November 21, 2006
Impeccable Timing...
...on my part to write an article about my love of fruitcake to coincide with the Gateway Men's Chorus' holiday production for this year.
By the way, I do not want to herein go into debate about the topic of homosexuality, which is an issue that deserves more measured and thoughtful discussion than that which generally occurs in blog banter. It is interesting, though, to see a gay community apporpriating and subverting a prejorative term, and when I saw it in Starbucks this morning I thought it too funny a coincidence not to pass along.
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April 21, 2006
The Clarity of a Dumpster-Another Article in Catapult Makes a Turkey
For those of you keeping score at home, this is the third article in a row in Catapult, which in bowling terms makes a Turkey (i.e. three strikes in a row). As for whether this one or the last two are actually strikes or gutter balls, I'll let you decide, if you can spare the time. Get it? "Spare the time." Roomie Nathan will be proud.
The Clarity of a Dumpster
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April 7, 2006
Another Article in Catapult and a Poem too!
Another article and, for the first time, also a poem, woo hoo! Thank you, Kirstin (Catapult's editor).
If you have ever wanted to watch someone put a "kick me" sign on their back to see what will happen, well then the article is for you. In reality, writing this article, potentially, could be more like this.
If you have ever felt your faith challenged by the Hindu parable of the blind men and elephant, then the poem is for you.
Confessions of a Fundamentalist Librarian: Negotiating Hereses (Article)
Two Sonnets (Poem)
My Previous Writing in Catapult
The current Catapult issue is titled Heretic. It looks like there are some good articles, though I have not read them yet.
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March 24, 2006
Catapult Article-On the Seriousness of Being a Child
This article is a bit lighter than the previous ones. It was actually written for Advanced Composition in the Summer of 1994 for Dr. Betty Richardson's class, where I first began to believe that I might be able to do this writing gig.
Thanks, Dr. Richardson.
Read Himalayan Idyll.
Many articles in the Wonder Years issue are excellent.
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March 2, 2006
Circa 1982-84
Since I have been writing a fair amount them recently. This one goes out to the ones I love...to Vincent Amrit in Edwardsville and Norma Lee who is safely Home.
For how their lives wove together into the making of my own see the reprint below...
Continue reading "Circa 1982-84"
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February 10, 2006
A Post on Writing-Though, Perhaps on How Not To
My recent article on conflict was principally born through failure at it. And that, I am discovering, is generally also how I write. I do not know if it is nature or nurture (i.e. me failing to nurture my butt with a large kick to get disciplined), but I struggle with procrastination, with invariably getting every piece of writing done just at, and often after, the final moment. It happens every time. Sometimes I wonder if I could even write something decent if I did not put myself under the gun. More often, duplicitously, I mutter in my mind, and sometimes out of it, about how I could have done so much better if I had started sooner....mumble, grumble.
This post is not really about that issue, though. I did start this piece relatively early. No, it is about another pattern. When I begin to write I have this feeling that I need to cover all the aspects of a topic, from the cosmic down to every tiny contingency. I think this is the function of having perfectionistic tendencies, but that will have to wait until another post, in which I can explain how I believe I can have perfectionistic tendencies and be comfortable with rather messy and cluttered spaces, if I am left to my own devices.
Trying to situate what I write somewhere into the Theory of Everything does have its virtues as it can help in establishing a theoretical framework and in making valuable connections which I might use later. More often than not, though, it leads to paralysis, to me not even beginning. For this piece, I was going to cover the nature of conflict from the Garden of Eden on down, the nature of the spiritual battle between God and the Devil and our participation in it, how this all does or does not relate to the issue of war and pacificism, and then finally bring it down to interpersonal conflict, which was my main subject for the piece.
If you don't believe me. Here is the fragment of the first draft. Abandoned, oh, say sometime Monday morning for a Tuesday deadline.
____________________________________________________
The Good Fight-Learning the Art of War
For many, the only “good” fight is the one that never happens. For others, a fight of any type is something in which Christians never, ever should participate.
On a very fundamental level, the first statement is true. I cannot imagine an unfallen world in which any true fight between humans could be a legitimate possibility. In C. S. Lewis’ unfallen world Perelandra, after the demonic tempter sent from Earth to the “Eve” of Venus has launched numerous, subtly escalating lines of seduction to disobedience, the creatures of that world, human and beast, are put into a deep sleep. Why? They cannot “know” the mortal violence (the bloodletting, the cracking of bones, the total “giving over” to death) that is about to take place between the demonic Unman and Ransom, the representative of God in the conflict that will rid the new world of evil.
Lewis’ fantasy of “what if,” though, puts the lie to the second belief in the opening paragraph. Because our first parents did not resist the wiles of the very same tempter, death is a reality for us humans, and conflict has become the warp to the woof of the Goodness of creation. Bloodletting, cracking bones, a total giving over to death is at the center of the Christian faith in both crucifixion and consummation. Christ submits to the punishment we deserve ushering in peace; Christ will completely crush the Devil making that peace permanent and universal. In this fight we must participate, actively struggling against the classic of the triumvirate of World, the flesh, and the Devil.
It is not the province of this essay to explore....ARRRGH!
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April 15, 2005
Blog Book Essay
This past winter writer and blogger extraordinaire, Jeremy Huggins, compiled a book of essays and some poetry concerning the Gospel. He invited fellow bloggers to contribute to this book, be they believers or atheists or somewhere in between. The simple instructions were to write a piece about something from the gospels. Fully twenty-six bloggers contributed with many others interested. Here is my piece from that now sold out book, which Jeremy published with a hand fashioned cover. Sometime in the future there may be a Blog Book II, so if you are interested in contributing, fire up a blog and keep your ears on (good buddy). OK, I have been watching too many reruns of the Dukes of Hazzard on CMT. And while we're on that topic, Jessica Simpson as Daisy Duke? Puh-lease! In fact, why must they reimagine and sully such high art at all? "Kee! Kee!"
Matthew 12:1-13
I love rules. They tell you how to behave. And, if you are unclear about exactly how a specific rule should be applied, well, with rules, ÒThereÕs always more where them came from.Ó And, if you really love rules you can make unlimited addenda to address any hypothetical breach. And this will invariably lead to principles that spring from the rule that, when applied consistently, will create a sort of warning track around the rule. If you are not in the know regarding baseball, the warning track is the several yards of gravel just before the outfield wall. The outfield wall is what truly ÒrulesÓ which fly balls are home runs and which not. The warning track, though, lets a charging outfielder know that very soon he will be reaching a hard immovable object that is unforgiving.
The other side of the coin of being a rule lover is that I strongly dislike people who have no regard for rules, who live out their lives acting either as if there are no rules or, more maddeningly, as if, of course, the rules do not apply to them. I would have said I ÒhateÓ such people, but you see there is this rule that says we are to love one another andÉ. No, really I should say no more even than that I hate their behavior. More than that, and, well, I would be breaking the ruleÉwhich, actually, is not such a bad one to apply when angry unless you use it simply to stifle and repress valid feelings which need to be addressed.
Who are these people, though? Who are they to snub their noses at rules to which the rest of us submit? Of course, ironically often I am one of the very people I hate the most in this regard. At other times, though, I truly do not understand. A former girlfriend confessed to touching the corner of a famous painting in a museum in Europe. Why? Because she just wanted to touch it so badly to have a connection with it and the artist. Inwardly I burned, principally because she was simply a rule breaker, but also because, really, that rule is there for a pretty good reason. If everyone did the same, you would end up with a squidgy masterpiece.
More often than not, though, a rule that a person is ÒflagrantlyÓ breaking (which my former girlfriend did constantly), is really one of my own construction. They are only crashing through one of the pretty little hedges that I have so painstakingly planted in my mind. And, boy, once it was like the gardens of Versailles in there. My girlfriendÕs hedge crashing of the latter sort and my angry-hurt-obsessive-gardener-like-sulks-and-tirades (yes, it was a complex) helped a great deal in adding the adjective ÒformerÓ to my appellation of her as Ògirlfriend.Ó And, that separation, of which I am only finally beginning to accept the Goodness, brought sorrowful regret and pain into my life of a depth I had not experienced before. It also, though, helped bring about the perspective I articulate in this piece. And, for that, I am eternally, and temporally, grateful.
In Matthew 12, when the Pharisees confront Jesus both about his disciples picking and eating grain on the Sabbath and then his healing of the man with a withered hand on the same holy day, we have something of Jesus addressing the Òwarning trackÓ dynamic. The Pharisees were forever creating hedges around the law to ensure that people would not even come close to breaking it.
However, there is another dynamic in his interaction with the Pharisees that is more radical and explosive. Jesus, at first blush, seems to be one of my hated crowd who believe that the rules do not apply to them. He answers the PhariseesÕ complaint about the grain picking by noting that David ate consecrated bread when starving and Hebrew priests, kind of like pastors today, of necessity work in the temple on the Sabbath. But then he says something that is truly mind blowing; that he is greater than the Sabbath. Unfortunately, I can imagine from my own experience just how the Pharisees must have felt. ÒNow who in the worldÉ.Ó Or, if they were blindingly mad at that point, ÒWhat the fÉ.Ó Yes, the extremely fundamentalistic are very prone to abandon their niceties under duress.
In the passage, Jesus does two things: one conventional, the other radical, no ridiculous, if it were not true. First, for the conventional one, in true Rabbinic fashion, balancing principles and precedents, he makes the case that the need for acts of mercy to be done for distressed animals on the Sabbath provides a precedent for his healing on the Sabbath. While they might have disagreed with his conclusion, the Pharisees would have at least had a framework for such argumentation.
For the greater claim, though, which actually occurs first in the passage, they would have had no framework. He begins with the precedents of David needing to eat bread in an emergency and priests needing to work in the temple. But then Jesus claims to be greater than the temple in which both of these accepted precedents occurred, except in DavidÕs case it would have been the tabernacle, I think. In so doing, Jesus elevates his disciples to the role of the great historical kingÕs companions and to that of priests. His elevation of himself, though, is truly astounding. He elevates himself as one greater than the temple, the One, indeed, who makes the temple itself holy. And there would have been no doubt in anyoneÕs mind who heard those words of the only person who can make that claim. And, how dare he?
How dare he, indeed? And, yet, I still do not thinking he is claiming the rules do not apply to him. If they are simply rules for human behavior, of course, they would not. However, if they are Rules with a capital ÒR,Ó or rather words that describe his character and nature, even he cannot (or perhaps it is better to say he will not) break them. No, what Jesus is doing here is claiming his position as both the provider of Sabbath Rest and the true recipient of Sabbath worship. He claims the position of Lord of the Sabbath. In that context, the disciples munching their grain in his presence are participating in a high, holy feast with their God. Rules are not so much suspended as they are superseded. They are being followed truly, organically, naturally, perfectly. And, oh, it took me so, so long to understand this wonderful truth of this passage.
The truth is, though, that I still tend to love rules. They are easy. I do, though, want to love them less, at least the variety which multiply like rabbits and rigidly proscribe behavior, which I especially use to judge others in my heart and sometimes still in my words. I do not want to need them. I want something more. I want the heart of rules. It is not the righteous who need rules but the wicked. The thought is not original with me, but it is actually where wickedness and lawlessness increase where more rules are needed. And, no example is more prescient than our own law-saturated, litigation-mad nation. No, what I really want, whether I always realize it or not, is the heart of God, and in that I will find freedom for myself and the peace not to take that freedom from others. The more I hang with Jesus and his followers, whether it is munching corn on the cob in a Sabbath potluck or carrying out the acts of mercy he wants me to, I think the better I will understand that.
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