The Consolations Of Writing

I like Joan Didion's writing (she's sort of the anti-Annie Dillard to me.  Dillard, like a good mystic, can get lost in her own internal experience and writing about it.  Didion, even in writing about the death of her husband and her daughter, almost doesn't seem to have an "internal experience).  The person?  Eh, I never knew her.

Don't know Annie Dillard either, so we're square.

Was watching the documentary on Didion on Netflix, and honestly it was so much Didion it was almost exhausting.  Still, admiration.  Except when they got to the point where she wrote about El Salvador (I think I still have my hardback copy of "Salvador".  Really great stuff.), and they quoted her on politics, how politics seemed like something done by other people in another realm, with no connection to "real life."

About that time, per the documentary, she was living in Malibu and working in movies, and was friends with Harrison Ford (from his carpentry days), and houseguests included Scorsese and Spielberg and other "glitterati" and notables.  And when she and John Gregory Dunne weren't living in California, they were living in NYC.  She started out writing for Vogue and never really got down to the ground level where Molly Ivins wrote from (and why Molly didn't get along with the NYT), or just herself alone in the countryside, where Annie Dillard trumped Thoreau (and thumped him) in every way possible (she really runs rings 'round him).

And, in an Annie Dillardism, I'm left wondering:  whose life is "real life"?

"(Bless me father)"

Every year I return to Eliot’s  poem, because it was my first introduction to the idea of "Ash Wednesday"  The first I remember, anyway.  As I said last year:

This was Eliot publicly turning to Christianity.  Back to Christianity?  Most likely.  I don't know that he was ever that public an atheist.  He was turning to the establishment church, too, as he joined the Church of England at about this time, a church that, liturgically, is more or less properly called "Catholic lite."  So the language here may seem distinctly Catholic, to non-Catholics like me, anyway.  But it is also distinctly Anglican.

This was my first encounter, in high school where I first read Eliot, with the idea of Ash Wednesday.  Needless to say this poem was not terribly enlightening on the liturgical calendar for this observance.  But I return to it every year because it challenges me to understand, much in the same way I try to understand my relationship to God, and to everyone else.  I don't mean because I am so far removed from people, or even in some teen-angst sense from myself.  But every year I start over, "Because I do not hope to turn/Because I do not hope/Because I do not hope to turn again/[Still] Desiring this man's gift or that man's scope."  I tell myself I no longer strive to strive toward such things; but my self knows better than I.

Is that odd? 

I was going to (finally!) explicate the poem today. Maybe I will.  Maybe I'll even connect "Burnt Norton" and The Four Quartets" to Xmas and Advent, now that Lent has begun.  My penance for never finishing what I started.

Maybe.  But right now, I just want to leave you with this, which maybe has nothing to do with Eliot at all.  Or maybe I can connect nothing with nothing.

Maybe.

But then, how is that different from most of us?

ASHES, ashes, all fall down. How could I have forgotten? Didn't I see the heavens wiped shut just yesterday, on the road walking? Didn't I fall from the dark of the stars to these senselit and noisome days? The great ridged granite millstone of time is illusion, for only the good is real; the great ridged granite millstone of space is illusion, for God is spirit and worlds his flimsiest dreams: but the illusions are almost perfect, are apparently perfect for generations on end, and the pain is also, and undeniably, real. The pain within the mill-stones' pitiless turning is real, for our love for each other-for the world and all the products of extension-is real, vaulting, insofar as it is love, beyond the plane of the stones' sickening churn and arcing to the realm of spirit bare. And you can get caught holding one end of a love, when your father drops, and your mother; when a land is lost, or a time, and your friend blotted out, gone, your brother's body spoiled, and cold, your infant dead, and you dying: you reel out love's long line alone, stripped like a live wire loosing its sparks to a cloud, like a live wire loosed in space to longing and grief everlasting.

--Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm, HarperCollins, 1977.

IN some monastic communities, monks go up to receive the ashes barefoot. Going barefoot is a joyous thing. It is good to feel the floor or the earth under your feet. It is good when the whole church is silent, filled with the hush of people walking without shoes. One wonders why we wear such things as shoes anyway. Prayer is so much more meaningful without them. It would be good to take them off in church all the time. But perhaps this might appear quixotic to those who have forgotten such very elementary satisfactions. Someone might catch cold at the mere thought of it.

--Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration  

I can't see Dillard and Merton ever getting along; but maybe they would surprise me.  Dillard's despair is as firm and real as Merton's faith and confidence.  Two sides of the same coin?  No.  Two feet on the same path.

I am an older man than I was when I first encountered Dillard's words (long before I read any of Merton's),  Couldn't have been earlier than 77.  I was a feckless ignorant child of 21 when that year began; 22 and married and wholly unprepared for adulthood by the time the year turned to '78.  I didn't understand what she meant then; lord, do I understand now.  And I understand it is only for understanding, not for explication. Sometimes analysis is increase and insight; but sometimes it is decrease, and willful blindness.  Sometimes you just need to leave it at the realm of spirit bare, of longing and grief everlasting, and let that be reality for even a moment. It is good to have a day, ritually, for that.

"Why Does God Hate Me?"

(This started out as the first sermon written in seminary for a homiletics class. It was something of a revolt against the assigned text, which was the verses from I Corinthians. This is a less satisfactory revision; the original is lost in a box somewhere, if it exists at all. Reviewing this copy, it is obvious that there is much more to other issues than is said here; and much could be said better, or more clearly. But it raises some valuable questions about the center, and whether or not it holds. Perhaps that's why it seems to demand it's place here.)

Text: Deuteronomy 5:22-31
I Corinthians 4: 1-5

Annie Dillard, the essayist and novelist, says that she kept on her mirror, for several years, a newspaper article, with a photograph. The photograph is of a young man, heavily bandaged; only his eyes, she tells us, and down to his lower lip, are visible. He is a burn victim, for the second time in his life. This was years ago, when burn victims suffered even more than they do today. She tells of reading about burn victims who lay in their beds. weeping, as the drugs seeped out into the bandages, with no skin to hold them in. They often committed suicide, later. Because, she says, they didn't realize the world could include such suffering, "that," as Ms. Dillard puts it, "life would permit them personally such pain." "Why does God hate me?" the newspaper reports the burn victim asking. He had been burned by gasoline when he was 13; it took years of painful treatment and surgery to recover. And then a bowl of gunpowder exploded on him. He said that when he realized what had happened, that he was on fire again, he thought "God couldn't do this to me again. "

"Why does God hate me?" Paul tells us we are stewards of Christ, and that we must prove ourselves trustworthy. How do we answer this man?

Or consider: a young couple, happily married, decide at last it is time to have a child. But something decides otherwise, because try as they might, no child is conceived. Medical science is invoked, painful and expensive; a private task becomes a public commitment, other people, strangers, are involved; the struggle goes on, and …nothing happens. No child. They describe it, separately, to you as a loss, but what have they ever had to lose? There is no baby who suddenly stopped breathing in her crib one morning; no daughter who succumbed to a cruel illness, lingering to the end, while the parents wept; not even a fetus delivered still-born. There is nothing, and yet they mourn, and describe it as a hole they cannot see, can only feel around the edges, can only wonder as to what would have filled it, and how that would have felt. And they want to know: Why has God done this to us? Why does God hate us, that we are denied what others must struggle to avoid? They don’t want to hear about Abraham and Sarah, or Zechariah and Elizabeth. That stuff doesn’t happen anymore. They don’t want God to exalt them; they want to know why God has abandoned them.

Paul tells us we are stewards of the Lord. As Christ’s steward, what do you tell them?

Or what about the woman whose mother dies of cancer, in a long, lingering decay, a terrible wasting dance with death? A decent, God-fearing woman, a Christian who quietly and humbly loved Jesus, and lived as spiritual a life in this material world as a wife and mother can. A woman who survived the death of her husband to raise four children alone; who had to turn her house into a nursing home for first her own mother, and then her father, and even for her brother-in-law; and who was finally able to enjoy life on her terms, and spend time with her favorite sister, and enjoy the coming grandchildren. A woman who, just when life was leaving her alone to enjoy herself, got cancer. Why did God let her die so slowly, and in such pain, over such a long time? Why did God let her waste away, day by day by day?

Paul tells us that the Lord will come and bring to light what darkness hides. I certainly hope so.

Because sometimes it seems that whatever is in the dark is just too much to have to put up with. I understand why Annie Dillard would read that newspaper clipping every morning. As she says, this is the Big Time here; the real thing; it doesn't get closer to the bone than this. And yet we know we are called to be trustworthy; we are called to account by the world, by our families, by ourselves, as the stewards of Christ. If we don't answer, who will? And we don't know what to say. Annie Dillard asks that someone please explain to this poor bum victim just what in the world is going on. And send her a copy of the explanation. I don't think she's joking. But if she gets an explanation, I sure need to see it.

Paul, of course, is not talking about suffering in his letter to the church at Corinth, but then he seems to have a different worldview from us. He perhaps understands the place of suffering in the life of the individual. God, at least in the Old Testament, works through nations. When God speaks to Moses at Sinai, it is the nation of Israel that trembles, and asks Moses to see to it that doesn't happen again. The entire nation is scared witless by the noise on the mountaintop. And God understands; God tells Moses to tell Israel "Get into your tents again." God speaks to Israel, and bothers with individuals only to speak through them to the nation as a whole. Even Paul sends letters to churches, never to individuals. At least no such letters have survived.

But we cannot tell the burn victim, the infertile couple, the daughter of the cancer victim, that their suffering is illusory because God is only concerned with nations, and the nation did not suffer because of their loss. We cannot tell them that they are too individualistic, that they must look upon this from a larger scale, that people die every day, or go unborn, or suffer horrible injuries, and it was just their turn. We cannot say God didn't do it, that these things just happen. We are stewards; we must prove ourselves trustworthy. How do we answer?

God only directly answers the questions of a suffering person once in the Bible, and then out of a whirlwind. It is the answer of a God of nations, God's answer to Job; it is the answer of a God of the Cosmos. "Were you there when I laid the foundations of the world?" Well, no, obviously not. And so, the logic runs, you have no reason to question my actions. At least, that's how the book of Job puts it. But that is not the only answer.

The shortest verse in the Bible is: "Jesus wept.” When brought news of the death of his friend Lazarus, John tells us Jesus wept. An odd response, don't you think, from someone who could raise people from the dead. But Jesus didn't think of that, apparently; instead, he wept. What else would we do, in the same situation? "So pass no premature judgment, but wait until the Lord comes." Paul is talking about people in the church at Corinth thinking themselves better than other church members because of who they claim allegiance to. Paul is telling them they cannot judge themselves; it is for God to judge. So what does that have to do with suffering?

People are born to suffer as surely as birds fly upward, the book of Job tells us, and it certainly seems true. We have no answer to the problem of suffering; as if an answer would relieve the pain, anyway. We ask God why, and we get no reply. But long ago, we asked God to stop talking, because we feared what we heard. We went into our tents, and now we poke our heads out, time and again, and look around for God's presence. Since we hear nothing, we conclude God has gone on to other matters. Or we decide God has moved into the tent with us, and will take care of everything, that God is concerned, first and foremost, with our well being. After all, what could be more important? We follow the true God; those others, over there; well, one can't be sure, now, can one? We will prove ourselves trustworthy stewards and what could be easier? After all, God will take care of everything.

But Paul says we cannot judge, least of all what God intends, or another believes. And if we cannot judge whether you are as trustworthy a steward of Jesus as I am, I cannot judge even myself. Paul's robust conscience almost hides the fact; "I have nothing on my conscience," says Paul, "but that does not mean I am innocent. Only God can judge guilt and innocence. " There are things about myself hidden even from me, Paul writes. If we cannot know ourselves, how then can we know the reason for pain and suffering?

Annie Dillard wrote a letter to the burn victim, but she doesn't know if he got it. Nor does she tell us what she said. Doesn't matter. The attempt is enough; the effort to make the connection, to bridge the gap between two people, to try to show that suffering can be uniting, rather than closing one off from creation. Frederick Buechner tells us that God does not give answers to the world's problems and questions. God gives God's self. As stewards, we do not have answers; we only have offers: of hope, of love, of charity, of companionship on the journey. We can only offer God. And in the attempt, at least we can prove ourselves trustworthy. As for the silence, which is the presence of God in the world, the very being of God among us, sustaining us when all else seems to have failed, the words of Annie Dillard give some sense of direction. She says we are met by the silence of the world, an obdurate silence of the objects of creation that says precisely nothing to us. I say it is a silence thas. She says we must begin there, recognizing what is irrevocably true:

The silence is all there is. It is the alpha and the omega. It is God's brooding over the face of the waters; it is the blended note of the ten thousand things, the whine of wings. You take a step in the right direction to pray to this silence, and even to address the prayer to "World." Distinctions blur. Quit your tents. Pray without ceasing.

"That's how the light gets in"

Lord knows I can drum things right into the ground, turning the most gossamer of butterfly thoughts into lead weights and depleted uranium-heavy meditations which are toxic in their own right.  So I'm going to try to leave this one as untouched as the original consideration, and see what I can do with it later (probably nothing, given my track record and jackdaw mentality, i.e., the pursuit of shiny things).

The "God of the gaps" used to refer (and for some still does) to God squeezed into the gaps in our empirical (not necessarily scientific) knowledge of the world, as if relating God to the world was of critical importance to believers.

To some believers that relationship is critical; then again, there are many paths to God, and that phrase doesn't just mean many approaches through world religion.  The beliefs of a Mother Teresa aren't necessarily completely harmonious with those of a Jesuit Pope, and the theology of a poor mother in the barrio isn't necessarily the theology of a seminary professor at a Catholic seminary.

And which of these is right, and which is wrong?

So some need God to explain the rainfall, and some consider God to explain human existence.  Which gets us to the newer, more modern use of the "God of the gaps."  It's akin to what I've labeled "vulture theology."  God is supposed to fill the gaps in our personal lives.  God is supposed to answer why bad things happen to good people (the good people always being us, and those we cherish).  God is supposed to fill in the empty spaces; and it seems we have so many empty spaces.

There's been an outpouring of grief for famous people lately, to the point we can see it as narcissistic.

“Several factors are at work here: the cult of celebrity, a more emotionalized society and, indeed, a more fragmented and lonely society that uses public grief, however dubiously, to bond with strangers through collective tear shedding.”

The fragmented and lonely society is the touchstone.  "Bowling Alone" is how Robert Putnam described it.   If there is a "God of the gaps" in modern American society, it is mostly likely found there:  in the spaces between our social contacts; in the isolation we live in even as we connect on social media.

The isolation itself isn't new.  Annie Dillard describes it about her mother's life in the suburbs where Dillard grew up, the suburbs familiar to Baby Boomers who saw it reflected on their televisions every night.  These are the gaps we have made for ourselves, and now we want God to fill them.  Or we want something to fill them.  Which may explain both our grief when celebrities die, and our anger that religion no longer supports us.

And as if to oddly underscore my point, the Bernie Sanders campaign releases a wordless ad that plays "America" from the "Bookends" album, a Baby Boomer paean to lost innocence and the search for community:  "'Kathy, I'm lost," I said/Though I knew she was sleeping./"I'm empty and aching and I don't know why!/Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike/They've all come to look for America."

Streams in the Desert

Nature, Annie Dillard tells us, is profligate. Consider the sunflower seed, and how true this is; not only true, but necessary. One seed will produce a plant with a flower the size of a truck steering wheel; and in that flower, will be many more seeds. Enough seeds to produce more plants, or to supply seeds for animals to eat, and still produce plants. Thanks to the profligacy of nature, one seed equals many seeds. Call it the arithmetic of biology, where 1+1=3, or 4, or a dozen, or two dozen. Without this arithmetic, life itself would be impossible. Without the wild profligacy of nature, none of us would be here to examine this wild profligacy. We are all the product of extravagance; but then there's the second part of Ms. Dillard's observation: "Nature is profligate, but wastes nothing."

Humans, it seems, waste everything. Which leads us to the conviction of shortage, of limits, of scarcity. We are convinced security is scarce, that is must be hoarded, defended, girded round with walls and barriers and men atop those walls with guns, all to protect what is ours, to keep it from running out, to prevent it from becoming scarce. Convinced of scarcity, we create scarcity. Consider the conclusions of Alfred Stiglitz. He estimates the cost of the Iraq war to already be $3 trillion, and anticipates the true cost, especially in care for veterans of the war, will end up between $5 trillion and $7 trillion. The White House response, of course, is the response of the defenders of scarcity as status quo:

"People like Joe Stiglitz lack the courage to consider the cost of doing nothing and the cost of failure. One can't even begin to put a price tag on the cost to this nation of the attacks of 9/11," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto.

"It is also an investment in the future safety and security of Americans and our vital national interests. ... What price does Joe Stiglitz put on attacks on the homeland that have already been prevented? Or doesn't his slide rule work that way?"

We are, you see, like nature: profligate; except that we waste what is most precious:

The war's gravest toll has been paid in blood. Fighting in Iraq so far taken the lives of 3,973 U.S. troops and left nearly 29,300 wounded. Its staggering expense, however, has already dwarfed the 2003 White House war estimate of $60 billion, and the price continues to rise.

"America is a rich country," said Stiglitz, a Columbia University professor and former World Bank chief economist.

"The question is not whether we can afford to squander $3 trillion or $5 trillion," he told committee members. "We can. But our strength will be sapped. ... There is no such thing as a free war."

As for what the White House said about Mr. Stiglitz' estimates, he has a very direct response:

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, I think the White House lacks the courage to engage in a national debate about the cost of the Iraq war. The Joint Economic Committee has asked the White House to come down and discuss the numbers; they’ve refused. Security is important, and we don’t deny that. The question is whether this war has been the best way of obtaining the security. And no matter what you’re going to do—you know, what you think about security, you still have to look at the cost. The costs have been important, even for the way we’ve waged the war. The reason the administration presumably did not buy, for instance, the MRAPs, these special vehicles that would have reduced the number of deaths by a very large fraction, is economics. So, you know, no matter what one says, economics is important, and the American people have the right to have an understanding of what those costs are. When we went to war, they said it was going to cost $50 billion. We are now spending that money upfront every three months, and that’s not even including the cost of veterans’ healthcare and disability down the line.

The market determines value based on scarcity. As Mr. Stiglitz explained to Amy Goodman:

When we say $3 trillion, that’s really an underestimate. We attributed, in our book, only $5 to $10 to the war itself. But if you look back, in 2003, futures markets, which take into account increases in demand, increases in supply—they knew that China was going to have increased demand, but they thought there would be increases in supply from the Middle East—they thought the price would remain at $25 for the next ten years or more. What changed that equation was the Iraq war. They couldn’t elicit the increase of supply in the Middle East because of the turmoil that we brought there. So we think, actually, the true numbers, not the $5 or $10 that we used, because we didn’t want to get in a quibble, but really a much larger fraction of the difference between $25 that it was at the time in 2003 and the $100 we face today.

Scarcity is the peculiar province of economics, the "dismal science." How much is available to go around, how fairly can it be distributed? This is the assumption of utilitarianism, this is the assumption of John Rawls' "Theory of Justice," this is the assumption of economists: scarcity is the nature of the world, now how do we adjust our desires to meet this wholly reasonable and undeniable conclusion? The economic pie can only be so large. Full employment, for example, would be disastrous: without a scarcity of jobs, what bargaining power would the employer have, what incentive would drive the workder to labor rather than laziness? With every niche filled, there would be nowhere to go, and little reason to worry about being asked to go. Scarcity is not only reality, we deem it necessity. The desert is our model for the world, it is the spur of our incentives: we are not creatures driven and derided by lust, because lust we can market. Lust is another model of scarcity, as you can never have enough things, look good enough, have enough sex or be attractive, knowleadgeable, witty, intelligent, enough. You must always lack and desire what you do not have. It is not lust we are driven by now, but fear. Fear for our security, but also fear for our want, fear that the world, indeed, is not enoughm and that we must always have more. Our fear is that the world is actually the desert we are afraid it might be, and that enough will never be afforded us.

Oddly, I think this is new, and it is American. In Stanley Kubrick's vision of Anthony Burgess' venture into the future, the world they imagine in A Clockwork Orange is not a world of plentitude and scarcity: it is a world of emptiness and spiritual waste. Alex is a creature of appetites, but those appetites are not the appetites Sitting Bull complained of. The love of possession is not a disease with him: indeed, he sees the world as his oyster, and reprimands his "droogs" when they spurn his authority over them. He reminds them everything they want is theirs for the taking, and, indeed, the live a life of crime and rape and theft that supplies all their needs, but their needs seem to be small. They steal cars and money as an exercise in power, not possession. Theirs is a dissolute life, but it is not a possessive one. Still, to an American eye, Alex's world is a very British one. He lives in a block of concrete flats, government housing small and cramped and anonymous, with even the public are in the lobby defaced in reaction to the soul-lessness, the dehumanizing atmosphere of the place. But no one complains of that, and the solution doesn't seem to be a more open marketplace. Alex's one venture into a store reveals as glittering and gaudy an arena as ever could be wished for, so it isn't lack of goods that plague his world, it is lack of humanity, and that is not a purchasable commodity. Indeed, the woman he kills inadvertently is a merchant in human happiness, and a collector of frankly pornographic art. The primary difference between her and Alex is his use of physical power, of violence. It is enough, but it isn't violence driven by what she owns and he doesn't. Yet what we hear today about terrorists or illegal aliens is all the same thing: we have something "they" want, and they will come and take it from us, will enjoy what we have, and we won't be able to any longer. That is not a fear peculiar only to American culture, but it is certainly a fear peculiar to American political culture today.

No character in Kubrick's film seems concerned with acquisition at all, or with what will be taken from them. Their only concern is power, and who wields it (rape, after all, Alex's favored mode of expression, is just another form of violence; and all violence is about exerting power). Which is another way of looking at scarcity, and another reason why we ventured, as a country, into a disastrous and misguided war. We were even assured the war would not create scarcity but defeat it, and now when Alfred Stiglitz tells us just the opposite has happened, the White House hastily changes the subject, deflects attention from the fear of want to the fear of losing what we have. So Americans at home are told only to worry about scarcity, are told only to shop after national calamity, or how we don't have the resources to help the people of the Gulf Coast after Katrina; or how we can't help borrowers caught in the subprime mortgage catastrophe; or told how we can't wage war and help the poor, the homeless, the sick, the infirm, even the veterans of the war that is making everything else too expensive, although we are assured that war either costs us nothing, or is a price worth paying. Power itself is an expression of scarcity, so that even those of us who proclaim power a necessary evil which we will wield wisely, confess the scarcity of the world, rather than the profligacy of God, the Creator who made the profligacy of nature.

Looking at what technology has wrought across the face of the earth since the discovery of the uses of petroleum barely 100 years ago, and the near exhaustion of that same resource today, it would seem economics and the notion of scarcity is not only true, but rational. That is the lesson of global warming: that there isn't enough to go around, and now we must reduce our demands, we must limit what we can do, expect, desire. The world is a desert, and we must act accordingly. Ironically, the desert is precisely where people have gone for centuries to encounter the God of Abraham, the one known as the Creator.

Consider, first, that is has always been this way; and it has not always been this way. When was the last time you heard someone talk like this?

People nowadays interchange gifts and favors out of friendship, but buying and selling is considered absolutely inconsistent with the mutual benevolence which should prevail between citizens and the sense of community of interest which supports our social system. According to our ideas, buying and selling is essentially anti-social in all its tendencies. It is an education in self-seeking at the expense of others, and no society whose citizens are trained in such a school can possibly rise above a very low grade of civilization
-- Edward Bellamy

The ultimate aim of production is not production of goods but the production of free human beings associated with one another on terms of equality.
-- John Dewey

I confess that I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other's heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of human beings
-- John Stuart Mill

The gross national product includes air pollution and advertising for cigarettes, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors, and jails for the people who break them ... It does not allow for the health of our families, the quality of thier education, or the joy of their play.
-- Robert F. Kennedy

We must recognize that we can't solve our problems now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power....[What is required is] a radical restructuring of the architecture of American society.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr

Three from the 19th century, two from the twentieth. It is hard to imagine an American public figure today speaking as Bellamy and Dewey did, or an American politician speaking as Kennedy did. And Martin Luther King, Jr., of course, only had a "dream," not a critique of American society that sounds very much like the little regarded and much despised liberation theology of Latin America. A helpful prelude, though, to a discussion of a much older text, and much older ideas, from another culture. Too old, and ideas are easily dismissed as ancient and irrelevant. But Ecclesiastes is right, and again and again we learn that there is, indeed, nothing new under the sun. We take that, too, as a lesson of scarcity, and tell ourselves nothing could be new under the sun, so we must accept the present as an inevitable and ineluctable extension of the past; which is no more true than the myth of scarcity we cling to for our survival.

You can consider this in the terms of what Naomi Klein calls the "shock doctrine." Or you can consider it in even more direct terms, of who gets to control the natural resources like water. It comes to the same end: the preaching of scarcity, commodification as a way of making something more desirable. So long as someone else can create a scarcity which they can then supply, they will have power. And what is true for multinational corporations was equally true for Solomon:

Solomon became a centralized power in Israel (something, by the way, God had warned Israel about back in 1 Samuel). He became the main source and owner of chariots and arms, which he also sold; so he was an arms dealer. He levied tributes on those who came through Israel (it was on the trade routes), and on all the peole of Israel. Tributes, of course, are nothing more than taxes, and they do nothing more than take money from the many, and give it to the one: the king. It's good to be king; for the king. He also built the Temple, in a style typical for the Near East; but there's another issue there, and it's the same underlying issue: the Temple enforced control.

The Temple was arranged into three areas: the outer Temple, where women and slaves and all the "non-persons" of Israel could gather. The Inner Temple, where the men of Israel alone could go; and, in a small room at the back, the "holy of holies," where only the priest could enter. [Walter] Brueggeman said if you put wings on the Temple, it would be a modern passenger plane. The elite board first, and get the best seats in a special section, while the rest of us board last and sit cheek by jowl. Those up front even get the curtain drawn so we can't see what they are eating. The cockpit, of course, is there the priest goes.

Contrast this to Sinai, says Brueggeman, where all of Israel saw Moses on the mountain talking to God. Now, most of Israel can't even go into the inner temple, and no one is allowed to venture into the place where God could be seen.

Control, in other words, with access guaranteed by accidents of birth. All the Jubilee stuff that comes into Deuteronomy, by the way, doesn't even exist yet, and under Solomon it never will. That would cost him control.

Solomon becomes "wise," too, not because he is born that way, but because he puts scholars on his payroll, and pays them to know and learn wisdom and give it to him as he needs it. He controls knowledge, then, too; as much as he possibly can. And Solomon does one more thing: when he fights his brother for the throne, he kills all his brother's supporters after he becomes king. All of them save the priest, whom he exiles to a small village, where the priest leaves so long as he remains quiet. His power consolidated, Solomon proceeds to build a Temple to prove his power and wealth, and to enjoy a reputation that he largely bought and paid for with other people's money.

Under Brueggeman's analysis, Solomon might well fit into Klein's "shock doctrine." Solomon fights his brother for control of the throne, and kills his brothers supporters; if that isn't "shock and awe," what is? Then Solomon consolidated control in his hands, and became an arms dealer with the nations around Israel, even as he made Israel a military power. Such power, of course, is about scarcity. Only friendship with the king will provide security for the subjects. Only the king's wisdom is wise, because he has the best scholars to prove it. Only the king's power is just and fair, because he provides the security against rival kingdoms whom he also arms, and has to arm against. As long as the king keeps all good things scarce, and provides some measure of those things who are loyal to the king, then all is well with the king in his kingdom. But consider the rest of the story from the Hebrew scriptures:

Jump ahead about 400 years, to the impending Babylonian Exile. Now comes Jeremiah, descended from a long line of priests, from that very village where Solomon exiled the priest who had supported his brother. And now Jeremiah tells the reigning king:

Let not the wise boast of their wisdom,
nor the valiant of their valour;
let not the wealthy boast of their wealth;
but if anyone must boast, let him boast of this:
that he understands and acknowledges me.
For I am the LORD, I show unfailing love,
I do justice and right on the earth;
for in these I take pleasure.
This is the word of the LORD.

There is a direct rebuke of the descendants of Solomon there. Solomon who purchased his wisdom and his palace and his power and even the Temple, with his central concern for Solomon, and what Solomon could obtain, and own, and control. Solomon who used his control of horses and chariots to exact tribute (read: taxes) from others; who used the location of Israel along the trade routes to exact a toll for what passed through the land, and made sure the money went to Solomon, not to the community. Solomon cared about Solomon, not about:

How good and pleasant it is to live together as brothers in unity!
It is like fragrant oil poured on the head
and falling over the beard,
Aaron's beard, when the oil runs down
over the collar of his vestments.
Is is as if the dew of Hermon were falling
on the mountains of Zion.
There the LORD bestows his blessing,
life for evermore (Psalm 133)

The LORD bestows the blessing freely. Solomon makes sure the blessing is recovered and rewarded to Solomon. Solomon, like the Pharoah, says there isn't enough to go around: not enough money, not enough power, not enough wisdom, and I, Solomon, must control it all, must deal in it, must buy and sell in all the marketplaces, of arms, of ideas, of palaces, even of religion. Because of this, says Jeremiah, comes the Exile. Because of this, Isaiah tells Israel, the people, not the kings:

"Come for water, all who are thirsty;
though you have no money, come, buy grain and eat;
come, buy wine and milk, not for money, not for a price.
Why spend your money for what is not food
your earnings on what fails to satisfy?
Listen to me and you will fare well,
you will enjoy the fat of the land. (Isaiah 55:1-2)

Listen, not to the king, but the LORD. Fare well not because the king is wise, or rich, or virtuous, but because of the goodness of the LORD. And buy without money, buy food without price, because economic transactions are not the basis of true life. There is no basis of exchange here: "Come to me and listen to my words, hear me and you will have life." (Isaiah 55:3). It is the call of the Creator, who gave life simply by speaking, in the beginning; and who gives life still, simply by speaking. And what is life if not a gift, something for which you can't give anything in exchange, which you can't even accept or acknowledge or receive, because you can never step away from it, apart from it, stand beside it and recognize it as something other to you, something which you could be given. What you is there to give to, if you don't already have life?

And because of the Exile comes Deuteronomy; the book of identity; and not identity for the king, but for the people. The people to whom God has given the one gift which can be given: life.

The consistent thread through the Hebrew scriptures into the proclamation of the basileia tou theou is that humans must eschew and avoid political power, because power draws its source from the fear of scarcity. As Brueggemann reads the Biblical narrative, Pharoah represents the people who live in fear and anxiety and anger. Such people have no energy left over for the neighborhood. In the story of Joseph and Pharoah, the guy with the most power and authority and wealth, dreams of scarcity. Which is not surprising; Pharoah's oikos is governed by the fear of running out. It is what keeps him in control, keeps him in power and why the people allow him to rule. This anxiety about scarcity is what drives the Hebrews into slavery and so, in brief, Genesis moves into Exodus.

Now Pharoah is so afraid of scarcity, so filled with anxiety for what might be taken from him, he begins to kill the babies of the Hebrews (and here the parallel to Herod in the New Testament, where he is clearly Pharoah to all the Gospel writers, becomes clearer. This is where Matthew draws his parallel with the Massacre of the Innocents). This is Pharoah's anxiety at work. As my notes indicate from the lecture: "The system that generates anxiety cannot relate to steadfast love." Which all by itself explains much about the reaction to Tom Fox, and even to the desire to go to war in the Middle East, a desire Wesley Clark says originally led to a plan to invade 7 countries in that region. But the story of the Exodus is that "Anxiety generated by ideology and social systems is not a part of the human condition." It is, in other words, our creation, and our creation, unlike God's, is grossly imperfect.

Enter Moses, a person with nothing who dreamed of freedom and departure from the "anxiety producing system." And then there is the miracle in the desert, the gift of God's abundance in the manna which comes to break the influence of the anxiety system (it comes as the people are complaining that they were better off in Egypt than in the desert). Our anxiety, Brueggemann notes, is a product of our lack of trust (faith) in God. God's offer of abundance, he says, calls into question the anxiety created by social systems, by human structures and strictures; and yet God never gives us more than "this day our daily bread."

The answer here becomes an answer that can never gain wide acceptance, because it requires a faith that cannot be imposed, nor would I choose to try to impose it. That way, too, requires an argument from scarcity: the portrayal of a god whose grace is necessary for life, but such grace is in short supply and available only to those who rightly and properly believe. That grace was bestowed upon the widow when she fed Elijah, but she was already of the house of Israel. That grace was bestowed freely and without first asking payment in any kind by the people who came to Jesus to be healed of their blindness, their lameness, their diseases. They know only that he had a reputation for power, and often they were amazed at how he treated them. They, too, were accustomed to scarcity, but Jesus blessed them with an open and generous hand, and never took back a blessing because they had not given him or God the proper due. Likewise when the prophets promise streams in the desert and the world coming to Jerusalem to pay homage to the one true God, it is a scene of benevolence and reverence, not of an enslaved humanity making a forced pilgrimage to Zion. The promise of life through the actions of the Creator are to be bestowed through the children of Abraham, not on them exclusively as a precious reward, as something rare and precious and available only to a few. But to live in that promise, to live in what Christians call the basiliea tou theou, is an act of faith, and that faith cannot be imposed even though it is a precondition to the trust that abandons scarcity and sees abundance.

The sunflower is profligate in its production of seeds from one seed, and there are enough to feed the birds or people and still make more sunflowers. But still we make sure the seeds are not free. If we did not, who would grow them? The sunflowers, of course, would grow themselves. But to appreciate that intellectually, and to live in the world that implies spiritually, are two very different endeavors. One might be utopian; the other is sheer madness; or simple faith. The latter are two conditions that often appear alike.

It can seem quite radical to think this way. But thinking this way doesn't mean you have to abandon all you know, nor that everything you know is wrong. But it might just mean that some of what you think, needs to be reconsidered. The Celtic Christians at the end of the Roman Empire would call that "seeking the place of resurrection." Which is yet another way of seeing abundance where others see only scarcity. It is open to everyone, but it is not incumbent on anyone, except those who choose it. And to those who do, it is a question of whether or not they truly choose life, of whether we truly trust God to be profligate enough to give us this day what we need.

Call it a Lenten meditation.

Same song, second verse

As the year closes, I've been watching a documentary series on Netflix, "Chef's Table."  It profiles in roughly one-hour episodes famous chefs who will never be on Food Network, but who regardless are apparently well known in the field.

I've never heard of any of them.

The third in the series is a chef from Argentina who has several restaurants around the world, is, the documentary tells me, constantly on television and has been for years, and is very, very famous.  Everywhere except America, apparently.  To say he's the Bobby Flay of South America would be an insult, but I'm guessing his fame is on that level or perhaps well above.  More likely he's Bobby Flay combined with Mario Batali with the name recognition of Guy Fieri.

I mention it only because I thought of the notion of what we know being important in giving us perspective on what we think is revelatory, or especially an indicator of the future.  Annie Dillard pointed out that no place on the globe is "out of the way," except as a matter of perspective, and our perspective is not the only one on the planet.  "Out of the way" to us may be "home" to someone else  (as it is to this chef, who lives on an island in a lake on the border of Argentina and Peru, reached at the end of 100 miles of dirt road).  As Ms. Dillard puts it (if memory serves):  "Out of the way?  From where?"

Anyway, I thought of that when reading about story no. 10 here.  Daniel Dennett, in his ignorance about priests and clerics in general, thinks he's discovered a new thing made possible only by modern technology.  When, in fact, it's neither new, or distinctive, nor the shape of things to come; nor only made possible thanks to silicon chips.  Think of Graham Greene's "whiskey priest," or the preacher in The Grapes of Wrath.  Literature is sprinkled with examples of priests and pastors who found the church a convenient place to make a living, and little more.  Hell, Chaucer wrote about them.  So this is nothing new.  And besides, as I've said several times before:  has Mr. Dennett ever attended a seminary class?

Seminary is not a place for indoctrination.  Take this ludicrous statement by Mr. Dennett as an example:

Protecting your inner workings is becoming very difficult; it’s very hard to keep secrets. Religions have thrived in part because they were able to keep secrets. They were able to keep secrets about other religions from their parishioners, who were largely ignorant of what other people in the world believed, and also keep secrets about their own inner workings and their own histories, so that it was easy to have a sort of controlled message that went out to people. Those days are over. You can go on the Internet and access to all kinds of information. This is going to change everything. 

This (the internet) is going to change nothing, because:  what the hell is he talking about?  Christianity ceased to be a "mystery religion" sometime in the 1st century.  You want a mystery religion, you look to the temple practice of the Mormons.  Is the internet going to destroy them?  And as for parishioners being ignorant of that other people in the world believe, has Mr. Dennett paid attention to the arguments about Islam?  It seems clear people prefer ignorance over knowledge, the better to despise and detest "the other".  Yes, you can go on the internet and get all kinds of information.  Most of it is crap, and people mostly look for the information that confirms their prejudice.

Information is not education.

Maybe this is the place to make that distinction:  education is not about being informed; education is about being trained to think in a certain way.  There is no "objective" stance, no "God's-eye view" or "position of the universe" for humans to take.  All information is served up with a point of view attached, if only the point of view that the earth sits "upright" with North America and Europe "on top," and the lesser countries "below."  Larry Wilmore presents the globe like that on his comedy show, but everyone takes it as a joke.  I first encountered it in seminary, as yet another way to simply change my point of view, my presumptions about everything.   And that's what a seminary education will do:  challenge your point of view about everything.  And it won't give you a new one to replace it.  You have to come up with that on your own.  I remember a seminary professor, a man closer to my age now than then (20 years ago) asking a group of us how we would explain the importance of Jesus Christ without resorting to old-school soteriology about the damnation of the unbeliever.  He didn't have the answer either; he was asking us.

Seminary ain't Sunday School

Education is about being trained in the ideas and even ideology of the teacher.  You can challenge that ideology (I got into almost an infamous spat with one of my professors in seminary), but you have to learn how even start to do that.  The self-taught, the autodidact, are conspicuous by their opinions and insistence on ideas that their self-education never challenged.  The internet has not created a class of people who prefer to confirm their prejudices with select information, it has simply confirmed their existence as a normal part of human society.  We all prefer our own prejudices:  that's why there are so many denominations and non-denominational churches, so many different types of French cheese, so many ever-changing flavors of ice cream.  We all think we are right, and we all gather with "right-minded' people; people who think like us.  The internet didn't invent that; the internet didn't change that.

All the internet did was provide yet another forum for the confirmation of that.  What it won't do is the same thing television was never going to do:  it won't educate.

Education is a deliberate process, an engagement between teacher and student.  It does not occur by happenstance or coincidence or osmosis.

I don't know about the pastors and rabbis selected by Mr. Dennett for his book:  maybe they have had mid-life crises; maybe they have had a crisis of faith.  Maybe the insane pressures of being a religious leader simply got to them, and they abandoned their churches and synagogues altogether.  Nothin he describes is new or unique in the world.  It is as old as religion and clergy itself.

And as for the idea that congregations will demand information the church is hiding from them, all I can say is:  I took my training in the thought of the Jesus Seminar and the German Biblical scholarship which prompted the Christian fundamentalist movement, to my congregation, and they didn't use it to demand more of me:  they rejected it wholesale, and me with it.  I don't think I was a worthy messenger, but what I didn't find in my churches was any desire to know more salient and valid and, at the same time challenging, information than anything I've seen on the internet since I went online in the '90's.

Here I want to tie in another article at RD mentioned in that top 10 list, this one about Sam Harris and his e-mail spat with Noam Chomsky.

Let me say at the outset it still surprises me, as it did Chomsky, that Harris would publish this exchange.  Harris seems to be a man remarkably obtuse when it comes to either self-reflection or even any consideration of an idea that isn't his.  But it's the article at RD that convinced me, mainly on the strength of the three long quotes from the e-mails of Noam Chomsky, to revisit this issue at year's end.  I mention it because it concisely states where Chomsky rebutted everything Harris had to say ("I’ve seen apologetics for atrocities before, but rarely at this level" pretty much marks "paid" to any idea that Sam Harris is an ethical thinker; and I agree with you completely that we cannot have a rational discussion of these matters, and that it is too tedious to pretend otherwise" is so clear and directly between the eyes it is only myopia that can account for Harris being willing to publish this exchange.) and it establishes, as clearly as anything I've ever seen since the collapse of logical positivism, that the positions taken by Sam Harris are morally corrupt, unsound in reasoning, and thoroughly discredited.

We have in Dennett and Harris two people probably better known because of the Internet than they would be otherwise (the number of people who write bestselling books but also influence the public discourse is vanishingly small), and they are far more alike than different in that both of them live in a bubble which the internet only reinforces for them.  And that is what the internet has created:  more of the same.  A little bit louder, and a little bit worse.  Mr. Dennett is as ignorant of the world around him as I am of famous chefs and public figures who don't swim into my ken.  And he's as parochial as people who think that anyplace not near them is "out of the way" for everybody.  Mr. Harris is no different, yet he can't even allow any contrary idea to swim into his knowledge, lest it uproot his understanding and render everything he's ever said pointless.

And yet they are, if not saints, at least representatives of one constituency on the internet.  Maybe that "vast wasteland" isn't inherent in how we use our communications technologies; maybe it's simply inherent in us.

Why does religion matter?

Admittedly, I need more time to explore this, but via the Mad Priest I find yet another internet article about religion and what it is supposed to do: i.e., it should, like everything else in this material world, produce something of value, and to the extent that it does, it can therefore be considered "good."

I'm tempted to say this is yet another form of Social Darwinism, but then I'd have to go off the rails of this discussion and elucidate the true conclusions of evolution. That's on my mind for reasons which will become plain in a moment, but also not entirely germane to the issues at hand; so I'll come back to it later.*

Went to bed last night looking for something to read for a few minutes, and plucked up Huston Smith's Why Religion Matters (New York, HarperSanFrancisco 2001), which I'd never finished reading. There I came across this quote, from Christopher Lasch, referring to Jonathan Edwards, the man perhaps best known for giving us the image of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." Mr. Edwards was quite a subtle theologian, though, and this brief reference to him by Mr. Lasch tells us a great deal about the current popular perception of that noble (and sometimes rather dismal) enterprise:

Intellectuals [writes Smith] typically present religion as comforting people with the agreeable illusion that they are the center of the universe, the object of God's loving-kindness and rapt attention, Lasch continues. But (in a paragraph that is not easy reading but is important enough to quote) Lasch points out that it is just this illusion that the most radical form of religious faith relentlessly attacks. Thus:

"Jonathan Edwards distinquishes between a 'grateful good will'(the root of religious feeling, as he understood it) and the kind of gratitude that depends on being loved and appreciated--the kind of gratitude, in other words, that people might feel toward a creator presumed to have their interests at heart. 'True virtue,' Edwards wrote, 'consists, not in love of any particular beings nor in gratitude because they love us, but in a union of heart to being in general.' Man has no claim to God's favor, and a 'grateful good will' has be to conceived, accordingly, not as an acknowledgement of the answer to our prayers so to speak, but as the acknowledgment of God's life-giving power to order things as he pleases, without 'giving any account of his doings.' "(Smith p. 117)

I have to say several things at once, because this idea spawns so many responses. One: it sounds very much like Annie Dillard in Holy the Firm or Pilgrim at Tinker Creek or (and most especially) For the Time Being. Two: it puts me in mind, too, of Bill McKibben and his book Hundred Dollar Holiday (a timely tome). Third: it puts me in mind of some work I did in seminary on the nature of faith and the material inducements we need; that's a very Protestant v. Catholic/Orthodox issue, but one still worth exploring further. And fourth, of course, it puts me very much in mind of Joel Osteen and Ted Haggard, and the "gospel of prosperity." Which brings me back to McKibben and Dillard and my senior year in seminary. All topics I hope to get back to. Somebody hold me to that, will you?

I want to say more about this now, but I'm pressed for time. This, at least, preserves that rather bracing observation by Edwards and Lasch for future discussion. Historically what intervened, of course, was Pietism; the same movement that gave Edwards his right to such emotional fervor, also went on (unintentionally, but then we all know about good intentions) to undo his view of the Creator in the name of the supremacy of emotional fervor. But that's topic no. 5. All I want to say right now is: when discussing what religion is, or is not, perhaps we first need to nail down a definitive definition of "religion."

D'ya think?


*oh, what does this have to do with evolution? Left that out, didn't I? Smith makes his discussion in the context of the clash between faith and evolution, an emblematic clash between science and religion. In brief, the idea that all believers are fundamentalist flat-earthers is false, but it's a false story perpetrated as much by non-religious observers as, by now, by religious leaders. Smith has some interesting insights into the "Darwin wars," which I also want to come back to. "Time, time, time, see what's become of me, while I looked around for my possibilities. I was so hard to please...."

Meanwhile, in the agora....

Growing up around guns and owning them as an adult affords a person memories and experiences that strangers to guns may have trouble understanding. The divide is phenomenological, not political (or not political until it gets to be), like the gulf between those who’ve had sex and those who haven’t or those who smoke and those who’ve never lit up. Pulling a trigger and being prepared to do so cuts patterns in the self. Depending on the nature of your social life, which time around guns can shape and color in ways that I’ll describe, you might forget that these patterns are even there, because you’re surrounded by people who share them—until someone or some event challenges you to answer for your thinking.

That's from an article Josh Marshall highlights at TPM, where he's trying to make much of the distinction between those who live in a "gun culture," and those who don't.  I rise to call "bollocks" on the whole discussion.

Replace "guns" in that quote with anything you like:  "Evangelicals;" "Bible-thumpers" or "holy rollers" would do, as well.  "Snake handlers" comes to mind, though I'm more familiar with the previous categories.  Maybe "Ultra-orthodox Jews," or "Fundamentalist Muslims."  You get the idea.  Drop in the term of your choice for the exclusionary group of your choice, and then tell me what's different about guns and gun owners.  JMM notes he's had correspondence with people fanatical about the "liberty" they think the 2nd Amendment represents, even though they don't own guns, and with gun owners who think all guns should be registered and very heavily regulated, so it's not a simple either/or equation, even as we try to make it one for easier discussion. But really, do we have to talk about "tribes"?

Part of the reason I object is the quasi-anthropological aspect of the topic.  "Tribes" is a term with specific meaning in anthropology, but a vaguer, looser meaning in the general public.  We can speak of "tribes" with in political parties, or even within national regions (or even local ones).  But when we speak of "tribes" in this context, it carries the idea that we must give due deference to that tribe's concerns.  And yet we don't have to acknowledge the "legitimate concerns" of the "gun tribe," anymore than we have to give due deference to the "tribe" of drug gangs.

Ah, you will say, but gun owners are not criminals, and drug gangs are; the comparison is unfair and unjust.  But drug gangs are only criminal because we have declared their activities criminal; there's nothing inherently good or bad about drugs; it's the ones we define as bad which are the problem (alcohol v. marijuana, for example).  The real issue is not the inherent evil of the fetish object (drugs, guns), but the question of recognition of, and response to, the "tribe" we say surrounds that issue.  Do we really need to recognize the legitimate concerns of drug gangs the way we recognize the legitimate concerns of gun owners?

Let me put this in religious terms.  We have a 1st Amendment, which protects religion in this country.  Does that mean we have to respect the rights of religious fanatics to firebomb abortion clinics, or commit terrorist attacks, or just insist our children learn that evolution is false and comes from Satan?  Do we even discuss such extreme ideas in terms of the "tribe" such people grow up in, or join in adult life?  We have a 2nd Amendment which we think protects gun ownership in this country (it is, even under Heller, far less protected than religious belief).  Does that mean we have to respect the rights of people to amass arsenals that can be used by family members, if not the purchasers themselves, to commit mayhem?

If  you understand religious extremists (Muslim, Christian, what have you) as a "tribe," does it advance your understanding of how to respond to them?  Do I really need to understand fundamentalist Christians as  "tribe" in order to know I don't want them writing laws about who can marry whom, or what can be taught in schools?  I've grown up around both gun owners and religious fundamentalists, and it's never occurred to me to categorize either as a "tribe" whose "culture" I must understand.  I understand full well the culture of both, and each partakes of the general culture far more than either creates a unique, individual culture apart from the main.  They aren't tribes so much as they are special interest groups.  They also move back and forth between wanting to ignore and withdraw from the general culture, and wanting to dominate and control it.  The former is their business, but the latter is political, a matter for the polis, the people in general.  And I don't really need to consider them as anything else but wrong, to confront that.

The "divide" is not phenomenological, unless you mean it is basic to human identity and existence itself.  But that's nonsense; how can gun ownership be any more basic to human existence than religious belief, and yet we don't allow religious beliefs not shared by the majority to hold sway over our legislative process.   As for "patterns" which are "cut into the self" which you may not even know are there, I could make the very same argument about growing up in a small East Texas town in the '60's.  Annie Dillard even wrote a very insightful memoir about a '60's suburban American childhood.  You could use the language of that quote to describe the weltanschaung she described from that experience, or to describe mine; and I've never considered such experiences to be "phenomenological" or like a gulf between the sexually experienced and the sexually inexperienced (which is a pretty silly gulf, looked back at from 40 years past the onset of puberty).  Are Ms. Dillard and I part of a "tribe" because our childhoods look familiar on "Mad Men"?  Hardly.  And as for events that have challenged my thinking, well:  if that hasn't happened to you by now, you haven't been paying attention.  That, or you haven't been out in the world yet.  Maybe it's time you joined the polis in the agora.

Molly Ivins once wrote that she liked the guys who ate lunch in the Petroleum Club, but she didn't want them running the country.  I feel the same way about the "gun tribe."  I have nothing against them, personally; but I'm not too concerned with the source of their fanaticism, or with the need to find a common language with them, any more than I want to reason with fundamentalists about teaching evolution schools, or with rabid anti-Communists about the fluoride in the public water supply.  Such fanatics are no less tribalistic than rabid defenders of what they think is the 2nd Amendment.  I don't have to understand and appreciate their position, to know I don't want them making laws.

This is, I suppose, "tribal" thinking:

 “Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’ — we are not going to stand for this injustice,” [Oklahoma state Sen. Nathan] Dahm [(R)] told the receptive crowd. “Another quote that he said was, ‘Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.’ Now, I’m willing to give the President the benefit of the doubt, and believe that this is just sincere ignorance and not conscientious stupidity. But I’m here to say, no matter what it is, we in Oklahoma will not stand for it. The Second Amendment reigns supreme. ‘Shall not infringe’ means ‘shall not infringe.’”

The Second Amendment "reigns supreme"?  Supreme over what?  The entire Constitution?  You can call this kind of reasoning "tribal," but it is also supremely stupid.  One might as well say there is a "tribe" that supports the cause of nullification.  They don't deserve my respect or consideration, either.

As far as I'm concerned, this is the best and final word on the subject:

"We stop being the world's greatest country when we allow our most vulnerable citizens to be slaughtered because we might offend people by taking away their guns."

Indeed, at that point it is safe to say we stop being a country at all.

DHS And The Cloud Of Unknowing

Definitely a message you want to hear from the Department of HOMELAND SECURITY pic.twitter.com/BVhWdrXkhA

— Jason Selvig (@jasonselvig) August 28, 2025

First, let’s put that passage in context.

Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. 2 For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. 3 While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. 4 But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. 5 For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. 6 So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. 7 For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night. 8 But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. 9 For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, 10 who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. 11 Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.

12 We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, 13 and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. 14 And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. 15 See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone. 16 Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not despise prophecies, 21 but test everything; hold fast what is good. 22 Abstain from every form of evil.

23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.

25 Brothers, pray for us.

26 Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss.

27 I put you under oath before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers.

28 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

Not my favorite translation, but it was easy to copy. Notice here that v. 17 is not rendered as a separate sentence, but as a clause in a longer sentence. V. 17 raises two questions, neither of which make this verse more appropriate for government use. The first question is: “what is prayer”? The second is: how do we do this unceasingly?

Jacques Derrida actually introduced me to this verse, at the end of The Gift of Death, if memory serves. Google AI tells me:

For Jacques Derrida, to "pray without ceasing" refers not to a continuous religious act but to a fundamental, indeterminate address to an absolute other, which he describes as a "prayer without prayer". This idea, which is explored in his work Circumfession and his lectures on prayer, transforms the religious command into a radical philosophical and ethical posture.

The pure apostrophe

Derrida distinguishes between traditional prayer and what he calls "pure prayer," or the "apostrophe".

A prayer without referent: While a conventional prayer addresses a specific, known divine figure, Derrida's pure prayer addresses a "you" whose identity is unknown and indeterminate. It is a call directed to "nobody" in particular.

An uncertain act: This prayer is defined by its skepticism and suspension of certainty. You cannot be sure anyone is at the "other end" of the call. If you were certain of a response, it would cease to be prayer and become an order.

Pure performativity: This pure prayer is a pragmatic or performative act rather than a theological statement. It is a demand for the other's sheer presence, not for anything specific. The prayer is "absolutely heterogeneous to the minimal description, evaluation or narration".

A radical spirituality

This concept of ceaseless prayer is part of a "radical spirituality" that goes beyond traditional religious frameworks.

A "spectral" faith: Derrida's prayer is enabled by a suspension of belief in a supernatural being, making it a more "spectral" and radical form of faith. This perspective allows him to embrace an atheist perspective while still engaging in "prayers and tears".

A ceaseless desire: This constant state of prayer is a ceaseless human aspiration and longing, not a religious ritual. It is a fundamental hope and expectancy that cannot be monopolized by organized religion.

A childlike and skeptical posture: He describes his own prayer as having a childlike aspect intertwined with the "suspicion of the childish". It is a humble, ongoing call marked by both hope and an absolute lack of certainty.

The impossible prayer

Derrida suggests that authentic prayer must, in some way, affirm its own impossibility.

A fragile hope: The prayer for the absolute other is made precisely because the other's presence is not guaranteed. This hopelessness, or "epoché," is necessary for prayer to be authentic .

Contamination is inevitable: In texts like "How to Avoid Speaking," Derrida acknowledges that a pure, indeterminate prayer is ultimately threatened by contamination. Any articulation of prayer, with its concrete language, codes, and rituals, inevitably reintroduces the metaphysical elements that pure prayer seeks to avoid. However, this contamination may also be what makes prayer possible at all.

In summary, for Derrida, to "pray without ceasing" is to live in a state of ethical openness to an indeterminate and unknown absolute other, an incessant call that persists without the comfort of religious certainty.

This is more helpful than it seems because Derrida is discussing prayer outside a specific religious context. That actually helps the government’s use of the phrase; but it’s clearly not what Paul, or DHS, meant.

I’ll start at the bottom and work my way up, trying not to address this artificial summary as the words of Derrida.

First, the “certainty” of religion is always uncertainty. Abraham was certain God had demanded Isaac as a sacrifice, but the terror of the akedeh (the ritual binding of an animal for sacrifice in Hebrew practice, and the name applied to the story in Genesis, just as Christians speak of “the prodigal” for the story in Luke) lies precisely in the certainty of Abraham and the uncertainty that this is, in fact, God’s will. There is, in fact, more uncertainty than certainty in the Biblical witness. Jesus himself invokes Jonah, famous for his uncertainty about God’s command. Isaiah cries out in frustration “O, that you would come down, as in days of old!” Isaiah is desperate for some certainty. Peter is so certain of death he denies knowledge of Jesus three times. Death is certain. God? Eh, not so much.

I’m not trying to be glib, but certainty is not a mark of faithfulness. “I believe, help thou my unbelief!,” is more like it. Or at least more properly humble.

Which is not to deny we should “live in a state of ethical openness to an indeterminate and unknown absolute other.” The first person to claim they know the will of God is a liar, not a person of faith. Just ask Job and his friends. Again, I’m not proof-texting to settle an argument; I’m trying to appreciate the complexity of the Biblical witness. Certainty is supposed to be a hallmark of religious faith. I think it is only arrogance and a lack of humility, the latter of which is a Christian touchstone (I limit myself because of the verses, not because “religion” is co-terminous with “Christianity.”). A lot of the blast in the last five chapters of Job is against the arrogance of Job and his friends; the failure of God to speak of the events of the prologue just underline what Derrida would call God’s absolute otherness. That’s a good concept to keep in mind; especially for government agencies laying claim to the word of God (DHS is clearly exclusively aiming at Xians, so I’ll use the Christian term for the contents of the Bible.).

We’re still no closer to our questions, though. Derrida says the action (”praying without ceasing”) is a conscious and willed state of existence. (I hesitate to propose that as a proper restatement, but I think Derrida means it as a similar concept to S.K.’s Knight of Faith. In the terms of Johannes de Silentio, one always making the movements of the Infinite. Yeah, I know that doesn’t help much, either. But the Action

(Paul’s admonition) is a matter of will in existence, a sideways answer to Tolstoy’s question: “How should we then live?” Sideways because, despite the conclusion drawn by Google AI, we still don’t have a good definition of “prayer.”) Praying without ceasing is, to simplify it, the ultimate act of faith, with all of one’s life turned toward the goal. How, for example, do you learn to be last of all and servant of all, without devoting your life to the task? And yes, says Johannes de Silentio, that is what the Knight of Faith does, even as he appears to live an ordinary, bourgeois life. (Here we seem to part company with Derrida, because the Knight of Faith is in the religious, and Derrida’s pray-er is still seeking an ethical alignment. But I don’t think Fear and Trembling (ironically, a phrase from another Pauline epistle) is the fundamental touchstone it’s often made out to be. Not any more than religious faith is about absolute certainty. We can keep the ethical with the religious, for now; although the terms are NOT co-terminous.)

Prayer as an “openness,” however, appeals to me more than prayer as an action, or especially as a demand. Yes, there are prayers for intercession, and prayers of supplication; there are five categories of prayer, if memories of seminary serve. Useful for thinking of uses of prayer beyond “O Lord, won’t you buy me a…,” but ultimately just a way to justify the prayers we want to pray. Every Christian knows the Lord’s Prayer/Pater Noster, but how many think of it as a blueprint for prayer?

The prayer comes up when Jesus is asked: “How should we pray?” And Jesus says: “Like this.” And then we all take off one shoe, to follow his example. The prayer is instructions. We turned it into rote recital. I still can’t recite the 23rd psalm from memory. But the KJV version of the Pater Noster?  I could probably get a severe blow to the head and still recite it without thinking.

The instructions are pretty simple:

Address your prayer to God, and keep God’s name holy.

Seek first God’s kingdom (by which I mean work (without ceasing?) to see that it is here, now, and carry on accordingly)

Ask for nothing more than food for the day, mindful it is from God

And be humble; ask for forgiveness only insofar as you forgive. A reminder, IOW, that it’s not about you.

The doxology is a later addition. We’ll skip over it for now.

Okay, there are your instructions. That’s how you should pray. Not much room for a plea for a Mercedes Benz ; but plenty of room, I dare say, for “a state of ethical openness to an indeterminate and unknown absolute other.” That ethical openness inexorably directs you to others, without whom there is no ethical responsibility (there are no ethics for an individual on an island. But no person is an island, separate into themselves.). And “religion is responsibility, or it is nothing at all.”  So, to whom are you responsible? That’s a very ethical question, isn’t it?

If not, indeed, a very personal one.

We still haven’t settled what “prayer” is. Is it a generalized activity directed at nothing in the blind hope there is something after all, and our ethics are not, after all, just the behavior of the successful people in our society (Aristotle’s Nicomachean ones)? The point then is us, not the…whatever…to which our prayers are directed. Which is not far from wrong, though the effort to ground an ethic in something transcendent, if not knowable, seems a little weak to me. “Do to others what you would want done to you” seems like a pretty solid ethic, so long as you’re not in a society of masochistic sociopaths.

There’s always a catch, isn’t there?

But the question of ethics and how we should then live is not our question today. Our question is: how should we then pray? And why? What, in other words, is prayer for? And what is it?

Annie Dillard, by the way, is on Derrida’s side:

The silence is all there is. It is the alpha and the omega, it is God's brooding over the face of the waters; it is the blinded note of the ten thousand things, the whine of wings. You take a step in the right direction to pray to this silence, and even to address the prayer to "World." Distinctions blur. Quit your tents. Pray without ceasing.

"Quit your tents" is a reference to Exodus, to Moses in Sinai. Terrified by the theophany of Moses receiving the law from God, they tell Moses they’re just going to stay in their tents until the show on the mountain is over. It is, as they say, a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

There’s a connection here, which is why Dillard reaches from Moses to Thessalonians. Sinai marks the end of one way of life for the Israelites, and the beginning of another. Paul is marking the same for his church at Thessalonika.  He wants them to start it with doing everything in prayer. For their sake, obviously. He doesn’t say, doesn’t even imply, that God needs their prayers. He says they need it. The admonition to prayer is made to them. No different than Annie Dillard, actually. But her direction is towards the silence. Because her God is similar to Derrida’s: one who is not personal, and is wholly other.

We think of government that way: impersonal and wholly other. And usually dealing in directives. We call those “laws.” So is the tweet from DHS a directive? No; but what else would it be? And we still haven’t moved from “to what/whom?”and “how?”

If prayer is for us, are we just talking to ourselves? Possibly. As Derrida says, we can’t know. But we can trust; which is to say, have faith. We can believe. Which, as William James said, doesn’t mean believing what you know ain’t so. Back to Derrida: we can’t know.

There’s actually a great deal we can’t know. I can’t really know what people think of me (maybe they’re just being polite). I can’t know that some people love me. I trust they aren’t lying; it’s all I can finally do. I can’t even know that atomic theory, or relativity, or quantum mechanics are sound. Others tell me it must be so; but mostly they trust what they are told. The whole world, really, runs on faith. It has to. There’s no other way. Religious faith is really no different. I’ve never seen a germ, a molecule, RNA. But I’m told mRNA can be the basis for vaccines, and I accept that I’m given that vaccine and not saline or poison. I trust, where RFK, Jr. does not. My faith in science is, I think, better than his denial. I certainly do less harm than he will. And I believe I am ethically, and existentially, obligated to take care of others, to do what is in my power to help them, even if it’s just a cup of water, or a visit when they’re sick. What is RFK’s ethical obligation? And to whom?  He seems to believe in something even more unknowable than the God of Abraham. And to address himself to a more certain nothingness than the cloud of unknowing described by the anonymous Christian mystic as the way to knowing God.

You address your prayer to that, and you have taken a step in the right direction. The prayer is for you, anyway. To remind you of your position in the cosmos; your posture toward it; what you should expect from it; and your position and posture toward the people you are fortunate to know. It’s not for nothing that you do it. It is not towards nothing that you direct it. But it is a cloud of unknowing that you enter into when you assay it.

Things the DHS knows absolutely nothing about. So ignore them.

Scott: At the end of the day, can't we just think the good lord we have a president who cares about all Americans? pic.twitter.com/R0AENrv5hc

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 30, 2025

Yeah, I guess that’s what we’re really supposed to think. But that’s just credulity; not faith. That’s actively not knowing. Who needs that?

Christmas Day 2022

I used this in lieu of a sermon for my very first Christmas Day Service (in the end I only did two, both in that small country church of truly wonderful people).  I'm not doing a sermon this year on Christmas Day either; but I can still offer you this:

The World in a Bowl of Soup

by Annie Dillard

Once there was a great feast held in a banquet hall of such enormous proportions that you could not believe men built such a thing.  Two thousand chandeliers hung from the ceiling: lumber cut from all the world’s forests made the walls and parti-color floor.  Great loose areas of the hall were given to various activities: there were dances and many kinds of gaming: a corner was devoted to the sick and injured, and another to the weaving of cloth.  Children chanted rhymes wherever they gathered, and young men sought pretty girls in greenhouses or behind the damask hangings of booths and stalls.

The feast lasted all night long.  Guests sat at a table as long as a river that stretched down the middle of the hall.  No one cloth could cover such a table, nor could one centerpiece suffice.  So the table was decorated in hundreds of different themes, with different combinations of colors and kinds of tableware, with various carved figures and various drinks, and with lively musicians in costume playing to each set of guests a special music.

There was only a single course served to the guests, but that was a soup made of so many ingredients it seemed to contain all other dishes.  The soup was served continuously, all night long, and there were so many guests that all the places at the table were always taken, and the benches always full, when the servants ladled the soup into the endlessly decorated array of metal, glass, wood, and pottery bowls.

***

Now, the host of this feast was a young man of tremendous wealth and power who stood behind a curtain on a balcony above the great hall and watched the guests as they ate and drank at the long table.  He thought: “All night long people have been eating as much soup as they wanted and then coming back to the table for more.  It is good that they enjoy themselves.  But not one person has seen or really understood the excellence of that soup.”

So the host parted the curtain a crack more and let his gaze fall.  It fell directly on an old man who happened to be sitting at the table in his line of vision, looking about and thinking of nothing at all.  At once the old man felt an overwhelming sense of power, an impact as if his spirit had been struck broadside and wakened to a flood of light.  He bowed his head and saw, through charged eyes, his bowl of soup that had come alive and was filled to endless depths with wonderful things.

There were green fields in his soup bowl, with carrots growing one by one, in slender rows.  As he watched, transfixed, men and women in bright vests and scarves came and pulled the carrots, one by one, out of the soil, and carried them in baskets to shaded kitchens, where they scrubbed them with yellow brushes under running water.  He saw white-faced cattle lowing and wading in rivers, with dust on the whorled and curly white hair between their ears.  He saw tomatoes in kitchen gardens set out as seedlings by women in plaid shirts and by strong-handed men; and he watched the tomatoes as, before his eyes, the light from the sun blew each one up like a balloon.  Cells on the root hairs of beans swelled and divided, and squashes grew spotted and striped in the fall.  Wine aged in caves, and the barrel maker went home to his wife through sunlight and shade.

He saw the ocean, and he seemed to be in the ocean himself, swimming over orange crabs that looked like coral, or off the deep Atlantic banks where whitefish school.  Or again he saw the tops of poplars and the whole sky brushed with clouds in pallid streaks, under which wild ducks flew with outstretched necks and called, one by one, and flew on.

All these things the old man saw in his soup.  Scenes grew in depth and sunlit detail under his eyes and were replaced by ever more scenes, until, with the flight of wild ducks, the worlds resolved into one blue sky, now streaked, now clear, and, at last, into soup again, dark soup, fragrant in its bowl.  The host had let the curtain fall shut.

The man blinked and moved his head from side-to-side.  “I see now,” he said to himself, “that this is truly an excellent soup, praise God.”  And he ate his bowlful and joined the dancers in a daze, a kind of very energetic daze.

May it be unto you according to your faith.  Merry Christmas, and the happiest of holidays, to you and yours.

Christmas Day 2024: "The World in a Bowl of Soup"

I used this in lieu of a sermon for my very first Christmas Day Service (in the end I only ever did two Xmas Day services both in that small country church of truly wonderful people).  Nobody really cared about the sermon; they were there for the hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls. which even the "liberal" UCC was afraid I would call "communion."  No matter; a splendid time was had by all.

I'm not doing a sermon this year on Christmas Day either; but I can still offer you this:

The World in a Bowl of Soup

by Annie Dillard

Once there was a great feast held in a banquet hall of such enormous proportions that you could not believe men built such a thing.  Two thousand chandeliers hung from the ceiling: lumber cut from all the world’s forests made the walls and parti-color floor.  Great loose areas of the hall were given to various activities: there were dances and many kinds of gaming: a corner was devoted to the sick and injured, and another to the weaving of cloth.  Children chanted rhymes wherever they gathered, and young men sought pretty girls in greenhouses or behind the damask hangings of booths and stalls.

The feast lasted all night long.  Guests sat at a table as long as a river that stretched down the middle of the hall.  No one cloth could cover such a table, nor could one centerpiece suffice.  So the table was decorated in hundreds of different themes, with different combinations of colors and kinds of tableware, with various carved figures and various drinks, and with lively musicians in costume playing to each set of guests a special music.

There was only a single course served to the guests, but that was a soup made of so many ingredients it seemed to contain all other dishes.  The soup was served continuously, all night long, and there were so many guests that all the places at the table were always taken, and the benches always full, when the servants ladled the soup into the endlessly decorated array of metal, glass, wood, and pottery bowls.

***

Now, the host of this feast was a young man of tremendous wealth and power who stood behind a curtain on a balcony above the great hall and watched the guests as they ate and drank at the long table.  He thought: “All night long people have been eating as much soup as they wanted and then coming back to the table for more.  It is good that they enjoy themselves.  But not one person has seen or really understood the excellence of that soup.”

So the host parted the curtain a crack more and let his gaze fall.  It fell directly on an old man who happened to be sitting at the table in his line of vision, looking about and thinking of nothing at all.  At once the old man felt an overwhelming sense of power, an impact as if his spirit had been struck broadside and wakened to a flood of light.  He bowed his head and saw, through charged eyes, his bowl of soup that had come alive and was filled to endless depths with wonderful things.

There were green fields in his soup bowl, with carrots growing one by one, in slender rows.  As he watched, transfixed, men and women in bright vests and scarves came and pulled the carrots, one by one, out of the soil, and carried them in baskets to shaded kitchens, where they scrubbed them with yellow brushes under running water.  He saw white-faced cattle lowing and wading in rivers, with dust on the whorled and curly white hair between their ears.  He saw tomatoes in kitchen gardens set out as seedlings by women in plaid shirts and by strong-handed men; and he watched the tomatoes as, before his eyes, the light from the sun blew each one up like a balloon.  Cells on the root hairs of beans swelled and divided, and squashes grew spotted and striped in the fall.  Wine aged in caves, and the barrel maker went home to his wife through sunlight and shade.

He saw the ocean, and he seemed to be in the ocean himself, swimming over orange crabs that looked like coral, or off the deep Atlantic banks where whitefish school.  Or again he saw the tops of poplars and the whole sky brushed with clouds in pallid streaks, under which wild ducks flew with outstretched necks and called, one by one, and flew on.

All these things the old man saw in his soup.  Scenes grew in depth and sunlit detail under his eyes and were replaced by ever more scenes, until, with the flight of wild ducks, the worlds resolved into one blue sky, now streaked, now clear, and, at last, into soup again, dark soup, fragrant in its bowl.  The host had let the curtain fall shut.

The man blinked and moved his head from side-to-side.  “I see now,” he said to himself, “that this is truly an excellent soup, praise God.”  And he ate his bowlful and joined the dancers in a daze, a kind of very energetic daze.

May it be unto you according to your faith.  Merry Christmas, and the happiest of holidays, to you and yours.