Hulk,
I'm a lucky son-of-a-bitch to have a friend like you. Your email in response to my last post brought tears to my eyes. I wanted to write something just as meaningful in response, I wanted to write a post that would let everybody know what a fucking amazing friend you are. I wanted to tell everybody about your wisdom, your passion, and your empathy. I wanted you to know how deeply I admire you… but all I've got are these few lines that read like a Hallmark card (well, except for the swearing).
I love you brother. And thanks.
(By the way, I talked to Bushey today — he was trying to convince me to go planting up by Fort Nelson. That got me thinking about the season we planted together… I realised that a lot of my good memories from that summer are related to watching you freak out. Thanks for that, too.)
Where are you?
Ann Lamott repeats a Hasidic story about a rabbi who tells people that if they studied Torah, it would put scripture on their hearts. A student asks the rabbi, “Why on our hearts, and not in them?” The rabbi answered, “Only God can put scripture inside. But reading sacred texts can put it on your hearts, and then when your heart breaks, the holy words will fall inside.”
If we encounter Jesus in “the least of these” then I think that journeying in love relationships with marginalised people is something like putting Jesus on our hearts. Yet such relationships, when they are genuine, cannot help but lead us to a place of broken-heartedness. A place of crying out to God. When we love such people with a real love, then our hearts will break and Jesus will also be in our hearts.
(In the same way if we are also to be Jesus to these people then when their hearts are broken we have the chance that we’ll fall into the holes — that Jesus will fall into the holes — instead of the other shit that people force into their hearts just to stay alive.)
Billy Graham, you got it wrong. You don’t get Jesus in your heart by saying a pithy prayer. You get Jesus in your heart by journeying with his precious ones — the crucified people of today.
~
Leslie is a sweetheart. There is a softness to her, a gentleness in her words and in the way that she looks at you. She’s the kind of kid that you want to hug, the kind of kid you want to take under your wing and say, “It’s okay, you don’t have to be strong anymore. Rest now. Play now. We’ll be strong for you.”
Leslie has cerebral palsy and a learning disability. Sometimes it takes her a while to learn things and she falls down more often than most people.
Oh, and Leslie’s mom started selling her into the sex trade when she was just a little girl — not that she’s much bigger now.
Ever since she moved into our program we’ve been worried about the men that Leslie’s been hanging around with. We’ve talked with her about being safe, about setting up boundaries, about trying to avoid places where she might get trapped. I had a good chat with her the other day. She says the guys she hangs with continually offer her drugs for sex — and maybe there was a time in her past when she would of done that — but she respects herself too much to consider the offer. She refuses and she likes the way that makes her feel about herself.
And then one night Leslie didn’t come home. I sat at the desk all night long hoping she would come in… but she didn’t. She came in the following evening flying high and totally wrecked. She was crying and trying to get money out of her savings. Staff refused to give her money and she fled. One of the RAs found her curled up in the back alley in the fetal position. It turns out that a some of the guys she was hanging with had dragged her into an alley, forced a bunch of pills down her throat and then ripped her pants off. They were grabbing at her and…
She’s rocking as she tells her story and she flinches every time a guy walks by. Now she can’t eat, she can’t sleep, and she can’t stop crying.
“I feel empty. I feel like I’m dead. And then sometimes I feel so angry… I’ve started cutting myself again — I hadn’t done that for a year and a half.”
Leslie is one of my kids, she’s one of my people, and I love her. I don’t give a fuck about what kind of special relationship you think you have with your god — if you’re not concretely journeying in love relationships with people like Leslie then I’m half inclined to say your faith is bullshit. But maybe that’s just me lashing out because my friends are getting gang raped on a pretty regular basis.
~
Ann Lamott tells a story about A.J. Muste in her book Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith. A.J. Muste used to stand in front of the White House during the Vietnam War. He would go, night after night, rain or shine, and stand with a single lit candle. One night he was asked, “Mr. Muste, do you really think you are going to change the policies of this country by standing out here alone at night with a candle?” He replied, “I don’t do it to change the country, I do it so the country doesn’t change me.”
Listening to Leslie makes me think of Mr. Muste. I am not listening to her because I think I can save her — I wasn’t there in the alley when they forced her down onto the ground all covered in “piss and shitty garbage.” I wasn’t there when they tore at her clothes and her body. I suppose that god was there bleeding and crying and feeling helpless along with her — so I’ll do the same now. We may not be able to save each other but perhaps being together will give us the strength we need as we wait for God’s salvific action.
So I’ll hold my candle, and I’ll smile and try to look brave when you come by and tell me what a wonderful thing I’m doing — before you drive away.
I’m not trying to give my life meaning
by demeaning you
and I would like to state for the record
I did everything that I could do
I’m not saying that I’m a saint
I just don’t want to live that way
no, I will never be a saint
but I will always say
squint your eyes and look closer
I’m not between you and your ambition
I am a poster girl with no poster
I am thirty-two flavors and then some
and I’m beyond your peripheral vision
so you might want to turn your head
cause someday you might find you’re starving
and eating all of the words you said
~ Ani DiFranco
God as Judge
The metaphor of the judge does not have its locus in a theory of law. It lives, rather, in a world of desperate, practical appeal to those who have no other ground of appeal or hope and in a world of righteous rage among those who are appalled at exploitative brutality that must be called to accountability.
~ Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament.
As Christianity was infiltrated by Greek philosophies and other modes of thought from the Greco-Roman world, the idea of judgment became increasingly related to a law of moral purity, and personal piety. That is to say, judgment became associated with sin that had more to do with personal holiness and less to do with social justice. Of course this is only natural once Christianity becomes the official religion of the Constantine's empire (and any other subsequent Christian empires), for the religion of empire is a religion which cannot show much regard for the social injustices that result from the excercise of power. If anything such a religion provides a the empire with a justification for such inequalities.
However, a Christianity that only thinks of judgment in this context is essentially unbiblical. As Brueggemann emphasises, the notion of God as the judge, the notion of God excercising his judgment, is intimately tied to socio-economic issues.* God as judge is understood as the God who will not tolerate social injustices. God as judge is the God who sides with the oppressed over against the oppressor. God as judge is the God who brings liberation to captives and food to the hungry.
Of course Christian discourse about judgment is mostly dominated by questions relating to the final destination of one's eternal soul (which is itself a Greek, and not a Hebraic, concept). However, Krister Stendahl, a New Testament scholar who is partially responsible for launching the school of thought known as 'the new perspective on Paul,' does an excellent job of bringing a genuinely biblical understanding of judgment back into the discussion. He argues that God's judgment cannot be divorced from the realm of the social and the political. The notion of God's judgment cannot help but give us pause about our current socio-economic status. In the conclusion to his stirring essay “Judgment and Mercy” (found in Paul Among Jews and Gentiles), he writes,
Judgment and mercy. We must resist all homogenizing, neutralizing, dialecticizing and balancing acts with these terms.** There is little mercy except the chance of repentance for those of us who sit in judgment; but when judgment comes upon us, there is much mercy for the oppressed… So let us weep! And let them rejoice when the judgment that comes upon us provides their liberation!
Christians would do well to worry less about the state of their own souls and worry more about the state of their neighbours' bodies.
___________________________
* I say “his” because the title of “judge” when applied to YHWH is generally associated with YHWH's masculinity. There are other titles that emphasise YHWH's femininity — of course, as Brueggemann also highlights, we need to understand all nouns as “noun-metaphors” when they are applied to YHWH in the Old Testament. They are not Israel's primary way of referring to YHWH and only gain their meaning from their association with the broader narrative and from the ways in which YHWH acts in the story of Israel.
** This thought also fits well with Brueggemann's insistence that one should refuse to resolve tensions that are inherent to the biblical texts. Brueggemann argues that such tensions must be maintained because they are essentially a part of the character of YHWH as it is revealed to us.
Saints and Commies
When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.
~ Dom Helder Camara, Archbishop of Recife, Brazil.
And don’t even think about suggesting that God has a preferential option for the poor. Such a thing is unthinkable to us who — despite our alms-giving, and our oh so noble acts of charity — pursue comfort, wealth, and that ever elusive sense of security. A preferential option for the poor? But I’m rich, and I’ve built my business with integrity — God must love me. God doesn’t have favourites.
Unfortunately, when one seriously studies the bible a preferential option is unavoidable. God does have favourites. There are people groups that God consistently sides with and speaks of with great affection — and there are people groups that God regularly sides against and speaks of with great anger. And it’s only natural that the groups the God sides against tend to claim that God is on their side, that they are living holy lives and are experiencing intimacy with the divine. It always was that way and I don’t expect things to be any different now.
David and I
David was a tough guy when he moved into our program. He came in talking about fucking bitches and bashing faggots. David rides girls like he rides his skateboard, fast, hard, and every now and again somebody gets hurt. He did some time when he was younger — he’s only 18 now — and I think he got in with some white supremacists. I’m not sure but, every now and again, there seems to be a veiled racism hanging under his words.
You see, where David comes from, they don’t give you respect. Respect is something you earn, something that you take, and it’s only given grudgingly.
In our briefings we would talk about David, we were constantly warning him about his language, his behaviour towards women, and members of the LGBTQ community that participate in our program. We were all pretty sure that things were going to come to a head one day, that David was going to explode, that we would have to come down hard on him for him to realise that we’re serious about what we say.
But David never exploded and we never had to come down hard on him. He just… changed. There was no big break through, no big blow-out, nothing. Suddenly the way he talked was different, suddenly he was treating queer and trannie youths respectfully. Suddenly he seemed just like any other kid that’s hungry for love.
And that’s what love is. Love is respect that is given freely. David never had to earn our respect, never had to take it from us. We were giving it freely to him since the day he moved in. And it changed him. David chose to respond. He suddenly found himself in a new and safe place and that enabled him to drop all his guards, to let his shoulders down, and be more like somebody he wants to be — not somebody he has had to be in order to survive. And so he did just that. He dropped his guards. He smiles and says that he’s happy to see me.
The thing is…
The thing is that when I compare myself to David I end up thinking he’s a far better person than I am. You see, I also had found a safe place, a place where I think I was loved more deeply than I had ever been. I too had somebody give me an unearned respect. But instead of letting down my guards and trusting like a child, instead of trusting like David trusted, I ran. I wrecked everything and I disrespected — disrespected in the deepest sense of the word, a sense which I only expect people involved with street culture to understand — the person who loved me and trusted me. With all my talk about love, and trust, and willing vulnerability, I find myself to be a more hurtful kid than David.
let it go
the damage in your heart
let it go
the damage in your heart
i can’t tell you how the words have made me feel
i can’t tell you how the words have made me feel
~ Weezer
I *heart* books
Well, since this seems to be a bit of a craze amongst certain bloggers, and since I love books so damn much, I thought I’d get in on this.
Number Of Books That You Own
Just under 500 — I told you I love books.
Last Book Bought
Performing the Faith: Bonhoeffer and the Practice of Nonviolence by Stanley Hauerwas. $9 and brand new… how could I say no?
Last Book Read
God, Medicine, And Suffering by Stanley Hauerwas. An intriguing look at the way our contemporary approach to medicine reveals how dominant societal narratives (or the lack thereof) are unable to address the question of suffering adequately. Hauerwas’ emphasis on the role that a community living a shared narrative plays in giving suffering meaning is, well, brilliant (but I wouldn’t expect anything less from him).
On My To-Read List
Oh boy…
Jesus Remembered by James D.G. Dunn.
Not Ashamed of the Gospel: New Testament Interpretations of the Death of Christ by Morna Hooker.
The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation by Jurgen Moltmann.
The Possessed by Fyodor Dostoevski.
On Job by Gustavo Gutierrez.
The commentaries on First and Second Corinthians in The New Interpreter’s Bible Series.
Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman.
I could go on…
“Five” Books that Mean A Lot To Me
Well, I’ll pick five fiction books and five non-fiction ones, in no particular order.
Fiction
1. Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis. Easily Lewis’ greatest (and most under-rated) book.
2. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. I want to be Jean Valjean.
3. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. Unfortunately, I am Jude Fawley.
4. The Brothers K by David James Duncan. I laughed, I cried. This narrative is more “god-haunted” than pretty much any other book I’ve read.
5. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevski. This book really needs no introduction. Read it.
Shit… is that five already? Honourable mentions go to The Plague by Albert Camus, David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.
Non-Fiction
1. Jesus and the Victory of God by N.T. Wright. There’s been a lot of books written about Jesus. This is easily the best one. You cannot read this book and be the same kind of Christian that you were before.
2. The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology by Jurgen Moltmann. The book changed my life more than anything else I’ve ever read (oh wait, except for the bible). You cannot read this book and believe in the same god that you did before.
3. A Theology of Liberation: History Politics and Salvation by Gustavo Gutierrez. This was my introduction to liberation theology and the first time I heard about “the preferential option for the poor.” It also put me onto other authors such as Sobrino, Boff, Segundo, Ellacuria…
4. Liberation Theology After The End Of History: the refusal to cease suffering by Daniel M. Bell Jr. A brilliant commentary on liberation theology, on capitalism, and on the ways in which the church needs to embody forgiveness by suffering redemptively/salvifically.
5. Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies by Noam Chomsky. This was the book the drew me into counter-cultural politics. For that reason Chomsky beats out other authors like Neil Postman or Naomi Klein.
Damn, so many others… Embodying Forgiveness: A Theological Analysis by L. Gregory Jones comes to mind, as does Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross by Michael Gorman, The Shape of the Church to Come by Karl Rahner, and pretty much anything by Hauerwas. Hope in Time of Abandonment by Jacques Ellul should really be on there as well. That book shook me pretty much as deeply as The Crucified God. It was that book that put me onto the whole idea of godforsakenness. I suspect that Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy, by Walter Brueggemann might make that list when I finish reading it.
The Symbol Gap
Psychic numbness is possible, says Lifton, because of a “gap of symbols,” meaning that a community lacks adequate symbols to mediate and communicate the horror and brutality of its own life. Thus where symbolic life in a community is thin, lean, or one-dimensional, violence can be implemented, accepted, and denied with numbed indifference.
~ Walter Brueggemann, commenting on the writings of Robert Jay Lifton [Jude, have you read anything by this guy?] in Theology of the Old Testament.
Tom Wright argues that Jesus, following the prophetic tradition, was a master of reworking symbols in meaningful ways (cf. Jesus and the Victory of God). Jesus was capable of taking the dominant symbols of the religion of his time and manipulating them in ways that made them come alive in urgent and often radically new ways.
If the contemporary Western church is to be transformed it must encounter people who, like Jesus and the prophets, are capable of rediscovering the power, and significance, of rich religious symbols that have now been reduced to trite and kitschy icons.
Similarly, if the church hopes to be a community that lives peaceably, if it hopes to live in the midst of all the darkness, blood and violence of reality, it must — as Lifton implies, and Brueggemann affirms — rediscover the symbols that it has to deal with the horror and brutality of real life. As Christianity has become a religion of a class of people who are committed to faking life, a people committed to maintaining an image that says everything is alright, all the time, symbols that speak of things not being okay have lost their meaning (as many people have pointed out before me, the cross was an instrument of torture, not a piece of costume jewelry [cf. esp. Martin Hengel's work on crucifixion]). Until the church regains the power of its symbols, until the church lives honestly in the midst of reality (cf. Jon Sobrino's Where is God?) violence will continue to be “implemented, accepted, and denied with numbed indifference.”
Mendacity
The problem with trying to be honest with others is that I first need to learn to be honest with myself. And that… well, that usually takes a lot of time.
But I think I'm finally there. I'm finally ready to speak honestly with others because I have finally spoken honestly with myself.
Bearing Witness
In his monolithic work, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy, Walter Brueggemann continually argues that the Old Testament resembles a law court. Within the metaphor of a trial Brueggemann picks up on the role of a witness and says this:
The witness allegedly had access to [the] actual event, was there, saw it and experienced it, and so is qualified to give testimony.
Now if Christians seek to be witnesses [Gk: martyrion] to Jesus Christ they should have access to Jesus, they should have experience of (and with) Jesus. It is intimacy that qualifies Christians to give testimony about Jesus.
The contemporary lack of witnesses (exhibited especially in the lack of martyrs — martyrs understood in the more radical sense) suggests that there are relatively few who have actually encountered Jesus. The testimony of Christians today garners little credibility because it is generally a false testimony — it is people speaking of something they have not experienced and, therefore, something they know nothing about (for knowing God as a mental construct is quite different than knowing God as a person). Perhaps the largest way that this is exhibited is the fact that, as Brueggemann points out elsewhere in Theology of the Old Testament, the God in the Old Testament is primarily known for acting with transformative power in the midst of history. This God was known for his mighty deeds (cf. Gerhard von Rad). Yet most contemporary Western Christians live with little reliance upon God breaking into history. We have become much too engrossed in God's Being as opposed to God's doing. Which is why I am increasingly echoing the words that Karl Rahner used to say to his theology students: I do not know the God that you are speaking of.
All this brings me back, once again, to another Rahner quote: future Christians will either be mystics or they will cease to exist as Christians. By this he meant that Christians will have a genuine experience of (and with) God or they will (post-Christendom) have no reason to be Christians.
And, of course, the first step to knowing God is admitting how little we know God.
May Books
Well, no school + no television + no girlfriend = hella lotta books.
1. Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross, Michael Gorman.
This is one of the best books I have read. Comparable (in caliber) to The Moral Vision of the New Testament by Richard Hays, I think that anybody who wants to accept or reject Christianity should read this book — here a genuine Christian spirituality is revealed. Those who have developed an affinity for the likes of Piper or McLaren should really read this book so that they can get a better understanding of what Christianity is all about. A much needed voice.
2. Where is God? Earthquake, Terrorism, Barbarity, and Hope, Jon Sobrino.
A poignant reflection upon the 2001 earthquakes in El Salvador, the bombing of the WTC, the bombing of Afghanistan and the war in Iraq. Sobrino is one of the best liberation theologians out there.
3. The Disappearance of Childhood, Neil Postman.
Picking up themes that are further developed in Amusing Ourselves to Death and Technopoly, Postman argues that, with the decline of a typographic culture and the ascendancy of a visual culture, childhood is bound to disappear. He argues we have once again returned to the Dark Ages, where children are simply miniature adults (and adults are large children). I love Postman, he’s witty, intelligent, and is often bang-on with his socio-cultural critiques. Postman has said that, of his writings, this book is his favourite.
4. Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion, Robert Coles.
Dorothy Day — one of those people that makes me want to become a Roman Catholic.
5. Prison Journals of a Priest Revolutionary, Philip Berrigan (edited).
Although one can’t help but wonder about a certain egoism in Berrigan’s writings, reading his journals is humbling for any who aspire to making sweeping (revolutionary) changes in our society. An interesting perspective on Vietnam from an American priest who was willing to be jailed for his religious convictions.
6. Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean.
Staying with the theme of American Catholic social activists… Prejean is quite an interesting voice. The things that struck me the most about this book were (a) the way in which she was unable to journey alongside of both the victims and the perpetrators of violent crimes (b) the way in which she gradually moves towards a more restorative approach to justice by the end of the book.
7. The Gulag Archipelago (I-II), Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn.
I think I stayed away from Solzhenitsyn for a long time because I was sick of people trashing the U.S.S.R. in order to make the West look righteous. A grievous and horrifying read — especially in light of Guantanamo Bay and other places where the U.S. is creating it’s own Archipelago.
8. Bread and Wine, Ignazio Silone.
Self-described as “a socialist without a party, and a Christian without a Church” this is Silone’s most autobiographical work. The ending completely shocked me. Completely. I think I actually gasped.
9. Poor Folk, Fyodor Dostoevski.
Dostoevski’s first book and the one that launched him into the circles of Russia’s literary elite. It’s interesting that, at the time, this book was considered radically empathetic.
10. The Double, Fyodor Dostoevski.
Dostoevski’s second work. It did not receive nearly as much acclaim as his first, due largely to the fact that is was misunderstood by a lot of critics. Quite an interesting look into mental illness — especially considering Dostoevski’s own struggle.
11. The Eternal Husband, Fyodor Dostoevski.
The best of these three short novels, Dostoevski writes a very compact, well put together story that picks up on themes that are more fully developed in The Idiot and The Possessed.
12. The Sorrows of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
It’s always interesting to go back and read something that totally took Europe by storm at the time it was published (and actually made Goethe a renowned author). But, being quite removed from that romantic period, I can’t say I really loved this work.
13. Grimm’s Fairy Tales, the Brothers Grimm.
Some people read encyclopedias in the washroom, others read magazines… I decided to read Fairy Tales.
14. Kissing Chaos, Arthur Dela Cruz.
Still looking for other graphic novel’s comparable to Craig Thompson’s. And still coming up empty.