Politics

Ralph Klein Interview

Posted on by stephen t berg / 1 Comment

Unfortunately I had to miss Ralph Klein’s parting interview last night on Global but I did get my wife and daughter to watch it for me. The reason for my curiosity was because our Premier was going to talk about his rather unbalanced late night visit to Hope Mission’s shelter for men.

If you recall it was around Christmas time back in 2001. Our Premier was drunk, got his driver to stop at the shelter, went in, looked around, got in a verbal altercation with a homeless person, threw some money on the floor in the man’s direction and left…with the help of his chauffer.

While it must be a bit daunting to interview the leader of a province Linda Steele apparently moderated more than interviewed. Her questions answered themselves and real engagement was suspended. For Ralph Klein’s part, what could have been a moment of genuine reflection, turned out to be a-wave-of-the-hand.

When asked why he went to the Hope Mission’s shelter, he answered that he was curious. (Reasonable enough.) When asked about his conduct, he replied that he thought "he was quite nice" and that he had been told by others that "he was quite kind". And when asked what he learned about the incident he said "he learned that there are snitches".

Just my opinion but perhaps Mr. Klein would benefit from some Enneagram.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Politics/Poverty/Spirituality

Orphans Freegans Missions and God

Posted on by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

Father of orphans and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation. (Psalm 68)

There is a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise across the street from where I work. Beside it is a dumpster enclosed by a high wooden fence with a gate that is locked, occasionally. Across from the dumpster on a concrete riser sat a young man, reasonably clean and seemingly composed. He had thick features and a brush-cut. He smiled slightly when he talked, revealing even teeth.

He said he was waiting for someone to throw away some drumsticks or a chicken burger. Said it happens all the time. I told him where he could get a better meal, healthy, not left-over. He thought about it and frowned. Said he might do that later. But the suggestion threw him off.

I thought about the Freegans that I discovered when the little dust-up over brochures about dumpster etiquette was in the news. (See earlier post.) The Freegans are a community that have totally boycotted the "economic system". Instead of boycotting one bad company to support another they try, as far as possible, to live by not buying anything. They have dumpster banquets. They live off of what we throw away. They’re picky in their own way, they clean it up and discard what can’t be eaten.

Well, Mission’s have been doing that for years with the difference that we intercept the too-old-for-retail food from the back of donut shops and grocery stores before it hits the dumpster. We have our regular pick-ups where certain stores hang on to their better stuff until we retrieve it.

Freegans also have there favorite spots where the selections and the throwaways are better. Our KFC has no doubt been one of those. Perhaps that’s why they put the fence up. But Freegans wouldn’t collect here. The other part of Free, is Vegan.

The young man was obviously not a Freegan, he liked chicken, was not much interested in a "movement" or a "philosophy". And he had been here before; and now, having just been released from jail, was back. I asked him about work and he said he’s tried the temp-agencies but finds it hard getting through a day. He said that he has Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.

As I was leaving he called to me, I turned and he said that he had had a very good dream last night. I walked back and asked him what the dream was about. He thought for moment. I waited. He screwed up his face. I saw him struggle to lift something out that just wouldn’t surface. I waited…I said dreams are hard to explain sometimes. He finally asserted, "Well, it was spiritual." That seemed to satisfy him.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , ,

Christianity/Peace/Politics/Religion/Violence

Pseudo Events and Meekness

Posted on by stephen t berg / 1 Comment

Not long after 9/11 something grim came onto my inner horizon. It was like this: When I saw a person who I assumed to be Muslim, the thought that crept in was whether or not this Muslim was an extremist and therefore a terrorist. Almost unconsciously I began to conduct a sort of interior racial profiling. What fueled this was fear, the fear came from all the hyperbolic-meaning that was invested into the 9/11 event.

And I do mean hyperbolic. Nine/eleven is what Thomas Merton would have called a "pseudo event". Not at all to underestimate all the human loss and genuine grief and emotion and the miserable depth of all that. And not at all to undermine all the genuine outpouring of care and concern for families of victims and then, in some quarters at least, care for Muslim neighbours who were targets of the inevitable backlash. All that was beauty from ashes, genuine and human.

No, what Merton would have been referring to was how the world became suddenly transfixed by an event that at its base has nothing creative about it at all. The instant camaraderie, the suddenly new interest in faith, people flocking back to churches, the declarations by world leaders from pulpits of cathedrals of a new war to make the world safe. And the irresistible upsweep we all felt in the wake of all that fire-works. Merton would have asked us, while in that state of fascination, while we poured over our newspapers and absorbed all those images of flame and falling concrete, to take with us a page from the gospels.

He would have shown us how Jesus asks us to look away; to not be seduced by the power of bombs, of suicide planes, and the pronouncements of powerful people. Not to be alarmed by wars and rumours of wars. Not to be sucked in by the concentration of "meaning", all of it false. He would have shown through the gospel that our fear and "meaning-making" unwittingly gives credence to false-power, that is, satanic power.

The world is addicted to this false power. We line up around it like iron filings around a magnet. While the real power, as Alison has said, is so powerful that it can afford to lose to this power, in order to expose it. The real power has already been unleashed in this world, waiting to be further appropriated by imitating Christ, by growing a mind of Christ, by desiring the desires of Christ. The real power is discreet, open, full of love and beauty, and profoundly, not at all tethered to death.

Real power, unlike ersatz power, is not controlled by death. All false power of the pseudo events ritually dance around death. And death masquerades as the big show. The extent that my own fear, my "profiling" control my thoughts and movements is the extent to which I am ensnared by the big show. My freedom, our freedom, as always, is only through learning to see through the eyes of Jesus. How else to understand Jesus’ words that, "The meek shall inherit the earth."

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , ,

Atonement/Christianity/Religion

Jesus: Mysterious Necessity

Posted on by stephen t berg / 2 Comments

Len, I am grateful for this comment:

I’m just not at the place where I can say I fully understand what to do with all that sacrificial stuff in the Old Testament (I often want to chuck it all and be a Simone Weil ’ian’) and the Lamb of God stuff in the new Testament. If we don’t include the idea of sacrificial and substitutionary atonement then there is a lot of scriptural material that I need to deal with in a new way.

I have evolved enough to change my statement of faith on my blog to read "Jesus was the fulfillment of some mysterious necessity. "It used to read: "Jesus was the fulfillment of the requirements of God’s law…."

You convinced me that I don’t have to define Jesus as God’s whipping boy, so I moved the atonement stuff to the realm of pure mystery in my thinking. For now I don’t know what else to say about it. Perhaps If I read the book that brought the light to your eyes I too will have the epiphany I am looking for.

Perhaps mystery is still the grand realm where all of our stutterings reside because they begin and end with the incarnation. And how I love your statement: "Jesus was the fulfillment of some mysterious necessity." Mysterious…certainly. Necessary…absolutely.

Here are a some of the books that have inspired and changed me, and have become texts for Grow Mercy: Books by James Alison: Knowing Jesus, Beyond Resentment, On Being Liked, and his thesis–where he deals with all the substitutionary atonement scripture and more–not an easy read but amazing breadth, an amazing book: The Joy of Being Wrong – Original Sin through Easter Eyes. Books by Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred, and perhaps the pivotal book, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World. And also, Gil Ballie’s accessible and pragmatic and beautifully written, Violence Uncovered.

There are of course others. Traces of the non-sacrifical, (hesitate to call it a movement) can be detected to various degrees, in authors like Merton, Nouwen, and Vanier. I could be wrong here but even evangelical writers like Yancy and Campolo seem to employ a kind of "atonement lite". At least the emphasis, as in all of Brennan Manning’s books for example, are all upon the exemplary love of Jesus. Here the work of Jurgen Moltmann for example, or the "exemplary view", or "Christus Victor" understandings of atonement are evident. These are efforts at reworking the substitutional atonement, while still leaving the language intact.

You’ll be intrigued to know that Girard regards Dostoyevsky as one of the greatest of novelists, and shows how Dostoyevsky, through his own writing over the course of his life, came to a deep understanding of human desire (mimetic desire) and to a non-sacrificial understanding of Christianity.

Again thank you for your comment. I hope in my own peice-meal way, through my own limited experiences, with obvious help from author-friends, that I can shed slivers of light in future posts in how all of scripture points to and supports non-sacrifice and non-violence and non-scapegoating.

The key is to read all things, as far as we are able, through "Easter eyes". I think that, in the end, this is what Simone Weil did. Her life was an amazing self-gift to the working poor, her mind a wealth for theologians, and her refusal to enter the church was, for her time, a Christ-like act…an identification with all people through rendering the Temple/Church exclusionary "laws" (which are by their nature sacrificial) as nul and void.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,