Archive for September, 2006
September 29th, 2006
A generation ago Thomas Merton said, "we are free to buy a car but we are not free to own one." 
Hunting for a "beater" with my son the other day, I thought we might not even be free to buy one. But that’s another story.
If you stroll West Edmonton Mall you’ll catch on to what, I think, Merton was talking about. Here is a world of choice that leads inevitably to more choice which guarantees the question of whether I will make the right choice.
Sociologist Stanley Hauerwas called this "normal nihilism". That is, having so many compact discs, lawn-mowers, cheeses, from which to choose that no matter which ones we choose, we are dissatisfied because we cannot be sure we have chosen what we really wanted. And there is nothing so wonderful for the "adman" than a climate of discontent and dissatisfaction. Because it always leads to more purchases. Consequently we are owned by what we buy (and don’t buy).
What’s more is that in this slurry of choice I am seduced to believe that I can purchase not just things but purchase a lifestyle. And of course a consumer lifestyle can itself be modified, changed and exchanged at will. In effect all "lifestyles" are devalued.
If lifestyle is radically individualistic, is merely personal choice and preference, then one lifestyle (You’ll gather I’m speaking of lifestyle as far more than fashion.) is inherently as good as the next; and because our lifestyle is a reflection of our values and attitudes, values and attitudes are by the same token subject to choice and preference. Now if my values bump up against yours… there is simply nothing to say.
You have your set of values and I have mine; I like coffee, you like tea, cela vie. This sounds like tolerance, but is it?
Tolerance is in itself a beautiful virtue but when used to escape navigating important opposing moral issues, it becomes something like the opposite of love. This evasion is as bad as the "fundamentalist" evasion that defers all things to the decalogue writ in stone.
Technorati Tags: Thomas Merton, Stanley Hauerwas, Nihilism, Lifestyle, Religion
September 28th, 2006
(Matthew 12) He will not wrangle or cry aloud, nor will any one hear his voice in the streets; he will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick, till he brings justice to victory.
Our age, like every age I suppose, is marked by wrangling. And we, like people of every age, still believe that wrangling, even when it leads to war, is the best strategy to address an injustice.
I like to think I’m above the fray. But I always join in. I do so by complaining about some politician or murmuring about some perceived slight and so in my own way add to the great common wrangle.
But Jesus is different. He is audacious enough to employ an entirely different strategy. His strategy for the triumph of justice, which is not really a strategy, but more like a new kind of game, has to do with small acts of gentleness. His way of justice is about doing no harm, about doing no violence to anyone’s soul. His justice is concern with bruised reeds and smoldering wicks. And to the bruised ones he says, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. (Matthew 11)."
When we remember that a reed is already a symbol for weakness, and so a bruised reed is a thing near desolation, we catch a glimmer of his gentle love. A love that walks slowly with the bare feet of attentive care. In this new kind of game we could even say that justice is a synonym for love.
I recall the warm summer evening when during a moderate rain, brought on by a passing thunder storm, my son Lucas, in his early teens at the time, ran out of the house and dashed around the front lawn playing the clown.
Earlier that day we had been playing "Sorry" and as these games go, we competed as strenuously as we could, knocking one another of the board at any and every opportunity. But now, here we were, all gathered at the picture window watching Lucas in the rain. He danced, hooted, did silly walks, hopped like a rabbit and turned cartwheels.
Our small kids, leaning over the couch, faces against the glass, squealed with delight while Deb and I stood behind and laughed. Lucas was at play in a game with no rules. He was making everything up as he went. And I loved him for it.
Here were two games with vastly different rules and outcomes and ways of participating. The one is the tit-for-tat game we all know how to play; the other is a game that has at its heart the antithesis of rivalry. It’s this new game that I’m invited to, where getting my fair share has no currency and what is just, takes on a new light.
This is the invitation Jesus invites us to play. And every day is a new opportunity to join in the new game.
Gentle souls leave it to others to make a commotion. Gentle souls don’t know what the commotion is about. Gentle people play by a different set of rules.
Technorati Tags: Gospel, Justice, Christianity, Peace, Lucas Berg
September 26th, 2006
I have hesitated to write about the recent lecture that the Pope delivered at the University of Regensburg, afraid to add to the fulminating morphic field, desiring instead to wait and watch as the thing unfolded. And thankfully there seems to be some amelioration as the Pope has steadily moved toward, not a direct apology, which would of course be disingenuous, but at least an expression of regret that what he said caused hurt among Muslim people.
As for the small number of Muslims who reacted violently, unfortunately they only reinforced the Popes conclusions.
When I read the Popes lecture I was puzzled why he didn’t take the route of self-critique and self-deprecation. It may have relegated his speech to media’s back pages, but would have, could have, given him greater credibility not only among disenfranchised Catholics, but perhaps Muslims as well.
The lecture centres upon the relationship of violence and religion as related to Reason. It tries to show that violence is incompatible with the nature of God because God is obviously reasonable and violence is something irrational. Therefore to attempt to spread faith through violence is unreasonable. It’s precisely here, in my view, that the Pope could have drawn reflectively on Christian history, the crusades being the obvious example of an "irrational" attempt at spreading faith through violence.
Instead he placed the following into his lecture:
Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he [Emperor Manuel II Paleologus] addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable…
Granted the Pope was also attempting to show a distinction between the Muslim view of God as wholly transcendent and the Christian view of God as transcendent and immanent. But the Pope is an intelligent man and could have approached the divergence in a much more inviting way. St. Paul’s adjuring us to be "all things to all people" may have been the right and good thing here.
My thought is that it would have been much more instructive for all, to explore why Reason failed the medieval Christians miserably, and why it so often continues to fail us modern Christians as well.
Could it be that Reason is not enough, not nearly enough, for the creation of peace?
I suspect Benedict XVI has now had time to consider and reconsider these things at length. And I pray for him. It’s not easy being Pope.
Technorati Tags: Pope Benedict XVI, Islam, Muslim, Christianity, Crusades, Emperor Manuel II Paleologus, Peace, Religion, Violence
September 25th, 2006
I’ve made this discovery about doubt. Doubt allows me to breath. It allows my faith to breath.
What is it like to be absolutely certain? It’s alien. Doubt gives my faith space to breath. All of my ideas of God, ideas I share with others, are nevertheless provisional. And things change. Doubt therefore makes room for God.
A mind made up about God is a false mind bearing a false God.
I think that most of the time I’m too afraid to doubt. I’ve been trained to control things and doubt has the stain of chaos or "god I don’t know if I’m right about this".
The Saints were never afraid to doubt. Thomas, standing in front of his friends, says prove it to me. The man with the sick daughter says, "I believe, help my unbelief." Most of my life is lived in the aridity of …"I believe, help my unbelief."
I distrust people who are absolutely certain about God, but I also distrust people who haven’t tried to be or have quite trying to be certain.
There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds. - Alfred Tennyson( 1809-1892) English Poet
Technorati Tags: Doubt, St. Thomas, Religion, Spirituality
September 24th, 2006
Today, upon seeing a lady bug inch its way up a wooden railing I recalled this journal entry from exactly three years ago.
You wouldn’t think that Willie Nelson could cheer up a soul. But I feel like traveling on, on that is, that train they call the City of New Orleans. I feel like traveling a long way away. I want to feel the rhythm of steel wheels on steel track clacking beneath me. I want to feel it for miles of hours, and hours of miles. I want to travel anywhere, it doesn’t matter. Anywhere takes me away. Feeling this tells me I’m still alive.
And of course James Taylor’s music takes me, transports me, away. It opens up the possibility of leaping into the still blue breeze, climbing as high as two translucent wings can take me and drifting, catching up and down drafts without worrying the destination.
This is what the lady bug did. I watched from my lawn chair beside the barbecue. The spotted beetle landed for just a moment and before it had reasoned or made up its mind it flew straight up. Catching the wind about a story off the ground it sailed more than flew, weaving and swerving into a cloud covered sky, to a destination yet unknown. Considering its size, the distance it traveled was great. It was a leap I admired.
The French call the lady beetles les betes du bon Dieu or creatures of the good God and les vaches de la Vierge or cows of the Virgin. The Germans call them Marienkafer or Mary’s beetles. Lady beetles are primarily predators of aphids and other soft body insects. This makes them a friend of most gardeners. But when their life supplies thin out they don’t hesitate to fly and try another destination. And most any direction will do. Who knows if there are aphids here or there? The thing to do is to leap and to find out, not to stay and subsist on meager pickings, and die slowly.
Technorati Tags: Lady bugs, Beauty, Spirituality
September 22nd, 2006
Connie said,
So we tend not to be aware of being guilty of scapegoating (though I think we’re all quite well aware of being scapegoated)…how do we become more aware of being guilty? Or maybe I’ll answer my own question by way of another one – are we tempted to scapegoat when we’ve been on the receiving end of it? Like when we’ve been hurt by a friend, rejected or slandered in some way…is that just our reflex, to return the favour?
Reflex is an accurate description of our reciprocal-aggression habit. We payback without thinking. But of course the permutations of our "payback" are countless. A friend may have hurt us but because we desire the friendship, for what ever reason, we "scapegoat" in any number of unpredictable directions.
To live a limpid life, free from tit-for-tat hostility is what we are meant for. But oh so hard. We need models.
Technorati Tags: Scapegoating, Christianity, Peace, Violence
September 21st, 2006
(Continued from yesterday’s post) 
After reading Alison’s story in "On Being Liked", the incident I described in the last post and my treatment of Colin came back to me like a swift blunt blow. More importantly, the truth and insight that the Gospels attest to regarding my (our) sacrificial ways, and how God desires to save us from all that, leapt out with a freshness that I can hardly overestimate. That said, I dedicate yesterday’s and today’s post to James Alison. (The following is a mere stencil of his thought.)
To the conclusion…
Let me revisit my experience with Colin. Imagine that when we were chasing Colin, he had run into traffic and been hit by a car and was hospitalized for a few months. It’s not hard to see that after a short time of regret, perhaps even genuine remorse, our group would be irritably off balance until we found someone else to pick on. And of course, with Colin gone, all of us on the lower levels of the prevailing power structure would be seriously worried.
But now suppose that Colin, having healed, came back to school not sullen, or angry, or vengeful; not holding on to any resentment, but entirely free and open and wanting to play with us, because he truly liked us. And what if it became apparent that he always did like us, had always wanted just to play with us, but that before our causing his injury, we just couldn’t see it.
Because the relationships in our group depended on there being an outcast, this would be hugely destabilizing. But, at the same time, Colin’s presence would now offer us a way of relating that was free from there being others who were supposedly inferior or superior to us. That is, free from structures of power.
And in this buoyant freedom we could find ourselves called into being people we had no idea we could be. Because Colin’s non-violent “liking-presenceâ€, would be our forgiveness. In this way, Colin could become our radical counter model.
This, of course, is what is offered to us by Jesus Christ. Jesus, in allowing himself to be the ultimate scapegoat, and through his resurrection-as his forgiving and merciful return, is now our radical counter model that has nothing to do with retaliation, shame, or any sort of violence.
In his dramatic self-giving act, Jesus exploded the power of the “scapegoating mechanism†and its false unity through sacrificial violence, offering us the possibility to renounce involvement in it and embrace true peace. As Christ put it, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.â€
Grow Mercy
Technorati Tags: James Alison, Scapegoating Mechanism, Atonement, Christianity, Peace, Religion, Violence
September 20th, 2006
When I was in grade six, there was a group of us that picked on Colin. Colin was in our class and always got better grades than everyone else. He was also ungainly and preferred sticking to himself. In short, Colin was a "natural" outcast.
I remember one day agreeing with a few of the bigger boys in our group to corner him after school and beat him up. Colin somehow smelled our plan and when the bell rang to end class he was the first one out the front doors, running as fast as he could to his house a few blocks away. But I was a fast runner. I caught and tackled him before he made it out of the school grounds. The other boys, having caught up to us, began to beat him up while I stood there watching.
The utterly detestable thing about this, besides the act itself, was that at the time, I had no remorse for Colin, only relief that it wasn’t me flailing away on the ground. I knew my action gave me a place within the group; but I remember having the vague feeling that without Colin around I might have been the target. In some twisted way I needed Colin to occupy this place.
I’ve since learned from anthropologist Rene Girard, that Colin was our "scapegoat". In some elemental way our identity was bound up by being something that Colin wasn’t. And so, while he was the "outcast" he was also the thing that unified and solidified our group. For a while at least, any conflicts in our group could be solved by a new round of bullying, or "scapegoating" Colin.
Now while we pretty much knew that abusing Colin in this way was wrong, we didn’t understand the dark dynamics of our involvement in this "scapegoating violence". We didn’t know, as Rene Girard has shown, that this "scapegoating mechanism", in all its limitless permutations, is at the bottom of all kinds of "power plays" and power structures, from schoolyard bullying to "office politics", from church splits to gang wars, and from the creation of cultures to the founding of religions.
We didn’t know because the mechanism has an uncanny ability to stay hidden when we are personally caught up in it. It’s usually only when confronted by our own deep complicity in scapegoating violence that we are able to choose another way. Mercifully, there is a story that can confront us, and begin to heal us. (Continued)
Technorati Tags: Rene Girard, Scapegoating, Bullying, Atonement, Christianity, Religion, Spirituality, Violence
September 19th, 2006
Somehow the underwater nasal strains of Bob Dylan always settle me. Dylan has the voice of a sad mystic, which is hope for me. It counters the sight of fire trucks and the sound of police sirens here on 9th street.
I like that sometimes Dylan’s muse is sick and his "horse is blind". I like it because I feel it; I know what that’s like. Sometimes words don’t come. They get stuck–jammed like logs at the throat of a river. They wait there for the river to rise. A rain perhaps. Perhaps they will wait until spring after the thaw.
–
I like the man in the bright orange and yellow vest with the broom and the heavy blue bag with the long handle, that serves as dustpan. I like him because he always says hello to me. Says hello to as many people as meet his eyes. You can tell he likes saying hello. I also like him because he keeps this concrete acre clean.
Today a lady that could be his wife is working with him. What kind of life do they have? Does he say hello to his wife several times a day?
–
Lately I’ve been waking up late. 6:30-7:00 AM. The reason is that I wake up early, around 3:30-4:00, and lie awake for an hour or more before falling back to sleep. What’s that about? Certainly not the sleep-of-the-dead. Which is fine with me if that’s my alternative.
The people that are writing "spots" for Hope Mission’s Radio-thon had a story of a guy wandering the streets, not sleeping for eight days. I read someplace that after eleven days you die. Thinking that the man in their story was an anecdotal-composite-man, I told the writer that we don’t see too many people who haven’t slept for eight days and asked him to adjust the story a bit. But he came back to me and said the eight days was an actual quote.
I know street guys-I talk to them-who claim to not have slept for several days; and by the zombie-signs I believe them. But eight days? What would that be like?
Technorati Tags: Starbucks, Sleepless, Bob Dylan, Hope Mission
September 17th, 2006
The lady in Starbucks this morning, who asked me whether or not I could get a weather report on my laptop computer, was wearing a loud fluffy orange scarf. One of those you would have seen on a starlet in the thirties–all wispy and feathery–hiding neck, chin and shoulders, dwarfing the rest of her body even though she wasn’t exactly petite. She talked with a lisp caused by a cleft palate.
She was genuinely intrigued by the technology and was amazed that I could, if I wanted, listen to radio and watch TV and movies all on my computer. After she had enough information to walk with she put on her long brown leatherette coat, re-wrapped her scarf and left. I looked over at the young lady reading the newspaper at the next table. I couldn’t quite make out from the turn of her mouth, whether she found the scarf-lady or our conversation slightly amusing.
I’ve spent most of my life wanting to fit in somewhere. If I’m honest, fitting-in has been the hidden quest of my life. Underneath my pursuits, from recreational to intelectual to spiritual, from John Krakauer to Nietzsche to St. Benedict, there is an intense desire in me not to be found amusing, but interesting.
I was in grade nine, on a morning break, when I turned to find myself the object of laughter by a group of classmates. The boy at the centre of the scrum was imitating me, holding up an invisible hair. And I saw myself.
I had a habit of being distracted in school and that morning I became preoccupied with a very long hair I had discovered on the knee of my jeans and had picked it off for closer examination. I didn’t know that I was being carefully examined at the same time.
Dwayne hadn’t counted on my stumbling onto his pantomime of me and when I caught his eyes, for a brief moment, we were both embarrassed. He however had the crowd guffawing and sniggering and recovered quickly, and turning his back to me went on with the show. Well, I only assumed he carried on because at that moment I dropped my head and I left the area immediately. I didn’t recover so quickly. Decades later I still remember the scene with precision.
Places of acceptance are greenhouses for the soul. But true places of acceptance are expansive, inclusive, not held together through the exclusion of some group or person or idea. True places of acceptance are places where you can wean yourself of the intense desire to fit in. When you find a place like this, return to it as often as you can.
Technorati Tags: Acceptance, St. Benedict, Nietzsche, John Krakauer, Beauty, Intellect, Spirituality
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