or write our own stories, we are not in control. As any writer will tell you, what you intend to write and the story that ends up on paper are entirely different. So it is with life. We live in the hope that we can understand the meaning behind things, that there really is a "sermon in the suicide" – and I’d like to believe that there is. But perhaps the meaning is one we do not want to know, or one that is beyond our capability to understand. We tell ourselves stories so that we may live, and God gives us stories so that we may hope. And learn.
So go out and tell stories. Go out and find stories. Go out and recognize that the life we live may not have happy endings or easy morals, but it is filled with meaning anyways. And recognize the buried treasure in your life; those stories of God (against all reason and sense) actually showing up.
"We tell ourselves stories in order to live...We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the "ideas" with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience."
~Joan Didion The White Album
Students everywhere realize pretty quickly that people (teachers especially) tend to overestimate the importance of their own subject. Math teachers will tell you the whole world is run by equations, Philosophy teachers believe it all depends on the ideas in our heads, and so on. It’s an old, old notion, perhaps best expressed by Philip Sidney in his Defense of Poetry: "self-love is better than any gilding to make that seem gorgeous wherein ourselves be parties."
So I probably need not tell you why I, as an English student, was interested in the quotation above. What better way to justify my love of stories than to say that stories are not just reflections of reality, but constitutive of it? If I have read Joan Didion right, then what she is suggesting is not that our life makes stories, but that our stories are life. We cannot understand what’s going on around us, and so we make narratives that cut and paste reality into a diorama of our "life".
But perhaps this theory isn’t just the rantings of someone who read too much as a child – maybe this theory actually has credibility (not that the scientists of the world don’t have a pretty good claim on Unified Theories of Everything, but at the moment, I’m the one on the microphone). Incessantly and unconsciously, we create a tv show (or a novel, or a movie, or a play – the media doesn’t matter) of our own lives – we watch ourselves to understand what it is that we’re doing here. Whether that creation is a tragedy or a comedy (or, God forbid, a slasher flick) depends on us, on our proclivities and our fears. At the end of each day, as we compose ourselves towards sleep, does the heroic music swell and the lens swing to a wide shot of our hero silently celebrating a job well done? Or does the eerie minor key and quick cut to black indicate that all is not well, that something is very rotten in the state of I?
Believing in the power of story is something what fuels my interest in (nay, obsession with) the Bible. While the debates on the authenticity of the Bible are important, I find them secondary to the importance of the story, of the way the Isrealites and the early followers of Jesus went about shaping their experiences into something intelligible (strange and bizarre, certainly, but intelligible nonetheless). We all want to find meaning in life, and the stories of the Bible give us that, give us a narrative of sin and redemption which can be applied to our own personal experiences. I screw up, I feel bad about it, I receive some kind of forgiveness. I live to screw up and be saved again another day.
The Israelites reference to the "God of Abraham and Isaac" isn’t just a way of claiming a kinship with those set apart by God, it’s also (and perhaps more importantly) saying "We believe in the God who promised things to Abraham, the God who both condemned Isaac to death and and saved him." Believing in the God of Abraham and Isaac is bound up with believing in the stories of Abraham and Isaac. Likewise, believing in Jesus means investing in the stories he tells, in understanding what it means to be a prodigal son or a lost sheep "carried home to great rejoicing" (Luke 15:5). For those of us interested in historical and literal truth, I mention the parables as an example of a story that is True (with a capital T) without needing to be factual.
But stories need not be written down to be important. In my rampant bibliophilia, I sometimes forget that the religion I believe in is called "Christianity", not "Bible-anity". In the religious sense, stories are not only past relics of what God has done, but current explanations of what God is doing. The long tradition of "testimonials" (a word now corrupted by crass tv infomercials) shows us that as believers we need to hear the stories of other believers. In times when God seems to be missing-in-action, we receive stories of healings and miraculous interventions as eagerly as the desert drinks up the rain. An inveterate skeptic, I usually hear reports of miracles and let out an internal "Hmph!", but I cannot deny my own need for stories of hope and faith justified. I knew for several years that a mentor of mine had a story of healing which he had stopped telling because he wanted to allow it to be his son’s story. While he did, finally, explain what had happened, I realized that even without knowing the story, it gave me comfort to know that someone so solid and real and normal had had an extraordinary experience of God’s love. The idea that there was a story there (even if I didn’t know it) was enough to feed my faith.
I believe, and so I, in Joan Didion’s words, select faith as "the most workable of multiple choices". I freeze the "shifting phantasmagoria of my actual experience" and I see the face of God. As people of faith, we are called to embrace the story (with all its plot twists and reversals of fortune and anguishing cliffhangers) and acknowledge that as much as we may speak or write our own stories, we are not in control. As any writer will tell you, what you intend to write and the story that ends up on paper are entirely different. So it is with life. We live in the hope that we can understand the meaning behind things, that there really is a "sermon in the suicide" – and I’d like to believe that there is. But perhaps the meaning is one we do not want to know, or one that is beyond our capability to understand. We tell ourselves stories so that we may live, and God gives us stories so that we may hope. And learn.
So go out and tell stories. Go out and find stories. Go out and recognize that the life we live may not have happy endings or easy morals, but it is filled with meaning anyways. And recognize the buried treasure in your life; those stories of God (against all reason and sense) actually showing up.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Theological Shite.
That was supposed to be the name of this blog, as suggested by a good friend of mine. But when it came right down to it, I wasn't comfortable enough with swearing to stare at that name at the top of the blog every time I went to post something. So I settled on the much more mundane "theological thoughts" instead. Sorry.
The truth is, though, much of it will be shit -- just the detritus of my brain, thrown out into the wide world of the internet so that I can sleep well at night. Most of the time, I quite honestly write these ramblings because I've got no other choice. I'm seized by an idea which rattles around until I can no longer stand it, until, like Matilda in Roald Dahl's book, I feel like I could shoot beams of pure energy right out my eyes with all the pent-up religiousity I've got inside. So I write it out, and only then do I feel relief.
Some of these posts will be sermons in foetal form, some of them will be letters to myself, some rants to God, and a perhaps a few which fit in no other category than 'ramblings'. In any case, I thought I'd start this blog to get the four or five pieces I've already got on my computer off it, and to provide a resource for myself sometime down the road when I'm speaking at a church or some such and want to remember that semi-brilliant thought I had a few weeks ago. And of course to give me a place to put my eye-beam writings. I've seperated this out from my other blog so that I don't have to worry about digging through other posts to get to what I want, and so that I can maintain the division I feel I need between everyday, non-faith type stuff and my theology degree which could too easily take over my entire life.
Since these are just thoughts, feel free to criticize and disagree to your heart's content. Sometimes I think what I've written is brilliant, so I'd appreciate someone telling me that it's actually crap (or it's got some major leaps of logic) before I decide to use it in front of several hundred people. Also, for those of you who share my faith, you can catch me out on any heretical bits/bad biblical exegesis that could get me in hot water with the big ol' bearded guy who lives up in the sky. Comments, of any kind, are encouraged.
Let the shit-stream begin!
The truth is, though, much of it will be shit -- just the detritus of my brain, thrown out into the wide world of the internet so that I can sleep well at night. Most of the time, I quite honestly write these ramblings because I've got no other choice. I'm seized by an idea which rattles around until I can no longer stand it, until, like Matilda in Roald Dahl's book, I feel like I could shoot beams of pure energy right out my eyes with all the pent-up religiousity I've got inside. So I write it out, and only then do I feel relief.
Some of these posts will be sermons in foetal form, some of them will be letters to myself, some rants to God, and a perhaps a few which fit in no other category than 'ramblings'. In any case, I thought I'd start this blog to get the four or five pieces I've already got on my computer off it, and to provide a resource for myself sometime down the road when I'm speaking at a church or some such and want to remember that semi-brilliant thought I had a few weeks ago. And of course to give me a place to put my eye-beam writings. I've seperated this out from my other blog so that I don't have to worry about digging through other posts to get to what I want, and so that I can maintain the division I feel I need between everyday, non-faith type stuff and my theology degree which could too easily take over my entire life.
Since these are just thoughts, feel free to criticize and disagree to your heart's content. Sometimes I think what I've written is brilliant, so I'd appreciate someone telling me that it's actually crap (or it's got some major leaps of logic) before I decide to use it in front of several hundred people. Also, for those of you who share my faith, you can catch me out on any heretical bits/bad biblical exegesis that could get me in hot water with the big ol' bearded guy who lives up in the sky. Comments, of any kind, are encouraged.
Let the shit-stream begin!
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