"Abandon...all ye who enter here....."

The problem with cases like the treatment of Terri Schiavo, is that we all end up relying on news reports and unless we are health care workers ourselves, have no real understanding of the physical issues involved.

This morning, for example, is the first time I learned what would be involved in reinserting the feeding tube. Simple the description ("feeding tube") makes most of us think of something no more complex than inserting the oil stick into the engine block of a car. That, at least, seems to be behind the claim that feeding tubes are not "extraordinary measures" for "life support." But it seems replacing the tube in Ms. Schiavo would involve surgery, hospitalization, and transport:

Judge Whittemore at times sighed, paused and buried his face in his hands during the hearing. He wanted details of how long it would take to transport Ms. Schiavo from her hospice to a nearby hospital and replace the tube - about two hours, the lawyers said - and what the procedure involved. Both sides said it would require surgery and that Ms. Schiavo would need to be hospitalized for several days while her electrolyte balance was restored.

Restoring the elecrolyte balance would, of course, require blood tests, adjustments to the food, etc. This is not a simple matter of putting a spoon in a mouth.

Expect more confusion, not less, in the coming days. NPR this morning all but said the case had been dismissed. All the judge has done here is refuse to issue a temporary injunction, an order requiring the parties maintain a certain status quo (i.e., feed Terri Schiavo) while the matter waits for trial. The refusal to issue such an order is appealable, but the case still waits a hearing on its merits.

And we still have the metaphysical question: is Terri Schiavo her body? Are we feeding her, or her husk? Are we helping her, or hindering her soul's release? Games are being played here. Michael Schiavo reported that a Roman Catholic priest administered last rites on Friday. The family's lawyer claimed, however, that:

...Ms. Schiavo's religious beliefs as a Roman Catholic were being infringed because Pope John Paul II has deemed it unacceptable for Catholics to refuse food and water.

"We are now in a position where a court has ordered her to disobey her church and even jeopardize her eternal soul," Mr. Gibbs said.

The circus acquires another ring. Funny, there's a literary precedent for another place made of rings, but it's not a place of pleasure. Perhaps there is a warning for us in that.

Monday in Holy Week

The appointed psalm, no. 36 (REB):

A wicked person's talk is prompted by sin in his heart; he sees no need to fear God.

For it flatters and deceives him and, when his iniquity is found out, he does not change.

Everything he says is mischevious and false; he has lost all understanding of right conduct;

he lies in bed planning the mischief he will do. So set is he on his evil course that he rejects no wickedness.

Lord, your unfailing love reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies.

Your righteousness is like the lofty mountains, your justice is like the great deep; Lord who saves man and beast,

how precious is your unfailing love! Gods and frail mortals seek refuge in the shadow of your wings.

They are filled with the rich plenty of your house, and you give them to drink from the stream of your delights;

for with you is the fountain of life, and by your light we are enlightened.

Continue in your love unfailing to those who know you, and your saving power towards the honest of heart.

Let not the foot of the proud come near me, let no wicked hand disturb me.

There they lie, the evildoers, flung down and not able to rise.

Never say never again

I'll try to make this my last reference to the Schiavo circus (as it should now be called). Majikthise points out several excellent points in this matter, including the one that even incapacitated people retain the right to determine their own medical care, and when they cannot do so, a guardian is appointed to act for them. The legal issue in this has never been: "Who has the right to decide?" (as even the comments of DeLay and company tacitly acknowledge), but about the decision that was made. Terri's parents refuse to accept it. Terri's parents, as indicated below, have never accepted that Terris is other than their possession.

Terri's parents are convinced she can recover. This is clearly delusional. Society has no obligation to support delusional behavior. The GOP's involvement in this is preying mercilessly on delusional people. They smell a fundraising opportunity, and nothing more.

But I digress....

Something I hadn't noticed before, in reference to the question of money, is also pointed out by majikthise, and worth keeping in mind, since it is a finding of fact by a judge, about as ironclad a statement of "what has happened" as we have in our world:

* Judge Greer found that the Schindler's financial motivations were just as conflicted as those of Michael Schiavo. Michael was awarded $300,000 for his own loss, and the Schindlers demanded that he share it. The money was paid out in February 1993. Schiavo and the Schindlers last spoke on February 14 of that year. Judge Greer wrote that that the Schindlers fell out with Schiavo over Michael's share of the malpractice settlement.

That tells you a bit more about the people involved in this case. And that, I hope, will be enough of that.

Just Do It

More than one person has pointed out the irony of Michael Schiavo's determination to carry out his wife's wishes, and his statements that she died 15 years ago, and now she should be released to go to God (there are philosophical and theological questions everywhere, much as we might wish not to deal with them except in the comfortable abstract). Which means, of course, this issue is all about power. The people running this circus now use fear and power as their goads, and they seem to have herds to drive before them.

This has, as you can tell, been driving me crazy. Things do that; get under my skin, and then I am frozen in an inertia of powerless anger and helpless despair. Cleaning up my files in an effort to return everything I wrote for 4 years of sermons back into electronic form (the boxes loom around me in my office as I type, waiting to be reviewed and transferred and then the paper destroyed), I found something I wrote for a church newsletter. Some of it is meaningless here; but this much wouldn't let me go:

"Feed My Sheep”

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” A second time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.”

The "three times bit" is particularly poignant, given the passion story being read in many churches today. But I want to focus on it for a reason. In the original context of this article, I was talking about church membership, about participation. Remove those introductory paragraphs, and we can go straight to this:

Jesus asks Peter three times “Do you love me?” and every time Peter answers, Jesus says “Feed my sheep.” He doesn’t say: “That’s good. Now sit here on the back pew with me and listen to the sermon.” He says: “Do something. Feed my sheep.”
When you come to church, do you expect to get something? Or do you come prepared only to give something? It’s easier to receive, isn’t it? But Jesus says “Feed my sheep.” How can we do that only by receiving?

Dame Julian of Norwich says: “Pray even if you feel nothing, see nothing. For when you are dry, empty, sick, or weak, at such a time is your prayer most pleasing to God, even though you may find little joy in it. This is true of all believing prayer.” Pray, in other words, especially when you have nothing to give, when you really only want to receive. It’s a hard lesson, isn’t it? We’d rather pray when we are “motivated,” when God or the pastor or life in general gives us reason to pray. We don’t want to pray “because we have to.” We’ll do nothing instead. But Dame Julian understands something we don’t: God doesn’t belong to us; we belong to God.

That's it. That's all. A reminder. Pray without ceasing. Pray even if you feel nothing, see nothing. Because we belong to God. We all do. And prayer will do us more good than all the arguing and anger and grandstanding and public outcry combined. Not because it is magical, mystical, or miraculous (although it is); but because it is a reminder of whose we are, and who we are.

Jesus says: "Do something. Feed my sheep." We have no power. But we are not helpless. We have the power of powerlessness. We can do something. We can feed the sheep. It's a hard lesson, isn't it? What better time to get around to start acting on it, than Holy Week?

"Pull the other one, it's got bells on it."

Well, Atrios is right, we should pause at the thought of Tom DeLay flaying the character of a private citizen so publicly (quick: what did Michael Schiavo do to inject himself in to the public arena? That's the only legal protection DeLay could have in a libel suit, if Schiavo isn't already disgusted with the American legal and political system; I know I would be).

But when I said this would get ugly, I had no idea how ugly.

In a phone call to reporters on Saturday night, Mr. McClellan dismissed any suggestions that there were political considerations in the president's hurried and dramatic return to Washington. Mr. DeLay and others in the largely deserted Capitol said they were trying to move quickly to limit any health damage to Ms. Schiavo.

Can we finally and reasonably stipulate that the "feeding tube" is not what is keeping Terri Schiavo alive, but also extraordinary medical care?

This is a human being who cannot feed herself, clothe herself, roll herself over in bed, clean herself, or otherwise function except at the level of an autonomic nervous system which, sadly, is all that she is now. Without 24 hour nursing care she would have died by now, with a feeding tube, lying in her own waste or with her bowels impacted, or from bedsores and infections, or in any number of horrible ways. Terri Schiavo can breathe on her own, and pump blood on her own, because she has a functioning brain stem. But that is all she can do.

This is not, pace Tom Delay, "basic" medical care. This is extraordinary care, that is keeping a functioning brain stem alive. And that, very sadly, is all.

The whole issue doesn't even upset me as much as the political and legal issue it is now morphing into. Now this business is of a piece with Bush v. Gore. Now politics is just war by other means, and everywhere and anywhere, anyone and anything, is the battlefield. Americans supposedly have a "secular religion" in their devotion to country. If so, our "book of common prayer" has always been our legal system, that great arbiter that levels the playing field and makes sure the rules, for the most part and sometimes much later than sooner, are fairly applied to everyone.

And now these grandstanding idiots want to screw that up, too. Over an issue that shouldn't be an issue, and for reasons that don't amount to a hill of beans. On human suffering and tragedy, no less. George Bush, who would mock the pleas of a woman being executed in Texas, suddenly has to fly back to D.C. to sign a bill because he's so "compassionate"? And the article says he'll stay until Monday morning, if he has to.

Wouldn't want him to be put out or anything, since he's on vacation. No, Scottie, nothing extraordinary in this, or political.

Addendum: I just said this over at Atrios, but I can freely quote msyelf: Terri Schiavo is nothing more than a functioning brain stem. Her family is convinced she can be rehabilitated. How do you rehab a brain stem?

At what point does society have a positive duty to this delusional family to take away the appearance of this crutch they continue to cling to?

At some point their denial of reality becomes pathological, and the rest of us become responsible for supporting it. Other than via the court system, the rest of us should naver have been involved in this matter. Continuing to participate in their grief and denial of reality, is sick. We deserve better from our 'leadership.'

Just when you think it can't get worse....

It gets worse.

If there is a lesson in all of this ugliness, in all of this unseemliness, it is that everyone who can should have a "living will," a clear, unambiguous, direct declaration of what you want done (or not done) in case you reach the point that Terri Schiavo sadly has reached. Living wills are not expensive, they don't take a long time to complete, and they can help guide families during the worst moments of their lives. It's funny, if Congress in the name of Terri Schiavo had passed legislation aiding in the effort to get people to make living wills it would have earned my praise today instead of my scorn.

Via Atrios, of course.

This is beyond incomprehensible, beyond savage, beyond credible. This is a complete disregard for a legal system in exchange for e a few cheap political points. "At long, last, sir, have you no shame?"

That is the question this raises, now. The desecration to notions of human decency, morality, ethics, and now even law, are beyond imagination. I am a lawyer; I am a pastor; I am a human being, a husband and a father. I can't find enough words to condemn the people who exploit this situation, or to express my sorrow for those suffering in it. What Mr. Cohen says about the legal implications of this proposed legislation are absolutely chilling to my legal mind, and I hope the Courts waste no time in throwing this despicable law out as improper and unconstitutional. For the time being, the inmates are in charge of the asylum, and they are running riot.

At the beginning of Holy Week. How appropriate.

"Where ignorant armies clash by night...."

This is going to turn very, very ugly:

From the LA Times:

Michael Schiavo was not present because he was emotionally unable to attend, lawyer George Felos said, but he arrived minutes later. Terri Schiavo's parents had been at her bedside earlier in the day, but were asked by officials to leave before the tube was shut off.

After the procedure was complete, Felos launched into a caustic attack on Republican leaders, describing their subpoenas directed to the Schiavos as "nothing short of thuggery."

"Apparently, according to the House of Representatives, any committee member can direct a subpoena to any American citizen, forcing them to have medical treatment against their will," Felos said. "It was odious. It was shocking."

DeLay said House Republicans would not be deterred by Friday's events. He called Greer's order "barbaric" and cited Felos as "the personification of evil."

...

Frist, a physician who is considered a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2008, said Congress remained "dedicated to saving Terri Schiavo's life." He earlier had insisted that after a review of videotapes of Schiavo, he had found that she might not be in a persistent vegetative state — a requirement crucial in any order to cut off nutrition.

But right-to-die supporters have insisted that only a few snippets of videotape show any animation from Schiavo, whereas hours of footage portray her in a near-motionless state. And some ethicists questioned whether Frist could have properly drawn his conclusion from only reviewing videotapes.

...

DeLay and other House leaders said they were issuing subpoenas to "require hospital administrators and attending physicians to preserve nutrition and hydration for Terri Schiavo to allow Congress to fully understand the procedures and practices that are currently keeping her alive." The fight, they insisted, "is not over."

The move prompted an angry reaction from Rep. Henry A. Waxman of Los Angeles, ranking Democrat on the Government Reform Committee. Calling the subpoenas a "flagrant abuse of power," Waxman said the Republican move "is turning the Schiavo family's personal tragedy into a national political farce. The committee has no business inserting itself in the middle of an excruciating private family matter."

And from the Washington Post:

On Friday night, Frist (Tenn.) and Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Ill.) announced that congressional committees will work through the weekend, saying in a statement that they "are committed to reaching agreement on legislation that provides an opportunity to save Mrs. Schiavo's life." The House committee asked the U.S. Supreme Court to order the feeding tube reinserted while it appeals in lower courts to have its subpoenas recognized.

....

Schiavo's feeding tube has been removed twice before, most recently in 2003 when a law pushed by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) gave him the authority to override Greer's orders and restart Schiavo's tube-feeding six days after it had been stopped. The law was later declared unconstitutional.

The legislative focal point of the case -- once centered in Florida's capital, Tallahassee, where conservatives failed on Thursday to pass laws blocking the tube removal -- has shifted to Washington. The U.S. House and Senate agreed in principle Thursday to pass legislation that would move jurisdiction in the case to the federal courts, effectively leaving Greer powerless. But the two legislative bodies were unable to reach a consensus before adjourning.

Now the Senate, whose members had planned to take two weeks of vacation, plans to reconvene Monday to debate a bill aimed at saving the life of Schiavo, 41. The prospect of Schiavo's death inflamed emotions in the Capitol on Friday as lawyers in Washington and Florida did battle.

And the New York Times:

And George Felos, the lawyer for Ms. Schiavo's husband who had fought for nearly two years to allow his wife to die, blistered both parties in Congress for what he portrayed as a politically motivated, 11th-hour interference in a case that has existed for years without previously attracting much attention from Capitol Hill.

"It was odious, it was shocking, it was disgusting and I think all Americans should be alarmed," Mr. Felos told reporters in Florida.

And he had a warning for Democrats who would deign to veer from longstanding opposition to federal intrusion in such intimate medical decisions: "If they don't stand up for Terri Schiavo, they deserve to be the minority party."

Many Congressional Democrats were biting their tongues Friday as they witnessed what they considered an egregious misuse of power by Republicans. They pointed to public opinion polls that show support for Mr. Schiavo's right to decide his wife's fate, but they also fear the power of the mobilized right.

Plus, lawmakers of both parties say they have been moved by the videotapes they have seen of Ms. Schiavo, viewing themselves as the last barrier between her and a death sentence.

Yet, as Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, warned her colleagues this week as they considered a bill that would move the case to federal court, the mix of politics and mortality can be volatile.

"We change the nature of all these things to put this in the political arena," she said.

Yes, they do.

It is obvious from reading these articles that many of the protesters are motivated by ideology, not compassion, sympathy, or even understanding. One, in the Washington Post article, said "We treat dolphins better than this." Few, clearly, understand Ms. Schiavo's physical condition. Actually, we euthanize animals long before they reach Ms. Schiavo's condition. It has been 15 years; it is time to let her go.

Understanding, however, has no place in this matter; not any more. Politics has entered.

Perhaps there is a cautionary tale for all of us, in that.

Last Words

There are, unfortunately, hard issues behind the Schiavo case, and they are unrelated to the individuals involved, and connected only to the broader questions. Those issues are even harder to address under these circumstances, but the circumstances make the issues necessary.

Lawyers deal with this, on the legal level, every day. Legislators (when they are passing laws, not making asses of themselves) deal with it, too. But the meta-legal questions have to be asked and answered at some point, for the law to be consistent and just. That's the issue I don't want to see lost in the "let her die/keep her alive" tennis match this matter has become.

The sad truth is, Terry Schiavo is dead and gone, whether you hold to a spiritual, or a materialist, point of view. In one opinion, the Second District court of Florida found:

Although the physicians are not in complete agreement concerning the extent of Mrs. Schiavo's brain damage, they all agree that the brain scans show extensive permanent damage to her brain. The only debate between the doctors is whether she has a small amount of isolated living tissue in her cerebral cortex or whether she has no living tissue in her cerebral cortex.

It is time to let her rest in peace. After a proper period of mourning, it is time for the rest of us to do all we can to prevent a circus like this from happening again. And the root of that, is in our ideas about life, and being human, and simply being.

But that comes later. Not so much later, though, that we forget how important the issue is.

Not so fast!

This is changing so fast, it's hard to keep up with.

But about 2 p.m. Judge Greer , who has handled the case for several years, said the removal of the tube should proceed. After hearing from lawyers for the Congressional representatives and for Michael Schiavo, Judge Greer, referring to the feeding tube, said that workers at her hospice in Clearwater, Fla., "need to remove it forthwith."

A spokesman for Michael Schiavo told CNN shortly after Judge Greer's decision that the tube had been withdrawn.

By and large, my opinion about this is what Athenae says. There is still, I maintain, behind all of this, the vexing question of modern philosophy: if we no longer think, do we continue to be? And if we continue to be, by what right does the state authorize an end to that being?

Cogito, ergo sum, Descartes declared as the solution to his skepticism about everything. Having established the self by the very fact of awareness of the self, he went on to establish the validity of everything else. It's not so clean and easy as that, of course; one of the implications of that model was that animals and humans with impaired mental capacity could be treated as equals, i.e., non-humans (animals in Descartes schema were automotons, capable of motion but not of thought; people incapable of "full" thought were, by extension, undeserving of treatment as "full humans."). Which is to say that the Congress and the Senate are rational in their concerns; but they are irrational in their institutional responses.

The fall out of the cogito, of course, is that when a patient no longer appears to think (however that term is defined, and it is a sore point indeed), is the "self" still "in there." Because the cogito also gave preference to the old Platonic mind/body split, which has also plagued modern philosophy. If the self can be said to "leave" the body, or at least no longer seem accessible, then whose body is it, anyway?

This is the legal question of the Schiavo case.

The reigning alternative model comes from DavidHume, who argued from perceptions. Since, try as he might, he could not perceive a "self," only a bundle of stimulus responses, he surmised that the "self" was illusory, and there was no more than those responses available to us. This, ironically, is the argument behind keeping Terri Schiavo on a feeding tube: so long as she responds, she is still "alive," and being "alive," she is still "human."

Which considerations are what brought up my questions yesterday. These are the assumptions we need to be concerned with. Because the question in cases like this is: what does it mean to be alive? And what does it mean to be dead? Can we, indeed, merely prolong death? How, if death is only the cessation of life activity? Is death more than that? If so, what? Is death the separation of body and soul (many an assumption there)? Is there indeed a "mind" and a "body," and one is us, and the other is not?

Vexed and vexing questions. This case raises them; this case is not the way to answer them. These are the very issues a "public" philosophy (and theology) should be undertaking.

Whose Death is it, anyway?

As I said, hard cases make bad law:

In an extraordinary legislative maneuver that may pit Congress against the decisions by several courts over the last several years, Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee and the Senate majority leader, issued a statement saying that the woman, Terri Schiavo, and her husband, Michael, were being invited to testify in a Congressional inquiry into the matter later this month.

The statement pointed out that Federal law protects witnesses called before Congress "from anyone who may obstruct or impede a witness's attendance or testimony."

That, actually, is the Senate's action, which seems almost reasonable next to the reason the House has issued a subpoeana:

Just after midnight today, House leaders said the Government Reform Committee would issue subpoenas that they hope will also halt the removal of the tube."We will issue a subpoena which will require hospice administrators and attending physicians to preserve nutrition and hydration for Terri Schiavo to allow Congress to fully understand the procedures and practices that are currently keeping her alive," said a statement issued at 1 a.m. by the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert; the majority leader, Tom DeLay of Texas; and the chairman of the Government Reform Committee, Thomas M. Davis III of Virginia.

The fact that it is, literally, too late for Ms. Sciavo to understand anything, is beside the point. Indeed, you can cut the sanctimony with a knife:

[The statement from the House leadership] added: "This inquiry should give hope to Terri, her parents and friends, and the millions of people throughout the world who are praying for her safety. This fight is not over."

The definition of "safety" being used here is not one I am familiar with, and opens a whole new can of worms.

Unfortunately, I don't have time at the moment for the philosophical fishing trip this matter is rapidly turning into.

Pray for Terri Sciavo, and her husband, and her parents. This has become as clear a vision of Hell as any other on our planet.

An addendum, for those interested: this appears to be, at first glance, an excellent site for an overview of this case, start to present: Abstract Appeal.

How We Die

"My death; is it possible?"--Jacques Derrida

"Death is the only experience that is not lived through."--Ludwig Wittgenstein

revenant, commenting below, has it exactly right:

RMJ: I commented at Atrios yesterday about my first wife's death when I honored her wishes to remove life support. Not a choice I ever hope to face again. The ethical difference is the persistent vegetative state. My wife had no frontal lobes left after 2 major CH's..she was no longer there, period. A shell was all that remained My wife was already dead. She had become a Catholic a few months previous, after suffering a stroke at the age of 36...mostly because of a very good man who was also a priest. Another priest, probably in his 60's, who didn't know us, stood at the foot of her bed with me as the supports were removed. He said one of the most profound things I heard during her very long illness: "We have a responsibility to prolong life; we do not have a responsibility to prolong death". That's what it would've been Again, I have the deepest respect for her husband.

I hope none of you are ever faced with this situation as more than a theoretical construct

We do not have a responsibility to prolong death. And it's a great and terrible burden to be the one to decide when "life" has become "death." But since our technology has made us as gods, we'd better learn to address the situation.

What is death, really? We can examine it empirically: define it as cessation of brain activity, heart motion, lung movement. Basically no more advanced than our ancestors, we can say death is the absence of animation in a previously animate body. But we do not see death. We see only the dead. That is the philosophical question. The physical question, paradoxically, actually leads us into our problems:

By and large, dying is a messy business. Though many people do become "unconscious and unconcerned" by lapsing or being put into a state of coma or semiawareness; though some lucky others are indeed blessed with a remarkably peaceful and even concsious passage at the end of a difficult illness; though many thousands each year quite literally drop dead without more than a moment's discomfort; though victims of sudden trauma and death are sometimes granted the gift of release from terror-filled pain--conceding all of these eventualities--far, far fewer than one in five of those who die each day are the beneficiaries of such easy circumstances. And even for those who do achieve a measure of serenity during separation, the period of days or weeks pr~ the decline of full awareness is frequently glutted with mental suffering and physical distress.--Sherwin B. Nuland, How We Die, (New York: Vintage, 1995, p. 142)

That is the emotional part of the problem. "Life is messy," one of my wisest seminary professors used to tell us, to remind us there were no easy answers, no bright lines that could be drawn. Life is messy, and death is a part of life. But what part? And how do we admit it?

Because all of our medical technology is turned toward avoiding death. And yet we cannot avoid it; at some point, we have to recognize that prolonging life, is actually prolonging death. But when do we make that decision? On what basis? Uncomfortable questions, but less discomfiting than having the doctor walk into the room where you are waiting at the hospital and asking you for permission to remove the life support, because there is no reason to sustain the loved one: the father, the mother, the wife, the husband, the child; on life support. Remove it, and they will surely die. Keep it attached, and only the machine will simulate the conditions we call "life." That is the even more uncomfortable question, and it is literally "life or death," and you are literally unprepared for it, and in that moment of decision (because no decision is also a decision; the refusal to choose is a choice) you realize you have more power than you ever wanted, or ever should have, and you don't know what to do with it. And it will shake you right down to your soul. That is the mysterium tremendums, the great mystery that makes you tremble not just physically, but existentially. And no amount of brave conversation about "easy death" and "pull the plug on me" can prepare you for it. Because it's not you, that you are thinking about.

I do not base that knowledge on what revenant said. I base it on my experience as a pastor, in hospitals, with church members who have turned to me when the doctor asked the question they'd never prepared themselves for, and said: "Pastor, what do I do?"

"Death is the only experience not lived through." Not by us. We live past it, beyond it, after it. We don't live through it. Someone else does that, and at some point, sometimes, we have to decide for them what their experience will be.

Anecdotes are one thing: they are like hard cases; they make bad "law." But they are instructive: at some point, we must choose, and we must choose for another person. The question for us, before we face that choice, is: on what basis do we choose? What are we choosing? The priest would understand death as the separation of soul and body, but if it isn't that, what is it? If the body contains no soul, when and how do we decide the person we know physically, is now the person we can let die? On what basis do we make that decision? We can give directives to our family, but does that mean we think our death is possible?

Sherwin Nuland wrote his book for a reason:

No matter the degree to which a man thinks he has convinced himself that the process of dying is not to be dreaded, he will yet approach his final illness with dread. A realistic sense of what is to be expected serves as a defense against the unrestrained conjurings of warrantless fear and the terror that one is somehow not doing things right. Each disease is a distinctive process-it carries its own particular kind of destructive work within a framework of highly specific patterns. When we are familiar with the patterns of the illness that afflicts us, we disarm our imaginings. Accurate knowledge of how a disease kills serves to free us from unnecessary terrors of what we might be fated to endure when we die. We may thus be better prepared to recognize the stations at which it is appropriate to ask for relief, or perhaps to begin contemplating whether to end the journey altogether. (p. 143)

But we still cannot expect to be so clinical, so clear and cogent, about such a messy business. There are consolations of philosophy (which Boethius connected with his impending death), but the questions of philosophy are always social, never wholly individual. How do we decide what to do, and what to advise others to do? What do we think death is, such that we can decide how best to approach it?

It's a response, not an answer; but the "Death Dirge" from the Carmina Gadelica has always seemed one of the most compassionate answers:

Thou goest home this night to thy home of winter,
To thy home of autumn, of spring, and of summer;
Thou goest home this night to thy perpetual home,
To thine eternal bed, to thine eternal slumber.

Sleep thou, sleep, and away with thy sorrow,
Sleep thou, sleep, and away with thy sorrow,
Sleep thou, sleep, and away with thy sorrow;
Sleep, thou beloved, in the Rock of the fold.

Sleep this night in the breast of thy Mother,
Sleep, thou beloved, while she herself soothes thee;
Sleep thou this night on the Virgin's arm,
Sleep, thou beloved, while she herself kisses thee.

The great sleep of Jesus, the surpassing sleep of Jesus,
The sleep of Jesus' wound, the sleep of Jesus' grief,
The young sleep of Jesus, the restoring sleep of Jesus,
The sleep of the kiss of Jesus of peace and of glory.

The sleep of the seven lights be thine, beloved,
The sleep of the seven joys be thine, beloved,
The sleep of the seven slumbers be thine, beloved,
On the arm of the Jesus of blessings, the Christ of grace.

The shade of death lies upon thy face, beloved,
But the Jesus of grace has His hand round about thee;
In nearness to the Trinity farewell to thy pains,
Christ stands before thee and peace is in His mind.

Sleep, 0 sleep in the calm of all calm,
Sleep, 0 sleep in the guidance of guidance,
Sleep, 0 sleep in the love of all loves;
Sleep, 0 beloved, in the Lord of life,
Sleep, 0 beloved, in the God of life!

"I only want to say..."

Holy Week is coming; and if this blog abandons politics altogether for awhile, this (via Atrios) can stand as one of the reasons why:

The latest Pentagon report on the abuse of captives, delivered to Congress last week by Vice Admiral Albert Church III, doesn't point a finger of blame at Miller or any other high-ranking official. It concludes that while detainees in Iraq, Guantanamo, and elsewhere were brutalized by military or CIA interrogators, there was no formal policy authorizing such abuse. (On occasion it was even condemned -- in December 2002, for example, some Navy officials denounced the Guantanamo techniques as ''unlawful and unworthy of the military services.")

But surely, Church was asked at a congressional hearing, someone should be held accountable for the scores of abuses that even the government admits to? ''Not in my charter," the admiral replied.

So the buck stops nowhere. And fresh revelations of horror keep seeping out.

The fundamental principal of a legal system, is that everyone is held accountable for their actions. Commit a crime, the state prosecutes you. Injure another person through negligence or even intent, and the judicial system provides civil remedies. You are responsible for what you do, and held accountable when what you do is considered wrong; when it improperly costs someone else in either property, liberty, personal injury, or loss of life. As small a thing as an offensive contact, or even an offensive word; as great a thing as death, dismemberment, or grievous suffering before dying.

That fundamental principle is being ignored. Again. Ask the Indians. Ask the blacks, the Mexicans, the Chinese, the Irish, what have you. We've done it before, we'll do it again.

But this time it's on my watch, so to speak. And I can't stand it anymore. As Dirty Harry wisely said: "Man's got to know his limitations."

I know mine. It's almost Holy Week. There are other things to contemplate. Outrages, some of them, anyway, will have to wait awhile.

Husband and Wife

"And a man shall leave his mother,
and a woman leave her home,
They shall travel on to where
The two shall be as one."--Paul Stookey

The irony of the House vote to allow the parents of Terry Sciavo to intervene in her care via the Federal courts, is that it undermines precisely the "sanctity of marriage" that supposedly won for the GOP in November. Not that this is noticeable on the face of the matter, of course; but it is true.

The legal issue in the Sciavo case, as I understand, has always been a simple one: who decides when Terry Sciavo cannot decide for herself? Her parents? Or her husband? As expressed in the words of "The Wedding Song," and as generally enshrined in the law of 50 states, upon marriage a woman and a man become adults, and become responsible for each other's care. This is generally considered under the rubric "the sanctity of marriage." The husband is held liable for, and responsible for, the wife's care, and vice versa. Terry Sciavo's husband has, unfortunately, had to fight her parents to assert that right, largely because they don't like his decision. As lawyers say, hard cases make bad law. This is a hard case; and the law the House of Representatives has approved, is bad law.

But bad law is not the only issue here. The real issue is one of treatment, is one of "euthanasia." The real question here is: is this how we treat human beings?

It isn't a simple question. I started thinking about it when I read this post, by Majikthise. What I didn't even realize was that Ms. Sciavo's "cerebral cortex [has] been destroyed and replaced by fluid." Which puts her, clearly, in a persistent vegetative state. And the courts have found that this is not a condition she would want to endure. So I suppose we should all feel comfortable with that; comfortable enough to let her starve to death.

But the uncomfortable questions are not so easily dispelled. How did Terry Sciavo come to be in this state? Is it humane medical practice to keep people alive in such a condition? Is it humane medical practice to kill them? Hard cases make bad law. And we are making a lot of hard cases these days.

We are making hard cases because, as the Last Whole Earth Catalog put it, "We are as gods." Except we aren't getting good at it. This whole issue of "life" and "death" seems to have us bamboozled, still. The underlying issue here, it seems to me, is a simple one, but a very Western one. We are still caught on the horns of the "mind/body" split.

This one is so fundamental to Western thought that thinking about it is very hard, indeed. But the mind/body hypothesis says that "we" are mind, and only tangentially "body." Our "soul," our "essence," is somehow contained in this "vessel," this "container." And when the vessel is damaged beyond repair, it seems only "humane" to us to release the "soul," or "essence," if you prefer, from it's prison. "She wouldn't want to live like this," we say, presuming that "she" is somehow no longer "here," because we cannot communicate with her. And so we consider it more humane to starve her to death, than to keep her alive.

It isn't easy, and I don't mean to draw a bright line or even infer the answer is clear, if obscured by poor reasoning. It isn't clear, and the reasoning commonly used isn't poor, for the most part. What it is, is difficult. What we have to decide is: when is a human being no longer a human being? When is it justifiable, in other words, to kill someone, whether killing means actively ending their life, or passively withdrawing the means for their life?

We don't do this with infants, even infants who are brain damaged. Withdrawing the feeding tube form Terri Sciavo is no different than leaving an infant on a rock to die of "exposure." Both will simply starve to death, because they are unable to feed themselves. On the other end of the scale, we have nursing homes where we care for people who can no longer shop for their own groceries, cook their own meals, in some cases feed themselves or even clean up after themselves. But we don't starve them to death. We may be inhumane to them in other ways, but we don't starve them to death.

In general, we don't starve humans to death at all. We intervene in hunger strikes, or even acquiesce to the demands of the striker. We intervene in countries where people starve, or use it as a motivation to intervene. Starvation is cruel and unusual and a punishment we don't wish on our worst enemy. It's inhumane. So, does the lack of a cerebral cortex mean Terri Sciavo is no longer human?

She is suffering, we say. Or she wouldn't want to suffer. But we intervene to prevent suicides, whenever we can. We alleviate suffering as much as we can, but we also accept it as part of life. This kind of suffering is different; without medical technology, it would be impossible. The cutting ethical question, the one no one really wants to answer, is: who is suffering more? The patient? Or the family who wants to "pull the plug"?

That's the nettlesome issue with "euthanasia." For whom is the death "easy"? Don't rule out that it is easy for the family, even if the patient is cogent and can ask for the end to be hastened. The patient may be less selfish than the family, in that case. How do we tell?

We give husbands and wives a great deal of privilege over their spouses, and we should do so. The House should not intervene in this matter. But should the courts support such an action? They do now; but is the jurisprudence of that theory sound? Is the ethical base for it so clear? Is the body merely the receptacle that, when damaged enough, releases the soul? Is that what death is, and we should not stand in the way of it? This is the philosphical (and theological) question our medical technology forces us to face.

It's time we got down to it.

St. Patrick's Breastplate

After all, what could be more appropriate for the day?*

I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, through belief in the Threeness, through confession of the Oneness of the Creator of creation.

I arise today through the strength of Christ with his Baptism, through the strength of His Crucifixion with His Burial through the strength of His Resurrection with His Ascension, through the strength of His descent for the Judgement of Doom.

I arise today through the strength of the love of Cherubim in obedience of Angels, in the service of the Archangels, in hope of resurrection to meet with reward, in prayers of Patriarchs, in predictions of Prophets, in preachings of Apostles, in faiths of Confessors, in innocence of Holy Virgins, in deeds of righteous men.

I arise today, through the strength of Heaven; light of Sun, brilliance of Moon, splendour of Fire, speed of Lightning, swiftness of Wind, depth of Sea, stability of Earth, firmness of Rock.

I arise today, through God's strength to pilot me: God's might to uphold me, God's wisdom to guide me, God's eye to look before me, God's ear to hear me, God's word to speak for me, God's hand to guard me, God's way to lie before me, God's shield to protect me, God's host to secure me: against snares of devils, against temptations of vices, against inclinations of nature, against everyone who shall wish me ill, afar and anear, alone and in a crowd.

I summon today all these powers between me (and these evils): against every cruel and merciless power that may oppose my body and my soul, against incantations of false prophets, against black laws of heathenry, against false laws of heretics, against craft of idolatry, against spells of witches, smiths and wizards, against every knowledge that endangers man's body and soul.
Christ to protect me today against poisoning, against burning, against drowning, against wounding, so that there may come abundance in reward.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ in breadth, Christ in length, Christ in height, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, through belief in the Threeness, through confession of the Oneness of the Creator of creation. Salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is of Christ. May Thy Salvation, O Lord, be ever with us. Amen.

I bind unto myself today the strong Name of the Trinity, by invocation of the same, the Three in One and One in Three.

I bind this day to me forever, by power of faith, Christ's incarnation; His baptism in the Jordan River; His death on the cross for my salvation; His bursting from the spiced tomb; His riding up the heavenly way; His coming on the day of doom; I bind unto
myself today.

I bind unto myself the power of the great love of Cherubim; the sweet "Well done" in judgment hour; the service of the Seraphim, Confessors' faith, Apostles' word, the Patriarchs' prayers, the Prophets' scrolls; all good deeds done unto the Lord, and purity of simple souls.

I bind unto myself today the virtues of the starlit heaven, the glorious sun's life-giving ray, the whiteness of the moon at even, the flashing of the lightning free, the whirling wind's tempestuous shocks, the stable earth, the deep salt sea, around the old eternal rocks.

I bind unto myself today the power of God to hold and lead, his eye to watch, his might to stay, his ear to hearken to my need. The wisdom of my God to teach, his hand to guide, his shield to ward; the Word of God to give me speech, his heavenly host to be my guard. Against the demon snares of sin, the vice that gives temptation force, the natural lusts that war within, the hostile ones that mar my course; or few or many, far or nigh, in every place, and in all hours, against their fierce hostility, I bind to me these holy powers. Against all Satan's spells and wiles, against false words of heresy, against the knowledge that defiles, against the heart's idolatry, against the wizard's evil craft, against the death wound and the burning, the choking wave and poisoned shaft, protect me Christ, till your returning.

Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself the Name, the strong Name of the Trinity; by invocation of the same: The Three in One, and One in Three, of whom all nature has creation: Eternal Father, Spirit, Word, praise to the Lord of my salvation, salvation is of Christ the Lord.
Amen.


*The Guinness comes later!

"God made us the boss/God gave us the cross!"

"We turned it into a sword
To spread the Word of the Lord!
We used His holy decrees
To do whatever we pleased!
And it was good! (Yeah!)
And it was good! (Yeah!)
And it was goddamned good!"-from Mass, by Leonard Bernstein

More on the topic of salvation, which even one very lengthy post cannot hope to exhaust. This is actually in answer to a promise I made at L'esprit d'escalier. A quick, Biblically based explanation of why most "evangelicals" (an umbrella term, here, for fundies and their conservative brethren and sistren) are so anxious after the state of your soul.

Begin with scripture, because ever since Martin Luther, non-RC churches have espoused sola scriptura. And the scripture they all prefer, again looking to Luther for guidance, is John 3:16: "God loved the world so much that he gave the world his only son, so that whoever believed in him would not perish, but would have everlasting life." (My rough paraphrase). Now, as is typical in these matters, it's all a matter of em-pha-sis. Rather than focus on the first half of that verse (God+love+world), all attention focusses on 3:16b: whoever believes in him will not die, but instead live forever. Now, "life into the ages" (the direct translation of the NT Greek usually rendered "eternal life") was a slippery concept, and became more slippery when Messiah left after the resurrection and didn't make the expected re-appearance. One interpretation of that phrase then became "life after death," which is how Neo-Platonism got into Christian doctrine (another story entirely), but it also quickly attached to "life in heaven, not hell," or, in short, salvation from damnation. And this was all you had to do: believe in God's son.

Okay, so now you are taken care of. What do you care about everyone else?

Well, of course, Christianity is supposed to be about everyone else, but we're dwelling on scripture alone here; we need a Biblical warrant for caring about others, and we get it in Matthew 25. Before we get there, though, we have to go to the end of Matthew, to the last words of Jesus on earth (according to Matthew), which many learn as the "Great Commission." (Connections to sales and commissions which salespeople both have and earn, and the fundamental culture of America as all salespeople, are not accidental, but won't be remarked on further, here.)

The Great Commission, again in rough paraphrase, is Jesus' command to his disciples to "go into all the world, and make disciples of all nations." Well, that naturally comes down to the present day, in an unbroken chain of discipleship without which we would have no access to salvation (i.e., would not be spared from damnation), so right away we have an obligation to pass it on. But what do we have an obligation to pass on? The message of salvation? Is that the only message of Christianity?

According to some, yes, it is. That's why John 3:16 is so central. It is the clearest statement that some are saved, some are damned. And the clearest teaching on that point (salvation v. damnation) is Matthew 25. Or, at least, it's interepreted that way.

In Matthew 25 Jesus describes the final judgment, when all the believers come before God, who tells them that they saw him hungry and didn't feed him, naked and didn't clothe him, in prison and didn't visit him. Those who failed, are sent to the place of wailing and gnashing of teeth (there isn't a fully developed theology of hell in the NT). Those who did those things to the least among us, and served God without knowing it, are welcomed into the eternal kingdom of Heaven (it is significant that Matthew calls it the "kingdom of heaven," while Luke calls it the "kingdom of God." One is clearly on earth, the other clearly not. Sorry about the digressions.)

Now this is clearly a radical teaching, but it is in line with the Jesus of all four gospels, who doesn't condemn people because society thinks they have sinned and deserve their punishment: he radically overturns that opinion, and cavorts with prostitutes and tax collectors (Jews working for the hated Rome) and beggars (who sinned, that this man was born blind?), etc. Too radical, in fact, and since, as Michel Foucault has noted, "Society Must Be Defended," society cannot allow its carefully arranged structure to be so easily undone. So the clear command to physically care for the homeless and the prisoner (who belongs in prison, don't they? Would God have us comfort the criminal, in the face of the victim?) becomes a spiritual command. After all, what does it matter if you save the whole world, and lose your own soul? Which, in the end, is more important? A comfortable life here, or salvation in the next life?

This decision, by the way, is usually settled in favor of those with a comfortable life, which would be made uncomfortable if they really had to clothe the naked, and visit the prisoner, etc.

So Matthew 25 becomes a command to care for the "least of these," but "the least of these" is interpreted spiritually, not physically (Jesus didn't really want us to consort with prostitutes as if they were like us, did he?). And spiritually, what we need to do, then, is follow the Great Commission, and make them disciples. Because if we don't, they will perish. And we will stand before the king on the last day, and be judged and divided, sheep and goats. And if we haven't saved the souls that came our way, we will be sent to the place of wailing and gnashing of teeth.

I mentioned that this theology gets ugly, and it does. It is predicated, for one thing, on the very theology Jesus rejected: that a difficult life in this world, is a result of sin which God is punishing, either in you or in your ancestors. It also draws sustenance from the "Doctrine of the Elect," which Jean Calvin, ironically, formulated in order to humble believers, but which, in typical fashion, Christians have used to justify their righteousness, and condemn others. The Doctrine of the elect was Calvin's attempt to explain both why salvation was necessary, and why some people would never get it. If salvation is not essential to all, the doctrine of atonement (Jesus died for your sins) falls apart. But if it is essential, and yet (per Luther) we cannot earn it (grace by faith, not works), then why can't we all just get it, and go do what we want? If we have to do what God wants, doesn't that mean we have to earn grace? (which puts us back to works, and undermines grace.) So Calvin said God had elected some from the beginning of time to be saved; but you don't know who you are, so you have to live as if you needed God's salvation. It's still arbitrary, but the problem is less in Calvin's solution than in the doctrine itself.

And Christians use this to justify themselves and condemn others on the socioeconomic grounds Jesus rejected. It works largely like this: I am well off because God loves me, but you are poor because He can't stand you. Now once I save your soul, I can continue to enjoy what is rightly mine, and you might hope for amendment of life which might save you. Or might not; it's all been decided by God beforehand, but just to be sure I don't slip up, I'll make sure your soul has a chance at salvation.

Jesus says all the law and the prophets hang on two commandments: love God, and love your neighbor. But preferring to be in charge (since love puts us distinctly NOT in charge), we come up with reasons why we should run things, or at least be able to control things in the short term, and secure ourselves a place in heaven, in the long term.

At least, some of us do.

The Origin of Fire

[Ed. note: Blogger finally wakens from its slumber. This was written last night, but wouldn't post until today. Anyway....]

Robert, my lapsed Catholic self has always interpreted the focus on the cross, the suffering, the death, as a means to frighten or guilt the faithful into behaving properly. I am unworthy of this, we declared at each Mass, Jesus died for me and I am not worth that kind of trouble.

I began to feel rather defensive of humanity, after a while. I wanted to give examples of ways we were worthy. Bach concertos, or a well-made batch of chocolate chip cookies.

Your final question is intriguing. Do we need salvation? Does it exist outside of our need for it and our idea of attainment?--A

Listening, as I type, to music by Hildegard von Bingen, sung by the quartet Anonymous 4. Their last album together (maybe), “The Origin of Fire.” It’s a perfect metaphor for the Spiritus Sanctus, the Heilige Geist, the pneuma agion. Listening and thinking about Athenae’s question. It was the “Bach concerti” that got me; but Anonymous 4 is my latest obsession, and it is a worthy substitute.

Do we need salvation? As always, there is a question behind any question, another question to be asked and answered first. In this case, the question is: salvation from what? What is "salvation"?

The term was in common usage in first century Palestine, and came to them from Rome. The Caesars were regularly presented as saviors. They saved their subjects from barbarism. By force of arms and organization of government, they saved the world from violence and for civilization. No mean feat, either. The Romans built roads and buildings that stand to this day, and brought literacy and learning to corners of the globe that had not known it before. But the people under Roman rule, especially the inhabitants of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., had reason to ask: salvation from what?

It became a term attached to Jesus of Nazareth, which is probably why he was crucified. The term had political meaning (clearly), and Rome jealously guarded its political power (witness Jerusalem, in 70 C.E.). But what did Jesus save people from? Rome?


God is named as savior, too, in the Hebrew Scriptures. This appellation has a different root, however. God's covenant was with Abraham, and the children of Abraham, throughout time and space. God created Israel, and named it, through Jacob. God made a promise, one God would not break. So God was both creator and preserver, savior, in that sense, of Israel. But that was so that Israel could be a light to the world, could be an example to the nations, could show all of humanity to "Be still, and know that I am God." But through example, through witness, not through evangelism.*

So God was savior of Israel because God was creator of Israel. God saved Israel from Egypt, and later from Babylon, and still later, was to save them from Rome. This was the expected promise of the Messiah. This is why Jesus was called the one who would come to set his people free. But free from what? Free to what? After the crucifixion, and in spite of the resurrection, or perhaps more clearly because of it, that freedom had to be re-identified, had to be spiritualized. And it has been a difficult matter ever since.

But it was not autmoatically a spiritual salvation from sin and depradation of the spirit. There were many doctrines in the early church, and the Augustinian one won out over the Pelagian one. One out, but didn't eliminate the more austere, but more hopeful, Pelagian "heresy." That tradition was represented in the Celtic church, the one which, ironically, saved the church as the Empire fell into barbarism; came from the edge of civilization back toward the center, bringing the church with it. It is too simple to say one was good, one was bad. It is certainly true that "salvation" became caught up, in the Roman church, with guilt and punishment and abasement and the absolute horrors of sin. But it didn't have to be that way. And salvation didn't have to be about the either/or of death, or life.

Salvation was real, to the first audience, the audience of Jesus. It was the revelation that God cared for the poor, and the widow, and the orphan, and the blind and lame and halt, and God wanted everybody else to, also. That was salvation. Salvation from misery, from outcast, from being marginalized. But that meant the rich were not in need of salvation, were not even offered it; and so they had to become poor in spirit, in order to become rich in the kingdom. That, at least, is what they thought; that is what they decided. And the richer they became in the kingdom, the more they wanted to insure poverty of spirit in everyone else. Because misery loves company; and human nature loves power, especially spiritual power. And the idea that the creation is good, but that people are bad, set up a contradiction they couldn't reconcile. The idea that people were good was anathema; it went against the Neo-Platonist leanings of Augustine; as did the idea that creation was good. Despite the first creation story in Genesis, it was the second story that was emphasized: the second, with its depiction of selfishness and greed and arrogance and punishment. Maybe good is harder to portray, and evil, since it's repetitive, is just easier to write. So creation could not be good, and humanity could not be good. All was tainted by the sin of Adam and Eve.

Because if creation was good, and humanity was good, what need did they have of a church? Much need, of course, if the church was to be a place of hospitality. But if it was to be an institution, it needed power first, so hospitality could be granted second. So the emphasis was on sin, and evil, and it was such an inspiring picture, that it took over.

Jesus teaches his followers humility; something that would have been second nature to most of them. But he knew that such humility would easily turn to arrogance, given the chance. We don't like humility, though; especially those of us who have never had to be truly humble; so we easily turned that into the mea maxima culpa of the breast beating and the flagellation and, when that went out of style, of the guilt and despair and unworthiness we didn't feel, but were told we must feel. We have never quite trusted grace by faith; we've always preferred it have some works involved in it, the better to secure our salvation, ourselves. If we left everything to God, how could we be sure we were saved?

And so guilt and despair and dismay, became institutional concerns. It resonated from the Catholics to the Protestants, until all shouted "Enough!," and threw out the baby with the bathwater. Even the most conservative of large churches today, doesn't preach the "hell fire and brimstone" of a generation ago. Even the most virulent of Catholic priests, I'm sure, doesn't preach the doctrine of damnation that Frank McCourt grew up with in Ireland, with the image of eternity in hell where one burns and burns and burns without being consumed, and eternity is so timeless that after a million years there you've only begun to spend one second of the endless, timeless time, you will spend in such agony. From one extreme to another we go, still chained to the shibboleth of "salvation," because, we fear, without it, we lose our Christianity.

And yet, most modern theologians will tell you the central doctrines of Christianity are the Incarnation and the Resurrection; that these are the distinctly Christian attributes that must be confessed in Christian doctrine. About salvation there is more to say, in connection with the American mania for evangelism. But in the answer to A's question (she of the lovely superfluous vowels): no. We don't "need" salvation. It does not exist outside us, for our attainment. It is given to us, in the peace of God which passes all understanding. In Bach concerti, or beautifully sung music; or even chocolate chip cookies (and if you can cook a good batch, send me some; I'm never happy with mine). It comes to us in the quotidian mysteries, as Kathleen Norris calls them. It comes in other people, and we know it in faith, and in prayer, and in spiritual discipline. And yes, even in worship, if we are capable of it. Which is another kind of spiritual discipline.

And three or four other topics. But salvation: that is about the origin of fire. And why we are so afraid of it. And why we erect such elaborate doctrines, to protect ourselves from it. When it is really as simple as acceptance. We don't need it. But it is nice to have it.



*(This touches on a different topic, which I'll post on before the night is over, hopefully).

Just because it' s my blog, and just because I can!

left revsquito, courtesy, again, of watertiger's comments (the link is below; what, you think I'm shillin' for her twice in one day?) gives me the best bumpersticker I think I've ever heard of.

Or maybe I'm just tired.

"God WAS my co-pilot. But we crashed into the side of a mountain, and I had to eat him."

Maybe it's funnier as a Eucharist joke.

Of Levinas, and mythology, and others....

This is not in anyway new, except to me. Chasing down Haloscan trackbacks, I found some made to me back in December (ah, halcyon days!), and that alone lightens the gloom of Lent. But I found this particularly interesting, even though I haven't done enough reading in Levinas to undertake the task.

Most of the substantive stuff in Bultmann's thought seem closest to Levinas, who, like Bultmann, is a thinker of the Radical Other. For both, the source of ethics and religion is the call of the Other. In other words, I don't act ethically toward you because you're similar to me; I act ethically because of your difference from me. This notion underpins Bultmann's theory of the "kerygma" of the text, which he defines as an existential relation to the text, which calls to me (to simplify: it resonates in my soul. The Bible isn't a set of propositions which are true or false, but something that calls to me from a distance and stirs me).

For what it's worth, merging Levinas and Christian theology got kind of hot in the 80s, so a resurgence of Bultmann, read through Levinas, is possible and would be kind of neat to see. That would require reading him against the grain of the conventional wisdom, but it's definately do-able.

Bultmann's great work, actually, is not Jesus Christ and Mythology, which he wrote trying to explain his "demythologizing" theology to the laity; his great work is his magisterial study of The Gospel of John. It's true Bultmann was friends with Heidegger (they were professors together at the time), but he read John's gospel side by side with Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments. The existentialism is much more Kierkegaard's than Heidegger's, who is, in fact, more of a phenomenologist anyway (the difference is hair-splitting, actually), and where Bultmann can't avoid it, he includes long footnotes quoting Kierkegaard's pseudonymous work (so it is, and it isn't, Kierkegaard's, at one and the same time. Paradoxes abound).

The idea of charging theology by reading Bultmann through Levinas is a profound one, for the reasons JPE gives here. Conventional wisdom in ecclesiastical circles today is all about "community," but "community" is all about the Other. And that, as Derrida says, puts us face to face with the mysterium tremendums, that which always makes us tremble. It is, in fact, an existential trembling, a terror in one's being, a fear of eradication. Which all springs from Romanticism, actually, which will always be with us, now. As Kierkegaard understood, his philosophy and theology being wholly a product of Romanticism.

Much to do, and so little time to do it all....

Can we leave out the nuts?

Maybe blogging is about nothing more than pet peeves.

But watertiger over at Dependable Renegade got me started on this rant, and as poorly thought out as it still is, I'll bring it over here to complete.

Of course, the first thing to be said is that every pastor knows these recipes, in one form or another. Probably only the Unitarian Universalists are spared someone in the congregation bringing something like these up as a way to "teach the children" (and why, oh why, do we insist on infantilizing the Gospel stories and all the Bible stories? Don't get me started on "Jonah." I was in seminary before I found out that book wasn't about a whale and God taking care of people who get swallowed by fish.) But that's another matter.

As I mentioned at watertiger's, this recipe lost me at "Fold in the broken nuts." My mind simply wandered off to a field replete with sarcastic replies, and refused to come back. But what really sets my theological teeth on edge is not the attempt to make an object lesson out of clearly abstract concepts: "So far, the ingredients are not very appetizing. Add 1 cup sugar. Explain that the sweetest part of the story is that Jesus died because He loves us. He wants us to know and belong to Him. Read Psalm 34:8 and John 3:16." Equating blood with sugar is quite a stretch, but no more so than equating the Psalms with atonement theology. Still, as I say, if you're going to take this line, you have to make some effort to get the object lesson into the abstraction. As a pastor, I have a lot of sympathy for this effort. Preaching from the gospel stories is ever so much easier than preaching from the letters of Paul. Jesus tells stories. Paul invents theology on the spot. One flows naturally into illustration; the other begs for a lecture series, not a sermon. It ain't easy tryin' to preach.

Which is why, of course, so many preachers fall back on pop psychology trends, business management theories du jour, or anything else that's part of the public disourse without being political or personal (don't want to offend anyone!). It makes so much more sense than the obscure Jewish references in Paul, or explaining to people that the mustard seed grows into a pesky weed, not a towering tree. (Many of the parables are really dark jokes; it's part of their staying power.)

But the issue of soteriology is central to Christianity: indeed, it is the source of Christianity's exclusionary streak, and no gospel is more seemingly exclusionary than John's. So it is the favorite of churches large and small that wish to justify their own demands for salvation, and for the preference for their group. That's just one reason I'm uncomfortable with John's gospel.

(Actually, I admire John, but because of it's clever exploitation of the "signs," or miracles, that Jesus performs. In John, those signs that are aupposed to point toward the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth, actually lead away from it. It's too subtle a point to do justice to here, but I admire John's gospel more than I dislike it. As I say, I dislike the way it is used.)

So, back to these cookies. What do they teach? A child's version of The Passion of the Christ, apparently. Certainly a child's version of the resurrection, the most central and most difficult concept in Christianity. When Jesus of Nazareth was resurrected, what happened, exactly? The gospels themselves are unclear. Mark seems to have originally ended without a resurrection, just a hint of one. Matthew has Jesus appear, and leave quickly. Luke has Jesus linger a while, but he's mysterious: he's disguised, and then revealed and vanishes; finally he ascends into heaven. In John, Jesus has hands and feet with scars, but appears magically in locked rooms. There is no body in the tomb, but does Jesus have a body after the resurrection? No one is sure. But does the story center on the brutal death from crucifixion? Or is it about something else?

Certainly most church goers today want to skip from Christmas to Easter with no spiritual discipline of preparation, but in the case of children, that is hardly a fair expectation. Still, is this how we teach them that violence is good, and bloodshed redemptive, and pain is the path to salvation?Those have become identified as Christian themes, but they are all attempts to make sense of the cruelty of the death of Jesus, to find an explanation for everything that happened, and a reason that justifies everything.

Personally, before this runs on to five pages and still no conclusion in sight, I have completely rejected the "atonement" theory, the idea that Jesus had to die in order for God to forgive the sins of mankind. It's a theory of God as sacrificial lamb to God, an idea that never made much sense to me, and that still sounds like cosmic child/self abuse (given the doctrine of the Trinity). Which is why I truly find "recipes" like this appalling. It connects blood and bones and death and pain, with pleasure. One reason the elements of the eucharist are seldom sweetened, I suppose. But the soteriological question is the real issue: what is salvation, and why do we need it?

That one, I will definitely have to come back to.

Laurie Garrett and Newsday

Democracy Now! directs me to this: Laurie Garrett has resigned from Newsday, and on her way out wrote a memo (scroll down) that blasts the idea of journalism as a profit center:

Ever since the Chandler Family plucked Mark Willes from General Foods, placing him at the helm of Times Mirror with a mandate to destroy the institutions in ways that would boost dividends, journalism has suffered at Newsday. The pain of the last year actually began a decade ago: the sad arc of greed has finally hit bottom. The leaders of Times Mirror and Tribune have proven to be mirrors of a general trend in the media world: They serve their stockholders first, Wall St. second and somewhere far down the list comes service to newspaper readerships. In 1996 I personally confronted Willes on that point, and he publicly confirmed that the new regime was one in which even the number of newspapers sold was irrelevant, so long as stock returns continued to rise.

The deterioration we experienced at Newsday was hardly unique. All across America news organizations have been devoured by massive corporations, and allegiance to stockholders, the drive for higher share prices, and push for larger dividend returns trumps everything that the grunts in the newsrooms consider their missions.

Firesign Theater once released an album: "Everything you know is wrong!"

This time, unfortunately, something we know is right.