Journeys Home

Gay Marriage Struggle within the UMC

2012-02-20T08:03:00.000-05:00

In my 5/14/2011 post, I discussed the Presbyterian Church's vote to ordain gay persons, and I showed ways to support gay ordination biblically. Yesterday's NYTimes had this article about the struggle within my own denomination concerning gay marriage.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/us/within-gay-marriage-battle-a-quiet-struggle-in-churches.html?pagewanted=all

Our Lenten Short Menu

2012-02-19T08:40:00.000-05:00

This morning a Facebook friend posted this nice little piece about the barren places of Lent. The author comments that we Americans aren't big on fasting, and that "we choose our Lenten sacrifices from a very short menu." I admit I seldom bother with "giving up something," because of that very thing: do I think I'm such an amazing Christian, giving up desserts till Easter? For Lent, I double-up on my devotional reading. But this piece reminds us how life thrives in the most empty places, which is difficult for us to remember amid our abundance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/opinion/sunday/in-a-lenten-season.html

Second and Third Parties

2012-02-18T20:43:00.000-05:00

Every once in a while, as time allows, I’ve written a few news summaries for this blog, pertaining to current issues in politics and economics. One of my favorite writers, Thomas Friedman, had two interesting columns recently. His NYT column last week discusses our need for “a second party,” that is, a Republican party less hardened on the right and more traditionally conservative: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/opinion/sunday/friedman-we-need-a-second-party.html?smid=tw-NYTimesFriedman&seid=auto

The other column, in this weekend’s NYT, also addresses the kind of political thinking that, amid “the circular firing squad” of the GOP debates, would provide potentially helpful options for the economy: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/opinion/sunday/friedman-a-third-voice-for-2012.html?_r=1&smid=tw-NYTimesFriedman&seid=auto

Frederick Delius, 1872-1934

2012-01-29T08:00:00.004-05:00

I used to have an LP of composer Frederick Delius’ music, conducted by Thomas Beecham, which I played when I was in the mood for very peaceful, pastoral music. The LP disappeared over the years as we downsized our belongings, but I still enjoy the composer's music on anthologies of English music like the "English String Miniatures" series on the Naxos label. Today is the sesquicentennial of Delius’ birth, which I learned from the cover story of the new Gramophone magazine (February 2012). In that article, Jeremy Dibble, whom I quoted a few posts back, recounts Delius’ international travels and artistic influences.

I looked around the internet for other articles about Delius, to read later. A website devoted to Delius, http://thompsonian.info/delius.html, includes two links: an article by Emanuel E. Garcia, “Frederick Dilius: Devotion, Collaboration and the Salvation of Music," at http://thompsonian.info/delius-garcia.html, and an article by Thomas F. Bertonneau, “The High Hills: Frederick Delius and the Secular Sublime," http://thompsonian.info/delius-bertonneau-essay-Word.html

Cellist Julian Lloyd Webber has a nice tribute, “Delius: Beauty in the Ear of the Beholder,” at http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/jan/05/delius-fenby-julian-lloyd-webber
He writes, “No other composer polarises opinion like Delius. You either love or loathe his music. And it is rare to find someone who has grown to like it.”

Lloyd Webber comments that Delius’ music has been absent from concert programs, for several reasons. “First and foremost he was a 'nature' composer. The sights and sounds of the countryside permeate his music and, in an age increasingly dominated by all things urban, the concept of 'countryside' becomes ever more obscure.” Also, “Delius's music is never about bombast. He lived most of his life in the leafy lanes of Grez where he would sit in his garden listening to the songs of the birds, often translating their language into music. Some would pour scorn on such a romantic approach, while praising the birdsong-influenced works of Olivier Messiaen."

Another reason is that, “From a musician's point of view, Delius's writing for different instruments is often awkward... the strings are often left to play long, sustained chords and woodwind and brass solos emerge out of the blue, with the players' orchestral parts providing no clue as to their significance. Self-regarding maestros are bemused by the quiet endings of nearly all of his music, which guarantee that there will be no burst of applause at the end." But Lloyd Webber points out that excellent conductors like Beecham, Vernon Handley, Richard Hickox, Charles Mackerras, Andrew Davis, and others have kept his music alive, and other composers like Bartók, Grainger, Kodály and Duke Ellington have praised his music. Lloyd Webber adds, “And when, in 1935, the New York critics hailed George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess as 'the first negro opera' they were wrong – for that singular achievement belonged to Delius's Koanga, composed almost half a century before.”

YouTube has several of Delius’ pieces, like the famous “On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qsriktzVFw&feature=related"

My Cousin C. C. Crawford

2012-01-26T09:03:00.057-05:00

When I was young, growing up in Fayette County, Illinois, relatives talked about a cousin who lived in Texas, Cecil Clement Crawford, who was a Christian minister, professor, and author of several theological books. My grandma Crawford knew him. He had sent her one of his books, Sermon Outlines on Acts, and three booklets which she kept in the manila envelope with Cecil’s return address. Sometimes at family get-togethers I’d look at the books, not deeply interested but intrigued at theological writing---and by a relative, at that. One of our cousins wrote books! Grandma loaned them to another, local cousin but never got them back.

Cecil was actually a double cousin, rooted in our families in and around Vandalia. He was my grandfather Crawford’s second cousin. But Cecil’s mother was a Pilcher, my grandma Crawford’s family name. He and Grandma were second cousins through that family. His father, Frank Crawford, and stepmother Fanny Crawford were local educators. I believe Fanny may have been my dad's teacher during the 1920s. I don’t remember if I met Cecil prior to a family get-together, circa 1974, at the home of another Pilcher cousin, Ella Braun. (Grandma was deceased by that time; I was still in high school but interested in genealogy and family.) Cecil had traveled back to our hometown to visit Ella and other relatives and to visit family graves. His father and stepmother were buried in Vandalia, his mother in nearby St. Elmo, IL, and his infant sister, Armedia Ivy Crawford, in the Griffith Cemetery near Brownstown, another local village. I enjoyed meeting him. He seemed a very down to earth person. He and other family members joked about their dislike of wearing shoes indoors.

He died in 1976 at the age of 83 and was buried in El Paso. By that time I was in college and considering a religious vocation but, sadly, I had no opportunity to chat with him about it. However, the cousin to whom Grandma had loaned those books chanced into Mom and asked if she wanted them. Mom, annoyed at the presumption, said that she did indeed. Eventually I asked Mom if I could have them. I’ve always kept the booklets in the same manila envelope with Grandma's familiar address, "RFD 2, Brownstown, Illinois."

As described on book jackets, Cecil attended Washington University for his bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees, and also studied at St Louis University. He received the LL.D. from Southwest Christian Seminary. He was chairman for 11 years of the department of philosophy and psychology at Texas Western College of the University of Texas system, El Paso, and also taught at Dallas Christian College. I remember family members chatting about the fact that Cecil had been a parish pastor but, following his divorce from his first wife, was no longer allowed to serve in that role.

Over the years I’ve found more of his books. I do searches on abebooks.com. By using the name “C.C. Crawford” for his books, he unintentionally made it difficult to narrow internet searches for his books. They are Bible study texts, theological books with Bible-study components, and some discussions of issues in the Campbellite churches.

Sermon Outlines on Acts (Cincinnati: The Standard Publishing Co., 1919)
The Passion of Our Lord (Joplin: College Press, 1968)
Sermon Outlines on the Restoration Plea (Murfreesboro, TN: Dehoff Publications, 1956)
Sermon Outlines on the Cross of Christ (Murfreesboro, TN: Dehoff Publications, 1960)
The American Faith (booklet, no publisher given, 1955)
Survey Course in Christian Doctrine, a four-volume set, Joplin: College Press, 1962-1964)
Commonsense Ethics (Dubuque: Wm. C. Brown Book Co., 1966)
What the Bible Says About Faith
The Eternal Spirit: His Person and Powers (Joplin: College Press, 1972)
The God of the Bible (booklet, no publisher given, 1960)
Genesis: The Book of Beginnings, a four-volume set in the Bible Study Textbook series, published by the College Press in 1966-1971. Each of these books is nearly 600 pages.

In addition to The God of the Bible, the two other booklets in Grandma’s package are “open letters to the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ": Freedom or Restructure? and The Truth about Restructure.

I've not read these but as I've leafed through them, I find many interesting Bible studies and connections-making, and theological discussions bringing in a very broad range of authors from biblical studies, philosophy, science, and American religion of the early- and mid-century. Of course, I don't agree with everything, but in most cases he invites a thoughtful response with his ideas and wide reading. In one of the books, he assures readers that they can use and adapt his writing without attribution. I lack at least two books of his, The Bible and Science and Sermon Outlines on First Principles. But I think he probably wrote more than these. Learning about my cousin Cecil and his career is an ongoing project.

Two of the books above, which I purchased online, were inscribed to Cecil’s cousin Nola. That sounds like a name I’ve seen in either the Crawford or Pilcher genealogies; I’ll look it up.

Speaking of cousins, I’d love to know if Cecil still has family in the El Paso area. I traced the Crawford family history in the 1970s but I did not keep up with various branches. Now, my information is too out of date for me to make any “cold” contacts. I’m brainstorming how I might find some of his relatives, in a non-creepy way.

I chuckle that I've become the same kind of person in our extended family as Cecil was during my grandparents' generation: a former parish pastor who teaches college and graduate classes, a writer of Bible-related books who sends them freely to friends and relatives, and who is talked about as such by relatives. I feel very grateful and honored! A cousin on Dad’s side laughed that her son read one of my books at his church study group and had asked her, “Don’t we have a cousin named Paul Stroble?”

I dislike making myself a example of faith---other than of falling short---but isn't it amazing how God can subtly use us to influence one another? A little kid picks up a theological book at his grandma’s house, and the idea of writing about and teaching the Bible comes to fruition many years later. If you’re ever downhearted about your faith, you might take comfort in knowing that you may have influenced someone else, positively and tremendously, but you’ll never know it. You helped plant a seed. (That's one reason I don't respect church growth ideas that focus one-sidedly upon quantifiable results. Couldn't a church, pastor, or teacher exert tremendous influence upon persons, via the Holy Spirit, in ways that can't be reported in yearly numbers?)

Cecil did not continue in parish ministry but his books contain evangelistic appeals. The final volume of his Genesis set concludes with this faithful assurance as Cecil connects Joseph's story with Jesus:

Is there a poor sinner here today, whom God has disciplined, whether less or more severely than He did those men [Joseph's brothers], and brought you to repentance? If so, the kind Redeemer whom you rejected, and sold, as it were, to strangers, stands ready to forgive you more completely and perfectly than Joseph forgave his brethren. He has found out your iniquity; he knows it all; but he died that he might be able to forgive you. Come in his appointed way; come guilty and trembling, as Joseph’s brothers came, and you will find His everlasting arms around you (p. 587).

Grape-Nuts, "There's a Reason"

2012-01-23T07:42:00.002-05:00

When Beth and I were dating, her fondness for Grape-Nuts was a topic of discussion. The cereal is very crunchy but not good if you let the milk soak a bit. (She has since moved on to other kinds of breakfast foods.) Then we found an old magazine ad for Grape-Nuts in an antique store. We began a small collection of such ads, some framed for their quaintness---especially ones that depict only men in executive roles---and as an inside joke about her former enjoyment of the product.

The cereal inventor C. W. Post developed Grape-Nuts cereal in 1897. According to one explanation, Post thought that “grape sugar” (his term for sucrose) resulted from the baking process. The wheat and barley cereal, in turn, had a nutty consistency once baked and produced. I suppose the hyphen (or in some of the early ads, a colon, a plus sign, or an equal sign) was intended to convey that this was a trademarked product name and not, literally, nuts from grapes. The Post cereal company website provides some history of Grape-Nuts, which in the early days was often advertised with the slogan, “There’s a reason.”

My family recently browsed at a favorite highway stop, The Heart of Ohio Antique Mall near Springfield, Ohio. There, they found a batch of antique ads and purchased several for Grape-Nuts for my Christmas present. The ads are so interesting as early 20th century advertising. One, a page from McCall’s magazine, June 1925 depicts a listless looking woman in her robe, half-dozing over her light breakfast.

"The Dangerous Toast-and-Coffee Breakfast

“The meagre [sic] breakfast, hastily eaten, is becoming a national bad habit…. A single serving of this tempting food contains more varied nourishment than many a hearty meal.” It goes on to say “the delicious flavors of these golden grams are brought out with a richness unmatched in any other food. That is why Grape-Nuts, with cream or whole milk, is a favorite breakfast dish in millions of American homes.”

Cream? Sounds fatting! But another ad, from 1920, promises that “Baby faces grow plump and ruddy” on the cereal.

The humor of such ads comes from the recognition of changing habits, values, and social roles, as well as different uses of words. Here’s a page from Woman’s Home Companion, September 1930.

“A good old friend dons a gay new dress.”

The ad shows how the Grape-Nuts box changed from a yellow one with black letters to a yellow box with blue letters. Not a significant change, to me, but perhaps it seemed so at the time.

The Post website notes that Grape-Nuts was originally marketed not only for its specific nutritional content but its benefits as “brain food.” Several ads identify the vitamins and minerals in the cereal, like this page from The Ladies’ Home Journal, December 1925.

“Don’t let your great-great-grandmother tell you want to eat!

“Plenty of rich, heavy food for every meal was great-great-grandmother’s idea of feeding a family…Nowadays, diet must be carefully adapted to the strain, the sedentary work, the nervous intensity of modern living. Fortunately, the wives of this generation are learning more about food and food values than the wisest omen of great-great-grandmother’s time ever dreamed of.” The description also extols the dextrins, maltose, and carbohydrates, iron and phosphorus, protein, and the vitamin B of Grape-Nuts.

As far as “brain food” is concerned.... this undated ad shows the interior of an ancient throne room and states:

“Many a Chair of Power Stands Empty…Awaking the man with keen, active Brains and good health---Brains that can 'do things' that can deliver the Service. Grape-Nuts builds good bodies and healthy Brains---’There’s a Reason.’”

The Country Gentleman, December 1926, has this message:

“Watch your diet—especially breakfast! Here’s a rule for success and happiness given you by 150 brilliantly successful men! Chose all your meals carefully. Choose breakfast very carefully…Famous men say that your morning meal must be right, or your day’s work wont be right.”

And The Ladies’ Home Journal, September 1909, informs us:

“Ball-Players need snap and judgment. Grape-Nuts may be found on the tables of Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Ann Arbor, West Point, etc., and wherever brain and brawn are essential. ‘There’s a Reason.’”

An ad from 1930 shows a woman in swimsuit, ready to dive into a pool. An appeal to women’s fitness and athletics? In a way, but the ad mainly promotes dental health:

“To a lady who is just going to dive, what about your teeth? They need exercise, too.

“Of course, you know how greatly exercise benefits the body---how it stimulates, invigorates and beautifies. But do you know that exercise is every bit as important for the health and beauty of your teeth and gums? Do you know that the fast-increasing dental troubles of today are largely due to lack of chewing?"

From The Farmer’s Wife, May 1931:

“A track man can’t train in a rolling chair. Teeth can’t train on ‘Mush.’”

This ad, which (in the racial mores of the time) features a white runner in a rolling chair, with a black porter ready to push him, and the copy describes the dental advantages of eating the cereal (crunchy to chew, after all), analogous to an athlete’s training.

Of course, the cereal has to taste good, too. Here is The Ladies’ Home Journal, February 1927:

“These golden kernels. People eat them for crispness…for balanced nourishment…above all for flavor.”

A sweet ad from 1919 has a pretty girl at a market counter, with the grocer pointing to a display of the plain Grape-Nuts boxes (prior to their “gay new dress”), who says:

“--The kind that tastes best? Well, little one, you must mean Grape:Nuts ---it surely makes little girls round and rosy.”

I look through the other ads, some from the World War I era, others depicting everyday family life.

“In Childhood---and All Along Life’s Way Grape=Nuts and cream.”

“Economical—Easily Digestible—Delicious. ‘There’s a Reason’ for Grape-Nuts.”

“Deeds of Valor come from men of sturdy strength and active brain.”

“Grape+Nuts Builds stout bodies and keen minds. ‘There’s a Reason.’”

“Children’s teeth require 'inside' treatment as much as outward care.”

“America’s Foremost Ready-to-Eat Cereal. When war called for the saving of wheat, Grape=Nuts stood ready with its superb blend of cereals, its wonderful flavor, fullest nourishment, and practical economy. Grape=Nuts. The Food For the Times.”

Among other things about these ads (reflective as they are of their times), they are interestingly similar to contemporary concerns for health and urge a kind of national health renewal. They don't use terms like our "obesity epidemic," but they remind food purchasers of the importance of balanced meals and good health, not only for the individual but for the good of society!

Gerald Finzi, 1901-1956

2012-01-22T15:24:00.009-05:00

I enjoy reading Gramophone Magazine, a British periodical devoted to articles and CD reviews of classical music. It’s an easy and informative way of learning about this type of music and discovering new pieces. For instance, last month’s issue (Dec. 2011, pp. 114-119) contained an article about Gerald Finzi’s cantata Dies Natalis. During a season when even my favorite Advent and Christmas music wasn’t “moving” me amid an unusually hectic month and down mood, I appreciated a (to me) new work by a favorite composer.

Finzi was an English composer of Italian and Jewish background. Born in 1901, he began to be known for his works during the 1920s and 1930s. He set his favorite poet Thomas hardy’s words to music with By Footpath and Stile (1921-1922), A Young Man’s Exhortation (1926-1929), and Earth and Air and Rain (1928-1932). His other words included Dies Natalis from the 1920s and 30s, the anthem Lo, The Full, Final Sacrifice (1946), his setting of Woodsworth’s poem “Ode: Intimation of Immortality" (1950), as well as the Clarinet Concerto (1948-1949), and Cello Concerto (1951-1952, 1954-1955). His other works include the melancholy Eclogue from 1929 (a slow movement of an unfinished piano concerto).

Andrew Burn, in the notes for the Naxos CD “Lo, the Full Final Sacrifice and other choral works,” writes that “Finzi’s music is rooted in the tradition of Elgar and his lifelong friend Vaughan Williams. It was his response to words, however, that gave his music is particular individuality, resulting in music that seems inevitably to mirror the essence of the poet’s thoughts. As in … Thomas Hardy, a sense of urgency can be felt in the music reflecting his keen awareness of life’s frailty. A further preoccupation wash is believe that adult experience tarnishes the innocent wonder of childhood. Both these concerns may be traced to Finzi’s own early experience when the deaths of his father, three brothers and his teacher [Ernst] Farrar made an indelible impression on him.” Burns reiterates these influences in his notes for another Naxos CD, Finzi’s setting of "Intimations." He also points out that Finzi had numerous and admirable interests: he revived and championed works of neglected composers, he built an orchard and saved several varieties of English apples from extinction, and he collected over 3000 editions of English poetry and literature.

In that Gramophone article, Jeremy Dibble writes about Finzi’s music generally: “Stylistically, Finzi undoubtedly owed much to that English Romanic yearning established by Parry in Blest Pair of Sirens in the latter part of the 19th century. The falling melodic seventh of Milton’s moving epode, ‘O may we soon renew that song’, finds countless resonances in Finzi’s own voice.” Also, writes Dibble, Finzi was influenced by the counterpoint and contrapuntal textures of Bach, Boyce, Stanley, Avison, Garth, and other 18th century Baroque composers. But English poetry and prose and the rhythms of the English language inspired Finzi’s compositions, so many of them for voice.

I haven’t read the two recent biographies by Diana M. McVeagh and Stephen Banfield, which a Gramophone reviewer a few years ago found complementary. Finzi died in 1956 at the age of 55, which is the age I am this year. He died of complications related to the Hodgkin's Disease which had been diagnosed five years before. As a Vaughan Williams devotee I had read about him in RVW literature, then I liked his Clarinet Concerto in a CD collection of English concertos (“My England,” on the ASV Living Era label). Later, I found his Requiem da Camera and several other pieces I already named, including the Woodsworth setting, with words I’ve loved for years because they remind me of my hometown:

But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never...
(For the whole poem, see http://www.bartleby.com/101/536.html)

I also love Finzi's setting of the poem, "God Has Gone Up," a wonderful anthem. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFaJjeXCTjU

God is gone up with a triumphant shout:

The Lord with sounding Trumpets' melodies:

Sing Praise, sing Praise, sing Praise, sing Praises out,

Unto our King sing praise seraphic wise!

Lift up your Heads, ye lasting Doors, they sing,

And let the King of Glory enter in.

Methinks I see Heaven's sparkling courtiers fly,

In flakes of Glory down him to attend,

And hear the Heart-cramping notes of Melody

Surround his Chariot as it did ascend;

Mixing their music, making every string

More to enravish as they this tune sing.

A Short Blogging Break

2012-01-08T14:42:00.003-05:00

I'm taking a temporary break from blog-writing in order to focus on upcoming teaching responsibilities, plus a big move to a new house. Posts will be sporadic for a while. I hope to resume more regular writing in March. Meanwhile, a big thank you to those who reads these thoughts! Feel free to browse these posts and those at my other blogs, and feel free to make comments.

Clergy Peer Groups

2012-01-02T11:23:00.001-05:00

Instead of the post I intended for today (my 55th birthday), I wanted to post this link to a Christian Century article about clergy peer groups. When I did regular church work, I often found clergy peer groups not to be very "safe" places at all. And yet clergy long for safe friendships among other clergy. This article, plus the sidebar piece, gave very hopeful anecdotes and ideas.

http://christiancentury.org/article/2011-12/peer-power

Christmas Joy

2011-12-25T11:55:00.000-05:00

"Sadness should have no place on the birthday of life. The fear of death has been swallowed up; life brings us joy with the promise of eternal happiness.

"No one is shut out from this joy; all share the same reason for rejoicing. Our Lord, victor over sin and death, finding no person free from sin, came to free us all. Let the saint rejoice as he sees the palm of victory at hand. Let the sinner be glad as he received the offer of forgiveness. Let the pagan take courage as he is summoned to life.

"In the fullness of time, chosen in the unfathomable depths of God's wisdom, the Son of God took for himself our common humanity in order to reconcile it with its creator. He came to overthrow the devil, the origin of death, in that very nature by which he had overthrown humankind.

"And so at the birth of our Lord the angels sing in joy: Glory to God in the highest, and they proclaim peace to his people on earth as they see the heavenly Jerusalem being built from all the nations of the world. When the angels on high are so exultant at this marvelous work of God's goodness, what joy should it not bring to lowly hearts?

"Beloved, let us give thanks to God the Father, through his Son, in the Holy Spirit, because in his great love for us he took pity on us, and when we were dead in our sins he brought us to life with Christ, so that in him we might be a new creation. Let us throw off our old nature and all its ways and, as we have come to birth in Christ, let us renounce the works of the flesh... Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God's kingdom."

(From a sermon by Pope Leo the Great, quoted in The Liturgy of the Hours, I, Advent Season and Christmas Season, pp. 404-405. I made the language inclusive in three places.)

Beethoven's Birthday

2011-12-16T14:35:00.006-05:00

Happy Beethoven’s Birthday! His baptism on December 17, 1770 is documented, and scholars assume his birthday was December 15 or 16, because babies were typically baptized at a day or two old. When I was little, I loved the Peanuts comics and enjoyed getting paperback collections of the strips. Nearly every December 16, the story concerned Beethoven’s birthday and Schroeder’s celebration of it. Of course, Schroeder also performed Beethoven sonatas and other works on his toy piano.

Thus inspired by a favorite comic strip, I liked certain Beethoven compositions when I was young. In those days, the Huntley-Brinkley evening news on NBC concluded with the scherzo from Beethoven’s Ninth. I wrote NBC to find out the title and got a letter back! Subsequently, I found a used recording of the symphony at our hometown library’s annual book sale. Eventually, I also found LPs of the fifth and seventh symphonies and some of his named sonatas. I took piano lessons, but somehow never managed the spontaneous, unpracticed skill of Schroeder.

Our library acquired a copy of George R. Marek’s Beethoven: Biography of a Genius (Funk & Wagnall’s, 1969) when it was published or perhaps the following year. I didn't read the whole book but I enjoyed checking it out. I was 12 in 1969, and at 13 and 14 I had unrequited crushes on a couple of girls, which unfortunately aggravated some childhood depression I’d had even earlier. Feeling scarily hopeless at such a young age, I found comfort in the fact that, as Marek discussed, Beethoven struggled for acceptance, too!

Marek’s chapter on “The Immortal Beloved” is interesting. Beethoven's letter to his “Unsterbliche Geliebte,” dated July 6-7 and later analyzed to be 1812, was found among his effects after he died. But who was the woman, to whom Beethoven wrote with such passion? Was the letter returned to him, or did he never send it? Reviewing the numerous women important to Beethoven---like Josephine Brunsvik, Guilietta Guicciardi, Amalie Sebald, Bettina Brentano, and Therese Brunsvik---Marek builds an interesting and convincing circumstantial case for Dorothea Ertmann, although (from what little I’ve read on the subject), many scholars argue for Josephine Brunsvik. From time to time I still leaf through my own copy of the thick book, which gives an excellent sense of the composer’s era and life.

In a funny way, Beethoven sticks to my childhood Christmas memories, I suppose because of the Peanuts paperback collections, some of which I received as presents. And, of course, December 16 was, at least for the prodigy Schroeder, a significant day just nine days from Christmas, with a gladness all its own.

Christmas Carols

2011-12-10T17:18:00.001-05:00

Here is an interesting excerpt from David Vernier, “From Christemasse to Carole,” in Winter 2010 issue of Listen magazine (article is pages 39-42).

He notes that we don't know what part of the year Jesus was born, and that the December 25th date of Christmas was probably chosen because it was already a non-Christian holiday, the solar feast Natalis Invicti on the Roman calendar's winter equinox. “However it happened, once the time of year was official determined (probably sometime in the fourth century), the course of Christmas music history was set. Not only did the ‘bleak mid-winter’ become one of the more vivid and affecting images of the season, but a whole body of songs, hymns and carols began to capitalize on the dramatic possibilities of cold, snow and wintertime activities and necessities. The shepherds in the fields, the journey of Mary and Joseph, the stark rudeness of the stable, the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes in the manger, the brilliance of the stars--all took on a more compelling aspect in the context of a cold and dark winter.

"Carols were especially good at conveying these many moods--elation, wonder, appreciation, reverence--and their texts, written in the local vernacular, told compelling stories. The carol, from the French carole, was originally a type of dance performed in a circle. The music was characterized by a refrain sung before and after each verse---and often there were many, many verses. Carols were composed and sung for all sorts of occasions and were not specifically tied to Christmas. Today the term is almost exclusively applied to Christmas music--and many of the pieces we call carols are technically hymns or songs” (pp. 41-42).

(This was a post from last December.)

"Jerusalem: The City of Two Peaces"

2011-12-10T14:41:00.004-05:00

This Advent I’ve been listening to and reading a remarkable book, with two SACDs, entitled "Jerusalem: The City of Two Peaces." A couple years ago I saw the set reviewed in Gramophone magazine, but I didn’t happen to seek it out until the most recent issue of Gramophone (November 2011) featured the Spanish early music specialist Jordi Savall on the cover, reminding me of the "Jerusalem" project.

Savall and his wife Montserrat Figuera, and their ensemble Hesperion XII have produced several sets on their own label, Alia Vox, some of which I hope to explore in the future. For this Jerusalem album and book, the groups Hesperion XII and La Capella Reial de Catalunya as well as Jewish, Christian, and Muslim musicians from among both European and Middle Eastern countries. perform a homage to Jerusalem.

The project attempts the “enormous and almost impossible challenge to evoke some of the key moments in the history and music” of Jerusalem. All the material invokes Jerusalem’s history from the point of views of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim heritage, the city’s heritage as both a “city of pilgrimage” and a symbol of exile and refuge,” as well as the ever-present concern for peace. The music and words include recitations from the Qur’an, Psalms (121, 122, 137), Talmudic reflections, the sound of shofars, dances, songs from the Crusades, songs of Jews, Palestinians, and Armenians, pleas for peace in Arabic, Hebrew, Armenian, and Gregorian chant, as well as anonymous songs.

All this music and text is given historical context (pp. 110-120, 128-143), and this material is provided in eight languages: French, German, English, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Hebrew, and Arabic. Included are not only standard pictures of the musicians but also interesting art from different cultures relating to Jerusalem.

The introduction’s author notes that one etymology of the Hebrew name for Jerusalem is “city of two peaces,” that is, the “heavenly peace” promised in prophetic texts, and the “earthly peace” sought by the city’s political leadership over the past five millennia. “Sanctified by the three great monotheistic religions of the Mediterranean, Jerusalem soon became the focus of prayers and longing. Desired by all, she has been the goal, aim and destination of pilgrims of all persuasions who flock to her gates in peace, but also the objective of soldiers and armies in pursuit of war, who have besieged and burned the city, bringing ruin and devastation more than forty times throughout her long history.” (p. 101).

The project aims not only to trace Jerusalem’s political and spiritual history through texts and music, but also to invoke peace. “A peace born out of a dialogue based on empathy and mutual respect is, despite the enormous difficulties involved, a necessary and desirable path for all concerned” (p. 1). The artists see Jerusalem as a “symbol of all mankind,” and thus a symbol of the urgency of peace in the 21st century (p. 21).

Witnessing to peace comes out of Savall's artistic credo: in that Gramophone article (p. 37), he comments, "We musicians sometimes forget how powerfully what we do can act on people's lives, how it can heal them."

A Can't-Sit-Still Feeling of Expectancy

2011-12-09T08:27:00.001-05:00

Nancy Gibbs writes an essay, "The Gospel of Glee," in the Dec. 7, 2009 issue of Time (p. 112). She writes that "a bright, earnest youth minister" had told a group of kids that the television show "Glee" is "anti-Christian" because it "portrays Christians as phonies and hypocrites."

I never feel at all sympathetic toward Christians who think that the media persecutes them. I wonder, instead, what it is about us Christians that conveys that impression: maybe a lot of us are behavior-centered, disapproving, and inconsistent---off-putting because of ourselves rather than because of our message.

How might Christians convey a different "signal" to the world? Several ways, I think, but one is to talk more about the Gospel--the person and work of Christ which accomplishes our salvation regardless of anything we could ever do---than about behavior and our perceived place in the culture.

For my 2009 Advent study book for Abingdon Press, I found this comment from the Bible scholar William Barclay: Christians, he says, should be people “in a permanent sate of expectation.” [1] We can live in hope about the fullness of Christ’s presence. This isn't the same thing as wishing our physical lives were over! It means that, as long as we do live, we feel happy and hopeful at God’s steadfast love, and confident in the blessings God bestows for this life and the next. We could even dare admit that we are not perfect and get a very great deal wrong in our lives, but that God is steadfast.

What wonderful hope we can have! I enjoy the movie The Shawshank Redemption and its theme of hope. Of the two major characters, Andy has hope (symbolized in his love of music and chess) but his friend Red believes that hope is deceptive and prevents a person from accepting reality as it is. After the movie has passed you through several despairing circumstances, the last five or ten minutes of the movie are so uplifting: Red arrives at a point where he does feel hope. He’s so happy “I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head.”

Some of the joyful Christians whom I’ve known are very hopeful people, both in head and heart. Sure, you meet Christians who aren't very happy, who are angry or put-upon. I've struggled my whole life with mild depression, so I know about "blues" myself. Let's not judge others too harshly; let's pray that God's love continues to work in all our lives. Joy and hope can be ours because God’s promises are absolutely certain, and far greater than our personality traits and changing emotions.

I believe God works constantly to remind us of the divine love. I also believe that God prepares us to be ready. Thus the power of Jesus’ words: we shouldn’t succumb to “the worries of this life” in case the day of the Lord should “catch you unexpectedly, like a trap” (Luke 21: 34-35). Advent can be a wonderful time to reacquaint ourselves with God's love and grace.

1. The Daily Study Bible Series: The Gospel of Luke, by William Barclay (The Westminster Press, 1975), page 261.

"Rest a While in God"

2011-12-08T08:51:00.001-05:00

A psalm-like reading from St. Anselm’s Proslogion, for the first Friday in Advent and appropriate for the "seeking" quality of the Advent season.

"Insignificant [person], escape from your everyday business for a short while, hide for a moment from your restless thoughts. Break off from your cares and troubles and be less concerned about your tasks and labors. Make a little time for God and rest a while in him.

"Enter into your mind’s inner chamber. Shut out everything but God and whatever helps you to seek him; and when you have shut the door, look for him Speak now to God and say with your whole heart: I seek your face; your face, Lord, I desire.

"Lord, my God, teach my heart where and how to seek you, where and how to find you. Lord, if you are not here where shall I look for you in your absence? Yet if you are everywhere, why do I not see you when you are present? But surely you dwell in ‘light inaccessible.’ And where is light inaccessible? How shall I approach light inaccessible? Or who will lead me and bring me into it that I may see you there? And the, by what signs and under what forms shall I seek you? I have never seen you, Lord my God; I do not know your face.

"Lord most high, what shall this exile do, so far from you? What shall your servant do, tormented by love of you and cast so far from your face? He yearns to see you, and your face is too far form him. He desires to approach you, and your dwelling in unapproachable. He longs to find you, and does not know your dwelling place. He strives to look for you, and does not know your face.

"Lord, you are my God and you are my Lord, and I have never seen you. You have made me and remade me, and you have given me all the good things I possess, and still I do not know you. I was made in order to see you, and I have not yet done that for which I was made.

"Lord, how long will it be? How long, Lord, will you forget us? How long will you turn your face away from us? When will you look upon us and hear us? When will you enlighten our eyes and show us your face? When will you give yourself back to us?

"Look upon us, Lord, and hear us and enlighten us, show us your very self. Restore yourself to us that it may go well with us whose life is so evil without you. Take pity on our efforts and our striving toward you, for we have no strength apart from you.

"Teach me to seek you, and when I seek you show yourself to me, for I cannot seek you unless you teach me, nor can I find you unless you show yourself to me. Let me seek you in desiring you and desire you in seeking you, find you in loving you and love you in finding you."

From The Liturgy of the Hours: I, Advent Season, Christmas Season (New York: Catholic Book Publishing Corp, 1975), 184-185. I enjoyed studying Anselm in two of my degree programs, both in his reflections on the atonement and his ontological argument subsequently used by Karl Barth.

Repeat the Sounding Joy

2011-12-06T22:49:00.000-05:00

Do you have a favorite Advent or Christmas hymn? Usually, mine would be "Joy to the World," in a close tie with the Wexford Carol... although I also love "The First Noel," and then there's also ...

Driving home from teaching classes the other day, I was listening to the Sirius XM "Holiday Pops" channel. "Joy to the World" joined other pieces--choral music, instrumentals, hymns, and carols. Like so many hymns, I sing the verses and know what they say, but I don't always think about them. This time, a line stood out: "Let men their songs employ; while fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains repeat the sounding joy."

People sing praises to the newborn Jesus, and then Creation repeats the praises. What an interesting image! I connected this verse in my mind to Psalm 19:

The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
In other words, Creation praises God with a "voice" that does not use words and speech, but that "voice" is very clearly heard and understood as praise.

The psalmist continues:

The law of the Lord is perfect,
reviving the soul;
the decrees of the Lord are sure,
making wise the simple;
the precepts of the Lord are right,
rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is clear,
enlightening the eyes;
the fear of the Lord is pure,
enduring for ever;
the ordinances of the Lord are true
and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold,
even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey,
and drippings of the honeycomb.
As Creation praises God for his care, the psalmist praises God for crucial aspects of God's care for humans: his redemption, teachings, commandments, and guidance.

Psalm 104 is a classic psalm of this kind, too. For thirty-two verses the psalmist praises God for his creation and sustenance, and then in the last few verses, the psalmist joins the praise of Creation and humbly rejoices in God.

Then I thought of Colossians 1:15-20.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

The psalmists praise God's creation and redemption alike, while the author of Colossians writes a kind of "psalm" that connects creation, redemption, and Christ. The New Interpreter's Bible commentator on Colossians notes that "Christ is not simply to be seen as the firstborn of all creation (1:15); rather, all things were created in, through, and for him (1:16). God is the Creator, but Christ is both an agent of creation and, more than that, its goal...he is also the one to whom all creation is directed, the very purpose of its existence. Not only so, but all things hold together in him (1:17); their integrity and coherence depend on his role." Creation is also "in need of reconciliation," since evil and dark powers still pervade the world (1:13), nevertheless, "Through Christ the powers have already been pacified and reintegrated into God's purposes, and believers can already appropriate this achievement, but the full recognition of their new situation by the powers themselves awaits the eschaton." (p. 570).

I suppose the popular image of animals gathering around Jesus' manger is a way of conveying the connection of Jesus' birth with human salvation and with Creation's praises to God.

As I listened to "Joy to the World," the word "flood" stuck in my mind. The things that "repeat the sounding joy" are positive things in the way a flood is not. Floods are destructive, although in an arid region, an overabundance of water could be a good thing. But floods (and any manifestation of weather) are part of God's creation, too, although we rightly lament the destruction and personal and economic hardships resulting from bad weather. This was a key point in Annie Dillard's classic book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, that the hideous and inexplicable aspects of Creation force us to offer praise to God, too, although in much more difficult ways than the praise we offer when we're happy and things are orderly.

Advent is traditionally a penitential period in the church's liturgical calendar, and if snow falls in December, the landscape takes on a pretty bleakness in keeping with Advent solemnity. But amid all the liturgical and commercial aspects of the month, we can increase our sense of joy and wonder at Christ's birth by looking around us: at Creation, which in its own way is singing (Ps. 19:4).

(A post from last year, 12/15/10)

Servant Hipness

2011-11-21T17:49:00.002-05:00

When my hometown turned 175 years old, the local celebrations and commemorations included a history book, "Vandalia Remembered: Illinois' Second Capital Celebrates 175 Years, 1819-1994," edited by Charles W. Mills and others. One article I love (pp. 33-34) is "From the Depression to 1993" by local attorney Robert Burnside, whom (like Charles) I knew. He describes the many businesses in downtown Vandalia during the 1930s and afterward, commenting that "if any one thing stands out as being the single crucial element of the tradition [from the Depression to the present] it is the decline, and almost complete disappearance, of the sole proprietor, the entrepreneur, the self-made man and the 'mom and pop' operation" (pp. 33). These people were the "backbone of the community" not only economically but in their civic and religious participation (p. 34).

My dad worked for one of these entrepreneurs, Dale Hasler, a petroleum distributor, for about sixteen years. And both my parents were friends with many of the people Bob named in his article. Vandalia's business district is quieter today, but some entrepreneurs and small businesses remain---even a few from this earlier period. I'm sad that many of the businesses are gone by now; the downtown economic vitality of my hometown has followed the trends of other small towns, with larger companies (one in particular) meeting retail needs that small businesses once fulfilled. I like to take a broad view, deny that I'm "self-made," and acknowledge that these numerous local businesspeople were in different ways essential for my growing-up years.

I thought of Bob Burnside's article when I read a recent op-ed piece by William Deresiewicz, "Generation Sell," in the Nov. 13, 2011 New York Times. (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/opinion/sunday/the-entrepreneurial-generation.html?pagewanted=all) The whole article is well worth reading; I'm leaving out interesting points. The author, trying to discover the basic "idea of life" of our contemporary youth culture, noted that "[p]revious youth cultures — beatniks, hippies, punks, slackers — could be characterized by two related things: the emotion or affect they valorized and the social form they envisioned." The Millennial Generation's basic paradigm, he thinks, is "the salesman."

"Consider the other side of the equation, the Millennials’ characteristic social form. Here’s what I see around me, in the city and the culture: food carts, 20-somethings selling wallets made from recycled plastic bags, boutique pickle companies, techie start-ups, Kickstarter, urban-farming supply stores and bottled water that wants to save the planet.

"Today’s ideal social form is not the commune or the movement or even the individual creator as such; it’s the small business. Every artistic or moral aspiration — music, food, good works, what have you — is expressed in those terms."

Deresiewicz goes on to say that today's "hipness" is social entrepreneurship (with Steve Jobs as a major cultural hero). A side to that is the "commerical personality": polite (compared to the rage of the punks, for instance, or the conscious counterculturalism of the beatniks and hippies), good to others, without overt rebellion against anything. If we're nasty, it's in our anonymous posts on web sites rather than anything in our own names. In our own names, we're pleasant and positive---as salespeople are.

"We’re all selling something today, because even if we aren’t literally selling something (though thanks to the Internet as well as the entrepreneurial ideal, more and more of us are), we’re always selling ourselves. We use social media to create a product — to create a brand — and the product is us. We treat ourselves like little businesses, something to be managed and promoted."

I'm thinking about all this. "Branding" isn't a new idea; I've heard the term for several years. The idea, if not the term, has been common in church professional literature, where churches and their pastors are enjoined to discover that congregation's vision and ministry opportunities they can do well in their community. I've also read discussions of how colleges and universities brand themselves in order to attract students, and certainly anyone of us use who uses the internet has to think about this. (For my own professional networking, I've thought about how to "brand" myself and realized I couldn't: I've five or six professional interests that I don't want to narrow to just one or two. So I simply identify those interests and know that my generalist approach is most true to my calling and myself.)

But---thinking about Deresiewicz's analysis---is the popular kind of "branding" a bastardized version of an earlier business model when people created businesses with much higher stakes than hipness and self-identity: surviving a depression, making a faithful living, and giving back to the community? Also: isn't branding (paradoxically, since it involves modern communication technology) a kind of nostalgia for simpler times (the way some shopping mall shops have store fronts that mimic the ornate facades of many small-town commercial buildings)?

I also wonder..... if you're going to brand yourself, are you thereby also "giving back" and growing spiritually? Does your "brand" draw you closer to God? Does it help and serve others? I'm not being snarky; the answer may very well be "yes," as you seek God's will for your life.

I like this quote from John Wesley: "Be an example to all of denying yourself and taking up your cross daily. Let others see that you are not interested in any pleasure that does not bring you nearer to God, nor regard any pain which does." I don't live up to that, but the goal is wonderful---and a good guide (empowered by the Spirit) for anything we do, on an everyday basis.

Symphonic Sonata Form

2011-11-20T19:35:00.001-05:00

My 300th post on this blog! Good to devote it to music..... A few weeks ago, I purchased a copy of BBC Music Magazine (Nov. 2011), for the article on Maurice Durufle, whose compositions (so few of them, sadly) are so lovely. My daughter's choir performed the Quatre Motets and the Requiem.

But relaxing with this magazine, I also enjoyed the article, "What is a Symphony?" by Terry Blain. I learned something that any beginning music student would know but I didn't: symphonies are often structured by the "sonata form." "Basic sonata form [is] presenting contrasting musical themes in an exposition, comparing, contrasting, and extending them in a development, then renewing and summarising them in a recapitulation" (p. 34). Blain writes that Haydn and Mozart were pioneers in the development of this form. The form is so useful because of its adaptability: the ability to use the form to contrast, confront, and dialogue among different musical themes (p. 34).

Obviously different composers have different symphonic styles. Mahler wanted the symphony to "embrace everything," "like the world," while Sibelius (to whom Mahler described this desire) wrote more concentrated symphonies, though no less emotional and profound (pp. 32-33). Of course, different composers of symphonies have been able to use the symphony to express many things like tragedy (Tchaikovsky), comedy (Mozart), political dissent (Shostakovich), "muscular metaphysics" (Beethoven), and others (p. 34). But some composers don't use the sonata form: Sir Peter Maxwell Davies is Blain's example. Recently I purchased Arvo Pärt's fourth symphony; I need to read the liner notes and learn what resources that innovative composer used. Surely it's not the sonata form.

Last night, my wife Beth and I attended a St. Louis Symphony concert featuring Bruckner's seventh. This reviewer, Chuck Lavazzi, notes that Bruckner's symphonies are often described in terms of Gothic cathedrals, "they so strongly suggest a connection between the material and ethereal plans---great blocks of sound alternating with moments of otherworldly beauty" (http://kdhx.org/music/reviews/concert-review-sound-and-fury-with-berio-and-bruckner-by-the-st-louis-symphony-at-powell-hall-friday-and-saturday-november-18-and-19). And thus we see one of the most important of life's contrasts---the spiritual and material---expressed in a symphony.

Discovering Ed Ruscha

2011-11-20T15:29:00.003-05:00

A few months ago, I saw a feature on "CBS Sunday Morning" about the artist Ed Ruscha. I was surprised I hadn't noticed his art before---my own fault. I'd love to have a print of paintings like "Standard Station, Amarillo Texas" (1963) or "The Canyons" (1979) or the graphite "Twentysix Gasoline Stations" (1964) (or the photographic book), or the painting "Noise, Pencil, Broken Pencil, Cheap Western" (1963), and others, and I want to look for his art at the MoMA when we're in New York next spring.

Born in 1937, Ruscha (pronounced roo-SHAY) is an LA-based artist, photographer, filmmaker, and printmaker. As this article from a recent exhibition in Stockholm indicates, Ruscha has been identified with both pop art and conceptual art, and his work has commonalities with surrealism and Dada, but, according to this article, Ruscha's art isn't wholly identifiable with a particular movement(http://www.modernamuseet.se/en/Stockholm/Exhibitions/2010/Ed-Ruscha/Fifty-Years-of-Painting). He is a contemporary of artists like Warhol and Lichtenstein, was influenced by artists like Jasper Johns and Edward Hopper, and was featured in very early exhibitions of pop art. His West Coast subject matter makes him an interesting artist in the pop and conceptual art traditions.

After the "Sunday Morning" report I ordered the heavy retrospective history, Ed Ruscha by Richard D. Marshall (New York: Phaidon Press, Inc., 2003). Leafing through the book, I loved the quality of his art explained in the above Moderna Museet article, "Ruscha’s overarching theme is words and their constantly shifting relationships with context and message. In all his paintings there are tensions and frictions at play: between foreground and background, between text and image, and between how words look and what they mean."

Unfortunately, the print in Marshall's Ruscha is small, and gray rather than black---a strain for this middle-aged person---so I'm still dipping into the text as best as I can while enjoying the many reproductions. Meanwhile, I enjoyed an article by Laura Cumming (http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/oct/18/ed-ruscha-hayward-baldessari-tate). Cumming notes how Ruscha "painted words out of context, giving them a non-verbal life of their own as figures in a landscape; and he pictured words as images." "His humour is perennial but it coexists with profundity."

I found another article, an interview with Ruscha by Martin Gayford (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-features/6224022/Ed-Ruscha-interview.html). Gaylord writes that Ruscha's work "gives one the feeling of being on an endless road through an immense landscape, interrupted by puzzling messages on billboards, at once folksy and mysterious, a journey through a wide space the only features of which are logos, gas stations and parking lots. Joan Didion – another literary admirer – wrote that Ruscha’s works 'are distillations, the thing compressed to its most pure essence'. They are also sometimes surprisingly funny, in a laconic, Marcel Duchamp-meets-Clint Eastwood sort of way. Ruscha invented an entire artistic genre – one of several in his repertoire – that consists of nothing but words and phrases, floating in vaguely defined space: All You Can Eat, ½ Starved, ½ Crocked, ½ Insane, Chicken Rivets, Girls Girls Girls, Defective Silencer Units, Etc, and – especially ironic in the current circumstances – I Don’t Want No Retro Spective, a pastel from 1979."

As with these other referenced articles, that whole essay and interview are worth reading, with many more insights and discussions that I can summarize. I was interested that Ruscha's friend, with whom he drove Route 66 to California in the 1950s, was the musician Mason Williams, whose pieces "Classical Gas" and "Baroque-a-Nova" have been favorites of mine for over forty years.

In still another article, http://www.beatmuseum.org/ruscha/edruscha.html, the author writes this: "Born and raised Catholic, Ruscha readily admits to the influence of religion in his work. He is also aware of the centuries-old tradition of religious imagery in which light beams have been used to represent divine presence. But his work makes no claims for a particular moral position or spiritual attitude." As I dig into the Marshall text in the days ahead, this theme is something I'd like to learn more about.

"Picnic" (1955)

2011-11-20T07:35:00.000-05:00

A post from last year.... Recently I chanced upon the 1955 movie "Picnic" on the TCM network. The movie is based on the William Inge play and stars William Holden, Kim Novak, Betty Field, Susan Strasberg, Cliff Robertson (his first movie), Rosalind Russell, and Arthur O'Connell. The hominess of the title intrigued me. The story concerns a handsome, useless drifter who upsets people and relationships in a small town during the big Labor Day festivities. Although I'd never seen the movie, I must've flipped past a TV production many years ago, because the scene where Rosalind Russell's character pitifully begs Arthur O'Connell's to marry her was familiar. William Holden, 37 in 1955, plays a man in his twenties, while the two young women (Novak and Strasberg) are more believably close to their characters' ages. Holden is handsome and "hot," and a fine actor, and I wonder if he was cast partly because of his star power.
I enjoyed the story and the various characters' interrelationships. One of my classmates says this movie was his mother's favorite. The film concludes with a theme that I can never find touching: the lonely young woman who falls for, and then runs away to locate the handsome but no good stranger who chanced into her life. I always think the heroine is being naive; even if the guy has a good heart, her love will not magically reform him. Mrs. Potts, the kindly old woman who holds the beginning and end of the film together, does realize that we all have to learn through difficult experience, whether in love or other aspects of life. In that respect, rather than in an imagined but unlikely happy-ever-after, the movie's conclusion is heartwarming.

I fell in love with the small town surroundings depicted in the movie. The railroad cars and tracks, with grain elevators in the background, is a happy sight to me, having grown up close to the Illinois Central tracks. So is the way the neighborhood yards are not so sharply separated as in the suburbs where I now live; yards have sheds and small barns that blend the village and the rural, just as back porches blend indoors and outdoors. Mrs. Potts has a 55-gallon metal drum in her backyard for burning trash, exactly as my parents had in our yard. You'd have to enjoy old signs to notice it, but Mr. Potts had the top portion of a yellow stop sign attached to her shed, perhaps to cover a hole in the wall, just as my grandma used a metal Grapette Soda sign to patch the wall of her chicken house. Behind the houses is a little alley, not a street, just the parallel path that cars and trucks would make across grass-covered land. All these sights were familiar sights as I was growing up, not only in my hometown but in small communities which my parents and I visited on weekend trips, checking on relatives.

According to online movie data sources, "Picnic" was shot in five Kansas towns, Halstead, Hutchinson, Nickerson, Salina, and Sterling. William Holden's character arrives (in a box car) in the railroad yard in Salina and, although supposedly in the same town, soon breezes into a neighborhood in Nickerson. That's the magic of movies, as they say.

I've been happy in the places I've lived, but part of me will always miss the kind of rural/small town ambiance depicted in "Picnic." As the movie stresses, this kind of world isn't all that innocent. But "geographically" it's very comforting, always worth revisiting.

Anniversary of a Door

2011-11-17T11:39:00.002-05:00

Thoughts from last year... My grandma Crawford lived in an old farmhouse in rural Brownstown, Illinois. Her father, Albert Pilcher, built the house in 1907, but he died only three years later. I'm not sure when Grandma and Grandpa moved to the house, or when Grandma's mother remarried and moved away. My mother was born at the house in 1919. My own association with the house began, I assume, when I was a baby in the late 1950s and continued until the house burned in the 1970s.

I also don't remember when I discovered the tiny letters and numbers on the outside of the kitchen's back door: C. E. Pilcher, Nov. 17, 1907. These were in a lighter color than the door's dark stain. Grandma said that Cassius E. Pilcher was a housepainter, and her father's cousin. I was pretty young, but the old designation was fascinating to me, something unobtrusive and nearly forgotten, like a building's cornerstone.

In fact, I did nearly forget the discovery. For years I puzzled about November 17; it seemed to be a significant day but I couldn't remember. Someone's birthday? Elton John's third album? Finally I remembered the old door.

This coming Monday is November 22. For those of a particular age, we will always associate that day with John F. Kennedy, because we remember that day in 1963. Some anniversaries are much more personal, and so ephemeral they nearly fade from thought until some lucky spark of memory brings them back.

My Cousin Lewis

2011-11-11T09:54:00.000-05:00

From last year .... Here's a Veterans Day post: from Frederick M. Hanes, Fayette County [Illinois] in the World War, 1922, pp. 58 and 60.

"Lewis Calvin Crawford, son of Calvin and Rosetta Crawford, was born October 24, 1905 [i.e., 1895] near Brownstown where he lived until he entered the service of his country May 8, 1917. He enlisted at Mattoon and was sent to Jefferson Barracks. Later he was transferred to a camp in Texas and thence to Jersey City, N. J., from where he crossed as a first class private of CO. K., 16th Infantry.

"His father having died several years previous, many a young man in his position would have pleaded that he must remain with his lonely mother. But whenever he spoke of going he would remark, 'Mother, if I did not go and help win our freedom I would feel that I had no right to live here. I could not face the boys as they came home who had fought for me.'

"Lewis was a Bible reader and before going expressed the desire to go across and if possible see the country where the Saviour lived on earth. On the way across however, he contracted measles. Pneumonia followed. He was taken to Base Hospital No. 1, St. Naziarre, France where he died July 15, 1917, the first of the sons of Fayette county to give his life on French soil. His comrades buried him in a French cemetery but later removed the body to an American cemetery. At the request of his relatives the body was again disinterred and set back to his homeland where it was laid to rest in Pilcher cemetery in the family lot.

"When the American Legion was organized in Fayette County the Vandalia Post was named The Crawford-Hale Post in honor of Private Crawford and Sergt. Edward B. Hale, Fayette County's first two sons to give their lives overseas for American ideals.

"Private Crawford was a member of the M. W. A. His mother recalls his favorite hymn which has taken on a new and grander meaning:

"I will follow Thee my Saviour,
Whereso'er my lot shall be:
Where Thou goest I will follow,
Yes, my Lord, I'll follow Thee."

Lewis was my great-grandfather John Crawford's first cousin. In fact, Lewis and his parents are buried very close to my grandparents and great-grandparents. Coincidentally, the Crawford-Hale post began on the same day my mother was born: August 2, 1919.

A Family Heirloom from Otego Township

2011-10-29T15:29:00.000-04:00

A post from 2009. On my office wall is a framed auction announcement that will be 101 years old next week.

Public Sale of live stock and personal property. The undersigned will sell at Public Sale at his residence two miles south of Brownstown, in Otego Township, on Thursday, October 29, 1908, the following described property: Four Head of Horses consisting of 3 Good Work Horses and 1 Good 2-Year-Old Colt. 2 Good Dairy Cows and 1 Spring Calf. 13 Thirteen Head of Hogs 13 [sic] Weighing from 100 to 250 pounds. Farm implements: 1 Champion Binder. 1 McCormack Mow-Drill, 1 Steel Harrow, 1 Cultivator, 2 Breaking Plows, 1 Wagon, 1 Top Buggy, nearly new, 2 sets Double Harness, and 1 set Single Harness. Also about 5 tons of Hay and 20 acres of Corn in the field. 1 Estate Steel Range and other Household Furniture. Terms of Sale. All sums of $5.00 and under, Cash in hand. Sums over $5.00 a credit of 12 mouths will be given. Purchaser to give note with approved security before property is removed. Notes to draw 7 per cent. Interest from date if not paid when due. A discount of 5 per cent. Will be allowed for Cash on sums over $5.00. Sale to commence at 10 o’clock a.m. Farm for rent on day of sale. John Crawford. W. H. Sawrey, Auctioneer. Paul Crawford, Clerk

John was my mother’s paternal grandfather (Paul Crawford was John’s brother, and John‘s wife Susan was the granddaughter of Comfort Williams, about whom I wrote a few entries ago.) The family lived along the road that today connects U.S. 40 with Illinois 185, two or three miles north of the scene on my blog. As I recall the story, John and Susan’s second child Marvin was ill of tuberculosis and the family planned to move to Texas to assist him. I know that Marvin died in 1909, however, so I don’t know how these sad events, including the sale of all this property, turned out. I do know that John lived until 1927 and his wife Susan until 1926. Their personal papers (which I have, still kept in a 1920s oatmeal box) indicates that the couple moved back to the Brownstown area and started again. Even though I loved family history as a kid, I now think of more questions I would’ve asked my great-aunts about their parents, my grandfather having died before I was born.

Last year I forgot to note the 100th anniversary of the sale, but I will remember the day this time---and next week, October 29th is also on Thursday. Whenever I’m back in Fayette County, I nearly always drive out to Otego Township and pass by the small residence along the road, pointed out to me as the Crawfords’ long-ago farm. Though the framed announcement is sad, it gives me a happy sense of belonging to a family history, as do those Otego visits.

That Hope and Change Stuff

2011-10-21T10:34:00.003-04:00

I first heard of the contemporary artist Shepard Fairey on a program on the Ovation network. His socially-engaged art, first manifested in his street art (especially his Andre the Giant sticker), has been collected in gallery shows and books like E Pluribus Venom, Mayday, and Obey: Supply and Demand. He became known, as well, because of his "Hope" poster widely published during the 2008 presidential campaign. A few weeks ago, taking atwriting break at “my” Barnes and Noble cafe, I noticed a book which Fairey and Jennifer Gross edited, Art for Obama: Designing Manifest Hope and the Campaign for Change (Abrams Image, 2009)

The book collects a variety of paintings, collages, computer-generated art, prints, and other works from and inspired by Obama's campaign. One by Ron English, “Blue Abraham Obama,” in which the famous 1863 Alexander Gardiner photo of Lincoln, wherein he looks directly into the camera, is rendered with Obama’s features. Another Lincolnesque painting is Scott Siedman’s “The Man from Illinois,” in which Norman Rockwell’s painting “Lincoln the Railsplitter” (depicting young Lincoln walking, reading a book, and saying an axe) is remade with Obama in the role (holding a hoe instead of an axe). There are several prints concerning America’s lack of universal health care; a very forceful print in which a 1950s-era water fountain marked “Colored” is pouring rainbow colors; numerous renderings of the promises “hope” and “change," and art connecting Obama to Dr. King and Gandhi.

Not all the art is painting, collage, and print. There is a dress, designed by Lisa Anne Auerbach, with the slogans “Chosen People Choose Obama” and “My Jewish Grandma is Voting for Obama” woven into the fabric. Sculptures and furniture are also artworks responding to Obama’s campaign. I highly recommend this book if you appreciate examples of socially-involved contemporary art (which makes me wonder if politically conservative people are also producing artworks today: I just don't know).

Exploring this book, I thought, not unkindly, "What happened to all that hope and change?" (or, as former Gov. Palin put it, unkindly, that "hopey, changey stuff"). Then, serendipity! As I sorted files from recent projects) I found a 2010 Time magazine that I’d saved in a pile of research from last year. Peter Beinart's article, “Why Washington’s Tied Up in Knots," gave me some answers to my question(http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1966451,00.html). I enjoy pieces like this which help me make historical connections.

Beinart argues that the two major political parties were, until the mid-1900s, diverse with outlooks and vying interests. One force that caused a change for both parties was the support of civil rights, environmentalism, abortion rights, and "a more dovish foreign policy" among liberal Northern Democrats in the 1960s and 1970s. The Republican party grew more conservative in response, as conservative Southern Democrats became Republicans and Northern liberal Republicans became Democrats. As this process continued, Beinart writes, "Washington politics became less a game of Rubik's Cube and more a game of shirts vs. skins."

He notes that after Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush left office, "congressional Republicans realized they could use political polarization to stymie government — and use government failure to win elections. And with that realization, vicious-circle politics started to become an art form." By the 1990s, "a new breed of aggressive Republicans — men like Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay and Trent Lott — hit on a strategy for discrediting Clinton: discredit government. Rhetorically, they derided Washington as ineffective and conflict-ridden, and through their actions they guaranteed it." These congressmen used the filibuster, previously a rare devise, to force the failure of legislation. Meanwhile, conservative Republicans discredited moderate Republicans as traitors to the party. "The Gingrich Republicans" used the "vicious circle" because it worked---and in particular, it worked because (1) Americans dislike political fighting, and (2) American voters tend to blame the party in charge. "By 1994, trust in government was at an all-time low, which suited the Republicans fine, since their major line of attack against Clinton's health care plan was that it would empower government. Clintoncare collapsed, Democrats lost Congress, and Republicans learned the secrets of vicious-circle politics: When the parties are polarized, it's easy to keep anything from getting done. When nothing gets done, people turn against government. When you're the party out of power and the party that reviles government, you win."

To return (in my mind) to the outcome so far of Obama's "hope and change": Beinart further notes that this vicious-circle politics have become even more pronounced during the Obama administration than during the Clinton administration. Democrats who were thrilled at the Obama victory (as well as the Democratic majority in Congress) neglected to appreciate the resultant hardening of the Republican minority--and their unwillingness to cooperate and compromise. "In 2009, Senate Republicans filibustered a stunning 80% of major legislation, even more than during the Clinton years. GOP leader Mitch McConnell led a filibuster of a deficit-reduction commission that he himself had demanded. The Obama White House spent months trying to lure the Finance Committee's ranking Republican, Chuck Grassley, into supporting a deal on health care reform and gave his staff a major role in crafting the bill. But GOP officials back home began threatening to run a primary challenger against the Iowa Senator. By late summer, Grassley wasn't just inching away from reform; he was implying that Obamacare would euthanize Grandma."

Beinart further notes that Republicans have, during Obama's term, not only helped to thwart his goals but to foster the "rising disgust with government not just to cripple health care reform but also to derail other Obama initiatives."

He continues that there is no guarantee that Democrats might not use these tactics, although the Republicans currently use them better. And the tactics don't always work: for instance, when the government is "handing out goodies." But when the government wants people to make sacrifices, this is the point where people are called upon the trust their government: "It's when the pain is temporary but the benefits are long-term that people most need to believe that government is something other than stupid and selfish. Which is exactly what they don't believe today."

In a more recent issue, I found an article even more relevant to the Shepard Fairey book: Anthony Romano, “Wanted: A New Messiah,” Newsweek, Oct. 10 & 17, 2011. (http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/10/02/the-search-for-bold-leadership.html)

He writes that "America is desperate for a messiah. Christie Fever would seem a little more remarkable, for instance, if conservatives hadn’t already contracted Bachmania, Donalditis, and Restless Perry Syndrome, then cast aside each of their would-be saviors as soon as he or she showed the slightest earthly imperfection. Meanwhile, on the left, and in the center, the very voters who fueled President Obama’s landslide 2008 victory are now awarding him the lowest job-approval ratings of his career. Christie summed up popular sentiment in his speech. 'If you’re looking for leadership in America,' he said, 'you’re not going to find it in the Oval Office.' Never mind that the administration just assassinated yet another Al Qaeda kingpin, Anwar al-Awlaki, out-Bushing Bush and further discrediting the old canard that Democrats can’t protect America. The belief that there’s someone better out there—someone who can lead us not into recession, but deliver us from unemployment—now extends to both sides of the aisle."

Romano reminds us that FDR and Reagan served during economic crises, but their leadership style (according to the research of Yale's Stephen Skowronek," is "reconstructive": in Romano's words, "both of them blamed the crises they presided over on the failed, un-American ideology of the previous regime and relentlessly positioned their sweeping proposals as part of a grand project to undo the damage and revive real American values." This is a "resilient model" for a president "because it serves as a one-size-fits-all justification for everything the White House does. FDR had high hopes for his central New Deal agency, the National Recovery Administration; to him, it was 'a supreme effort to stabilize for all time the many factors which make the prosperity of the nation.' Two years after the NRA was created, however, the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional. While this setback may have deterred a nonreconstructive president, Roosevelt simply cited it as further evidence of the old regime’s intransigence and again started 'promising to reconstruct the very terms on which American government operated,' as Skowronek puts it. By 1936—after forcing Congress into the summer session that produced Social Security, the Wagner Act, and the Banking Act, among other reforms—he had. He won reelection with 523 electoral votes. "

Romano notes that although Reagan's approval rating was very low in the early 1980s, when unemployment was over 10%, he stuck to his script of less regulation, lower taxes, and other policies a way to return (in Reagan's words) to “the dream conceived by our Founding Fathers." Romano writes: "Eventually, the Fed rejuvenated the economy by manipulating the money supply and lowering interest rates. But Reagan got the credit because he kept harping on his reconstructive storyline (tax cuts = growth), which provided the public with a more intuitive explanation. In 1984 he carried every state but Minnesota."

Unfortunately, he writes, "Obama ran as a reconstructive leader, but he has governed as something else entirely. It’s absurd to say, as Christie did in California, that the president has been 'a bystander in the Oval Office,' or to claim, paradoxically, that he’s a socialist bent on 'transforming' America into France part deux. As Obama’s advisers often remind us, he has accomplished a lot of unradical things as president (preventing another Great Depression, passing private-health-insurance reform, saving Detroit)." But Obama has tended (in Romano's words, "to look for policy proposals, like the stimulus or health-care reform, that respectfully weave opposing viewpoints into some sort of pragmatic whole. As president, Obama has assumed the role of the bipartisan realist—the leader who prides himself on seeing the world as it is, with all its political limitations, and doing the best he can within those constraints."

Unfortunately, Obama has also needed to communicate a reconstructive vision which (as it did for FDR and Reagan) "gave meaning to their victories, kept them buoyant during dry spells, and defined the opposition before the opposition could define them. The approach also assured voters that Reagan and Roosevelt shared their deep dissatisfaction with the way things were." To me, the fact that the Tea Party emerged and forcefully voiced a Reaganesque vision during debates about bailouts and health care reform is an example of the opposition doing the defining, rather than vice versa.

This past week, another article by Beinart caught my eye: "Occupy Protests’ Seismic Effect" (The Daily Beast – Mon, Oct 17, 2011, http://news.yahoo.com/occupy-protests-seismic-effect-062600703.html) He writes about the demonstrations "against unregulated capitalism" that had just taken place in 900 cities. He addresses the topic of the hopefulness exhibited in the Obama campaign, and shows how it is taking a slightly different direction.

He writes: "In a great many countries, especially in the West, the political grass is dry. Huge numbers of young people are unemployed, governments are launching harsh and unpopular austerity programs, and the financial elites responsible for the global economic meltdown have almost entirely escaped justice. Millions of articulate, educated, tech-savvy people are enraged and desperate. And they have time on their hands." This movement is quite fertile, he notes, and something like this hasn't been seen since the 1960s. He notes that those movements did not push American politics to the left because, among several reason, "many ordinary Americans were starting to chafe against taxes and regulations that had been growing since the New Deal. Although few realized it until Ronald Reagan’s election, the relationship between government and the economy in the late 1960s and 1970s was actually more conducive to right-wing than left-wing change."

Although the anti-globalization movement of the 1990s was a precursor to what we're seeing now, that movement had more to do with "globalization's impact in the developing world" while the current movement is, according to Beinart, primarily focused on what unregulated capitalism has done to their own societies [i.e., America and Europe]—societies where there is much greater anger and pain than there was 15 years ago. Therein lies the movement’s greater potential to create political change."

But---to return to my interest in the Shepard Fairey book---Beinart argues that a more recent and more important precursor is Obama's 2008 election! He traces the beginnings of the "netroots" activism in Howard Dean's 2004 campaign and the beginning of sites like DailyKos and MoveOn. "But," Beinart writes, "in retrospect, the netroots movement’s focus on candidates as a vehicle for change left it unprepared for the aftermath of Obama’s election, when Obama failed to articulate a story about why the financial meltdown had occurred—and why America’s regulatory system and welfare state needed to be rebuilt—that could compete with the Tea Party’s narrative of a government grown so large that it was stifling both economic growth and personal liberty."

He continues: "What we are witnessing in Zuccotti Park actually represents an improvement over the Obama campaign. That campaign was largely about faith in one man. The Occupy Wall Street movement, by contrast, represents a direct reckoning with the most powerful forces in American life, forces that are not voted in and out of office every two or four years. And it represents a belief that young Americans must force that reckoning by themselves. No politician will do it for them. Those instincts are exactly right, and we’ve never needed them more."

Those Fragile Egos

2011-10-17T09:06:00.002-04:00

In my last post, I thought about the fact that we might be growing in love and the fruit of the Spirit, and yet aspects of our personalities grow slowly or resist growth. We need to be kind to ourselves and others if we perceive faults and flaws; God may be maturing us in faith, hope and love, even though personality flaws and struggles remain.

Feeling spiritually "dry," I was leafing through another favorite book, Robert J. Wicks' Touching the Holy: Ordinariness, Self-Esteem, and Friendship (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1992, 2007). I found a page which I'd already dogearred. Wicks talks about the fact that many of us have somewhat fragile egos, even though we seek to grow in God's love all the while. He tells a story on himself that he was deeply offended by a rude person on the phone who had said, self-importantly, "This is the Reverend..." But a friend asked why he was so upset by the call. Wicks realized that his own big ego had caused him to be offended at the person's pompous and curt tone. His own fragile self-image had caused him to let the person have power over his mood (p. 21).

Wicks goes on with a quote from Henri Nouwen, who had been deeply hurt over some rejection and was ruminating the experience. A friend helped him see that, although he might have had reason to feel hurt, he (Nouwen) was hurt out of proportion to the event--and, in fact, the people whom had made him feel that way were not that important to him.

Nouwen reflected that he did have a hidden need for "total affection" and "full acceptance" which he brought into even small experiences--but unfortunately, a "small rejection" might thereby lead to "a devastating despair and a feeling of total failure." (p. 22, quoting Genesee Diary, New York, Doubleday, 1976, pp. 51-52).

This resonated with me, as I too nurse sad feelings at slights and criticisms. I've grown tremendously in this area over the years, but I still have to talk myself through certain circumstances when I fall into sadness and feelings of unimportance. (I was feeling downcast and self-doubtful about my teaching one day when I checked my email and discovered I'd been voted the graduating seniors' favorite teacher; one's feelings don't always match up at all with reality!) It's one thing to be sad when someone important to us treats us rudely, but sometimes (and certainly with me) we feel hurt by the opinion of people who just aren't that close or important to us. That Henri Nouwen---whom I met years ago and whose books are filled with brilliant spiritual insights---dealt with a sad, fragile ego was very reassuring!

Wicks goes on to say that, if we have a good balanced view of our own "ordinariness," we needn't give others so much power over us--and we can be strong enough to deal with conflicts in a manner between being overly nice, and being rude in return (pp. 22-24)

In general, we "continually fail to see that the chance for real joy is wrapped in unexamined anger, apathy, and confusion," and our peace is similarly "shrouded in a fog of anxiety and preoccupation." But he encourages us to get out of those things in order to find and enjoy God. Understanding prayer as having a "dynamic interpersonal aspect" is key--it's "a journey into a deeper encounter with the living God" (p. 53).

Natural and Graced Virtues

2011-10-13T12:38:00.004-04:00

I've a favorite book by Thomas H. Green, S.J., When the Well Runs Dry: Prayer Beyond the Beginnings (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1998). Green's reflections can be helpful for many growing Christians, though obviously the book is written from a Catholic perspective. Recently I returned to the book as I felt spiritually "dry" myself, but before I got to those sections I found another section worth pondering.

Drawing on writings by St. Teresa, Green notes that our prayer life necessarily results in growth in faith, hope, and love; in greater love for God and one another; in love for our enemies as well as our friends. But he also distinguishes between natural and "graced" virtues: our natural qualities, and the qualities that are fruit of the Spirit.

These two kinds of virtues are easily confused! He writes that
"[s]ome people are naturally cheerful, pliable, energetic, service-oriented. And others are naturally worrisome, stubborn... lethargic, hesitant to get involved. It is very tempting to categorize the first group as holy and the second group as spiritually mediocre." (pp. 72-73). But this is not at all necessarily the case! "[I]t is not the natural qualities of temperament and upbringing which are the marks of a genuine and solid spirituality. It is rather those qualities, those virtues (like a love of the cross) which transcend the natural and cannot be explained by any merely human formation" (p. 73).

He goes on to write about a person he directed, who was a difficult and overbearing personality, and about whom questions had been raised whether the person was genuinely spiritual. But Green found, in private counseling, that the person was very open to being guided and was genuinely growing in faith, hope, and love (pp. 74-75).

He continues, "If there are underlying signs of growing faith, hope, and love I would judge that the Spirit of God is at work, even though there are still many thorny (and highly visible) weeds in the garden of the Lord" (p. 75). He admits that he has personality traits and failings which have persisted for years but which he would consider inconsistent with his calling; and yet the Lord keeps deepening their relationship. "Instinctual failings and flaws of personality are not necessarily or automatically uprooted by a genuine spirituality," and a good example is the impatient Apostle Paul (p. 76).

The distinction between natural and "graced" virtues seems obvious, but as I think about it, we confuse these all the time. For instance, a parishioner might complain that the church's pastor "isn't spiritual" when the matter is simply a personality difference, nothing to do with the pastor's heart. I felt very annoyed at a person at our church who left the congregation because she thought the pastor wasn't spiritual enough, when the actual problem was (in my opinion) that she liked the previous pastor's style.

Another time, my parents came home from an errand one day and commented how huffy and impatient a local pastor had been as he waited in a long line at the bank. What kind of Christian is he? was the implication. That's the kind of judgmental nonsense that pastors have to endure---but isn't it human nature to make such judgments! I've done it too, although I do limit my venting to the privacy of my home, to avoid talking about people behind their backs in public. (That's still being judgmental, of course.)

It's easy to make superficial assessments of people, both positive and negative. I've noticed that some folk are very articulate about faith-matters, have significant ideas, and speak in a very loving manner. Unfortunately, sometimes those same people are unreliable at carrying out certain tasks, or they're unreliable as friends, terrible at giving favors, are alarmingly lacking in self-awareness, and so on. But on first acquaintance, such folk are often judged as SO spiritual (and, of course, they may very well be, in terms of growing in "graced virtues," but you don't know).

Now, on the other hand, they very well may not be spiritual at all! That's the tricky thing. The Bible does warn us that we can go through the trappings, rituals and proper articulation of religious faith but be empty inside.

Some folks are challenging in the opposite way: they're so "into" their vision and passion to do good, that they've difficult personalities! I noticed this article about the recently deceased Steve Jobs and his similarities with notable saints, none of whom were people who'd necessarily like to be around.
http://www.religionnews.com/index.php?/rnstext/epitaph_for_steve_jobs_too_great_to_be_good/

Although it's human nature to make judgments about people (and also to feel disappointed in God when other people let us down), this distinction between natural and graced virtues might help us be less critical about the quality of other people's faith. We can grow in compassion and intercessory prayer. We can understand more clearly that the personality weakness and the failings of other people do not mean that God has let you down. A fellow Christian may annoy you (he gives you unhelpful advice; he throws Scripture at you instead of listening; she isn't "there for you; he or she has a serious moral failing, etc.). A pastor may be off-putting for whatever reason. But none of these things necessarily mean such folk are spiritual phonies; they're just flawed like you and me.

The distinction has helped me see ways to be more accepting of others and also more accepting of myself. I tend to beat up on myself because, like Fr. Green, I see personality traits, anxieties, failings, and other things about myself. I've made progress on all these over the years (including the mediocre self-acceptance), but they very much remain. Of course, as we all go about our lives, we also discover new things about ourselves---people and situations that hurt us more than we realized. Progress sometimes seems like "baby steps" regarding our old hurts, half-forgotten wounds, and personality imperfections.

But God does not give up on us! As long as we live, God works in our lives to help us grow in faith, hope, love, and the fruit of the Spirit, no matter what.

Tillich in the Coffee Shop on a Fall Day

2011-10-12T08:05:00.152-04:00

We've always loved books. My younger, innocent desire to build a library of texts---maybe someday I might own the complete Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (whether I read German or not), the entire Anchor Bible series, assorted interesting texts in history, literature, and religion, and, heck, maybe even The Official Record of the War of the Rebellion, all kept in a cozy, shelf-lined office--came down to earth when we moved across country one year and I learned how much even our modest collection of books cost to move.

So now, whenever we relocate, we sell or donate items that seem unnecessary to move, including books. Beth and I do accumulate many books for our work and our interests, and Emily loves books, too. I've thinned my book collection several times, notably this last move, when I reduced it by nearly half. I thought that if I hadn't used a book in at least five years (unless the book was an antique or a special keepsake), I should donate it to the local book fair.

I still have several religion books that I purchased in college or div school in the 1970s and early 1980s. I've my Barth's Dogmatics; the old Interpreter's Bible; Old Testament texts by Brevard Childs, Gerhard von Rad, Walther Eichrodt; New Testament texts by Howard Clark Kee, Joaquin Jeremias, Nils Alstrup Dahl and Rudolf Bultmann; a few volumes of Karl Rahner's Theological Investigations and of G. C. Berkouwer's Studies in Dogmatics. Stepping up my personal Bible study during the past few years, I've been using several of these books again, giving the double pleasure of study and nostalgia. Because I attended div school in Connecticut, feelings of New England cling to these books: thoughts of cool temperatures, country drives, great friendships which have endured, and autumn leaves.

With each move, I consider donating or selling my paperback copies of Paul Tillich's three-volume Systematic Theology---no longer read, only a modest keepsake---and never can. I took them from the shelves the other day and noticed that I'd written my name and the date of purchase inside one of the books: October 13, 1977. That's 34 years ago this week! (The 46th anniversary of Tillich's death is next week, the 22nd.) I don't remember where I purchased them---the college bookstore, perhaps; in 1977 I was 20 and in college---but I do remember having them along in 1978 or 79 when my parents and I visited the campus of Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, six hours north of my hometown. Garrett was one school I was considering for my masters degree. The family car broke down along I-57, and I read a few sections of Tillich's system as we waited in a garage for the repair work. In addition to anxiety about the delayed visit, I was fascinated at how Tillich used philosophical concepts to explicate biblical truths.

I was never a devoted Tillichian, preferring Barth and his epic Dogmatics, or as John Updike's eponymous character in "Lifeguard" puts it, "the bewildering duplicities of Tillich's divine politicking" and "the terrifying attempts of Kierkegaard, Berdyaev, and Barth to scourge God into being." But I still found Tillich fascinating. One author writes, "The main thrust of Tillich’s thought was to recreate a meaningful link between Christianity and contemporary society. Like Karl Barth, he intended to do so by reintroducing the absoluteness of God and the Christian message, as opposed to its attempted “enculturation” in the liberal Protestantism of that time. That attempt, Tillich and Barth felt, was doomed to fail, as it deprived Christianity of its very essence. Like Barth, Tillich also linked the Christian message to social justice and the socialist movement. Unlike Barth, however, Tillich did not believe that a mere insistence on the absoluteness of faith in God as the “wholly other” was a viable solution. He strongly felt that ways had to be sought to show how religion was a necessary dimension of any society and how the absolute God was at the same time present in all relative cultural life." (http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Paul_Tillich) While both theologians were conscious of the need to articulate a basis for theology that respected the critiques of Kant and also Feuerbach, I always wondered if there was a disconnect between Barth's personal appreciation of culture and his insistence that nothing in human knowledge and culture can be a contact-point for revelation. Tillich sees the task of theology as understanding one's own time and as serving one's time via the latter's questions and issues.

For years I looked for a book by my teacher, Robert Clyde Johnson, Authority in Protestant Theology (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1958). His to me spellbinding lectures echoed his monograph, and in the days before internet booksellers (where I finally found the text), I searched every used bookstore for a hard copy to replace my old photocopies. Johnson studied under Tillich, so I enjoyed only a degree of separation from the great German-American theologian.

Johnson writes of Tillich's belief that the theological task is "bipolar" (in the sense of having two poles or orientations), the responsibilities to state the truth of the Christian message and also to interpret that truth for each new generation. "Situation" is for Tillich a technical term for one's socio-historical location, including cues from art, politics, science, philosophy, and ethics. But the theologian must also participate in the divine reality that is being articulated theologically. The theologian must find a norm within his/her era---which will not be the norm of other generations---with which to speak with theological authority to the questions of his/her times. "New Being" is Tillich's theological norm. This norm fills out Paul's own conception of "new creation" because Tillich can include the venerable philosophical concept of being into Christology (pp. 119, 136).

The theologian's analysis of the questions of his/her era allows for a correlation of the symbols of the Christian religion to the questions posed by contemporary times. As Tillich states in the system (I, 61), "symbolically speaking, God answers man's questions, and under the impact of God's answers, man asks them" (pp. 111-113). To the charge that in Tillich's system form determines content (p. 143), Tillich would respond that the questions of one's era (and human experience generally) are not an independent source for theology.

In all this, Tillich seeks a different path than, for instance, Barth's "kerygmatic" theology---wherein there is no contact point between God and humans---as well as American fundamentalism and Protestant orthodoxy, and also a different path than 19th- and 20th-centural liberal theology, which undercuts the knowledge of eternal truth by focusing upon the character of faith within human experience (pp. 112-113). Johnson points out, for instance, that Tillich criticized Schleiermacher for opening the way for a confusion of the medium of theological experience (the believing self) with revelation itself.

Tillich is open to the charge that he does not use biblical expressions in his theology. Johnson writes that the challenge isn't that Tillich uses different language and expressions but that, in using the questions of his own era, alters biblical emphases: for instance, when Tillich makes sin a "state" before it is individual actions---and consequently, in Tillich's system, we find forgiveness, atonement, and redemption given less emphasis and the incarnation expressed as "the negation of finitude" (pp. 122-123). But Tillich himself points out that Calvin's correlation of the knowledge of God and self, expressed in the opening sentence of the Institutes, imply that we cannot seek God until we realize and lament our sin and finitude (p. 123).

Another book by another teacher, Robert P. Scharlemann, is Reflection and Doubt in the Thought of Paul Tillich (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969. Scharlemann---my doctoral advisor, in fact---shows how Tillich takes on the post-Hegelian problem of the historically conditioned character of thinking.

In pre-Kantian times, theology provided a greater certainty than history and science, because metaphysics provided access beyond history and the changing physical world to unchanging being and God. But Kant reduced synthetic a priori knowledge to that of time and space, and thus metaphysical knowledge of God is no longer possible via pure reason (which cannot access the noumena).

Post-Kantian philosophers dealt with this challenge, notably Hegel, who sought a solution by constructing a system wherein temporality is embodied in eternity; thinking travels through logical and historical relationships until we reach the final stage that "thinking is being," and ongoing thinking (acts of reflection) are anticipated by and already included in the whole system of thought. But Scharlemann (echoing Tillich and others) notes that ongoing thinking (the kind which is not anticipated and included) does indeed happen in spite of Hegel's contention otherwise. Consequently, the challenge for theology is that (in Scharlemann's words) "what I think is never identical with the here-and-now act of thinking it; the act is always gone before it comes content" (p. xiii). This is a problem because we can thus never know God with certainty because the eternal vanishes with the continual passing-away of my here-and-now thinking. With no certain presence of God and no objectivity in thinking, Nietzsche declares "the nothingness of being and the death of God" (p. xiii).

But Tillich solves the problem of the failure of Hegel's absolute whole with the ideas of correlation and paradox. Because the self responds in a dual way to reality--both reflection and response---the failure of reflection to "catch" certainty about God in Hegel's system is countered by a system of respond: "What being is is answered by God, to whom response is made; and the God to whom total response is made is present as being" (p. xv). Paradox, in turn, also counters the failure of reflection to "catch" knowledge of God in one's here-and-now thinking, via Tillich's definition of temporality as "paradoxical reality" and God as "paradoxical presence. That is, God is thought via the double reflection of my here-and-now thinking and my recognition of its failure (pp. xvi-xvii).

Furthermore, Tillich's conception of "symbol" as that which participates in the depth or ground of being without being an empirical concept allows our thinking failing to grasp God (because of the historical nature of our thinking) or to wrongly fit God into the subject-object quality of our finite knowledge and being; "symbol" allows God to bridge that gap (pp. 29-30).

There is much more to Tillich's system, as well as to his large corpus of writings in both German and English. Spending an afternoon at my favorite coffee shop, rereading Tillich and these two appreciative authors gave me terrific pleasure amid the week's other tasks. It's never too late to rediscover an interesting book. So I'm happy that I kept these, first perused in an Illinois repair shop on I-57, then further enjoyed during a sojourn in New England. They're also a nice reminder that my initial excitement in discovering religious studies, not long before I purchased these books, has never abated in the slightest.

"Flooded with Relief"

2011-10-08T09:28:00.001-04:00

Remembering that today is Yom Kippur, I read the article on "Judaism 101" about the day. Among other interesting aspects, the author notes that the communal confessions of the day include a general list, a longer, more specific list, and also a "catch-all" confession, "Forgive us the breach of positive commands and negative commands, whether or not they involve an act, whether or not they are known to us."

The author writes: "It is interesting to note that these confessions do not specifically address the kinds of ritual sins that some people think are the be-all-and-end-all of Judaism. There is no "for the sin we have sinned before you by eating pork, and for the sin we have sinned against you by driving on Shabbat" (though obviously these are implicitly included in the catch-all). The vast majority of the sins enumerated involve mistreatment of other people, most of them by speech (offensive speech, scoffing, slander, talebearing, and swearing falsely, to name a few). These all come into the category of sin known as "lashon ha-ra" (lit: the evil tongue), which is considered a very serious sin in Judaism." http://www.jewfaq.org/holiday4.htm

What a wonderful reminder! I've known an awful lot of gossipy Christians over the years and have been very hurt by some. I've never meant to hurt anyone's feelings but I'm sure I have. Prayers for our big mouths would be wonderful prayers---and also soul searching for what stupid things we've said to people and how, if possible, we can make amends.

But words also bless! Browsing the internet, I also found these words of poetry and mediation concerning Yom Kippur: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/by-topic/poetry/words-for-yom-kippur/7033/ Check these out; they're all wonderful truths. I lift this one out as particularly wonderful to me personally, because of the assurance that God "knows we are dust" (Psalm 104:13). (This quote also reminds me a little of a Christian poem by John Donne, "Hymn to God the Father.")

"I am grateful for this, / a moment of truth, / grateful to stand before You / in judgment. / You know me as a liar / and I am flooded with relief / to have my darkest self / exposed at last. / Every day I break my vows— / to be the dutiful child, / selfless parent, caring friend, / responsible citizen of the world. / No one sees, no one knows / how often I take the easy way, / I let myself off the hook, / give myself the benefit of / the doubt— / every day, every day. / On this day, this one day, / I stand before You naked, / without disguise, without / embellishment, naked, /shivering, ridiculous. / I implore You— / let me try again. (Merle Feld, poet, playwright, activist, and educator)"

Programs and Taxes and Debt

2011-10-04T09:53:00.005-04:00

Every once in a while I like to take notes from news articles and columns, to help me think through ideas and topics. The Bible calls us to care for the needy and so perhaps I can do "my little bit" for voicing concern for those in society who are struggling---as I also seek to do "my little bit" in other ways. (I do realize that many of the articles I enjoy come from the Huffington Post, although I'm also focusing on GOP positions, which interest me as one who taught the party's history several years ago.)

"God so loved the world," as the Gospel teaches, but what's happening in that beloved world at the moment? Big economic issues and the accompanying politics are "what's happening," among other things. Steve Thorngate, writing for The Christian Century, laments that there wasn’t serious policy debate in the debt-ceiling negotiations of this past summer. The president wanted to “get to yes,” while the GOP leaders are keen on preventing Obama’s reelection, while Reps. Boehner and Cantor want control of the House republicans. This is, as Thorngate writes, all about “zero-sum electoral politics.” He criticizes the way the mainstream media (for instance, an article in Time that week) conflates policy talks with the trope that leaders should “just compromise.” In reality, there are no liberal extremists parallel to GOP hardliners who refused to budge on raising the debt ceiling and letting Bush-era tax cuts expire for the sake of increased federal revenue. Democrats have already compromised concerning cuts to what the Time article called“cherished entitlement programs like Medicare”, but GOPs will meanwhile (in Thorngate’s words) “feign disappointment when agreeing to cut tax expenditures.” (http://christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2011-07/compromise-compromise)

Coming from the conservative perspective, David Frum, a CNN columnist and former assistant to President Bush, complains that “[o]nly about one-third of Republicans agree that cutting government spending should be the country’s top priority. Only about one-quarter of Republicans insist the budget be balanced without any tax increases. Yet that one-third and one-quarter have come to dominate my party. That one-third and that one-quarter forced a debt standoff that could have ended in default and a second Great Recession.” Frum offers several ideas. One is to borrow money at less thant 3% interest in order to help people get out of unemployment, because “Unemployment is a more urgent problem than debt.”

He makes other points. Second: “the deficit is a symptom of America’s economic problems, not a cause,” because government spending increased and revenue declines when the economy weekends. Third: “The time to cut is after the economy recovers.” Fourth: “The place to cut is health care, not assistance to the unemployed and poor”; the US, he says, “provide less assistance to the unemployed and the poor than almost any other democracy” and yet health care is more expensive here and with “worse results.” Fifth: he argues that federal income could be increased not by raising tax rates but by, for instance, higher taxes on energy to encourage conservation or eliminating certain deductions (like state and local taxes) from taxable income. Sixth: he argues that the “frenzy of rage and contempt” among Republicans toward Obama “satisfies the emotions of the Republican base” but are undercutting their own good judgment via pinning all the responsibility for our economic problems on Obama. Finally, he worries that some GOP leaders are going to ruin our economic system in order to prove that the system is in trouble. (http://www.cnn.com/2001/OPINION/08/01/frum.debt.republicans/index.html).

Speaking of Obama-hating, I'm honestly not aware that liberalism has produced a cottage industry of angry media; liberal-hating authors fill an entire shelf at my nearby Barnes and Noble. One thing that urks me badly is when my churchgoing Christian friends start to sound hate-ful and snarky like some of these authors and broadcasters. I personally have found only one book (there may be others) that aims to persuade in a more irenic manner: Patrick M. Garry, Conservatism Redefined: A Creed for the Poor and Disadvantaged. New York: Encounter Books, 2010.

There is a lot of talk about taxing the wealthy these days, especially with regard to retaining earlier tax cuts and the need for national debt reduction. I worry that some of the rhetoric give a very one-sided picture. In my own little world, I know well-to-do people who are extremely generous, concerned about social issues, and hopeful to improve the common good, and I know of large companies that contribute notably to beneficial efforts. In current discussions of taxes and federal revenue, Charles Hugh Smith, writing at businessinsider.com, notes that we tend to lump the wealthy together. That's mistaken: many wealthy people (Steve Jobs is his example) "created value" and benefited millions of people, while other wealthy people (those connected with Countryside and Enron) deserve condemnation.

Smith clarifies some of the issues. Smith cautions that "the debate over tax rates is pointless, because as long as the super-wealthy own the levers of Federal governance and regulation, then they will buy exclusions, loopholes, rebates, subsidies etc. which relieve them of whatever official tax rates have been passed for public consumption/propaganda purposes." He cites the sociologist G. William Domhoff who distinguishes "the net worth held by households in 'marketable assets' such as homes and vehicles and 'financial wealth.' Homes and other tangible assets are, in Domhoff's words, 'not as readily converted into cash and are more valuable to their owners for use purposes than they are for resale.' Meanwhile, "[f]inancial wealth such as stocks, bonds and other securities are liquid and therefore easily converted to cash," and Domhoff calls these "non-home wealth." Smith cites 2007 statistics that "the bottom 80% of American households held a mere 7% of these financial assets, while the top 1% held 42.7%, the top 5% holds 72% and the top 10% held fully 83%." I direct people to this interesting article for Smith's several graphs and analysis. His conclusion:

"Beneath the happy surface of Federal transfers and spending funded by debt, earned incomes for the bottom 95% are falling and wealth is accumulating in the top 1%. (Emphasis in text.) The Federal Reserve's project of goosing stocks and bonds has greatly enriched the holders of those assets, while doing essentially nothing for the bottom 90% except increasing their government's debt load.
"It's painfully obvious that the Federal government and the Fed are the handmaidens of the politically powerful Financial Elites. Why spend your own money on bribes, bread and circuses when you can arrange for the Central State to borrow the money? Why, indeed. 'Austerity' is of course a modest reduction in the amount of money borrowed and spread around to keep the masses safely passive, but a few trillion trimmed here and there over a decade won't change the Great Game." (http://www.businessinsider.com/made-in-usa-wealth-inequality-2001-7)

Taxes, by their very nature, do impede economic growth by taking money from businesses and consumers. The author of Naked Economics, Charles Wheelan, notes that when government is “doing the things that it is theoretically supposed to be, government spending must be financed by levying taxes, and taxes exert a cost on the economy.” In his opinion “supply-side economics” is a “chimera” because “we cannot cut taxes and have more money to spend on government programs.” Basically if we pay more taxes, we get more government services, and if we pay fewer taxes, the government will have “fewer resources to fight wars, balance the budget, catch terrorists, educate children,” and other traditional government functions. So how do we have strong services and security from our government while also doing things that encourage economic growth?[1] (I wish I knew!)

Another notion in the news is "class warfare." Two articles I found are worth reading, one is "Classlessness in America: the uses and abuses of an enduring myth," in The Economist, discusses the reality of class in the wake of Rep. Paul Ryan's remark about 'class warfare." (http://www.economist.com/node/21530100/print ) Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott's "Class Warfare?" which argues that although a "millionaire's tax" does not solve all problems, but that it is a significant way to raise revenue, but President Obama "hasn't made out [the] moral case to the American people," and that his critics are wrong to argue that it is not a serious possible solution to our economic struggles. "More and more citizens believe--and rightly so--that we aren't all in this together, and that there isn't a level playing field.... Intergenerational income mobility is lower in the United States than in many European countries...The rich get richer, and so do their children, while the great majority struggles. It is the winner-take-all economy, not taxation, that is the moral problem threatening our democracy." (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-ackerman/class-warfare_3_b_982888.html)

Yet another article, by Joshua Holland for Alternet, is "The real 'class war' in America: Six narratives wealthy elites are using to destroy the nation's poor." All his points are worth reading. One of the false narratives he lists is "unemployment benefits have created a 'nation of slackers.'" He quotes the hard words of Rep. Steve King (R-IA), "The 80 million Americans that are of working age but are simply not in the workforce need to be put to work. We can't have a nation of slackers... We've gotta get this country back to work and get those people out of the slacker rolls and onto the employed rolls." But Holland points out that America has one of the "stingiest unemployment benefits" among developed countries, and that unemployment benefits are not discouraging people from finding work---because "[t]here are no jobs!" We have nearly 7 million fewer jobs than in 2007, and to that you can add many millions more people who are working part-time and would like a full-time job, so "you get 25.4 million workers vying for 3.2 million full-time job openings. King, comments Holland, takes an assertion that there are millions of people not in the work force, and derives from that the conclusion that they're all "slackers." Similarly, Holland argues that food stamps do, indeed, help people and in fact discourage starvation for many people! But the stigma attached to SNAP, perpetuated by critics who equate nutritional assistance with perpetuating instead of helping to curb poverty, causes some people to not seek this assistance despite eligibility. (http://news.salon.com/2011/09/27/wealthy_class_warfare/)

In a couple of other "news round-ups" (http://paulstroble.blogspot.com/2009/10/christian-love-part-1.html and http://paulstroble.blogspot.com/2010/03/not-funny-but-interesting-part-2.html), I thought about the need for conservatives to create a compelling vision for the common good rather than being a "party of No." Recently, Vice President Joe Biden noted "You've got audiences cheering at the prospect of somebody dying because they don't have health care and booing a service member in Iraq because [he's] gay. That's not reflective of who we are. This is a choice about the fundamental direction of our country." As the article author noted, too, the "histrionics of a small minority of the GOP debate crowd ... continues to present a lasting problem for a Republican Party struggling to come off as inclusive." (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/27/biden-on-gop-debate-boo-gay-soldier_n_983263.html)

Unfortunately, the possibility of a positive, inclusive political vision emerging on the national scene seems hopeless right now in the wake of numerous political changes that have arisen over the past fifteen or so years, as discussed in another article, "Why Congress is So Dysfunctional" (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/02/congress-dysfunction-long_n_991010.html)

A few weeks ago, an article from Religion News Service indicated that conservative Christian leaders were praiing Governor Rick Perry and his presidential candidacy. Former Focus on the Family leader James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Jr., of Liberty University, and other evangelical leaders supported Perry's style, policies, and faith. Falwell even admired Perry's "guts" for suggesting Texas might secede from the Union. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/22/rick-perry-praised-by-evangelicals_n_976674.html)

Still another article author, Karl Giberson, explains some of the background to this (to me lamentable) position of these evangelical leaders. "Widespread rejection of human-induced climate change by evangelical Christians, of the sort we have seen recently from Rich Perry and others, is a bit of a puzzler. There is no obvious reason why evangelical faith commitments should motivate the faithful to reject climate science." But he comments that "one of the strategies employed most effectively by evangelicals in their crusade against evolution, which does pose real, although soluble, biblical and theological problems, has been to undermine the entire scientific enterprise. If science is a deeply flawed, ideologically driven, philosophically suspect enterprise, then why should anyone care if almost every scientist supports the theory of evolution [and by extension, climate change]?" And the anti-science polemic by, for instance, the Discovery Institute, characterizes science as a kind of left-wing ideology which one can reject. This is very sad, as is the way some evangelical Christians will, nevertheless, become attracted to "faith-friendly" but "indefensible views in many areas: American history (the Founding Fathers intended America to be a Christian nation), sexual orientation (you can 'pray away the gay'), climate change (not happening), evolution (never happened), cosmology (Big Bang is a big joke) and even biblical studies (the bible tells us what is about to happen in the Middle East." (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karl-giberson-phd/evangelicals-and-science_b_975821.html)

Another article, "Rick Perry and Republican Magical Thinking" by Lincoln Mitchell, points out that Perry does "project an image of strength and independence" as well as "a record and some relevant experience while also legitimately presenting himself as a political outsider." The "magical thinking" part is a fuzziness of some Republicans' thinking "that cutting taxes can magically solve all economic woes," as well as the contention "that global warming is a conspiracy by liberal scientists." (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lincoln-mitchell/rick-perry-chris-christie_b_983140.html)

Yet another article, by Eric Sapp of the Eleison Group, criticizes Gov. Perry for his combination of belief in God with his determination to cut government programs for the poor. This is interesting not only from a political position but it also speaks to the role of church and government in fostering the social common good. Gov. Perry, like many conservatives, believe the church can care for society's need better than government programs. Sapp notes that progressives tend to lose this "Church can do it better" argument, which in turn supports the conservative argument that government isn't supposed to solve all problems. Sapp argues, "What we should be saying is that it doesn't matter whether the Church could do a better job caring for the poor or not because the Christ isn't doing it. We wouldn't need Section 8 housing if we had enough Habitat homes. We wouldn't need food stamps or school lunches if we had enough soup kitchens. The way to ensure better care for the poor than government can provide is not to hobble government programs but for the Church to make these programs unnecessary." (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-sapp/rick-perry-tithing_b_975723.html)

The more I've thought about this particular issue, the more I think it's not a simple either-or. I think that the Tea Party, with its anti-taxation and small-government rhetoric, has raised this issue afresh. But there can be possibilities of government working along side of faith-communities for the common good, and of persons of faith working as citizens and civic leaders in order to serve the common good through government.

Last year, while working on a research project about faith and citizenship (purchasableright now! http://congregationinpubliclife.org/DVDcurriculum.htm), I found an interesting book Doing Justice in Our Cities by Warren R. Copeland, professor of Religion and Director of Urban Studies at Wittenberg University, and also a several-term mayor and civic leader in Springfield, Ohio. He notes that, after he and his wife became the legal guardians of a teenaged girl, people remarked, “You are such good Christian people to take this girl into your home.” But he wonders why people don’t say they’re “good Christian people” because they participate in the public life of their community! “Being legal guardians for a teenager is not significantly less complicated than being a good citizen,” but he wonders “why is the direct relationship of a legal guardian so often seen as more of an act of faith than the principled participation in a community’s public life?” He adds that “Those who have served on the board of a voluntary association know that that can be just as difficult as government,” since voluntary associations, like local government, “shape our communities and understandings of the issues we face” in public life.[2]

Similarly Copeland wonders if people avoid public service because (to use his example) building a house for Habitat for Humanity is somehow more clearly a "good cause” than dealing with local and federal laws about, for instance, housing. During one year of his elected service, Copeland voted to support construction of over 200 housing units for medium- and low-income families via a federal tax credit program. In addition, his city’s public housing authority supports nearly 2000 housing units. In twenty years, he notes, Springfield’s local Habitat chapter constructed forty homes.[3] “Voluntary organizations provide a human touch and often a spiritual dimension that may be missing from government programs. However, we are not about to meet the huge needs of our urban communities through volunteerism.” He also uses the examples of public schools. He notes that people make personal decisions about their children’s education, sometimes by moving to new communities or removing children from public schools, but “[g]enerally this only makes things worse for the vast majority of our children and makes the overall education system less just” Individual and volunteer errors cannot address all the problems of school quality, funding, and so on.[4]

“Both [government and voluntary groups] are essential to a democratic society.” This is, to him, a matter of faith. “I believe that the fundamental values of real freedom and real diversity are essential to the experience of full humanity in our human communities. I believe that the ethical principles of respect for the integrity of other human beings, recognition of the just claims of our neighbors, and concern for the common good deserve our commitment.”[5]

Words to ponder---and to end this little "news round-up"!

*****

Notes:

1. Charles Wheelan, Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010), 94, 97.

2. Warren R. Copeland, Doing Justice in Our Cities: Lessons in Public Policy from America’s Heartland (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 124.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

"Sacred Music"

2011-09-24T13:44:00.003-04:00

This is a kind of CD review, more about me than the music, I guess, but strongly commending of the 30-CD "Sacred Music" set from the Harmonia Mundi label, with a good price for the amount of music covering the earliest church music to the 20th century. (See http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=309387)

Having purchased the set a year or two ago, I had listened to some of the selections but not nearly all. At the end of August, my daughter and I moved her stuff back to her college 600 miles away. But what to listen to as we traveled? I always feel very sad at the end of our nice summers; certain kinds of music, which elicit nostalgic feelings, would make me feel worse. "Sacred Music" was a good choice: lots of music for a long drive, and helpful to put me (always a worrier) in a less anxious, more trustful spiritual mood for the upcoming academic year.

Sorting through the discs, I skipped some of the early chants and Gregorian chants, though I liked;the polyphonic Renaissance music by de Machaut, Desprez, and Janequin. I also skipped some familiar pieces---Bach's Christmas Oratorio, Mozart's Requiem, Handel's Messiah, Brahms' Requiem---in favor of ones new to me. I most definitely skipped the requiems by Faure and Durufle, not because I don't love them but because Emily's choir performed them and, in my nostalgic mood, I was afraid of feeling even more sad and nostalgic about time's passage. I didn't listen to Bernstein's Mass, although I want to eventually. I loved the 1970s original, conducted by Bernstein himself, and the most recent version conducted by Marin Alsip. This version is directed by Kent Nagano, with Jerry Hadley as the celebrant. I did listen to Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, although I was familiar with it from an LP set conducted by Kurt Masur. But I hadn't heard it for a long time; this version is conducted by Philippe Herreweghe.

Looking through the CDs now, to refresh my memory about the trip, I realize I never got to Scarlatti's oratorio Cain, directed by Rene Jacobs, and some polyphonic masses by Byrd and Palestrina, which would be wonderful.

As the miles rolled along, I listened to interesting lamentations and tenebrae by Massaino, de Lassus, Charpentier, Couperin, and the 20th century Ernst Krenek; baroque vespers by Monteverdi (his Vespro della Peata Vergine) and Rovetta's Vespro Solennelle; Orthodox church music, including a vespers by Rachmaninoff; Reformed music by Tallis, Purcell, Schütz, Bruhns, and Bach; French motets by Dumon, Lully, Delalande, and Charpentier; and motets and psalms by Mendelssohn and Bruckner. The "Sacred Music" set includes Stabat Mater by Vivaldi, Pergolesi, Boccherini, and Rossini. I usually like Rossini but this piece was jarringly operatic compared to the others; his Petite Messe Solemnelle would've been another good choice.

Mendelssohn's symphonies already remind me of I-70 in Maryland, because I purchased some LPs of all five during a happy road trip in the 1980s. So Mendelssohn's Paulus, also directed by Herreweghe, was a wonderful discovery appropriately made on the same highway--possibly my favorite discovery among this whole set.

Thirty CDs barely scratch the surface of this kind of music. J.S. Bach’s alone requires dozens more CDs. After enjoying a majority the selections, I was still in the mood for religious music. I had Gounod's Requiem on my iPod but not yet listened to it; a reviewer in Gramophone magazine had called it a beautiful piece on its own and alongside Faure's and Durufle's. The reviewer was certainly correct. I also listened to Dvorak’s Requiem, which is longer than Brahms’ (George Bernard Shaw famously complained about the latter), but with a lovely “Agnus Dei.” I didn’t have time on the trip to re-play some of Bach’s cantatas on my iPod, or to play lots of other classical CDs…. A 1200-mile round trip barely gets you through the possibilities of wonderful music!

Mid-September

2011-09-15T07:47:00.001-04:00

Something I posted two years ago..... Yesterday was 09-09-09. Today is the birthday of one of my mentors: Rabbi Albert Plotkin turns 89. He is rabbi emeritus of Temple Beth Shalom in Scottsdale, AZ, formerly in Phoenix. Alluding to Talmudic traditions about the upcoming Rosh Hashana, my friend wonderfully hoped for me and my family that we might be written into the Book of Life.

Tomorrow is 9/11. My wife Beth was on a business trip in Manhattan on 09/11/01 and saw the second tower fall. She and her associate were standing on the roof of their hotel, ten blocks away. They finally rented a car the following Saturday morning and drove back to Ohio, as they failed to get any flights. That week, I tried to carry on with teaching duties and parenting (Emily was in sixth grade), but of course I was worried sick about Beth and, like the rest of the country, in shock.

Next Wednesday, the 16th, is the tenth anniversary of my father’s death. He used to pull me aside and confided that Mom’s health was failing; he wasn’t sure how much longer Mom would be with us. But that day, he was doing what he loved best, messing around in the kitchen. According to Mom, someone had rung the front door bell and then went around to the back door and knocked. In attempting to answer the knock, Dad nearly made it to the back door when he died instantly of a cardiac aneurysm. We never knew who was at the door. My mom turned 90 last month.

September 16 is also my father-in-law’s birthday. He was born in 1924, and passed away of brain cancer in 1995. His death was one of several terrible things going on in the mid-1990s, but his birthday was always memorable (and now sad to recall) because he jokingly reminded people of the upcoming date in unsubtle ways.

A while ago I read the expression “God’s wink,” some serendipitous event that signals the care of God. That’s a lovely thought, but sometimes the hard events of one’s life form a clash of anniversaries that feel like a much darker signal. I think of the last few bars of Mahler‘s sixth symphony: things are good, and then crash, a terrible chord is struck that haunts you for a long time. I know someone whose father died, when she was a teenager, on that year’s Father’s Day. Now she’s reminded of him on a day that is, cruelly, a happy day in other families. I’ve known other people who lost loved ones around Christmas time or close to significant birthdays.

I don’t want to say that God “arranges” for hard events to occur. If you’re a believer, though, these times become occasions not only to lean on friends and family, but also to turn to God, to seek God's help, and to ask the difficult “why” questions.

The Bible raises the "why" questions, too, but answers them not with theses but blessings. For instance, Psalm 22 affirms God as “holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel” (vs. 3), even though the psalmist is otherwise quite frank about his doubts and distress. Other psalms similarly include both sorrow and affirmation. Leafing through the psalms, even reading some of them outloud, can be a helpful thing when we feel haunted by tragedies or otherwise distressed. Joining psalms to intentional periods of reflection and reconciliation, as the upcoming Yamim Noraim serve for Jews, can also help.

Amid the events and milestones of life, we find consolation as we look humbly to God, the Holy One, who wants to write our names into his book. When I am afraid, I put my trust in thee (Ps. 56:3).

9/11 Anniversary

2011-09-10T08:54:00.030-04:00

The news has been filled lately with 9/11 remembrances. Many news stories have updated us on the families of victims and the dreadful events of the day. My wife Beth and I are attending two different events Sunday afternoon and evening. Many communities, colleges, and universities are holding remembrance events.

Beth was in Manhattan on business that morning. With no Tuesday classes, I was home watching a VHS tape of the movie “Finding Forrester,” so I didn’t know what was happening until Beth’s secretary called and asked if I’d heard from Beth. By that time, both towers had fallen. Unbeknownst to me, Beth had actually seen the second tower fall as she and her colleague stayed at their hotel several blocks away. Of course, phone service was dodgy but we finally got through to each other. Beth and her colleague left the city on Saturday, when the LaGuardia flight that had been optimistically scheduled was, in fact, cancelled, and the two of them rented a car to drive out of the city and across New Jersey and Pennsylvania, finally to our home in Ohio. It was a bad week, but so much worse for many, many people.

The evening of 9/11 I did something well-intentioned, which was to take daughter Emily to the animal shelter to look at cats. We had already discussed the possibility of adopting a second cat, and I thought that merely looking at cats would be pleasant for her as we both worried about Beth’s situation. Of course, we found the perfect cat, a little 8-year-old part-Siamese, black and white kitty named Domino. I should’ve waited, but in my distress I decided we could adopt Domino. Unfortunately, our cat Odd Ball—one of the most patient and placid cats on the planet—reacted very negatively to the interloper, and I was up most of the night dealing with the situation. It wouldn’t have been a restful night anyway. I can imagine that very strict British woman on the show “It’s Me or the Dog” sharply criticizing me for the situation. Happily, Domino settled in, Odd Ball settled down, and we loved Domino for four years until he suffered a disease and had to be put to sleep. Emily wrote a contest essay (which though excellent didn’t win) for “Cat Fancy” magazine about our 9/11 friend.

Beth and were going to lead a community project this year, including interviews of people about how 9/11 changed their lives. The project never developed amid the many other, good projects happening around our community, but the question is still pertinent: how did 9/11 change your life? I think for Beth and me, our normal efforts to try to promote inclusiveness and understanding increased. I was privileged to write a short study book on world religions which also promoted understanding and mutuality. My editors hoped the book would be well-timed following 9/11, and the book went on to sell over 20,000 copies.

I always wonder what happened to a student enrolled in my European history class that semester. He had gone to Manhattan to help with efforts. When he returned, he was quite shaken up and asked if I’d give him some leeway with his assignments. Of course I told him to take care of himself. But then he stopped attending class altogether and made no further contact. I hope he found help for his difficult experience.

******

Not surprisingly, both Time and Newsweek and other magazines feature cover stories this week on 9/11. I picked up a USA Today issue called “Remembering 9/11: A Tribute to Heroes.” I was interested in the article therein, “Good News in America,” which tries to balance our current gloomy mood with positive things: a record number of foreign students attended American colleges in 2010; employment is up in Silicon Valley and the tech sector; there are more jobs in clean energy than ever; farm exports are up; we have a growing number of national parks; there are more women entrepreneurs; and although he’s controversial, Obama is of course our first African American president, significant amid our legacy of slavery and racism.

Looking for a balanced analysis of our national policies of the past ten years, I found an article in the journal Foreign Affairs (Sept.-Oct. 2011). Melvyn P. Leffler of the University of Virginia reflects on “9/11 in Retrospect: George W. Bush’s Grand Strategy, Reconsidered.”

He concludes that “It seems clear now that many of [Pres. Bush and his advisers'] foreign policy initiatives, along with their tax cuts and unwillingness to call for domestic sacrifices, undercut the very goals they were designed to achieve” (p. 37). Their goal of U.S. primacy, analogous to the expansion of U.S. global policy after the Korean War, was hurt by other things. One was the flawed efforts in both Afghanistan and Iraq which, in combination with America’s support of Israel, caused increased hostility toward the U.S. in the Muslim world, while the cost of both wars—now well over $1 trillion—also hurt American primacy in the world, added to the increase in domestic spending, and increase in U.S. debt held by other countries, as well as Bush-era tax cuts. Thus, both American position in the world as well as its economic strength have declined since 9/11. Unfortunately, too, the U.S. war on terror, including our two long wars, have possibly increased the number of jihadists (pp. 37-39).

However, the war on terror has had positive outcomes, too: it has possibly thwarted new attacks, gained successes in Libya (e.g., its abandonment of a nuclear program), kept ties strong with India, China and Russia, and, as Leffler puts it, “reformed and reinvigorated foreign aid, exerted global leadership in the fight against infection diseases, tried to keep the Doha Round of trade talks moving forward, and raised the provide of democracy promotion and political reform in ways that may have resonated deeply and contributed to the current ferment across the Middle East” (pp. 39-40).

Leffler helpfully goes on to show how the Bush Administration’s strategies were not at all something new and unprecedented but were rooted in strategies, presidential rhetoric, and bipartisan national policies going back to the Monroe Doctrine. Even our unilateral policies after 9/11 are rooted in Americans’ “instinct to act independently, and to lead the world while doing so,” going back to Washington’s farewell address” (p. 42). I recommend this article for anyone thinking with these issues.

Our current partisan atmosphere in the U.S. isn’t new, either, but it is still lamentable, especially in light of the commonality and mutual care following the 9/11 attacks. As I watched the NBC news this morning, Doris Kearns Goodwin remarked that our time of political goodwill changed into an extended time of political rancor; in another interview, she also regretted the "recklessness" which characterized some of the political, economic, and foreign policy actions of the 00s, leaving us with a sense of "what might have been."What I wish for is, unfortunately, not going to happen, because it’s not the nature of politics: a kind of soul-searching and bipartisan problem-solving among our elected leaders regarding the plusses and minuses of our recent foreign and economic policies.

For instance—-to go on a tangent for a moment—I supported recent efforts at health care reform, as well as the use of stimulus funds to help the faltering economy. (This is a debated point among economists and columnists, but writers in The Economist magazine have argued that these funds did save the country from potentially disastrous economic depression and, in fact, additional stimulus money might have hastened an economic recovery). But unfortunately the timing and the way the efforts were handled by the administration and Congress (while not unlike the way the Medicare prescription drug legislation was handled several years ago) created a “vacuum” of public discussion that has resulted in the posturing and lack of cooperation among national leaders who do share responsibility of addressing economic mistakes and advancing beneficial economic policies. I go on this tangent because one big issue right now, seemingly lost amid the rhetoric about cutting domestic spending, is the plight of injured and troubled veterans of our recent wars—as well as the circumstances of the poor and the struggling middle class, who continue to be stigmatized in political rhetoric about “entitlements.” But our economic challenges include not only domestic “cushions” but also foreign aid, major military expenditures for our long wars, and the current need for tax reform.

What we need is a very strong injection of a sense of shared responsibility into our political discussions and into our everyday thinking as citizens. 9/11 has, after all, become a powerful symbol for American resilience, mutual help, and hope for the future.

As I thought about these topics, I found a discussion of Thomas Friedman’s new book, That Used to Be Us: How American Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back (by Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum). The authors argue that America’s turning point came not with 9/11 and its aftermath, but a decade earlier, when the Cold War ended. Friedman states that “[w]e shifted from [the] greatest generation that really operated on what we call in the book ‘sustainable values’ — saving and investing — and we handed power over to the baby boomer generation who really lived by ‘situational values’ — borrow and consume.” One wonders if this is one reason why we, as a country, did not mind so much when we did not have to make many domestic sacrifices at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were waged. He also notes that, with globalization, American-based companies are no longer contributing as much to the well-being of society. Friedman notes that “We are missing the voices of those CEOs in our discussions — national discussions on education and infrastructure — because if they can’t get the workers, the infrastructure, the opportunities that they need here, they can just go somewhere else… And that’s a huge problem.”

Friedman continues, “We’re having an economic crisis and the politicians are having an election and it’s like they don’t even overlap in many ways. The incentives of politics today — money, cable television, gerrymandered districts — are so misaligned with the needs of the country that they become like a closed circle, operating on their own,” he says. “What we argue for is an independent, third party that actually can show that there is a huge middle in this country that demands different politics.”[1]

Recently, I was the principal writer for a lesson series about “faithful citizenship.”[2] In those lessons, we cited the noted author Robert Bellah who has commented that contemporary conservatism, with its strong free market component, and welfare liberalism both tend to focus upon individual rather than the common good; both outlooks stress that “[t]he purpose of government is to give individuals the means to pursue their private ends” and differ only “about the means by which to foster individual self-reliance, not about the ultimate value of fostering it.”[3] Furthermore, we tend to lose sight of our commonality–as individuals, families, and workers–when we frame stories in terms of individualism. Researching the lessons I found a wonderful comment by columnist Ellen Goodman, who takes the current slogan of the Home Depot company, “You can do it. We can help,” and says that, in our current moment of overpaid CEOs, individualism, and misplaced stress on “personal responsibility,” we’ve lost the second half of that slogan, “We can help.”[4] We Americans want to help each other, but somehow we often lose sight of that when we discuss broader economic and foreign policy issues.

If conservatives tend to emphasize personal responsibility and discipline (and underemphasize circumstances where discipline and responsibility are insufficient), the liberal answer of providing government relief to the needy also misses a huge sense of what the ethicist Eric Mount calls “shared membership in a national community or a global community.”[5] What Americans still need is a “story” of shared national and global membership wherein we do not frame our view of one another as “us and them,” but rather of “being in this together.”

Mount writes: “Learning to tell better stories about ourselves as Americans and as members of the global community will not occur if we cease to remember the stories that we tell around the tables of our familial and religious communities and of our various voluntary associations and fail to advocate the virtues embedded in these stories. Nor will the better stories emerge if we lack the willingness and ability to hear the stories of other…The virtues of faith as openness to the other, love as affirmation of the other and compassion toward the other, hope as the expectant patience to keep public discourse alike, and generous public-spiritedness as the manifestation of gratitude are essential to the process of table talk that sustains civil society. If our covenantal religious traditions are worth their salt, they will season civil discourse to make it more inclusive, more respectful of difference, more attentive to the well-being of the entire community, and more constitutive of shared identity that does not subsume all other identities.”[6]

Can politics be loving and inclusive? It’s hard to imagine! Do we need a new, third party that can better articulate the needs of the political and economic “middle”? We’ll see how such an idea plays out historically. But for now, the legacy and heroism of 9/11—powerful in its tragedy, as well as its commonality among our families, religious communities, and organizations—can be a reminder to us that Americans’ first reaction to a crisis is to pull together and bolster one another. I’ve low expectations about writing letters to national leaders, but we can at least pray that some of our common spirit of mutual care can extend to the vision of our national leaders as well as to our personal political and economic opinions.[7]

Notes:

1. “Thomas Friedman on ‘How American Fell Behind,’ NPR Books, Sept. 6, 2011, http://www.npr.org/2011/09/06/140214150/thomas-friedman-on-how-america-fell-behind

2. “Faithful Citizen,” http://www.congregationinpubliclife.org/DVDCurriculum.html

3. Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, Steven M. Tipton, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkley: University of California Press, 1985), 262-266.

4. Ellen Goodman, “Bob the Un-Builder, The Washington Post Writers Group, January 11, 2007:

5. Eric Mount, “Storytelling and Political Leadership,” The Progressive Christian, 182:5 (Sept.-Oct. 2008), 19.

6. Eric Mount, Jr. Covenant, Community, and the Common Good: An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (Cleveland, OH: The Pilgrim Press, 1999), 156.

7. We Christians aren’t always as careful as we should be in communicating Christ’s love and Christian kindness while also communicating our political opinions. I admit that I rage (and shamefully swear) in private while watching the evening news, although I try to be kind while discussing politics with others. Feeling angry and discouraged about politics is entirely normal; it’s a sign that we’re engaged citizens! But then we church people need to be careful that we don’t sound like certain angry, divisive political commentators when we talk politics, otherwise we might fail badly in sharing the Gospel of God’s love.

"Faithful Citizen" Curriculum, Now Available!

2011-09-06T08:32:00.000-04:00

Shameless commerce: The Center for the Congregation in Public Life hired me last year to research and write these lessons, called "Faithful Citizen," based on their tremendous groundwork and planning. Then the editor did an awesome job of shaping the lessons. If you're part of a church group interested in current global issues and biblical teachings about covenant and ministry, check out these lessons, which include an interview with Robert Bellah and also relevant film clips!
http://www.congregationinpubliclife.org/DVDCurriculum.htm

Our Golden Age of Kids' TV

2011-08-30T09:41:00.011-04:00

When we lived near Fairlawn, OH, we loved to shop at the Borders book store there. What a favorite place, where we spent a great deal of money! It closed after we moved, and soon all other Borders stores followed suit, to our regret.

One Christmas season, at the Fairlawn store, I amused my daughter when I purchased a book by Jerry Beck, Not Just Cartoons: Nicktoons! (DK Adult, 2007). I explained that I'm quite nostalgic about her childhood.

Emily was little during the 1990s, now widely regarded as a notable era in children's programming, thanks in part to the Nickelodeon network and its series of imaginative shows. Emily's favorite show for a long time, however, was Muppet Babies, on CBS in 1984-1991 but in syndication throughout the 1990s. We watched those shows every day in summertime, and recorded several on VHS for later viewing. In the early 1990s, she also loved the Bozo show on WGN. I recorded those for her while she was in preschool, and we even considered getting tickets for the show (but there was a multi-year waiting list, and the show ended in the last part of the 90s, as I recall).

With a little research on the internet, I created a list of shows that we watched over the years. Most were on Nickelodeon but some on Cartoon Network or Kid's WB or the Disney Channel. As I think of more, I'll add them to the list. In no particular order:

Muppet Babies
Rugrats
Tiny Toon Adventures
Animaniacs
Doug
Hey Arnold!
Rocko's Modern Life
Dexter's Laboratory
Powerpuff Girls (an older relative called this show "Space Bugs," LOL)
Johnny Bravo
As Told by Ginger
Oh, Yeah! Cartoons!
The Wild Thornberries
Time Bandits
Rocket Power
Kablam!
Gargoyles
Spongebob Squarepants
Samurai Jack
Chalk Zone
Jimmy Neutron
Beetlejuice
Katie and Orbie
Danny Phantom
Butt-Ugly Martians
Cat Dog
Pelswick
Dragon Ball Z
Captain Planet and the Planeteers
Recess
The Angry Beavers
Invader Zim
Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers
Freakazoid!
Fairly Odd Parents
Aaahh! Real Monsters
Sailor Moon
G Gundam (we had all 50-some episodes on DVD, too)

We also watched some Nickelodeon sitcoms, variety shows, and game shows:

You Can't Do That on Television (that's an early one! I think Alanis Morissette was briefly a character on that show, but we didn't notice her because her music career hadn't yet taken off in the U.S.)
Adventures of Pete and Pete
Salute Your Shorts
100 Deeds for Eddie Dowd
All That
Clarissa Explains It All
The Secret World of Alex Mack
The Amanda Show
Double Dare
Wild and Crazy Kids
Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Global GUTS
Legends of the Hidden Temple
Figure It Out

Also Even Stevens on the Disney Channel, and I think a few others.

But that's not all! The TLC Network once had a block of shows called "Ready, Set, Learn," aimed at kids. I thought those shows were good, but the network eventually fazed out their kids shows (transferring them to the Discovery Kids network) and devoted programming to different kinds of formats: home decorating, baby shows, make-over shows like "What Not to Wear," and so on. But I remember kids shows like Magic School Bus, The World of David the Gnome, Skimmerink TV, Salt's Lighthouse, Zoobilee Zoo, Book Mice, and The Magic Box. (The Magic Box was, I think, a Canadian show geared toward helping preschoolers learn to read. It was quite well done but it's hard to find information on it now. I've one episode on VHS and wished I'd recorded a few more for "posterity.")

The Nick Jr. block of shows on Nickelodeon included favorite programs like Eureeka's Castle, Little Bear, Franklin, Little Bill, Max and Ruby, Maisy, Gullah Gullah Island, and others. Emily liked Blue's Clues for a while. We also watched Zooboomafoo, Wishbone, Liberty's Kids, and Cyberchase on PBS. She watched Mr. Roger's Neighborhood for a while, Reading Rainbow more often.

A few shows of the era are missing from our personal list, notably Barney. Emily never watched the show very much, other than one prime-time special (which we recorded) where Barney and the kids went off on a boat and visited a pirate island, and she liked her Barney doll. We never watched Beavis and Butt-Head and Ren and Stimpy---thank goodness. She never watched Ninja Turtles, X-Men, or Darkwing Duck for some reason, and Daria only occasionally.

I hated CatDog and Invader Zim. I disliked the latter's occasional gross-out humor (although the animation was very imaginative) and the premise of one sane person in a world of crazy people (a common enough trope: think both Bob Newhart shows, and many other examples). CatDog was just kind of mean: a character who's different is constantly abused by bullies. No thank you. But Emily liked the show.

We watched some classic shows produced in the decades prior to the 1990s: Tom and Jerry, Bugs Bunny and his "colleagues," Popeye, and Scooby-Doo. These will will be on television forever! I remember when Scooby-Doo premiered in 1969: a quartet of kids and their dog riding around in their hippy van, solving mysteries. Who would've thought that show would have such staying power?

I think I'm leaving out more anime shows on the order of Dragonball Z, G Gundam, and Sailor Moon, but I'll have to think about it for a while. We also watched a variety of movies on VHS, but I'll leave those out of this list: our trips to the video store is a good subject for another blog post. Emily did enjoy a series of (what I'll call) Christian adventures that were on TV and also VHS, but I'm blanking on the name of the series, which was well-done and compelling rather than preachy.

I was going to reminisce about some of the shows I've listed here, but they mostly consist of Emily and me, or Emily and my wife and me relaxing on the weekend, or after school, or during summertime: contented family times. If you're reading those post and recognize some of these shows, they'll elicit your own personal memories.

In another post, I listed some of my favorite kid shows from the 1960s and 1970s: http://paulstroble.wordpress.com/2010/06/18/the-triumph-of-goodness-and-canned-greens/ But I don't think I remember them nearly as fondly as all these which I watched with my daughter when she was young. No need to explain why.

Car Trading Memories

2011-08-26T08:04:00.004-04:00

Early last month, we finally traded our 2004 Toyota Sienna van for a 2010 Toyota Matrix hatchback. The Sienna ran very well but was looking worse for wear. It had a minor dent from an unknown person who backed into it. A year ago, I was stopped at the yield sign of an exit ramp in Pennsylvania, waiting for traffic to pass, and a fellow (also waiting the traffic, and distracted because he was late picking up his kid) bumped into me from behind. He was only going 5 or 10 mph but it was enough to crumple a bit of the rear fender.

We didn't need a minivan anymore, now that my daughter is in college. But the van was so handy when she was in high school! We could haul her skis in winter, band stuff in most seasons, and cart her and her friends around to various functions. What a suburban life! The van was also quite useful in moving her stuff to college and then back for summer break.

One of the fun anecdotes associated with the van was prior to our actually driving it. We had purchased it from a dealership in Kent, OH but had to wait until it arrived from the factory. We were vacationing in the West and strolling around the Mt. Rushmore park when we got the call that the van had arrived.

I’ve stayed home with Emily every summer since the one before kindergarten. It was a handy and enjoyable way to manage her activities until she learned to drive and to spend time with her. Naturally, a lot of “van memories” involve her summer camps and classes, and not only that, but getting her to and from school. The school bus drivers were poor along our route, in my opinion, and her high school was only about three miles away.

Rereading John Updike's essay "My Life in Cars"[1] made me wonder how much of my life was spent in the van. While getting that doggone song from "Rent" stuck in my head--"Seasons of Love" and its famous opening, "525,600 minutes"---I made some calculations. A half-hour every day is a reasonable minimum estimate, given our distance from various things like jobs, church, and shopping. That estimate gives me (if I’m thinking and calculating correctly) 53 total days, over a seven year period, spent driving the van. But that's a minimum: I also drove a few times to visit my mother in Illinois--a 20-hour round trip--on trips to visit Ms. Daughter in college--at first a 6-hour round trip, and then after we moved it was a 28-hour round trip---and various other excursions.

So, a modest estimate is that I spent perhaps four full months, possibly five (out of a seven year period) driving the van. In contrast: in seven years, I also spent about 2-1/3 years asleep. Fortunately, none of those times were spent in the van!!

These thoughts can be read in conjunction with an earlier blog post on northeastern Ohio: http://paulstroble.blogspot.com/2010/10/northeast-ohio.html Although we owned the van for two years in Missouri, I'll probably always think of it as our Ohio car, a faithful and nicely low-maintenance vehicle that kept us safe and on time through many routines and adventures.

Notes:

1. John Updike, "My Life in Cars," Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism (New York: Ballantine Books, 2007), 86-91.

First Day of School!

2011-08-17T15:32:00.004-04:00

An essay from 1995. I made only a couple changes, and kept the original present-tense, although my daughter is now a senior in college.

Beth and I drove our daughter to kindergarten the other day. It was her first day there. She had attended preschool; she already loves school. But we shed tears nonetheless.

She had a great time, of course! I did too, my first day of kindergarten. I started at Washington School in Vandalia in the fall of 1962, and then after Christmas break, part of my class transferred to the brand-new Jefferson School, nearer my home. (When we visit Vandalia she says, in five-year-old fashion, "Dad, is that your old, old kindergarten school?" Thanks, kid!) I've been thinking about the differences and similarities between her and my kindergartens. Some things reflect the greater range of choices that are part of our modern age and the social changes of the past decades. But some things seem alike.

Fayette County, Illinois had nine grade schools. Our large Kentucky county has 83.

On my first day of school, I wore nice clothes and Fruit-of-the-Loom underwear (purchased at Vandalia's store The Model) and held tightly to a Huckleberry Hound doll. Emily wears a Disney's Pocahontas tee shirt and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers underclothes (purchased at Target) and likes her Barney doll (although she doesn't care so much for the show). Her sneakers have little lights on them. I wore Buster Browns without lights.

I watched new Hanna-Barbara cartoons on one of our four television stations. Emily watches thirty-five-year-old Hanna-Barbara cartoons (and newer ones on Nickelodeon) from among our forty stations.

Emily has instruction in Spanish and computer use once a week. I learned no Spanish, and computers (which weren't in schools) looked like this: http://www.old-computers.com/history/detail.asp?n=58&t=9 and
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=1028

I loved Dr. Seuss and watched for his new books. Emily enjoys Dr. Seuss, too, plus the Berenstain Bears, Max and Ruby, and other series.

Few African Americans lived in Fayette County during my childhood. I had no non-white classmates and didn't think anything about it. Emily has several non-white classmates and doesn't think anything about it.

Mrs. Bannister was a wonderful teacher; so is Emily's Mrs. Smythe. How important are good teachers for a child, especially at the very beginning!

I had a half-day kindergarten. Emily has a full-day class.

Emily's obsessed with being five years old. I introduced myself to Mrs. Bannister by proudly telling her the date I was born.

Mr. Bannister, the principal at Washington, drove a Renault Dauphin in 1962. I have no idea what Emily's principal drives!

In 1962-1963, important word events included the deaths of Pope John XXIII and Marilyn Monroe, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of JFK, and others. Will Emily remember the deaths of Mickey Mantle and Jerry Garcia? The war in Bosnia? Bill Clinton's presidency? The OJ trial?

I loved to get candy at Vandalia's mom-and-pop groceries, especially McCormick's store at Third and Randolph, and the G. C. Murphy store downtown. Emily loves to get candy at Dairy Mart, a local chain.

When Mom became pregnant with me, she gave up a wonderful job at the G.C. Murphy. She enjoyed the downtown scene. "A lunch table in the Abe Lincoln Cafe," wrote Joseph Lyford in 1962, "is the scene of peppery exchanges on all varieties of subjects. One week of noontime debates covered desegregation, the cold war, bureaucratic government, the policies of Alexander Hamilton, teaching machines, Supreme Court decision, apportionment, the separation of powers, and Harvard." My mother loved being a part of all the downtown variety! Giving it up was difficult for her. My dad still worked long hours, of course. Beth and I share in Emily's care, and we've both kept our jobs, although I reorganized my career drastically in order to have more time for her. I see many dads dropping off and picking up their kids, too. Parental roles have changed.

My mom read Dr. Spock. We've read Dr. Mom.

Mom was afraid I'd be homesick during my first day at school, which was also my first time away from home. The predicable thing happened. I didn't think once of home till naptime. I'm sure Emily rarely misses us, too. The clerk at Dairy Mart told me that her (now 17-year-old) son, on his first day of kindergarten, made her wait outside while he went in alone!

I'm thinking about that last point. The popular author Robert Fulgham has written wonderful books, notably, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. His list is famous. He might have included one other thing. In kindergarten I learned: how eagerly, how early we begin to separate ourselves from our parents.

Motels on Route 66

2011-08-14T22:35:00.006-04:00

I used to have a copy of a 1983 issue of Art in America, with Ellsworth Kelly's "Concorde Angle" on the cover. In the accompanying article, the author discussed Kelly's minimalist art and made reference to Kelly's then-recent Concorde series. I don't remember the exact quote but the author noted that Kelly sought in that series to overcome or challenge the form of the rectangle . The quote may have been "the tyranny of the rectangle," but I'll have to find the article and check.

That comment stayed with me because I wasn't sure if the goal of overcoming the rectangle was one of those high artistic concepts which Tom Wolfe lampooned in The Painted Word, or if that was an interesting insight into the way art represents or does not reality. I appreciate contemporary art more now than when I first read Wolfe's small book. But the comment came back to mind when I discovered a book recently, which has been out for a while: Lisa Mahar's American Signs: Form and Meaning on Route 66 (New York: The Monachelli Press, 2002). There is a vernacular story of overcoming the straightforward, rectangular form, in the history of motel signs.

Mahar provides the history of motel signs along Route 66 during its main years: from the late 1938, when most of the road was finally paved for its complete distance, to the 1970s when the highway began to be decertified in some parts of the country. Of course, motels along 66 are representative of those along America's many other highways. She quotes the geographer J. B. Jackson that "The beauty that we see in the vernacular is the image of our common humanity, hard work, stubborn hope, and ... love" (p. 10). She continues that a formal analysis of signs not only show us the humanity of Americans during different time period but also their values and economic realities. (To these comments, I added a few scans of motels from my own postcard collection, some from 66 and some from U.S. 51.)

Mahar's book is divided into periods: "Symmetry, Geometry, Rigor: 1938-1947"; "Theming and Regional Symbolism: 1945-1960"; "Abstraction and Self-Expression, 1950-1957"; "Specialization, Modularity, Segregation: 1957-1965"; "Intensive Simplicity, 1961-1970s." In the first period, signs were more straight-forward. In the post-war period, the simple geometry and efficiency of the earlier signs "no longer provided a sufficient means of differentiating one business form the next. Motel owners and signmakers responded by boldly theming their buildings and signs." (p. 77). Thus, not only did signs show more visual interest in their shapes (for instance, incorporating designs like tails and arrows), but also more imagination in their names: one saw fewer motels simply named for their owners--"Clark Motel"---and more memorable names like "Desert Hills" or "Ozark Court" or (as above, in Flagstaff) "Flamingo."

During the 1950s, one also saw many more novel signs and asymmetry, and what has been called the "googie" style related to the Space Age. Personally, I like these kinds of signs the best; during my parents' 1960s vacations, plenty of those 50s signs still beckoned travelers along highways. The signs seem quaint and nostalgic now, celebrated in picture books about Route 66 and the Lincoln Highway, and striking where they still exist.

In the later period of Route 66's existence, the 1960s and 1970s, one saw a return to more simple signs, often made of much cheaper materials than earlier signs. Part of this greater simplicity was due to cost savings, but also the Highway Beautification Act of 1965, and the accompanying feeling that we shouldn't clutter natural environments with gaudy signs and advertisements. I think this postcard from Decatur, Illinois is from the 40s but does show the original, simpler design.

It is hard to imagine a more thorough treatment of motel signage. Mahar discusses the many geometric innovations, patterns, and styles of signs, including materials, structures, and fonts, as well as years when a popular form (like tails---as in the above postcard of the Holiday Motel in Centralia, IL---arrows, and formal similarities to the motel's architecture) were developed or dropped. She is influenced by material culturalists in the structuralist tradition, like Henry Glassie, and also Paul Klee's Pedagogical Sketchbook, which "combined the science of rigorous analytic method with a faith in the power of ordinary objects to reveal larger truths" (pp. 24-25). I've always appreciated a book coauthored by my friend Keith Sculle: The Motel in American Life by John A. Jakle, Keith A. Sculle and Jefferson S. Rogers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). For good treatments of this aspect of American culture, I'd recommend that book plus Mahar's detailed account.

It makes me wonder if there is a story of church signage over the years: any ideas?

Faithful Citizen Curriculum, Now Available

2011-08-11T17:03:00.000-04:00

Shameless commerce: The Center for the Congregation in Public Life hired me last year to research and write these lessons, based on their tremendous groundwork and planning. Then the editor did an awesome job of shaping the lessons. If you're part of a church group interested in current global issues and biblical teachings about covenant and ministry, check out these lessons, which include an interview with Robert Bellah and also relevant film clips!
http://www.congregationinpubliclife.org/DVDCurriculum.htm

Downtown Vandalia

2011-08-07T17:02:00.002-04:00

An essay about my hometown, written in the early 1990s. My inspiration was Alfred Kazin’s beautiful little book, A Walker in the City.

Like many small midwestern towns, downtown Vandalia has a friendly feel: clean, quiet, and safe. I love to see it. The old state capitol dominates the square; businesses line the quiet streets. Bright signs just into the daytime space and color the night. Power lines zigzag above my head just higher than the cornices of the stores and their memorialized businessmen. From the street the top, second stories look unused and dry. Stop signs, railroad lights, the yellow and black R x R signs, the signs for routes 40, 51, and 185; emblems for gasoline, liquor, and soda; painted ads for Brunswick Tires and Mail Pouch tobacco — look sun-baked and familiar. I’ve always loved the way the signs look, the way the sidewalks look, the downtown architecture, the faces of townspeople. The effect is one of closeness and safety, feelings that attend memories of growing up in a small town.

Even before I come to town I can picture the sights and sounds of my childhood’s cool interiors: the lightning-bolt calligraphy of Zenith ads tacked upon a drab beige wall; bins of stereo LPs and the sound of country music from WPMB; displays of cemetery flowers at the downtown florist; rows of Maytag washers and dryers. I can picture the shelves of pharmaceuticals, beauty products, and boxes of Fruit Stripe gum inside Capps’ Drugs (“Your grandfather traded here,” read the sign outside); the wooden bins of tools inside the Greer hardware store. I can picture one bank’s “giveaway” calendars from which huge numbers were torn at the start of each day; the hard plastic squares of dates, set in holders upon the smooth counters of the bank where I had my first savings account, the wet counter of the soda fountain where I got cherry Cokes; the movie theater with its dim interior. Some of these things are still here, some are gone, and some have been sold, improved, and freshly painted. Some are antique and craft stores. No store sits vacant long.

Vandalia has grown over the years, so the neighborhoods press the city limits beyond the borders of my childhood. But like so many small towns bypassed by superhighways, Vandalia’s economy has largely been diverted by Interstate 70 to the other side of town, and the business district is quiet. “You seldom see anyone you know downtown,” says a classmate, “you see them at Wal-Mart.” Though Vandalians hope to continue revitalizing and preserving the downtown, an older “Main Street” era has passed, and I caught its end. I survey the short business blocks between Third and Sixth Streets and miss the shaded row of small, busy shops near Sixth, Dr. Mark Greer’s downtown office (inside the waiting room were, I recall, enormous mounted animal heads), and, up the block, the corner “Illinois Brokerage” store where my aunt once worked. On busy Saturday mornings it was tempting to take the parking spots reserved for the physicians who had offices in the upper stories of the block. I miss all these places because they are my childhood recollections. The present-day businesses are not inferior, except from whatever moral standpoint my own sentimentality can claim. I miss downtown signs for auto tires, shoes, the Abe Lincoln Cafe, the Shirley Shop, Merriman’s. I miss the Craycroft car lot which I passed as I crossed the Pennsy tracks with a new LP under my arm. I miss the small town clothing stores like the Model and the Hub where as a toddler I hid in the soft darkness of pant legs and dresses hanging from the low ranks. I miss the G.C. Murphy store, just up the street, where my mother worked for many years before becoming pregnant with her only child, and of her taking me into the crowded store on Saturdays as we stood together upon the wooden floors to buy bags of Hershey’s kisses at the enormous glass counter. I miss the local Ben Franklin store, with its white and orange sign. On summer days, one of that store’s benefits was the air-conditioned interior –worth a trip to town whether you needed anything or not. Exiting into the summer heat caused one alarm. The First National Bank time-and-temperature sign reminded you, when all other conversations failed, to talk about the weather and its effect on crops.

Allen’s furniture store, the local photographer, and two pharmacies are still downtown, but two other pharmacies are gone, as is the Western Auto store and the frame building which served as Democratic headquarters during the ’64 campaign when I eagerly collected badges for “LBJ” and Illinois secretary of state Paul Powell. The “Tri City” grocery store is gone now too. “Before my time” there were several downtown markets. As we pushed our cart past familiar symbols of flour, baking goods, and hair tonic, I’d check my own list for sugary breakfast cereals, Bazooka gum, and candy cigarettes. If we saw him, we chatted with a widowed cousin of Mom’s who came there to shop. Dressed in overalls he always rested on the seats near the exit before he pushed his cart sadly to his old car.

I miss the downtown businessmen and women of my childhood; some are retired or moved, a few have died, but I welcome seeing those folk who are still just inside their doorways and who still recognize me after intervals of time. For years I came to town like a thief, hoping not to be conspicuous because I’d have to contact so many people and it would take time away from filial visits. I’ve changed my mind, and try to see several folk at least for a short time. The older I grow the more I value those people who still stand in the doorways of my private recollections.

*****

This place could be anywhere. Vandalia is typical of midwestern towns and has even been scrutinized by an “outside” author looking for greater movements of social change. Such a community possesses a closely-knit social fabric wherein, as the historian Lewis Atherton puts it, one scarcely needs a name. (Yet a “good name” is indispensable: a good name can make even large financial transactions friendly affairs of first-name basis, and my father is proud that his own name elicits trust.) But with that closeness and rural sociality comes the inconvenience of fewer services and a claustrophobia that may set a young man dreaming. He dreams of greater opportunities beyond the small town, a different kind of human community and new friendships. So he leaves the small town and for better or worse becomes part of those greater social trends. Yet he always thinks of his hometown as a friend who will always be a friend but, since friends want the best for each other, they must live many miles separately and there is always fear that each reunion will be the last.

“He” of course is “I.” I write this neither with regret for being one of the “young people” who have fled the small towns, nor blameful at something which might have caused me to leave, nor scornful toward classmates who stayed. Yet as I raise my own child I often think of my favorite childhood places and consider how those landscapes influenced me through the subtle nuances of human geography, while feeling regret that this won’t be the place where I’ll raise her too.

(Thus, I’ve become the nostalgic nuisance I once thought my parents were. Even better, I’ve incorporated their nostalgia into mine.)

Several things downtown have changed since I was small. The Easterday Building at the corner of Sixth and Gallatin has changed hands several times. I remember inspecting the Jethro Tull and Van Morrison 8-tracks inside the store, during one of its incarnations. Across the street a sign for a downtown cafe-with the greater admonition to drink Pepsi-Cola (“Taste that beats the others cold!“) — was painted on the side of a two-story building and dwarfed the tiny cafe itself That was a wonderful place. It had delicious cheeseburgers and good conversation among locals. The place closed when its owner died and that sign is gone now, peeled away by years of sunsets and finally painted over. Beside the cafe stand the local grain elevators, next to the ICRR tracks. I am always relieved to see them. They seem so appropriate there, so “small town” beside the clutter of railroad hardware.

The Illinois Central tracks were purchased by Vandalia in 1983, two years after the ICRR ceased all service but the Conrail thunders through on the Pennsylvania tracks. The two lines intersected at Vandalia and the depot, built in 1923 and now a restaurant, sits beside the rails. The Illinois Central saved Vandalia economically prior to the Civil War. Completed to Vandalia in 1854, the ICRR joined the Vandalia Line (established in 1847 as the western line of the Terre Haute and Indianapolis Railroad). By 1905 the Vandalia Railroad Company had combined several different lines, including the St. Louis, Vandalia, and Terre Haute R.R., and the Pennsylvania Railroad held a majority control therein. The railroads made Vandalia a popular stopover for traveling salesmen—the best for accommodations, people said, between St. Louis and Indianapolis and between Chicago and Cairo.

My parents remembered that time as exciting. They grew up on Fayette County farms and Vandalia was a bustling place to “come in” to as the “Spirit of St. Louis” rumbled into town. My railroad memories are very different, since the trains no longer stopped here. I recall how we waited and waited in the family car as the lights of the striped railroad crossing guards blinked bright red, and I’d count the passing box cars marked with the interlocking PRR symbol of the Pennsy. Other times, on foot, I liked walking the tracks and studying the numbered rail spikes, the blue insulators upon the tall power lines, the red no-left-turn lights which stood along Main Street, the disused railroad equipment and the weeds which thrived upon the graveled railroad line. A small concrete bridge forded the Pennsylvania tracks at Fourth Street. The tracks were thirty feet below and if I waited long enough I could scoop up a handful of gravel and throw rocks down upon the passing boxcars. It was great fun for a 12-year-old boy. I could recall the First Street Bridge, never replaced after an August 1962 train wreck demolished it, and the fascination I felt, as a five-year-old boy, seeing freight cars tumbled along the tracks like toys.

Gallatin Street, which is Vandalia’s “main drag” rather than the quieter Main Street, slopes upward at Sixth to an auto parts store in the old Kroger building (where teenagers used to park in its lot at night), to the sanctuary and watchful spire of the Lutheran church — “the friendly church on the hill” – and to the county courthouse. A Christmas tree has for years been annually positioned at the top of this hill, right in the middle of the street. Traffic is less hectic there than in years past. U.S. 40 once passed directly through town, entering town to the east at Gallatin Street, along with the longitudinal U.S 51, then 51 turned north at Fifth Street on its way to Lake Superior, and passed through the rest of downtown and onward to the west. Both highways were rerouted after World War II; instead of passing through downtown they turn north at Third Street, where Vandalia’s older commercial blocks begin, and the former path of 40 (or “Alternate U.S. 40″) is now the charming, winding Illinois 140 west of town. I-70 was opened locally in 1965. But even during the early-Seventies a good deal of highway traffic still came through the downtown. I recall that buses once stopped at the Hotel Eakin—a grand hotel of my parents’ generation. In old pictures the Eakin’s Ford garage stood at that corner with a “gargoyle” Mobil sign out front. My parents remember all the businesses which catered to the highway travelers, the Hotel Evans and its Abe Lincoln Cafe, the Eakin, the Star Hotel, the Wigwam Bar-B-Q (“Gas for the Car, Eats for You”), the Junction Park Motor Co. which sold Mohawk and U.S. Royal Cord Tires, and the Smith Brothers Sales and Service which sold Whippets, Willys Knights, and Nashes. Some of the buildings for these places remain but have been transformed into other kinds of stores. The sight of buses in that section of downtown where the space created by grocery parking lots, the long side of the Easterday building, a Marathon filling station, the two-lane road, and the railroad tracks and depot provided a large open area, gave a mild impression of an invasion of the outside world–a “stranger’s path”–into the structural closeness of the little downtown. That area still is open although the rerouting of buses to a place more convenient to I-70 and the end of railroad commerce has made that area more benign.

Realizing, perhaps, that “my” Vandalia had lost some of its former importance as a trading center, I felt lonely looking down the railroad tracks into the hot, hazy distance. Yet it was a fond kind of loneliness, as a child understands such things: it was a gratitude for life plus sadness at change. If home is a road that every other road of one’s life crosses, I felt both sad and happy at the prospect of other roads.

I still feel that way. I recognize that my hometown is a mirror for me of the changes in my own life and my own mortality. Yet the older I become, the dominant feelings which I’ve kept about Vandalia are not sadness or self-pity, but gratitude and, of course, affection.

*****

I feel a little guilty–since it betrays the triumph of marketing–by how enduring to my thoughts of home are product symbols. Not surprising, I suppose; antique dealers make a lot of money on both authentic and reproduction signs. Such things become the specifics of one’s childhood life. One of my earliest memories is that of a railroad building on Sixth Street. A billboard was attached upon its north side and the distinctive calligraphy of Coca-Cola, painted on the wall itself, protruded from behind the board. I was a tiny child when the building was razed but I recall recognizing that calligraphy, and what it stood for, and the taste. (I remember the building as huge. But the tiny grassy place where it stood reminds me that, as one grows older, childhood landscapes shrink ). Trademark symbols for Pet Milk and Ked’s shoes, Buster Browns and Hush Puppies, Kiwi shoe polish, Gold Medal flour, Sherwin-Williams’ “Cover the Earth”, Firestone tires, the Standard Oil Company’s flaming torch, Shell Oil’s shell, the Socony-Vacuum Pegasus, and the wildly cursive “GE”-all these symbols stir recollections of going downtown, holding tightly to my parents’ hands, not having a care in the world. Even beer ads–this would have horrified my non-drinking parents–caught my juvenile attention. One purchased the brands, after all, in “package stores”–there were an abundance of package stores and saloons following the late-Thirties oil boom in the county–and “package” was a sweet-sounding word, a word we used at Christmas. Beer signs hung from the old facades and flashed in dark tavern windows. I liked the ads for Falstaff best. They looked like the six-pointed U.S. highway shields that I also liked, except the Falstaff shields were misshapen, as if left on a hot car seat on a summer’s day. I also liked the Miller High Life signs, with their muted colors of red, green and gold, like an old gift in an old home.

Perhaps it is not merely the triumph of marketing which makes me remember such things, but also the fact that one’s childhood memories are a complex of rich associations both banal and sublime. The sight of anything–a business marquee, an architectural relic, a highway sign–triggers a litany of memories that have collapsed into a common experience. Spotting the wooden footbridge over the “town branch” I recall summer days when, walking along Fifth Street near our church, I’d stand upon the bridge and enjoy spitting down to the small smooth stones and lapping water. I’d hum the latest tune from The Who or The Doors or The Jefferson Airplane. I’d head up the hill past the appliance store from which Dad got Frigidaire boxes for me to play in, past the rich wood smells of the lumberyard, and I’d walk under the cool shade of the awnings on the north side of Gallatin. I’d wander to the library for a book or I’d pick up the local paper for my folks. A stroll to town seemed more productive than watching television, yet better than mowing the lawn. If I turned all the knobs on the parking meters I might even hit the jackpot.

I recall an old hotel on Fifth Street, with a group of idle, older men sitting outside in their plaid shirts, caps, and overalls. It is among my very earliest memories although I can’t say for sure if the image of overalled fellows is a later interpolation after seeing such men in a hundred small towns through which I’ve passed. At some point in time, things were slower and easier. Down the street from the shoe store that stands at the site of the hotel, City Hall stands beside the newer fire station. Once there was a room in City Hall where mothers could stop and change a baby’s diaper or rock the child to sleep. The newspaper office sits all the way down on Fifth Street on the corner. I still subscribe to the local paper–I have to know the local agricultural news, the news from neighboring communities, the names of folk who have died, the issues of local politics, the folk who have found morel mushrooms this week, the reflections of the local clergy, and the daily menus of the public schools–but something is lost now that I don’t go to town to obtain each issue. I recall minor traffic jams whenever the paper “came out” on Monday and Wednesday. The Tri-City grocery and the First National Bank had parking lots on Fifth Street that could serve for the local library and the newspaper office too. But people double-parked in front of the library as well as in front of the paper office when the paper came out. People double-parked in spite of the fact that City Hall and the police cars might have discouraged them in any other place than a small town. This row always had a friendly feel to me. In a small town, one could double-park and not fear a ticket. One knew everyone else, after all, and most everything about them.

I make more mental connections as I survey Fifth Street. My grandfather died many years before within that friendly, public space, while walking to a harness shop. I have seen pictures of the street as it looked in 1935—the striped awnings, painted signs, and other banners which today are replaced by the plain parking lot of the First National Bank–the year Andy Stroble died of a fatal stroke. “He just caught the handle of the barbershop door and fell,” says my father. The two men had “come to town” for trading that day, as they often did. Dad still points out the locations of downtown shops they frequented: hardware stores, doctors’ offices (one of whom, “Old Doc” Morey, always gave Andy a friendly sip of whiskey), trading centers, and a tobacconist’s store with a carved Indian figure outside. Born twenty-two years later I always have wondered what fun Andy and I missed by the fact our lives did not overlap (“Everyone knew Dad, and liked him,” Dad has told me.) But once I met an “old timer” who asked me, upon hearing my name, “Are you any kin to Andy Stroble?” and I was startled to be so easily connected to a man dead these six decades But I remembered that, in a small town, you are ever connected to someone else, and time will ever linger.

*****

Still looking around Vandalia, I think about other things. I like to see a variety of Vandalia friends during visits to Vandalia. There are people I miss seeing: Dr. Phil Cocagne, the outgoing retired physician; my close friend Pastor Arthur Cullen Bryant, a Brooklyn-raised descendent of the poet, who loved Vandalia and looked at small town mores with a dry, amused wittiness; G. V. Blythe, the school superintendent who never failed to buy any fool thing which I came peddling for scouts or school. To this day I buy anything a little kid sells, in honor of G.V. I miss Amel Oberg, my old friend from church who read voluminously and told me many stories of his rich life. I miss seeing my mother’s brother, Harold Crawford, who walked all over town for his bad heart, and another relative who liked to tickle children and claimed that boys lack a rib because of Adam.

I’ve always liked the block where my cousins Don and Hazel Jones operated a gift shop and photography studio. I bought “45s” there and got the tenth one free: Jesus Christ Superstar! . . . now a period piece. Just down the street, I generally got my hair cut at Reeves’ barbershop. I liked its electric, striped pole, its penny gum machines with Lion’s Club emblems glued to the clear globes, and its strewn collection of Field and Streams. The long mirrors on both walls sent reflections back and forth of white bottles of aftershave and scented oils. (How long would the reflections go? The old Pet Milk cans, which my parents purchased, each had a picture of a cow in a Pet Milk can, and the can on the label had a picture of a cow in a can, and so on forever. As I sat in the barber’s chair, I had time to speculate about such things.) Next door was the “beauty parlor,” which always startled me when I encountered the strong, toxic smell of “permanents” in the air. Next door to that shop was Doug’s shoe store. I liked to collect the latest promotional giveaways there. Ked’s Shoes offered kids things like little plastic whistles containing secret “spy” compartments–rivaling the devices of James Bond himself. When school was in session we kids took them to school to scare girls and teachers, whenever we weren’t already involved with catching “tobacco juice”–spitting grasshoppers or playing “Red Rover” or singing childish choruses–complete with mildly sexual references which to us were the height of daring–for the sake of being unruly.

I sometimes wonder what nuggets of lifelong happiness we gain from such hometown scenes. What lasting joy did “spy toys” give me? What confidence did I gain at age four or five when I was allowed to select my own box of cereal from a certain grocer’s comfortable shelves? What self-esteem did I gain when Dad brought me, a tiny child, to a store and introduced me as “the boss,” or when my rock collection was profiled in the local paper, or when I could walk unsupervised to town for a haircut?

Much of Vandalia remains the same. The land itself is as undulating as the Lord and the Illinoisan Glacial Drift made it: the hill at Seventh and Gallatin; the slope of the main drag as it gently tours past the filling stations of “Gasoline Alley” near the Kaskaskia River bridge; the way the patriotically named streets climb the apex of small hills and descend into respective valleys; the topographical pleasantness of the small-town churches. After growing up here I sometimes feel, not irreverently, that my very soul has been laid out in perpendicular grids by the surveyors of the Old Northwest. The neighborhoods are tree-lined and pretty with older homes of Queen Anne and Italianate style set among the Craftsman, ranch, and split-level houses. There are fences and brick barbecues in people’s backyards, canopies of bright green leaves of the town’s great trees, the dogs, cats, and playing children. When I try to imagine what these streets would look like if I were a tourist “just passing through,” I fail utterly. But when I try to do so, I initially think, This would be a pleasant place in which to grow up.

*****

It was such a place. Except for a very short time after my marriage I’ve never lived in Vandalia as an adult and thus the town retains a special quality for me: a freedom from want, a freedom from the need to make my own living, a freedom to have a name which everyone knows. Where I live now, in the suburbs of a city, I’m a wage earner, happy in my privacy, wistfully content with my malls where I rarely see people I know.

Vandalia was by no means perfect. Like most small towns its character lay somewhere between the discord and isolation of famous fictional small towns and the virtuous agrarian ideal of Thomas Jefferson. Many times I’ve walked downtown and thought of stereotypical “small town” things from my childhood, conflicts between town and farm kids; the overheard gossip and scandal; the judgments of people. Yet the town elicits a deep sense of loyalty in many of its natives. It is a loyalty quite different from nostalgic, small-town smugness for, traditionally, it has resulted in progressiveness, civic teamwork, and Vandalians’ laudable and ongoing work of historical preservation. A few years ago most of Vandalia’s citizens gathered on Gallatin Street for a promotional photograph. The sight of 6000 people on one street gained the town national publicity.

I grew up in Vandalia during the Sixties and early Seventies. The character of the county’s agricultural economy was changing. “You starve to death on eighty acres–even on twice that much,” one farmer complained in 1962: the area’s farms were by necessity becoming vast operations needing greater capital outlay than newcomers to farming, including many sons of farmers, could afford. My grandparents–who had productive small farms near Vandalia in the early 1900s–would have had difficulty in the Sixties with comparably limited acreage. Yet the period was only slightly less “cash rich” than the late Fifties and most local people owned their homes and had sufficient income for savings and long vacations.

During that time a good amount of small town patriotism–from the war-veteran courtroom orators to the daily displays of the American flag in schoolrooms, churches, and public offices–was not abated by the deepening confusion over Vietnam. Until it was abandoned in 1969 a dress code in the public schools kept teenagers from imitating the hippies, and kids’ Sixties-era sensibilities had finally more to do with fashion and adolescent self-indulgence than social protest. Yet, when, a young man from Vandalia, the son of a local service station manager, came home from Southeast Asia in a flag-draped casket, I knew better than to believe that small towns had nothing to do with the greater world, or that patriotism was an empty gesture.

So my mind teems with the era’s contradictory images, images of American faith, heroism, and youthful rebellion. I remember deadly serious discussions in our church youth group over the issue of long hair–was it Christian? Didn’t Jesus have long hair and preach love? We practically pinned a “peace symbol” upon the Lord’s seamless robes. I recall discussions among my parents and their friends: what’s wrong with young people today?

The times were a-changing. I grew up feeling part of two eras and I was confused about both: my parents’ generation which sought to relieve their children of the troubles of their own youth, and my own generation which sought to discover its own way. Walking or riding to town, I had solitary time to think about such things. I could view the tangible, mercantile legacy of my parents’ lives while seeking a footing in my own life, about which I hadn’t a clue.

*****

On hot, mosquito-ridden summer days of the Sixties, the 5:30 whistle blew loudly downtown. The American flag at the courthouse came down, and the neighborhoods filled with smell of barbecues and cut grass. The downtown streets remained sunny and hot long after folk went home for supper. At some point, it seems that people went home for supper and just stayed there, for the downtown streets seem so quiet now. Vandalia is larger than during my childhood years, but, like so many small towns, its economy is no longer primarily “Main Street.” I’ll drive through and recall how the streets looked on big shopping days when Gallatin Street, both ways from Fifth, became filled with tables of wares and bargain-hunting shoppers. I’ll feel wistful for those days.

Yet my own memories pale compared to those of my mother who felt wistful at Vandalia’s “glory days” even when I was small. Even though the Depression had gripped the region, Vandalia was a busy, exciting place as people “from all over” gathered on Saturday nights! Cars were bumper-to-bumper! Farmers lined up their trucks near Kelly’s elevator! The present First National Bank was the great Dieckmann Hotel of the railroad era, and it was always full; the other downtown hotels were filled with salesmen and tourists, and the streets were filled with country folk who had “come to town.” Polk Atkinson’s store at Fifth and Gallatin was the chief gathering spot on Saturday nights; the crowds were thick. All her relatives from the farms of nearby Brownstown and the Four Mile Prairie would be in town too. You’d see everyone you knew!

What accounts for the change? Alteration of styles of travel, of course, with interstate highways superseding the older roads and railroads as primary modes. Also the lesser importance of both farm-town and tourist economy and the increasingly indoor quality of community functions–the teens have their malls in nearby towns and their jobs, the adults have Wal-Mart. All these things explain some of the quietness of the business district, a quietness which, ironically, does not reflect Vandalia’s economic healthiness in other areas and its population growth.

Yet I miss the downtown of my childhood, and miss, in a manner of speaking, the downtown of my parents’ childhood “before my time.” In a why, as I look through the old local histories, I feel some sense of connection with Andy Stroble’s 1890s childhood in Vandalia: a time without the sights and sounds I have known, a time without automobiles. My feelings thus emerge as entirely contradictory since they count upon social and geographic change that makes today’s Vandalia different from “mine,” and in turn different from the town of my parents and my grandparents. In which case is change true and good?

I accept such contradictions, just as I accept the contradiction of loving deeply a small town that I’ve chosen to leave. It’s not a matter of Frost's “road not taken,” but rather Wordsworth's "Ode" to our childhood memories:

… those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day…
Uphold us, cherish, and have the power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake
To perish never…

So I become nostalgic for the place of my childhood, and wish for my own child a comparable light.

I’ve used that expression “before my time.” In a way, it has little meaning. Time is something I fight against. I hope to beat the clock which will inevitably beat me, all the while I place my hope in an Eternity which enriches and redeems time.

But space …. therein I live and remember. Little wonder that Christians, unconsciously at least, think of Heaven as a place without time but with “streets” and with earthly, affective ties made everlasting. For unless you keep a diary, you cannot date the time you bought a favorite outfit, got a great bargain, found an appliance box for your child to play in, read a library book which especially moved you, stepped up to a yellow curb, or noticed a place had “changed hands.” You won’t recall delighting in the red shape of a stop sign, a yellow railroad sign, or the number of a U.S. route, because that was the time when you were first learning words, shapes, colors, and numbers. These things have become the particulars of your earliest life, deeply part of home.

*****

This essay originally appeared in Springhouse magazine, then in my book Journeys Home: Thoughts and Places (1995), and then my wordpress blog.

Hurt by Criticism?

2011-08-06T12:12:00.006-04:00

Doing some studying of Buddhism for a fall course, I came upon this quotation from the Buddhist nun and author Pema Chödröm, where she explains a term used by her teacher, Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, "shenpa," which can be translated "attachment" but has additional meanings.

"Here is an everyday example of shenpa. Somebody says a mean word to you and then something in you tightens—that's the shenpa. Then it starts to spiral into low self-esteem, or blaming them, or anger at them, denigrating yourself. And maybe if you have strong addictions, you just go right for your addiction to cover over the bad feeling that arose when that person said that mean word to you. This is a mean word that gets you, hooks you. Another mean word may not affect you but we're talking about where it touches that sore place— that's a shenpa. Someone criticizes you—they criticize your work, they criticize your appearance, they criticize your child— and, shenpa: almost co-arising." (Source: http://www.shambhala.org/teachers/pema/shenpa3a.php)

This quotation struck me because "attaching" one's inner well-being to the harsh words of others, at least sometimes, is a psychological and spiritual struggle for many people, including myself. I identified this personal trait many years ago and have developed several positive strategies to deal with it, if not altogether remove it. How fun to see one's feelings explained as a common problem shared by others!

Chödröm's thoughts made me think of this quote from Touching the Holy: Ordinariness, Self-Esteem, and Friendship by Robert J. Wicks (Sorin Books, 2007). This passage has been one of my recent positive strategies to keep things in perspective when I'm blue about something. Wicks notes:

"We need to recognize that it is not 'the end of the world,' 'terribly sinful,' or 'catastrophic' if:

* Someone is angry with me;
* I made a mistake;
* Some people see some of my actions as failures;
* I don't work as hard at everything I do;
* I temporarily avoid some problem;
* Others are better at what they do than I am;
* Some people misunderstand my intentions or don't like me;
* Certain individuals don't take me seriously or may even laugh at me;
* Persons say negative things about me to my face or behind my back.

"The above instances are merely annoyances. In fact, they are good opportunities to practice clear thinking as a means of supporting self-respect....We need to recall that all religious figures, presidents, educators, business executives, philanthropists--no matter what their stature or giftedness---fail badly at times and are not accepted by everyone...

"God creates people with inherent value. So no mistake, failure, loss of image, exaggerated thinking or hurtful comments by others can take away or destroy this reality. We must stubbornly hold onto this fact of faith every day for ourselves, for others, and in gratitude for being made in God's image" (pp. 94-96).

Wick thus provides an excellent way for Christians to avoid being "hooked" by the trap of being hurt by criticism and rejection: we daily and stubbornly hold on to God's love and our God-given inherent value.

Holding onto a sense of God-given value doesn't mean we'll never make mistakes or be criticized! That may seem obvious, but it's not: too many people, including Christians, have a "my way or the highway" approach to life because of their sense of God-given value and calling! We also may gain a sense of God-given identity but remain as thin-skinned as ever. As we hold to God's love we must be wary of other subtle, selfish mental habits.

Wick gives a clue to avoiding these habits, though, which is to hold onto our God-given value not only for ourselves but for others, too. This, too, is a common error: people find help in Christ's love for their low self-esteem but they remain harsh and fault-finding. They didn't seem to see that other people needed a fresh, healing sense of God's love as much as they do---or they assume that was someone else's challenge.

But that sharing that God-given value---also known as sharing God's love---is in turn a way that we find healing for our own struggles. Honestly, it's a wonderful source of joy and satisfaction to see that you've tangibly helped someone via God's love! Ephesians 4:12-16 is a good scripture in this regard:

....to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery [or their criticism!], by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.

On a related note concerning people's sense of inner well-being.... Another favorite scripture is Hebrews 13:1-3, where the struggles of other people become, in a way, your own. We all have different things that "push our buttons." I once met a person with underdeveloped arms and hands, who said he was less anxious about his disability than he was about being criticized for his poor spelling! If another person's "buttons" are not our own, or if those buttons seem odd to us, we're likely to react with dismissal: "how foolish you are to feel like that!" But sharing God's love means that God understands all difficult human feelings and wants us to be empathetic in Christ's name:

Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.

My Cool Haydn Ring Tone

2011-08-04T08:45:00.017-04:00

More amateur "musicology." During our recent, weeklong visit to London, I played a little of Joseph Haydn's 100th symphony, stored on my iPad-- that is, one of Haydn's "London symphonies" (93-104). It may seem like a slightly cheesy thing to do, but I was trying to make some kind of cheerful, spiritual/aesthetic connection as we visited that city for the first time. I could've played some Purcell or Handel after we saw their graves at Westminster Abbey (plus, we saw some "Messiah" manuscripts in Dublin, where the oratorio premiered in 1741, at Trinity College's Long Room), or I could've played some favorite pieces by Elgar and Britten, who have memorials at the abbey, near the grave of Ralph Vaughan Williams. The next time we visit the city, I want to see Abbey Road studios, the site of the UFO Club, and other such places to gain a sense of more recent musical heritage.

Having a Haydn ring tone is pretty cheesy, too (the slow movement of the 46th symphony), but since I despise the sound of a phone, it's a pleasant alternative to many ring tones. This bit of Haydn music was denied to me in the UK and Ireland because I'd neglected to check with my phone company if I had the proper service functions for overseas calls. The second movement of the Op. 76 No. 3 "Emperor" string quartet would be a pretty ring tone, too (because it's the tune of "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken," and not because it's the tune of "Deutschland Über Alles," LOL).

That quartet was one of the first CDs I ever purchased, in the late 1980s when I realized that my favorite record store in Flagstaff no longer carried LPs. I'd held out on purchasing CDs until the inevitable. During my earlier, student days, I noticed sets of the Dorati-conducted LPs of Haydn's complete symphonies at a record shop. Uncertain which set to try, I didn't purchase any. But in Flagstaff, I was pleased to find a 6-LP set of Haydn's London symphonies--conducted by Karajan and featuring a pretty rainbow cover---at the then-new Bookman's store. For our long road trips, Beth and I liked a Haydn cassette of the famous trumpet concerto, organ concerto #1 and horn concerto #1. So I liked Haydn from a few pieces.

I liked him enough to risk a few dollars for an Adam Fischer-conducted, 33-CD set of Haydn's 104 symphonies plus two string quartets for which woodwind parts were discovered, and a sinfonia concertante. That was a wise purchase. I love playing this music during the day when I'm home working. Four or five times over the past few years, I've made it a little "project" to begin with the first disc and play the whole set over a period of weeks.

I don't listen attentively to all the music; it's in the background as I write. But that's a way to discover favorite music as certain passages and movements stand out in my subconscious mind. Almost inevitably, I "perk up" to a slow movement or a menuetto movement: for instance, the minuets of symphonies 61, 71, and 80. My favorite movement from all the symphonies is the slow movement of 44, the "Trauer" ("Mourning") symphony. But I also enjoy the entire symphonies 6, 7, and 8--- named Morning, Midday, and Evening---as well as 16, 22 ("Philosopher"), 82 ("The Bear"), and others. Every time I do a "marathon" I discover a few favorite.

The April 2009 issue of Gramophone, page 110, contains this comment from critic Geraint Lewis as he reflected on the 200th anniversary of Haydn's death.

"When he died in 1809, no previous composer in the entire history of music had enjoyed such universal and unanimous acclaim. So something obviously went wrong to turn him into Tovey's 'Haydn the Inaccessible' in 1932 (the bicentenary of his birth) and to become Holloway's 'well kept secret' today. With supreme irony, it was the immediate and subsequent evolution of Western music that unwittingly eclipsed and then proceeded to distort a general understanding of most of the output of its essential progenitor, while none the less retaining his essential DNA deep within his being. Whoa there, you may well be tempted to interject! But just imagine that Haydn had perished in the devastating fire which destroyed his tiny house in Eisenstadt's Klostergasse on August 2, 1767. Where then would have been the grit which gave birth to the pearl in Mozart's oyster-shell? And what would have become of young Beethoven without those pivotal 18 months in 1792-93 spent sitting at Haydn's elbow and looking over his shoulder?"

A couple years ago I subscribed to a new magazine, Listen: Life with Classical Music. In the second issue (May/June 2009), David Hurwitz writes about “Music’s Greatest Innovator.” Haydn “enlarged the expressive scope of [instrumental] music to include not just happiness and sadness in varying degrees, but also humor, irony, desolation, ambivalence--the entire gamut of emotional expression” (p. 53). Haydn’s music differs from previous music because “it “involves a uniquely musical quality (that branch of harmony called ‘tonality,’ or more commonly ‘key’) that Haydn used as the organizing principal of a large instrumental work--what later became known as ‘sonata form.’ This later term… in Haydn’s hands really means turning a piece of music into a related series of dramatic events moving through time as you listen… His themes have specific personalities or characteristics that we can hear change, evolve and interact over the course of a movement or entire work” (p. 54). Hurwitz writes that “Baroque music tends to explore one basic emotion, or ‘affect,’ at a time” (p. 54), while in Haydn, “each movement shows a whole range of contrasting feelings and seldom restricts itself to just one” (p. 55). Haydn’s discovery of musical development “put abstract music on the same footing in terms of importance as vocal music because in his hands it achieves a similar expressive depth and specificity. And this, by any measure, was a true musical revolution, something that had never been done before” (p. 56). Interestingly, because Haydn’s music was not readily available and because he did not fit the later Romanic conception of the artist, his reputation faded and he was perceived as Beethoven’s precursor (p. 56).

I want to give a shout-out to Haydn's brother, Michael, too. I recently purchased a CD set of twenty of his symphonies. When I log onto Pandora Radio, I often choose the Michael Haydn play list and enjoy most every piece. Both Joseph and Michael were associated with St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, which we were privileged to visit in 2007 when my daughter's choir toured central Europe and sang there for a noon service.

Andrew Wyeth

2011-08-03T07:54:00.004-04:00

My wife had business in New York last spring and I came along. One afternoon I walked over to MOMA to enjoy, among other things, the special exhibit on abstract expressionism. I walked through rooms of Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, and Newman, and also enjoyed seeing art by Warhol, Lichtenstein, and others. Still looking at paintings, but also momentarily disoriented with respect to the exit, I wandered through an opening into another room, turned the corner, and realized I was standing in front of "Christina's World," which I'd forgotten was located at MOMA. What a change from the expressionists! I'd seen the photos of this painting--which is about 3 feet by 4 feet---many times, of course.

Long before I started writing about "the sense of place," I enjoyed Andrew Wyeth's art. In the early 1980s I purchased Thomas Hoving's Two Worlds of Andrew Wyeth (Houghton Mifflin, 1978), in which Wyeth discusses with Hoving his Kuerner and Olsen paintings and his relationship with the two families. Interestingly, Wyeth commented that people wrote him about "Christina's World," saying that he expressed their own lives in the picture; and yet those people didn't notice that Christina was disabled. At the time I lived in a very rural area and I appreciated Wyeth's ability to artistically depict great, unspoken significance in natural scenery and everyday objects. Wyeth told about his unplanned moments of inspiration, as when his friend Karl Kuerner pulled some homemade sausage off meat hooks on the ceiling. Wyeth, noticing the ugly hooks, used them in the painting "Karl."

Now that the Borders chain is closing, my daughter and I sadly stopped by our favorite store and took advantage of sales. (We had loved our Borders in Ohio, which closed several months ago.) I noticed Anne Classen Knutson's Andrew Wyeth: Memory & Magic (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc, 2005) and purchased it. The book explained well the artistic and subconscious reasons why many of us love Wyeth's art. In her essay "Andrew Wyeth's Language of Things" (pp. 45-83), Knutson quotes the historian Wanda Corn that Wyeth's paintings frequently feature windows, vessels, ajar doors, and womb-like spaces. "In general, the objects he paints fall into three categories: still lifes in nature, vessels, and thresholds" (p. 45). Knutson writes, "Many of the natural and domestic objects that Wyeth foregrounds in his paintings have long been used in western rituals of mourning and death. Flowers, trees, and other organic matter are traditional metaphors for death and the fragility of life, and the enduring properties of granite and other rock symbolize the persistence of memory... Vessels are often used in memorials as metaphors for memory storage, and thresholds suggest transformation, a concept often explored in images of mourning. When Wyeth is not representing the transience of life, he often tries to freeze time in his paintings, just as nineteenth century postmortem photographs were sometimes placed within the face of a stopped clock" (p. 47). His paintings also depict the ephemeral quality of life: the Olsen's house in "Weatherside", for instance, seemed to be dying and disappearing (p. 68).

Little wonder that Wyeth's paintings are attractive and compelling to many of us because memory, death, mourning, and a consciousness of life's impermanence are universal! Someone could do a phenomenology of Wyeth's images and symbols via the philosopher Gaston Bachelard's "poetics of space" and the way (if I recall Bachelard's argument correctly) those images and symbols are ontologically prior to their expression.

Knutson comments that although Wyeth's paintings seem realistic, "[h]is realism is magic realism, prompted by drams and imagination rather than observed reality" (p. 47). (The first essay is by Michael R. Taylor, "Between Realism and Surrealism: The Early Work of Andrew Wyeth".) Interestingly, Wyeth's paintings are often inspired by but do not depict powerful personal memories. For instance, the painting "Indian Summer"---a nude woman, seen from behind, who is looking into darkness---was inspired by a angel figurine that was a Christmas tree ornament (p. 47). "Winter, 1946," a hill down which a boy runs awkwardly and uncertainly, has its background in the accidental death of Wyeth's father, as does "Christina's World" (pp. 58-59).

Like the latter two paintings, Wyeth often "merges" human figures with the landscape. But compared to some paintings, the Helga pictures are more consistently about vitality and rebirth rather than loss. My family and I visited the Helga exhibit at the Canton (Ohio) Museum of Art in 2004. In those drawings and paintings, Helga becomes a kind of embodiment of nature (Knutson, p. 61). But although as strong and "other" as a landscape---unlike Christina, Karl, and some others, Helga never makes eye contact with the viewer---her significance is not simply landscape. As David Kuspit puts it: in people like Christina Olson and also Wyeth's African-American models, "[A]gain and again we see Wyeth looking for signs of ego strength in people in whom one doesn't expect to find it. But Wyeth always takes a lingering, searching second glance, discovering strengths of character in everyday people--a self-respect oddly rooted in respect for the body, whatever its problems" (David Kuspit, "The Meaning of Helga," Andrew Wyeth's Helga Pictures (exhibition book), Washington, DC: International Arts & Artists, 2004, p. 9).

Wyeth died two years ago. His obituary in the New York Times gives an interesting overview of his life and career: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/17/arts/design/17wyeth.html

My Awesome U2 Mug

2011-08-02T08:29:00.004-04:00

My family and I spent two weeks touring the UK and Ireland last month. What an amazing trip. One of the items I hoped to find on the trip was a kilt of my mother's family name, but alas, even locally available kilts cost over $500, too much for something I wanted as a memento rather than a clothing item. (I spared Scotland the sight of my shockingly pale legs.) We did drive through Ayrshire in Scotland, where the family originated centuries ago. (I can only go back as far as my 4-great-grandfather, who is buried in Ohio.) I've one Irish branch of the family but I don't know from where they emigrated in the 1700s. In nearly all the places we visited, we enjoyed finding books, jewelry, and other items---and we made it through customs fine!

In a shop in Dublin, my wife and daughter bought some hoodies and teeshirts but I spotted this U2 mug, not too expensive at 6 euros. (Later in the visit, our tour guide pointed out U2's recording studios where, according to him, the group has recorded every album except "The Unforgettable Fire" and "Achtung Baby".) The mug emigrated from Dublin to St. Louis without damage, thanks to the cardboard box and also family plans about what we'd pack in checked luggage and what we'd carry on. Our cat thoughtfully jumped onto the table and sniffed the mug as I took this photo.

A year or so ago, there was a Facebook "fad," urging people to share their 10 or 15 favorite albums.  As I recall, I wrote down a variety of favorites, some from high school (Jethro Tull's "Aqualung" and "Thick as a Brick", David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World", The Who's "Tommy", Mahavishnu Orchestra's "Birds of Fire"), some classical (Clemens Kraus' 1953 recording of Wagner's "Der Ring des Niebelungen"---although that's technically 15 LPs already---Sir Adrian Boult's recording from the same year of Vaughan Williams' "Pastoral Symphony").

I don't remember if I included U2's "The Joshua Tree", but I should have. I don't listen to it as much these days. But when my wife and I moved to Flagstaff, Arizona in 1987, the Oliver North hearings had preempted most television, and so as we rested in our lamentable Route 66 motel room (Flagstaff has developed many more nicer accommodations in the years since), the best thing to watch was MTV. The now-well-known video of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" was a treat.

The best thing about our four years in Flagstaff was the birth of our amazing daughter. My wife and I moved forward in our careers in "Flag," and I completed my doctoral dissertation. We made numerous friendships which have endured over the last twenty years. The sound of Edge's bright guitar will always remind me those years in northern Arizona, the snow on the San Francisco Peaks, driving old 66 to work, and the shimmering aspen leaves in autumn.

(Here's my own favorite U2 song, from an earlier album, sung by the Irish singer Luka Bloom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjVpLI5c8_U)

The Mouse in the Book of Kells

2011-08-01T07:43:00.005-04:00

When my family and I visited Dublin two weeks ago, we enjoyed the National Gallery of Ireland.

Among the many interesting paintings we found was Caravaggio's The Taking of Christ which, like many of the artist's work, is a moving and earthy depiction of a biblical event. (The unibrowed fellow on the right is presumed to be a self-portrait). Nearby was a painting with which I was unfamiliar or had forgotten, Velazquez's Kitchen Maid at the Supper of Emmaus. What an interesting painting: the maid is in the forefront while the meal of Jesus, Cleopas and his friend happens through the door in the background. I found this site which nicely explains the theological and ethnic significance of this work: http://underthegables.blogspot.com/2008/09/fine-arts-friday-kitchen-maid-with.html

In some future post I've love to explore the "spirituality of art": the diverse role of Orthodox iconography, Gothic church windows, and other kinds of art in spiritual reflection, and also visualization meditation in Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism.

Down the street from the National Gallery is Trinity College, which houses the Book of Kells and an interesting exhibit that explains the manuscripts many features. You may know that the Book is Kells is an illuminated manuscript of the four Gospels (the Vulgate as well as earlier Latin translations), plus other material. But the calligraphy and the insular illumination makes the manuscript a candidate for "Ireland's finest national treasure," as the online Catholic Encyclopedia puts it. (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08614b.htm) According to that source:

"The illustrations and ornamentation of the Book of Kells surpass that of other Insular Gospel books in extravagance and complexity. The decoration combines traditional Christian iconography with the ornate swirling motifs typical of Insular art. Figures of humans, animals and mythical beasts, together with Celtic knots and interlacing patterns in vibrant colours, enliven the manuscript's pages. Many of these minor decorative elements are imbued with Christian symbolism and so further emphasize the themes of the major illustrations...."

The manuscript has been called the "Book of Columba" after the 6th century saint (also called Columbkill) beloved in Irish and Scottish memory. One of my best friends was married in a Parma, Ohio, church named for Columbkill, so his name stands out to me whenever it's mentioned. Once attributed to the saint himself, the Book of Kells possibly was written and illustrated to honor him many years later. The enthusiastic encyclopedia author continues:

"The most characteristic ornaments of the Book of Kells, as of other illuminated Irish of the period, are the closely coiled spirals connected with each other by a number of curves and terminating in the so-called 'trumpet pattern'. Almost equally characteristic are the zoomorphic interlacements, coloured representations of fanciful beings, or of animals, birds, horses, dogs, and grotesque, gargoyle-like figures, twisted and hooked together in intricate detail. Other frequently occurring designs are a system of geometrical weaving of ribbons plaited and knotted together, and a simpler ornamentation by means of red dotted lines. The versatility and inventive genius of the illustrator surpasses all belief. ... The artist shows a wonderful technique in designing and combining various emblems, the cross, vine, dragon, fish, and serpent. The drawing is perfection itself. It has been examined under a powerful magnifying glass for hours at a time and found to be, even in the most minute and complicated figures, without a single false or irregular line. ... Especially worthy of notice is the series of illuminated miniatures, including pictorial representations of the Evangelists and their symbols, the Blessed Virgin and the Divine Child, the temptation of Jesus, and Jesus seized by the Jews."

This site provides a few examples of some of the pages: http://www.snake.net/people/paul/kells/

I purchased the book by Bernard Meehan, The Book of Kells (Thames & Hudson, 1994). Meehan notes how many human figures are found in the manuscripts: biblical characters, soldiers, and people in different kinds of activity---including a man who seems to have drunk too much wine (p. 71). Among the many animals and birds are peacocks, symbolic of Christ because of the supposed incorruptibility of the bird's flesh (p. 57). One image that I enjoy is a cat chasing a mouse, which in turn has a piece of the host in its mouth. Meehan notes that preserving the communion bread from rodents was probably a concern at the time (pp. 44-45). This humorous image stands out to me; in a different way than the Caravaggio and Velazquez paintings, the image vividly shows how Christ reaches into even the smallest and most everyday cares of our lives.

Looking for online sources about the book, I found this very recent article about increased funding for the manuscript and its related tourism: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0729/1224301563925.html

But on the subject of providence, I need to relate a story from Dublin's National Museum, too. As the three of us looked at the many displays, my daughter said, "I wrote a paper about this!" It was the Cross of Cong, 12th century processional cross that supposedly once held a portion of "the true cross." (http://www.fionasplace.net/AnIrishPatchwork/thecrossofcong.html) She hadn't known or had forgotten that the cross was at the National Museum.

Ralph Vaughan Williams at Westminster Abbey

2011-07-31T08:05:00.005-04:00

During our recent vacation to the UK and Ireland, we arrived in London's Heathrow at 8 in the morning (2 AM "our" time) and at our hotel by 9. Of course our hotel rooms weren't yet ready, so the three of us stored our luggage and then walked over to Westminster Abbey as a first visit during a memorable vacation. The line to get in---the queue, as they'd say---was long but moved along.

If you're familiar with the abbey, you know that many notable figures in history are buried there (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Burials_at_Westminster_Abbey). I was especially interested in viewing the grave of composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. I've appreciated RVW's music for nearly thirty years and wrote a modest tribute in 2008 for the 50th anniversary of his death (http://paulstroble.wordpress.com/2009/12/27/thank-you-rvw).

Our first walk through the abbey---slow, crowded, and sleepy---was nevertheless fascinating and moving. But I hadn't found the grave, which I knew was near memorials for composers Edward Elgar and Benjamin Britten and was near the tomb of RVW's great uncle, Charles Darwin.

I asked a guide about the grave and he kindly told me where to find it. I complied with the abbey's prohibition of photography but found this picture and tribute at the website: http://www.westminster-abbey.org/our-history/people/ralph-vaughan-williams. The guide said he loved RVW's music, too, and added, "I'm glad we have him here at the abbey." He said he was present when the tomb was open in 2008 to receive the ashes of RVW's second wife, Ursula. Later, after lunch at The Albert and a nap, I listened to the lento movement of RVW's "London Symphony."

Looking for sites for this post, I found this article, which notes RVW's importance and uniqueness:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4601922.ece On a related note, this article discusses bomb damage to the abbey during the war; I can't imagine how frightening that would have been: http://www.westminster-abbey.org/our-history/war-damage

God Brings about Good

2011-07-30T16:29:00.006-04:00

There is an entertainment/literature trope called "Put on a Bus," in which a major character disappears in such a way that the character can be brought back. At the end of "Men in Black," agent K retires (and is deneuralized), and then a large portion of "Men in Black II" is devoted to his restoration. Similarly the second and third "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies, where Jack Sparrow goes down with the ship in II and then is located and returned in III. This is a very common trope in soap operas: for instance, when I was a kid, the character Stephen Frame in "Another World" was presumed dead, reminisced about for over a year, and then reappeared.

I don't care for this trope in movies very much. But then I realized that the Bible has an elaborate "story line": the family of Jacob settles in Egypt via the complicated circumstance of Joseph's "disappearance" from Canaan, and then God rescues the Israelites in order to return them to the land where Jacob and his family had left!  Not only is this a "story line," it comprises nearly 90% of the Torah (the most precious part of Scripture for Jews), contains the covenant and mitzvot foundational for the Bible and, as I discuss in another post, the Exodus story is next to Jesus' resurrection as key for the whole Bible (http://paulstroble.blogspot.com/2011/04/exodus-and-our-faith.html).

You may wonder about God's strange ways, as I do. Why such an elaborate, centuries-long plan, just to get the descendants of Abraham back to the place from which they started? To prove God's saving power? To create a "community" of God's people through misfortune, salvation, covenant, and memory? To show God's faithfulness and righteousness in and among unfortunate human circumstances? Yes, yes, and yes.

I thought about all this while we were on vacation as I read the July 21st piece in the Lutheran devotional "Portals of Prayer." The piece noted that God used the sin of Joseph's brothers in order to establish a plan to save God's people: "God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive," declared Joseph (Gen. 50:20).

The piece notes that many of us suffer because of the sins of others. Certainly, we're not spared that kind of suffering, a fact which can put a strain on our faith if we're struggling to understand why things happen generally, or why God allows terrible things to happen. (In fact, the July 22nd devotion concerns Mary Magdalene, who stood heartbroken at the empty tomb and, in her distress, could not recognize the living Jesus in front of her.)

The devotion writer notes that "In any terrible circumstance, even physical death and the pain and loss it brings, God can and does work good things. We can count on it." The stories of Joseph, the Exodus, and Christ's resurrection are great benchmarks of God's love and salvation among the difficulties we face.

We must remember that God didn't work in Joseph's life just for Joseph's sake! (Why did God allow Joseph to "rot" in prison for two years, for instance? His betrayal and exile were compounded with still more betrayal and distress.) When we personally are in crisis, we're naturally thinking of the resolution of that distress whenever we pray for divine help. But God worked in Joseph's life not only for his sake but also to achieve a greater good---several greater goods, in fact. Although our circumstances are not on par with the biblical events, we can take comfort that God may not only be involved in our personal situation but possibly also, through us, the difficulties of others.

*****

While I don't mean to distract from my devotional thoughts above, I browsed a bit through the addictive site, tvtropes.org, as I looked for that phrase "Put on the Bus." I noticed a few other tropes that reminded me of some Bible stories. This is just a bit of daydreaming about the Bible's content, not intended to be irreverent.

"The Can Kicked Him," or incidents when a character is injured or killed in the bathroom. Pulp Fiction is an example. In 1 Samuel 24, Saul goes into a cave to relieve himself, and David could've killed him there---but did not.

"Stuffed in the Fridge," incidents when a character is killed in a gruesome and horrifying way. Certainly the gang-rape, death, and dismemberment of the Levite's concubine in Judges 19 is one of the Bible's most awful passages.

"Chuck Cunningham Syndrome," when a character (like Richie's older brother in Happy Days, or Carrie's sister in King of Queens) disappears without explanation and never again referred to. Zerubbabel figures notably in the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah and in the first part of Ezra (the story of the post-exilic restoration) but then ceases to be part of the story! His name is mentioned, though, once in Nehemiah and in the Matthew 1 genealogy of Jesus.

"Sobbin' Women," a pun on the Sabine women: women who are kidnapped for companionship, as in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Another horrible Bible story is the rape of the women of Shiloh by the Benjaminite men at the conclusion of Judges.

Jesus' Sleeplessness

2011-07-06T09:57:00.003-04:00

My wife, who has a very complex and high-pressure job, seldom does. She falls asleep, doesn’t have weird dreams, and is happy to start the day in the morning. I’m much more anxious. Sometimes I “can't turn my brain off"; I lay awake or semi-awake until midnight or 12:30. Once in a while (though not often), I can't sleep at all and end up drifting off at 3 AM or later. Television isn’t very good after about 1 AM….

Even if I can turn my brain off and go to sleep, my brain isn’t really off, because my crazy dream life kicks in. Sometimes I wake up blue because I dreamed about my childhood home, which I had to sell a few years ago, or about Oddball, our cat who passed away last year.

I can think of a half-dozen or so times in my whole life when I couldn't sleep at all, except for an hour or two, most of them when I was young and worried variously about bullies, or girls, and other things. What torture, though, when you’re exhausted and you know sleep would help you, but your brain is like a cage of angry animals.

Fortunately I've figured out two things which have helped me with sleeplessness. (1) Just because I'm very anxious about a situation, doesn't mean the situation is as dire as I perceive it. (2) The fact that I can't do anything about the problem late at night makes the situation seem worse; the vast majority of the time, I’ve been able to deal with the problem the following day. If I can keep these things in mind, I can relax and sleep.

“[F]or he gives sleep to his beloved" (Ps.127:2b), which can also be translated “for he provides for his beloved during sleep.” Other psalms concern sleep and sleeplessness.

I will both lie down and sleep in peace;
for you alone, O Lord, make me lie down in safety. (Ps. 4:8)

I am weary with my moaning;
every night I flood my bed with tears;
I drench my couch with my weeping (Ps. 6:6)

Late-night prayer isn't necessarily calming, at least at first, since prayer is your thoughts and your thoughts are disordered and filled with worry. I try to have some good devotional material handy, like a Joyce Rupp book or quarterly lessons. They help provide a wider perspective, and the act of reading brings on drowsiness.

Jesus sometimes prayed late at night, alone (e.g. Luke 6:12) Based on Hebrews 5:7 (“In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission”), I wonder if some of his late-night prayer times weren’t simply a choice to commune with God but a time to orient himself with God amid distressed sleeplessness.

That’s speculation, but still, Jesus’ sleeplessness can be a wonderful “sleep aid,” in that you know Jesus understands our struggles. We could also connect his sleeplessness with the wonderful Psalm 121:

He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
He who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.

Anne LaBastille, 1933-2011

2011-07-05T21:55:00.015-04:00

I learned from a Facebook fan page that the environmentalist author Anne LaBastille died on July 1. Here are some websites from this past weekend, and one from a few years ago, which describe her life and work. http://adirondackdailyenterprise.com/page/content.detail/id/525384/-Woodswoman--Anne-LaBastille-dies-at-75.html?nav=5008 http://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2011/07/remembering-anne-labastille.html?flv=1
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Outdoors/Woodswoman_wants_to_return_to_cabin

Occasionally I write authors and artists whose works I enjoy, and in Dr. Anne’s case I was familiar with Woodswoman and The Wilderness World of Anne LaBastille, as well as a National Geographic article about Wisconsin that featured a picture of her resting---tanned and quite attractive, I thought---in her canoe. I didn’t tell her that, but I told her I enjoyed her writing. She wrote back, I wrote back, and for about ten years we sporadically exchanged notes. Mostly I got postcards from her, sometimes short letters, and I wrote a bit more. I was just starting out in free-lance writing, and her example of independence and resourcefulness in managing her career, as well as her writing style, were inspirational to me. In one note, she apologized for not writing sooner because she had a break-in at her home, the same crime that she described at the end of Woodswoman III. She also alluded in letters to her painful experiences as a guest professor, which she recounted in detail in Woodswoman IIII.

I was always respectful and appreciative of her time. In fact, until now, I never told anyone we were occasional pen pals, to respect her privacy. We were both only children, had PhDs, liked going barefoot, and felt a lack in our lives for having never met our grandfathers. I was honest with her that I wasn’t active in environmental efforts---and didn’t even know what a “grebe” was until I read Mama Poc—but that I enjoyed ecology-related books and planned to support organizations more conscientiously. In retrospect, I appreciate that she didn’t dismiss me as an inadequate fan just because we weren’t “on the same page” about issues crucial to her.

I regret that we fell out of touch and never had the chance to meet. During the mid-00s, I had to move my elderly mom to a nursing home in another state, sell my childhood home, and complete a short book-writing assignment by a deadline. Consequently I didn’t write for a year, and I never heard back the two or three times I tried to reconnect, including giving her the book I’d written. She may have been ill by that time, or I may have seemed like an absent friend. But while we corresponded, I was able in small ways to help her by citing and recommending her books, and calling attention to her books to some independent booksellers. One time she was chagrined that some company was making her books available online without permission. Since she didn’t use computers, I did some research for her about the company and sent her information if she wanted to deal directly with the situation, which she appreciated. She was also pleased that I gave my father (a dog lover and former hunter) his own copies of her books and that he became a fan prior to his death.

She had many grateful fans, and I was only one, and a minor one. I enjoyed collecting all of her books, including the children’s books, her two 1960s books, and her 1974 scientific monograph about the Lake Atitlan grebes. She autographed several for me. Of course I included self-addressed padded envelopes for her to use. She liked the following review that I wrote to help "spread the word" of her efforts.

Book Review of Woodswoman, Mama Poc, Beyond Black Bear Lake, and Woodswoman III (written for Springhouse magazine, published in the June 1997 issue).

Some Springhouse readers will already be familiar with this author. I read some of her National Geographic articles back in the mid-1970s but remained oblivious (in spite of her memorable surname) that she’s a best-selling author with a large following. I love nature-related books (one of her articles had introduced me to Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac) and last year I finally checked to see what else she’s written. I selected one of her books and liked it so much I didn’t wait twenty years to find others! All her books are available from bookstores or from West of the Wind Publications, Westport, NY 12993.

Dr. LaBastille is a wildlife ecologist and consultant who lives in Adirondack Park, a six-million acre area of state-and-privately-owned land in upstate New York. She was born in New York City, grew up in New Jersey, and received her Ph.D. from Cornell. She has written several books: Woodsman, Beyond Black Bear Lake, Assignment Wildlife, Women and Wilderness, The Wilderness World of Anne LaBastille, and Birds of the Mayas. She also wrote titles in the “Ranger Rick’s Best Friends” series for young people and has contributed to Nature, Travel, Reader’s Digest, Outdoor Life, Audubon, National Geographic, and others. She has worked as a professor, lodge-co-owner and manager, a freelance ecologist, park commissioner, guide, consultant, writer and photographer. She has received top awards as a writer and conservationist.

Woodswoman begins as LaBastille, reflecting upon her experiences as she sits in her cabin during a beautiful, dramatic winter, recounts her early goals of studying wildlife and living in a natural environment. Several years before, her marriage succumbed amid the pressures of running a resort lodge in the Adirondacks; the need to remove herself from that situation caused her to return to her long-time dream of a private haven in the woods. LaBastille found a track of land at a reasonable price near a location she calls Black Bear Lake. She recounts the construction of her 12 by 12 cabin, heated with a wood burning stove, lighted by candles and kerosene lanterns, then gas lamps running off her propane. Two males who helped her with the cabin’s construction gave her the nickname (at first an exasperated response to her requests) which became the book’s title. Settled, she loved to contemplate the beauties of the park, the scents of the forest and the many animals of the land. Unfortunately, an attorney showed up stipulating that her 14-ton house had to be moved 12 feet back from the lake to conform to codes, which she grudgingly accomplished. Trespassers showed up, too, whom she dismissed in no uncertain terms.

Much of the book recounts the splendor and history of the park. She notes that the park is the largest track of wilderness east of the Mississippi and half the park has been legally designated “forever wild” since 1894. She is visited by beaver and deer, shrews, bats and monarch butterflies. She writes with awe concerning the great trees, the spruce and fir; she writes concerning the history of logging in the region, and the lives of the park’s residents (don’t miss the description of “Adirondack haircuts”). She delights in skinny-dipping in the clean water, in developing her practical outdoor skills first learned during her initial and happy years of marriage, and in living a healthy lifestyle that many of us would find too Spartan (no TV, electricity, or phone). Her first two pets were a kitten and silver fox—the kitten was too lively and the fox was sadly killed—but Pitzi, a German shepherd puppy she found in Guatemala which doing her doctoral research, became her companion for twelve years. Helped by her guide friend Rob, LaBastille became one of the very few licensed women guides of the park. She finds love, in a chance encounter with a man she calls Nick, and she weaves a bittersweet story through her observations of the park. After they go their separate ways, she ruminates about the difficulties of the successful career she has established, the difficulties of being a woman whose education threatens some men, and her own dreams and hopes. But in the last chapter, an eventful stay in DC helps remind her of the impersonal quality of the city, contrasted with the tranquility of her cabin and her many friends and contacts there. The book ends wistfully as the author looks to the unseen future, confident of the rightness of her choice to live close to wilderness.

Mama Poc covers the period of LaBastille’s life from the early 1960s through the mid-1980s, thus including the same general period as Woodswoman but including additional years. [Of course, Assignment: Wildlife, which I’d not yet read at this time, and the later Jaguar Totem also cover this period.] LaBastille documents how a single species went from health (albeit rarity) to extinction in less than a quarter century.

Around 1960, she and her husband studied birds in Central America and Mexico, and during that time she encountered a rare bird, the giant pied-billed grebe classified Podilymbus gigas. Unlike the common grebe of the U.S. (Podilymbus podiceps) the larger grebe lived only at Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, where it required certain amounts of territory for health and breeding. The grebes were called “pocs” by the native Indians, and thus LaBastille became “Mama Poc” and “the crazy bird lady” by people curious at her presence and work. She began to document the life of this bird, with its estimated population of only 200. After her divorce she traveled again to Guatemala, meeting and befriending several people including Armando (they fall in love), Edgar Bauer (who appears on the book cover with the author), and others who work with her on gathering census data and observations. Unfortunately, the grebe population fell to 80 during five years when new species of fish were introduced to the lake. What should she do? She and Armando created “Operation Protection of the Poc” and obtained the interest (partly thanks to LaBastille’s creative use of Spanish!) of the agriculture department to hire a game warden, which Edgar became, and they began educational trips around the region.

For the next few years LaBastille returned to Guatemala and accomplished a great deal. She learned how best to get things done in the country and she gathered both grass-roots support and the support of Guatemalan leadership. Soon Edgar had better equipment with which to work, the poc was featured on a postage stamp, and folk who loved the lake grew concerned for the grebes. Sadly, she and Armando realized their cultural differences and other issues which made marriage impossible. That sad realization coincided with the happy news that the grebe population as growing again.

Several years later, a 7.5-magnitude earthquake hit Guatemala in 1976, killing 23,000 people and creating fissures at the bottom of Lake Atitlan, causing it to drain slowly. But a reduced water level threatened the giant grebes, which needed much more territory in which to thrive. With Edgar, LaBastille also discovered that many vacation homes and tourism adversely affected the lake. Edgar devised a plan to increase the reed growth at the late, but as Guatemalan policies grew more heated he was killed by unknown assailants in 1982. When LaBastille returned in the mid-1980s, a census revealed rapid diminishment of the grebe population, which were doomed. Too little was known about the birds’ habits to breed them in captivity; meanwhile, the human population around the lake thrived. As a valedictory, LaBastille spotted two male pocs at the lake during a late visit which included a bleak but comic attempt to get medical care for an Indian’s dog. One determined person can make a difference, she writes, and her successes with the pocs, both in increasing their numbers and encouraging public awareness, is a case in point.

Beyond Black Bear Lake begins as LaBastille recounts the many intrusions into her life after Woodswoman’s publication: visitors sought her out, some well-intentioned and respective, some not. Her fan mail increased beyond her ability to handle it, and her phone machine (at a nearby house) included truly weird calls. Likewise the human population around Black Bear Lake increased. LaBastille resolved to build a new cabin near the parcel she owned farther into the woods. She loses her beloved Pitzi when he encounters a car coming too fast down the road. She resisted obtaining a new dog but serendipitously met Condor, a German shepherd puppy who, like Pitzi, learned to ride in a canoe and carry the mail bag. Later, in the book, LaBastille acquires Condor’s puppy, which she named Chekika after a Seminole chief.

Concern for the effects of acid rain and technology upon her land (which she discusses) she selected Lilypad Lake for a retreat home she’d call Thoreau II. Careful to be aware this time of bureaucratic regulations (which she encountered anyway), she set to work on her retreat, recounting the process of cutting and dragging logs and raising the place. Frighteningly, she dealt with a proposal to store nuclear waste in the Adirondacks. Fortuitously, a hip injury became occasion for a friendship with a local surgeon named Mike to grow into a mutual love and affection. She writes of Rob, her old friend who taught her to guide and who, in his old age, willed himself to die rather than be hospitalized, and of Rodney Ainsworth, a hawk-nosed, cigar-smoking and tender-hearted guide with whom she also became close friends. (She writes additionally of the admirable Rodney in Wilderness World.) Finishing her house, she muses concerning the similarities and differences between her Thoreau II and Henry David’s own famous cabin at Walden Pond, which cost only about a hundred dollars less than LaBastille’s). She reflects on her happiness as an unmarried woman and the rightness of her life spent living in wilderness, solitary with nature, as she built her career as a writer, photographer, and ecologist. She dreams of the educational and ecological work which her estate will someday continue.

LaBastille’s most recent work, Woodswoman III, represents her ongoing reflections and experiences in promoting environmental issues. Her encouragement of women to pursue active environmental appreciation, as well as to nurture their own independence and self-reliance, is another ongoing task. Astonished at time’s passage, she describes her satisfaction at living for thirty years at the edge of wilderness. Her life still balances quietness and contemplation with professional fervor. As a writer and consultant, her daily routine is hectic and resistant to quite writing time. Recently she purchased a tract of land which she christens Kestrel Crest Farm; there, powered with electricity for her grudgingly acquired phone and fax, she humorously describes both her work day and her schedule as an “ol’ book peddler” around the park. She also describes the enjoyable and rewarding experiences as she revives her work as a park guide, and farming her land with a Thoreau-like, barefoot ease.

In the park, she is greeted by loons, a respected porcupine, and a hearty pheasant named Napoleon. She loses her beloved Condor to old age and infirmity but Chekika is soon joined by the Arizona-born puppy Xandor, another shepherd (regrettably, with similar infirmities endemic to the breed). She appreciates ongoing friends (like Andy and Albert), honors the park’s founder (a determined New Yorker with the memorable name of Verplank Colvin), and she enjoys the temporary company of a mouse who hitchhikes in her truck until a witnessed highway accident makes the mouse disdainful of human chaos.

The natural and human worlds remain enriching or terrifying. A twister strikes the park (leaving the remote Thoreau II in unknown condition for a while). In two chapters she recounts a new environmental hazard, the large boats (50 HP and over) which had long been discouraged but now threaten the environment and local neighborliness alike. LaBastille also suffers cut brake line, arson, and burglary; the first two are assumed to have been in response to her environmental activism. Her experience reminds her of Edmund Burke’s famous quote, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

In all her books LaBastille style is informative and genuine; her words are never forced or self-conscious. The naturalness of her style attracted me to seek out her other books. Her happiness and delight at the natural world are everywhere apparent. Although LaBastille says her fan mail came mostly from women, I don’t think she writes for women alone, though she is particularly encouraging to women. Like Thoreau, she aims to convinced people of the value of nature. But Thoreau, writing extremely and rhetorically, couldn’t imagine that people wouldn’t walk several miles a day like him! LaBastille is more invitational. Even Mama Poc is not stylistically characterized by blameful outrage (although she did feel outrage and sorrow); she still makes clear that one person can accomplish great things in conservation and natural preservation.

Many of us lead lives of quiet inattention to the natural world. I’m not different. One of the benefits of books like hers is to call people like me to a kind of repentance. Read her books if you’d like an enjoyable impetus to appreciate the outdoors. She discusses the need for natural wildness, responsible recreation, and protected lands. She doesn’t eschew urban life but sees the modern city as that “wilderness” where you may lose your spiritual center. Unfortunately, many of us aren’t appreciative of the noise and the risk, even though we may feel at peace as we lounge comfortably with the TV remote. The solitude and silence, which nurtures and sustains LaBastille in the Adirondacks, may go the way of the pocs if we’re not better stewards of our world, time, and lives.

Read her books, too, if you need an injection of inspiration and courage for your own life. Impressively credentialed academically, she uses her training to serve, teach, train, encourage, and inculcate confidence in everyday people concerning wilderness. She has made her own way into areas of work and scientific inquiry traditionally dominated by males. Like many modern women she has struggled with commitments of career, singleness, love, and companionship. Like many people she discovers, in living, that the lost dreams of one portion of her life leads to wisdom and new dreams down life’s way; she accepts difficult circumstances as opportunities to make choices concerning her priorities. Those priorities balance personal needs as well as service to others. She is interested in physical health, emotional and spiritual well-being, lifestyles responsible to the environment, and the needs and mysteries of the earth. She is a “regional writer" in that she has selected a beloved region, lived in it and loved it, gained wisdom from it, and she lets the region stand for larger truths. As a “whole” kind of person, she validates those ecological values to which she has devoted her life.

"On the Doorposts of Your House"

2011-07-03T20:57:00.005-04:00

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

When we moved to our present home, I noticed a small mezuzah outside my daughter's bedroom. This site explains the purpose of these doorpost cases: http://www.jewfaq.org/signs.htm#Mezuzah. Contrary to this site's recommendation, our home's previous owner did not remove the case, but understanding its significance I have treated it with respect.

Among God's commands in the scripture above, Deuteronomy 6:4-9, God says, "Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart... write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates" (verse 6 and 9). Thus, mezuzah's are literal responses to this scripture, as are tefillin.

This passage captures my imagination on a variety of levels. One is certainly my own failures in being faithful to this, a text addressed to Jews but which we Gentile Christians now also take to heart.

Bible study has its risks. You could have strong opinions about points of biblical interpretation but communicate stubbornness rather than love when you discuss the Bible. I remember feeling so inadequate when, as a new Christian (who felt inadequate as a general rule), other Christians pressed me for my opinion on certain topics about which I’d not yet considered.

You could become discouraged in your faith because you can never measure up to the Bible’s standards. Or you don’t know what to do with your doubts and questions because you think you're not supposed to have any.

But we read the Bible best when, in addition to private reading and devotional time, we’re also part of a congregation of diverse, worshiping people where prayer, preaching, the Eucharist, group study, and service are part of a whole spiritual journey. The Deuteronomy passage is addressed to a people whom God is forming, not a bunch of individuals who happen to be together.

I love this story from the author and activist Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

“Once I noticed,” writes a Christian scholar, who visited the city of Warsaw during the First World War, “a great many coaches on a parking-place but no drivers in sight. In my own country I would have known where to look for them. A young Jewish boy showed me the way: in a courtyard, on the second floor, was the shtibl (Hasidic synagogue) of the Jewish drivers…. All the drivers were engaged in fervent study and religious discussion…. It was then that I found out and became convinced that all professions, the bakers, the butchers, the shoemakers, etc., have their own shtibl in the Jewish district; and every free moment which can be taken off from their work is given to the study of Torah. And when they get together in intimate groups, one urges the other: Sog mir a shtickl Torah—Tell me a little Torah.”[1]

I don’t study the Bible that way and I’m unfamiliar with Christians who do. But I love the image and the idea. What if we, who don’t want to be fundamentalists but do want to live as faithful Christians, lived our lives in such a way that Bible study was intimate—and an intimate part of our everyday lives, and a natural part of conversation, the way we talk about the irritating people at our places of work, about our favorite books and movies? We might get angry at least other, but we’d deal with it; we wouldn’t be aloof from each other; we’d accept our disagreements. We’d grow together and perhaps reexamine our cherished yet unhelpful opinions and positions. We’d grow in wisdom and kindness.

******

Being me, I have to go on a nostalgic reverie, but the Deuteronomy passage is so sacred for Jews that I didn’t want to trivialize it with personal memories, so I’m thinking separately about the image of the doorpost, or, more generally, the primary door of your residence.

My childhood home was constructed in the late 1950s and fits the period style: a long ranch house with large picture windows. The walkway to the front door was parallel rather than perpendicular to the house, and anyone coming to the door was already walking next to the house. The effect was always just a bit creepy, to realize someone was right outside the big windows (although they weren’t necessarily looking inside). I don't know how many times we were startled by the profile of an approaching visitor.

In the 1990s my wife and daughter and I lived in another ranch style house, but the front walkway was perpendicular to the house. However, our street was a cul-de-sac (thanks to the bird brains who ran the adjacent condo neighborhood and decided to block the street to reduce traffic into that neighborhood) so our front door was more seldom used. Our kitchen door opened into the car port and drive way, and down the driveway was our mailbox, which was actually located another street than our address, an anomaly that created much confusion. Our kitchen door became our major entrance, which in turn made the house all the more homey, somehow; visitors stepped right into our kitchen.

For a few years we also lived in a townhouse apartment. There was a solid front door and also a glass door, into which one hapless guest collided (without hurting him or breaking the glass, although he felt embarrassed). Although our apartment was not in a stereotypical “bad neighborhood,” we were sometimes startled awake by late-night knocks on the door; our neighbor, it turned out, was dealing drugs and his customers got the apartment numbers confused. Thankfully our next neighbors were pleasant and more morally employed!

I think of Psalm 121:8 ("The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in fron this time on and forevermore"), which connects well to Deut. 6:9. The psalm refers to a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and God’s unfailing providential care, not only for that original occasion but for any occasion. But the lovely imagine of God’s care for our “going out and coming in” means that our relationship with God encompasses our daily chores, our car-trips for errands, our employment places, our yard work, and all the other times we’re in and out the main door of our homes.

Notes:

1. Quoted in Stephen M. Wyland, The Seventy Faces of Torah: The Jewish Way of Reading the Sacred Scriptures (Mahwah, NY: Paulist Press, 2005), pp. 73-74.

The Hidden Ego in Giving

2011-06-30T08:38:00.012-04:00

A year or so ago I read an online article about a home built by the crew of the TV show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. The family was going to sell the new home, for reasons that I can’t remember now but made sense when I read the article. (Don't quote me but I think they couldn't keep up with utilities for the enormous house, because their original challenges, which had necessitated the show's intervention, were still difficult.) What interested me was that people were frustrated by the family’s decision. Community members had helped the family in different ways during the makeover, and the sale of the house felt like ingratitude. (And yet the sale of the house would've helped the family, too.)

I thought about that. Did those local folks volunteer to help the family so that they would get praise and gratitude? Perhaps not explicitly (but perhaps some folks did). When the family couldn’t stay at the house forever, the people felt betrayed, in a way. Their generosity and caring carried hidden expectations.

I'm sure this analogous situations happen to many of us. Years ago I gave a gift to a friend, which I thought the friend would love; then the friend later told me he gave it to his grandson. Now, I would've been less sensitive; at the time, I didn’t say anything but felt grumpy and foolish.

These situations raise the question of why do we do good for others. We may not be motivated outright by a desire for praise and gratitude. But there are situations when we might feel chagrined when others didn’t respond to a good deed as we assumed they would.

You might send a gift to a friend but you never receive a thank-you or acknowledgment. (I’ve a friend who humorously says that if you give someone a wedding gift you need to include an SASE if you want a thank-you.) If you’re the adult child of elderly parents, you encounter this dynamic: your parents sacrificed to raise you, now they expect you to meet their needs as they wish. (My dad thought I should be grateful for the chance to make a 500-mile round trip to mow his lawn for free so he could save $10 or $15 a week for some kid to mow it.) Or, you might reach out to a person in friendship, but the person didn't "click" with you in the same way or otherwise didn't respond.

Churches can be hotbeds for this kind of situation. We contribute (both time and money) to a church—but then we’re not pleased with recent developments at the church, or our input on a certain issue was not followed. But why do we feel displeased? Do we think the church should answer to all our expectations just because we contribute time and money? Had we contributed only because we had happy feelings about the church? [1]

This issue points us to a very good potential spiritual discipline. How much happiness can we derive just from going something good, regardless of the outcome?

This is one of those teachings common to many religious traditions; it is among the "dharma" themes of the Bhagavad Gita, the Muslim value of selflessness, as well as the Buddhist theme of non-attachment, plus biblical passages like Romans 12 and others. I especially like the Jewish conception of tzedakah, which means “righteousness” or “charity.” The following is a quote from the site http://www.jewfaq.org/tzedakah.htm describing Talmudic levels of tzedakah, from the least to the most meritorious.

·    Giving begrudgingly
·    Giving less that you should, but giving it cheerfully.
·    Giving after being asked
·    Giving before being asked
·    Giving when you do not know the recipient's identity, but the recipient knows your identity
·    Giving when you know the recipient's identity, but the recipient doesn't know your identity
·    Giving when neither party knows the other's identity
·    Enabling the recipient to become self-reliant

Let’s try this in the weeks and months ahead. Find helpful things to do for people, but try not to involve your ego in it; find joy simply in the giving... If you’re displeased with something at your church, try increasing rather than decreasing your contribution; find joy in focusing on God rather than your feelings... Give to someone and don't even assume you'll hear back: then if you do, it'll be a nice "extra." ... Reach out to someone, either in friendship or in helpfulness; if he or she doesn't respond positively, know that you did a good thing to try. You may still feel disappointment, but you're (potentially) stronger for the next time you reach out.

Notes:

1. I like this quote from ethicist Stanley Hauerwas, who writes that love is not “some affection for another that contributes to my own sense of well-being” but ”the steady gaze on another that does not withdraw regard simply because they fail to please.” That love “is first learned through being required to love our brothers and sisters who, like us, are pledged to be disciples in Christ.” From Stanley Hauerwas, “The Family as a School for Character,” in Gabriel Palmer-Fernandez, Moral Issues: Philosophical and Religious Persepctives (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pretence-Hall, 1996), pp. 239-246 (quote from page 244).

Highway 51 Revisited

2011-06-17T22:52:00.012-04:00

"Where two great highways cross!" declared a Vandalia brochure from the 1940s, referring to U.S. 40 and U.S. 51. The latter road is a north-south highway through the center of Illinois. When Illinois began to create a system of automobile roads in 1918, the road was State Bond Issue route 2. In northern Illinois the oldest alignment of 51 is still called IL 2. When federal highways began in 1926, highway 51 was one of the series of 1-ending north-south roads with U.S. 1 on the east coast and U.S. 101 on the west coast. Highway 51 itself begins at U.S. 2 at Hurley, Wisconsin, near Lake Superior, and ends at U.S. 61 at LaPlace, Louisiana, 1286 miles south. Originally, the road continued another 73 miles, concurrent with U.S. 61, into New Orleans.

Here are some interesting sites. This one features pictures of the highway as it crosses Illinois: http://www.highwayexplorer.com/il_EndsPage.php?id=2051&section=1 This site has shots of the old pavement before U.S. 51 was rerouted concurrently with Interstate 39: http://www.roadsites.org/losthwy/us-051_wi.html Finally this one shows the southern end of 51 in Louisiana: http://www.southeastroads.com/us-051_la.html

My childhood acquaintance with U.S. 51 included only about 95 miles: 65 miles to the north to Decatur, Illinois, and 30 miles to the south to Centralia, Illinois. Centralia has about 14,000 population in 2000, Decatur about 82,000, and my hometown Vandalia, 7000. Both communities were places my parents and I went to shop on occasion. I also got my teeth straightened by a Centralia orthodontist, so our drives down 51 to that office were frequent during my early teenage years. Naturally, the scenery in both directions became significant personal memories.

In fact, two of my very earliest memories relate to U.S. 51. One is a childhood visit to see a railroad engine on display at Centralia's Fairview Park. (See http://www.ageofsteammemorial.org/) The visit must've been fairly soon after the engine was moved to the location in 1962, when I was five, but I'd never seen anything so massive and amazing!

The other early memory is a childhood visit to Kitchell Park in Pana, IL, thirty miles north of Vandalia. I think the occasion was a family reunion of some sort, but I don't remember which reunion. Our yearly Crawford family reunions happened in late August in Vandalia. I remember being upset when two bigger boys wouldn't let me play on a seesaw. To console me, my mother walked me over to the bridge, pictured in this very old postcard.

The bridge is still there, although I'm not sure I've visited the park since that early 1960s reunion. It was fifty years old then--ancient and venerable, to my young mind--and now it's over 100 years old. But sometimes, when I'm at the edge of a lake or stream, this old bridge appears in my memory. We used to live along a small lake and, as I mowed the lawn, the scene came to mind. The same thing happens when I see a Monet painting of water and water lilies.

I've lots of other childhood memories of U.S. 51. Ghost signs are advertisements painted on the side of buildings and other structures, but the signs are fading and not always legible. One of my favorites is gone: a Miller High Life logo painted on a silo beside the road, a few miles north of Vandalia. I went to high school with the girl who lived on that farm in the 1970s. I didn't pass by the place for several years but the last time I did, the logo had pretty much vanished.

Barns with advertisements painted on their roofs or sides are particularly interesting. A favorite book, Rock City Barns, has pictures of two barns along U.S. 51 near Vandalia. The one I saw most often was several miles south of town. I say "was" because although the barn is still there (last time I passed by, anyway), the once-white letters on the roof had completely oxidized and were no longer recognizable.

Original U.S. highway signs (1920s and 1930) were cut-out shields with embossed letters and numbers, then after World War II, cut-out shields with flat letters were more common. In the 1960s and after, the cut-out shields were replaced by square, black signs with white shields and black numbers. During the late 1990s, when I took my father on a visit to Ramsey, IL so he could visit his grandparents' graves, I noticed one of those post-war shields on a side street, where (I assume) it was unnoticed when signs were replaced. It's gone now, sadly, but how fun to chance upon a relic of highway history.

Two-lane highways followed existing streets and roads. As we traveled to Decatur, I liked the zigzag but still northbound way that 51 passed through Pana: north on Poplar St., then east on First Street for five blocks, north on Cedar Street across the railroad tracks, east on Jackson Street for a mile or so, and then north toward Decatur. Read any guidebook for driving old Route 66 and you'll find similar, zigzag alignments through towns. (Before the widening of U.S. 51 reaches Pana, I need to give a shout-out to a highway curve north of that town, which I always loved. It's just a gentle curve through the landscape, with a sign pointing east toward a place called Dollville.)

Driving south from Vandalia, I liked those river bottom lands which often flooded in rainy seasons... a little hill called Pole Cat Mound...a lumber mill near the road where a great-aunt and uncle of mine lived...the barn roof that advertised Rock City...the small slope with a bath tub (apparently a trough for farm animals) nearby...a sign for a Lutheran Church located down the county road... a small and junky, crossroads antique store where I only visited once because the proprietor was so profane....a line of trees that indicated a much earlier alignment of the highway....a roadside picnic area, between the main road and another, earlier alignment.... Rural sight after rural sight along a gray two-lane road, accompanied by telephone poles and the tracks of the Illinois Central Railroad. The large petroleum storage tanks near the village of Patoka intrigued me as a little kid because there were so many of them, huge cylinders, and a few had the red Pegasus logo for Mobil.Ò

Among those villages I mentioned earlier, I liked Vernon (population 178 in 2000), paradoxically, because of involuntary time spent there. My mother was at one point an interested sewer, and she loved the remnant and fabric shop in Vernon. I was a little boy and waited and waited and waited in the car for her to finish shopping; I read nearly all of A Christmas Carol as I sat in the back seat. But I liked the town because it is so small, the houses are not close together, and you have the (to me) peaceful experience of seeing the farm fields and bordering timber beyond the village as you look from highway through three or four blocks the village's yards. I also liked the simply little playground and the G.A.R. monument, an inauspicious park but, I'm sure, sufficient for a little kid living in the tiny place.

Driving to Centralia, you arrive in Central City, Illinois, which is continuous with Centralia, and you feel a little relieved to be in a town again as you pass florists, gas stations, small churches, and motels. There was once a discount store along northbound 51 where my mom liked to shop for picture frames, and where I liked to browse the bins of LPs. I remember purchasing the Moody Blues' Question of Balance album there, and perhaps others.

(Speaking of music: what songs or pieces remind you of favorite roads? I've another blog post about that, http://paulstroble.wordpress.com/2010/06/11/musical-roadtrips/, but Route 51 certainly brings to mind particular songs from high school years: Moody Blues' "Question" (with its epic opening), Mason Williams' "Classical Gas," The Hollies' "Long Cool Woman," Nilsson's "Without You," The Who's "Overture" [see below], ELO's "Fire on High" [with its backward lyric, "The music is reversible, but time is not. Turn back! Turn back! Turn back! Turn back!"], and others.)

Driving from the north, Central City soon merges into Centralia, and you arrive at Centralia's business district. My parents enjoyed shopping there, though less frequently than our monthly or bimonthly trips to St. Louis. Along Broadway, there were nice clothing stores (at one, I purchased some Cub Scout paraphernalia), a very cool newspaper office designed in Egyptian style, the store Centralia Stationary, which my mom particularly liked (it still operates), and a music store where I bought sheet music. I was thrilled to find the music for "The Overture from Tommy," which I'd heard on the radio in the Assembled Multitude version rather than The Who's. Compared to my hometown's, Centralia's business district was not appreciably larger or more cosmopolitan (compared to Decatur's, for instance), but it seemed so to me, a little kid, as we strolled from the stores near the Illinois Central tracks on the west and the grand trees and stately library in Library Park to the east. Perhaps that pre-kindergarten visit to the railroad engine gave to me an extra bit of appreciation for the small town.

Another Centralia/U.S.51 memory: a childhood visit to the synagogue there, as a Vacation Bible School field trip. But I've acknowledged that shul's influence on my life in another blog post, concerning the
Exodus and Christian Faith (http://changingbibles.blogspot.com/2011/04/92-exodus-and-our-faith_05.html).

A few years ago I discovered a German word, fernweh, which means “far sickness.” It’s the opposite of “home sickness” but is a similar kind of longing: longing for a place that’s not home, a nostalgia for some place distant. I’ve experienced this feeling for places more exotic than our drives on U.S. 51, but the sights were enough like–and close enough to–my own home places that home- and far-sickness mingled. The sights along U.S. 51---the houses, churches, small industry, and business districts--were other people’s landscapes. In a childish way I wondered what people’s lives were like in these “distant” areas, creating in me the feelings described well by that word.

But there is also good old nostalgia, the pleasure of driving a two-lane road you've known your whole life. Wherever I drive, I like to play music---much of Ralph Vaughan Williams' music, some of Elgar's and Holst's, and others---that my brain has "placed" into home scenes like those along U.S. 51.

Growing in Faith

2011-06-15T15:52:00.006-04:00

The New Testament book of Hebrews contains an interesting metaphor: milk vs. solid food as "nutrients" (my word) for one's religious faith. The whole passage is 5:11-14.

About this we have much to say that is hard to explain, since you have become dull in understanding. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic elements of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food; for everyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is unskilled in the word of righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.

I hate being talked down to and scolded, so I might have shamefully thought (if not said) "Screw you!" if someone told me this. But the passage is interesting and difficult because it follows some very sophisticated and nuanced theology in the previous 4-1/2 chapters!

We don't know the author of Hebrews nor the location of the congregation, although the latter were probably Jewish converts to Christianity (hence the title, added by later tradition), perhaps in Italy in the 60s AD. The congregation could've grasped and followed the writer's several arguments concerning the primacy of Christ, based on Old Testament scriptures (the only scriptures they had, of course). Yet, the author expresses concern that the people are still "babies." Interestingly, in 6:1-3, the author tells them to "leave [behind] the elementary teachings about Christ... not laying again the foundation of repentance... instruction about baptism," etc. (NIV). They know all that stuff! And yet the basic knowledge, as well as the more sophisticated teachings of the author (which you could consider "solid food"), are not leading the members to maturity (NIV: the NRSV has "perfection").

The author of Hebrews does alternate harsh warnings, reassurances and encouragement throughout the letter: for instance, the section coming up, 6:4-12. Why weren't the people mature? Their problem seemed to be apathy or sluggishness (6:12: cf. the "dullness" referred to in 5:11 above), weakness that implies weariness (12:12-13), and a tendency to "drift" (as an unanchored boat would drift: 2:1). They also seem to be facing a certain amount of persecution, though apparently not yet life-threatening (12:4). So the epistle's author felt the need to startle them: to talk louder, if you will, to get their attention.

This is interesting to me, partly because I want to be mature in Christ, too, and partly because this biblical advice is different from the way some of us preachers and churchgoers approach this subject. A denominational official visited our church several years ago and, I swear, he preached an evangelistic, "come to Jesus" sermon--for an established congregation. We pastors want people to grow in their faith but I think some of us try to do so by reiterating and reenforcing the "elementary teachings"---the "milk." Perhaps we should, instead, remind them of what they know (or should know) and push them toward deeper and more confident understanding.

What might jolt and lead people toward maturity? Discussing this Hebrews passage, the commentator in The New Interpreter's Bible (vol. 11, p. 72) notes that the problem with the congregation was essentially a social failure! "The [original] readers [of the epistle] have apparently pulled back from bold witness to outsiders and from exhorting and encouraging one another. The loss of a congregational conversation means a loss of hearing. Through lack of use faculties grow dull and the members regress to a former condition of immaturity."

But their failure was also a failure to sharing the blessings of Christ's own life. We can follow Christian teachings and have correct beliefs and yet fall short of a full relationship with the living person and living presence of Christ himself---no historically distant teacher known only through a book. Thus the Hebrews author gives his readers so many glorious passages about the sufficiency of Christ for people's needs, about Christ's tender, real and present care for struggling sinful people. The failure (but not an irreversible one) of the congregation is a two-sided coin: an apathy toward the living Christ and an apathy toward mutual encouragement and social involvement and witness.

All this dovetails with one of my favorite Bible passages, Ephesians 4:11-16.

The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.

Paul (or, some scholars argue, the author writing in Paul's name) similarly links Christian maturity to mutual support and encouragement and Christ's living power. Christian maturity can't take place apart from a loving (a genuinely loving) fellowship wherein people can build one another up.

Similarly, 1 Corinthians 3:1-9:

And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarrelling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations? For when one says, ‘I belong to Paul’, and another, ‘I belong to Apollos’, are you not merely human?
What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each. For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building.

In the previous chapter, Paul depicts Christian maturity in a lovely way, and then in this section, he lowers the boom on the Corinthians, who think they're mature (and possibly would've thought Paul was describing them in chapter 2), but they actually are "infants"! Their "infancy" is, once again, a basic social failure combined with a failure to appreciate the living, working presence of Christ among them. Instead of being pleased at God's grace, the Corinthians were jealous, quarrelsome, prone to divine themselves among factions, and to glorify the work of particular people (in this case, Apollos and Paul) in a possessive, self-important way.

I never liked the expression, "There is no limit to what can be accomplished if it doesn't matter who gets the credit," which has been attributed to both Emerson and Harry S. Truman, among others. Half-humorously, I think the saying could be used by people to take all the credit and not acknowledge and thank the efforts of others! But if we apply the saying to Paul, we could paraphrase: God can accomplish amazing things as we avoid playing favorites with one another, dividing ourselves into factions, and work humbly together for one another's benefit! But those things imply a deep trust and mutual affection among believers in a congregation---goals that a church might set prior to other, more programmatic goals.

Back to Hebrews: we grow and become mature believers in Christ in so far as we encourage and support one another---every day, in fact (Heb. 3:13, 10:23-24). I don't seek such encouragement every day, and would feel needy if I did. Biblically, though, I should be seeking and giving daily encouragement for my faith (including periodic course-corrections)!

So should we all--but, as I say, it would require a high level of love, trust, and sincere concern within our circles of fellowship.

Summer Camp!

2011-06-08T16:52:00.023-04:00

A commercial came on TV recently about a certain organization's programs for children. My wife and I looked at each other and said, "Summer camps!" What a bunch of memories we have, surrounding our daughter's childhood camps! Starting in the springtime, we'd watch for camp announcements, get calendars out, compare available weeks, make payments, and schedule all kinds of 9-to-noon or 9-to-3 adventures to bring variety to Emily's summer weekdays. I call them "camps" but only a few were overnight: week-long events when she was a teenager (unlike the dreaded, long and far-away camps in the Peanuts comic strip).

Her very first camp, when she was five, was a morning class at a historic site in Kentucky. After the sessions, she brought home her crafts and also a mint plant, which we planted in the back yard. Other camps blur in memory as to which summer was which, but I remember classes in soccer at the local Y ("our teacher said the girls hustled better than the boys," she proudly reported), various art classes, and I think a swimming camp. I don't remember any "duds," just a class wherein one little girl was a bully, and a music-related camp that turned out to be a week-long intensive rather than a class which combined recreation.

Zoo camp was an annual favorite. Our community had an excellent zoo, and we often enrolled Emily in two half- or full-day classes there. We even had the zoo host her end-of-summer birthday. The zoo's gift shop was a favorite stop after camp was over. Who knows how many animal-themed toys and books we purchased there?

A momentous camp was a Humane Society camp, wherein the kids learned about pets, cared for animals, and cleaned cages. My wife and I agreed: what a great idea on the society's part, extra help around the center and the likely chance the kids would want to adopt a pet! Sure enough, Emily fell in love with a two-year-old female tabby named Oddball, a sweet, pretty favorite among the kids. Emily thought another girl was going to adopt the cat, but that wasn't the case: by the end of the week Oddball was still available. We adopted her, and she became an integral part of our family for twelve years. (See my 6/15/10 post.)

When we moved to Akron, OH (Emily was 10), she enjoyed camps at the Akron Zoo, a more modest facility (prior to its expansion a few years ago) but with a nice aviary and adorable red pandas, among other critters. For several years we displayed photos on our refrigerator of Emily handling a snake and a turtle. Another, science camp happened the high school she'd eventually attend. We were sad when an excellent camp at a local park had been scheduled during the first week of school in August; what were they thinking? Other summers, we packed her bags for the annual weeklong camp in the nearby Cuyahoga National Forest.

I don't want to leave out Vacation Bible Schools, always a significant summertime week. When Emily was in grade school, our church had a very nice program. After we moved to Ohio, she attended VBS at our own church and a Lutheran friend's church. At the latter, a motorcycle-riding pastor was a highlight one year. Something that always amazes me about VBS is how the curriculum designers dream up enjoyable and different themes year after year.

An enduring memory of any summer event is heat (and its partner humidity). The camper received ample sunscreen, and she had two or three little plastic fans to carry on hot days (multiple ones because misplaced fans were replaced and then rediscovered). Her chauffeur seized the day and sometimes went barefooted.

Emily's "era" of camping merged into volunteer service as a VBS assistant, and also summer marching band practice. Marching band was a several-week commitment, more boot camp than summer camp. Instead of "driving Miss Emily" around to different locations, we had only destination: the band room in the rear of the high school, and church during VBS week.

Camps were not part of my own childhood experience. My hometown was too small for such programs, and I've no idea if our denomination offered camps in Illinois, but I did love and was influenced by a series of VBSs. Our local library featured summer programs. Not until the summer between my junior and senior years of high school did I have an out of town class, a week-long training program for students working on yearbooks. The program happened an hour away at Eastern Illinois University, where we kids stayed in the dorms and attended classes (my interest was photography). The Steely Dan song "Reelin in the Years" reminds me of that summer. What a great time! I bitterly regretted not having similar opportunities earlier.

Fortunately, the many hours I've spent with Emily over the years means that I won't have the regrets of some parents who worked hard but neglected their kids. I think my own dad was one, although he never said so explicitly. I appreciate this article, http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/06/16/pearlman.fathers.day/index.html, which calls dads to spend more time with their kids.

When we moved to Akron, the mint plant came with us. We planted it near the lake at the edge of our backyard, where it lasted nearly nine years (or nearly fourteen years after Emily brought it home) until heavy rains flooded the area. I saved a toy giraffe, though, from a garage sale pile, when I recalled its purchase on a cheerful afternoon in the zoo gift shop.

My Cousin Lewis

2011-05-30T08:05:00.003-04:00

Here's a Memorial Day post: from Frederick M. Hanes, "Fayette County [Illinois] in the World War," 1922, pp. 58 and 60.

"Lewis Calvin Crawford, son of Calvin and Rosetta Crawford, was born October 24, 1905 [i.e., 1895] near Brownstown where he lived until he entered the service of his country May 8, 1917. He enlisted at Mattoon and was sent to Jefferson Barracks. Later he was transferred to a camp in Texas and thence to Jersey City, N. J., from where he crossed as a first class private of CO. K., 16th Infantry.

"His father having died several years previous [in 1916], many a young man in his position would have pleaded that he must remain with his lonely mother. But whenever he spoke of going he would remark, 'Mother, if I did not go and help win our freedom I would feel that I had no right to live here. I could not face the boys as they came home who had fought for me.'

"Lewis was a Bible reader and before going expressed the desire to go across and if possible see the country where the Saviour lived on earth. On the way across however, he contracted measles. Pneumonia followed. He was taken to Base Hospital No. 1, St. Naziarre, France where he died July 15, 1917, the first of the sons of Fayette county to give his life on French soil. His comrades buried him in a French cemetery but later removed the body to an American cemetery. At the request of his relatives the body was again disinterred and set back to his homeland where it was laid to rest in Pilcher cemetery in the family lot.

"When the American Legion was organized in Fayette County the Vandalia Post was named The Crawford-Hale Post in honor of Private Crawford and Sergt. Edward B. Hale, Fayette County's first two sons to give their lives overseas for American ideals.

"Private Crawford was a member of the M. W. A. [a Methodist organization]. His mother recalls his favorite hymn which has taken on a new and grander meaning:

"I will follow Thee my Saviour,
Whereso'er my lot shall be:
Where Thou goest I will follow,
Yes, my Lord, I'll follow Thee."

Lewis was my great-grandfather John Crawford's first cousin. In fact, Lewis and his parents are buried very close to my grandparents and great-grandparents. Coincidentally, the Crawford-Hale post began on the same day my mother was born: August 2, 1919.

Being Judgmental

2011-05-28T16:10:00.009-04:00

A while back, a friend asked me why I thought some Christians are so judgmental. I promised to think about it!

Maybe it's better to say "some judgmental people are also Christians." None of us can separate our psychological makeup from our faith. People who are naturally introverted, or controlling, or easily hurt, often express their personalities in similar ways in church settings, too; similarly, people who are quick to pigeon-hole and judge others, and people who want to others to change. (The character Angela in the NBC show The Office is a good pop-culture example of someone who, you assume, would be strict and stiff even if she wasn't religious. You shutter to picture the character Dwight Schrute as a Christian, without an accompanying personality overhaul!)

Having the Word of God at hand can be a powerful source for "judgmentalness": God said it, you don't measure up, that settles it. Some of us read scripture that way. Conservative and evangelical people tend to be accused of judgmental attitudes, but I think liberal and progressive people can also be quick to generalize, stigmatize and condemn. It's a tricky balance to be passionate about an issue or topic, and yet not dismiss or characterize those who disagree.

Of course, "being judgmental" doesn't have to be the same as having strong opinions and convictions. One might be perceived as being judgmental when s/he communicates personal convictions (again, whether they're stereotypical conservative or liberal issues); but she might be labeled as judgmental by someone who disagrees.

I wonder, too, whether judgmentalness (I know that's not a word: don't be judgmental toward me, LOL) is connected to certain stages of one's spiritual growth. This isn't always the case, but it can be. When I was a new Christian I was quick to pass judgment on certain things, but in retrospect, my attitude stemmed from my insecurities in faith and life, and my uncertainties how to be a Christian. I certainly lacked the inner peace that helps a person be strong, consistently kind and sensitive toward others.

Sometimes people are judgmental because they can't quite process the fact that other people's lives and experiences are not their own. They meet a single woman and make assumptions why she's not married. They meet a childless couple and wonder why they don't have children. Years ago, a few fellow pastors learned that I was interested in both parish work and getting a PhD, and they judged that I must be snooty and "ivory tower." Much worse, you can see how this kind of assumption-making isn't too far from racist, homophobic, and sexist attitudes. Any of these attitudes are painful when they're directed at you from fellow Christians; you hope they'd be more loving and considerate.

Unfortunately, generalizing harshly about other people is an easy habit for all of us, in part because it makes us feel better about ourselves.

Scripture does teach the potential need to warn others about their behavior or circumstances. Ezekiel 3:17-21 is a well-known example. This would be an easy scripture to use wrongly: throw tact to the wind, point out a person’s sin, and say to yourself, “Whew, I did what God wanted!” Nevertheless, according to this scripture, one might have the responsibility to warn someone about his or her actions. Similarly Paul voiced concern about immoral behavior tolerated by a congregation (1 Cor. 5:1-5) and also showed concern about another congregation (2 Thess. 3:6, 3:14-15; also Titus 3:10-11).

Jesus pointed out people’s sins. He was very harsh to the teachers who considered themselves superior to others (Matthew 23:25-28), and he told the woman caught in adultery to sin no more (John 8:1-11) although he was kind to her and, indeed, saved her life. But Jesus also loved people and involved himself with people whose lives were wrong, broken, judged harshly, and confused. To them, he shared himself.

Scripture teaches a responsible kind of judgment-making, but it is also very clear about the kindness and encouragement that go along with judgments! One should mind one's own affairs (1 Thess 4:11), one should be gentle and self-aware in one's judgments (Heb. 5:2, Gal. 5:1, 2 Tim. 2:24-25), one should be encouraging, helpful, and patient (1 Thess. 5:14), one should be concerned for peace rather than "wrangling" (1 Tim. 6:4-5, 2 Tim. 2:24-25). Why don't see these kinds of verses and focus on the ones about rebuking and fault-finding?

In Matthew 7:1-5 Jesus famously tells people not to worry about the speck in someone else’s eye until you take the log out of your own eye. It’s actually a very humorous passage, which definitely gets the lesson across: I'm walking around with a big ol' tree stuck to my face and yet I point out that your face doesn't look right and you need to fix it!

Just because you see something that you consider condemnable in another person, you need to ask, What is condemnable in myself, if "the whole truth" were known about me? When Jesus’ opponents said, “He eats and drinks with sinners,” the irony is that they who disapproved of the sin of others, were themselves sinners! But they (in their own eyes) seemed more righteous because their sins were more subtle and prideful.

Jesus also said, “Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment" (John 7:24). Here is another biblical warrant to be cautious how you judge someone: the person may seem to be doing something of which you don’t approve, but do you really know what’s going on with the person? Have you "walked a mile in his or her shoes"? Have you inquired into the person’s circumstance? (Remember that “judgment” in the legal sense means a decision based on all the known facts about a case.) “Being judgmental” implies an haughty assessment according to appearances, or to a one-sided appeal to scripture, without a person knowing the content of that person’s heart and experience (or your own).

And… how would you know what’s going on with the person, if you didn’t have some kind of friendship with him other? Those scriptures I cited earlier (four paragraphs up) place judgments within the context of fellowship, friendship, love, and empathy. It's easy to show scripture to someone to condemn or criticize them, but in a way that's distancing yourself from them, putting yourself above them. That’s why “being judgmental” is so easy to be and simultaneously is so disagreeable when we see it in others.

To cite the often-quoted 1 Corinthians 13: you can be right about everything, including your moral and theological judgments, but if you don't have love, you're just noisy.

Decoration Day

2011-05-27T08:41:00.004-04:00

A post from two years ago.... Memorial Day weekend is coming up. My daughter has graduated from high school and thus is no longer in the band, but I've fond memories of her participation in the Copley, OH Memorial Day parades each year. The parades ended at the Copley Cemetery and its impressive veterans' monument. The cemetery is bright with flowers and American flags.

When I was a kid, the holiday was always “Decoration Day.” We picked up Grandma at her old farmhouse near Brownstown, IL then backtracked on Route 185 to the turn off to the Pilcher Cemetery. I was told that one ancestor, Winslow Pilcher, had owned the land first but that another ancestor, Josiah Williams, formally deeded the property as a cemetery. The graveyard was located in a bright meadow surrounded by thick timber. A single massive oak stood in the clearing. We saw no houses and heard nothing except sounds of nature, our own voices, and the slam of the trunk as the grown-ups removed the “decorations” and then placed the flowers on the grave of my grandmother and other relatives.

My grandfather’s red granite stone read, CRAWFORD Josiah 1886-1954 Grace 1890- . To each side of the stone are the graves of my great-grandparents, John and Susan Crawford and Albert and Abbie Pilcher. Grandma and my parents decorated these graves. I was usually more interested in the older section of the cemetery. A new stone, so plain and solid, seemed less interesting to me than an old, leaning marker which carefully tallied the person’s exact age at time of death and contained odd names like Comfort, Alonzo, Mortimer, Elvina, Reuben, Ulysses, Tabitha, Jahiel, and Eudoxy. A few of the old stones had fatalistic inscriptions, like the epitaph of Moses Cluxton, Sr.:

Remember, friends, as you pass by,
As you are now, so once was I.
As I am now, so you must be.
Prepare for death, and follow me.

Others had more explicit promise of Heaven:

The rose may fade, the body die,
But flowers unmarked bloom on high
Beyond the land of sinful powers
Our son is safe in Eden’s bowers.

The stones had extremes of brevity and wordiness, from the most basic inscription (“J A T 1835”) to a hymn carved upon my great-great-great-uncle David Washburn’s stone:

When Jesus comes to reward his servants
Whether it be noon or night
Faithful to him will he find us watching
With our lamps all trimmed and bright
Chorus [sic!]
O can we say we are ready Brother
Ready for the soul’s bright home
Say will he find you and me still watching
Waiting waiting when the Lord shall come.

The cemetery was a place of lonely peacefulness. Each year, the adults interrupted that pace with remarks about the peacefulness, about how long that tree must have been growing there, about how badly Cousin So and so misses his wife (who’s buried over there) when we last saw him at the grocery, about why Cousin Such and such hasn’t been out with flowers because she’s usually decorated by now, about how old Grandpa would’ve been (“196- minus 1886 is ___ so he’d be ___”). Sometimes we’d arrive in time for a trustee’s meeting beneath the oak and the grownups would talk about how much mowing costs had been last year, what kid was going to be around this summer who could be counted on to do trimming and … on and on. Mourning doves made their haunting call.

We weren’t the only “decorators” of course. Someone usually placed flags on the graves of veterans. Two were Civil War veterans (one a casualty at Vicksburg according to his stone). Josiah Williams was a Mexican War veteran. On the east side of the meadow, a small flag decorated a plain rock. “So and so knew who that soldier was,” a cousin told us wistfully—“so and so” being another cousin who had long since passed away.

My mother is very elderly and in a nursing home. She wonders who is decorating at the cemetery. Albert and Abby Pilcher had only one child, and so they’ve not many descendants in the area. With such mundane things as a bouquet of artificial flowers or a $1 American flag, we could show departed loved ones that we still cared and remembered. Decorating was no casual thing.

Here are my relatives buried in Fayette County, IL who were war veterans. Off the top of my head:

My dad, buried in the South Hill Cemetery in Vandalia, in World War II.
My great-uncle Ed Strobel, buried in the Ramsey Cemetery, in World War I.
My great-great-grandfather George Washburn, buried in the Bolt Cemetery near Ramsey, in the Civil War.
My great-grandfather John Strobel, buried in the Ramsey Cemetery, in the Civil War.
My great-great-grandfather Josiah Williams, buried in the Pilcher Cemetery near Brownstown, in the Mexican War.
My great-great-great-grandfather Winslow Pilcher, buried in the Winslow Pilcher Family Cemetery near Brownstown, in the War of 1812.
My great-great-great-great-grandfather James S. Carson, buried in an unknown location in Fayette County, in the Revolutionary War. His name appears on the bicentennial monument, honoring him and other Revolutionary veterans, at the Fayette County Courthouse.

I'm leaving out other uncles and cousins on both sides. John A. Wakefield, an early Fayette County pioneer who married my great-great-great-great-grandfather Henry Brown's niece, led troops in the unnecessary Black Hawk War of 1832 and wrote an 1834 history of that conflict. He was the first white settler of the Otego Township area (where the Pilcher Cemetery is located), but he is buried in Kansas.

Don Giovanni's Inner Life

2011-05-22T18:15:00.008-04:00

My wife Beth and I attended opening night of Opera Theatre of St. Louis, which was "Don Giovanni." I've loved this opera ever since purchasing the Karl Böhm live recording (with Sherrill Milnes in the title role, along with Walter Berry, Peter Schreier, Edith Mathis, and others) way back in the spring of 1982 at the old Chapel Square Mall in New Haven, CT. In spite of reviews like http://www.allmusic.com/album/mozart-don-giovanni-w145607/review, I still enjoy this recording.

The Opera Theatre production featured a wonderful cast and, interestingly, a variety of costume styles. The principles were in modern dress (and the Don killed the Commandatore with a handgun), while the chorus wore shabby period clothes. That shabbiness worked effectively when some of the chorus returned to pitch the Don into Hell, which appeared then retreated through a crack in the rear wall.

One of the local newspapers provided a good preview article: http://www.stlbeacon.org/arts-life/21-music/110361-don-giovanni-kicks-off-opera-theatre-season I've not read much Kierkegaard (much Karl Barth, who was early influenced by him). But knowing of Kierkegaard's passion for the opera, I found two interesting quotes, one from Maria G. Amilburu's essay "Kierkegaard's Aesthetic Realm of Existence," in Understanding Human Nature: Examples from Philosophy and the Arts (http://www.bu.edu/wcp/MainAnth.htm):

"Kierkegaard maintains that Don Giovanni has all the exuberance and primitive impulse of man before self-awareness has dawned: he lives for the immediate satisfaction of his senses, and is the embodiment of the kind of person who can only see him/herself in terms of the senses. Living for the moment entails a negation of the ability to reflect, which is characteristic of the spirit. This means that Don Giovanni lacks inner life: he simply enjoys himself, flits from one pleasure to another, one conquest to another, as Leporello tells us in his Aria. His life is a flow, but without a flowing subject. It is like the bubbles in the wine which gives its name to another of the best-known pieces of the Opera. The aesthetic existence is thus an inconsistent kind of phenomenon which wafts here and there in an evanescent world. This is why Kierkegaard says that the best way of expressing the levity of the aesthetic existence is through music: pure experience which only exists in the present."

And then, here is a quote from the essay "Kierkegaard, Don Giovanni, and the Messiah" by Martin Winer (http://www.ourexpose.com/139759-Kierkegaard-Don-Giovanni-and-the-Messiah.html):

"Both Kierkegaard and Don Giovanni had a fundamental lack of faith: Not a lack of faith in God, but a lack of faith in humanity. We'll soon see that the two are related however. What is the fundamental value of faith to begin with? Faith allows the human mind to make decisions in the absence of perfect information and absolute certainty. Faith in its purest form is essential to daily living. How could we board a plane, drive to work or go about our daily business without a certain faith that the odds are in our favour that everything is going to be alright? I'm certain that were Don Giovanni alive today, he'd happily board a plane to fly to his love of the week. He would have faith in the plane ride, which could theoretically cost him his life, but he wouldn't have the faith in the woman to truly love her, even when there is no mortal danger. This irony speaks wondrously of the innate human ability to recognize that the soul is the most precious thing of all. Don Giovanni was a duelist who commonly took risks with his life but never risked to expose his soul."

The PCUSA's Vote to Ordain Gay Persons

2011-05-14T08:48:00.005-04:00

In July 2010, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) adopted "Amendment 10-A" which would change ordination standards to include openly gay people. But the measure had to be approved by over 50% of the PCUSA's presbyteries (regional bodies). This past Tuesday (May 10, 2011) the Presbytery of the Twin Cities voted 205-56 to support 10-A, providing the necessary majority (87 of the denomination's 173 presbyteries). The change in ordination standards go into effect next July 10, giving presbyteries the ability (if they choose) to ordain gay persons. (See the article at http://www.religionlink.com/tip_110509.php, which reports the process and also provides numerous responses and articles on the subject. This would be a helpful source for anyone studying different sides of this contemporary issue.)

The PCUSA action has been exciting news to those of us who hope to see progress on this issue among our denominations. The religionlink article notes that "The PCUSA now joins the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the United Church of Christ as major denominations that allow the ordination of homosexuals in committed relationships, and the development reflects a growing acceptance of homosexuals among the wider public."

My own denomination, The United Methodist Church, still excludes gays from ordination. Any change has to be accomplished by the denomination's law making body, the quadrennial General Conference. So far GC delegates have kept the restriction in place, but earlier this year, 33 retired UM bishops issued a statement urging a lift of the ban, as reported at the UMC site (http://www.umc.org/site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx?c=lwL4KnN1LtH&b=5723451&ct=9103189¬oc=1, as well as http://www.actup.org/forum/content/retired-united-methodist-bishops-urge-end-gay-clergy-ban-3173/ and other sites). The bishop's statement, although lacking legal force, has been applauded and in some quarters regretted; similar reactions greeted the first openly gay candidate to seek election to the United Methodist episcopacy three years ago (http://www.umc.org/site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx?c=lwL4KnN1LtH&b=2789393&ct=5690357).

Needless to say, homosexuality is a hotly-debated topic in many denominations, not only ordination but also marriage. And needless to say, biblical prohibitions (especially the texts Lev. 18:22, Lev. 20:13, Rom. 1:27, 1 Cor. 6:9-11, and 1 Timothy 1:9-10) lie at the heart of the debate. For many people, the church should be faithful to these texts and not ordain gay persons---and the church is being untrue to God's word when it circumvents these texts and argues differently from them. However, I've appreciated this article by Walter Wink that puts these verses in a larger context: http://www.soulforce.org/article/homosexuality-bible-walter-wink

The sad irony is: while church leaders and church members continue to debate these texts, God is already and richly blessing LGBT persons in callings to ministry and thus in gifts of preaching, counseling, teaching, administration, and other areas of service! Of course, the church has been ordaining gay persons for many years but only recently have gay persons felt a greater freedom to accept and open up about their orientation and identity. Many of us straight people have formed theological positions on this issue without having spent time with LGBT persons. But among the retired bishops I mentioned above, Sharon Z. Rader and Donald A. Ott "both stressed that the statement is based on their experience as church leaders. For more than five years after her retirement, Rader was the bishop in residence at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Ill. In that capacity, she said, she met with many seminary students who had the gifts and calling for ministry but were gay or lesbian." (http://www.umc.org/site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx?c=lwL4KnN1LtH&b=5723451&ct=9103189¬oc=1)

If you open your heart and mind to the fact that God is already calling and blessing gay persons (and has been for many years), and if you need additional guidance from the scriptures, I find Acts 15:12-18 relevant:

The whole assembly kept silence, and listened to Barnabas and Paul as they told of all the signs and wonders that God had done through them among the Gentiles. After they finished speaking, James replied, ‘My brothers, listen to me. Simeon has related how God first looked favorably on the Gentiles, to take from among them a people for his name. This agrees with the words of the prophets, as it is written,
"After this I will return,
and I will rebuild the dwelling of David, which has fallen;
from its ruins I will rebuild it,
and I will set it up,
so that all other peoples may seek the Lord—
even all the Gentiles over whom my name has been called.
Thus says the Lord, who has been making these things known from long ago.

In this passage, God is doing amazing things among Gentiles, but the question has been raised, Should they be circumcised (or, to say it another way, should they be excluded as Christian witnesses because they are not Jews)? You can see a parallel in this situation. The fact that God is working among these people causes the Jerusalem council members to seek the scriptures for assurance that God can indeed do amazing works in unexpected ways. As one of my seminary professors put it, scripture conforms to experience! If you argue that the biblical prohibitions forbid ordination of gay person, perhaps this can help you see a different but also scriptural way of looking at the issue---God provides gifts and graces to gay and straight people alike, just as God called and blessed both Jews and Gentiles alike in biblical times.

Here is another helpful text of an analogous situation. Galatians 3:2 reads: "The only thing I want to learn from you is this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard?" The predominantly Gentile church of Galatia had received God's Spirit apart from fulfilling any traditional religious requirements. In our own time, have gay persons received calls and gifts to ministry by ceasing to be gay, in compliance with those above-cited biblical strictures, or by believing in the Lord?

Because many of us straight people think about this issue around the biblical texts, I've tried to show a few ways we can argue positively for ordination of gay persons. I'm conscious of the fact that this whole subject is hurtful and frustrating to gay persons, who wish that we straight people would catch up to what they already know.

The Bible is God's Word, but we should not interpret it (or assert that we should never interpret it, only obey it) as if there is no new understandings of human nature, no historical developments, no science, and so on.

For instance, questions of biblical authority are often raised in the context of conflicts concerning the theories and discoveries of modern science. We can recognize the historical development and time-bound character of the Bible writers, so that when we encounter in the Bible ancient and “outdated” views of the cosmos, we need not think that we’re selling-out the Bible to science when we recognize the former’s cultural origins, nor do we have to declare the Bible any less God's word if modern scientific theories and discoveries do not comfort to biblical details.

Similarly, we can affirm contemporary understandings of homosexuality as an identity, a possibility of a commitment relationship with another person, and as a gift from God---while acknowledging that the Bible defines homosexuality differently (e.g., as a male behavioral sin or an exploitive relationship), both within the Levitical holiness code (which otherwise does not, generally speaking, apply to modern Christian practice) and Paul's lists of sins (and some of us may be guilty of a few of the others on those lists).

Still another issue related to biblical interpretation is Christian anti-Semitism. Although written primarily by Jews who still considered themselves Jews, the New Testament is filled with negative references to Jews (e.g., Matt. 27:25, 1 Thess. 2:3-16, Rev. 2:9, and the Gospel of John’s consistent use of “the Jews” in a pejorative sense). Does this give us permission to dislike Jews?

Of course not, but the anti-Jewish “atmosphere” of the New Testament has caused untold sorrow for Jews. I’ve known Christians who, while discussing the scriptures, refer disparagingly to “the Jews” in a clear echo of New Testament texts—the same Christians who would never make a generalizing, disparaging comment about an ethnic group in other contexts. I've also sensed that certain Christians assume that, because the New Testament portrays Judaism in a certain way, then contemporary Judaism must be the same; they've never taken the time to know a Jew or learn about modern Judaism. Important work has been done in recent years to show how the anti-Jewish material in the New Testament has contributed over the centuries to Christian disdain for Jews, the persecution of Jews, and the anti-Semitism that led historically to the Holocaust. Greater sensitivity to the sins of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism require us to read the Bible in a different way than the literal sense.

Again, here is an example of a historically-conditioned quality to the Bible and the necessity to interpret it in light of new insights. In this case, we must acknowledge that the New Testament expresses an apparently hostile and generalizing attitude toward Jews, but history has shown that we (Gentiles) must not derive prejudice and racism from a thoughtless, literal reading of the New Testament text.

This example of Christian anti-Semitism is also pertinent to the discussion of homosexuality and LGBT person's service to the church, because active persecution of homosexuals is of course quite real and some of it does make use of biblical texts. Rev. Mel White's article, "What the Bible Says - And Doesn't Say - About Homosexuality" by Rev. Mel White, provides several examples of gay bullying and killings. (http://www.soulforce.org/article/homosexuality-bible-gay-christian). We straight Christians must be aware that we might be upholding Bible passages that are, by other people, used to excuse and justify hatred and murder.

I do not know if Bible texts are used against gays in Uganda, but to cite an example of persecution against gays, this week the parliament in Uganda was "set to pass a number of laws against gays and lesbians so draconian that the entire population of that country will feel the effects," according to a news source. "The so-called 'Kill the Gays' bill, proposed by legislator David Bahati," includes death sentences to persons "who are 'repeat offenders' of having sexual intimacy with a person of the same sex" and "anyone with HIV who engages in sexual activity with a member of the same sex. Those who harbor or assist gays and lesbians will be subject to imprisonment. Even those who know someone to be gay or lesbian who don't report them to the authorities will face a prison sentence." (Here is the source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bishop-gene-robinson/ugandas-kill-the-gays-bil_b_861150.html) Fortunately, in news which broke as I was writing a draft of this post, the Ugandan parliament tabled the measure in the wake of international outcries.

I've obviously moved from the subject of ordination of American gays to the ministry! But knowing about situations like this are necessary as we straight people learn the joys and sorrows of LGBT persons. With greater understanding, we can learn to appreciate one another's struggles, to enjoy God's peace together amid our differences, and to affirm our respective callings, gifts, and graces.

Responses to bin Laden's Death

2011-05-05T10:04:00.022-04:00

The reactions to Osama bin Laden's death have ranged from joy and jubilation to relief, to an interesting and appropriate soul-searching about whether celebrating the death of a human being, even a vicious and hateful one, is proper. A large celebration happened at University of Missouri, for instance, where students waved flags, drank champagne, tossed toilet paper, and lit sparklers. Another celebration at Webster University, though much quieter, featured 3000 American flags arranged around campus. (http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/article_bea4f3dc-74f2-11e0-8ec0-001a4bcf6878.html) The Webster U. president (my wife) issued a statement affirming the diversity of the university and its values as "a welcoming institution that values differences."
A good United Methodist news story expresses some of the emotional and theological responses to the death: http://www.umc.org/site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx?c=lwL4KnN1LtH&b=2789393&ct=9380133 And still another story highlights theological challenges for pastors, imams, and rabbis: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-justus-n-baird/the-bin-laden-sermon-imam_b_857842.html

At the Christian Century website, Yale theologian Miroslav Volf quoted a friend who had cited Proverbs 24:17, Ezekiel 33:11, and Matthew 5:44. The friend said, "After 9/11 I found it very hard to bring myself to pray for Usama [sic] bin Laden. but by God's grace I did because Jesus said I must. And though I am tempted to rejoice today, I will not because Jesus said I must not." Another friend had written Volf, who worried about whether "God's justice" is achieved when foreign troops carry out a mission in another country. "All my instincts were, and are, to sigh with relief, even, in a measure, to celebrate. But my mind warns that this is a dangerous precedent in principle and an extremely dangerous action in terms of possible unintended consequences." (Quoted from: http://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2011-05/fear-and-relief)

It's true that the Bible says love your enemies---the living Christ helps us to do so, many times painstakingly and over the long haul---but the death of an enemy elicits a normal emotional process, including relief and joy. 9/11 was a national tragedy of horror and grief, and some of the emotions of the past days (though certainly not destructive feelings like hostility toward Muslims) are part of a healing process, if not "closure."

Like many people, I struggle with a sense of Jesus' vision in combination of (as Reinhold Niebuhr put it, "what kind of world we are living in" (quoted in http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-plank/obama-niebuhr-and-us-politics). Patriotism, religious values, and emotions mix in my mind and heart.

When writers worry about the use of violence to combat violence, and the problems of American exceptionalism, I wonder what specific alternatives they would offer, when someone like bin Laden is a continuing threat....

True, Jesus teaches us to love enemies, but what about enemies who are mass murders who caused untold grief and misery? Jesus showed (and shows) care and compassion on the suffering and grieving, after all, and disapproved those who imposed burdens of suffering upon others ...

And I feel grateful for soldiers who sacrifice so much. Just a couple years ago I chatted with a man (at the mall) who was wearing a Korean War Veteran cap, and I thanked him for his service. His eyes grew misty....

And yet.... I agree that the use of violence against violence is a hellish, endless treadmill of destruction....

Somehow, something approximating world peace must be achieved, and the Lord shows us the way....

And yet I wonder how is God's justice carried out in the world, given Romans 13:1-7 (which I haven't seen quoted in these discussions, although I haven't done any kind of thorough web search)....

And then... I think how complicated are historical trends, resisting easy solutions. For instance, some of the Middle Eastern situations of today have historical roots in international relations, and decisions both good and bad, going back over a century (e.g., the United States' traditional support of the State of Israel has helped Jews have a homeland and yet perpetuates an Arab sense of humiliation and hostility in the Middle East)....

And I agree with my wife's statement that our diversity of voices and opinions must be honored and preserved. Getting along and honoring one another's viewpoints begins at home....

And....I wonder what are real, workable alternatives to international relationships, more helpful for the long term than American (or anyone's) military confrontation. For instance, for a curriculum chapter on global security that I wrote last year (1), I read portions of John Steinbruner, Principles of Global Security, Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institute Press, 2000. Steinbruner notes that an “[a]ctive confrontation is an ingrained American inclination,” and having a “designated enemy” has been an “organizing focus” for our own security policy.(2) But, again, the present possibility of “diffuse violence” is too widespread for the U.S. and its allies to address solely through confrontation and intimidation.(3) Altogether, he argues, “One of the most fundamental implications of globalization is the shift in the balance of reliance in security policy from deterrence to reassurance, from active confrontation to cooperative engagement.”(4)

.... And all these things are ways my head and heart go back and forth. "Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say," says Edgar in King Lear. But that's not quite right. We need to speak both: how we feel, and what must be said, our real emotions (including the shameful ones) and more excellent ways to which God guides us. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations (Rev. 22:2).

I do very much appreciate these words from the same source by Miroslav Volf: "We are right to feel a sense of relief that a major source of evil has been removed. But we should reflect also on the flip side of that relief: the nature of our fears. As the King hearings and state-level anti-Sharia bills indicate, many people in our nation find themselves under a spell of a 'green scare' analogous to the red scare of the 1950s. But fear is a foolish counselor...."

Brian McLaren, who quotes this paragraph of Volf's, also notes (alluding to the work of Rene Girard), that "We can unite our party, if not our nation, around common aggression against shared fear---even if we can't unite them around a common vision around shared values. This trade in the currency of fear sets us up for a boom-bust cycle not unlike our economic cycle, ad not unlike the vicious cycles of agony and ecstasy known by addicts."

He goes on: "At what point do we Americans temper the celebration of our victories with concern about what we are becoming? At what point do we notice that for us the word 'justice' is harder and harder to distinguish from 'revenge'?" He expresses respect for those who took risks "to end bin Laden's reign of terror" but warns again about the subtle and long-range destructiveness of fear (http://brianmclaren.net/archives/blog/who-will-be-the-next-monster-for.html ). I think I'll reread portions of Steinbruner's book (published in 2000) and think about some of his suggestions in light of our current struggle against terror and the difficulties of our national debt.

Notes:

1. The curriculum "Faithful Citizen" will be published later this year: see http://www.congregationinpubliclife.org/DVDCurriculum.htm

2.Steinbruner, Principles of Global Security, 225.

3.Ibid., 229.

4.Ibid, 18.

Brueggemann's Journey to the Common Good

2011-04-23T10:41:00.004-04:00

I've been enjoying an excellent book called Journey to the Common Good by Walter Brueggemann (Westminster John Knox, 2010). As I've thought about the Exodus and Passover this past week (see my earlier post about the Exodus), I returned to the book, wherein he points out that "The exodus-Sinai memory produces an uncommon social ethic" (p. 39). His examples are:

The prevention of a permanent underclass through debt cancellations (Deut. 15:1-18), with the reminder of Egyptian slavery.
Openheartedness and generosity toward one's neighbor (Deut. 15:7-11)
No interest on loans within the community (Deut. 23:19-2)
Runaway slaves are always extended hospitality (Deut. 23:15-16)
Collateral-free loans to poor people (Deut. 24:10-13)
Poor people cannot have their wages withheld (Deut. 24:14-15)
Resident aliens and orphans receive justice (Deut. 24:17-18), again with the reminder of Egyptian slavery.
An economy structured for provision for the needy and marginalized (Deut. 24:19-22), yet again with the reminder of Egyptian slavery (pp. 39-41).

An ethic of neighborliness, generosity, and the common good are rooted in the nature and salvation of the Lord of the exodus (pp. 42-43). The experience of liberation from Egyptian slavery is supposed to lead to an economy and society in which people are cared for.

Interestingly, Brueggemann connects King Solomon with Pharaoh! He argues that Solomon, with his accumulation of power and wealth, comprise a "nullifying [of] the vision of Sinai" wherein the common good is provided for (pp. 53-55). Thus the prophetic tradition of Nathan, Amos, Jeremiah, and others call the people back to the Lord of the exodus (p. 57). Jeremiah, for instance, calls people to "praise" or "boast" of the Lord rather than their own wealth, wisdom, and power---the qualities of Pharaoh and Solomon (Jer. 9:24) (p. 61). Both Jeremiah 9:24 and Hosea 6:6 remind the people that God is a God of lovingkindness (hesed), justice (mispat) and righeousness (zedaqah), and God desires and delights in these things more than sacrifice and burnt offerings (pp. 62-63).

Brueggemann connects these verses and traditions to the New Testament. For instance, Hosea 6:6 is referred to in Matthew 9:13 and Matthew 12:7. God continues to love justice, lovingkindness (or "steadfast love, which in turn is connected to the Sinai covenant and its social ethic), and righteousness (connected to the social well-being) (p. 64). That notion of "boasting the Lord" is a favorite saying of Paul (e.g. 1 Cor. 1:31), even if we don't realize it is a quotation of Jer. 9:24, which in turn is a reminder of the will of the Lord of the exodus (pp. 66-67).

All these have contemporary relevance, Brueggemann argues. "[T]he U.S. national security state thrives on wisdom, might, and wealth. That triad of commitments, moreover, gets articulated among us not as savage militarism but as consumer entitlement in which liberals and conservatives together take for granted our privileged status in the world as God's most recently chosen people....[T]he coming troubles of our society call us away from our internal struggles in the church in order that the church may address these great public missional issues. It remains to be seen how the church can fashion an intentional alternative to the national security state, which [comparing it to Israel and Judah during the prophetic era] is itself a path to death" (p. 68).

Although this sentence sounds like a typical way to close a book report (LOL), I do find this book, typical of Brueggemann's work generally, a very creative reading of the scriptures, and this one is particularly important amid our contemporary, competing discussions about the common good, and the ways to achieve it.

Thoughts about Hell

2011-04-18T10:04:00.000-04:00

http://changingbibles.blogspot.com/2011/04/94-thoughts-about-hell.html