Scardey-Cat Democrats

We're hovering somewhere near the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision Roe v Wade, which, of course, means our inability to discuss the matter as a people will be highlighted as each side - Dead Babies! You Hate Women! - screech at each other in a ritualized ragegasm that is as predictable as it is boring.

I thought this approaching date on our national cultural, social, and political liturgical calendar would be a good time to chide the Democratic Party for stirring up the fears of so many potential voters. The prime time for the anti-abortion crowd to get their mojo working was the previous decade. Instead, they picked fights over stem cells and a non-existent practice called "partial-birth abortion" as a way to keep the money flowing and the activists active. While it is indeed the case that the low-level domestic terror campaign against women's clinics has resulted in fewer such places operating, restricting practical access to a variety of services including abortion, as a legal matter, the status quo on abortion rights - revised in Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania v Thornburg in 1989 - is under no threat of drastic change.

All the same, all one need do is whisper "pro-life candidate" and the screeching from Democrats begins. Not only will abortion be outlawed and the doctors and women involved become criminals; contraception, pre-marital sex, sex education in public schools, the introduction of mandatory chastity belts, the sterilization of all women of all ages - there is no end to the claims by pro-choice proponents in the fear-mongering over this issue. Common sense and a glance at recent history should be enough to quiet the chilling tales of what might happen should this or that candidate be elected to this or that office.

I shall confess here and now that I used to let this kind of thing sway me. Not just on matters regarding reproductive choice and women's health and the regulation of sexual activity. On all sorts of things. I operated out of a mindset that saw political opponents not as opponents, but as threats. Standing now outside the largely false dichotomies and ridiculous irrelevance of so much of our politics and public discourse, I yearn for just one figure in politics to say, "You know, Mitt Romney has his pluses and minuses as a person, but the question before us is whether or not the policies he proposes would be in the best interest of all Americans."

Of course, I also yearn for warp drive technology so I can go to another planet where things make sense.

It isn't just Republicans and conservatives who practice the politics of fear. I wore partisan/ideological blinders long enough to buy in to that notion. It certainly didn't help that much of the politics of the previous decade consisted of waving the bloody shirt of 9/11 around to silence anyone saying anything about Pres. Bush's policies. All the same, it just isn't true that only conservatives and Republicans play upon our fears to get people motivated to support candidates.

I grew tired of being afraid some time ago. Pres. Obama used to talk about hope, but I'm guessing the coming year is gonna be dire warnings about everything from the fragile state of the economy to Republican spies in our bedrooms policing our sex lives moreso than vague pledges of fealty to hope. Hope sounds nice. Fear gets the epinephrine pumping. I'm tired of thinking my fellow citizens are either too stupid to understand reality, or too elitist to understand how the real world works. I am weary of the name calling.

I am not speaking now of the politicians. I have little doubt they will continue to stoke our fears of all those horrid Christian thugs waiting to guard the wombs of our women even as they lock Muslims and atheists up forever under Pres. Obama's practice of lawful indefinite detention. What better way to make sure folks get the message than the hint that our country teeters on the edge of a chasm, and only our heroic efforts can pull it back?

I am speaking more about partisans, particularly those who write on the internet. It would be nice if those folks tamped it down a bit. Stop yelling. Stop seriously discussing the alleged threats to the Republic posed by a Romney/Gingrich/Paul/Santorum Presidency. Even should such an unlikelihood come to pass, we made it through eight years - EIGHT YEARS, FOLKS! - of George W. Bush. Stop calling them wingnuts and Rethugs and Christianist fascists and all the other names out there.

Our times are uneasy. The folks who support Republican candidates are our fellow citizens, uneasy by the uncertainty of our times. Making them not just folks who think differently than we do, but our enemies, a threat to the survival of the nation may be good politics. It is also bearing false witness against our neighbor. The nation will not collapse should a Republican be elected to the White House. Our rights and freedoms are under far more threat from the actual practices of the incumbent, particularly regarding indefinite detention, the recently passed NDAA, and the targeted assassination of American citizens (even if I occasionally voice support for this or that actual assassination) than by some spectral Republican candidate.

Man up, Democrats. Stop being a bunch of pussies. Seriously.

Some Honest Republicans

With an entirely new well-pump and all the fixin's being installed, I've spent most of the day perusing stories on the intertoobz instead of writing. I came across this story, and it got me thinking.

The campaign manager of Arkansas Democratic congressional candidate Ken Aden arrived home last night to find his child’s pet cat murdered on the front porch with the word “LIBERAL” scrawled across its lifeless body.

The usual denunciations are flowing. No doubt many will call it "cowardly".

On the contrary, it is an act from one of the few honest conservatives out there.

If it is, indeed, the case that liberals are not just our fellow citizens who have slightly different views regarding the best way to govern the country, but active, hostile threats to the Constitution of the United States, then aren't acts of violence against them, including intimidation, not only acceptable but morally justifiable? Seems to me, like all those doctors killed by right-to-lifers, there is most definitely a logic to this act that makes "cowardly" unintelligible in context.

Which, perhaps, should lead some few of us to shut the hell up. Stop the fear-mongering about what might happen to America if a Republican is elected President. Stop claiming that America might collapse should Obama be re-elected. Stop saying that Pres. Obama is destroying the country. Stop the apocalyptic rhetoric, right and left, that sees the US perched on the precipice of collapse depending on who is elected in November, and who is doing the viewing.

I don't believe for one moment that candidates from the two major parties will stop it. They have far too much invested in using fear-mongering to energize an electorate that just doesn't see any candidates addressing the real issues - real, normal, bread-and-butter issues of proper governance and Administration - that need to be faced.

We, however, can do better. We can refuse to be cowed by the rhetoric from some, "Beware Newt/Mitt/Santorum because they'll take away your abortion rights/impose Christianity/steal the middle class's money". None of that is going to happen. Neither with the alleged disarming/destruction/Islamification of America should Pres. Obama be re-elected. The House Republicans are obstructionist and, largely, incompetent. That doesn't make them dangerous, just a good source of both amusement and frustration. Mitch McConnell is not a threat to American Democracy from his perch as minority leader in the Senate; he's a ridiculous clown who is grasping at what little power he has.

The election of liberals or conservatives will not cause the collapse of the US. Neither will it save us from the nightmare in which we find ourselves.

Until we can all accept this reality, the true believers - killing cats to intimidate potential candidates for public office from any particular ideological perspective - are both honest and brave. If you listen to our public rhetoric, that is.

Thinking In Jesus Christ

The past week has been fruitful in any number of ways as I have engaged in a longish discussion on humility, how one approaches living, and understanding that living, as Christian in the fullest sense of the world. I've been around and through and over the repeated insistence that part of our humble approach toward this whole thing loosely called "being a Christian" is the reality of the openness of the future, an openness rooted in the Good News that is the heart of the Biblical witness.

It was my great good fortune to learn of a long-running blog by a doctoral candidate in theology at Edinburgh, Scotland. For those who may not quite get it, there is irony in the title, albeit, I think - in keeping with the blog writer's admiration for Barth and Moltmann (among others) - a dialectic of irony. In any event, as a way of introducing myself to what the blog offers readers, I checked out this series on theodicy, the bugaboo of theology. If all the things we say about God are understood correctly, the reality of evil becomes the great stumbling block, over which far too many folks trip on their way to hearing the Good News that God's Love and Grace, incarnate in Jesus Christ, has, in his death and resurrection, enacted the reconciliation between God and fallen creation.

Not to put too fine a point on it, the series on theodicy is among the best explorations of the topic I have read. Not least because it takes the matter head on. Evil is real. Death still holds sway. Whether it's the evil of children dying across the world from preventable diseases because pharmaceutical companies refuse to provide the drugs needed to prevent them at cost or even free, or the brutal reality of the husband who beats and belittles his wife and children - unlike the Love of God, who wears just one face, evil is constantly shifting, ever-changing, trying to stay one step ahead of the judgment upon it.

While not even trying to justify or "explain" evil in any way, Byron makes clear in this series that the only way to live in the midst of the on-going reality of evil and death, is in the faith and hope and with the love that flows through the cross and out the empty tomb. When I repeat what T. F. Torrance, the late great Scottish Reformed theologian said about the best theology - that it is thinking in Jesus Christ - this series is precisely what I mean.

A Bunch Of New Songs

O sing to the Lord a new song,
for he has done marvellous things.
His right hand and his holy arm
have gained him victory.

Psalm 98:1

An on-going discussion, from a different angle . . .

Meet, if you would, Tony MacAlpine:



I was introduced to him, quite literally, less than two hours ago. Not new, perhaps. New to me, however. Which begs all sorts of questions, not least about what, precisely I thought I was doing with all those music posts for so long.

Then, there's a truly new band. They just released their first collection of music (I really hate calling them albums anymore since I buy it all electronically). They're from Texas. They're a mixture of classic psychedlic rock and good old fashioned Texas blues a la Stevie Ray Vaughan and Albert King. Their release, Conversations in D Minor, was one of the gifts I gave myself with my iTunes bucks.



Then there is the discovery that even in darkness and the celebration of evil, one can find beauty. There is something about the songs of the Norwegian Black Metal band Emperor that I just find . . . entrancing. I am the last person to say I like the whole screaming-rather-than-singing thing that has infected so much rock. Yet, it works here so well, in combination with the whole sonic, tonal approach. I cannot help but call it beautiful. Dark beauty to be sure, but that, too, is a part of God's creation.



Also, I should mention the fun I've been having using the various artist radio stations on Spotify. If you don't have it, I highly recommend it, especially over the far overrated and tired Pandora.

So, there's always all sorts of new things to hear, new sounds to encounter and think about. New songs to sing to the LORD, like the Psalmist says.

In Other News . . .

What a crappy day. Between the sick wife and no water, I do believe this is one of those days I shall, at some point, look back upon and shake my head in wonder as to how I made it through.

I've been wanting to read the new defense strategy the White House announced a few weeks back, but other interests and things have interfered. I have, at least, the link to it. In the near future, I hope to take a look at it.

A Single Word

Last night's Christian Believer class was on the doctrine of atonement. A great benefit for me was a deeper appreciation for this particular teaching, and the way various "theories" - ransom, substitution, moral example, Christus Victor - all work together to illumine the depth of the confession this one word contains. Along with discussing the Scripture and historical readings for the week, each week there is a video presentation of a Christian scholar discussing some aspect of the topic for the week. This lesson, it was Leander Keck, New Testament scholar and former Dean of the Divinity School at Yale. In the course of Keck's discussion, he notes the links between the Hebrew "kippur", as in Yom Kippur, "kapporeth", the word used in Leviticus to describe the lid or covering of the Ark of the Covenant, and the word the rabbis used in the Septuagint - hilasterion. Interestingly enough, a couple centuries before the LXX, St. Paul uses this very word in Romans 3:25. Here, from the NRSV, is Romans 3:21-26:

21 But now, irrespective of law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, 22the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, 23since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; 24they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; 26it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus. (italics added)

I was unaware not only of the word itself, but of the long history of scholarly dispute over its use by St. Paul, and what, precisely, he means by it in this context.

This morning, I typed "hilasterion" in to Google (a lesson here for those who aren't sure how to work this whole Internet thingy), and found, among the 27,600 hits available in the first three-tenths of a second, these three articles that make clear just how unclear the meaning of this word is.

For the moment, I want to set to one side the debate itself. As a total novice, a newcomer to it, recognizing just from the reality of such an extensive debate, I have no opinion beyond accepting that such a thing as a debate over the meaning of this word exists. The main point in highlighting this is two-fold. First, it is a constant source of amazement how much of our understanding of our faith can hinge upon words the meaning of which is just not clear. In this case, much of our understanding of St. Paul's teaching on the meaning of Christ's death hinges on just how, exactly, we understand this particular word.

Second, I bring this up as further testimony in an on-going discussion on the reality that I am constantly learning new things, reminded of my own ignorance. Which is why, while I would defend to the fullest extent my understanding of the faith at any given time, I would never under any circumstances presume to claim that understanding as final.

Most definitely, I would never assume to claim clarity concerning the Biblical witness, which is why life-long study and the surprise that accompanies it, is part of my life.

What Makes Something Real?

In 1950, my mother made her final installment payment, and took the subway from her apartment on E 51 St. near Second Avenue over to Brooklyn to pick up her new sewing machine. She would always remember that ride for two reasons. It was her first trip to Brooklyn. Instead of going under the East River, the train rode on tracks underneath the bridge. My mother has always had a phobia about heights and bridges, so she made sure, on her return trip, to find a route that went under the river.

It was a Necchi, that sewing machine. Complete with sewing machine cabinet, it had an electric treadle. Sitting on the sewing machine stool, which opened up to store sewing material, she pressed her knee against a small lever that operated the motor, turning the machine. The Italians made great sewing machines, the Olivetti and Necchi. The former was probably more popular. The Necchi, though, was built to last. My mother's, built and bought during the Truman Administration, sits in their house to this day, fully functioning, with all the original parts and extras. Needing only the occasional squirt of oil to keep the moving parts from stiffening, it should run well for another sixty years.

At this point, you're probably wondering what the heck my mother's old sewing machine has to do with the alleged subject of this post. Trust me when I tell you, the relationship could not be more vital.

Capitalist ideology limits an understanding of reality to that which can be exchanged for another thing of equal value. In advanced capitalist economies, the value of any item is the price it fetches on the market of goods. Anything that cannot be so priced, anything that is not both reified and reduced to its price on the market, is not real. The inexorable, totalitarian logic of capitalist ideology pushes society toward denying any other reality to all things. If it doesn't have a price tag, if no one wishes to pony up some money for it, it isn't real. Even marketing flirts with this in the midst of denying it. Consider the Master Card commercials that list the price of various purchases, then ends with the tag line that, these particular items, when used together by people to make memories, create an experience that is "priceless". Yet, isn't this Romantic nod toward human sentimentality actually enforcing the worthlessness of the experiences in question? After all, they would have been impossible without first purchasing the items in question; they, it would seem, are the truly and really valuable items. Because they have an exchange value. Because they have been and can be priced. The rest is, as noted above, so much sentimental guff.

The creation of useful items and their exchange was once a means to an end. The reality of these items was not determined by their exchange value, but by their usefulness for the purposes for which they were made. Some of that same process lingers even in advanced capitalist society, where items of greater durability tend to have higher value than those of less durability. Once purchased however, and actually put to the use for which they were intended, their value as determined by the market decreases substantially. Unused, however, they hold their value. Consider, for example, how collectors value an unopened toy as compared to one that has been opened and played with.

There is another way to think of what makes a thing real. Built and sold on the market, some items, like an old Necchi sewing machine, become more than just an electrical/mechanical contraption that is useful for making clothes and curtains, for stitching together a child's Halloween candy bag or stuffed animal. The item, used for the purposes for which it was constructed - a toy that's played with, say, or a settee that is sat upon - becomes an integral part of the lives of the people who use it, or are effected by its use. Its reality, then, is determined not only by its usefulness, its success at performing the tasks for which it was constructed. By being a part of the lives of people who share experiences due to that success, its usefulness is appreciated; its value becomes a function, then, not of its potential or actual price on the market as a commodity. Its value rests now on its vital connection to the life-experiences of the people who use it. It is far more real as a link in the warp and woof of human life than its moment on the market, a bar code attached.

We human beings make things real. What is real has value. This word, much misused and misunderstood, is not a function of market forces or reducible to any given's commodification. A thing becomes what it really is when it becomes integrated into human living. Until then, it is formless, a heap of matter without use or any reality of its own. Whether its an antique sewing machine, a yo-yo, a car, a chair, what-have-you, the inexorable press of capitalist ideology, reducing these to their exchange value distorts, at a fundamental level, what provides them with reality. Their value does not reside in what others are willing to pay for them. Their value, hence their reality, is the result of human use, the function and role they play in human interaction.

Because my mother made use of that old Necchi sewing machine for decades, its reality has become an integral part of my family's life, its memories and experiences. Reducing its reality to the amount of money others might be willing to pay for it strips away that reality, reducing it to little more than a heap of metal, sitting on a block of wood, shapeless, nameless. This is the lesson I've learned from thinking about this old piece of Italian craftsmanship. It is not real because it has a price; it is real because, put the use for which it was made, it provided for real experiences for our whole family.

The Beginning And End Of God-Talk

Along with ruminations on William Stringfellow, Per Crucem ad Lucem also has a variety of ruminations on the thought of Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury. Surprisingly, perhaps, for a contemporary English prelate, Williams has a long CV, and a recent work is criticized, from the perspective of method, in this thoughtful post.

Reading it, I found echoes of recent thoughts I've expressed - on the way doing theology is a never-ending process; my own warnings at resting safe on any particular conclusion; the way the Spirit has of disrupting even the most cogent self-satisfaction - and heard the warnings and criticism of similar thoughts expressed by the Archbishop.

As a response, I can only say that theology is not a "thing" humans do. We too often associate it with other human intellectual pursuits, in particular philosophy, from which it often borrows vocabulary, and with which it remains in dialogue. Yet, the two things are very different. Indeed, theology can rightly claim not to be an "intellectual pursuit" at all. Rather, it is a faithful pursuit of understanding, striving to make clear using different vocabularies that which we proclaim in our life of faith. The beginning of philosophy, it is often said, is wonder. Wonder that there is something rather than nothing. Theology, on the other hand, does not begin with wonder.

It begins with praise. It begins with the faithful acknowledgement of the reality of salvation God has granted in Jesus Christ, to us through the power of the Holy Spirit. We encounter this reality in our life of worship, in the sacramental practices by which the Body renews itself and restores us. We encounter this reality in prayer, as the Spirit takes our mumblings and stutterings and makes of them something coherent. We encounter this reality on the pages of Scripture that begin the journey of unraveling the encounter between God and creation.

While I do indeed, and will continue to insist, that we should never rest easy with what we feel are, in the words of Archbishop Williams, "a captivity to trivial optimism … and lying cliché", this should not prevent us, even as we continue to try to make sense of this marvelous mystery in which we find ourselves living, from continuing to participate in the praise and thanksgiving which birthed it. Unlike the kind of doubt and skepticism that can pervade philosophical thought, even the most thoroughgoing doubt and pervasive God-questioning rarely leads an honest theologian from saying, praying, and singing the reality that God's love, offered to the world in Jesus Christ through the Spirit that is the Love that binds Father and Son together, is the strange and wonderful thing that keeps them going.

The end of theology, like its beginning, is always and only praise. I wouldn't even claim a more enlightened praise, or a more deeply-felt thanks. Rather, I would just say one with a bit more clarity. It is one thing to put all one's works, including one's theological musings, under the shadow of the Cross. No matter how faithful, now matter how brutal, no matter how honest they will always fall short because they are human works trying to make sense of the God who is Wholly Other. Which is precisely why prayer and praise, song and sacrament, living and working in the Spirit are always the end of theology, just as they are the beginning.

Something New

It seems the simple reality that we can never know enough in order to be certain about what we believe is far too difficult a concept for some. Which is fine. Resting in their certainty, they may well have the kind of peace that passes understanding in their own way.

Me, I'd rather assume, from the get-go, that I pretty much don't know anything.

Over the past few days, thanks in no small part to the links provided by the blog Faith & Theology, I have encountered the most generous blessing. Yet another theological blog, Per Crucem ad Lucem, has explored the thought of Anglican lay theologian William Stringfellow. When I say "explored", I mean that I stopped at nine posts on various of Stringfellow's writings and his life.

I wish to post here, in part, some of what Stringfellow wrote, in a book entitled Instead of Death on how the transformative power of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer changes even our sexuality. I would urge anyone to go and read this, indeed all, the posts on Stringfellow. The tantalizing hints in the works cited seem to show he was one who, as T. F. Torrance has said of all good theology, thinks in Jesus Christ. Anyway, enough of my babbling. Here's Stringfellow:

How then shall one discover who one is as a human being if sex provides neither the means nor the answer? And how shall one be emancipated from the power of sin in sex and in other realms as well?

In Christ.

In Christ. That means in beholding Christ who is in his own person the true human, the person living in the state of reconciliation with God, with himself, with all men, with the whole creation.

In Christ. That means in discerning that God ends the search for self by himself coming in this world in search of men. For the person, [sic] who knows that he has been found by God no longer has to find self.

In Christ. That means in surrendering to the presence and power of death in all things including sex and , in that event, in the very midst of death, receiving a new life free from the claim of death.

In Christ. That means in accepting the fact of God’s immediate and concretely manifest love for human life, including one’s own little life. Finding, then, that one’s own life is encompassed in God’s love for the world.

In Christ. That means in knowing that in the new life which God gives to humans there is no more a separation between who a person is and what a person does. That which one does, in sex or anything else, is a sign of who one is. All that one does become sacraments of new life.

In Christ. That means in realizing radical fulfillment as a person in the life of God in this world; such radical fulfillment that abstinence in sex is a serious option for a Christian though it is never a moral necessity.

In Christ. That means in enjoying God’s love for all humanity and all things in each and every event or decision of one’s own life.

In Christ. That means in confessing that all life belongs to God, and but for him there is no life at all’.

In a previous discussion of the relationship between Stringfellow's possible homosexuality and his life of faith and theology, the blog writer cites a discussion of some thoughts of Rowan Williams, the current Archbishop of Canterbury. This summary of Archbishop Williams does indeed capture the living heart of what Stringfellow says in the above passage:

1. The gospel, the good news spoken by God to the world in Jesus Christ – is God’s command. To put it the other way around, the command of God is not extraneous to the gospel, as if God, while saving us in Christ by the Spirit, said, ‘Oh, and there’s another, unrelated thing I wanted to talk to you about’.
2. The connection between gospel and command is intelligible. That is, it is possible for us by attending to the Gospel to understand how and why we are commanded and such understanding is the fundamental task of Christian ethics.
3. The gospel so understood provides the criterion by which we discover what truly is a binding command upon us. Faced, for instance, with a range of biblical commands about slavery, women, usury, polygamy, and sexual relationships, the fundamental theological question is not, ‘Which of these is culturally conditioned?’ but ‘How, if at all, do these matters relate to the gospel?’ Theological ethics is a matter, we might say, of taking every thought captive to Christ.
4. Because this attention to the gospel is the fundamental task of Christian ethics, any approach that simply stops with the apparent demands we find in Scripture, without asking whether and how they connect to the gospel, fails to take the command of God seriously.
5. If there is some intelligible connection between the gospel and sexual relationships, there would be a binding Christian sexual ethic (a command of God regarding sexual behaviour) even if there were no passages in Scripture that explicitly treated sexual matters.

These thoughts, this way of thinking in Jesus Christ, with the Gospel as the central reality of our identity, bringing new life out of all the empty tombs in which we dwell, are tantalizing indeed. I am going to enjoy, over the ensuing days and weeks, reading more from Stringfellow. It is a good thing to encounter a challenge, something new and different, life-affirming and faithful.

Time Doesn't Stand Still

As a way of clarifying why I refuse to rest easy with my understandings of Christian Scripture at any particular time and place, I think an obvious point to make would be this - time and place are always changing. I am not the same person I was yesterday, last year, ten years ago. I have no idea who I will be tomorrow, in five years, in twenty years.

I often reference the Ethics of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Few works have had the impact on the way I understand the faith and my life in that faith. It is important to understand this work that it was never finished. Indeed, some Bonhoeffer scholars think he would be unhappy with the publication of various notes and manuscript pages, some separated by years, that lack organization or any central theme. Which is why it is with caution I approach anything he has written in these pages; they are incomplete, lacking a center. All the same, the two things that have made the biggest impact upon me seem, to me at any rate, to be complete ideas. They open the reader to possibilities.

In this case, he makes it clear that "ethics" is and always has been a questionable name for the study of that part of the Christian life that includes not only the moral life of the individual and community, but worship and liturgy, private devotion and prayer, the relationship between the church and the state, and what was known, once upon a time, as the Orders of Creation. Bonhoeffer makes plain his discomfort with this by contrasting the study of "Christian ethics" with a consideration that what is right and proper for Christian is not a concern that their actions and lives are ethical or moral; rather, referencing abundant Scriptures, not least the saying of Jesus that we are to seek the Kingdom of God above all things, and concludes that it is our lot not to pursue "the good" (however we envision that particular word), but rather, each and every day, to seek in prayer and devotion, to do the Will of God.

Why each day? Simply because each day is new. We must set to one side the idea that God's timelessness has anything to do with our perception of what God is calling us to be and do. Like a blind man in a room with an elephant, we can't believe we have it all figured out from one, or even two, or perhaps many, encounters with various parts of the elephant.

We are being pulled forward in to God's Holy future, the true creative force in history. For this reason, each day brings not only more clarity, a smidge closer to that final Triumph for which we all live. It also rolls the stone in front of the tomb that has become our past. I would submit that God's will for us, however we understand that phrase, does not change. I would also submit that our understanding of that will for us, our perception of it, our openness to the Word for us, changes all the time. Everything changes for us, each and every day. Why should our understanding of Scripture, our perception of the whispered Word of the Spirit in our lives be any different?

A Question For Dan

A peripheral point, I suppose, but before I make my own position clear I do have to ask Dan if he really means what the following sentence seems to indicate he means:

I don't find the Bible, for the most part, to be that hard to understand. I think its teachings are generally consistent, reasonable, understandable and pretty danged obvious (if challenging and hard to live up to, short of God's grace). I don't find the Bible to be a puzzle in the least.

Speaking only for myself, I find understanding the Bible to be a journey full of traps and tricks, a lifetime-long search for understanding that never ceases. I refuse to rest in this journey, because within the dead words on the page, the Spirit constantly urges and whispers, comforts and convicts, binds and frees me. Reading the Bible as a far too comfortable middle-aged man in the second decade of the 21st century is a far different experience than a far too self-enamored young seminarian in the last decade of the 20th century, or a far too earnest and serious youth in the decade prior to that.

In addition, I find myself challenged by new readings, using all sorts of tools of which I was either unaware, or ignorant in their inner workings. It can become bewildering, discovering new meanings, new ways of reading, new questions to ask the text, finding new questions posed by the text.

The Bible is Heraclitus' stream. Which would be frustrating were it not the stream that flows from the Throne, the Living Water that, once tasted, leaves us never thirsting again.

So, Dan, I'm wondering if you really mean what it sounds like you're saying here. I find the Living Word that resurrects the text as surely as the dry bones of the Valley are made to dance by the Spirit of God's grace a challenge both in its whole and its parts. The questions it asks, the challenge it poses, the threat to my self-satisfaction; all these and so much more change not only with each phase of my life, but each passing moment of that life. The only reason I return to it each day is that I believe the sentence passed on my previous sense of success and understanding is a window to the only real Life that matters.

We Are Whole

PLUS Model Magazine has an article, with accompanying photos, concerning models, their bodies, and the effect of images of models on women's perception of their bodies. While generally acknowledged that the manufacturing of an unrealistic potential body image is not a good thing, fashion and pop culture continues to promote the notion that thin is not only the same thing as beauty; with assistance from health care and nutrition, we are told that thin also equates with health. Thus, an image such as the one below is not only considered "not beautiful", but also, should one read the comments to the accompanying article, not healthy.

I want to suggest a couple things. First, the idea that mass-produced images of thin women and beefed-up, defined men (all those six-pack abs, you know) promote unhealthy assumptions and understandings about what is and is not beautiful and healthy rest, I believe, on an underlying consumerist approach to the human body. Our bodies become just another product, to be purchased in a gym, a health food store shelf, through diet plans and exercise regimens. We view our bodies as things, products, whose value can be reduced to the amount of money and work we are willing to invest in making them properly presentable. With the endorsement of doctors and other health care professionals, we have the additional impetus for changing our bodies that comes from a desire to be healthy. Yet again, however, our bodies become a thing, detached from who we see ourselves as being, a means toward an end - health - unrelated to our whole selves.

I would further suggest this ability to understand our bodies as things separate from ourselves rests with the Cartesian division of reality into "thinking substances" and "extended substances". While many folks point to "Greek philosophy" and the ways the Christian Church adapted it for its purposes through its long sojourn as reigning intellectual framework in the west, it was really Decartes, with his radical separation of the physical world from what he understood to be an equally real, supremely better world that, for lack of a better word, we can call mind or soul.

At its heart, Biblical anthropology - the understanding of what it means to be human culled from reading the Christian Scriptures - is almost comically holistic. Not just we human beings, but all existing things, are whole things. Modern science, with its emphasis on the biochemistry of brain function, mapping the ways our brains operate under a variety of stimuli, certainly backs this up. Our bodies are not things, separate from some other thing we call our "selves". There is no ghost in the machine. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible views human beings as beloved creatures in our entirety.

We haven't always been clear in articulating this reality. With the advent of Cartesian dualism and its reign of error for the past four and three-quarter centuries, we speak of "hearts" and "souls" and "minds" as if they were things that could or did or should operate apart from the "gross" functions of the human body. With the rise of consumer capitalism, and the assistance of deeply-rooted transcultural misogyny, as well as bad readings of Genesis 3 that place the blame for the Fall of humanity on the shoulders of the first woman, we have created an entire industry that demands women consider their bodies a thing to be bought and sold, to be repaired or willed to fall in to disrepair, always with the aid both of "beauty" and "health care" and "nutrition" experts who are more than willing to make a buck from people's desire to correct any deficiency in their lives.

As I noted above, it isn't just women. Men, too, are targets for such really bad beliefs. While not nearly as visible, whether it's the size of one's biceps, the conditions of one's abdominal muscles, or penis size, there are literally billions of dollars to be made from men who are convinced their bodies are a thing to be improved, tinkered with like the car in the garage on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

There is no easy way out of this trap. Not only centuries of thinking in the wrong way about what it means to be human, but industries with millions of dollars in potential profits as well as the weight of scientific understandings regarding obesity, body mass indices, and the like are all mixed together to create this superstructure within which we are socialized to think both of beauty and health. With both understood as products, and our bodies reified as separate entities from our "real selves", to be manipulated for goals that exist outside what they actually are, we face a daunting task in clearing this rubble and coming to understand who we are as persons, as beloved sons and daughters of a good God who made us whole beings, creatures with bodies, unique mammals whose brains have evolved to give us self-awareness, the ability to reason, to imagine, to love.

Our bodies are not things. We are not in any way distinct from our bodies. Beauty is not a product to be purchased, either in an image or through the variety of industries that offer their assistance in getting it for us. Health is not a product to be purchased on the open market. Before we do anything else, we need to rid ourselves of these cancerous ideas, these inhuman views of what it means to be human beings.

State-Sponsored Terrorism

I chuckle when I hear and read the oft-repeated claim of Iranian involvement in and support for international terrorism. Not that I think they are innocent. I just find it fascinating that the abundant evidence linking the United States to a variety of terrorist acts and groups somehow never gets brought up.

I got to thinking about all this after I heard our Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Kissinger, "categorically deny" US involvement in the murder of an Iranian nuclear scientist yesterday. The only difference between these days and back in the good old days of the Cold War is Pres. Obama all but admitted the US has been seeking any means to disrupt Iran's nuclear research. What makes all of this even more funny - well, except for exploding cars and dead bodies, I suppose - is the US has yet to release evidence of the dread Iranian nukes. Over a decade ago, they were five years away from raining atomic death upon us. They are still, according to recent reports from both the CIA and Israel, about a decade away. Are they that incompetent? Have the disruptions in their research program noted in the linked article - three other targeted murders, "mysterious explosions", and a computer virus unleashed on Iran's internal security networks, including the one with their nuclear data - continued to push back the date of the inevitable Iranian bomb?

Or could it be, as the UN continues to say and Iran continues to insist, that Iran is doing peaceful nuclear research?

The US would be more credible if the frothing dogs of so much of our discredited foreign policy establishment hadn't spent the better part of three decades trying to spark a war between the US and Iran (well, except for that one time we sent them weapons so Oliver North could give the proceeds to one of our terrorist clients, the drug-running Nicaraguan Contras; so, I suppose by a circuitous route, that counts as sponsoring terrorism, huh). Just the other day, Max Boot, one of those so-called "establishment scholars" who enjoys imagining other people fighting and killing and dying in wars he dreams up, insisted that the "anti-bombing side" (what a strange construction) had yet to offer any convincing arguments. These folks revel in destruction.

While not insisting that Iran is a blushing bride in the state-sponsored terrorism brothel, I think it fair enough to note that the US is the madame. It may well be there is abundant evidence of Iran's nuclear program being specifically for a weapon for use against Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other regional targets. It may well be that the ongoing low-level conflict in all its variety continues to push back the inevitable development of an Iranian nuclear weapon.

The least all involved could do is be grown ups about this. Not that I expect any US Secretary of State to stand before the press and say, "Sure, we killed 'em. I'm damn proud of it, too!". We could, I should think, understand that we Americans have hands just as bloody as any other state sponsor of terrorism.

Mad Season

With Mitt Romney all but divinely ordained Republican nominee for President after the New Hampshire results last night, I think it is important to wonder at the strangeness of this political season. The Republicans have been trying to convince voters who among them is crazy enough to hold that title - Republican Candidate for President. It isn't enough that some, like Jon Huntsman and the putative nominee, have surrendered every scruple and principle in the dogged pursuit of the nomination. It isn't enough that true oddballs like Michelle Bachmann and Rick Santorum are spoken about in the deep measured tones one used to hear in reference to McGeorge Bundy and that old war criminal Henry Kissinger (but he's a professor, you know). It isn't enough that Newt Gingrich put even pride on the line, and rather than wait for a public outcry for his presence in the race, has actually campaigned, only to remind people exactly why the whole party got rid of him thirteen years ago.

This whole spectacle has taken place in a bubble tough enough to prevent any reality to penetrate. There have been serious discussions about all sorts of things that have nothing to do with reality. In his speech last evening upon winning New Hampshire, former Gov. Romney proclaimed the President, who began life the peripatetic child of a wandering scholar, then settled for borderline poverty in the care of his grandparents only to rise through hard work and some luck and an acceptance letter from Harvard University to become the President of the United States, to hold "resentment of success".

And none among the normal folks drowned out the cheers with their laughter.

Meanwhile, the silence on the Democratic side due to Pres. Obama cruising to renomination, has been oh-so-briefly broken by a spectacle I have longed for: Glenn Greenwald and Katha Pollitt, two lions of the left, smacking the crap out of one another all because Greenwald made the not-uncontroversial point that the only candidate talking about real issues also happens to be the one candidate who hides his sociopathic tendencies the best - Ron Paul (the part about sociopathy is my addition).

For those not familiar with either, Greenwald is a former civil liberties attorney who rose to prominence in the left-blogosphere in 2006 with searing attacks on the Bush Administration. He jumped from writing a private blog to getting a steady paycheck from Salon with the publication of his first book, How Would A Patriot Act?, and success has made his pomposity and self-righteousness coalesce through some weird personal chemistry to become, in a word, an asshole of the highest water.

Pollitt, a poet and columnist for The Nation, has those qualities so many on the left treasure the most. Not only does she have the ability to speak for whole swaths of the population without blushing, she manages to do so while still publishing a memoir in which she confessed that she considered herself emotionally abused by a man who later dumped her, then spent months semi-stalking him - the whole call-and-hangup routine; driving by his new digs - which only shows that left-feminists can be as creepy as anyone, I guess.

The subject of the dispute, Ron Paul, first gained some lefty attention in 2008, because he was the only Republican candidate for President who talked in negative terms about the Iraq War. It took me about ten minutes of digging to realize that Paul is The Last Bircher, a dogged defender of the ideas of Robert Welch who, sitting in a hotel room late one night, dictated to friends (who dutifully wrote down each word in what has become known as The Blue Notebook, which I used to own but lost in a basement flood) a rambling dissertation on the insidiousness of the Communist Conspiracy, which included, among others, then-Pres. Dwight Eisenhower. While Paul does, indeed, speak on matters from American Imperialism to economic exploitation that need to be addressed, he does so from a deep well of sinister beliefs concerning the myriad conspiracies that control these dangers to the Republic. Worse than a broken clock that may well be right twice a day, Rep. Ron Paul is the street person you meet, take for a cup of coffee at the diner because he starts talking about the family he lost and wishes to get back, only to discover he lost them to aliens who put an implant in him. The coffee you just bought him may well dissolve the chip, or it may well hold more insidious drugs that will make of him even more the slave to the aliens.

In other words, Ron Paul is just bug-shit nuts.

Greenwald noted, with his usual panache and flair for detail, the many ways Paul is the only "mainstream candidate" (doesn't writing that indicate a sickness in our polity) addressing these issues. Ms Pollitt made the not unimportant point that Ron Paul is kinda nuts, and a white supremacist to boot. Had she stopped there, I do believe she would have been fine. She couched her argument, however, in the measured tones of shallow identity politics*, in the process managing to claim to speak for all sorts of people. Not only "lefty women" but "people of color" (God, I really detest that last phrase, reducing the matter of race to pigment), it seems, were forthrightly behind Ms. Pollitt's disdain for Paul and his long-time residency in crazytown.

With that, the fight is on. Since the goal in these things isn't so much "let's find out if Glenn Greenwald made some valid points, while Katha Pollitt reminded the world that Ron Paul is loony", but "I'm right! No, I'm right, and you're a closet-crypto-fascist! Well, you're a hypocritical blowhard who doesn't care about "lefty women" and "people of color" as much as I do!", it has entered the popcorn-popping stage.

In other words, these two are worse than children. My sincere hope, at this point, is they just beat the crap out of one another.

Meanwhile, is it at all possible to ask a question? Is anyone going to make Pres. Obama face up even to one failure? Not the imagined failures and betrayals one reads about in the fever swamps of the right, mind you. I'm just wondering if we can have a thoughtful discussion of Mr. Obama's failings, instead of crazy on the right, and a duel to out-pompous one another on the left.

*I say "shallow identity politics" because all politics are about identity. In Pollitt's case, however, it is identity-as-physiognomy, genetics is destiny politics that are not only shallow, but deeply, deeply troubling.

Finding Beauty In The Oddest Places

I am happy to note an addition to the roll of my usual readings. The blog Per Caritatem offers thoughts on a variety of subjects, much as I wish I could do. The latest offering concerns what could be called, for lack of a better phrase, a sociology of knowledge that refuses to grant pride of place either to the signifier or the thing signified. Rather, each exists in mutual relation to the other by means of a convention that, nevertheless, provides shape and meaning that transcends each.

Moving freely between French post-structuralist understandings of language and an examination of the atonal music of Stravinsky, the post suggests in a far more clear, nuanced, and detailed way something I have long proposed: rather than determine the aesthetic quality of any particular musical experience as something to be judged qua music we need to consider any musical composition in light of all sorts of things within which its significance may lie. This is why I believe it is possible to teach people to hear a variety of musical expressions as beautiful precisely because they fulfill the purposes for which they were intended. Rather than judge any particular piece of music - from Bach to Black Sabbath - by an arbitrary canon created for a particular purposes, it might be better to consider the conventionality of such aesthetic tools.

Traditional western musicology hears non-standard musical styles, from the varieties of indigenous folks musics to non-Western music in its marvelous variety, in ways ill-suited to the task at hand. Which does not render such musicological analytics erroneous in and of itself. Rather, it is a simple case of choosing the wrong tool for the job at hand.

Rather than unlearn what we have learned, as Yoda would insist, we need only consider that our notions of beauty, that arrangement and relationship among parts and the whole that affect us, are not universal. The experience may well be; that which we call beautiful, however, may differ greatly, and some may be unable to appreciate in a visceral way, the beauty that would grasp another immediately, and (perhaps) unmediatedly (to coin a word, apparently).

I consider myself strange for any number of reasons. Not the least of them being that I find myself praising the beauty in each of the following. My guess is most would find, perhaps, one or another, beautiful while dismissing the rest as either pretentious nonsense, noise for noise's sake, or (perhaps the most devastating critique of all) passe, irrelevant to our life hear and now. All I can say to others is simple enough: Hear it as it was intended to be heard, by those for whom it was composed. This is the first lesson in opening up oneself to the variety of beauty that human beings create in the world. Don't judge a work of art. Let the work judge you.

Salvation Be Not Proud

The Faith and Theology blog, includes among many other wonders, occasional epigrammatic posts by one Kim Fabricius. He calls them "Doodlings". His latest offerings include the following:

If Christianity is unique, it is in declaring not the forgiveness of the sinner but the forgiveness of the righteous. The righteous too must repent – precisely of their rectitude.

Obviously, I insist you go read all of them. This one, however, struck me for its roots in the Biblical testimony, its thoroughly theological grounding in the Trinitarian economy of salvation, and its relevance in a world that is awash in phony Christian piety.

My prayer today is that I submit to the judgment that my desire to be righteous, to stand before God and humanity as a good person, is the spear that pierced the side of the suffering Christ. My hope is that I would always prefer to sing that I am without one plea when summoned to judgment by the One who has been judged in my place.

Some Advice From The Psalms

I was pleased to see that one of the Psalms for this morning's Daily Office reading is 146. I offer, with no commentary, this short, sweet, poem:

Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord, O my soul!
I will praise the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praises to my God all my life long.


Do not put your trust in princes,
in mortals, in whom there is no help.
When their breath departs, they return to the earth;
on that very day their plans perish.


Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord their God,
who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them;
who keeps faith for ever;
who executes justice for the oppressed;
who gives food to the hungry.


The Lord sets the prisoners free;
the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
the Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the strangers;
he upholds the orphan and the widow,
but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.


The Lord will reign for ever,
your God, O Zion, for all generations.
Praise the Lord!

Keep this in mind as the endless political season plods on.

Which Story Is True?

I started yesterday's post complaining that the morning had been pretty awful. And it was. God-awful. There are days it just seems the whole effort of trying to make clear what it means to be a Christian, to live that life faithfully and in full knowledge that I shall always fail at it - all that isn't worth it. You see, there are people out there who, trash the name of Jesus whenever they speak it. Am I "questioning" their faith? Not at all. I am saying, right out loud for all the world to hear, that whatever they're talking about, it isn't the faith in Jesus Christ. Furthermore, their blathering and carrying on, full of hate and division, rage-gasms of bigotry and belittlement make a mockery of the cross of Christ because they are serving the one thing the crucified Son of God tossed aside as he carried that cross up the Place of the Skull - power. Whether it's political power or social power, economic power or cultural power, these folks and the myriad like them who prance around mouthing the words "Lord, Lord" should remind us that the devil, most assuredly, believes who Jesus is, what Jesus does.

If that sounds kind of harsh, well, I'm not apologizing for it. Reading through today's Daily Office readings we get the real story, the whole story, the only story, from the banks of the Jordan as Moses prepares for his own end, and the new beginning for the people he has led through the desert for so long; we hear Jesus recall this event as he tells listeners that the Bread of Life, the true gift that gives life in the wilderness of this world in which we are to wander together, is nothing more or less than Himself, his body; we hear the Psalmist declare the greatness of God, the wonder and power and grace of God toward those who fear God; we read St. Paul praise the tiny group of folks in Colossae who have heard, and in whom the Spirit has moved, offering them hope in the midst of confusion, strength to face the trials that come from being citizens of the Kingdom Christ offers to us, a kingdom of light and redemption and forgiveness.

So which story is true? Is the bullshit we read from people like Mike Adams and Rick Santorum and all the rest of the phony "Christians" who want our eyes closed while we pray to the god they made up so they can reach in our pockets and go through our purses for money - is that what the Bible is talking about? Is the craptastic nonsense from self-appointed religious leaders, whose lust and greed and gluttony and pride are on display for all the world to see the faith of the One who offers us His own flesh as the True Bread of Life? Are we renewed by the constant badgering about how gays and Muslims and atheists are going to destroy our world? Does any of this have anything to do with the peace and light we have as people bought at the price of the blood and life of the Son of God?

Do you understand now why I might be upset? There are the lies the people pursuing power tell the world, and there's the simple truth of the Gospel, a story that stretches from Moses through Jesus to our own day, a story of simplicity, of Divine presence and the promise of light and life to come. The world, which the Fourth Gospel reminds us, did not know or receive the Word that came lighten its darkness, can perhaps be forgiven for being confused. Which message is which? Who are the followers of this Jesus, the heirs of the promise of Moses, the descendants of the humble community in Colossae facing persecution?

We who are claimed by the blood of the risen Christ are heirs to a simple message. We are to bear witness to the unfathomable love of a God whose ways are not our ways, whose love for us is as great as the distance between our creaturely realm and the heavens where God sits enthroned. We are to celebrate a forgiveness of the breach between ourselves and God, and between one another, offering the Bread of Life as strength for the journey. The world is a place of hatred and lies, a place of violence and depravity, and yet God loves us, right here in the midst of all this demonic debauchery, coming down in the carpenter of Nazareth to tell us that this creation is far too precious to let go. Each of us, and all of us - all of it, from supernovae to mosquitoes - is the product of a prodigal love to which our lives are to bear witness.

Any other message, any other claim, any other words are lies. It's that simple, really.

Of course, God loves Mike Adams and Rick Santorum. They, too, are the precious children for whom the Christ suffered and died, and in whose resurrection we believe and hope we have a share. When they call upon the name of god, however, it isn't the God who is known as love. When they seek to divide us, they are not appealing in the name of the Son, whose body is the Bread of Life that creates community. When they dehumanize and deride others, their words are not inspired by the Spirit of Life, the Spirit that reaches down to lift us all out of the sinkhole of violence and death that is the world that doesn't want to believe there's a way out.

Which story is true? The only answer to this question, I guess, depends on what you wish the world to be. Do you look around and, like Jesus as he stood gazing down on Jerusalem, weep because of the boundless love that is repeatedly scorned, yet tread onward because that love is not one born in fear, but is the very essence of the power of God, revealed in the powerless, despised, spat-upon criminal hanging on the cross? For me, this is the test: Do you look upon the horror and hatred and violence and weep from a love that knows no end? Do you still carry a tiny flame of hope in your heart because you still believe these things do not define the world that is God's, and that God refuses to let go? Do you hear the cries of those whom the world despises and call them brother and sister?

There is only one Way, one Truth, one Life - it is the scorned and beaten, crucified and risen Jesus, the Messiah. We who bear the marks of the crucifixion in our own lives must do a better job of making clear that our story, a story of boundless forgiveness, of unrelenting hounding by a God who refuses to take our "No!" as final, is the only real story. All the rest is just crap, lies told by those who would take this glorious treasure for their own ends.

A Different Perspective

This morning has been a wreck. I usually take some time to peruse the news, and I can't help but feel outraged and enraged by what I read. I detest reacting to things like this. I had even planned to write something from the class I lead on Thursday evenings at church, Christian Believer. Then, it got all muddled and fuzzled in my head, and I became even angrier at the way people keep stomping the name of Jesus in the dirt.

So, why not talk about what I did yesterday morning?

At nine a.m. I arrived at Cornerstone UMC, and met with Dave, a retired USAF pilot. He drove me out to a little airport outside Huntley and introduced me to his plane, a Cessna 170A built in 1951, which he keeps in immaculate condition.

He walked me through his usual pre-flight routine and checks, then we hopped in and soon we were 1500 feet above sea level, which means about 600 feet above the suburbs.

About fifteen minutes later, we were out over Lake Michigan, flying south.

We flew by Chicago. From 1500 feet up and a couple miles out over the lake, this is what Soldier Field, the Observatory, and the Shedd Aquarium look like.

We flew as far south as the Museum of Science and Industry, then Dave banked left and climbed a thousand feet for the trip back north. From that height the plane was finally above the tops of the tallest buildings in Chicago. The skyline from that vantage point is . . . well, it's nothing short of breathtaking.

We headed back west, then somehow, flying by the seat of his pants and with a little help from some landmarks, we found, first, our house:

And the church:

I was given a rare treat yesterday, an hour and a half of my life that offered beauty, a unique perspective on the world, a chance to see and experience a kind of freedom and joy that not everyone gets in this life. I remain humbled by the thought that I, even I, had this opportunity. I am a very blessed man.

Frayed Ends Of Sanity

The only gift I asked for Christmas is Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground by Michael Moynihan and Didrik Soderlind. Ever since I read this review several years ago, I thought it would be a worthy volume for the small but important musical section of my library. Well written, thoroughly researched, with an attention to the extra-musical milieu and activities that makes clear this was as much social/political movement as music scene, I would recommend it to anyone interested in the intersection of music, social issues, politics, and culture. All the same, my reaction to the book is very different than Mark Ames.

He writes:

The rise of the Black Metal movement in Norway is a case of humorless dirtheads taking a joke way too seriously. The joke was Satanic rock, which Lords of Chaos skillfully traces from its early origins in Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Coven (who transformed from performing black masses on stage to perpetrating the weepy hippie hit "One Tin Soldier") to metal’s second big wave in the early 80s and the rise of kitsch Satan-rockers Venom. To our modern eyes, Venom looks the spitting image of Spinal Tap during their Smell the Glove phase, but to dirtheads who didn’t know any better, Venom was the long-sought embodiment of evil. It was from the Venom branch of evil-metal that all of metal’s more violent, "evil" forms descended, including Black Metal.
The point of Satanic rock was to scare the Normals while fucking with the minds of its pimple-faced, predominantly male (nerdoid) audience, who needed to create a counter-world, with counter-morals and counter-aesthetics, to empower the nerdoids against the cooler, more successful jocks. But metal had its rivals for the hopelessly angry nerdoid: punk, hardcore and metal’s own competing mutations. The competition forced metal’s leading edge to metamorphose into harder, faster and more violent forms, reaching its apex with the rise of Death Metal in the mid-80s. Death Metal was as violent, Satanic and musically inaccessible as metal could go, or so it seemed.
And here is where Norway, the comic straight-man character in this dumb, bloody saga, comes in. Norway is not only a completely humorless society (it banned Monty Python’s The Life of Brian for being too offensive, leading to ads in rival Sweden boasting that the movie was "so funny it was banned in Norway!"), but worse, a deeply oppressive society, in a recognizably bland, caring, pious, Social Democratic way. Which raises an interesting question: Do boredom and blandness "count" as real suffering, and if so, do they justify murder the way other forms of oppression make murder seem a likely, even understandable response? The Black Metalists of Norway think so.
The humor and empty boasts inherent in Death Metal were lost on Norway’s youth. They took Death Metal literally, and quickly discovered that it wasn’t "evil" or "authentic" enough. There were too many "poseurs." And more important, too few genuine corpses for a scene that claimed to be so obsessed with death and violence.

To be honest, I, too, considered the "Satanic Metal" of bands like Venom and Slayer to be a ridiculous pose, a marketing scheme designed to ensure press and sales among the target market, teenage boys who are unsure of all sorts of things, and find both reassurance of a certain understanding of "maleness" as well as the catharsis that comes from listening to very loud, aggressive music. I used to think that the Black Metalers were too stupid to get the joke. I used to think the fans who started reading Anton LaVey's Satanic Bible or dabbling in fascist politics might be better off in a community theater troupe.

I don't think that way anymore. On the contrary. While it is true enough that Venom were, indeed, Spinal Tap in the flesh - the authors provide a snippet of lyrics from a Venom track that includes the line "We eat the vomit of the priests"; excuse me if I do not take this seriously - and that Slayer's toying with dark imagery was just that, and careful attention to some of their lyrics betrays a defiance against violence, against war, against senseless, meaningless death. While the death metal genre certainly toyed with certain aspects of dark imagery, and their songs are hard, fast, and obsessed with, as the genre's name implies, death, that in and of itself isn't "evil". While there are comic elements, and self-conscious seriousness and a desire for authenticity that drove some over the edge in to criminal behavior, it is difficult to come away from this work without understanding that there is, at its heart, something evil not only about the music itself, but the whole scene.

In an interview included in the book, the lead singer of the Black Metal band Emperor, Ihsahn (for some reason, members of black metal bands, at least in Europe, adopt stage names, a way of faking it to prove authenticity; or something) said this about life in Norway, on page 219:

Black Metal wanted to be in opposition to society, a confrontation to all the normal stuff. Everybody needs some excitement, and if you look at youth today, they're all very boring.

In my town all they do is have their cars and they drive up and down the one main street. They have nothing else to do - it's a kind of competition for who the finest car and the loudest stereo. They basically live in their cars. Those who are younger, who don't have a car - they sit at the side d the road and look at the cars. Their lives are extremely boring, and I can see that some people want more out of existence, they want to have theor own personality and expression which makes it impossible to be associated with all those meaningless humans who walk around everywhere.

In essence, Black Metal was Norway's Punk, it's Grunge, a musical expression of youth frustration with a stifling status quo. Like some branches of punk, and unlike the far more apolitical American grunge, Black Metal had a political component that veered far to the right. Some Black Metalers moved away from the anti-Christianity of vulgar Satanism, through the more sophisticated Satanism expressed by LaVey and embodied by someone like Ihsahn, to the anti-Christianity of a kind of heathenism dedicated to a revival of ancient Nordic religion that includes, most definitely, more than a flirtation with National Socialism in its Norwegian varieties (the book includes a sketch of Norway's wartime leader Vidkun Quisling who espoused an ideology he called Universism, a pantheism that befits most well-read mental patients).

At the beginning, Black Metal was a tiny movement, if the word fits, of a few bands that could attract, at best a few hundred fans to rare shows. The shows were rare because the fan base wasn't there to sustain performance. The early bands like Mayhem and Burzum - the latter wasn't really a band, but a one-man project by the above-mentioned Varg Vilkernes - released self-recorded and produced records that have managed to survive, somehow. The original lead singer of Mayhem, a Swedish youth given to extreme lapses in to depression and self-mutilation, ended up blowing his brains out with a shotgun; the authors helpfully provide a photo. Mayhem's leader, and the leader of the scene in general, was a pampered youth whose real name Oystein Aarseth wasn't boss enough. He adopted the stage name Euronymous. Along with leading a band and starting a record label - it included the two aforementioned bands as well as Emperor, Dark Throne, and Immortal - he also opened a Black Metal record shop in a rundown section of Oslo. Called Helvete - Hell in Norwegian - the shop was atmospheric, although from the outside the authors point out it was little different from the massage parlors that were its neighbors. The walls were painted black, there were skulls liberally placed about, it was lit by candles, and it soon became the focal point of the Black Metal scene. Ames is quite right that there was a certain humorlessness about it all, with the corpse-painted band members and fans walking around in black.

It would be easier to laugh, as Ames did, if it weren't for the dead bodies associated with the musicians, the burnt churches in Norway first, then Sweden, Germany, and France, and the generally depressive haze that hangs over both the musicians and the fans. The book is as much a true-crime book as a chronicle of a musical form and its social milieu, due not least to the prevalence of criminal activity, from burning churches in Norway to the murder of an anonymous gay man in Lillehammer in the summer of 1992 by the drummer of the band Emperor to a band of confused teenagers in Fort Myers, FL who called themselves "Lords of Chaos", going on a crime spree that included arson, robbery, assault, and finally murder. Led by a charismatic young sociopath, their ultimate goal was to sneak weapons in to Disney World on their senior trip and murder African-American guests who also happened to be in the park.

I would be willing to grant even to the more intelligent and thoughtful purveyors of this music - and Ihsahn of Emperor, a band that is still around and whose music has a majestic, almost operatic quality to it, comes across in his interview as intelligent, thoughtful, serious but never earnest - a bit more leeway were it not for the prevalence of dead bodies. Removed from its original context in Norway as a form of social and political protest against a stifling mediocrity imposed for national benefit, Black Metal becomes less political, less intelligent, and more simple-mindedly nihilistic. In America, bands like Buffalo's Cannibal Corpse, Tampa's Deicide, and Britain's Cradle of Filth seem to revel in shocking dress, behavior, and a kind of youthful overindulgence in the whole Sturm und Drang of anti-Christianity. This disgust is only slightly lessened in the case of Cannibal Corpse, whose lyrics are indecipherable. Even reading them while listening it becomes impossible to make any correlation due to the lead vocalist's hoarse grunting.

While an expression of youthful discontent at the benign oppression in a wealthy, indulgent society, Black Metal's seamy underside of arson, violence, and murder as well as its indulgence in racialist, fascist politics* makes it far less attractive despite its occasional forays in to musical territory that one can only describe as beautiful.

*The book includes a rare interview with Anton LaVey of San Francisco's Church of Satan. While certainly intelligent, thoughtful, and insightful, LaVey also comes across, pretty clearly, as a far-right political and social personality. His remarks against consumerism, for example, make me almost wish I had never said anything about American consumerism. Knowing his background, I always figured LaVey wasn't very serious about the whole Satan schtick; he started off as a carnival barker, and was a small time hustler as well. I assumed he indulged in Satanic fantasies as a way of making money a la L. Ron Hubbard and the Church of Scientology. It seems, sad to say, he is quite comfortable with his mix of Nietzschean philosophy, human potential group dynamics, and what he calls an aesthetic that is similar to National Socialism with its enjoyment of drama and dynamic expression. In short, he seems to have been the real deal.

A Prayer For A New Year

It is so easy to surrender to despair. It is so easy to grow blind to the evil around us. It is so easy to stop our ears from hearing the cries from the billions around the planet who suffer. It takes no effort to throw up one's hands, insisting that we cannot change the world, that we are helpless, powerless, nothing.

My prayer for the New Year is that we see in the eyes of our fellow men and women precious children of a loving God. Every single one of us has been bought at a great price. The greatest gift we can give them is the understanding they are of infinite worth because of what God in Jesus Christ has done for them. Weep with those who mourn. Bind up those broken. Visit the lonely, the prisoners, those most despised in a world that finds it easy enough to dehumanize. Give your time, your energy, your resources, as much as you can give for those the world has said are irredeemable.

My prayer is that we are no longer afraid to hope. My prayer is that we are no longer too aggrieved to believe. My prayer is that we have eyes and ears and lives open to love those around us who are called unlovable. They, too, just as we, are children of a loving God, for whom Jesus came to sacrifice so that all of us, and each of us, could have life, and that more abundantly. We must endeavor to do this in our actions, in our lives. Not just in words.

That is my prayer for 2012. All of us, and each of us, can give to the world that which is greater than the pearl of great price, that which is more wonderful than a treasure buried on a plot of land. Let us, all of us and each of us, be the widow who searches for the lost coin, the shepherd who travels through the bramble and rocks and thorns for the lost sheep.

This is my prayer. That we live as God in Christ through the Spirit would have us live - for this world for which God gave everything. This world, and each person in it, is the most precious thing there is. We should live so that the world comes to believe this is true.

My Predictions

The title is supposed to be ironic because I don't believe in predicting the future. I know that my family will enjoy another week in Disney Resorts in March. I know there's going to be national elections in November. I know that spring will follow this winter.

Beyond that, couldn't tell you.

Based on previous experience, I'm guessing that a bunch of people across the political spectrum are going to say and do stupid, occasionally criminal, stuff. I also am pretty sure some conservative will say something liberals think is outrageous and it will become the hot-topic for a few days. Then, a liberal will say something conservatives think is outrageous and the cycle will repeat itself. None of it will mean very much, but it should be fun.

On the religion front, people who don't know anything about it, or any specific religion, will write millions of words about how silly it is. Again, doesn't mean much, but it should be a lot of fun. Nothing feels better than that deep satisfaction that comes from telling the world someone is being mean to you.

I feel safe predicting that about 90% of the music that will be released to the public, both on major labels and independents, will be, at best, mediocre sound sludge. Quite a bit of it will be crap. This time next year all sorts of people will either be moaning about how awful the year in music was, how wonderful the year in music was, or how the hipsters/Baby Boomers/music industry/rock critics/stupid listening public have destroyed musical entertainment. Again. If you look carefully enough, these same general complaints go back to the rise of popular music in this country at the end of the 19th century. Someone is always pissing in someone else's tea, apparently.

I'm not trying to be cynical here. I'm just saying that most of the things people get in high dudgeon about don't really matter all that much. The things that really matter, though, usually pass unnoticed and unremarked upon. If I made New Year's Resolutions, mine would be simple enough: Pay attention to what really matters. Let other people get their panties in a wad over things that don't matter.

I'm Not Insulting Anyone

Some people don't like to be called out for being bad people. Surprising, I know. Who wants to have the world know that, at heart, they have deep ugly recesses in their hearts filled with rage and disgust directed at their fellow human beings? If the past generation or so has taught us anything, it's no longer acceptable to be a bigot.

Except, of course, there are still bigots out there. They just don't like being called out for it, because being a bigot is socially unacceptable, so they deny-deny-deny.

I, for one, do not consider it a personal attack to call an ignorant person ignorant. When they demonstrate their ignorance for all the world to see, repeatedly, then it isn't an insult. It's just a description of . . . their ignorance. When an individual repeatedly expresses bigotry, calling them a bigot isn't an ad hominem attack. It is just calling things as they are.

If I said they were so ugly they were born prematurely because their mother's body couldn't stand them, that would be an ad hominem attack. If I said they were so stupid they couldn't breathe without cue cards reminding them, that would a personal attack. Calling someone who repeatedly demonstrates ignorance "ignorant" isn't an insult.

Just as people get all up in arms when someone notes that public figures, or bloggers, or writers, are lying - not prevaricating, being misleading, misstating the facts - I'm not sure why this is even a problem. The question of lying, for instance, is one I find fascinating. People will go to great lengths to excuse others from the charge of lying. For me, the test is really simple. If a person makes a statement that is contrary to fact, that's a lie. Do they know it is contrary to fact? With the multiple resources available to ensure factual accuracy, getting facts right is one of the easiest things in the world. So, when Michelle Bachmann claims that the HPV vaccine is dangerous, then tries to insist that she is merely relating what others have said, she is lying. In the first instance, the HPV vaccine is not dangerous; about ten seconds on Google would clear that up. In the second instance, repeating something someone else says about a topic that one does or can know is factually inaccurate is . . . lying. How is this hard to figure out?

I actually have a pretty simple standard for whether or not a person is lying. Person "A" says "X". Several people mention to "A" that "X" is false. Person "A" continues to say "X". That, folks, is lying. Even if Person "A" did not know in the first instance that "X" is false, once it is pointed out that "X" is false, Person "A" not only has a moral duty to make clear that he/she is wrong; Person "A" has a moral duty to make sure that, in the future, "X" is not presented as true.

Again, this isn't rocket science.

When a person doesn't know something, yet makes claims about understanding and insight and knowledge, repeatedly, and gets all manner of things wrong about said topic; when others, trying to be helpful point out a variety of errors in the first individual's claims, and that person continues to make claims rooted in ignorance, then that person is being both ignorant and untruthful. Not "misleading". Not "misstating the facts". They are both ignorant and, of course now, they are lying.

Again, this is first-grade moral clarity here, folks. The reason it's so simple is because it is.

It isn't "name calling". It's simple description. I'm not sure why any of this is a problem. Yet, it is.

Rick Santorum Gets Something Right

Yesterday, Talking Points Memo's Livewire noted that former Senator and current candidate for the Republican nomination for President Rick Santorum said Pres. Obama "is against both free markets and the founders' idea of individual liberty." One tends to scoff when Santorum speaks, yet on the latter point, he does have something right.

In the recently passed Authorization Act for the Department of Defense, FY 2012, Section 1301, subsections (a) and (b) have received some attention, albeit too late for people to actually do anything about it.

Sec 1031. AFFIRMATION OF AUTHORITY OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES TO DETAIN COVERED PERSONS PURSUANT TO THE AUTHORIZATION FOR THE USE OF MILITARY FORCE.

(a) IN GENERAL.-Congress affirms that the authority of the President to use all necessary and appropriate force pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107–40) includes the authority for the Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered persons (as defined in subsection (b)) pending disposition under the law of war.

(b) COVERED PERSONS.-A covered person under this section is any person as follows:
(1) A person who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored those responsible for those attacks.
(2) A person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.

In essence, Congress has given blanket authority to the President to arrest and detain anyone, anywhere, who may have, in some way or other that is never defined, supported not only the terrorist attacks ten years ago, but ongoing terrorist activities.

Sounds like Pres. Obama isn't too fond of freedom to me.

Back in September, Jonathan Turley, writing in The Los Angeles Times, made the point even more bluntly:

One man is primarily responsible for the disappearance of civil liberties from the national debate, and he is Barack Obama. While many are reluctant to admit it, Obama has proved a disaster not just for specific civil liberties but the civil liberties cause in the United States.

Turley revises and extends a tad:

President Obama not only retained the controversial Bush policies, he expanded on them. The earliest, and most startling, move came quickly. Soon after his election, various military and political figures reported that Obama reportedly promised Bush officials in private that no one would be investigated or prosecuted for torture. In his first year, Obama made good on that promise, announcing that no CIA employee would be prosecuted for torture. Later, his administration refused to prosecute any of the Bush officials responsible for ordering or justifying the program and embraced the "just following orders" defense for other officials, the very defense rejected by the United States at the Nuremberg trials after World War II.

Obama failed to close Guantanamo Bay as promised. He continued warrantless surveillance and military tribunals that denied defendants basic rights. He asserted the right to kill U.S. citizens he views as terrorists. His administration has fought to block dozens of public-interest lawsuits challenging privacy violations and presidential abuses.

While I'm pretty sure Rick Santorum doesn't give a fart in a tornado for civil liberties, he did manage to trip over the truth despite his ongoing efforts to be the most risible of an admittedly risible bunch.

Those who argue that, somehow, electing a Republican candidate will make things worse haven't been paying attention. Obama's signature on the Defense Authorization Bill, not even fighting to get this section removed, is just the latest in a series of blows against civil liberties. It is difficult to imagine a President actually expanding the policies of the Bush Administration, but Obama has achieved that with relish. Yet one more reason to refrain granting him my vote next November.

A Christmas Story

I suppose there is no better time, except perhaps Holy Week, to confess a sense of inadequacy in regards matters of faith. I have been feeling . . . well, let's just say I've been battling a sense of my own ultimate unworthiness in the face of the Gospel story. One hears the Good News, and it seems impossible the simple message of salvation - a free gift, to those loved beyond measure - is really meant for one such as I know myself to be. Not that I'm a horrible person. Just . . . faced with the reality of the whole thing, I have just felt myself without a plea, without a single leg upon which to stand.

I confessed to Lisa, before worship this morning, an overwhelming sense of my own unworthiness, of being beyond redemption. She cried for me, as I cried for myself, and she promised to pray that I would understand, anew, the promise of redemption that has been, is, and will be mine.

Then, in worship, I was overwhelmed with the presence of the Son, through the Spirit, for the sake of the Glory of the Father. The whole story seemed to unfold in my head and heart and I believed, in a new way, that this story was for me, too. I felt called forward to see the baby, offered a chance to hold him by his parents who smiled and insisted. The tiny hands, the marvelous baby-weight in my arms. . . Such joy.

On the north wall of the worship space at Cornerstone hangs a cross. Like all Protestant Churches, it is empty, signifying both its centrality and that this instrument of death is not the end of the Jesus story. As we sang Christmas carols, after having taken communion, I could see first, the tiny baby, then the man, hanging there, smiling down through the blood and tears. Then, the cross was empty and I could hear, from an empty tomb, the laughter that is the true final word of the story. The baby who sleeps on a bed of straw, wrapped in rags to stay warm is the man tortured and murdered by an Empire who does not want to hear a word of freedom, of salvation. The New is the biggest threat to all Empires, and Jesus was nothing if not the first real new thing to come to the world. Our capitalist orgy is as much about removing the threat implicit in the Christmas story as it is a celebration of the birth.

The story, in its fullness, doesn't really begin with a remembrance, an anamnesis of that long-ago night in Bethlehem. It began on the first day of creation, because it is the story of God's prodigal, never-ending love, an obstinate refusal to take our no as the final answer. Even if that means substituting his yes for our no. We are caught up in the great adventure, the challenge God poses for us - do we recognize and celebrate that magnanimous grace that is ours in the babe of Bethlehem or do we refuse, perhaps even laugh it off as a fable, a myth, a story for gullible ignoramuses too purblind to accept the reality of its falseness?

Today, I received the best gift anyone could ever give me. In a new way, not for the first time, and I know not for the last, I received assurance that my name - yes, mine - is called by the babe in the stable to come forward and kneel. I received the blessing of seeing that babe look down on all of us with love born in pain, and forgive us. I received the blessing of the Divine laughter that is the first sound of Easter, the only real Christmas carol worth singing.

Merry Christmas to all of you, to each of you, and may the peace of Christ, the peace that passes all understanding, be with you.