Obwohl der fremde Mann dadurch nichts erfahren haben konnte, was er nicht schon früher gewußt hätte, sagte er nun doch zu K. im Tone einer Meldung: »Es ist unmöglich.«
Although the strange man could have found out nothing by this, which he had not known before hand, however he now said to in a tone of a report, “It is impossible.”
The Kierkegaard Project has started off slow. I feel like I am an amateur marathon runner tempted to sprint ahead but forcing myself to find a manageable pace. I am reading the writings of a young Kierkegaard engaged in local journalistic debates that I do not have the inclination to learn more about at the moment. One quote, however, seemed appropriate to throw up into the blogosphere. The context could be characterized as a pre-blog comment thread;
When in a dispute the point is reached where the opponent says: I cannot understand you, although I have the best intentions – then that ends the dispute. And although we shall willingly leave outside the whole dispute the question of whether or not his intentions are the best, because until the opposite can be proved we remain ever convinced of this, one must always respect such a move by the opponent. But when instead he starts to attack the character of the person he is speaking to, accuses him of being a willful sophist etc., then it can at the most provoke a smile on the lips of the opponent, because the whole thing is nothing other than comic despair.
– Early Polemical Writings, 22.
Seeing some prospective plans for 2011 and more impressively seeing some accomplished plans from 2010 (I’ll let you identify the theme) I thought I would set out my own grand vision for 2011 . . . a year of living existentially. Kierkegaard in a year. I will be following the trajectory of Princeton’s edition of Kierkegaard’s Writings. I do not have all volumes on hand so it is difficult to set a ‘pace’ but hell I thought I would throw this up in a fit of passion and triumph victorious by 2012 or let me good blogging name be sullied in the process. Here is the list;
May God have mercy on my soul.
I am noting a consistent trend in my preaching. I am targeting the individual. This comes in part from my own experience and formation in existentialism but also in my experience of the Mennonite church in which it is easy for individuals to point to our good works in social supports and non-violent initiatives. And then when the individual is called to account it is typically with some moral leveraging around what else we could be doing.
The approach I am taking seeks a type of honesty that is divorced from being identified as a criteria of truth. I am not sure where I equated honesty with truth . . . is that a cultural thing? But, rather, I am seeking honesty as an attempt at congruence and liberation. I am trying to push my congruence to simply acknowledge the way things are. This is not a statement about access to some neutral body of truth but of observations. Observations could include things like money and economic security as constituting our primary mode of personal decision making. Observations like acknowledging the power of status and conformity within the church. There are many observations that need to be made as such. Subsequent qualifications can follow but I believe many of them can initially stand. Secondly, I am trying to divorce this from the typical and almost immediate shift to guilt and/or shame. The reason for this is not because we are not guilty of things or that certain expressions could not be considered shameful. Rather, I want to move away from them because they are debilitating. I want us to get a sense that we are in many ways already ‘living a lie’ so why don’t we name it as such. In this I want the pursuit of congruence to lead towards a liberating experience and liberating expressions.
As part of being honest with myself in this process I must admit that with respect to liberation I hold to some view of ‘enlightenment’. This does not refer to an isolated inner-journey but again of a sort of honesty that manifests itself in congruence with action, experience and belief. This is partially informing my conception of faith in which anchors to various modes of knowledge and decision are exposed. While I hold a high view of material liberation as it is being expressed in many contemporary theologies I cannot shake the notion that there is a prior act and experience of liberation. I would consider the Gospel insufficient if it cannot offer liberation to those suffering under material bondage. That is, I believe there is liberation without immediate material liberation. This does not mean that the two are not divorced. Rather it takes Jesus as an example in the liberating independence he exhibits despite the fact that his life arcs towards material bondage. So while full liberation is always to be engaged and on the table this does not deny that individuals cannot already enter into forms of liberation. For those with material forms of power at their disposal congruence will mean acting in accord with liberation; which means oppression as incongruent with liberation.
All of this is to say that I believe in a personally engaged form of faith that works intimately with if not perhaps prior to structural changes. So I will continue to support those working on a structural level (and hope to add my own contributions) but given my primary influence in preaching this remains a fundamental orientation. I hope to continue to push my own ‘honesty’ in this expression. Currently I am actively monitoring the extent to which my sermon preparation reflects a safety with respect to my own economic stability. I believe that this influence is waning but I would also admit that it is still probably the strongest external influence. I could interpret this as a structural flaw (that is churches that can dictate whether or not they want to keep a pastor) but I am not interested in engaging it on that level (presently). It would seem that it would be helpful situation for a church to have to reject and even fire a pastor on the basis of his or her preaching. In any event I am working on liberating myself from economic security in my preaching.
Thoughts or criticisms of this homiletic theology?
Preaching Advent has been a highly rewarding experience (well for myself in any event . . . I won’t speak for the congregation). I preached three of four Advent Sundays. I decided to follow the Romans texts. I was able to integrate the first two texts within the broader and more traditional context of Advent with relative ease. First Advent was a re-evaluation of time (entering Messianic time); Rom 13. Awake the time is at hand. Second Advent was the need for local, particular traditions to be challenged so that Christ might enter into them; Rom 15. Fourth Sunday in Advent, however, takes us right back to the beginning of Romans. It was in preparation for this sermon that Paul’s non-Christmas imagery was catching up with me. What the hell I am supposed to do with Paul’s call to be a servant, set apart for the Gospel? I could focus on his note that this was promised beforehand through the prophets but that felt like a cop-out. I decided to go canonical on this one and embrace a Pauline Christmas. Romans 1 is the first chapter of Paul’s first book in the New Testament so I took it as programmatic and read this as Paul’s Advent. Here are a few excerpts;
A great silence it seems has fallen across the theo-blogosphere.
Ben Myers has become sporadic and relatively uninteresting.
Halden Doerge has been reduced to throwing up quotes and meta-observations on blogging.
David Congdon flared up for a moment but I doubt that will be sustained.
D W Horstkoetter is ABD but that has not affected his output.
Church and PoMo Culture is simply flat.
Dan and memoria dei post less often but are usually worth the wait.
Where shall I go from here? I rely on the kindness of strangers for my theological engagement.
It seems AUFS remains the primary and most high level theology (related) blog (and it would cringe to be so named!).
Perhaps WIT and Jesus Radicals can also fill some of the void.
Who is emerging to take the place of these stewards of virtual discourse? Am I missing something? O blogger where art thou?
I remember when my little brain first gained the conceptual ability to ponder (outer) space. I let my mind wander as far as it would go into space. It traveled deeper and deeper where the star lights began to grow dim. Then light became absent. Things slowed down but my mind continued. Eventually my mind reached a wall, or more accurately a corner, a point where my mind was funneled. This is the end, there is no further. But the thought came to me, What if I began to dig into the end?
This thinking always comes back to me when the question of immanence and transcendence surfaces. It always supported, in my mind, a position of transcendence. I no longer see this as the case. I see the question now more as a Hebrew one; that is a question of boundary. In any event I have been trying to think through various expressions of immanence lately. Most of them are loosely or directly connected with Gilles Deleuze (and seems to characterize much of the contributions at AUFS). Currently I am reading Philip Goodchild’s Deleuze and Guattari: An Introduction to the Politics of Desire. As I am working through many things I do not understand I came across a very helpful and short statement on understanding immanence.
A truly critical philosophy can only be judged by the immanence of its criteria: it must do what it says, and say what it does. It becomes a being-thought: a thought of being and a being of thought. The second limit of critical philosophy is therefore a pure plane of immanence; this is the only possible meaning of the ‘end of philosophy’. Immanence does not mean the absence of determination; rather, it implies that all that one is should be put into how one thinks, so that one’s entire mode of existence may be changed by encounters and idea within thought. [emphasis added]
This is far and away the most helpful thinking I have encountered in this discussion. I have always approached the question as a jockeying for position over transcendence. Who is policing the boundaries? Who is claiming access or insight into the other side? Who has dug through the end? Goodchild’s (or Delueze’s) posture orients the question much more existentially and in many ways reminds me of statements found in Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground in which the Underground Man attempts to face himself.
There are certain things in a man’s past which he does not divulge to everybody but, perhaps, only to his friends. Again there are certain things he will not divulge even to his friends; he will divulge them perhaps only to himself, and that, too, as a secret. But, finally, there are things which he is afraid to divulge even to himself, and every decent man has quite an accumulation of such things in his mind.
. . .
I particularly want to put the whole thing to the test to see whether I can be absolutely frank with myself and not be afraid of the whole truth.
This thinking has no interest in the perception from outside as an abstracted and inaccessible site of conversation. This thinking desires to put all into play; a venture of risk and trust. I cannot rely on a secure deposit outside the relations of this world. What else is kenosis? As such this becomes a venture that may offer traction to the Christian notion of faith. And perhaps more importantly this thinking may actually put flesh on the possibility of conversion.
Ronald E. Osborn. Anarchy and Apocalypse: Essays on Faith Violence, and Theodicy (Cascade Books, 2010).
Osborn’s short collection of essays is one of the more eclectic publications I have read in some time. Faith and violence are indeed the mingled themes that bind this work together; having said that, however, the collection is somewhat nomadic moving from shorter almost op-ed pieces to longer more technical engagements. Osborn’s introduction claims that a possible underlying ‘project’ here is an attempt to relate anarchist and Christian approaches to nonviolence.
I have for years and years struggled in my encounters with panhandlers. And I have continued to live and work in areas that have forced me to struggle with this. During the years I have shifted from gratuitous giving to simple refusal. I have never been happy with any response (as if my happiness was the goal).
I would like to bracket for just a minute the larger structural and societal questions around panhandling and focus on the reality that each encounter is an encounter between two human beings in the midst of life. While I am still not fully satisfied with my approach I am beginning something new. I am beginning to shift my posture towards panhandlers to something more selfish. I am now interested in their stories. I value the unknown (to me) story latent within each of these encounters and I am willing to pay fairly for it. Working in a church located centrally in Winnipeg we come across a fair number of people looking for some sort of aid. I never really believe their ‘story’ as if any story is truly believable by someone in power. So I am trying to evoke another kind of story. A man came in to my office for the second time in about as many weeks. The presenting story is always well scripted and pointed in a way that is all or nothing with respect to what they are asking for. You will either have to accept me or refuse me . . . on my terms. I was sitting and thinking with this man on my couch and did not feel really comfortable enacting my new plan with him. But reluctantly I put forward the proposition that I would like to buy a story from him if he would write one. At first he started telling it to me but I stopped and told him that I would like him to write it down. He actually responded with more than a little enthusiasm. Now the story he completed still reads a little more like a ‘justification’ for why he is asking for money. I tried to be clear that was not what I was looking for. As I went with him to take out some cash to pay him he started talking about how his girlfriend has been telling him to start writing again (he used to write in prison). I told him I was not always sure I can pay the same rate but I would be happy to look at other stories.
While this approach does not offer a solution it does make me hopeful and I think it made him more hopeful. Not a bad thing during this season.
Here is an excerpt from my first story acquisition;
Lately I have been taking good care of Linda and love her very much. Sometimes she thinks that she’s a burden because she’s sick and I need to reassure her that she needs my help and I’m okay with it.
I have no actual comment or insight with regards to the recent protest at the University of California Davis campus. However, I could not resist posting this picture that I saw at Zunguzungu.
Notice the sandal-clad-scarf-wearing-bongo-drum-toting student in the background with his hands up. Oh my, what have we gotten ourselves into!?
David CL Driedger 