May approaches

April is the cruellest month. Well, right now it just seems damn hot. Another week comes and goes. Interesting, to be sure. I went on Wednesday to Blair High School to get information on their IB program(me). My principal wants to get one off the ground at our school and having done the IB diploma, I'm a likely candidate to help out. This may mean a trip to Lake Tahoe in June, but that doesn't sound so bad, not, does it. Let's see, what else. The Weepies have a new album out this week that I was slightly disappointed by. Say I Am You was probably my favorite release of '06. Been waiting for this one for a while. Had diversity integration training or whatever it's called on Tuesday. Went to Blair on Wednesday, the principal who called himself the "prince of pow" and could sell ice to eskimos (based on first impressions), let's say he had the "gift of gab" a la Don King, and looked dangerously like Keenan Wynn, which is only funny if you know who that is. Ahem. Anyway, then scrambled to school for periods 3 and 5. Raucous crowd these days. Bought a copy of Juno as well. Ah, capitalism. Consumption is salvation. Things for a novel rounding into some kind of shape. I predict a three year process trying to write this novel, although I should probably round it down for motivation's sake. Still reading Golden Compass from the Dark Materials trilogy. Interesting counterpoint to Lewis and, to some extent, Rowling. Went to the LA Times festival of books, about which more will be written tomorrow.

Wow! An Encounter with Conservatism

It's been so long since I've been in a crudely conservative context that self-righteous people seemed almost a conjuration, a mental construct, a straw-man or phantom from my past that I could use as a foil to gauge my own ideological development. But I forgot that someone, somewhere is listening to Rush Limbaugh right now and nodding and clapping vociferously like an autistic child singing the alphabet. Legalism and being pharisaical is so consciously avoided by those I know, Christian and non-Christian, that I have forgotten how appalling they can be. I do not think much about right and left, but obviously, someone does. I had entirely forgotten what "brow beating" looked like. Just about everything on this web site smacks of those clothed in religious certitude, the stagnant Pharisees whose religious constructs were stifling Christ's movement, his love, his transformative intention, his shalom. I know I am in a daily "den of iniquity" in this foul blue state with its liberal whackos with their political correctness. I wish some of the conservatives would simply interact more with people who aren't like them. Here in LA (often considered "not really America") or in any urban center for that matter, diversity is a fact and interaction with people of different stripes is unavoidable. How would people be changed through this exposure, I wonder? Would their definitions of certainty, truth, love, compassion, essentials of faith, would these things change? I am tempted to draw things in simple terms, to assume none of the people who write on such web sites have gone to college, something striking like that, so there's an excuse for the lack of compassion in their tone, for the lack of critical thought and strong sense of judgment for others. But the truth is, they probably have gone to colleges, but have been trained to think in fearful, exclusivistic ways theologically and psychologically. That which does not fit their narrow, rigid, reductionistic mind set has to be an attack from Satan on this edifice called "truth." I don't hate conservatives, but I am somewhat ashamed of them, if I can even say "them." How often do I tend toward discriminating others based on their views? Maybe the real enemy is not conservatives (who are trying to conserve what they hold to be essential, and largely attacked views), nor liberals, but polarization. And still, I wonder where the fear and hatred come from. Is it from having adopted a metanarrative from a small, persecuted people from ancient mesopotamia? How do we, as Americans, get the feeling that we are constantly being oppressed, that we are somehow under siege from the forces of Satan and immorality. By any standard, if anything, we are the Romans. We are the Babylonians, the Medes, the Persians, the superpower politically and economically. But to see ourselves as the Jews of the 1st century? Hardly. I suppose the shift takes place when you start to spiritualize the story. "Well, yes America is a power, but principalities and powers refers to spiritual reality." According to this thinking, we are constantly besieged by temptation and, as Christians, constitute an ethical monotheistic minority, clearly defined by following the letter of the law of God, Jesus, and Paul, whereas Hollywood, media, and other conjured phantoms represent the occupying force, trying at every turn to pry us loose from our "hard won" salvation. Again, in this view the Bible sort of plopped out of the sky in finished, divinely inspired form, and communicates its truth simply "for those with ears to hear" but will constitute "foolishness to the Greeks." What you are left with is a bitter tautology. "I'm right. God said it. I believe it. Anyone who disagrees just doesn't get it." This means whatever we think, no matter how colored by culture, language, or even misunderstood is by definition being "on God's side" and differing opinions are "of the devil." Interesting to think of God's metaphor for effectiveness: by fruits you will know them. The fruits of these writings are exclusivist, not inclusionist, they smack of hubris, certainty, and fear, not compassion, humility, grace, and shalom. So, to recap, how do you feel besieged and oppressed while living in one of the wealthiest and most powerful countries, not just in the world, but in all of freaking human history ? How do you manage that? First, adopt the story of a minority people from the ancient world as your own. Check. Second, spiritualize the story so it doesn't emphasize caring for the orphan and the widow, God's creation, preserving shalom, but rather on personal and collective religious piety. Check. Third, refuse to acknowledge the way in which our thoughts and biblical interpretations have been affected by the Enlightenment and individualism. Do we need to save Jesus from the petty tyrants and black friars who, in Blake's words "bind with briars my joys and desires?" What does it mean to have life and life abundantly? Does it mean turning into the Morality Brigade? Is that the sense we get from Luke? From any of the Gospels?

Infallibility, innerancy, insatiable curiosity.

Remember Rudyard Kipling's elephant's child with the insatiable curiosity who was always getting spanked for asking too many questions down by the banks of the great grey green Limpopo River? And he finally got his nose pulled long? Yeah that guy. Is it just me or is that what church is like? This somehow came to mind when looking for a witty title line for this blog. Hm. Karla recently went before session to be grilled on theological issues and one of the things they asked was whether she thought the Bible was inerrant or infallible. After years in the church, in a Christian home, in college, in seminary, I think I've figured it out: who freaking cares? Does the Bible work? Does it communicate truth in the sense of "applicable truths that practically change your life and relationships?" Well, then. Good. If not, if it's being used or has been used for brow beating, self-righteousness, and you have negative associations with it or parts of it, it might be good to take a Bible fast for a while, let the old weeds die, then reapproach it freshly later, maybe in a new context or with a fresh community of thoughtful, critically thinking, open people. It seems like meaning is created out of a dynamic between reader and text. Any engagement with the Bible sets up a relationship between reader and text. This might sound horribly post-modern and all, but it seems like the Bible doesn't "just say" anything. Context and interpretation, where we stand in relationship to the text affect its meaning. I'm sure I'm copping this off some well known writer or other I've forgotten about, but it seems fairly self evident. Of course the question becomes "well, then, it is just open to any old interpretation?" Well, if we stay in the purely categorical, abstract, Euclidean, logical, left-brained, rational, reason-based arena, where everything only exists as defined, where the rules are arrived at through argument, logic, and linear thought, then maybe so. But we live in a real world, governed by natural laws. We have experiences, delights, moments of suffering, and we measure our experience by the Bible and measure the Bible by our experience in a reciprocal dialectic. To say the Bible is infallible or inerrant or whatever is to concede somehow that the Bible's meaning is fixed and that it is our job to align ourselves with that fixed, unchanging, perfect truth. Acquired wisdom is a valuable thing, it helps us become mature, healthy individuals, but treating the Bible as a fixed quantity or perfect rulebook is not the only way to deep wisdom.

Bon Iver

Can I just say that this album is absolutely sublime. I've been listening to it over and over for days. I need a way to relax after a stressful day at work, to be ushered into reflection, contemplation. Take your Madonna (can she go away now, please?), your Gnarls Barkley, your Lil' Wayne, what have you. All I ever ask for is an album where I don't have to skip any tracks with beauty, a melodic pop sensibility (well, sometimes), and some substance or depth. There are precious few that hit on all cylinders. Bon Iver does it in spades. Although just for the sake of fairness to alternate points of view, Karla asked me to turn it off because it makes her anxious. Too slow, I guess. Ah, well, different strokes. But seriously, listening to this album is enough to make me believe in common grace if I didn't already. Something Keats said comes to mind...

Dualism

Karla and I had an interesting conversation after a long walk through downtown heading from the convention center, past Staples, past a brand new Ralph's (reurbanization anyone?) to a lovely organic (ah, LA) restaurant/diner called the Tiara Cafe. Understated flamboyance, that's my take. Anyway, we somehow got on the topic of dualism. Family dualisms, personal dualisms, etc. This is probably because she is taking the Ordination exams for the Presbyterian Church soon and I grew up in a theologically dualistic household and am constantly in a state of narcissistic self-reflection. She was trying to figure out if she could be considered reformed, orthodox reformed, or what, and we ended up getting on the subject of dualism. For her, dualism can be defined as splitting the sacred and secular, pre-judging who is "in" and who is "out" of salvation. What this comes down to is how you answer the question of whether or not common grace exists or not. In the churches I grew up, there was a very exclusive, insular mentality, in which salvation meant saying a sinner's prayer, belonging to a church or a community of "born-again" believers, preferably baptized in the holy spirit, you get the drift. But there was a fundamental view of reality as dualistic, somehow bifurcated. Holiness over here, evil over here. Kingdom of darkness out in "the world" or in "the flesh" and kingdom of God "in here" or "with us" or "in the spirit." Part of my path, my struggle has been wrestling with that duality. Even when I cast it off intellectually and embrace a different theology, I tend to fall back into it, encoded as it is into my spiritual DNA, unless I am actively a part of a community that believes otherwise. This one central element is huge in understanding theological differences within Christianity. If you believe in Common Grace, that is, that God is active in the world and calls it good even though there is sin, then you can embrace mystery. The downside is, perhaps, lack of accountability, not even to narrowly defined morality or what have you, but a mature life, open to God. I guess that opens up a question, how do you define spiritual growth outside of a rigid belief system with propositional truth and an emphasis on "the moral life?" What is a "deep well?" maybe it involves the same discipline, except that the discipline is not coerced nor out of fear. In my own journey I see so much the role of dualism. Now, this might work well for the Jesus People (my parents' generation) who were into this and that and then had a radical conversion experience as young adults. If you come "from" abuse, neglect, alcoholism, drug abuse, and you find life, find God in a church or through some faith tradition, then you are likely to see the split quite clearly, the shift from sprawling, selfish, ungoverned, random life to governed, ordered life as part of a religious community (I know, I know, it's "relationship with God" not "religion" well, ok, if it makes you feel better about it). But what if you're born into a religious community, Most of what you hear is to pray a sinner's prayer, to forsake your former life, to turn to God, away from sin, etc. In my case, although I'm sure I did some stupid things when I was 3, that is, before I said the sinner's prayer, and then many more times out of fear the first one didn't stick, I'm not sure the same message applies, although I heard it a thousand and one times. In this dualistic context, God has somehow given over the world to Satan "the prince of the power of the air" and condemned everyone to be his slaves. The contrast is so striking. I now walk about, not afraid the devil is around every corner in downtown Los Angeles, but interested in people, wondering where they're from, where they're at, what I could learn from them, what they could learn from me. I'm no longer afraid that all these streets, cars, this architecture, the people are somehow agents of Satan out to separate me from God because misery loves company. But this is exactly the kind of thinking the dualistic mind-set tends towards. What a revelation is Common Grace in this context. God just loves people, even though we do stupid stuff. The earth is his. I'm not waiting on the Millenium. I'm not worried about Hal Lindsey, don't care about Left Behind or any other scare tactics narrow minded people are controlled by and want others to be controlled by. Now who's scary? I had a kind of image of an open tent in the desert, like Burning Man or something. Thousands of people gathered round, some closer, some farther away from the center. The tent is open, not closed, and people are moving toward it, and some away from it, but there is energy there, and life, truth, transformation, transcendence. Where is judgment here? you might ask. What about "kingdom of darkness?" What about "gnashing of teeth?" You tell me. I don't know. Maybe there are people up in the hills, hiding from the light in fetal positions gnashing their teeth, only some of them have built their own little tents in the hills and some haven't, but they're all cold and naked and I think sometimes I'm one of them and nowhere near a tent. Common Grace means I can find God where I couldn't find him before, lost in stunted-graceland. I wrestled with this dualism all through college. I couldn't articulate it or identify it, but I knew it, felt it. I loved Blake, Dante, but was God really there? Couldn't possibly be. There was no invitation to salvation, not in the sense I was raised up to acknowledge. Instead of resolving the dualism, I suppose, I just hopped the border. The reasoning being, well, if I'm screwed anyway (and if our goal is nothing less than "to be perfect like our holy father is perfect" then, of course, we're all screwed) then I might as well enjoy myself. This is the logical conclusion of the dualistic mindset, at least for an aesthete such as myself. I have friends raised in similar circumstances who were better behaved, the difference being they didn't move to Germany when they were nine but stayed in exclusivist Christian subcultures that reinforced the dualism, moralism, and guilt. I, instead, was dropped into German school and then international school, which, you might say, is the opposite of moralistic. From the conservative American mindset, it seems horribly depraved and hedonistic. From the other side, it just seems like fun. On occasion, I would feel guilty about my lifestyle and repent, but any change was short term at best. My reasoning went that the high standards are impossible, and if we're going to be permissive, we might as well go all the way, you know, short of death and harm to others. In this mindset, sin is sin, and if you steal a dollar you might as well steal a million, because both will land you out of favor. So I didn't play by the rules, but I never really relinquished the dualism either. Maybe it took getting married to have enough perspective to see this. I don't know. It'll be interesting reconstructing a healthy theology and trying not to screw that up, too. =)

Moving...to Spokane?

So for the bi-monthy post. Hm, Karla applied to a position in scenic Spokane, WA and I've been thinking naturally about the implications should she get accepted. A dramatic upheaval to be sure, and not necessarily a welcome one, although in terms of purchasing power, and a slower lifestyle, it could even be a welcome one. Of course we would be extremely isolated from our previous communities and identities and this has to be reckoned with. Los Angeles by contrast, as much as I harp on it, also offers a variety of activities and temporary identities, a proximity to "happenings." For example, every white person under 40 is either in a rock band or trying to act, sooo you have options if you know anyone basically. Yesterday, a friend of mine from Kairos had a show at 14 below in Santa Monica, for example. Saturday Karla and I watched a lovely film called Under the Same Moon - a little predictable, but good moments and it made fun of white people, so what's not to like - at the Laemmle next to Vroman's. But most of the hipster/scenester stuff happens on the West Side. Which actually brings up another point. I rarely venture out to the West side from Pasadena, too much traffic, and the argument could be made that watching Netflix in Spokane will be every bit as fulfilling as watching Netflix here, which is the activity of choice most days, not going to the Huntington Library or the MOCA or even reading Barry Taylor's blog. (More on that later) While I do miss the seasons, this last week has been absolutely beautiful in LA. I'm slowly getting the hang of my job, have found a sense of community at this Kairos place and have our favorite restaurants and everything. Hm. On the other hand, do I really want to raise a child in Los Angeles?