A Little Political Quiz for You

  Here's a little two-part questionnaire, hopefully it will help you to determine precisely your level of partisan-ridiculousness.  After determining your level, please use the comment section, anonymous letters to the opinion section of your local newspaper, or private emails forwarded to other, like-minded citizens to proclaim the superiority of your level of partisanship and denounce the weak-willed, insane, idiotic, America-hating, or otherwise deficient people who happened to hold a different level of partisanship than your inspired personage.

1a.If you are a conservative, how badly would you like Barack Obama to fail?  Presumably you do wish him to fail, or at least be perceived to fail to such an extent that a Republican will win the next election.  Do you, on the one hand wish him to be moderately successful, doing the best he can for the country, only to be narrowly defeated by the Republican candidate?  Would you prefer a successful 3 1/2 years with a spectacular crash just before the election?  Or perhaps a more complete failure that would mean, as often seems to happen, a corresponding shift in the makeup of Congress, with the Republicans then riding in to the rescue?  Or on the other hand do you desire Obama to do this best possible job he can for the good of the country?

1b.If you are a liberal did you have similar feelings during the Bush presidency?  Did they shift from the first term to the second (i.e., "now that we know we have him for the next four years, I hope for all success for W., despite my hopes for his spectacular, fiery, crashing, train-wreck of a failure just a few short months ago)?  Did you instead still wish for him to fail in the second term, anticipating a call for a changing of the guard and validating your decision not to vote for him?

2.Did you find your vote swayed by your receipt of a forwarded e-mail sent by a like-wise concerned citizen who also happened to share your political views?  Did the e-mail, with all it's unverified claims, outright slanders, and questionable logic stir you into action?  Did the foreboding title in the subject line, "This is why I'm scared of....(Obama, Bush, McCain, Clinton, Warren G. Harding, ect.) motivate you to greater heights of political activism (for instance forwarding the e-mail to several friends who despite sharing your political party and showing no signs of changing, still needed to see this and work up the appropriate level of outrage at the thought of such a person running our country) or did you at least impart your new-found knowledge given you in the e-mail on someone else in casual conversation, with the dual benefit of showing both how political you are and striking your own little blow at the campaign of the lunatic- as you call the opposing party's candidate (either Democrat or Republican)? Were you instead influenced by the sight of a bumper sticker on the car in front of you?  Or the facebook posting of your "activist friend"?  What was the end result of this influence? A bumper sticker of your own? Re-posting the link again on facebook? More emphatically pulling the corresponding lever of your candidate in the voting booth?

Thank you for your time.

Walker Percy and Depression

A few ground rules here before I start:  I will not be arguing brain chemistry here.  I have known several well-meaning Christians who poo-pooed the use of drugs for psychological problems because they thought the root cause was spiritual.  I have even heard of others saying that the use of anti-depressants or similar drugs to be evidence of a lack of faith in God to heal.  I really have very little to say to such people (if you can't say something nice...), but that they need to at the very least be more loving and not use illness, like Job's friends, as an opportunity for questioning others' relationship with God.  On the other hand I'm not content to simply chalk it up to chemistry, suggest medication, and call it a day, anymore than I am willing to reduce love to that chemical reaction that occurs in one's brain in the presence of certain other persons.  Something more is going on in both cases.  There is a reason there are so many different schools of psychiatry each roughly as effective or not as the others- man is complex and our knowledge of him is perhaps more limited than in any other sphere, except for our knowledge of God; it is impossible to measure distances in the Infinite.

Lengthy disclaimer now out of the way, I would like to talk about one of my favorite novelists/essayists, Walker Percy.  He eventually settled in Covington, right near my hometown and lived and wrote there until his death in 1990.  A brief background is probably in order, Percy was raised by an uncle, also an author, after the suicide of his father and the death of his mother in a car wreck (which WP seemed to think may also have been a suicide).  He then went to UNC, studied medicine, and interned at Bellvue in New York where he caught tuberculosis.  His medical career was of course over and while convalescing and reading philosophy in a sanatorium, Percy made two important decisions: he decided to become a writer and he joined the Catholic Church.

Percy drew on his medical background to inform his writing, as he sought to write the diagnostic novel, a book that pointed to the disease of modern society.  He noted how the illness as the doctor sees it is in fact the body's response to the latent disease; for example, an infection does not cause a fever or runny nose, the body responds by raising it's temperature and secreting mucus in an attempt to fight off the disease.  Thus Percy argued modern depression, malaise, and alienation were not themselves diseases to be treated as such, but signified that something was deeply wrong with man, or society, or man as he finds himself in society.

The problem then is not as simple as "getting over it" or taking increasingly more pills in an effort to cope (not that medication or treatment is bad), but addressing the problems that cause this response of displacement.  In fact as Percy says in the book I'm reading now (the satirical, fake self-help book Lost in the Cosmos), something is probably wrong if you are not at least the slightest bit depressed by modern living.  Recognizing then by our own response to modern life that something in fact is wrong, that there is a sort endemic disease in man, what is our response? To point to a cure.

The problem is of course we ourselves bear the disease; we are part of the problem.  Like Percy as he worked in the sanatorium  as a doctor-patient while recovering, even as we work to alleviate the problem we ourselves carry the contagion that is its source.  So we ourselves cannot be the cure, we would have, in the end, to destroy ourselves to destroy the disease.  But if someone was able to grapple with our disease, bear it, and defeat it, then He would be inoculated, He could cure.

The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.
                                   T.S. Eliot- The Four Quartets, East Coker

All sorts of music for listenin to...

Just a few random links to music, I'm feeling kind of old school so not much from after the 70s unless its a cover-

Black Crowes covering "The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down" 
pretty good cover, can't match the original though- the feeling of loss in this song, my goodness; I am very glad we lost the war, but it just really destroyed so much down here.  Southerners are unique among Americans in that we can say we lost a war and are genuinely pleased that we did (since we don't really count 1812 or Vietnam for some reason).  I think it is vital to still identify with the Confederates in at least acknowledging that slavery was a part of our history.  I went through so many triumphalist, "America is always right" social studies classes growing up that would brush over stuff like this- "after all the Union won, slavery wasn't a part of  the real America, we've always been the good guys."  We need to take responsibility for having this in our past.  And while I'm on the subject, all the Confederate flag wavers at LSU are really putting their anger in the wrong place.  They shouldn't be angry at blacks for being offended, they should be angry at the white supremicists and Kluxers who co-opted the flag into being a racist symbol rather than a cultural or regional one.  Of course when you yell, "Go back to Africa,"at people you kind of betray yourself as not really being a good Southerner, and just being a hateful racist instead anyway. Dang it, couldn't even stay off the soapbox for one whole post.

Which of course brings me to this next Bob Dylan song "With God on Our Side".   Talks about this myth of America's goodness and our history of co-opting God to our cause.  Any Christian artist that covered this might get banned from Christian radio and Lifeway, which is a shame- the Church has a prophetic duty to speak truth to the country.
And here's a Johnny Cash and Dylan duet on "Girl From the North Country"- nothing really to say about it, I just really like it. And here's a cover of it by Conor Oberst (the Bright Eyes guy) and some other folks- got to love that steel guitar, takes awhile to get started though.

The Band again- "Acadian Driftwood"- without a doubt the greatest song by former Dylan backup musicians about the Acadians fleeing to Louisiana.  None others really even come close.  Oh and the French part at the end is something about arriving back in Acadia

Louis Armstrong- "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans"- if you don't smile a little bit when Louis hits his solo after the last verse, I don't know what to say you. Go find another blog to read.

Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood back together- "Presence of the Lord"-it's a shame Blind Faith only lasted one album and six months or so, they could've been great.

Allman Bros.- "Statesboro Blues"- I tried to find the Family Guy clip where the Gregg Allman poster comes alive to give Peter advice in the Toad episode, but I couldn't, oh well.

Elmore James-"Dust My Broom"- great acoustic blues on the slide.

And finally to go really old school  and drop some of that hot cello music all the kids are talking about these days on you- Dvorak-Cello Concerto. Do me a favor and click a link, it just might change your life.

The first of maybe several posts on the liturgy

     "Genuine spirituality requires spontaneity, but spontaneous spiritual expression will be richer if grounded in an  equal measure of discipline and consistency"- Yoel Finkelman, whole First Things Article here.

So looks like the Orthodox Jews get it too, guess that just leaves us Baptists, some various non-denoms, and the Pentecostals who are still mostly in the dark.  Maybe it's just me, but I really don't see the value of following the latest Lifeway fad, instead of 2000 years of tradition when worshiping God.  I have heard the arguments against liturgy as being staid, constricting, and dead, but the thing is we fall into our own patterns often without noticing it, and liturgy, especially when organized around the calendar (Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, ect.), actually draws us out of repetition through planning.  I know that for instance, when I lead a Bible study, it inevitably turns to one of a few "pet" topics, and preachers without some sort of lectionary seem to tend to the same thing.  Or they go through cycles of fad, getting all focused on one topic, perhaps doing a sermon series on it, and then, along with the congregation, forgetting all about it as they move on to the next topic.  We really credit ourselves with too much spontaneity.  Our prayers take on a certain faux-spontaneity, having all the trappings of a spontaneous prayer (informality, occasional rambling , use of God or Lord in spaces we might normally fill with "uh" or "umm"- God, you know I just really, want, Lord, to...) but actually return again and again to a few time-worn phrases that we always use.  Now this is fine, it's normal.  Language fails us here anyway, so the return to phrases that have taken on a special meaning for us is really the only proper way for us to try and communicate.  Thank goodness that we have, as Paul says, the Holy Spirit interceding for us with "groanings words cannot express".  The difference however in liturgical prayer is that the words have a common meaning, as we pray together we live into them, they take on a shared meaning rather than a personal one.  As I don't think I have a big Pentecostal audience here, I'll go ahead and say this:  I don't think Paul's admonishing against speaking in tongues (i.e. other human languages, not, I don't think, crazy sounding talk that just comes out spontaneously, but I may be wrong- maybe) is too far off here.  When we return to our favorite little phrases when praying "spontaneously", we are in effect speaking a slightly different language than our hearers because our words do not carry the same associations for them they might for us; language is not algebra. Without a translation from this slightly different tongue, the hearer isn't edified as they might be.  Liturgy, by providing a common language in which things too definite for language are spoken about, mitigates this problem at least a little by allowing the congregation to invest meaning into the same words.  And this works because we have much more in common than we let on, especially when it comes to our relationship with God.  I mean we all have sinned against Him "in word, in thought, and in deed, by doing what we ought not do and neglecting to do that which we ought..." saying as much together bonds us together as a family more trying to figure out what the deacon is talking about while she's up there. (Did you see how I snuck that "she" in there as a deacon?  Take that ultra-conservative, non-Biblical SBCers, you just got called out on a blog that is probably read by 5 or 6 people) Liturgy encourages us because it allows us to see the others in our position before God, we take a step back into the Church rather than perceiving our selves to stand alone in our faith and struggle. And of course the continuity of the liturgy places us into a greater historical context, a larger narrative of God's continued faithfulness and work within the world.  This seems especially crucial with so many forces within the modern world creating a sense of displacement and alienation; liturgy provides a certain "rootedness" for lack of a better word, but that is probably a whole 'nother post....

As you can see this is also one of my soapbox topics with the Baptists (which I am, and plan to remain) which I will probably return to again and again.  Perhaps the blog needs to follow a lectionary... Anyway, I-monk has been doing some good stuff on the liturgy lately too.  You should check it out; that is, if you do that sort of thing.

The Need for Grace (or "Why I sometimes remind myself of a 'kept woman' from a 19th century Russian novel")

Lately I've been reading Grahame Greene's fantastic novel, The Power and the Glory, and it has really affected me.  If I thought my posts to be more memorable, I would warn against spoilers, but since you probably will not remember any specific details from this even if you do end up reading the book, which I of course recommend, I will press on.  In it the Catholic Church is being violently suppressed in a rural Mexican province, to the point where only two priests remain who haven't been executed or fled.  One renounced his vocation and married in order to save his life and is now trapped in despair; the other, always refered to as "that whiskey priest", has serious moral failures, not least of them his alcoholism.  As the only remaining priest however, he feels the weight of responsibility and the tension between his calling and his failures.  He longs to be caught by the authorities at times because he feels unworthy, but knows it is his duty to avoid capture, visit the villages in his parish and minister the sacraments of confession.

 Hopping to another novel and another writer, in Dostoevksy's The Idiot there is a similar tension in one of the female characters.  The story revolves around two overlapping love triangles basically, the common point of which is the Christ-like epileptic Prince Myshkin.  It opens with Myshkin returning to Russia after years spent convalescing at a sanatorium in Switzerland.  Upon arriving, he is quickly confronted with choosing between two women: Aglaia, a beautiful young girl he feels natural attraction to and the pitiful Natasha Filippovna.  Natasha was orphaned at a young age and taken in by a wealthy noble who provides for her education.  She grows into a strikingly beautiful girl herself and is the victim of what nowadays we call statutory rape by her "patron", and becomes a kept woman.  At the start of the story, her patron, now looking to marry is trying to off-load her even offering to pay someone to take her, as she is "damaged goods".  The two who eventually end up competing for her affections and making up the two legs of our second triangle are Myshkin and a man who is very nearly his antithesis, Rogozhin.  All this complicated introduction is made to come to one main point (for my post at least), Natasha Filippovna must decide wheter to go with Myshkin who is sacrificing his high position and social standing to save her (she would basically be regarded as a prostitute at that time) or the wild, unprincipled Rogozhin who she perhaps thinks she deserves.  The tragedy is that she really does love Myshkin, but fears she would ruin him; she feels the loving thing to do is to prevent her from loving him and choosing Rogozhin.  This type of character occurs in several of big D's novels, including Notes from Underground, from which this blog partially takes it's name (along with the Herbert poem heading the page).  All of them feel a call to goodness and life, but feel unable to live up to the standard they think they must meet to be saved.  Rather than be caught between the two, they try to go Underground, to embrace wickedness and so become something- a wicked man.  They always fail, they can't really becoming completely evil, they still feel the call to life, and this is a grace.

I see quite a bit of myself in both these characters, both with the relationship problems of Natasha Filippovna- if I, out of Christian love, want a good man for a girl I'm interested in and know I'm not a good man, what do I do?- and because I quite frankly don't feel qualified for my vocation.  But then grace comes in.  You can't fall to the temptation Natasha and the "whiskey priest" felt to sacrifice yourself- martyrdom can't be chosen and the Sacrifice has already been made.  Christ came to bring new life to the dead.  Man occupies the place as Luther said of being "simultaneously sinner and justified"; I know myself to be a pretty poor man, but in Christ I am declared to be otherwise.  And this is not simply a vain, "Aww, you're not so bad!", but fully acknowledges my wrong, crucifies it, and actually creates that which it calls me to be.  Justification is not simply a declaration of God's indifference to my sin, it is a collaborative effort through the work of the Holy Spirit in the Christian to bring him into the newness of life.  Despite all this, sin is still destructive, temporally at least, and human rebellion can at least change the way in which the God works to "interweave all things to the good."  So what do y'all think, how gracious are we called to be?  Is NAMB or the IMB, for instance, right in barring Christians with rough pasts from service?  What about sins that people still struggle with? (Because we love victory stories- "I used to beat my wife and get drunk every night.  Now look at my smiling family and our perfectly straight teeth.  Gee, thanks Jesus! This abundant life is awesome!"- but we don't like so much to hear about people who still struggle or doubt).  As far as forgiveness goes I think we all agree that grace covers, but at what point does discipline come in?

A little quote I liked...

All people feel the interior impulse to love authentically: love and truth never abandon them completely, because these are the vocation planted by God in the heart and mind of every human person. - Benedict XVI

This comes from the Pope's last encyclical letter "Caritas in Veritae" -Charity in Truth. You should read at least the first few sections in the introduction, I can't really comment after that because I haven't got further than that. If I ever finish reading it I might post something here, apparently it talks some about the need for concerted global effort to pursue justice in the world, stemming from a desire for love in truth with its source in Christ.  I am convinced that it's stuff like this while Protestants are caught up in silly culture war stuff like prayer before high school football games that drives many people to "cross the Tiber".  We Baptists are more concerned with boycotting Disney World for having a gay day than pursuing God's justice in the world and addressing epidemic AIDS and easily preventable diseases like malaria and water-borne illness in Africa.  Makes me want to curse, but I'm trying to keep this a family blog, so I will limit myself to a dad-gummitt.

And that was my soapbox moment for the night, thank you very much.

Battle of the Buzzwords

So I'm not real photogenic.  Don't know why, don't know what I can do to change it- maybe there's a remedial class somewhere I could take.  I really am only in normal looking pictures when I don't know they're being taken of me.  When I know it's coming, I tend to intentionally make a weird face to avoid making a weider face attempting to look normal.  It's just not natural for me.  Instead of simply looking like myself, I end up looking like myself trying to look like myself; I fake it, I am a step removed from what I normally look like.  I can't be intentional and authentic at the same time.

This is problem, of course, not just because of the vast number of slightly strange pictures of me on facebook or the even more vast numbers of pictures that were deemed to awkward to merit posting, but because it puts two of every good "missional" Christian's favorite buzzwords-authenticity and intentionality- in the ring together (like boxing each other, not on the same side in some elaborate metaphorical tag-team match where they team up together to defeat the two time belt holders "Indifference" and "Hard-heartedness").  Because intentionality is at some level inauthentic, it's somewhat unnatural, we have to force ourselve to do it, intentionally.

I don't want it to seem like I'm saying we shouldn't be intentional in doing all we can in ministry. We tend to the easiest way, the path of least resistance; intentionality saves us from all this, nakes our service an affair of the will rather than simply our desires.  But it is not intended to stop there, it needs to deepen.  We are called to love, not simply to act lovingly.  Fortunately this does not depend on human will alone, the Spirit meets us in this, enables us to love, declares the beloved to be also made in the Image, and births in us an authentic love of our fellow guilty men.  Grace reconciles authenticity and intentionality.  (To return to the boxing metaphor it makes them like Stallone and Carl Weathers in Rocky III where he teams up with Apollo Creed to train for the fight against Mr.T- but that makes it seem a little too ridiculous, I suppose ).  On own however, loving acts don't necessarily deepen into love.  I've heard stories of new members of churches having what they described as "love bombs" dropped on them- members were giving, kind, generous people- until they got you in to the church- then since you joined the team they could slip into a comfortable indiferrence; perhaps a handshake or a headnod from across the room during the "hug and howdy", but no more radical acts of kindness were needed: you're on the roll, you've been saved- "mission accomplished".  Now part of this is our problem of reinterpreting the Great Commission to read, "Go ye therefore and make saved folks to fill the pews" rather than taking an active interest in making disciples.  Evangelicals have left alot of people homeless, far too often walking the aisle is the end and not the beginning.  But part also is our effort to be intentional without being authentic.  Grace puts them on the same team, lets us love like Jesus.

Another Link- One that will cost me a future SBC presidency nomination

Well I survived the rainiest camping trip ever and am back in Mandeville without too much to do, which means of course more blogging.  I'm going to put a post up soon about that little quote in green from St. Gregory of Nyssa about the difference between faith and knowing, but don't feel like doing that much thinking yet.  So instead, I thought I'd post a link to a funny little article by Walker Percy, a Catholic novelist who used to live in Covington, about the aesthetics of bourbon drinking.  If this offends you please consult your nearest New Testament.  If not, please don't think I'm painting myself as one of those "cool Baptists" because I also like a bit of whiskey on occasion.  Seriously, some of the Baptists who do drink are worse than high school kids about proclaiming they do drink and so are "cool".  It seems to be an issue for Baptists on either side, really it should not be this big a deal.  I just thought it was funny article.

Just a Link Really

So after watching the U.S. National Team play El Salvador last night I'm in a soccer-y mood.  Here's a wonderful post from the Run of Play about why soccer can be such an alternatively beautiful and frustrating game to watch.  Probably not most people's cup of tea but some fantastic writing all the same.  You should check it out, at least I think.  That's why I posted it...

Un-posted posts, a non-English Englishman, and how to love your neighbor while not really liking what he does much

So I still haven't put up that post about losing my granddad; I just can't seem to do it without coming off all emo, "woe is me".  It's not that I don't want to talk about it, or try and learn from it, it's just that I don't like emotionally dumping on people through a blog.  The temptation really is there to use this blog for that, and I wonder why that is: why is honesty and openness so much easier through something like this?  For some reason in our society it feels easier to be more personal the more impersonal the means of communication are.  For instance, I really have a hard time talking about this face to face or even over the phone, but I've been able to through texts, facebook, and this blog.  Maybe there's a post there, maybe it's just my problem, I don't know. 

Anyway I want to talk about this little quote I read today in this book I bought for cheap at a wonderful used bookstore in Houston.  The book is called Raskolnikov's Rebirth (refers to the main character in Crime and Punishment) and it's written by an English philosophy prof with the very non-English sounding name of Ilham Dilman.  Despite this, I still like to imagine him speaking in a proper British accent as I read, maybe sounding a bit like Michael Caine, not over the top snooty, but using very proper and precise diction.  Ilham, or Hammy as his friends probably call him, looks at a psychological view of good and evil, talks a good bit about Freud, and uses "one" as a pronoun far too much ("One must look at oneself, if one wishes to understand one's...").  He really needs to throw a he or a she in there or come up with a fictional character to use in examples, preferably with a proper British name like Basil or Nigel, but I digress.  So returning to the matter at hand, the quotation, "Furthermore blaming is not a form of intolerance.  Intolerance is the inability to tolerate what ought to be tolerated.  To attribute intolerance to someone is thus making a moral judgement about him- just as calling him 'judgemental' is doing so.  To tolerate anything whatever without any limit is not tolerance; it is moral indifference or total passivity."  Beyond being surprised at his use of a personal pronoun, I must say I wholeheartedly agree with Hammy here, a lack of standards is not a sign of moral superiority as it has so perversely become for some.

What then are we to do as Christians? We have, rightly I feel, received alot of criticism as a Church for being judgemental.  But what standards should we hold others to in order not to fall into the moral passivity of say the German Church during the rise of Nazism.  Part of the Church's mission in the world is to stand as a prophetic witness to the Truth of the Kingdom which both values man and Creation (which of course means we have a message for abortionists on the left and war hawks and "big-industry-screw-the-environment" types on the right.  There's a reason I can't find a party.)

Instead of putting more thought into this tonight however and rambling on, I would like to put up this passage from a few months back I found in the little notebook I keep.  Looking back on things like this I sometimes wonder what I was talking about at the time; it is a very strange feeling, almost like I'm reading something someone else wrote- once I forget writing it and stop thinking about it, it becomes external to me. Finding it again is a bit like walking into a house with the exact same floor plan as your own, it seems very familiar, but somehow foreign.  Wandering observations about the creative process aside, the troublesome part in the passage ahead is the talk about the "inarticulate part" inside that is beloved by God.  I think I may have picked this up from Auden (a fantastic poet by the way, that covers the compulsory recommendation portion for this post I suppose).  What is meant, I think, is that there is something deeper than our thoughts, desires, or even our wills that is drawn to God.  There have been times I have not felt particularly like a Christian and just wished for some end to all my duplicity.  Stronger than any decision of my will, I have felt drawn back to God.  This is not the Calvinist doctrine of irresistible grace, which tries to look at the whole process of salvation from some abstracted view outside the individual.  But it rather refers to something deep within that longs for God, as in Herbert's poem from the last post or St. Augustine's famous, "restless are our hearts til they find rest in You."

Goodness that was a lengthy introduction, hopefully some sense can be made of this, "The desire for change in a person and the acceptance of that person are not mutually exclusive.  We cannot, on the one hand, accept the person without regard to their faults and failures, as if those were somehow foreign to him (or as is, of course more likely in my case, her), but must see them in the fulness of their (fallen) humanity, as nevertheless bearers of the Image; otherwise we fall into idolatry either by the elevation of the other to a place they should not occupy or ignoring the frailty of our perceptions and self-deception and raising our subjective knowledge to objective truth.  We must acknowledge that we do not, cannot know the other fully, nor ourselves, yet in this hidden, inarticulate part we are beloved and may be saved in Christ Jesus.  Neither may we associate the other so fully with their sin that we are constrained to reject the person themselves.  It is precisely in the inarticulate, 'dearest freshness deep down things' [note- this is a line from G.M. Hopkins- "God's Grandeur"], the originality of their creation, declared as good' it is here that they may be saved and it is this which we must not reject in them.  To desire change, their existential freedom from that which yet enslaves them is not rejection, but acceptance of their created goodness, their declared belovedness by God."