A couple weeks ago I wrote a piece for the Edmonton Journal’s Religion page that questioned the church about its apparent absence during the Occupy protests. I was contacted later by one Pastor informing me that his church (Look to the Cross) of a few dozen socially engaged people were there, had always been there, and were fully supportive. This was cause for hope.
At the same time, that 99% of the clergy have been silent or quietly opposed, or even actively opposed, is for me a Jeremiah-sized lament. They have failed to recognize that this is more than a movement opposing corporate state bailouts and corporate controlled governments. It is a movement that challenges our very way of being in community. It challenges and condemns our celebrity culture and our atomistic consumerist culture; and for those of us who still name ourselves Christians, it is beginning to shame our spiritualized Christian culture.
We like to quote Dietrich Bonheoffer’s “Cost of Discipleship” as we are able to spiritualize and privatize it to where it has no bearing on how we live outwardly. We forget that Bonheoffer also said things like, “We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”
Chris Hedges is one who is leading the “spoke driving”. On Sunday he gave a speech worthy of MLK at Trinity Church in New York. (I thank my friend Connie Howard for pointing me to it.) It was in fact a sermon that should be circulated, perhaps used as a template, in churches across the land. Holding up the Beatitudes—from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount—on behalf of social justice and the Occupy movement will offend many including salvationist-Christians, but I have a notion that it won’t offend Jesus.
She walks on 103 avenue.
There is a melancholy to her gait.
A dog that gets her plods beside.
When everything is perfect like this
how can she get to the nub of her depression?
Yesterday she heard a song
that made her feel
as though she had found everything.
Today she heard a song
that made her feel
as though she had lost everything.
Listen, she says to no one,
except her dog,
it’s the same song.
Sitting here in a minor wind storm, thinking about Calgary’s more-than-minor wind storm last weekend, lead me to think about this year’s record number of tornadoes—and devastation—in America’s mid-west, the massive fires in Texas and New Mexico, the record flood’s in Pakistan, now in Thailand, and the drought in East Africa, not to mention Russia’s heat wave that killed 15,000 last year—and so growing uncomfortable listening to the wind outside, not that there’s anything unusual with our wind today other than its nagging presence—well, I just had to reassure myself that these weather ‘events’ were all isolated occurrences—unconnected to any warming, and unrelated to any changes in climate, and simply get my head beyond any oppressive idea of communal responsibility or worse, the need to think about these things and maybe change my behaviour… Fortunately I found this short film that relieved me of all that burden.
So yes, it’s a good thing Peter Kent and Stephen Harper are steering us out of Kyoto, which I suppose didn’t matter anyway as Canada is the only country within the Kyoto Protocol to have cast off our legally binding obligations. Besides I just trust Peter Kent’s face when he says: Kyoto is a failure and Canada can control greenhouse gases through another, non-Kyoto approach.
And finally, just on the off chance that there’s something to our exhaling great quantities of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, halocarbons, and hexafluoride into the air, and the crazy weather, Pope Benedict’s Sunday message for delegates attending this week’s U.N. climate change conference will have brought everyone into harmony: "I hope that all members of the international community agree on a responsible and credible response to this worrisome and complex phenomenon, taking into account the needs of the poorest and future generations." Clearly this should give us all assurance, especially the poor.
This poem came by experience, discussions with both wise and inveterate Christians, instruction from my children, evenings with friends, coffee with wayfarers, years of conversations with my wife—and not a few cups of tea with my late mentor-monk, Father James Gray.
Penitence
This old monk, hermit, says to me,
go ahead and swallow
the camphor with your tea,
but don’t expect the glory of the Lord
to shine round about.
And I thought; what,
the itch to retch sin and shame
by rending will and flaying flesh—
a vestigial tail, a tumid tonsil?
The denial of bread and wine,
to gore my guilt—an appendix?
And I catch the glint of freedom
in those cowled eyes,
and feel a sudden pull
to move in those arms.
My stony world, its caste of blight
now in full relief—
I turn to that lavender light,
and feel within a gathering leap—
when I remember all those years
of mete remorse and mulled regret.
All my work to put ahead what lies behind.
My daily wail, my ashened face.
All that comfort of lasting Lent,
blessed by Sunday mourning chorales of praise.
Oh Ascesis, would thou waste me this late?
My years of pious breast pounding a-wash?
No, sooner drink the brine of self-deceit.
Sooner hail the sour estate.
And serenely model
the righteous rigour of self-hate.
–
When dogma and doctrine come to define us, and the command to love your neighbour as yourself is always willed as an “ought”, but never consented to as a sweeping irresistible power, the ought finally twists itself into self-hate. That’s what I think.
With much love dear reader, Stephen
Last Saturday I had this article published in the Edmonton Journal’s Religion page.
My friend Peter wrote to say, “I read your article in today’s journal, and as usual I am always intrigued by your thoughts…In terms of content, I found your views somewhat apocalyptic – something I have had cause to wonder about given my perception that there seems to be a lack of balanced perspective going on in today’s topics du jour. I recall as a young man returning from my military trips delivering aid through Africa and the Asian sub-content with a profound sense of how fortunate we are where we live, and how little many who live here appreciate or understand that good fortune. This has led me more recently to wonder why it is we have such good fortune, while others don’t, and I become more and more convinced it is due to the evolution of our politics. I know many disagree with that, and attribute our good fortune to exploitation of others, but I don’t believe that stands up to scrutiny when one looks at countries in the last 50 – 60 years that have moved towards a similar political system and those that have moved away – contrast North and South Korea for example, India and Pakistan, Zimbabwe and Ghana, and so on. I didn’t mean to get diverted onto this topic, but given the tone of your article, I thought you might find the attached article and book a refreshing antidote to the gloom visited on us 24 hours a day.”
Here’s my far too lengthy response: (Besides being lengthy it also takes a theological turn; just wanted to warn you. Feel free to stop reading anytime.)
First of all, it’s gratifying to remember how our military was known for peace keeping and delivering aid. The last decade seems to have blotted out this memory.
Secondly, that even bad democracies are better than good totalitarian states, and that this has in part contributed to our good fortune, I think is accurate. However, that our fortune hasn’t on some level been due to exploitation, I think is inaccurate. I would only point to our own country’s historical expropriation of land and exploitation of First Nations people. There are more examples.
Most intriguing however was the essay (I’ve discovered more essays) and the book Peter referenced.
In "Our Better Angels,” author Steven Pinker has shown through some pretty exhaustive research and an accumulation of data that violence, contrary to our belief and intuition, has actually decreased over the centuries. We’ve taken it for granted that the 20 century has been the bloodiest ever, but according to Pinker, we may be living in the most peaceful time in human history.
I crave what I cannot explain
and what I cannot see,
but that if I saw,
I would steal and run and hold
high above my head.
High like a captured flag;
or high, like a seized cap
whose owner is gaining,
about to pounce and tackle me—
but I keep eluding him.
This ache within,
like a swallowed tooth;
this longing above,
refusing to fall into view—
a rumour racing ahead of me
holding high a flag I cannot see.
Photograph by: Christina Ryan, Calgary Herald
Here’s a letter by Mark Maxwell, President of Prairie Bible Instituted, who first informed the RCMP.
This is a sad and tragic story—one that we’ve heard within the halls of Christian faith all too often. Of course abuse happens in other institutions; but as one who tries to still follow the faith, the question this specific allegation raises for me is this: Is there anything in the way the Bible is interpreted within conservative, fundamentalist, neo-Calvinist institutions that enables and harbours sexual predators? Beyond this, is there something about the way a literal interpretation of Scriptures fosters the injustice of patriarchy and so supports the ongoing “soft” abuse of gender inequality?
My wife Deb attended Prairie for one year. She says, "I can certainly agree about the unhealthy, unbiblical male dominance teaching that was taught. At the time when I was young it was harder to ‘think’ against it but even then I knew within me that something was not only unhealthy but wrong about their teaching."
Early this morning I walked down to Occupy Edmonton to check on the protesters. Coldest night so far, minus 25, and still a half dozen tents were occupied and the main tent, equipped with a small wood stove, was alive.
Hearty bunch here in Edmonton:
Everyday, on my way to work, I walk by a car with a bumper sticker that reads, "Michael the Archangel protects Us from Satan." And everyday, I’m back in the metaphysical bleachers, watching Satan do his free-floating shuffle-step, his burnt-yellow eyes looking for an opening past the big angel. And when it comes, slipping by like grease, or shooting by Michael’s great white wings and leaving a black spot of suet and mayhem at the door of someone’s day. But in an instant Michael springs up, spear in hand, three bounding leaps and he’s back in front of the arch-demon, shield up, twice determined, back in control. Oh, and such daily battles, an endless bloodless war, out there beyond these mere mortal dimensions.
And if only we could grasp the truth of metaphor,
this wouldn’t be unreasonable language to help describe instances of evil. If we could, imagine.
But this is our modern problem, our hangover: the keg of Scientific Method long tapped, the many draughts of spiritual materialism downed before grey dawn, our Christian heads aching and pounding, now thinking that a literal reading must be the only true reading, a fundamental reading, an inerrant, authoritative, infallible, inspired reading.
And in the empirical fog surrounding our Thomas Nelsons and Scofields, our imagination sputters out leaving us self-condemned by literalism’s stasis. In this exegetical irony we bind ourselves to errancy and ignorance.
Certainly a literal reading, what pre-Enlightenment folk called a "plain reading," is often a true reading. But many times a literal reading is an inferior reading or simply a nonsensical reading.
Biblical writers’ understanding of the nature of reality could not be more removed from our own. And too, our understanding of the purpose of literature is not that of a writer in the first-century. So to adopt a reading without wrestling with this is lazy and dishonest.
Because the problem of literalism is mistaking a flame for the fire. One facet for the whole gem. One colour the whole spectrum. You get my drift.
And so, Satan, is just that volitional metaphysical entity jamming up the works, devouring the undevout and looking for any chance to trip us up. What comes of such a failure is to miss the satanic, the evil, that hides within dehumanizing institutions—systems of domination. That lives at the heart of state repression—from forms of socialism to fascism—that exults in racism and patriarchy, and hides within bureaucracy and capitalism.
