Letter to a Friend

It's miserable now, and the world no doubt seems like it's ending. In a way it is ending.. the world as you once knew it is no more. The sooner you accept that you can never go back to this world the better.. but of course you're probably in no position to accept it yet.

I lost my mind during my separation.. I mean I was lost completely. During that time I had to do whatever it took to keep from going off the deep end into suicide. It meant creating a space for myself right where I was. It meant rethinking what it meant to be me.. you know, who I was as a man apart from anyone else. Throughout history men (and women) have found themselves in that place.. and they have left some heart-wrenching monuments along the way. It is a human truth that each one will move through that moment in a different way. Some will indeed commit suicide.. others will become destructive towards others and themselves.. still others will channel their feelings into a momentous creative act.. some will travel. Each one is different.

The reality is life is an open possibility.. even though it may not feel like it right now. It is. The key is not to do something stupid that will narrow those possibilities.. In the moment this kind of foresight is rare.. but it is vital. Destructiveness is ultimately futile. Suicide works in that it ends the pain, but it's permanent, without the possibility of discovery or a new event. But all men, having considered suicide and persevered, realize what a small thing it was, in the end, that caused them to consider death, the most unchangeable human act. The act is not commensurate with the suffering... There is no human experience that is as permanent as death (including suffering), and so the suicidal act is ultimately excessive. What you need is not excessiveness, but simplicity. 

Here in the early hours of darkness is no time to lose your head.

Freud on Reason and Religion

"Our God, Logos, will fulfil whichever of these wishes nature outside us allows, but he will do it very gradually, only in the unforseeable future, and for a new generation of men. He promises no compensation for us, who suffer grievously from life. On the way to this distant goal your religious doctrines will have to be discarded, no matter whether the first attempts fail, or whether the first substitutes prove to be untenable. You know why: in the long run nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction which religion offers to both is all too palpable. Even purified religious ideas cannot escape this fate, so long as they try to preserve anything of the consolation of religion. No doubt if they confine themselves to a belief in a higher spiritual being, whose qualities are indefinable and whose purposes cannot be discerned, they will be proof against the challenge of science; but then they will also lose their hold on human interest."

Sermon on the Occasion of the Newtown Massacre

One cannot possibly stand before you today and neglect to say a word about the tragic events of recent days.  I would be remiss in my duties to take the pulpit without reference to an event that has drawn the whole world into itself, has caused so much suffering, so much soul-searching. 

At such times one’s pastoral duties must reflect the needs of the people.  To one, consolation.  To another, a listening ear.  To still another, an explanation (as if one can be offered, no matter how crucial an attempt may be).  For some the greatest consolation may come in the form of an explanation.  For others, a prayer or silence.  At the present time, from this stage, it is hardly possible to do all these things. 

One should not forget that a pastor too is caught up in history, in the same events we are all caught up in.  She is not above such events, but in her own way must come to terms with them.  In other words, this platform is not a privileged place where suffering and soul-searching are absent as if, as pastor, one has greater spiritual fortitude and tranquility.  On the contrary, the question of innocent suffering and the growing culture of death around us shakes the pastor to her core.  For this question is one that begs two others that necessarily follow: Where is God and where are God’s people?  The first wonders at God’s seeming absence while the innocent suffer and die: in the present time, young children, six and seven year olds.  This question is really quite an ancient one.  The second one, which is also ancient, wonders at the child of God’s place in the world.  That the Church of God is surrounded by a culture of death is certain.  That the Church of the Father of heavenly lights is already highly influenced and even saturated with this culture is equally certain.  The lesson of Luke 4, in which the Lord encountered a demon-possessed man in the synagogue, is not lost on us here.  Today we must be prepared to admit that among us too there lie powerful forces of evil.  One cannot be naïve in this regard.  There will always be weeds among the wheat, not just people of poor character among other people of relatively better character (!), but within our own hearts too we find weeds and wheat.

We will start with our first question: Where is God?  This is necessary because the answer to our second question regarding the people of God flows naturally from this.  First I think we can all agree that God was not there as the tragic events unfolded.  But we must be clear what we mean when we say “God was not there.”  We know that God, according to Paul and the poet he quotes in Acts 17 is that Being in whom we move and have our own being, and that for this reason he “is not far from any one of us.”  Presumably then he was not even far from the one responsible for the school tragedy.  That is, he is present-for-us at all times.  He is not, in some crude manner, a material substance that fills in the spaces between objects, but rather God is Spirit.  When we say “God was not there” we mean then two things: 1) The actions of the murderer do not reflect the will of any God we know, and 2) God was not there in the form of substance, however powerless, i.e. God did not physically restrain the murderer.  In these ways God was absent.  We must admit, as those who believe in a God, that God was nevertheless present in some way.  This way we call “Spirit.” 

One might ask, “what good is it if God is only present in Spirit, but cannot even lift a finger to help.”  One is entitled to ask this question, and indeed it should  be asked quite openly, even perhaps, especially in the Church of God.  For when we call on God for aid in troubling times, we should not imagine the most fantastic things, as if the greater our imaginings are, the greater our faith is.  We are not unaware of God’s chosen instruments of action, of the place where Spirit moves.  We are not ignorant of the meanings or implications of the Incarnation.  We have seen how consistent is God’s plan in that in our Saviour dwelt bodily the fullness of the Deity (Col.2:9), and now in his Church so too his Spirit dwells and moves.  The apostles were not in error to fall upon the ground and worship him, a man who hungered and grew thirsty, who defecated and shared all our bodily functions, though by all appearances their actions were shear madness.  So too the body of Christ today is made up of many undesirable parts and yet here Spirit moves.  God is Spirit.  This Spirit, who moves where Spirit wills, was surely moving in those present at the recent tragedy, those who made every effort to save the lives of the children in their care, those too who dashed to the scene to stop the murderer, even if it meant losing their own lives in the process.  This spirit of self-sacrifice and love is surely the Spirit whom we are speaking of.  So while we reject the crude notion of a God made up of particles of matter, and absent this type of God from the scene, we simultaneously acknowledge a much more tragic, yet for that very reason, triumphant Spirit present in the self-giving love and care of those present.  We cannot forget that if God can be pierced on a cross, he can be pierced in the heart of his people. 

This is the answer to our second question: “Where are God’s people?”  They are where the Spirit of God moves.  When they act and love they manifest the Spirit to and in the world.  Just as Eternity miraculously made its way into the body and form of a human being, so too Eternity now rises up out of this same body, each one of us -out of our finitude and smallness, it nevertheless rises!  You see God was not helpless to act in these tragic events, God did act.  Just as God once relied on a frail human body, so too God continues to rely on frail beings, beings afraid to act, to speak out, afraid to challenge the forces of nihilism and death that pervade our culture, afraid to meet the cross on our own, these creatures God lives amongst and shows himself to the world through.  Yet we have seen in the self-sacrifice of a few for the many that this is not a spirit of timidity, that in the end the will of the Father is our spiritual sustenance, a cup we are capable of drinking if we will take it in our hands as the few have done. 

The time has come to dispense with false notions of a God, with the individualism that runs so rampant we are not able to recognize in the Church the collective body of Christ, the Spirit of God.  One should not read the promise: “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Mt. 28:20) without simultaneously reading “He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit” (1 Pet. 3:18): the Spirit that now dwells among us.  “You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you” (Rom. 8:9). 

What will be your basic orientation to the world around you dear child of the Spirit?  Will you confront the forces of death and decay with your comrades, shining a light into every dark corner, even those corners of your heart?  Will you participate in this culture of death and sit idly by, allowing the cup you've been offered to pass to others?  Or will you take this cup and drink it to the dregs with the conviction that today, as far as you and the great company of your comrades are concerned, Spirit will rise?

Regarding justifications

When will the justifications not be enough?

It is the case that the answer to the question of innocent suffering is simultaneously the fulfillment of our need for an explanation.

For this reason the justifications will always be enough.  The dissonance thinking animals experience as a result is reinterpreted as faith, real, suffering faith.

This does no honour to the slain whatsoever, but rather reinforces individual ego.   The religion of apology and silent yet suffering fidelity is the religion of Ego justification.

The only proper response is not to justify the very One who supports and reinforces ego, but rather to reject this One as a prosthesis. 

There is no ultimate meaning here.  The suffering of innocents is the necessary consequence of our animal nature.  Looking for answers anywhere other than this sublime (and yes, monstrous) animal is an affront to human being and existence. 

Eternal Returning

Rilke

Again and again, however we know the landscape of love

and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,

and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others

fall: again and again the two of us walk out together

under the ancient trees, lie down again and again

among the flowers, face to face with the sky.

The Odyssey

As one that for a weary space has lain
Lulled by the song of Circe and her wine
In gardens near the pale of Proserpine,
Where that Ææan isle forgets the main,
And only the low lutes of love complain,
And only shadows of wan lovers pine—
As such an one were glad to know the brine
Salt on his lips, and the large air again—
So gladly, from the songs of modern speech
Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free
Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers,
And through the music of the languid hours
They hear like Ocean on a western beach
The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.

Andrew Lang, 1844-1912

Theological Practice

Fragment of a Thought on Theological Practice

What is the status of theological thought?  Who “owns” it, i.e. who has the right to engage in and utilize it?  Is it the special possession of faith traditions, somewhat like the specialist knowledge and apparatuses of various scientific disciplines, or can non-faith participants legitimately “do” theology?  To put this another way, does it have the same status as communist egalitarianism, as pointed out by Rancière in connection with failed communist communities:

They did not fail, as the opinion goes, because individuals could not submit to the common discipline.  On the contrary, they failed because the communist capacity could not be privatized.  The sharing of the capacity of anybody could not be turned into the virtue of the private communist man.

Ranciere’s point is that so many categories of communist discipline, whether it be emancipation from oppression or the communal sharing of labour, do not belong to the particular predicate “communism” as if only a communist could properly assume their practice.  They belong precisely to the “capacity of anybody” by virtue of their universality, and therefore cannot be privatized or held pretentiously as particular communist virtues. 

Insofar as egalitarianism, ethics, and the event (in the sense of creative novelty) are concerned, can the Church not admit that in the past it has likewise “privatized the capacity of anybody,” has made these categories virtues of the religious community as if without the Church everyone would only do “what was right in his/her own eyes,” as if there could be no new subjective creation without faith in Christ? Such a suggestion can only be said to be preposterous in view of the empirical evidence.  It was Alan Watts, that once Anglican minister turned Zen Buddhist, who summed up the state of homily during his time in the Church: “So much preaching we hear on Sunday morning comes down to this: ‘My dear people, be good!’”  So much should be admitted.  The real problem, however, is that such actual homiletic practice is a reflection of an underlying theology that has become little more than the repetition of the everyday humanistic parlance of modernity.  Obsessed with seeming relevant, much contemporary theology is found in the position of having given up on the deeper core of Christian thought, in, for instance, the historical status and meaning of the resurrection.  Nor is the problem merely implicit or subterranean in the life of the Church, for the Church itself has its own resurrection “reactionaries.”  For them, the resurrection is not theologically meaningful as an historical event, but merely provides a hermeneutical substrate for what is truly important: theory and practice regarding the human subject/community.  This sort of theology is so obviously a compromise with modernity that it is difficult to take it seriously as theology.  It would surely cause the one who said, “…if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain,” to roll over in his grave (1 Cor. 15:14).  Perhaps it is best seen as a reflection of the consciousness of a certain cultural type, or a certain “class.” As a result of the life of relative comfort lived by this class, it can no longer identify with the words that follow those just quoted: “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied” (v.15).  In short, it reflects a decadent class theology.   

Quoted section: Jacques Rancière, “Communists Without Communism?” in The Idea of Communism (New York: Verso, 2010), 169.

Whitman

To a Stranger

 

Passing stranger! you do not know
How longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking,
Or she I was seeking
(It comes to me as a dream)

 

I have somewhere surely
Lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall'd as we flit by each other,
Fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,

 

You grew up with me,
Were a boy with me or a girl with me,
I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become
not yours only nor left my body mine only,

 

You give me the pleasure of your eyes,
face, flesh as we pass,
You take of my beard, breast, hands,
in return,

 

I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you
when I sit alone or wake at night, alone
I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

Life After Death

"the last enemy to be destroyed is death." Jesus took care of that and has laid claim to life. Death is simply the end of the body...not the real you...that part that lives on and is ever transforming. It is true...we can keep getting younger....a spring in our spiritual step...a dance with the divine...a giddy heart....a "can't wait" attitude to see what is going to happen next...it is such fun...

This is a post taken from a Facebook friend.  Rather than respond there I'll just briefly comment here.  As much as I disagree with statements like the above, it's not worth risking a connection.  Actually I may speak a little to the complexity of navigating such relations, that is, those relations in which there is a radical difference in philosophical and/or religious beliefs.  A friend and I have started writing a book regarding just such a relationship but it remains to be seen when it will be completed.

It was Feuerbach who criticized statements like "the last enemy to be destroyed is death" for being entirely too convenient for a creature who longs for the certainty of its own immortality.  Freud, developing the observation, wrote in his Future of an Illusion:

It will be found if we turn our attention to the psychical origin of religious ideas. These, which are given out as teachings, are not precipitates of experience or end results of thinking: they are illusions, fulfilments of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind. The secret of their strength lies in the strength of those wishes. 

For those Christians who might dismiss Feuerbach, don't forget it was Karl Barth, one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century, who took Feuerbach quite seriously, even writing a preface to a later edition of Feuerbach's most provocative work The Essence of Christianity (and let us not forget that Feuerbach himself was a theologian).  

Now this is what we might call a psychological critique of the notion of an afterlife or life after death.  But what about a scientific one?  I have written elsewhere about the importance of keeping in mind the connection between personality/consciousness and brain.  One can observe, even in the most basic of human experiences, this connection. For example, when someone is struck in the head with great force there is a loss of consciousness, that part of us that is our personality, our self-awareness etc.. that part of us that Christians and others believe will transcend the limitations of our bodies.  But if trauma to the brain causes an immediate loss of self-awareness, the consistent conclusion to draw is that the ultimate trauma to our brains, death, will result in the same thing.  What will it be like after we die?  Nothing.  The same as when we are struck in the head and lose consciousness.  There is not even any darkness, let alone angels and a light at the end of the tunnel (an experience brought about by a brain starved of oxygen as it turns out).  There is simply nothing.  How can we imagine this?  It was once said by Alan Watts that one simply needs to think about what it was like before one was born (and had a brain).  In the same way that "death" before birth meant our complete lack of existence, so too death after birth will mean the same thing.  If this is unsettling to some, consider Feuerbach's words, and those of Freud. Could it be there may be a grain of truth in there somewhere?  Life and existence paid scant attention to the needs of our ego before our birth, why should they after?

Claudio Ianora

How does one really honour the dead? It has a hollow sound.. "honour the dead," like the emptiness of an apology to a tombstone. Yet there exists a need to give honour to those who are worthy of it, even if it is too late for the honoured to received their praise. There is nothing left to do in any case.

I give honour to Claudio Ianora, to Cain who wandered the earth, who wasn't afraid to shake his fist at the host of heaven on occasion, who in fact was the most faithful man I have ever known. He was the salt of the earth. He was a Van Gogh in many ways. His colours were words. Like Beckett's man who always wanted rest and was never able to find it in this life, he finally did find it on All Saint's Day, 2011. I for one will never forget this man. I shall miss our talks.

Sarkozy

In the wake of the Toulouse siege and the killing of self-proclaimed al-Qaeda operative Mohamed Merah, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has stated:

From now on, any person who habitually consults websites that advocate terrorism or that call for hatred and violence will be punished by the law. Telegraph.uk

Of course we might ask the President what precisely constitutes "terrorism" or how one should understand "advocate." Does activity calling for a new form of government fall into the category? We might also wish to inquire as to the content of the term "consults." At what point, Monsieur President, does a consultation become "habitual?" After two times? A dozen? Is it merely the observation of a website, perhaps out of curiosity, or is it only observation with malice? How can one tell the difference? He does not say, for example, that anyone who consults a certain website and then commits a crime will be punished, but rather that consulting a website is itself a crime.

The logic here is Christian but with a twist. In Christian teaching, one can look but not think (looking at a woman to lust after her is the same as committing adultery), for Sarkozy, one perhaps might think, but they certainly cannot look. They are two sides of the same coin. What the ultimate totalitarian ruler would demand is that one not look or think. To achieve this one might meld together the right leaning secular state (France) and Christian moral teaching. One will deal with the outward appearance of things, while the other will monitor the inner condition of its citizens. Only then can we be safe.

Pascal on belief (A translation)

Vous voulez aller á la foi, et vous n'en savez pas le chemin; vous voulez vous guérir de l'infidélité, et vous en demandez les remèdes. Apprenez (les) de ceux qui ont été tels comme vous, et qui parient maintenant tout leur bien. Ce sont gens qui savent un chemin que vous voudriez suivre, et guéris d'un mal dont vous voulez guérir. Suivez la manière par où ils ont commencé: c'est en faisant tout comme s'ils croyoient, en prenant de l'eau bénite, en faisant dire des messes, etc. Naturellement même cela vous fera croire et vous abêtira. Pascal, Pensées, 233

"You want to have faith and you do not know how; you want to heal yourself of unbelief and you ask for the remedy. Learn from those who have been like you, and who are now betting all their possessions. These are people who know a way which you would like to follow, and who are healed of an evil that you want cured. Follow the way by which they have set out: that is by doing all as if they believed, by taking the holy water, by saying masses, etc. Even this will, naturally, make you believe and deaden your passion."