No, Sarah's wrong....

Not that Sarah; Sarah Posner, this time. The one Digby is quoting:

But Sarah's right, both about the innate hypocrisy of the religious right and the useful idiocy of the Religion Industrial Complex. Most importantly, I shouldn't have gotten so lost in my own gleeful snark that I failed to note that using the Bible as the basis of any political argument is antithetical to enlightened democracy. I hereby correct that mistake.

Better we should rely on the Laws of Plato, eh? Or the Nichomachean Ethics? Maybe we should look to Machiavelli? Locke? The Federalist Papers? Jefferson's letters to Baptists? At any rate, we should base political arguments on something we can all agree can and that can be read only one way! Right? Soon as we can find it.....

I mean, when Sarah Posner writes this:

Indeed, for many on the religious right, support for Ryan's government-slashing budget is found . . . in their Bibles.

There's certainly no room to conclude that many of us find support FOR government social programs, and even social justice....in our Bibles. Indeed, support not only in the Gospels but in the dreaded "Old Testament," right back into those Laws of Moses everybody knows bans the eating of cheeseburgers and outlaws homosexuality (which it doesn't, but then the Bible fits Twain's definition of a classic: a book everyone praises (or denigrates) and no one reads).

So I have been chastised and proven wrong again, and I should stop using the Bible as the basis of any political argument, as that makes me antithetical to enlightened* democracy.

After all, it's what Digby said.


*we'll argue over the meaning of "enlightened" another day

and all the trees of the field shall clap [their] hands.

Give unto the LORD, O ye mighty,

give unto the LORD glory and strength.
2 Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name;

worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness. Ps. 96.7-9
3 The voice of the LORD is upon the waters:

the God of glory thundereth:
the LORD is upon many waters.
4 The voice of the LORD is powerful;

the voice of the LORD is full of majesty.
5 The voice of the LORD breaketh the cedars;

yea, the LORD breaketh the cedars of Lebanon.
6 He maketh them also to skip like a calf;

Lebanon and Sir'i-on like a young unicorn.
7 The voice of the LORD divideth the flames of fire.
8 The voice of the LORD shaketh the wilderness;

the LORD shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh.
9 The voice of the LORD maketh the hinds to calve,

and discovereth the forests:
and in his temple doth every one speak of his glory.
10 The LORD sitteth upon the flood;

yea, the LORD sitteth King for ever.
11 The LORD will give strength unto his people;

the LORD will bless his people with peace.

I only imagine the climate of ancient Palestine, but I imagine storms didn't come with the frequency with which they visit the Texas coastal plains. Lately, though, we have been as dry as I always imagine Palestine, and today it was as hot: 103, surely a record for this early in June. There were rumors of thunderstorms, but we'd given up any hope of it, and when the first thunderclap rolled across the sky, there weren't enough clouds to make us think we weren't imagining things. It was followed by another, and then by rain drops as wet and fat and cold as frogs. And then it passed, as quickly as it came.

And that was it; except it wasn't. The sun came out, the skies cleared, the winds settled; then it began again. This time the wind roared, and the rain came in sheets, even as the sun beamed through the clouds. There were rainbows in the rainfall, right above my driveway. And the trees waved and twisted and clapped their hands. And what could you do but shout: "GLORY!"

My garage had to substitute for a temple; my isolation for all the people.

And right on time (30 minutes after the storm has passed) the National Weather Service predicts a storm is moving through the area, and we should beware.

GLORY!!

The More Things Change Watch....

The Writer's Almanac:

[Machiavelli] also argued that most people value their property more than the lives of their friends and family, and so in some situations it's okay for rulers to kill their citizens, but it's almost never okay to take away their property. He wrote, "Men must be either pampered or crushed, because they can get revenge for small injuries, but not for grievous ones. So any injury a prince does a man should be of a kind where there is no fear of revenge."

We have gladly slaughtered hundreds of thousands (mostly by willfully denying the slaughter) in Afghanistan and Iraq (I stand by the studies published in the Lancet), and sacrificed thousands of American lives as well (for which we are supposed to feel greater concern) for the sake of oil and ideas. And all, of course, without serious fear of revenge (although fear of retaliation has been used to justify our actions, and is still used to justify our military operations to this day). I've often noted that if you want to be disbarred, at least in Texas, just mess with your client's money. Even sleeping through a murder trial won't get you removed from the bar, but taking $100 of your client's money for your own purposes will.

What has always fascinated me about Machiavelli is how close Reinhold Niebuhr came to agreeing with him.

Macchiavelli:

Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with. Because this is to be asserted in general of men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as you succeed they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life and children, as is said above, when the need is far distant; but when it approaches they turn against you. And that prince who, relying entirely on their promises, has neglected other precautions, is ruined; because friendships that are obtained by payments, and not by greatness or nobility of mind, may indeed be earned, but they are not secured, and in time of need cannot be relied upon; and men have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one who is feared, for love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.

Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred; because he can endure very well being feared whilst he is not hated, which will always be as long as he abstains from the property of his citizens and subjects and from their women. But when it is necessary for him to proceed against the life of someone, he must do it on proper justification and for manifest cause, but above all things he must keep his hands off the property of others, because men more quickly forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony. Besides, pretexts for taking away the property are never wanting; for he who has once begun to live by robbery will always find pretexts for seizing what belongs to others; but reasons for taking life, on the contrary, are more difficult to find and sooner lapse. But when a prince is with his army, and has under control a multitude of soldiers, then it is quite necessary for him to disregard the reputation of cruelty, for without it he would never hold his army united or disposed to its duties.

Among the wonderful deeds of Hannibal this one is enumerated: that having led an enormous army, composed of many various races of men, to fight in foreign lands, no dissensions arose either among them or against the prince, whether in his bad or in his good fortune. This arose from nothing else than his inhuman cruelty, which, with his boundless valour, made him revered and terrible in the sight of his soldiers, but without that cruelty, his other virtues were not sufficient to produce this effect. And shortsighted writers admire his deeds from one point of view and from another condemn the principal cause of them. That it is true his other virtues would not have been sufficient for him may be proved by the case of Scipio, that most excellent man, not of his own times but within the memory of man, against whom, nevertheless, his army rebelled in Spain; this arose from nothing but his too great forbearance, which gave his soldiers more licence than is consistent with military discipline. For this he was upbraided in the Senate by Fabius Maximus, and called the corrupter of the Roman soldiery. The Locrians were laid waste by a legate of Scipio, yet they were not avenged by him, nor was the insolence of the legate punished, owing entirely to his easy nature. Insomuch that someone in the Senate, wishing to excuse him, said there were many men who knew much better how not to err than to correct the errors of others. This disposition, if he had been continued in the command, would have destroyed in time the fame and glory of Scipio; but, he being under the control of the Senate, this injurious characteristic not only concealed itself, but contributed to his glory.

Or, if you will pardon a longer excerpt, this:

EVERY one admits how praiseworthy it is in a prince to keep faith, and to live with integrity and not with craft. Nevertheless our experience has been that those princes who have done great things have held good faith of little account, and have known how to circumvent the intellect of men by craft, and in the end have overcome those who have relied on their word. You must know there are two ways of contesting, the one by the law, the other by force; the first method is proper to men, the second to beasts; but because the first is frequently not sufficient, it is necessary to have recourse to the second. Therefore it is necessary for a prince to understand how to avail himself of the beast and the man. This has been figuratively taught to princes by ancient writers, who describe how Achilles and many other princes of old were given to the Centaur Chiron to nurse, who brought them up in his discipline; which means solely that, as they had for a teacher one who was half beast and half man, so it is necessary for a prince to know how to make use of both natures, and that one without the other is not durable. A prince, therefore, being compelled knowingly to adopt the beast, ought to choose the fox and the lion; because the lion cannot defend himself against snares and the fox cannot defend himself against wolves. Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves. Those who rely simply on the lion do not understand what they are about. Therefore a wise lord cannot, nor ought he to, keep faith when such observance may be turned against him, and when the reasons that caused him to pledge it exist no longer. If men were entirely good this precept would not hold, but because they are bad, and will not keep faith with you, you too are not bound to observe it with them. Nor will there ever be wanting to a prince legitimate reasons to excuse this nonobservance. Of this endless modern examples could be given, showing how many treaties and engagements have been made void and of no effect through the faithlessness of princes; and he who has known best how to employ the fox has succeeded best.

But it is necessary to know well how to disguise this characteristic, and to be a great pretender and dissembler; and men are so simple, and so subject to present necessities, that he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived. One recent example I cannot pass over in silence. Alexander VI did nothing else but deceive men, nor ever thought of doing otherwise, and he always found victims; for there never was a man who had greater power in asserting, or who with greater oaths would affirm a thing, yet would observe it less; nevertheless his deceits always succeeded according to his wishes, because he well understood this side of mankind.

Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And I shall dare to say this also, that to have them and always to observe them is injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to the opposite.

And you have to understand this, that a prince, especially a new one, cannot observe all those things for which men are esteemed, being often forced, in order to maintain the state, to act contrary to faith, friendship, humanity, and religion. Therefore it is necessary for him to have a mind ready to turn itself accordingly as the winds and variations of fortune force it, yet, as I have said above, not to diverge from the good if he can avoid doing so, but, if compelled, then to know how to set about it.

For this reason a prince ought to take care that he never lets anything slip from his lips that is not replete with the above-named five qualities, that he may appear to him who sees and hears him altogether merciful, faithful, humane, upright, and religious. There is nothing more necessary to appear to have than this last quality, inasmuch as men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because it belongs to everybody to see you, to few to come in touch with you. Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges by the result.

For that reason, let a prince have the credit of conquering and holding his state, the means will always be considered honest, and he will be praised by everybody because the vulgar are always taken by what a thing seems to be and by what comes of it; and in the world there are only the vulgar, for the few find a place there only when the many have no ground to rest on.

One prince of the present time, whom it is not well to name, never preaches anything else but peace and good faith, and to both he is most hostile, and either, if he had kept it, would have deprived him of reputation and kingdom many a time.

Niebuhr:

The selfishness of nations is proverbial. It was a dictum of George Washington that nations were not to be trusted beyond their own interest. "No state," declares a German author, "have ever entered a treaty for any reason other than self interest," and adds: "A statesman who has any other motive deserves to be hung." "In every part of the world," said Professor Dickey, "where British interests are at stake, I am in favor of advancing these interests even at the cost of war. The only qualification I admit is that the country we desire to annex or take under our protection should be calculated to confer a tangible advantage upon the British Empire." National ambitions are not always avowed as honestly as this, as we shall see later, but that is a fair statement of the actual facts, which need hardly be elaborated for any student of history. (p. 84)

As for relationships between nations:

It is of course possible that the rational interest in international justice may become, on occasion, so widespread and influential that it will affect the diplomacy of states. But this is not usual. In other words the mind, which places a restraint upon impulses in individual life, exists only in a very inchoate form in the nation. It is, moreover, much more remote from the will of the nation than in private individuals; for the government expresses the national will, and that will is moved by the emotions of the populace and the prudential self-interest of dominant economic classes. Theoretically it is possible to have a national electorate so intelligent, that the popular impulses and the ulterior interests of special groups are brought under the control of a national mind. But practically the rational understanding of political issues remains such a minimum force that national unity of action can be achieved only upon such projects as are either initiated by the self-interest of the dominant groups, in control of the government, or supported by the popular emotions and hysterias which from time to time run through a nation. In other words the nation is a corporate unity, held together much more by force and emotion than by mind. Since there can be no ethical action without self-criticism, and no self-criticism without the rational capacity of self-transcendence, it is natural that national attitudes can hardly approximate the ethical. Even those tendencies toward self-criticism which do express themselves are usually thwarted by the governing classes and by a certain instinct for unity in society itself. For self-criticism is a kind of disunity, which the feeble mind of a nation finds difficulty in distinguishing from dangerous forms of inner conflict. So nations crucify their moral rebels with their criminals on Golgotha, not being able to distinguish between the moral idealism which surpasses, and the anti-social conduct which falls below, that moral mediocrity on the level of which every society unifies its life.... [A]s Tyrell the Catholic modernist observed..."So far as society has a self...it must be self-assertive, proud, self-complacent, and egotistical." (p. 87-89)

For Macchiavelli, of course, "society" is the Prince.

What Niebuhr was arguing against was the idea of a "Christian nation," of a country (not a group of people) that would adhere to Christian principles. Those principles require sacrifice and "moral idealism" which, as Niebuhr points out, no country can aspire to or even hope to achieve. Consider how easily emotions have been stirred in this country just since 9/11. Or that I received an e-mail the other day once again denouncing "Hanoi" Jane Fonda (the past really isn't over, especially for those of us who remember "Hanoi" Jane). The Jane Fonda example is a perfect example of the "difficulty in distinguishing...dangerous forms of inner conflict." Indeed, you could say the same about the entire Vietnam War, a conflict still alive and well for those of us who lived through it, but already ancient history and a unitary, settled issue ("College protests ended the war and everybody knows it was unjust!") to those with no memory of it. Some still think Jane Fonda committed treason; much simpler to see it that way. Some don't; and many, of course, know nothing about it, or consider it at best a minor historical footnote. But if Fonda is not guilty of treason for what she did during the war, what meaning does treason have? And if some are not guilty of war crimes, or at least violations of U.S. law, for committing and directing torture, what meaning do the laws have? Perhaps it's just a matter of whose ox is being gored. Perhaps it is a matter of whether the nation acts, or demands action. Clearly it is not a matter of individual choice, except for the individuals who have the power, or who exert the influence of the dominant class.

I see something similar in the accepted history of World War II. You need only watch "The Best Years of Our Lives" to see characters who declare a new depression will follow the end of that war, and that the war itself was unjust and unnecessary and a conspiracy among dark powers, to realize the picture even then was not so simple, nor the national mind so clear and rational and united, as we imagine. To this day we imagine that war as an ethical exercise, especially as we use it to justify new wars because "freedom is not free!", or some such nonsense. Of course, no one in Iraq or Afghanistan or Libya, for that matter, threatens my freedom. As Osama bin Laden reportedly said, if he was fighting us because he hated our freedoms, why didn't he attack Sweden? But there was nothing ethical about World War II; it wasn't fought to end the Holocaust and establish the nation of Israel. It wasn't even fought to keep us free. We fought because we were attacked, and for no other reason. We have since decided it meant we must remain ever vigilant and truly make the world safe for democracy, and from that delusion came all of our post-war and Cold War history, right down to the current actions in Libya.

The nation Nieubuhr describes is little different from the prince Macchiavelli describes. Both must act in the interests of self-preservation, but preservation of a larger group, not of a small, homogeneous group. That reality is its own set of problems. The other set of problems comes when we cover our self-interest in self-justification, in a "higher purpose," in the decorative colors of a purpose other than our selfish ones. Perhaps at this point its timely to remember the words of Niebuhr far less famous than his "Serenity Prayer," but more appropriate:

“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.

“Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.

“Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.

“No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint.

“Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness."

--Reinhold Niebuhr

These Things That Pass for Knowledge I Don't Understand....

I just finished reading "Dragonrider" in my Science Fiction Hall of Fame collection. It's such a long story I somehow never got around to reading it before; and while I was reading it (off and on), I heard this interview on Fresh Air. It doesn't quite come through in the book excerpt or the article (although the references to pop culture in the book tell you we aren't in the groves of academia here), but in the interview the Director of the Laboratory of Perception and Action at Baylor College of Medicine sad some remarkably stupid things.

First, it turns out that, in a crisis, time really doesn't slow down like it does in the Matrix (his analogy, not mine). No kidding! Whodathunkit? Apparently when you are sent hurtling backwards in a 150 foot drop into a net, your perceive the fall as taking longer than it actually does, but you don't perceive events in slow motion. You can't actually (and the experiment proves it!) slow down events as they pass by. So time passes as it always does, and your perception of it is unchanged; but is changed, because you thought it was longer than it was. Except you thought that later, after it was over! Time, you see, is a matter of perception! And memory! Which will come as news to thousands of trial lawyers interrogating eye-witnesses to events!

And this also means that when I'm asleep and don't perceive the passage of time, it still passes, but I don't know it! And if I sleep a long time but very deeply, and still wake up tired because I don't feel like I slept at all! It's because time is just a perception for me, even though its still real! Somehow! And I didn't know this was true until these experiments!

Golly gee willikers! But you know, this guy is a scientist, so this stuff must be all truthy and stuff! But wait, there's more!

It seems the good doctor is interested in "reality," in what's "out there" and our perceptions of it! Wowee-zowee! Why, that sounds just like what Bishop Berkeley was up to! In the 18th century! But, you know, this is sciency! So it's more real! Or something....

Maybe he should just read this poem by John Hollander. I use it every semester to teach my students something about poetry, and epistemology, and Platonism, and empiricism, and perception, and memory. It might be more useful than throwing people off drops from 150 feet up.

What does this have to do with "Dragonrider"? Well, the crux of that story is that the past has been lost to the present. A lot of valuable information the present needs didn't make the crossing from the past, when it was known, despite the presence of records and ballads and all kinds of efforts and devices (even a tapestry!) for recording the information. Information is like that: it's just information unless it is interpreted and understood. And we tend to interpret and understand what we need to know for the present situation, and anything we don't think we need to know we discard as useless, archaic, uninteresting, or it just gets lost. That is what has happened to the people in the present in the story (and they finally recover the vital information through basically a magic trick of traveling into the past). I found myself comparing it to Asimov's classic story "Nightfall," where all knowledge is lost not because people are not perfectly rational and don't shift their interests over time, but because night eventually comes to a planet with two stars, and comes so rarely that the event provokes madness and chaos, and all knowledge of civilization is lost, to be rebuilt again from scratch when the suns return. It's a lovely piece of mythology, to imagine we stand on the shoulders of our ancestors and understand perfectly all that they knew, and add our store of knowledge, and so rise even higher on the steps of our, or rather their, dead selves.

But it's all bosh. "Dragonrider" gets that much exactly right. We know what we need to know for the present, and we discard whatever we don't need to know from the past, or we think we don't need to know it; and some of what we do hang on to, we hang onto out of tradition or some other fossilizing purpose, and lose the value of the knowledge altogether, until we find we need to reinvent the wheel all over again. I first learned this lesson in a bibliography class, where as a humble English major seeking a Master's Degree, I found out how important the preservation both of records, and of the knowledge in those records, is and can be. It's a lesson I've learned over and over again in the study and practice of law, and in the study and practice of theology.

Which, at least from Dr. Eagleman's description, is what neuroscience needs to do: learn from the past, because so far they seem to be only catching up with an Irish bishop from the 18th century. Any decent third year philosophy student could discuss the nature of reality and perception with Dr. Eagleman, not to mention the nature of time. He might be interested to know what Immanuel Kant had to say on the subject, too; or perhaps even Kurt Godel. It would certainly save him from re-inventing the wheel, and discovering that movies don't reflect reality.

Memorial Day 2011

Perhaps it began as "Decoration Day." Probably it was a memorial for the dead, like Samhain or Dios de los muertos. Now it is to remember that "freedom is not free," even though it was not won by war for the Founding Fathers but simply one's birthright. The militarism of society is a problem for another day. Today, as we honor soldiers we should also honor the dead, whoever they are. Because of them, we lead the lives we lead.

The characters are two African American Marines in the bush in Vietnam.

He was silent for a moment. Then he said "Ever'one here think it easy for me. I be this good little church boy from Mississippi with my good little church-goin' Mammy, and since I be this stupid country nigger with the big faith, I don't have no troubles. Well, it just don't work that way." He paused. Jermain said nothing. "I see my friend Williams get ate by a tiger," Cortell continued. "I see my friend Broyer get his face ripped off by a mine. What do you think I do all night, sit around thankin' Sweet Jesus? Raise my palms to sweet heaven and cry hallelujah? You know what I do? You know what I do? I lose heart." Cortell's throat suddenly tightened, strangling his words. "I lose my heart." He took a deep breath, trying to regain his composure. He exhaled and went on quietly, back in control. "I sit there and I don't seen any hope. Hope gone." Cortell was seeing his dead friends. "Then, the sky turn gray again in the east, and you know what I do? I choose all over to keep believin'. All along I know Jesus could maybe be just some fairy tale, and I could be just this one big fool. I choose anyway." He turned away from his inward images and returned to the blackness of the world around him. "It ain't no easy thing."

--Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War, by Karl Marlantes (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press 2010).


A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we
may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child. . . .the produced babe of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people and from women, and
from offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps,
And here you are the mother's laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward. . . .and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.--Walt Whitman


PEACE

O Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy upon us.
Thou that sittest at the right hand of the Father, have mercy upon us.
Arise, O Christ, and help us,
And deliver us for thy Name's sake.

AMEN.

O Christ, when thou didst open thine eyes on this fair earth, the angels greeted thee as the Prince of Peace and besought us to be of good will one toward another; but thy triumph is delayed and we are weary of war.

SAVE US AND HELP US, O LORD AND MASTER.

O Christ, the very earth groans with pain as the feet of armed men march across her mangled form.

SAVE US AND HELP US, O LORD AND MASTER.

O Christ, may the Church, whom thou didst love into life, not fail thee in her witness for the things for which thou didst live and die.

TEACH US TO DO THY HOLY WILL, O LORD AND MASTER.

O Christ, the people who are called by thy Name are separated from each other in thought and life; still our tumults, take away our vain imaginings, and grant to thy people at this time the courage to pro-claim the gospel of forgiveness, and faithfully to maintain the ministry of reconciliation.

TEACH US TO DO THY HOLY WILL, O LORD AND MASTER.

O Christ, come to us in our sore need and save us; 0 God, plead thine own cause and give us help, for vain is the help of man.

SAVE US AND HELP US, O LORD AND MASTER.

O Christ of God, by thy birth in the stable, save us and help us;
By thy toil at the carpenter's bench, save us and help us;
By thy sinless life, save us and help us;
By thy cross and passion, save us and help us.

SAVE US AND HELP US, O LORD AND MASTER.

Then all shall join in the Lord's Prayer.

Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

Apocalypse Not Just Now

Part of the unacknowledged problem of Harold Camping is right here in this CBS sub-headline:

May 20, 2011
How Harold Camping marketed the Rapture
Self-made prophet with $117 million radio network spreads worldwide message that the Apocalypse will begin at 6 p.m. ET Saturday

Harold Camping, as CBS goes on to point out, is "a civil engineer and self-taught Biblical sage." Of course, "self-taught" and "sage" are, or at least should be, a contradiction in terms, like "Jumbo Shrimp" or "Military Intelligence."

No, seriously.

There are no "self-taught" sages, not in the sense of learning from their own store of knowledge, and there is no wisdom that is not gathered from and approved by, the larger community, and by community I don't mean self-selected groups of persons, i.e., "followers." We know what's happened to the followers of Harold Camping, the ones who approved of his sagacity:

"I don't understand why nothing is happening. It's not a mistake. I did what I had to do. I did what the Bible said."

Poor Mr. Fitzpatrick has become the poster child for Camping's disappointed followers:

In New York's Times Square, Robert Fitzpatrick of Staten Island said he was surprised when the six o’clock hour simply came and went. He had spent his own money to put up advertising about the end of the world.

“I can’t tell you what I feel right now,” he said, surrounded by tourists. “Obviously, I haven’t understood it correctly because we’re still here.”

That community almost represents Godel's theorem of incompleteness, as their method of reasoning has produced questions their method cannot provide answers for; that is, "What is the world doesn't come to an end?" They refused to accept that as a possibility. Some of them still do:

Family Radio's special projects coordinator, Michael Garcia said he believed the delay was God's way of separating true believers from those willing to doubt what he said were clear biblical warnings.

"Maybe this had to happen for there to be a separation between those who have faith and those who don't," he said. "It's highly possible that our Lord is delaying his coming."

I'm reminded of the story in the gospel of John when Jesus addresses God and God answers from heaven, but some people hear the voice of God, and some only hear distant thunder. And I'm also reminded that "apocalypse" doesn't mean "catastrophic ending of the world in pain and turmoil," but more simply "revelation." It is the promised revelation that every eye will see, and every ear hear, that is usually anticipated in any eschaton. Surely there was an apocalypse this weekend; and just as surely, some only heard distant thunder. The difference is in my understanding, and the community that provides an explanation to me.

When "I" haven't understood "it" correctly, it is the community that supplies the answer and even surrounds one with the comfort. You can understand incorrectly and make a mistake in your life choice; you can understand incorrectly and make a mistake in your marriage choice; you can understand incorrectly in so many ways, and there are no bootstraps by which you can lift yourself out of that problem you have created. There is only the community. There is only the rest of the world.

"World," of course, has taken on a new connotation in modern times. "World" now means the entire community of humanity dwelling on all the continents; but we can no more imagine that community than we can literally imagine the 19 million people who live in New York City. We can't even imagine the crowd they would make could they assemble in one place; it's nothing more than a number, one we know is large because we compare to other, equally abstract, numbers. We no more live in the "world" today than our ancestors did, than did the people of Jesus' time. We live in a place, and we imagine the world as some extension of what we know. The world is too big, too vast, to incomprehensible at once, to be a community for anyone. But community is not limited to just the people we know, either.

"Community" cannot be a wholly self-selected group, although that principle has become one of the bedrocks of Protestantism. The revelation is never known to an individual; the revelation is known to all, and the community needs skeptics just as it needs doubting Thomases, just as it needs Peters to balance Pauls. Mr. Camping is "bewildered" and "mystified" now because he is a self-taught Biblical interpreter who draws inspiration from his own predilections, not from the discipline and decisions of a community. He is a community of one, and only those who think as he does have any importance for him. That sounds to some like the very definition of a religious community but it isn't; it isn't at all.

Community is more than the people you know, but less than the world. It is the people you can reasonably be in relationship to, but that doesn't have to be just the people you can possibly know. Christians speak of "the Church" and can mean anything from the body judicatory that ordains or authorizes priests, pastors, sacraments, and doctrines, to the "clouds of witness" which are believers in time and across both time and space. What the community cannot be is a group cut off from the presence and the knowledge of that larger group. It cannot be a self-selected body convinced of the rightness of its cause because it likes that cause. That's like building a tent with only one main pole. No matter how tall the pole, or how sturdy, it cannot hold up a tent large enough to include all the people who need to be inside it. And "need" is a crucial aspect of community; a community must not only be the people who want to be there, it must be the people who need to be there. Not necessarily for their sake, but for the sake of the community. The community needs people just as people need a community.

I was watching yet another filmed version of "Murder on the Orient Express" as I worked on this, and in this version Poirot, upon discovering the identities of the murderers, tells them that the judge and jury cannot appoint themselves. By the same token, neither can the religious leader. But that's precisely what Harold Camping did. And apparently he is figuring out there are consequences to being self-appointed:

Before May 21, many believers quit their jobs, left their families and gave their savings to Family Radio, which then sent out caravans and put up billboards announcing the end. Evans, the Family Radio board member, says now that the date has passed, all they can do is pick up and move on.

"I don't know what the future holds for Family Radio or for any of us," he says. "We just have to pray that God will be merciful."

Evans says he hopes the organization will repay people who gave their money to the cause. But at this point he can't guarantee it.

There is something bitterly ironic about hoping for God's mercy for yourself after expecting God's cosmic wrath being visited on everyone else. But then there is an appalling strangeness to the mercy of God. That's another consequence of a self-appointed community: you set yourself apart from everyone else and declare your group protected and privileged over all others, if only because it is "yours." Which is yet another warning against doing so. We do not know God in a vacuum, nor in a self-contained unit of our own making. We know God in the world. The sad followers of Harold Camping learned that lesson this weekend; at least, I hope and pray they did.

And the world is not laughing with them; it is laughing beside them.




P.S. Oh, and now it's October 21, 2011 for the "end." See you then.

Weekend Update

I am shamelessly stealing this from Dependable Renegade, who also took it from somewhere else.

Anyway, after Saturday it won't matter, eh?

Streams in the Food Deserts

When Stephen Hawking lost his ability to talk he was given back his voice by another person. It is not our own dead bodies that raise us from the dead.--Mad Priest

Not the first way I'd intended to use the Mad Priest's words, but then I heard this on the radio, and had to look it up. It is perfectly appalling:

Houston is among the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the country, and yet the area has fewer supermarkets per capita than most of the nation’s large metropolitan areas. When measured against the national rate of per capita supermarkets, the Greater Houston area has 185 too few. The shortage of supermarkets in Houston is representative of a statewide problem. In fact, Texas has the lowest number of supermarkets per capita of any state in the country.

Look at that last sentence again, and think about it. Texas loves to tout the virtues of the free market. But obviously that market works only for people with enough money to live near a supermarket that sells fresh food. Of course, this is not "fresh" news, and the City of Houston is working to do something about it (which is why it was in the news again). As the report today noted: those of us who can drive to the supermarket think nothing of what food is available to us; but those of us who can't, end up eating fast food, which is not only more expensive, but less nutritious as well. But again, don't take my word for it:

The lack of access to affordable and nutritious food has a negative impact on the health of children and families in Houston and across Texas. Today, nearly two-thirds of Texans are overweight or obese. There is strong and consistent evidence that people who live in communities without a supermarket suffer from disproportionately high rates of obesity, diabetes and other diet-related health problems. In contrast, when people live in a community with a supermarket, they tend to eat more servings of fruits and vegetables and are more likely to maintain a healthy weight.

There are 16 food deserts in the City of Houston alone. To put that in some perspective, in the U.S. there is one supermarket for every 8600 people, on average. In Houston, there is one supermarket for ever 12000 people. Nor is the distribution equal: I live within easy driving (or even walking, even in Houston, where no one walks!) distance of 5 large grocery stores, all offering fresh foods and meats. But other people in Houston only live near fast food outlets and stores where they can get beer and milk, and everything else edible is largely processed and packaged for a very long shelf life. The very system that offers me so many choices and options, is also the system that denies people in 16 communities (and how large are those?) those very same options.

As the Mad Priest reminds us, no one lifts himself up by his own bootstraps. Our own bodies do not raise us from the dead. And food deserts are not natural creations, like swamps or bayous or wetlands (all of which Houston has in abundance); they are entirely human-made. We cannot expect the people living in them to change them. And we must rely on something besides blind faith in the market as a strong green god, sullen, untamed, intractable, and start realizing it is entirely of our own creation, and we alone are responsible for it, and for what it does to others. Indeed, we have to recognize that our system is set up to provide us with benefits from the suffering of others. And participating blindly in that system, at the very least, has got to come to an end.

"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)

What would it be like to make that our purpose, our goal, our reality? Too utopian? Or not utopian enough?

"It is not our own dead bodies that raise us from the dead."

Vanity of Vanities!

Stephen Hawking says there is no heaven. Which leaves me wondering: what if Stephen Hawking said the verities of love were a myth? What if Stephen Hawking said beauty is not truth, and truth is not beauty, and that is not all ye know or need to know? What if Stephen Hawking had opined on the death of Osama bin Laden, or the state of the world economy, or even British cricket? Would anybody care?

So why do we care when Stephen Hawking trots out an old chestnut about heaven=myth, and adds to it the equally old chestnut that when you die, that's it? I mean, why does this even make the news? Because Stephen Hawking said it? But what does he know about matters theological?

He may be as qualified as I am to speak on matters of the heart, but would anyone listen if he opined that love was a myth, and it was all a matter of pheromones and hormones and neurons firing? Would anyone give such statements any real attention?

And when he trots out this old canard:

In an interview published Monday in The Guardian newspaper, the 69-year-old says the human brain is a like a computer that will stop working when its components fail.

He says: "There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."

I first want to question his analogy. A computer? Really? Why isn't it like a pocket watch? Or an adding machine? Or simply a receptor for sensory impressions? All three analogies have been offered at one time or another (the last is David Hume's, and my personal favorite. I always imagine an empty room with a wall of TV screens presenting images no one is there to look at. If, as Hume said, the self is just an illusion created from all that sensory input, who is deciphering the sensory input and remembering it? It would seem a better analogy for Mr. Hawking, if he wants to be such an absolute empiricist). Why is the computer the superior comparison?

But more directly, I'd point Mr. Hawking to Socrates' discussion of the soul in the Phaedo. Socrates made an argument for the existence of the soul so compelling it persists to this day; which is not to say, however, that Socrates was right. On the other hand, if you are going to dismiss Socrates as just another person "afraid of the dark," I am going to dismiss your argument out of hand, too. And I'm going to ask myself: "Why should I care what you think on this subject?"

So why do we care? Why do we worship at the shrine of "science" so much that Stephen Hawking can wander freely into other fields and determine their worth and merit based on his assumptions and, frankly, ignorance. I don't know what concept of "heaven" Mr. Hawking has, but it's a fairly elementary one. And there is some kind of supreme arrogance in dismissing several millenia of human thought and experience with the statement "I don't agree (and therefor you are all fools!)." It was an acceptable enough position in 19th century Europe, when educated white males convinced themselves they were superior to people younger than them (children) and non-males, and all persons of other "races," a concept they came up with to conveniently classify the bulk of the world as inferior. Is Mr. Hawking really so arrogant as to presume he knows better and more fully than all of humankind across history? It is indeed possible that he does. But we usually call such people "cranks." We don't usually honor them with respect for and publication of their every utterance.

So why do we publish the opinions of Stephen Hawking as if they matter? Because he's so much more intelligent than we are? Anyone who dismisses Socrates without even a mention, and implicitly defines him as a child afraid of the dark, doesn't strike me as more intelligent than I am. Certainly he understands physics better than I do, but since when did physics become the bedrock and benchmark of all human knowledge?

But here is the central problem: there are arguments for, and there are arguments against. The latter don't establish a proposition, so much as try to defeat one. Kierkegaard understood this about the "Socratic method." It was, he realized, merely the application of irony to all situations, the application of the "con" argument, without any establishing "pro" to justify it. It is, as Rabbi Hirschfield points out, not the same thing to deny something, as it is to prove something doesn't exist. Arguments pro, as Kierkegaard pointed out, are very complex, and sometimes impossible, while arguments con are simple and easy to construct. But they don't actually construct anything.

Irony...has no purpose, it's purpose is immanent in itself, a metaphysical purpose. The purpose is none other than irony itself. When an ironist exhibits himself as other than he actually is, it might seem that his purpose were to induce others to believe this. His actual purpose, however, is merely to feel free, and he is through irony....

With doubt the subject constantly seeks to penetrate the object, and his misfortune consists in the fact that the object constantly eludes him. With irony, on the other hand, the subject is always seeking to get outside the object and this he attains by becoming conscious at every moment that the object has no reality. With doubt the subject is witness to a war of conquest in which every phenomenon is destroyed, because the essence always resides behind the phenomenon. But with irony the subject constantly retires from the field and proceeds to talk every phenomenon out of its reality in order to save himself, that is, in order to preserve himself in his negative independence of everything....

For irony everything becomes nothingness, but nothingness may be taken in several ways. The speculative nothingness is that which at every moment is vanishing for concretion, since it is itself the demand for the concrete...The mystical nothingness is a nothingness for representation, a nothingness which yet is as full of content as the silence of the night is eloquent for one who has ears to hear. Finally, the ironic nothingness is that deathly stillness in which irony returns to 'haunt and jest' (this last word taken wholly ambiguously.)(Soren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, tr. Lee M. Capel (Bloomington, Indiana; Indiana University Press 1968, 273-75)

Now if Mr. Hawking wants to take that on, we can have a discussion. But so long as he wants to throw stones at other people who don't think like he does, then, in the words of that eminent 20th century philosopher Nigel Molesworth: "I diskard him."

Update: Rabbi Hirschfield was on BBC's "World Have Your Say" and acquitted himself very well. I'll admit to more than a little pleasure at listening to a person of faith discuss matters religious with a humanist, and refusing to use any of the platitudes the humanist expected to hear.

Judgment at Erewhon

I find most of the discussion of torture revolves around fictions, be it the fiction that "torture works" or the fiction that "torture can be morally justified under certain circumstances." So, in the spirit of fighting fiction with fiction, I bring you the speech of Spencer Tracy in "Judgment at Nuremberg:"

Judge Haywood: The trial conducted before this Tribunal began over eight months ago. The record of evidence is more than ten thousand pages long, and final arguments of counsel have been concluded.

Simple murders and atrocities do not constitute the gravamen of the charges in this indictment. Rather, the charge is that of conscious participation in a nationwide, government organized system of cruelty and injustice in violation of every moral and legal principle known to all civilized nations. The Tribunal has carefully studied the record and found therein abundant evidence to support beyond a reasonable doubt the charges against these defendants.

Heir Rolfe, in his very skillful defense, has asserted that there are others who must share the ultimate responsibility for what happened here in Germany. There is truth in this. The real complaining party at the bar in this courtroom is civilization. But the Tribunal does say that the men in the dock are responsible for their actions, men who sat in black robes in judgment on other men, men who took part in the enactment of laws and decrees, the purpose of which was the extermination of humans beings, men who in executive positions actively participated in the enforcement of these laws -- illegal even under German law. The principle of criminal law in every civilized society has this in common: Any person who sways another to commit murder, any person who furnishes the lethal weapon for the purpose of the crime, any person who is an accessory to the crime -- is guilty.

Heir Rolfe further asserts that the defendant, Janning, was an extraordinary jurist and acted in what he thought was the best interest of this country. There is truth in this also. Janning, to be sure, is a tragic figure. We believe he loathed the evil he did. But compassion for the present torture of his soul must not beget forgetfulness of the torture and the death of millions by the Government of which he was a part. Janning's record and his fate illuminate the most shattering truth that has emerged from this trial: If he and all of the other defendants had been degraded perverts, if all of the leaders of the Third Reich had been sadistic monsters and maniacs, then these events would have no more moral significance than an earthquake, or any other natural catastrophe. But this trial has shown that under a national crisis, ordinary -- even able and extraordinary -- men can delude themselves into the commission of crimes so vast and heinous that they beggar the imagination. No one who has sat at through trial can ever forget them: men sterilized because of political belief; a mockery made of friendship and faith; the murder of children. How easily it can happen.

There are those in our own country too who today speak of the "protection of country" -- of "survival." A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient -- to look the other way.

Well, the answer to that is "survival as what?" A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult!

Before the people of the world, let it now be noted that here, in our decision, this is what we stand for: justice, truth, and the value of a single human being.

And yes, isn't it interesting that we could conduct that trial without fear or terror, yet the trial of even one detainee at Guantanamo Bay is too grave a threat to our nation's survival. Tell me again what we stand for?

Torture Does Not Work

Josh Marshall, who should know better:

As a more general matter it's important to recognize that torture could easily have produced the key information. It just seems not to have in this case. You can be doctrinaire in opposing torture without being doctrinaire in assuming that it can't produce any good intelligence, which would be foolish.

This is the general assumption of people who've never made their living asking questions of people; or perhaps they imagine the journalistic practice of shouting questions at politicians is the equivalent of torture, that "grilling" a reluctant public figure is little different from waterboarding a captive.

First, let me remind everyone that the legal definition of torture makes no mention of interrogation. Torture is inflicting pain on someone; in the legal definition, doing so to a person under your custody or control, when you act under color of law. The connection between torture and confession is entirely specious.

Think about it: did the teacher who berated you, yelled at you, embarrassed you in class, elicit more information from you than the teacher you respected, and who respected you? Any lawyer who thinks his cross-examination will work best by intimidating the witness is a fool. Any interrogator who thinks information is best beaten out of a prisoner is a sadist, unfit to be in the same room with a prisoner. But don't take my word for it; consider the Congressional testimony of FBI agent Ali Soufani:

From my experience – and I speak as someone who has personally interrogated many terrorists and elicited important actionable intelligence– I strongly believe that it is a mistake to use what has become known as the "enhanced interrogation techniques," a position shared by many professional operatives, including the CIA officers who were present at the initial phases of the Abu Zubaydah interrogation.

These techniques, from an operational perspective, are ineffective, slow and unreliable, and as a result harmful to our efforts to defeat al Qaeda. (This is aside from the important additional considerations that they are un-American and harmful to our reputation and cause.)

And he has evidence (something JMM lacks) to back him up:

During his capture Abu Zubaydah had been injured. After seeing the extent of his injuries, the CIA medical team supporting us decided they were not equipped to treat him and we had to take him to a hospital or he would die. At the hospital, we continued our questioning as much as possible, while taking into account his medical condition and the need to know all information he might have on existing threats.

We were once again very successful and elicited information regarding the role of KSM as the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and lots of other information that remains classified. (It is important to remember that before this we had no idea of KSM's role in 9/11 or his importance in the al Qaeda leadership structure.) All this happened before the CTC team arrived.

A few days after we started questioning Abu Zubaydah, the CTC interrogation team finally arrived from DC with a contractor who was instructing them on how they should conduct the interrogations, and we were removed. Immediately, on the instructions of the contractor, harsh techniques were introduced, starting with nudity. (The harsher techniques mentioned in the memos were not introduced or even discussed at this point.)

The new techniques did not produce results as Abu Zubaydah shut down and stopped talking. At that time nudity and low-level sleep deprivation (between 24 and 48 hours) was being used. After a few days of getting no information, and after repeated inquiries from DC asking why all of sudden no information was being transmitted (when before there had been a steady stream), we again were given control of the interrogation.

We then returned to using the Informed Interrogation Approach. Within a few hours, Abu Zubaydah again started talking and gave us important actionable intelligence.

This included the details of Jose Padilla, the so-called "dirty bomber." To remind you of how important this information was viewed at the time, the then-Attorney General, John Ashcroft, held a press conference from Moscow to discuss the news. Other important actionable intelligence was also gained that remains classified.

After a few days, the contractor attempted to once again try his untested theory and he started to re-implementing the harsh techniques. He moved this time further along the force continuum, introducing loud noise and then temperature manipulation.

Throughout this time, my fellow FBI agent and I, along with a top CIA interrogator who was working with us, protested, but we were overruled. I should also note that another colleague, an operational psychologist for the CIA, had left the location because he objected to what was being done.

Again, however, the technique wasn't working and Abu Zubaydah wasn't revealing any information, so we were once again brought back in to interrogate him. We found it harder to reengage him this time, because of how the techniques had affected him, but eventually, we succeeded, and he re-engaged again.

Once again the contractor insisted on stepping up the notches of his experiment, and this time he requested the authorization to place Abu Zubaydah in a confinement box, as the next stage in the force continuum. While everything I saw to this point were nowhere near the severity later listed in the memos, the evolution of the contractor's theory, along with what I had seen till then, struck me as "borderline torture."

As the Department of Justice IG report released last year states, I protested to my superiors in the FBI and refused to be a part of what was happening. The Director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, a man I deeply respect, agreed passing the message that "we don't do that," and I was pulled out.

As you can see from this timeline, many of the claims made in the memos about the success of the enhanced techniques are inaccurate. For example, it is untrue to claim Abu Zubaydah wasn't cooperating before August 1, 2002. The truth is that we got actionable intelligence from him in the first hour of interrogating him.

To put it plainly and simply: torture works in the movies, and on TeeVee, because a writer can write it that way. In real life? Not so much.

Not at all, in fact. Torture works only to do what it is meant to do: inflict severe pain on another human being, who can't escape the pain, or the torturer. To correct Mr. Marshall, the only thing foolish on this topic is to assume torture does anything else.

NUNC LENTO SONITU DICUNT, MORIERIS.

I wasn't going to do this, at all; comment on the death of Osama bin Laden, I mean. But my work here is largely reactive, and when I read this:

So, let us mute our celebrations. Let any satisfaction be grim and grounded in the foundation of justice for all who have suffered at bin Laden's bloody hands. And also justice for crimes against God -- for using God as an instrument of terror and and promoting distrust between peoples of different religions and nations. Let us put bin Laden's body in the ground, and in doing so bury his disastrous and blasphemous religious legacy.

Ultimately, judgment is not ours to make. But I believe in a just God and I believe that Osama Bin Laden, for all the talk of rewards in heaven, will not be enjoying his meeting with the God of Creation.

And then this:

Judaism stands alone as a world religion in its commandment to hate evil. Exhortations to hate all manner of evil abound in the Bible and God declares His detestation of those who visit cruelty on His children. Psalm 97 is emphatic: "You who love G-d must hate evil." Proverbs 8 declares, "The fear of the Lord is to hate evil." Amos 5 demands, "Hate the evil and love the good." And Isaiah 5 warns, "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil." And concerning the wicked King David declares unequivocally, "I have hated them with a perfect hatred. They are become enemies to me." (Psalm 139) Hatred is a valid emotion, the appropriate moral response, to the human encounter with inhuman cruelty. Mass murderers most elicit our deepest hatred and contempt.

On the other hand, the Bible also says that we are not to celebrate our enemy's demise. We do not dance over the body of a murderer like Osama bin Laden. Indeed, at the Passover Seder we Jews, upon mentioning the Ten Plagues, poor wine out of our glasses ten separate times to demonstrate that we will not raise a glass to the suffering of the Egyptians, even though they were engaged in genocide. Likewise, after the Red Sea split and drowned the Egyptians, Moses and the Jewish people sang 'The Song of the Sea.' Yet, the Talmud says that G-d himself rebuked the Israelites: 'My creatures are drowning in the sea, yet you have now decided to sing about it?'

First, I don't equate death with justice. An eye for an eye not only leaves the whole world blind, it is not even remotely "justice." But there are other reasons I'm neither dancing in the streets nor feeling any sense of relief at this news:

PERCHANCE he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill as that he knows not it tolls for him. And perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does, belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and ingraffed into that body, whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me; all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again, for that library where every book shall lie open to one another; as therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come; so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness.

There was a contention as far as a suit (in which, piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled) which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity of this bell, that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours, by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him, that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute, that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? But who takes off his eye from a comet, when that breaks out? who bends not his ear to any bell, which upon any occasion rings? But who can remove it from that bell, which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did; for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough, that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current moneys, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell that tells me of his affliction, digs out, and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger, I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.

If no human is an island, then even the death of bin Laden diminishes me. Perhaps it would have been better had he never been born, but who among us can say the same is not true for us? Perhaps my sins outweigh my virtues? How am I to be sure?

I heard bin Laden denounced as a mass murderer today, and I thought about the distinction between a mass murderer and a head of state: some are equally guilty of as many deaths, if not more, yet they are justified. Some, like Qadaffi, are not. But then, who is guilty, and who is innocent, and whose life is worthy of existence, and who is only worthy of death? It is better that mass murderers had never been born, but who are the mass murderers? Definitions seem to differ.

Perhaps Donne would say bin Laden, not being "ingraffed" into the church catholic and universal, was not part of the main for whom the bell tolls. That is too fine a distinction for me. If I'm going to mourn the deaths of people on 9/11, I'm going to regret the celebration of the death of anyone involved in conducting that crime, too. Death is not justice, whether carried out by the state, or by an evil individual intent on creating his own pan-national state. Which brings me back to the quote I started with, and would counter with another quote, from "V" in the movie of the same name: "Ideas," he told his captive Natalie Portman, "are bulletproof."

And the fact is, they are. Even bad ideas; perhaps especially bad ideas. I would like to be able to bury bin Laden's disastrous and blasphemous religious legacy. But the only way to do that is to hold to my religious legacy. I cannot defeat ideas. I cannot bury ideas. I cannot kill ideas. I can only be as true to my beliefs as possible. And those beliefs don't allow me to take satisfaction in anyone's death.

A Day on Which Absolutely Nothing Happened*

Wounded Bird does an otherwise excellent post on the Royal Wedding today, saving me the trouble (what is it about weddings? I swore I wouldn't even get up for it, and yet...). But then WB misses entirely the Wedding Sermon, which I thought was not only the best wedding sermon I'd ever heard, but one of the best sermons I had ever heard. I mean, when you can work Catherine(!) of Siena and Chaucer into a wedding sermon, well...that's someone I can learn from! So, in order to repair the error made by WB's sin of omission:

LONDON: Bishop of London's Sermon at the Royal Wedding of William and Kate

April 29, 2011

"Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire."

So said St Catherine of Siena whose festival day this is. Marriage is intended to be a way in which man and woman help each other to become what God meant each one to be, their deepest and truest selves.

Many are full of fear for the future of today's world but the message of the celebrations in this country and far beyond its shores is the right one - this is a joyful day. It is good that people in every continent are able to share in the celebrations because this is, as every wedding day should be, a day of hope.

In a sense every wedding is a royal wedding with the bride and groom as king and queen of creation, making a new life together so that life can flow through them to the future.

William and Catherine, you have chosen to be married in the sight of a generous God who so loved the world that he gave himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

In the Spirit of this generous God, husband and wife are to give themselves to one another.

Spiritual life grows as love finds its centre beyond ourselves. Faithful and committed relationships offer a door into the mystery of spiritual life in which we discover that the more we give of self, the richer we become in soul; the more we go beyond ourselves in love, the more we become our true selves and our spiritual beauty is more fully revealed. In marriage we are seeking to bring one another into fuller life.

It is of course hard to wean ourselves away from self-centredness. People can dream of such a thing but the hope will not be fulfilled without a solemn decision that, whatever the difficulties, we are committed to the way of generous love.

You have both made your decision today - "I will" - and by making this new relationship, you have aligned yourselves with what we believe is the way in which life is spiritually evolving, and which will lead to a creative future for the human race.

We stand looking forward to a century which is full of promise and full of peril. Human beings are confronting the question of how to use wisely the power which has been given to us through the discoveries of the last century. We shall not be converted to the promise of the future by more knowledge, but rather by an increase of loving wisdom and reverence, for life, for the earth and for one another.

Marriage should transform, as husband and wife make one another their work of art. This transformation is possible as long as we do not harbour ambitions to reform our partner. There must be no coercion if the Spirit is to flow; each must give the other space and freedom. Chaucer, the London poet, sums it up in a pithy phrase:

"Whan maistrie [mastery] comth, the God of Love anon, Beteth his wynges, and farewell, he is gon." As the reality of God has faded from so many lives in the West, there has been a corresponding inflation of expectations that personal relations alone will supply meaning and happiness in life. This is to load our partner with too great a burden. We are all incomplete: we all need the love which is secure, rather than oppressive, and mutual forgiveness, to thrive.

As we move towards our partner in love, following the example of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit is quickened within us and can increasingly fill our lives with light. This leads to a family life which offers the best conditions in which the next generation can practise and exchange those gifts which can overcome fear and division and incubate the coming world of the Spirit, whose fruits are love and joy and peace.

I pray that every one present and the many millions watching this ceremony and sharing in your joy today will do everything in their power to support and uphold you in your new life. I pray that God will bless you in the way of life you have chosen, a way which is expressed in the prayer that you have written together in preparation for this day:

God our Father, we thank you for our families; for the love that we share and for the joy of our marriage. In the busyness of each day keep our eyes fixed on what is real and important in life and help us to be generous with our time and love and energy. Strengthened by our union help us to serve and comfort those who suffer. We ask this in the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

---The Rt. Rev. Richard Chartres is the Bishop of London

*It's a very inside joke. Don't try to make sense of it; you can't.

In lieu of yet another Easter post

I will assume the devoted religious/faithful among my audience (devoted to actually reading this blog,however occasionally, I mean) will have had enough of Easter sermons and services today. Besides, in the context of a blog, there's nothing much I can say that I haven't already said.

So I would direct you to New Advent for a definitive word on "Easter." All I can add to all the people who think if un-Christian to attach Christian significance to a "pagan" holiday is: get over it. Oestre probably never existed (more like the Venerable Bede was being less venerable than we might expect, as he is the only source for that odd connection to "Easter," which is an English word, not a Christian one. The more proper Christian term is the "Pasch," but let that go, too.) Go to New Advent to get the word on bunnies and eggs and all things "easter," if you like. Turns out this has always been a season of celebration, and always a much more important event on the Church calendar than Christmas.

Which is interesting. Christmas is almost entirely a secular observance, even in the Church (you can look me up on that if you want). Easter still isn't. Good for Easter.

I really should be out playing some games....

Good Friday 2011

Good Friday should be silent. The church should be shrouded, the altar stripped, funereal cloths draped, only prayers and whispers heard. No music; certainly there should be no music.

Good Friday should be silent. The world needs occasions to consider the values of silence.

"Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid."--John 19:41

Maundy Thursday evening

Because Good Friday should be silent:

Maundy Thursday 2011

Because Maundy Thursday deserves music:

Holy Week and Christ Crucified

This is what we should be meditating on for Holy Week:

In Atheist Delusions, David Bentley Hart has described the Christian revolution in terms of the stripping bare of the pagan life-world with its pantheon of gods, demigods and spirits who guaranteed the proper order of things and provided life with meaning.

"In such a world," Hart writes, "the gospel was an outrage, and it was perfectly reasonable for its cultured despisers to describe its apostles as 'atheists'. Christians were … enemies of society, impious, subversive, and irrational; and it was no more than civic prudence to detest them for refusing to honor the gods of their ancestors, for scorning the common good, and for advancing the grotesque and shameful claim that all gods and spirits had been made subject to a crucified criminal from Galilee … This was far worse than mere irreverence; it was pure and misanthropic perversity; it was anarchy."

Where is the sense of anarchy of yesteryear? "But we preach Christ crucified," Paul told the church in Corinth, "unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness." What would it take to be that revolutionary again, that compelling?

Mind, I don't accept the theory that the gospel was such an outrage in the "pagan world" that it upset the apple cart of history and paved the way for the conversion of Constantine. That's historical rubbish. More likely, had Constantine not converted, Christianity would have struggled along as a minority religious sect for many more centuries, upsetting no one and pestering many (as the Jews, inadvertently, have done in European history). Constantine's conversion was Christianity's blessing, and its curse; and the aggressively spiritual, aggressively contrarian Christianity some imagine, probably never existed outside the martyrologies.

Still, a guy can dream. And besides, a Christianity that isn't revolutionary is just "Christendom," and Kierkegaard was right about that.

It ain't worth havin'.

But it ain't worth positing as the only "true" Christianity, either. There has to be a better way. Which is where the spirituality of the monastery, or of a Dorothy Day, comes in. What am I trying to say? This:

On what condition does goodness exist beyond all calculation? On the condition that goodness forget itself, that the movement be a movement of the gift that renounces itself, hence a movement of infinite love. Only infinite love can renounce itself and, in order to become finite, become incarnated in order to love the other, to love the other as a finite other. This gift of infinite love comes from someone and is addressed to someone; responsibility demands irreplaceable singularity.

Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death, tr. David Wills (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 50-51.

And this:

These conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your own cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it, so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures. Adulterers! Do you now know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you suppose that it is for nothing that the scripture says, "God yearns jealously for the spirit that he has made to dwell in us"? But he gives all the more grace; therefore it says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble."

James 4:1-6

And even this:

I am reading (Simone Weil's) essays as a part of my Lenten reading...She says that we "...must experience every day, both in the spirit and the flesh, the pains and humiliations of poverty...and further we must do something which is harder than enduring in poverty, we must renounce all compensations: in our contacts with the people around us we must sincerely practice the humility of a naturalized citizen in the country which has received us."

I keep reminding the young people who come to work with us that they are not naturalized citizens...They are not really poor. We are always foreigners to the poor. So we have to make up for it by "renouncing all compensations..."

Dorothy Day, from The Dorothy Day Book, p. 11.

Holy Week Begins

Not my favorite version, but the best quality I could find on short notice. Although it should end with the far more plaintive plea of the original: "HEAL YOURSELVES!!!"

This is, for purely personal historical reasons, my soundtrack for Holy Week. And even in this versions, at least it pushes us closer to the human experience of Holy Week. Which is a very good thing.