Afghanistanford

So I am leaving for Kenya in a couple days and hope to keep a journal during my trip at http://stanfordinkenya.blogspot.com/. In the mean time, I have posted my Afghanistan journal from March 2007 at http://afghanistanford.blogspot.com/. It is really just a series of daily summary e-mails I sent to my wife at the end of each day. In other words, it's long so here are some highlights:

Foot for foot, Dubai is one of the richest places in the world because of an unusually high concentration of oil money. But there are still signs of poverty everywhere you look. This is perhaps the greatest contrast I’ve seen.

We worked a solid 12 hour day today. It seems fairly common around here, but it was rough given the jet lag and three nights of rocky sleep. It has been a rough time to give up soda for lent. It is free and I could use it. But I face my jet lag unmedicated and feel oddly heroic for it. Once in a while I use the cravings to meditate on the darkness of my unregenerate life and the longing for Jesus to make things right in the world and in my heart.

My body armor makes it difficult to get in and out of vehicles. I kind of have to awkwardly roll out of my seat. It made me admire my pregnant wife.

The embassy café was selling candy bars made in Iran. This was strangely hysterical to those of us at dinner. (They dissapeared the next day).

Speaking of potato, whenever we get hassled (usually by strangers walking by us) for not speaking one of the languages (which happens a lot here and the ‘I’m only here for two weeks’ answer is not satisfying) John always shows off the one Pharsi word he does know: catchaloo or potato. It is such a fun word (especially if you draw out the ooo sound) that it always makes the accuser laugh and become less aggressive.

Seeing the daily workings of USAID has really helped to demystify the ‘international development’ industry. It is true that they appear to have a sense of mission and purpose…but they also write reports, deal with annoying co-workers (possibly to a disproportionate degree) and just slog it out through the bureaucracy of multiple governments. Some could be in it for the money and adventure (which both can be plentiful if you play it right). Meanwhile, it has encouraged me regarding the usefulness of a professor of hydrology/hydraulics in a country like this. The engineers I am dealing with are really hungry for training, but are, for the most part, not well trained. Of course, I have also often felt that precisely what I am doing is what I should continue doing.

John’s quote “How better to make life long friends than a bomb blast and a very bad bathroom.” About hanging out with the 2 AID PRT’s in our house after the blast.

I found out today that Kandahar means 5 brothers referring to the legend in which 5 brothers were sent south to build and ancient dam. Water engineering is even in their lore here.

Thursday is a half day (one of the students said T.A.I.T. – “Thank Allah its Thursday” – John is thinking about opening up a chain of restaurants with that name).

I have always contended that many of the psalms would make more sense in a war zone, because they were often written in war zones. I feel more so now: “In Yahweh I take refuge. How can you say to me “flee like a bird to your mountains.” For look, the wicked bend their bows; and set their arrows against the strings to shoot from the shadows…When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do? Yahweh is in his holy temple; Yahweh is on his heavenly throne. He observes men; his eyes examine them…For Yahweh is righteous, he loves justice; upright men will see his face.” Ps 11

I like dog tags. I find them existentially helpful. Each morning, when I put them on, I feel like they have two effects. First, as I put them on, they are just substantial enough and cold against my chest that I feel like I am starting something important…like my day. Second, and more impactfully, dog tags exist for one reason…to identify your body. Beginning each day with a reminder that it is not promised is really helpful.

We watched Dogma after dinner. Dan asked me, “Are you ultra religious.” I am never sure how to answer that question. To say yes would probably describe the situation accurately in his mind, but it grates at my self understanding (as well as my theological training) and is not how I would describe my attempted life of worship and obedience.

One of the benefits of lecturing with a translator is that you get to review the next slides and form the flow of your discussion in the time that the translator talks (usually longer than you talked). It gives you a couple of minutes to plan the way the next couple minutes will go. Another interesting detail about teaching with a translator: I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten board during my own lecture before, but it has happened here.

One of the professors commented on how the schedule we were keeping was sustainable because of our youth. We asked him how old he thought we were…he said 24 (John) and 20 (me)…he was only off by over a decade for both. A couple things about this: One, it is not uncommon to be age underestimated in the hard environs of a country like this. People just look older sooner. But also, it astounds me that these people would sit attentively under the teaching of a practical teenager. If they think I have scarcely finished undergrad, they must either have been disappointed, impressed and/or desperate for training. I wish I knew all this at 20.

It was Mongolian night at the CAFÉ (which is funny because it is St Patrick’s day).

We have decided that spice before the gym is not a good combination. Several of the cooks are Gurkas from Nepal. In fact, several of the USAID folks did a tour in Nepal back in the early days of western influence. It is the first time I have had a serious conversation about the state of a monarchy in several years. One of the guys who went to Nepal remembered a couple sayings including ‘the red road cannot be trusted.’ I have no idea what that means.

In the US there is a much smaller temporal standard deviation of lifestyle.

Then my phone rang. It was John. There had been a suicide attack. They were bringing me in for at least the rest of the day.

Woodberry (the top scholar of Islam at an evangelical university, Fuller) spent much of his adult life in Afghanistan. Apparently he helped pastor the only sanctioned church in the country. Finally, just before the Taliban rolled through, the government gave them 1 day notice that the church building was to be torn down. The members showed up the next day and served tea to the construction workers as they demolished the building. I found that pretty moving. Also, after they had destroyed the church they started digging in the ground around it. Someone asked what they were doing. They said they had heard about an underground church. Woodberry and Co. smiled and said, ‘terribly sorry sir, but you will never destroy that.’

Tomorrow I finally start teaching again. I am looking forward to it but am embarrassed to face the students having been forbidden to travel their everyday streets with body armor and an armored vehicle.

(My driver) has been to the US 2 times with the US government. The first time was to Alabama. He said he got back and told his friends America was just like rural Afghanistan. He can’t read though his English is quite good. He said the worst part about not being able to read was to not be able to keep the mullahs accountable. During the war all the combatants were claiming to be Allah’s righteous warriors. He wanted to be able to study for himself.

Another thing about the cell phones. I think it is a really interesting bit of technology to introduce into a relationship based culture like this. My understanding of middle eastern culture is that relationship trumps schedule and people fully concentrate on the relationship they are tending to at the moment. Introduce a cell phone that allows some relationships to trump others, and it makes for a very interesting dynamic. Students are always taking calls in class and chatting.

Dan said that he couldn’t believe how well our training went. He said that it was the first training out here he has seen that was worth a sh**. He said he wished we had come out for two weeks each class…and he’s pretty cynical.

Unexpected Insight on Consequentialism

I’m not a big Ben Affleck guy. I can’t really think of a role I’ve enjoyed him in since Good Will Hunting. So my expectations were not high when I picked up Gone Baby Gone to help pass some late night laboratory hours. You can imagine my surprise to find a well made film, with strong acting, characters I cared about, and a rich sense of place. I don’t know if Casy Affleck is a good actor or not[1] but the protagonist in Gone Baby Gone was completely in his wheel house and he nailed it. But the biggest surprise here was not the success of the Affleck brothers, but the totally worthwhile themes.

Spoiler Alert: Gone Baby Gone is a mystery and is, therefore, by nature, built on a surprise ending. I can’t discuss the themes without reveling it. So if the movie interests you I recommend seeing it before reading this post. However, I have to warn some of my readers that it has very dark moments, is built around a narrative arc of a child kidnapping and includes violence against children (I find I have less stomach for this sort of thing since Charis was born).

Patrick and Angie (Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan) are missing persons PI’s who are hired to assist the police in an investigation for a missing girl. The girl was apparently kidnapped while left alone (a common occurrence for her) as an act of revenge against her addict mother for a drug deal gone awry. The deeper the PI’s get into the case, though, the less sense it makes. People start dying and at one point, Patrick finds himself in a room with a child molester and a dead boy during a police shootout…and he puts a bullet in the man’s head. This string of events leads to this exchange with the officer in charge of the search (Remy played by Ed Harris):

Patrick: They say how old the boy was?
Remy: Seven.
Patrick: Second grade.
Remy: Should be proud of yourself. Most guys would've stayed outside.
Patrick: I don't know.
Remy: What don't you know?
Patrick: My priest says shame is God telling you what you did was wrong.
Remy: F#*$ him.
Patrick: Murder's a sin.
Remy: Depends on who you do it to…Would you do it again?
Patrick: No.
Remy: Does that make you right?
Patrick: I don't know.
Remy: It doesn't make it wrong, though, does it?

Far from an off-narrative tangent (which it seemed at the time) this little discussion foreshadowed the film’s central theme. Gone Baby Gone asks the question: Is the moral value of a decision determined by its outcomes? As the movie unfolds Patrick figures out that Remy and the girl’s uncle were the actual ‘kidnappers’ staging her disappearance and death to get her out of her dysfunctional and dangerous family situation and into the care of a heartbroken, kindly, retired police Captain (played by Morgan Freedman and his incomparably sad eyes). In the movie’s closing minutes Patrick confronts the Captain and is faced with the decision of whether to turn him in or walk away. Freedman passionately made the Captain’s plea:

“You know why you haven't (called the police)? Because you think this might be an irreparable mistake. Because deep inside you, you know it doesn't matter what the rules say. When the lights go out, and you ask yourself "is she better off here or better off there", you know the answer. And you always will....You could do a right thing here. A good thing. Men live their whole lives without getting this chance. You walk away from it, you may not regret it when you get home. You may not regret it for a year, but when you get to where I am, I promise you, you will. I'll be dead, you'll be old. But she... she'll be dragging around a couple of tattered, damaged children of her own, and you'll be the one who has to tell them you're sorry.”

And suddenly, with minutes left in the film, it shifts from a dark PI thriller to a serious bit of philosophical art…because we know the answer too. We have no doubt that the girl would have a ‘better life’ (“with birthday parties and sandwiches with the crust cut off”) in the care of the Captain and his wife. The outcomes of walking away are irrefutably superior. Remy, the Captain, the girl’s uncle, even Patrick’s girlfriend all justify their behavior in the name of an ultimate good, the safety and nurture of an innocent child. And this makes them philosophical pragmatists…ethical consequntialists. It is hard not to side with them. But moral goods are not evaluated by outcomes.
Patrick makes the lonely decision that the right choice may not have the comfortable justification of superior outcomes. At great personal cost[2] he reports the kidnapping and the girl is reunited with her mother. In the sad epilogue we see that while improved, this is still not an environment designed for her flourishing. And it is Patrick’s (seemingly nominal) religious conscience that sentences her to this life.

Gone Baby Gone tells the story of how philosophical consequntialism makes the desire to do ‘a good thing,’ something ‘men live their whole lives without getting this chance’ into a potentially self destructive impulse. It tells the story of the loneliness of accountability to a transcendent oughtness. I guess, in the end, it just tells a very compelling story. I owe the Affleck’s a second chance.

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[1] He was horrible in The Last Kiss but I can’t think of anyone involved in that film that can be proud of their effort.
[2] His girlfriend tells him she will leave and does.

A Treatise in Defense of My Man Card

Note: I am dipping into ‘the file’ again this week. This is an essay I wrote following a coffee break discussion with my co-workers about a year ago. Since I am likely in the midst of a string of film posts, it seemed appropriate.

I recently lost my ‘man card.’ There are a few factors at play here but the primary complaint is that I prefer ‘chick flicks’ to ‘action movies.’ Now let’s frame the issue precisely. Braveheart and Fight Club are my favorite movies. Pulp Fiction and the Matrix are in my top 10. On the other hand Jerry Maguire and Garden State are also in the top 10. I prefer well made movies with subtle but emotive soundtracks, good acting, philosophical themes and redemptive characters. It is immaterial to me whether these are shelved in the action or romance sections at Blockbuster. The problem is that only a couple of movies fit this description come out each year and I watch more movies that that. So the real issue is that if I am going to watch a mediocre or bad movie I would prefer a story about relationships to one with guns, fast cars and explosions.

Why I Watch Movies

I love story. Humans are fundamentally story tellers. Story has been at the center of human culture for millennia. This is actually one of the tragedies of the emergence of visual media as our culture’s dominant choice of entertainment; we have lost much of the narrative nature of our evolved and/or created race. Particularly as our sensibilities grow more postmodern and we reject meta-narrative, the quality of individual narratives seems even more essential. However, there are some in the visual arts that are actually fine story tellers, and I am interested in being involved in the narratives that shape the cultural and moral sensibilities of my society. So I watch movies.

It is therefore my contention that the prevalence of shooting, fast driving, chasing, exploding, punching and other ‘action’ sequences are usually departures from narrative. They are visual stimuli and seldom actually move the story forward in a meaningful way. If 40-70% of a 100 minute movie is comprised of action sequences that only leaves 30 to 60 minutes of story. I feel ripped off. And I think it is fundamentally a lack of imagination and symptomatic of a poor story or story teller.

As inane as chick flicks often are,[1] they do not have the option of shortening their narrative arc by a third or half through choreographed sword play or motorcycle chases. Each scene has to move the characters forward. Dialog is not optional. Relationships must happen (even if they usually happen badly). I prefer this.

Some Thoughts on Manhood

Admirable manhood is a specialized condition of true personhood.[2] My favorite quote on what it is to be a man was written about 1800 years ago by a man name Ignatius.

“I am not yet perfected in Jesus Christ, indeed I am now being invited into discipleship. At last I am well on my way to being a disciple. May nothing seen or unseen fascinate me so that I may happily make my way to Jesus Christ. Fire, cross, struggle with wild beasts, wrenching of bones, mangling of limbs, crunching of the whole body, cruel torments inflicted by the devil – let them come upon me, provide only that I make my way to Jesus Christ. Once arrived there I shall be a man. Allow me to be a follower of my passion, of my God.”

Ignatius believed that passion was the heart of manhood. Being passionate enough about something[3] that life itself (as well as the intact nature of one’s limbs) paled in comparison. This theme emerges in both Braveheart and Fight Club (see inset) in nearly opposite ways and plays significantly into why I particularly appreciate these movies.

Hebrew Scriptures define the marks of manhood as humility, mercy and the love of justice. Since the thin themes of many action films often thrive on the principles of self reliance and revenge they actually depart from my fundamental principals of manhood and there is nothing intrinsically masculine in a preference for them.

Passion and love of justice are immaterial to the enjoyment of watching things blow up. And if the latter rather than the former is the requirement for holding a man card I gladly relinquish it.

Post script: I wrote this ~ a year ago. Then approximately a month ago I found this cartoon on the very good xkcd.com that made a similar observation and an opposite conclusion:

Post post script: For those keeping track at home, that is 2 Firefly/Serenity references in 3 posts. My man card might be in danger but my nerd card is untouchable.
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[1] And they do not get a free pass. Romances need an obstacle to keep the couple apart for 80 minutes. In the vast majority of these movies, this obstacle is miscommunication or some one else (often a husband or wife!!!). These are tired and dysfunctional obstacles and also symptomatic of a deficient story teller. Art should ennoble and inspire to the beautiful and heroic. I would be 10 times more likely to watch a movie about trying to make a marriage thrive (something I, with a significant portion of the American population, am currently trying to do) than another movie about falling in love (which was great fun, but I don’t really plan on doing again).
[2] This is a dense and dangerous idea that I am throwing out carelessly. At the heart of feminism is the question of, to what extent, masculinity and femininity are specialized forms of personhood. I am not qualified to speak to this with any authority and my language here is vague and sloppy. I’d ask my deconstructing friends to overlook my imprecision.
[3] In his case and mine, Jesus.

Briony’s Unsatisfying Atonement

In the past couple weeks, in separate conversations, I’ve been asked for recent movie recommendations and found myself almost entirely at a loss. In the last few months I have only seen two movies that I can strongly recommend. Blame the writer’s strike I guess. My wife and I are in possessions of hearts. We were as enamored as any one else with Juno. But the real winner, which stands out all the more in contrast to its almost non-existent competition, was Atonement. When my friend Dan recently got me to unpack why I liked this movie so much, I was surprised by my answer. I loved Atonement because I felt its conclusion was entirely unsatisfying.

Spoiler alert: I do recommend seeing this movie. However, it is the kind of movie where the experience will be significantly diminished by knowing too much about the ending. I suggest postponing this post if you have any interest in the movie but haven’t seen it. I will try to talk in generalities and not give too much away but it will make more sense if you’ve seen the movie.

Atonement follows the life of a precocious pre-teen Briony, who out of childish jealousy tells a pernicious lie. Due to the immanent start of WWII this lie ends up irreparably devastating the lives of the two people she cares about the most. From about the half way point, the movie follows the Briony’s psychological trauma as a young adult and ailing senior as she tries to atone for the damage done. The young woman turns down a spot at Cambridge in favor of a hard life of military nursing. You can almost feel her futile attempt to pile good deeds on some cosmic scale against the dark sin of her childhood. There is a great scene during her nurse’s training where she is scrubbing the floor and then her hands in a Macbethian frenzy. In the background she read a letter to her sister:

Dear Cecilia, Please don’t throw this away without reading it. As you’ll have seen from the notepaper, I’m here at St. Thomas’s, doing my nurses’ training. I decided not to take up my place at Cambridge. I decided I wanted to make myself useful, do something practical. But no matter how hard I work, no matter how long the hours, I can’t escape from what I did and what it meant, the full extent of which I’m only now beginning to grasp. Cee, please write and tell me we can meet. Your sister, Briony.

The movie ends with an interview of an old and dying Briony, who has since become a great novelist. She is still sad and reflective, and reveals that the effects of her childhood lie were actually far more devastating than we had originally believed. But she seemed to have found a troubled peace, a thin ‘atonement,’ in recreating the ruined lives in a work of fiction. She eased her tormented conscience by giving the people she loved the life they could have had were it not for her youthful intervention.

Until the final moments Atonement was gripping and fully emotionally vesting. Every bit of dialogue and every emotion rung true. Joe Wright is quickly becoming one of my favorite film makers and his work was rightly recognized here. This final resolution, however, was entirely unsatisfying and it stood out dramatically against the backdrop of two hours of narrative with emotional resonance.

In my opinion, the stark failure of the ending actually made the movie more powerful. Because, honestly, apart from vicarious atonement Briony had no better option. Giving the tragic characters the lives they were cheated out of in a work of fiction is a hollow atonement, but it was the best available to her. And as the credits rolled the brought with them a wave of despair and emptiness.

The topic of vicarious atonement is not an abstract category for me. I have some experience with the despair of personal responsibility for broken lives. In the summer of ’97, between the time I spent in Nepal and the beginning of grad school in Wisconsin, I worked as an Assistant Program Director at a Mennonite Summer Camp in Lewis County. Towards the end of the summer I was involved in an accident that left a 12 year old in a coma. I cannot articulate the depth of despair. The guilt was soul crushing. I resonated with Briony’s complete lack of resources to atone for her actions.

The story of the accident ends with miraculous grace.[1] The young man made a full recovery. But God does not always choose to do that kind of thing. And what interests me here is the weeks of uncertainty that preceded the boy’s awakening from the coma.[2] No amount of good could have been accumulated to off set the pain I had caused. I needed Atonement from an external source, beyond my resources. And this was the moment at which the gospel was most real to me. Under the unbearable weight of accusation brought by my conscience and socialization[3] I learned to point to the cross. At the center of the story of Jesus is a cosmic transfer of guilt. Never have I found theology more existentially applicable. Our maker has not left us without resources in this broken world, even when we are the ones doing the breaking.

I guess it is my experience with guilt[4] that made the Briony’s solution ring hollow. It may seem a poetic turn or a clever lemonade out of lemons response, but fundamentally it is not a sufficient atonement. And I think the film maker understands this, sending his protagonist into the haze of forgetfulness and death a devastated woman with a thin supporting narrative. And this is why I found it so impactful. Because I have known Atonement. It is powerful and it is sufficient…but only because it was acquired by a champion who is both of those things.

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[1] I mean, seriously, have you ever looked at the statistics on how often CPR ‘works.’ It is practically a placebo. And don’t even get me started on people waking from comas or the dismal range of outcomes for those who do survive either CPR or comas.
[2] As well as the question ‘what if he hadn’t?’
[3] Among other more sinister sources.
[4] And here I am speaking of actual, ontological, guilt, not a misplaced or socialized emotion.

Preaching Transcripts and MP3's

I suspected that weeks in which I preach I’d have trouble posting. At least this week it was true. So I have started a secondary site with transcripts from my messages. They tend to be longer than the posts I have been posting here, but they do represent my creative content for the week so I will link to them in case anyone is interested. This week it was a message of the parable of the treasure in the field for FBC’s youth ministry.

http://stanfordtranscripts.blogspot.com/

Fragments and Links

I think that one thing Nietzsche and Bill Simmons have in commen is much of their best work is actually published in fragments. They are both observers more than orators and the kernel and digressions of their prose are always more interesting than their writing itself. So along those lines, I have collected some observations, quotes and links that do not warrant their own post but that I think are fun or provocative none the less.

"I find that I’m much sadder about the state of Dr. Horrible soul after 43 minutes than I was about Anakin Skywalker’s soul after—what, 12 hours?—of Star Wars I, II, III." -my friend Tom I have to say, I'm a big fan of decentralized production of art and this can only be a step in the right direction
Was anyone else startled by the honesty of "Believe" by The Bravery? Very Camus.
There's a smell of stale fear that's reeking from our skins.
The drinking never stops because the drinks absolve our sins
We sit and grow our roots into the floor
But what are we waiting for?

So give me something to believe
Cause I am living just to breathe
And I need something more
To keep on breathing for
So give me something to believe

"The call to service is often harder to exercise when power is so readily available." -Darrell Bock Commentary on Luke - on the Church's transition from movement to institutions.

It seems to me that the first question in Christian political theory is not what we should do with our power but is power the kind of thing the Church should wield. Power can provide the mirage of a shortcut to change when our mandate is service and proclamation. Bonhoeffer used to say that a church that expends most of its energy fighting for its own rights and struggling for its own existence has already ceased to exist.

My wife's response to the 'I kissed a girl and I liked it' song..."She makes some really good points."

Does anyone else feel disoriented that Stargate Atlantis has a Dr. Keller? The role is played by actress who was Kaylee, the ebulient mechanic from Firefly/Serenity, one of my favorite science fiction characters of all time (who SA is basically wasting as a timid flirt). But every time Shepherd dramatically yells 'go get Dr Keller' I envision the brilliant, bald, senior pastor of Manhattan Pres emerging to save the day.

Wouldn't it be cool if preachers had entrance music like baseball players. OK, it would actually be wrong on so many levels, mostly how it would play into the already problematic celebrity culture of the teaching ministry. But it is fun to think about what songs I would choose. I think I would have to go with "My Exit Unfair" by mewithoutYou or "Crawling" by Linkin Park

Speaking of mewithoutYou, (and here) I have had favorite bands before, but this is my first time as a hard core fan waiting anxiously for each new release, keeping careful track of touring schedules and buying the T-shirt. One of Charis' first words was 'ity bit' as she put her thumbs and pointer fingers together requesting the itsy bitsy spider song. I am convinced she is into spider themed music b/c we went to mwY's Brother Sister concert when Amanda was 39 weeks pregnant. (Incidentally, if you have never seen the look in a guy's eyes who is trying to decide whether he should card a 39 week pregnant woman who wants to get into Slims in a shady part of SF, it is truly a delight).

I think I am going to expand on this idea in a future blog, but Keller (the pastor, not the fictionalcheif of medicine) dropped a fantastically provacative quote the other day: "Christianity is the only religion that does not claim moral superiority of the believers to unbelievers." (paraphrase)

Speaking of moral superiority, I love this website. It is written as a helpful guide for Latinos, Asians and African Americans to negotiating the strange world of liberal Anglo culture: "stuff white people like". #'s 14, 21, 28, 30, 35, 39, 44, 61 and especially 73 (Gentrification) totally nailed me. I love #2 (Religions their parents don't belong to.)

I highly recommend visiting the comments section of my last post. Our friend Tiffany knows us from more life stages than any one else (Beaver Camp, Madison and Buffalo - and she and Josh even visited CA). She is a bona fide English Professor and excellent poet. She has posted an Allentown poem of her own and I couldn't be more honored. For those of you who are wondering what we are talking about with all this bronze angel stuff, Amanda and I lived in this second story dive in downtown Buffalo. It had mold, was under heated, grew icicles on the walls (inside) and is still my favorite place we have ever lived. It was across from a great restaurant/bar called Gabriel's gate which had a large bronze statue of the angel Gabriel with 2 propane torches on top of it. Our window afforded the finest view of Gabriel in Buffalo. The first time i saw it at night I thought the building was on fire.

Rilo Kelly's "Pictures of Success" is one of the best songs I've happened on in a while. I love the verse:
I've had it with you
And Mexico can f%@&ing wait
And all of those French films about trains
'Cause I’m not scared
But I’d like some extra spare time
I'm not scared
But the bills keep changing colors
Bills changing colors to convey various levels of lateness and urgency is such a visceral image of uncertainty and upheaval.

A friend recently said ‘profanity is the crutch of the inarticulate.’ I understand his point. But for those of us who love words, though we tire of their overuse, taboo words are too rich and powerful to completely set aside.

I actually think this guy is an atheist and many of these dioramas (for lack of a better term) are actually deconstructions or decenterings of the text. His intent is clearly to undermine the Biblical narrative by highlighting the sex and violence. But he just does such a great job. He parses of the description of Solomon’s Canaanite wives and concubines ...word...by...word...so he could fit as many images of his extensive Lego sex scene as possible (and props to him as Lego's are not known for being particularly limber). And honestly, this gets at the heart of the narrative. Solomon wisdom was no match for his sexual apatite. Intelligence is not a particularly helpful weapon against moral failure (and may actually be a detriment). The Bible is a remarkably honest book. Prudes tend to make poor exegetes.

All of this talk of Legos reminds me of the very good Death Star Canteen sketch. It is fun to think about how many levels of management there must have been between Vader and the guy who hands out trays in the Death Star Cafeteria.

Speaking of an exegete who is not a prude...my favorite Mark Driscoll line of late: "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas...unless its itchy."

If there are two kinds of people, those who think the Flobots are a gimmick and those who think they are an immensely talented and refreshingly contemplative hip hop act, count me in category 2. Love the muted trumpet. Love the themes.

Eminem is a technical virtuoso. But his stuff just ends up making me sad. His creative genius is obscured by his lack of emotional maturity.

A movie like "The Kingdom" wants me to believe it is a deconstruction because of the heavy handed moral ambiguity of the ending (which was about as subtle as the rat at the end of "The Departed"). But if you make a movie that is 60% gunplay and Jenifer Garner's pouty lips...and market it as 98% those thing...you may assuage your conscience by your quaint little deconstruction - but you are just war profiteering.

And on the topic of action movies that try become message pieces with a brief post script...I finally saw "Lord of War". Unlike the tobacco lobbyist in ‘Thank You For Smoking’ I never felt a thing for Cage's protagonist. But it did have 3 very interesting lines
"She didn't know I existed. I was beginning to think she had a point."
"Maybe that's what I can't escape. You can fight a lot of enemies and win. But you can't fight your biology."
"They say evil prevails when good men fail to act. They should say evil prevails."

I noticed that I pass a Decatur Street on my new bike ride to work a couple weeks ago. Last week in Omaha, one of the students in the class I taught showed me a picture of a sediment problem at the bridge in Decatur. I don’t actually know where Decatur is. But what went through my head in both of these instances:
Our stepmom, we did everything to hate her
She took us down to the edge of Decatur
We saw the lion and the kangaroo take her
Down to the river where they caught a wild alligator

Speaking of Sufjan, I saw a really intriguing film that parenthetically tells the story of his rise. The movie actually follows the Danielson Family on tour. At the beginning of the movie he is ‘my brother’s buddy Sufjan.’ By the end he is an international phenomenon. But Danielson is intriguing in his own right. The Church has only recently abdicated a central role in the realm of creativity and art. I find it interesting what kinds of art emerge from a life of faith that turn out to be of value to those outside the church. In this case the answer is…slightly disconcerting art.

Flaming Bronze Angels From The Omaha Airport

So another 60 hour work week is not conducive to creative output, but ‘fortunately’ I am stuck in the Omaha airport (going on 7 hours and counting) and I find airports to be a particularly productive ferment for poetry. For some reason, like 80% of the poems I write come from planes and airports. So I banged one out that has been percolating all week. First, an introductory word about my ‘poetry.’ Every time I share a poem with someone I hear the Smith’s melancholy British dig ‘I never knew you wrote such bloody awful poetry.’ I suspect that it isn’t actually poetry but something vaguely like it…more like stream of consciousness prose. Some day I hope to actually learn how to write a poem from a bona fide English professor. But until then I doggedly adhere to Chesterton’s dictum that ‘Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.’

So I spent the week in Omaha, easily the most surprising city I have ever been to. If you were to score cities with a ratio of actual coolness to expected coolness, Omaha would have to be near the top on the strength of a solid numerator and a very weak denominator. Chalk it up to east/west coast elitism I guess. Anyway, downtown Omaha got me thinking of downtown Buffalo and I got a little nostalgic. So here it is, six years later…an Allentown Poem.

Allentown

Gabriel, the majestic greenish seraphim
holy fire obscured
through the condensation on
my second story window.
Now I see in part as through a glass.

Early morning streets,
soft with the cold cashmere
of untouched effects of the lake.
Street lights refracted in all directions
by the curiously clumps
of solid precipitation.
I squint to see
through my windshield,
carelessly scraped.
Now I see in part as through a glass.

Oh, Buffalo.
Where bison fly but never roamed.
City hall could be the playground
of some costumed vigilante,
like some obtuse Gotham envy.
And the great coliseums overflowing
with passion and disappointment.
Ornate Victorians,
the aging smell
of your steel money exhausted decades ago.
Your proud faces, rarely white.
Your rust belt glory.
Now I see in part as through a glass.

A Grand Inheritance

My brother and I stood together at the calling hours for my dad a day after his birthday and two days before the birth of my brother’s first child. He had been killed earlier in the week by a reckless driver. The long hours passed and we politely greeted people who we knew well many years ago and others we had never met. We smiled, hugged and made pleasantries. We had long since come up with a half dozen stock conversations with jokes perfected by repeated use. We were tired and sad. Near the end of the night a middle age man reached us and kindly introduced himself and said nice things about Dad. After the standard exchange, however, he told us that he had some ‘merchandise’ that my Dad had acquired and not used yet. Apparently he was holding about $1200 dollars of this ‘material’ that my dad bought and he went to great lengths to suggest that it was some of the very best ‘stuff.’ After opining about the quality of this ‘asset’ he told us to call him when we were ready and we could talk about what we wanted to do with it. Nic and I listened politely. When he was done, we looked at each other, and then one of us said in our well trained funeral voice, “I’m sorry sir. We have no idea what you are talking about.” He looked up in surprise and said, like it was the most natural thing in the word, ‘Semen. I have about $1200 dollars of Bull Semen in my freezer that your dad purchased.’ We struggled to keep a straight face. You see Nic had just spent three years in a nice Chicago suburb and I was a Californian. People we knew didn’t keep bull semen in their freezers. But sure enough, I recognized the man as the gentlemen that showed up a couple times a year with a shoulder length glove to artificially inseminate select cows with the seed of some of the finest bulls in the land. We assured him that we would be in touch and he left. Nic turned to me before talking with the next guest and said, ‘Of all the things I never really expected to inherit, this ranks.’

Bovine Deficit

A couple of days after my father died, they came with a big trailer to take the cows away. Those damn cows. How much had they cost our family over the years? How many fights? How much time together? But as the field stood empty days after Amanda and I came home from the movies to 11 messages on our answering machine, I felt surprisngly alone.

I had been a grown up for some time. I lived three thousand miles away, had a great family and job and hadn’t depended on my dad for anything really except interest in my life for years. So why did the world seem bigger, colder and scarier now? Why did the absence of cows seem like being caught without a coat on one of those legendary northern New York winter days? They say that you will always be your parent’s little boy to them. But it seems like I had been my dad’s little boy in my mind as well. I wasn’t ready for him to leave my mom alone or never meet my children. But I think the biggest shock of it was the jarring impact of full adulthood; of loosing a buffer between me and the world that I didn’t realize I counted on.

The Ogre's Castle

Since I have spent nearly every waking, non-parenting hour this week working, this will be my first week dipping into 'the file' to post some older stuff. After having an e-mail exchange with my high school friend, Taunee, this week about my Dad, I've decided to post 3 short pieces about his death and funeral. This should not be as depressing as it sounds. The last one is actually a humor piece (as Dad would have preferred). But let me use the first one to unpack the title of this blog a bit...

...my Father was killed by a reckless driver just over 5 years ago, 2 days before his 59th birthday and less than a week before the birth of his first grand child (my brother's first born, Abby). My next post will deal more with how this affected me existentially, here I am more interested in a wordview with room for the s@*# of life. You see, I think that any successful world view has to believably encompass two seemingly disparate observations: that our lives are rich with indescribable beauty (see previous post) and horrifying evils. Most religious world views have to deal with 'the problem of evil' because they assert a fundamental purposefulness against which, loss and pain appear to be aberrations. Conversely, secular worldviews have to deal with 'the problem of beauty.' By asserting a fundamental purposelessness, art, beauty and love can be difficult fits. Which brings me to Dad's funeral, my brother and GK Chesterton. Nic used the following quote at the service from one of my favorite books, Orthodoxy (the most exhilarating book that no one reads because the title sounds unbearably tedious):

"For our Titanic purposes of faith and revolution, what we need is not the cold acceptance of the world as a compromise, but some way in which we can heartily hate and heartily love it. We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent. We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre's castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return at evening. No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? Can he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist? Is he enough of a pagan to die for the world, and enough of a Christian to die to it?" GK Chesterton - Orthodoxy

And so there it is. In an age of post modern detachment I am on a quest for a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent. White hot anger in the face of injustice and overwhelming joy in grace. Frustration with the darkness in my own heart and gratitude in redemption. The ability to sit at my dad's funeral and hate the world I love.

A Surprisingly Familiar Satisfaction

For years my favorite part of living out west was the hiking and backpacking. Living hours from some of the greatest backcountry in the world and less than a day from most of our country's National Parks was the highlight of our move out here and we took full advantage. When we finally decided to have our first child (a mere 9.5 years into our marriage) we actually picked up the pace. In the 3 years before Charis joined our family we did extended hikes or backpacking trips in Glacier (my personal favorite), the Canadian Rockies, Olympic, Cascades, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Lost Coast, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Yosemite (several times). (This gives me an excuse to post gratuitous backpacking photos.)

We knew that we would enjoy the parenthood life stage and were not mourning the loss of our extended newlywed phase. We just knew that one of our favorite activities would be on hold for a decade or so and we tried to get as much of it in as possible. When 'we' actually got pregnant I started to take existential steps to embrace the new season. I even wore my special, REI, $10/pair, hiking-only socks for other athletic purposes as a personal act of moving on. I was thankful for the life stage we had lingered in but ready to start something completely different. What surprised me was how existentially similar the experiences were.

There are several reasons I love to backpack. I am a big fan of the exercise vacation. I am goal oriented to the point of personality disorder. I enjoy the air, the sounds and the solitude. Amanda and I once covered 15 spectacular miles along the High Sierra trail and encountered more bears than people (final score: bears 1, humans 0). But mostly it is the experience of transcendence. The proximity to bigness. There is a familiar emotional response that comes from staring up at the shear mass of El Capitan, peering out over the jagged peaks of the Palisade range or watching the sun come down over the watery pacific horizon. It is the feeling of transcendence...the strange and terrifying comfort you feel when the confining walls of the ego are shattered and you are overwhelmed with otherness. When there is something else so grand, so lovely, so original you, for just a moment, have an accurately sober self assessment.

But, for me, this was the great surprise of parenthood. It is flush with these same moments. I had expected that in trading backpacking for parenthood I was trading up, but for a qualitatively different experience. What I didn't expect was that my favorite moments of parenthood would remind me of my favorite moments in the mountains. The beauty and wonder of our daughter affects the same experience of joy in transcendence. (This gives me an excuse to post gratuitous Charis photos.)

John Piper believes that our desire to experience the transcendent through sunsets and mountains is a clue to our fundamental nature. We are existentially wired to desire to be near that which is qualitatively greater than ourselves. He actually expands the realm of greatness to include sports. This is why we watch the Super Bowl, the World Series and the Olympics. The reason that I, as a completely heterosexual man, am so drawn to the power and beauty of Kevin Garnett is because I desire the experience of fundamental otherness. I want to celebrate greatness. I have a base code level desire that seeks satisfaction in greatness. I was designed to worship. Lewis famously calls these temporal passes with transcendence 'the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.'

I have always found backpacking satisfying because the greatness of the geologic anomalies we protect as monuments become conduits of worship. I am awed by their bigness and by analogy (or syllogism) I am more awed by their creator. The surprise of parenthood is that I find it satisfying and worshipful in precisely the same way.

What the Church can Learn from the Hollywood Writers Strike?

The screen writer’s strike came and left leaving us mostly nonplused[1] but leaving behind a few mildly interesting lessons:

1. Goateed, hipster picketers fail to generate the blue collar solidarity that usually accompanies labor disputes and all attempts to compare Hollywood types to coal miners or auto workers disintegrate into comic self parody.
2. Americans are so dependent on visual media that they will tune into repeat programming with nearly 80% loyalty verses new content, divesting the creative class of any bargaining power.
3. People who have lots of money did not get lots of money by sharing it with those who made them lots of money.

But as we learned far more than we cared to[2] about the inner workings of original content programming, one lesson for the church loomed above all others. All quality original content is generated in community. When content is produced by an individual quality can not be sustained. We learned that our culture’s premier orators are pretty average when required to summon their own material.

My primary access to this phenomenon was through my regular consumption of the work of Jon Stewart, who struggled to fill his 23 minutes, four times a week. It was often painful for both of us. Stewart would openly check his watch to see how long a particular gag had taken, pleading with time to pass more quickly. Friends and commentators suggested that others (Lettermen, Leno, Kimmel et al) faired even worse.

But this got me thinking. If someone as brilliant as Stewart can not fill 93 minutes of content per week (even with the help of the other non-writing actors) how can we reasonably expect the average pastor to pump out inspiring sermon week after week when, for most, it is only about 20 to 30% of what they do. The marketplace is a pretty good machine for churning out optimal solutions to a range of problems. The pulpit is the centerpiece of post-reformation Protestantism (whether that is Biblically justified or not). Preaching is the primary original content the church produces. We should optimize its development. We should consider the benefits of generating content in community.

Lest I be accused of the unpardonable sin of pragmatism, let me build a brief theological case. Content by community seems like it could be a pretty easy pill for the church to swallow. After all, community is central to the Christian experience. As Eugeene Peterson says, “You are not yourself by yourself.” Christians believe that connectedness is fundamental to humanness. We call ourselves the body, a fundamental metaphor of interconnectedness. Every prescriptive text on leadership in the New Testament talks about a community of interdependent teaching leaders. And finally, our anthropology requires us to view our own skills, ideas and talents with skepticism and to desire the corrective influences of others.

Still, it seems that post-reformation Protestantism has this picture of the heroic pastor slaving in solitude alone in the study. There are a couple pastors out there that can consistently make it work. Driscoll and Keller come to mind. But both of them have significant time carved out[3] for prep and even then, Driscoll has no fear of repeating the same joke for the 8th time[4] and Keller is probably preaching on ‘the gospel’ again this Sunday.[5] Most preachers, even exceptional ones, simply cannot be profound, inspiring, entertaining, insightful, carefully exegetical from their own reading and experience week after week, 45 weeks a year. Almost no other profession requires that. And, those that do, do so in community[6].

So how about it? Pastoral writing staffs. This might look like 3 to 8 lay individuals that study the passage 2 weeks before and are responsible for providing 3-5 fragments under the headings: Observations, Interpretive Points, Illustrations and Applications. The orator builds his/her own message and synthesis but has quality bits to draw from that would have taken a great deal of time to find and might come from a different perspective that resonates with the listeners (since they also work outside the church). Or better yet, can you imagine the sanctified chaos of a weekly ‘writer’s room’ (say 1 hour, Tuesdays, after work) where the ‘writers’ pitch angles, illustrating anecdotes and points of application and riff off each other giving the orator a productive ferment from which to draw and hone a message. And, as a bonus, they’d never go on strike.

________________
[1] Particularly those of us who consume >90% of our visual media through DVD’s.
[2] The entertainment industry is becoming increasingly self referential as they turn to themselves for content and find themselves more interesting then we do. We are getting a lot of new content about the entertainment industry (e.g. Studio 60, 30 Rock, Extras). Studio 60 didn’t fail because religious America has no sensibility for the transcendent art of Alan Sorkin. Studio 60 failed because we are interested in Sorkin’s art not Sorkin himself. (That, and we have a polemic tolerance threshold for our art).
[3] One standard suggestion involves putting in one hour of prep time for each minute of speaking.
[4] And to his credit, it is usually still funny.
[5] Though, to his credit, it will be fantastic.
[6] Political speech writing is another example.

Why Clutter the Blogosphere with Yet Another Moo?

When it comes to recently deceased comedians I am far more of a Mitch Hedberg guy than a George Carlin guy. Mitch oozed genius while Carlin gave off more of an aura of method, personal intensity and blue collar work ethic. But there is no doubt in my mind that my approach to the creative act is much closer to the workman like Carlin than the genius Hedberg so I read this interview with great interest, as Carlin described his process in detail shortly before his death. I found the basic outline of his process reminded me of two writers I deeply respect: Blaise Pascal and Jonathan Edwards (the one that wore the wigs not the expensive haircuts). It goes something like this:

1. Never allow a thought or observation to go unrecorded. Carlin used post it notes. Edwards famously filled many many notebooks when notebooks weren’t cheap. Pascal, more like the former than the latter in this case, opted for tiny scraps of paper.
2. Have a good system in which you revisit these observations and group them, turning multiple insights into narrative fragments. Carlin used a Mac. Edwards, again, with the notebooks. And Pascal famously, and more idiosyncratically, used needle and thread to group his little scraps of paper.
3. Weave these pericopes into a cohesive piece of work.

(Note: If it seems like a stretch to compare a contemporary comedian that I don’t even think was that good with one of the greatest theologians and one of the greatest scientist/poets that ever lived, well, it is. But I have recently taken Mark Driscoll’s advice to study comedic method as homiletics training since they are the only ones in our culture that do anything remotely like what a preacher does.)

I love blog culture. No fewer than 15 of my friends blog regularly and I really enjoy their updates and reflections. But until recently I have thought anything I might add to the blogosphere would certainly be redundant. To steal a line from my brother (something you will become accustomed to if you end up reading regularly) from many years ago, ‘just another moo’ in the cacophony of the herd. And most of these friends that write serious philosophical blogs are disappointed at how infrequently they get read. Here are three reasons I changed my mind:

1. I have recently realized that most serious bloggers use the pressure of their (often scant) readership to motivate them to make step 2 (above) happen with more regularity. So that even if they are infrequently read, blogging makes their other writing and speaking significantly better.
2. I am much better at step 2 than step 3 above. I live and die at the level of fragment. As a multidisciplinary generalist and intellectual eclectic, my primary contribution to any conversation is connection between seemingly disparate observations. The chance to get feedback, by way of comments, on level 2 content (and maybe level 1 if I ever produce a Bill Simmons ‘Rambling’ or a Nietzsche ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ type entry) is just too valuable to pass up.
3. I didn’t want to be left out.

Plus, I’ll be preaching regularly this coming year and wanted to be able to say, ‘for more, check out my blog.’ So there it is. I am going to try to post ~once/week, supplementing down weeks with essays and poems from ‘the file’. I’d also point you to my Amazon Reviews (link in upper right). Until now they have been my primary presence on the web and I intend to keep them up. Thanks for reading.

By way of preview, here are some things I am working on:

Linkin Park: Our Generation’s Dostoyevsky
Enough with Paul: De-centering Acts for the Church’s Role Players
Stewart Yes, Colbert NOOOOoo: Deconstruction vs Irony
What the Church can learn from the Hollywood Writer’s Strike
Why I Like Obama and McCain and am Not Confused
Social Components of Plausibility Structures
An ‘Epic’ Limerick about a Viking and a Visigoth

cow photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitbywoof/782600579/

Colplay’s Lyrical Rorschach

Coldplay's latest has set a new record for album downloads and unsurprisingly so. They are a very good band and seem to be just getting better. But their first single from this album is (perhaps unintentionally) the most interesting piece they have ever released. Viva la Vida is an intoxicating meditation on power and loss. But the most interesting line turns up twice in late refrains:

"For some reason I can't explain,
I know St. Peter will/won't call my name."

The reason I find this line particularly interesting is that I can't tell if Chris is saying will or won't. His lyrical ambiguity is perfectly honed to generate a powerful lyrical rorschach. I went back and forth between will and won't and finally sought the wisdom of the masses through everyone's favorite informational life line, Google. I found the confusion to be wide spread with people taking hard positions either way and others believing different words were used in each verse (which instigated a secondary, intramural battle regarding order).

It does appear (for the benefit of those of us who subscribe to an authorial intent hermeneutic) that Martin has adjudicated the debate. If his hunch proves true St Peter won't be calling his name. (Parenthetically, this is a meaningless statement since there is no biblical evidence that St Peter will be playing any direct role in eschatological events - but we all understand his medieval metaphor.) But I think that far more interesting than what Chris thinks about St Peter's name calling is what each of us thinks he thinks. Are we comforted by vague sentimentality or emboldened by cavalier indifference or affirmed by confusion? What does how we fill the Coldplay madlib say about us?