If I were more serious about blogging, I would look ahead to the week’s readings and write about them before we hear them, but as it is I tend to hear them, be inspired, and take a few days to mull them over, ending up about 48 hours behind the lectionary when I decide to comment on it.
Yesterday was Trinity Sunday. This feast always sneaks up on me, possibly because it comes in the shadow of Pentecost. It celebrates one of my favorite theological ideas: that God is dynamic, mysterious, varied and engaged with us in every possible way. I cannot imagine being satisfied with a lesser God.
The second reading for the Solemnity was from Romans, containing Paul’s famous statement we even boast of our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
Some people look at that and see only danger, the danger that comes when people manipulate scripture to use it to keep people down. Yes, people have looked to that as an excuse to afflict and to keep the afflicted in their place. But when I heard it proclaimed this weekend my ear was drawn not to the beginning of the statement but to the end, that hope does not disappoint.
I have become well acquainted with hope in recent years. I rarely hope in a particular object or outcome – those indeed disappoint, and often. But I have settled into a hope that believes all will be well, that the worst of our lives are not the final word, and that there are myriad resurrections possible thanks to a God who died and rose.
For me, this is not pie in the sky stuff: My most intense experiences of hope have come in experiences of honestly accepting a grievous reality. Knowing that life can be tragic and still believing that life can be good has produced a new strength in me. This hope is not eagerness or anticipation - more a conviction that goodness and love are our ends. Like any virtue this hope is tested and surely will continue to be, but now it helps me face the day-to-day with a different attitude toward the bad. There are plenty of things that disappoint me, but hope has yet to be one of them.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
Searching for the Real
Not only do I keep the seemingly anachronistic phone books that appear annually on my doorstep, I use them from time to time, and this weekend I found myself searching for the directory’s latest incarnation in order to look up an address. I needed to find a service center for the wireless device I reluctantly purchased a few months ago so that I wouldn’t spend most of my time without access to the internet. My trip to the store was of the universally aggravating sort that need not be explained, and I left the store with another broadband card coming in the mail, and this wry thought on repeat in my head: A book never let me down like this.
I don’t like the idea of relying on ‘stuff’ to entertain me. Although I am a devotee of Facebook and Twitter (and, of course, blogging) I am equally wary of the barrage of contact and stimulation they can provide. I don’t want gadgets, I don’t want a million TV channels, and I want it to be easy to unplug and to look for something real. I look at new technology and see new passwords to memorize, new directions to uncode, new chargers to clutter the basket under the couch. I also see things that pass away – why get attached to something that will be out in a few years? I’m not opposed to technology in general: for example, I am quite glad that it exists when I am at the doctor, and despite doing most of my writing by hand, I still use the Internet to share my ideas with a world that may or may not care. I’m just opposed to the more-is-better attitude that is quickly becoming sacrosanct. My phone does nothing but call and text, my TV does nothing but show network channels. I know I can live without them, and from time to time I do.
Now we can “read books” on an electronic device – convenient for travelling, I suppose, but at what cost? There are two books with which I have spent more time than with any other: the Bible and The Brothers Karamazov. Both of those are as precious to me as objects as they are as repositories of the written word. The sections that fall open tell the story of what has intrigued and moved me, and the many years of underlining and scribbling in the margins track how I have changed in relation to these unchangeable texts. Almost every dinner with my parents and brother ends with some good-natured factual dispute or confusion that requires the use of a reference book. Someone fetches the dictionary, atlas, encyclopedia, or Bible and we resolve whatever has come up. The act of dashing up the stairs or digging through a stack of books to retrieve the information gives it more value, and as the book goes back on the shelf we know that it will be there the next time we need it.
We can read these books on a screen. We can take online tours of great museums, and listen to “choirs” of singers who have recording themselves individually in their bedrooms. We can look at the Grand Canyon on Google Earth. None of this can come close to the real thing.
We label these experiences “virtual” – virtual tours, virtual performances, etc. When I started thinking about that word I couldn’t pin down the definition, but imagined it was in the ballpark of “not real, imaginary, a substitute for that which is real”. The true definition (which, incidentally, I looked up in an old-fashioned hardcover dictionary) horrified me: being in essence or effect, though not formally recognized or admitted. In other words, pretty much the real thing, even if no one will say that out loud.
Let’s not delude ourselves that any of this is real. Turning that last corner at the Accademia and seeing Michelangelo’s David is real. Feeling the breeze on your face is real. Hearing a live chorus (or better yet, experiencing the camaraderie and intimacy of singing in one, of having your artistry affected by the person standing next to you) is real. Looking in someone’s eyes, holding someone’s hand – those things are realer than any Facebook status or Direct Message. Our ‘virtual’ activities are fine substitutes when circumstances prevent our experiencing reality, but too often we use them to escape the power of the real.
In the end, I’m willing to sacrifice convenience for simplicity, staying unplugged for stretches of time, using old paper maps and phone books on my search for the real – in books, art, nature and people.
I don’t like the idea of relying on ‘stuff’ to entertain me. Although I am a devotee of Facebook and Twitter (and, of course, blogging) I am equally wary of the barrage of contact and stimulation they can provide. I don’t want gadgets, I don’t want a million TV channels, and I want it to be easy to unplug and to look for something real. I look at new technology and see new passwords to memorize, new directions to uncode, new chargers to clutter the basket under the couch. I also see things that pass away – why get attached to something that will be out in a few years? I’m not opposed to technology in general: for example, I am quite glad that it exists when I am at the doctor, and despite doing most of my writing by hand, I still use the Internet to share my ideas with a world that may or may not care. I’m just opposed to the more-is-better attitude that is quickly becoming sacrosanct. My phone does nothing but call and text, my TV does nothing but show network channels. I know I can live without them, and from time to time I do.
Now we can “read books” on an electronic device – convenient for travelling, I suppose, but at what cost? There are two books with which I have spent more time than with any other: the Bible and The Brothers Karamazov. Both of those are as precious to me as objects as they are as repositories of the written word. The sections that fall open tell the story of what has intrigued and moved me, and the many years of underlining and scribbling in the margins track how I have changed in relation to these unchangeable texts. Almost every dinner with my parents and brother ends with some good-natured factual dispute or confusion that requires the use of a reference book. Someone fetches the dictionary, atlas, encyclopedia, or Bible and we resolve whatever has come up. The act of dashing up the stairs or digging through a stack of books to retrieve the information gives it more value, and as the book goes back on the shelf we know that it will be there the next time we need it.
We can read these books on a screen. We can take online tours of great museums, and listen to “choirs” of singers who have recording themselves individually in their bedrooms. We can look at the Grand Canyon on Google Earth. None of this can come close to the real thing.
We label these experiences “virtual” – virtual tours, virtual performances, etc. When I started thinking about that word I couldn’t pin down the definition, but imagined it was in the ballpark of “not real, imaginary, a substitute for that which is real”. The true definition (which, incidentally, I looked up in an old-fashioned hardcover dictionary) horrified me: being in essence or effect, though not formally recognized or admitted. In other words, pretty much the real thing, even if no one will say that out loud.
Let’s not delude ourselves that any of this is real. Turning that last corner at the Accademia and seeing Michelangelo’s David is real. Feeling the breeze on your face is real. Hearing a live chorus (or better yet, experiencing the camaraderie and intimacy of singing in one, of having your artistry affected by the person standing next to you) is real. Looking in someone’s eyes, holding someone’s hand – those things are realer than any Facebook status or Direct Message. Our ‘virtual’ activities are fine substitutes when circumstances prevent our experiencing reality, but too often we use them to escape the power of the real.
In the end, I’m willing to sacrifice convenience for simplicity, staying unplugged for stretches of time, using old paper maps and phone books on my search for the real – in books, art, nature and people.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Every closet has a skeleton
Every closet has a skeleton. Everybody has a secret. We’re all damaged and no one shows it.
Maybe it’s just that I’ve been watching too much TV, but I am increasingly disgusted with the overly negative melodrama that passes for art these days. More and more I find a deliberate, pushy darkness in literature and in drama. I’m sick of wallowing in how bad we all are, and I don’t think the solution to the world’s ills is to glorify or to rejoice in our shortcomings.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the world is all sweetness and light, and I do believe that we are all damaged and most of us either don’t show it or don’t deal with it well. We’re sinful people, and you can think that my perspective is totally shaped by my Catholicism, but it has mostly been shaped simply by paying attention.
But I believe that sinfulness is not the end of the story. I’ve been thinking about this for a while and was reminded of a talk I gave on reconciliation years ago. As I was writing that talk I started to wonder biggest challenge of the sacrament of reconciliation is not saying our sins out loud but letting go of the secret pride we have in being damaged. This is what I wrote at the time:
It’s easy to approach God, in the confessional or elsewhere, with the conviction that you have a sin that is the most horrifying ever, or that you have a pain in you that nothing will ever make OK. There is a certain sense of hubris in this belief that you have the market cornered on sin and darkness.
But none of us do. We enter the confessional and announce our sins and it doesn’t shock the priest and it doesn’t shock God. We have to let go of our sins and our pasts and allow God to transform our lives. I don’t think the hard part of the sacrament is the naming of the sins, or whatever penance we might receive: it’s accepting forgiveness and letting go of our sins. For our lives to be transformed we have to submit not only to God’s will but God’s mercy & forgiveness.
Yes, every closet has a skeleton. But there is also the possibility that those dry bones can have life put into them again when the time is right.
A few months ago I wrote about singing with a message, and I knew at the time that the post was a bit of a cop-out, because I felt like something had changed and I had a message, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. How boring the rest of my life would be if I had it all figured out, but I think I am getting an inkling. There is no need for my message to be about darkness and disorder – there’s enough of that to go around, enough people reminding us that we’re all damaged and don’t show it. Maybe the message lies on the other side of that: we’re all redeemed and don’t know it.
Maybe it’s just that I’ve been watching too much TV, but I am increasingly disgusted with the overly negative melodrama that passes for art these days. More and more I find a deliberate, pushy darkness in literature and in drama. I’m sick of wallowing in how bad we all are, and I don’t think the solution to the world’s ills is to glorify or to rejoice in our shortcomings.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the world is all sweetness and light, and I do believe that we are all damaged and most of us either don’t show it or don’t deal with it well. We’re sinful people, and you can think that my perspective is totally shaped by my Catholicism, but it has mostly been shaped simply by paying attention.
But I believe that sinfulness is not the end of the story. I’ve been thinking about this for a while and was reminded of a talk I gave on reconciliation years ago. As I was writing that talk I started to wonder biggest challenge of the sacrament of reconciliation is not saying our sins out loud but letting go of the secret pride we have in being damaged. This is what I wrote at the time:
It’s easy to approach God, in the confessional or elsewhere, with the conviction that you have a sin that is the most horrifying ever, or that you have a pain in you that nothing will ever make OK. There is a certain sense of hubris in this belief that you have the market cornered on sin and darkness.
But none of us do. We enter the confessional and announce our sins and it doesn’t shock the priest and it doesn’t shock God. We have to let go of our sins and our pasts and allow God to transform our lives. I don’t think the hard part of the sacrament is the naming of the sins, or whatever penance we might receive: it’s accepting forgiveness and letting go of our sins. For our lives to be transformed we have to submit not only to God’s will but God’s mercy & forgiveness.
Yes, every closet has a skeleton. But there is also the possibility that those dry bones can have life put into them again when the time is right.
A few months ago I wrote about singing with a message, and I knew at the time that the post was a bit of a cop-out, because I felt like something had changed and I had a message, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. How boring the rest of my life would be if I had it all figured out, but I think I am getting an inkling. There is no need for my message to be about darkness and disorder – there’s enough of that to go around, enough people reminding us that we’re all damaged and don’t show it. Maybe the message lies on the other side of that: we’re all redeemed and don’t know it.
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