And then you fall through....

Robert Silverberg wrote a wonderful story about the nature of perception and reality. Like most of Silverberg's works, it is a subtle almost-parable that plagues your awareness long after you've finished it. The story is "Sundance." I'll try to summarize it in a few words.

It's set on an alien world, where a group of people is trying to eradicate an alien life form to prepare the planet for colonization. One of the members of the group is an American Indian, who is plagued by thoughts of the extermination of his own people in history, and his complicity in the elimination of a species on this planet. The creatures themselves are innocuous: they eat the poison pellets the humans spread, die, and neatly dissolve, leaving no mess behind. But are they intelligent, or are they cockroaches? That's the central question of the story. And it turns out the protagonist, the American Indian, suffers from delusions, from "psychological problems," so his perceptions of reality are not exactly trustworthy. He imagines (or does he?) that the creatures (:eaters") are sentient, that they worship the sun, the creation, that they share an appreciation of life with him. He dances with the creatures, or imagines he does. He gets drunk on the plants of the planet, plants which provide rich oxygen, perhaps too rich. He ends up searching for realities:

Again they find you and bring you back. They give you the cool snout on your arm to take the oxygen-plant drug from your veins, and then they give you something else so you will rest. You rest and you are very calm. Ellen kisses you and you stroke her soft skin, and then the others come in and they talk to you, saying soothing things, but you do not listen, for you are searching for realities. It is not an easy search. It is like falling through many trapdoors, looking for the one room whose floor is not hinged. Everything that has happened this planet is your therapy, you tell yourself, designed to reconcile an embittered aborigine to the white man's conquest; nothing is really being exterminated here. You reject that and fall through and realize that this must be the therapy of your friends; they carry the weight of accumulated centuries of guilts and have come here to shed that load, and you are here to ease them of their burden, to draw their sins into yourself and give them forgiveness. Again you fall through, and see that the Eaters are mere animals who threaten the ecology and must be removed; the culture you imagined for them is your hallucination, kindled of old churnings. You try to withdraw your objections to this necessary extermination, but you fall through again and discover that there is no extermination except in your mind, which is troubled and disordered by your obsession with a crime against your ancestors, and you sit up, for you wish to apologize to these friends of yours, these innocent scientists whom you have called murderers. And you fall through.

Robert Silverberg, "Sundance," The Science Fiction Century, ed. David G. Hartwell (New York: Tor 1997), p. 692-93.

Listening to NPR this morning, listening to stories of contractors being abused by Marines and reasons for some of those stories, these conflicts between the military and civilian contractors, I wondered how many people were beginning to feel like they, too, were looking for a room where the floor is not hinged.

And everytime they find it now, they fall through.

Such is the nature of war. Such is the nature of power.

Dare we say it?

Atrios and Digby ask: Why did we invade Iraq?

From the Houston Chronicle:

"We both have big-country syndrome," said Edward Williams, a Beijing-based attorney with the American Chamber of Commerce in China.

Crude oil consumption is one area where China is following right in America's wake — and OPEC, which is meeting Wednesday in Vienna, Austria, knows it.

Since 2003, when China overtook Japan as the world's second-largest importer of oil behind the United States, this country of 1.3 billion people has generated a lot of talk at the table when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries meets.

Wednesday should be no different when the organization convenes to decide whether to push up the summer production ceiling by 500,000 barrels per day, a symbolic move since most members are already pumping more oil than their stated quotas allow.

Jeff Logan, China program manager for the International Energy Agency, says China's roaring economy is still glowing white-hot despite the government's efforts to slow growth. That's nothing but good news for OPEC, which not long ago some were writing off as irrelevant to world oil prices.

According to the IEA, the cartel supplies 38 percent of the world's oil, but by 2030 — thanks in part to China's growing demand — the group's market share is expected to zoom to 54 percent.

That's because once-gushing oil fields are slowly playing out in such places as the North Sea, Gulf of Mexico, Caspian Sea and even West Africa.

And, barring a massive economic collapse, most analysts think China and the United States will increasingly compete for the same barrels of oil in the Middle East in the next 20 to 30 years.

Three guesses, first two don't count?

Half a loaf, huh?

Apparently racism in the application of the death penalty is still okay, but racism in the selection of jurors for death penalty cases is verboten.

The Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a black death row inmate who said Texas prosecutors unfairly stacked his jury with whites, issuing a harsh rebuke to the state that executes more people than any other.

The 6-3 ruling Monday ordered a new trial for Thomas Miller-El, who challenged his conviction for the 1985 murder of a 25-year-old Dallas motel clerk. It was the second time justices reviewed the case after a lower court refused to reconsider Miller-El's claims.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans was wrong to reaffirm the conviction by a state court in light of the strong evidence of prejudice during jury selection, justices said.

The state court's conclusion that the prosecutors' strikes of people from the jury pool was ''not racially determined is shown up as wrong to a clear and convincing degree; the state court's conclusion was unreasonable as well as erroneous,'' Justice David H. Souter wrote for the majority.

In the opinion, Souter noted that black jurors were questioned more aggressively about the death penalty, and the pool was ''shuffled'' at least twice by prosecutors, apparently to increase the chances whites would be selected.

He was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

''The prosecutors' chosen race-neutral reasons for the strikes do not hold up and are so far at odds with the evidence that pretext is the fair conclusion, indicating the very discrimination the explanations were meant to deny,'' Souter wrote.

''At least two of the jury shuffles conducted by the state make no sense except as efforts to delay consideration of black jury panelists,'' Souter said, adding that it ''blinks reality'' to deny jurors were struck because they were black.

Summer Reading, Part 2

Four poems by Wendell Berry, from Given (Shoemaker Hoard, Washington, D.C., 2005).

THE FUTURE

For God's sake, be done
with this jabber of "a better world."
What blasphemy! No "futuristic"
twit or child thereof ever
in embodied light will see
a better world than this, though they
foretell inevitably a worse.
Do something! Go cut the weeds
beside the oblivious road. Pick up
the cans and bottles, old tires,
and dead predictions. No future
can be stuffed into this presence
except by being dead. The day is
clear and bright, and overhead
the sun not yet half finished
with his daily praise.


THE REJECTED HUSBAND

After the storm and the new
stillness of the snow; he returns
to the graveyard, as though
he might lift the white coverlet,
slip in beside her as he used to do,
and again feel, beneath his hand,
her flesh quicken and turn warm.
But he is not her husband now.
To participate in resurrection, one
first must be dead. And he goes
back into the whitened world, alive.


X (from Sabbaths 2002)

Teach me work that honors Thy work,
the true economies of goods and words,
to make my arts compatible
with the songs of the local birds.

Teach me patience beyond work
and, beyond patience, the blest
Sabbath of Thy unresting love
which lights all things and gives rest.


VI (from Sabbaths 2003)

The yellow-throated warbler, the highest remotest voice
of this place, sings in the tops of the tallest sycamores,
but one day he came twice to the railing of my porch
where I sat at work above the river. He was too close
to see with binoculars. Only the naked eye could take him in,
a bird more beautiful than every picture of himself,
more beautiful than himself killed and preserved
by the most skilled taxidermist, more beautiful
than any human mind, so small and inexact,
could hope ever to remember. My mind became
beautiful by the sight of him. He had the beauty only
of himself alive in the only moment of his life.
He had upon him like a light the whole
beauty of the living world that never dies.

Freedom

It was the primary theme of Jean-Paul Sartre's work, indeed of many of the French phenomenologists. Perhaps it arises from France's experience in World War II; perhaps it arises from the French Revolution, the one that devolved into the Reign of Terror. In European culture it came out of the Romantic rebellion against the Industrial Revolution and the "Great Chain of Being" which was a mainstay of the Enlightenment. It is clearly a concern for Dostoevsky in Karamazov. It is, we tell ourselves, the very foundation of our "American Way of Life," and the telling is a direct and unexamined result of the American Romanticism of Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, as well as the realism of Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway. It is no accident that Hemingway said American literature began with Huckleberry Finn. The flight to freedom of Huck and Jim down the Mississippi is the journey across the country of Jack Kerouac On the Road, is the enduring self-image of America. But along the way, the self-image changed, and nobody noticed. Kerouac bummed a ride, but he rode on money. Trucks aren't built by hand in a backyard, and they don't rely on rivers for the energy to move them. Huck was free not only from society, but from the need of money. Jack had to rely on the kindness of strangers; strangers with capital funds.

"I ask you: is such a man free?"

This is what freedom has come to mean for us. Freedom to spend money. Our money. Other people's money. It doesn't matter. Push the metaphor farther, you won't fall through to the other side. Kerouac's flight now depends almost entirely on American empire, on American hegemony. Our freedom of movement depends entirely on our ability to extract raw materials from other people. Cell phones, for example, make us free. Free to be contacted anywhere, anytime; free to be in touch from literally anywhere on the planet. When I toured Europe 30 years ago, I was effectively out of touch from my family for three weeks. Even the thought of a trans-atlantic call was beyond imaging, though certainly possible. My daughter travels to China with a cell phone in her luggage, and a card that will allow her to make calls home from a hotel lobby as easily as I would call my wife at work. But that cell phone works because of natives in Africa who scrape up mud with a certain element in it, and sell it to people who sell it to cell phone manufacturers. Is such a man free? Am I, who depend on the mud- scraping of that man to talk to my wife from my car?

When did freedom equate to money? Kerouac's run depended on someone else working to be possible. Huck and Jim were more truly free. The river provided the energy, and the raft was something they could make by hand. No one can forge an engine block in their back yard, or run a truck on naturally available energy. The refineries that fuel America are massive complexes that depend on thousands of workers and the pollution of square miles of land to make your drive on Highway 1 possible. Is such a man free? Am I?

Freedom in Iraq means freedom to vote for a government. But does it include freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom from chaos? Or does it only mean the freedom we give them or as we define it? And more and more, how do we define it? And why do we define it simply in terms of what we can gain?


"I ask you: is such a man free?"

Summer Reading, Part 1

I found this in Chris Hedge's new book, Losing Moses on the Freeway: The Ten Commandments in America.

For the world says; "You have needs, therefore satisfy them, for you have the same rights as the noblest and richest men. Do not be afraid to satisfy them, but even increase them" -this is the current teaching of the world. And in this they see freedom. But what comes of this right to increase ones need's? For the rich, isolation and spiritual suicide; for the poor, envy and murder, for they have been given rights, but have not yet been shown any way of satisfying their needs. We are assured that the world is becoming more and more united, is being formed into brotherly communion, by the shortening of distances, by the transmitting of thoughts through the air. Alas, do not believe in such a union of people. Taking freedom to mean the increase and prompt satisfaction of needs, they distort their own nature, for they generate many meaningless and foolish desires, habits, and the most absurd fancies in themselves. They live only for mutual envy, for pleasure-seeking and self display. To have dinners, horses, carriages, rank, and slaves to serve them is now considered such a necessity that for the sake of it, to satisfy it, they will sacrifice life, honor, the love of mankind, and will even kill themselves if they are unable to satisfy it. We see the same thing in those who are not rich, while the poor, so far, simply drown their unsatisfied needs and envy in drink. But soon they will get drunk on blood instead of wine, they are being led to that. I ask you: is such a man free?

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Richard Peavar and Marissa Volokhonsky (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), pp. 313-14.

I've read just enough of it to strongly recommend Hedges' book. And to move my copy of Karamazov back to the nightstand.

"War: Realities and Myths "

I have more to say on Chris Hedges later. I've read his War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning. I'm reading Losing Moses on the Freeway. I can see I need to read What Every Person Should Know About War.

Because I've read this, at Anti-War.Com.

Just thought the rest of you would be interested.

FEAR AND TREMBLING

Something I found while scanning sermons back into my computer. From the 18th Sunday after Pentecost, 1996:

TEXT: Exodus 17:1-7 Philippians 2: 1-13 Matthew 21 :23-32

I'm going to tell you something you may not understand. And then I will try to explain it to you. It comes directly from the scriptures we read this morning; but you have to look carefully to find it there. Listen. What I have to tell you is this: "The price of glory is the universal. " That is the coin you pay in. That is the price you pay. It is "A condition of complete simplicity/Costing not less than everything." Now, I will try to explain to you what I mean.

The Pharisees are getting a bit suspicious of Jesus. They really want to know who he thinks he is, why he thinks he can say the things he does. So they ask him. And he refuses to answer, until they put themselves on a level playing field with him. Their authority is presumed. By them. But Jesus asks them for their authority. And in this episode, it appears that their authority comes from the people, and not God. Because they worry about how the people will hear their answer. Not God.

There people, here, are the universal. They are our world. Our ethics, our standards, our right and wrong; for us, these things come as much from the people as from God. 150 years ago, slavery was not universally considered wrong. Even the Bible does not condemn it. The Hebrews, who had been slaves, held slaves. Paul returned a slave to his master; we have the
letter in our Bible. But today, world-wide, we consider slavery so evil that it is a sin. In the universal, the ethical, the world we all live in, slavery is wrong. Slavery is evil. Slavery is a sin. By what authority do we think so? The authority of the ethical, which is to say the people. The world.

You will think: But our ethics come from God. Indeed they do. And God's ethic is eternal, and unchanged, and unchanging. But the ethical, is where we agree on what God's ethic requires. "What does the Lord require of you, " the prophet Amos asks, "but to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God." The ethical, the universal, is where we daily decide what justice is. The ethical is the good; but it is not God.

So the Pharisees were not evil. They became the modem rabbis of Judaism. They were good teachers, and good people. They were not evil; but they were not God. And their understanding of God's will was based on the ethical, the universal, the people, rather than God.

"The price of glory is the universal." The Pharisees, here, in Matthew's gospel, cling to the universal. They will not give it up to attain a place before God. They care too much about who they are in relation to the people who think John was a prophet, rather than who they are before God.

And is that so unreasonable? Look at what happened to Jesus, according to Paul. It's a hymn, you can almost sing it: "He was in the form of God; yet he laid no claim to equality with God, but made himself nothing, assuming the form of a slave. Bearing the human likeness, sharing the human lot, he humbled himself, and was obedient, even to the point of death, death on a cross!" (Philippians 2:6-8, REB) There is nothing lower than a slave. Even sheep and cattle are better cared for, because the slave takes care of them. Who takes care of the slave? It isn't a question of freedom. If you are a slave, you are someone else's property. And if I own a slave, why should I treat him any better than I treat my blue jeans? After all, his only purpose is to work. We who have never known slavery think we would have to learn to be cruel to a slave; but it's easy. We could all do it. There is nothing lower than a slave.

But Jesus is our model; Jesus is our teacher, the one who shows us the way. Is the way, then, through slavery? No, the way is through the universal; the way is through payment of the universal, which leads to glory. The price of salvation is everything. The price of glory is the universal itself.

Consider what Paul is saying about Jesus. He was obedient, even to the point of death. But obedient to who? Certainly not to the universal, the ethical. Had he obeyed the ethical, he would have listened to the Pharisees and tried to persuade them. He would have engaged them in a discussion, tried to work out differences, tried to resolve the conflicts, perhaps show them the error of their ways. Instead, he tries to trap them. He knows what they are about, and he refuses to get involved. Because he is arrogant? No; because they are. Obeying God does not raise you above the ethical, the universal, the opinions of people. It puts you below them. They do not understand. They cannot grasp the divine, see the glory. It is arrogant to think you have God's glory through the approval of the people. It is the Pharisees who are arrogant, thinking they know what God wants because they know what the people believe. Jesus is trying to level the playing field; he is testing their faith, their belief. He wants to see if they, too, will pay the price for glory.

The universal is everything you know. The universal is everything you understand. Like the fish in water, it is the water you swim in. The power of the universal is that it contains not less than everything. And to attain glory, you must submit to the universal, the ethical, be condemned by it for obedience to God, and accept the judgment on you. Like a slave. "You must work out your own salvation in fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you, inspiring both the will and the deed, for his own chosen purpose." (Philippians 2:12b-13, REB)

Ahh, but glory and what is glory? Glory is the presence of God, and the price of glory paid allows you to stand in the presence of God, to address God familiarly, to know the glory of God. It is a condition of complete simplicity/costing not less than everything." It costs Moses his comfortable life as an Egyptian. He ended his days wandering in the wilderness of Sinai. It cost Abraham his home among the Chaldees. He ended his days as an old man with only one son to become the mighty nation God had promised. It cost Paul his easy life as a Pharisee; he wandered the Roman empire as a tent~maker, picking up hospitality and establishing churches among strangers who would listen to him. But how many of these things does the world value? How many of these accomplishments does the universal count good? Is it ethical to leave your home and take your family to a place you've never heard of, and have no knowledge of! Is it ethical to spend your life relying on the kindness of strangers? The price of glory is the ethical, the universal, the world.

The price of glory is slavery, is submission. "You must work out your own salvation in fear and trembling." Fear and trembling because it is God at work in you, and because the world opposes you. Glory will not take you out of the world, but return you to it. It made Moses a leader; it made Paul an apostle. "The price of glory is the universal." And it is a matter of deeds, not words. "Which of these sons did what his father wanted?" The one who set aside his own needs, and followed his father's wishes. Even our needs are determined by the ethical; unless we listen first to God. Amen.

Morning Prayer

I've used this before, but I consider it one of the best examples of what I was getting at in the post on Friday (below):

"My mother would be asking us to sing our morning song to God down in the backhouse, as Mary's lark was singing up the clouds, and as Christ's maven was singing it yonder in the tree, giving glory to the God of the creatures for the repose of the night, for the light of the day, and for the joy of life. She would tell us that every creature on the earth here below and in the ocean beneath and in the air above was giving glory to the great God of the creatures and the worlds, of the virtues and the blessings, and would we be dumb!"

This is the prayer her mother taught:

Bless to me, O God,
My soul and my body;
Bless to me, O god,
My belief and my condition;

Bless to me, O God,
My heart and my speech,
And bless to me, O God,
The handling of my hand;

Strength and busyness of morning,
Habit and temper of modesty,
Force and wisdom of thought,
And Thine own path, O God of virtues,
Till I go to sleep this night;

Thine own path, O God of virtues,
Till I go to sleep this night.

(from Carmina Gadelica)




Now, speaking of busyness of morning.....

Turning the Other Cheek in "Christendom"

Speaking of belligerence, Shrimplate reminds me I said something else at Eschaton I'd forgotten about. It's something a UCC pastor friend of mine pointed out to me.

"Turn the other cheek" is how conventional wisdom has rendered it, but, as usual, conventional wisdom is not, in its conventionality, wise. The original is clearer: "But to you who listen I say, love your enemies, do favors for those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for your abusers. When someone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other as well. When someone takes way your coat, don't prevent that person from taking your shirt along with it." (Luke 6:27-29, SV)

As the notes to this version point out, "The coat and shirt are full-length outer and under garments worn in the ancient world. One who lacked both garments would be nearly nude." And, as usual, I digress. Why, the question of how to "love" your "enemies" can take a book all by itself.

"Turn the other cheek," though, is what's commonly misunderstood. As my friend pointed out, you slap someone with the back of your hand. If you are right-handed, you strike the right cheek, moving across the other's face. If they offer the other cheek also, you have no choice but to strike it with your open palm. That blow is almost never a blow, but rather a greeting or even a touch of intimacy, shared only with friends and family members.

So, to "turn the other cheek" is in fact to "love" your "enemy." And I mention this in context of shrimplate's observation, which I think is fairly accurate, if damning: "To be a modern American conservative Republican born-again churchgoer today pretty much means that you're really a Roman."

Which has been a critique of "Christendom" at least since it was raised by Søren Kierkegaard in 19th century Denmark.

Now, about going around half-dressed.....

The Shining City on the Hill is Pandemonium

I posted this at Eschaton, in response to this thread, then decided I might be on to something a bit larger than a mere comment, and decided to bring it over here.

Some of the commenters took the opportunity to be critical of Drum's point. Having read it, I think Drum's point is a sad commentary on American belligerence and militarism.

We had plenty of evidence that Bush wanted war with Iraq immediately after 9/11. The "American people" didn't know? How do you, or I, really know that? It was in Woodward's book, it was all over the news. The war was protested by one million people in the streets of America alone.

How much attention do you need before you decide "the people" don't agree with your conclusion?

Vietnam had even less justification, and nobody really cared. The Tonkin Gulf incident was as transparent as Glad Wrap, and it stuck to LBJ about as effectively (i.e., not at all). We knew before the war was over that that incident was BS. Nobody cared. What turned us against that war was the endless carnage, not the legality/illegality of it's excuse for starting (actually intervening, but anyway....)

So it isn't that people "didn't know." Frankly, they didn't care. They were all too willing to buy the line that Iraq was a threat, and behind 9/11, because it gave them something to use the military against. Armies are tools, at least in America. In Switzerland the army is a purely defensive proposition, but in America, we have to trot it out once in a while to be sure we can still scare people. Or just to throw our weight around.

It's not that people didn't "know." They didn't care. A military excursion, in the words of one Vietnam era general, presents the opportunity for a "pleasant outing for the troops." Americans like that idea.

When it turns into a bloody bog and men are dying by the hundreds, then we don't like it anymore. Twain wrote about it. The Civil War was all about that. Korea and Vietnam were more of the same. Why should the invasion of Iraq be any different?

The frightening truth is, Bush is the nation's Id. This is why the people continually respond to him, rather than get disgusted with him. But the Id can only sustain a response for so long, before the ego, and finally the superego, are disgusted and reassert control. In the Roman Empire, they called Bush's position that of "dictator." It was a special office created solely to consolidate all Roman military power under one person, who could rule without check and act for the defense of the Empire. But once the threat had receded, the dictator's office was dissolved, and power returned to the Senate. The concept is simple: when there is a serious threat, you need decisive action. Once the threat is gone, the need for action returns to more consultative hands. We may be heading in that direction again, but make no mistake: the American people will always appoint a "dictator" when they feel threatened, or just feel the need to be "dictator" to the world, themselves.

Crash

I seldom see movies, and even less often do I recommend them.

But if you haven't seen Crash, do so. As soon as possible.

One of the finest films I've ever seen. Los Angeles as seen by Dickens, if he was a film-maker.

I think it's that good.

"It is impossible to say just what I mean!"--T.S Eliot

Among his other theses are: "God is both Father and Mother" and "Religion is not necessary, but spirituality is."

This is not, by the way, "radical feminist theology." It's roots are in the theology of the "Dark Ages." Which weren't really so dark.

Don't have my copy with me, nor the time to Google for on, but Julian of Norwich spoke of God as both Father and Mother in her "Shewings." It was not considered a radical concept, but it is one that has dropped away as belief and religion have more and more left everyday life and been relegated to the margins of our existence.

Which makes me think we need a dialogue here (Speechless? Jane? Leftrev?) about how fundamentalism and "tradition" replace a living faith when that faith becomes a matter of "Sunday morning" and "what churches do." Julian, in fact, an "anchorite," which meant she was "officially" dead to the world, yet she was more connected to her community than many pastors are to their congregations today. When faith is truly a part of the ordinary world, it is a living, breathing, complex "thing."

When it is shunted into byways and "personal beliefs" and "what you choose to do on Sunday morning" (this is NOT an argument for theocracy, BTW, or even a "religious society"), it atrophies into rigid doctrines, traditions, even images and metaphors.

Or at least, I could develop a line of thought around that. If I had time.

I want to get at least the skeleton of this idea out.

Immigrants never "leave" the "home country" so much as they try to preserve their memories of it, and so they want to place in amber the place they left. Examples of this will have to come later, but it's the basic premise.

The church, at one time, didn't just dominate society, it was society. In ways I'm not sure we can begin to imagine; and I don't think the dissolution began with the Enlightenment, or even the Renaissance. But for most of human existence, religion and "science" (which, after all, simply means "knowledge," albeit of a specific type, even in the original Greek) were not harshly separated.

Now, for a myriad of reasons, they are. Reasons, again, to be discussed later (or as you will).

What is left is a culture of "immigrants" who remember some vestige of a life lived with religion as a part of it (the loss of same being good or bad, depending on your perspective; again, another issue), and who want to preserve that vestige. My thesis, then, is that it is this desire to preserve the "vestige" that is at the heart of "fundamentalism," and even the interest in "traditions" (though I am by no means anti-traditionalist myself). Fundamentalism is not a response to Enlightenment thought, in other words, although its appearance is certainly connected causally to the application of such thought to Biblical studies (coming out of Germany in the 19th century, which ideas struck the immigrants of America as blasphemy, a sure sign of the decay of values of the "old country" since they had left). It may have been produced by that event, but the roots are much deeper.

So that today, a concept that raised no eyebrows in the "Dark Ages" (Julian of Norwich speaking of God as "Father and Mother;" Wisdom, by the way, is female both in Greek and Hebrew thought and vocabulary, which makes "God's Wisdom" feminine in the Bible), is considered scandalous and even non-Christian. But the roots are not in the rejection of "reason;" the roots are in the divorce of religion from ordinary life.

It occurs to me this ties in with the renewed interest in Celtic prayer, too, and the Carmina Gadelica. It occurs to me there is a book or two in this. It also occurs to me that I have to take my daughter to her point of departure for a three-week trip to China today, and I shouldn't even be here!

But maybe this will give you all some grounds for fruitful discussion until I can come back.

Two quick addenda, because they are related to this, and I don't want to forget them. I want to pick up on Rick's remarks re: Vaticn II, in the comments below, not because I agree or disagree, but because it opens a fruitful venue for discussion. That's one, and related is the other: I think this split in public/private life, while seen as a particularly Protestant boon (especially in church/state separated Protestant dominated America) actually marks the "death" of Protestantism.

Texas Kitsch Blogging Goes International!

Because my ability to post this morning will be severely limited, and because there are serious topics to take under consideration, I leave you (for the day) with:


The Yellow Submarine is threatened by Japanese monsters from Texas.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get close enough to show you the look of abject fear and terror on the faces of John and Paul.

George and Ringo are in the back. They're cool with it.


The Yellow Submarine in harbor (courtesy of my daughter, who was composing pictures that reflected her father. Thus do 13 year old girls see me.)

Go Matthew

Theologian Challenges Pope To Rethink Church's Position On Gays


Oh, Matthew Fox is doing that and quite a bit more in Wittenberg:

Like Luther, Fox believes that the church is in trouble and in need of a drastic change.
Fox's challenge was in the form an updated version of Luther's 95 Theses - applying them to today.
While Luther's protest was against indulgences and corruption in the administration of Pope Leo X, Fox's beef is more attuned to the injustices and power abuses he sees in the Vatican under Pope Benedict XVI and the apathy epidemic present in Protestant Churches...
-snip-
"Jesus said nothing about condoms, birth control or homosexuality," says one of the Theses. Fox said it is time for Christians to choose who the Church will follow: an "angry exclusionary God or the loving God who opens the path to wisdom."
Among his other theses are: "God is both Father and Mother" and "Religion is not necessary, but spirituality is."
-snip-
"The traditional purpose of a thesis is to open up constructive debate in the search for truth," said Fox. "At this critical time in human and planetary history, when the earth is being ravaged by the violence of war, poverty, sexism, homophobia and eco-destruction, we need to gather those who offer a future that is one of compassion, creativity and justice to stand up and speak their conscience together as never before. Religion ought to be part of the solution, not the problem."

Emphasis mine.

I've always thought that Matthew Fox really pushes the edges, and some of his earlier work was kinda "out there," or, at least, before its time. But he is absolutely correct as to the need for a prophetic voice to be heard.

If the drama of posting his thesis on the Church door is what it takes for the voices to be heard, than by all means. Like Bishop John Shelby Spong, Fox is advocating a new Protestant Reformation, and the end result will not look very much like traditional Western Christianity.

Fox has been seen as a threat to the Magisterium for decades. If his thoughts on the subject open up dialogue within the "mainstream" churches, he will seen as a threat to all those who mistake grace for power and love for intolorance.

Being a prophet is never easy. It involves being open to a radical re-examination of identity and existance. And, without a doubt, it involves beating one's head against a wall. But most of all, it involves being so in love with God and with God's people that you are willing to undergo a complete displacement in understanding who you are and who God is and be remade. Matthew Fox loves deeply. All who love deeply must be called to live that love, breath that love, speak that love and act that love.

[My appologies for any spelling errors undetected; Blogger is not allowing me to spell check and I'm kind of dizzy from banging my head against a wall]

"When I Use a Word, It Means Precisely What I Want It To Mean...."--Humpty Dumpty

I have to admit, I haven't kept up with the controversies surrounding Bush's nominees to the bench, except as it impacts the "judicial filibuster" vote that wasn't. But when even the NYT article leads off this way, you know it's bad:

Janice Rogers Brown, the African-American daughter of Alabama sharecroppers who was confirmed Wednesday to the federal appeals court here, often invokes slavery in describing what she sees as the perils of liberalism.

"In the heyday of liberal democracy, all roads lead to slavery," she has warned in speeches. Society and the courts have turned away from the founders' emphasis on personal responsibility, she has argued, toward a culture of government regulation and dependency that threatens fundamental freedoms.

"We no longer find slavery abhorrent," she told the conservative Federalist Society a few years ago. "We embrace it." She explained in another speech, "If we can invoke no ultimate limits on the power of government, a democracy is inevitably transformed into a kleptocracy - a license to steal, a warrant for oppression."

To her critics, such remarks are evidence of extremism. This week, some Senate Democrats have even singled her out as the most objectionable of President Bush's more than 200 judicial nominees, citing her criticism of affirmative action and abortion rights but most of all her sweeping denunciations of New Deal legal precedents that enabled many federal regulations and social programs - developments she has called "the triumph of our socialist revolution."

Her friends and supporters say her views of slavery underpin her judicial philosophy. It was her study of that history, they say, combined with her evangelical Christian faith and her self-propelled rise from poverty that led her to abandon the liberal views she learned from her family.

"We discuss things like, 'How did slavery happen?' " said her friend and mentor Steve Merksamer, a lawyer in Sacramento, Calif. "It comes down to the fact that she believes, as I do, that some things are, in fact, right and some things are, in fact, wrong. Segregation - even though the courts had sustained it for a hundred years - was morally indefensible and legally indefensible and yet it was the law of the land," he said. "She brings that philosophy to her legal work."

It would be nice, of course, if the reporter had gone on to include something that would make sense of this quote. Because the more I read it, the less sense it makes. Was slavery a product of government regulation? Was there some kind of "New Deal" in the 17th century that led to the U.S. slave trade? Are we to blame Voltaire and Rousseau?

I wonder if this isn't the price paid for an anti-intellectual culture, one that considers all products of thought suspect and the efforts of "elites" to exert undue influence on the "salt of the earth" working classes. Because this is pseudo-thought, thought dressed up with references to Cicero and Beckett ("Her friends describe Justice Brown as a voracious reader, amateur poet and serious intellectual, and her speeches are filled with allusions to writers including Cicero, the apostle Paul, Abraham Lincoln, Samuel Beckett, Ayn Rand, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Friedrich von Hayek and the comedian Chris Rock.") to lend them cachet, but thought that has not seriously absorbed the lessons of such disparate thinkers. "'We discuss things like "How did slavery happen?"'"? I realize the statement could be taken out of context, but just what is that supposed to mean?

When Humpty Dumpty made his statement to Alice, it was meant to be a mockery, a satire on pretension and ignorance masquerading as intelligence. More and more it has become the state of affairs in American public discourse, where there truly is no bedrock, no firm foundation, and the only authority is power. The President had the authority to finally install Ms. Brown in a position for which she is clearly not suited. Now, to quote Paul Simon, she's "got the Presidential seal," and she's at "the Presidential podium." And I'm even sure her momma "loves her like a rock."

The pity is, she's a judge now; with no discernible talent for discernment, the hallmark of judgment. But she's got the power; and that's all that seems to matter.

Gitmo, Gulags, and Amnesty International

This has all been said better, and noticed by still other, blogs with much wider readership than your truly ever aspires to.

But since it's been brought up here and bandied about a bit, these words from William Shultz of Amnesty International on the PBS Newshour deserve to be repeated, without comment:

MARGARET WARNER:....We invited Pentagon officials to send a representative, but they declined. And welcome to you both. Mr. Schulz, what is the basis for your charge that Guantanamo Bay is, in fact, the gulag of our times?

WILLIAM SCHULZ: Well, let me say first this that this is, of course, not an exact analogy. There are differences between the Soviet gulags, differences in size. We don't expect, we have no reports that there is forced labor at Guantanamo or the other U.S. detention centers or that people are being starved.

But there are similarities. The United States is maintaining an archipelago of prisons, many of them secret prisons in which people are being disappeared. They are being held in incommunicado detention without access to the judicial system.

That is similar to the gulags. They are being held without access to their families; that is similar. And in many cases, they are being mistreated, abused, and even killed. In fact, there have been at least a hundred deaths of detainees, 27 of which have been ruled to be homicides by medical examiners.

Now, at Guantanamo Bay itself, you don't to rely upon Amnesty International for reports of abuses that have taken place there and of the violation of the Geneva Conventions. In terms of abuses, a Kentucky guardsman, for example, reported detainees whose heads had been slammed into walls.

The FBI agents there at Guantanamo Bay reported their concerns about people held in stress positions for eighteen to twenty-four hours. The Red Cross itself reported on sleep deprivation there.

And we've heard reports of female interrogators smearing what they represented as menstrual blood upon the faces of those prisoners, some of the prisoners there, which certainly is inhumane and degrading treatment, even if it doesn't rise to the level of torture.

And finally, we also know that the United States is clearly in violation of the Geneva Conventions because the conventions require that if a captor does not want to label captives prisoners of war.

Even though they have been taking prison in the course of combat, then that question of the status of the detainees has to be taken to what the conventions call a competent tribunal to determine whether or not they are POW's or instead, as we claim, enemy combatants. And, in fact, no such competent tribunal has ever ruled on these detainees' status. So that's some of the reasons that this charge has been made.

Okay, one comment. Go to the Newshour website, and notice the immediate response of Neil Livingstone, who won't budge from the argument that hyperbole undermines an entire investigative report, who can't even be bothered to pay attention to Mr. Schultz' statement.

And if there's any question that Mr. Schultz is unfamiliar with this tactic, well:

The response of this government to Amnesty's criticisms is almost exactly the same response that the Chinese give, the Cubans give, and many other governments give whenever we hold up what we try to hold up as one universal gold standard of human rights respect: The same standard for every country.

Mr. Livingstone's response? You can't make this stuff up:

"Let me tell you about Guantanamo. For a lot of these people, they're having better treatment and care than they had when they were in the field in Afghanistan. They're getting healthcare for the first time."

This is what passes for "discussion" in our national media.

I'll retire to Bedlam....

The Shattering of Everything

"The Shattering of the Vessels" was an obscure reference to a Kabbalistic version of Creation, and to a sculpture in the St. Louis Art Museum. Unfortnately I can't find a picture of it on-line, and my memory of it is a few years old.

It's a modern work (I can't even remember the artist), made of metal and glass. It consists of massive metal bookshelves (10-15 feet high, IIRC), holding huge metal books (4 feet by 3 feet, roughly), twisted wires, and huge (human-sized, in other words) pieces of broken glass. The area in front of the bookshelves, roped off to keep the museum visitors from hurting themselves, was covered with broken glass in pieces ranging from huge to tiny. The references to Kristallnacht, the notes on the sculpture asserted, were intentional. The overall impression was one of oppressive weight (the sculpture was on an upper floor; I often looked at the huge square metal posts of the bookshelves, and the grey metal books, and wondered how the floor held; the pieces of glass were inches thick, huge and jagged and menacingly poised as if they had just fallen and rested in the structure, and soon would go to the floor, if not through it) and complete destruction. There were large, thick twisted wires trailing off the shelves, and the books had contrasting, copper-colored Hebrew letters on them. It was mesmerizing, disturbing, fascinating, appalling, scary, and beautiful, all at once. I used to stand before it for what seemed like hours, whenever I visited the museum.

The idea behind it is a complex one. In a simplified form, God's essence was poured into vessels which could not contain it, and these vessels shattered, allowing God's essence to descend into lower worlds, until it reached what we know as Creation. As this essence descended, it became less and less holy, thus giving rise to good and evil. .To quote from Rabbi Moshe Miller:

Although the fragments of the vessels initially fell into the world of Beriya pthe world in which we live], when their rectification (tikun) began, the most refined aspects of the vessels were able to ascend and became absorbed in the world of Atzilut [Kabbalah posits a hierarchy of 'worlds.' Atzilut is a higher, i.e., more holy, world than Beriya]. What could not be elevated into Atzilut remained in Beriya and became an integral part of it. What could not be absorbed into Beriya then descended into Yetzira and Asiya. The aspects of the vessels that could not be absorbed in even the lowest realm of holiness became the vitality of the realms of impurity, known as the kelipot.

The shattering of the sefirot of Tohu is not a coincidence, nor does it signify a flaw in the creative process. On the contrary, it serves a very specific and important purpose, which is to bring about a state of separation or partition of the light into distinct qualities and attributes, and thereby introduce diversity and multiplicity into creation, as explained above. In addition, the shattering of the vessels of Tohu [a world in which the vessels originated] allows for the possibility of evil, and gives man the opportunity to choose between good (for which he gains reward) and evil (for which he is punished). Thus G-d's attributes of chesed and gevura - the attributes from which reward and punishment derive - are revealed in the world, which is one of the primary purposes of creation.

I wasn't meaning to bring Kabbalah into the discussion, nor have I read any more on Kabbalah than I've found through Google. It was the sculpture that caught my imagination. And it is the idea here that evil has a purpose, which interests me. Not because I agree that evil has meaning (it is, in fact, meaninlessness personified, at least in the Hellenistic conception), and the clear influence of Hellenistic thinking on Hebraic thought evidenced by Kaballah. Maybe we need the metaphors of Kaballah to explain issues of religion and spirituality, of theodicy and theophany, today.

I'm not yet sure I have a proposal on that, but as my posts tend to pack too much into a small sausage skin, and to provoke discussions that aren't always related to the issues I was trying to get at (the fault is mine, if there is a fault at all), I'm going to try again to space this concept out over a few posts, and see if we can reach some measure of clarity.

That is, if I don't interrupt myself with another project I have in mind, which is to lay out some bits and pieces from my notebooks, simply to help shape them into something other than the formless thoughts they are now.

Maybe I should start categorizing these things, a la Daily Kos. That seems to be the latest rage in blogging (even though I'm not that organized, and have no idea how I'd carry it out....)

Dancing with the Devil

Well, Texas Governor Rick Perry signed a bill into law this week; in the gymnasium of a Christian church school. Not that you would know that from the Governor's own website or press release. Speaking as someone who grew up in an East Texas town with both a Catholic church and a Jewish synagogue (but dominated by Southern Baptists), I have to say that's just a bit beyond the pale.

And a sign of Perry's political desperation.

Non-Texans do have to understand that the office of Governor in Texas is largely a ceremonial post. This is the entire list of duties of the Texas Governor:

Signing or vetoing bills passed by the Legislature.

Serving as commander-in-chief of the state's military forces.

Convening special sessions of the Legislature for specific purposes.

Delivering a report on the condition of the state to the Legislature at the beginning of each regular session.

Estimating of the amounts of money required to be raised by taxation.

Accounting for all public moneys received and paid out by him and recommending a budget for the next two years.

Granting reprieves and commutations of punishment and pardons upon the recommendation of the Board of Pardons and Paroles and revoking conditional pardons.

Declaring special elections to fill vacancies in certain elected offices.

Appointing qualified Texans to state offices that carry out the laws and direct the policies of state government. Some of these offices are filled by appointment only. Others are ordinarily elected by the people, but the Governor must occasionally appoint individuals to fill vacancies in those offices. The Governor also appoints Texans to a wide range of advisory bodies and task forces that assist him with specific issues.

Not much room there to actually "govern," you understand. Indeed, the post has always been understood to be largely ceremonial, and until Ann Richards turned it into a national platform, was certainly never seen as a springboard to higher office. Now Perry has made it so ceremonial that he's "signed" a proposed constitutional amendment, which, even under Texas' arcane Reconstruction-era Constitution, has no effect at all. Still, Perry has to reach for whatever attention he can get, especially since the Texas Legislature failed to pass a law reforming school finance. Texas schools face a takeover by a state judge in October if the current school finance laws are not changed. And since the Texas legislature meets only for six months every two years (I told you it was an arcane Constitution), he'll have to call a special session quickly, to fix that "little problem."

Perry's "ceremony" is precisely why Baptist ministers in the 19th century argued against mixing politics and religion: because the state is powerful, and eventually bends even the church to its will. Their idea of "reform" extended not just to church doctrine, but to the separation of church and state so that the concerns of the state would not corrupt the moral imperatives of the church. They saw such corruption as inevitable. Campaigning in church may be acceptable (if, to me, distasteful), but that's politics. As Bill Schneider said on CNN, signing laws is governmental. Of course, the churches which align themselves with government now have lost almost all claim to moral authority. I want to say that if they dance with the devil, the devil will call the tune.

But when I consider the "morality" of Pat Robertson's diamond mine investments, or Jerry Falwell's pronouncements on social issues, or mega churches that put up billboards screaming: "We Believe In You!", then I know that, whatever else they are, they are no longer churches. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and Joel Osteen are not concerned with being pastors, with covenants with God and obligations given with promises: they are only concerned with the material well-being of the institutions they have shaped around themselves. Church can only be concerned with corruption from associating too closely with government, when church is concerned first with doing God's will. The churches that align themselves with the politics of the GOP have gone so far in forgetting their purpose it's almost impossible to chastise them as churches anymore; and the only recourse left, is to chastise the politicians.

"Americans Who Tell The Truth"

is a new children's book by Robert Shetterly. The back cover explains the purpose. Each portrait is accompanied by a quote from the person represented, and there is a short biography of each person at the end.

A few of the fifty people represented are listed below. when books like this are being published by major publishing houses (Dutton, in this case) for children, there is hope.

From the back cover:

"The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls." Elizabeth Cady Stanton

"After September 11, artist Robert Shetterly was inspired to draw strength from Americans, past and present, who have made our country strong. A single portrait grew into a powerful series. Now these paintings of fifty great Americans offer examples of what it means to have the freedom to speak the truth, while they remind us of our responsibility to make sure we are told the truth."

Some of the people represented:

"Studs" Terkel
John Muir
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Frances Moore Lappe
Jody Williams
Frank Serpico
Molly Ivins
Dorothy Day
"The biggest mistake sometimes is to play things very safe in this life and end up being moral failures."

Judy Wicks
Lewis Lapham
"Because God has chosen America as the construction site of the earthly Paradise, America's cause was always just and nothing was ever America's fault...corrupt foreigners commit crimes against humanity, Americans cleanse the world of its impurities."

Wendell Berry
Walt Whitman
Cesar Chavez