Category: culture

Some hate for The Tree of Life; Or, my apparent obsession with AUFS

I wrote an initial comment over at AUFS on my first impression of The Tree of Life.  And the more I think about it the more I can’t stand the film.  This is a reflective position and not a commentary on aspects of the film.  However, the movie lends itself to being processed in a larger cultural and political context and I think the context demands more of the movie than it offers.  I think the movie can be viewed in part if not entirely as Jack processing his childhood.  So Jack wakes up aloof from his beautiful wife (who I don’t think he says a word to).  Lights a candle for his dead younger brother.  Goes to work and sits atop a high tower.  Calls the other alpha male (his father) to apologize for something about the dead brother.  As I process the movie another conversation at AUFS comes to mind in which Brad states that the church has never been able to appropriate or face up to modernity.  That may be true but why is there any need when you have a movie like this which causes modernity’s implosion in the psyche of the man who builds modernity (powerful ‘modern’ architect).  This modern man traverses and encompasses all of evolution in order to find meaning for the death of his brother.  Oh, and who was that middle child again?

I don’t think it is helpful to minimize the white middle-class male experience but how can this expression not invite scorn in our context?  What if Jack was the First Nations man I encountered walking down the street a month ago.  I suspect he might have a few more things to ‘process’ from his childhood experience but he has no high tower in which to brood.  In this neighbourhood being young and native tends to invite things that do not allow for contemplation and so he is jumped and hit with an eight-ball over the head.  He continues on down the street with blood flowing down over him.  Oh wait, where was I again?  Oh yes I was up to the dinosaurs.  The AUFS view of this movie is all the more striking with its general tenor of liberation.  There seemed to be nothing here that would change the modern capitalist man or system.  He found his inner-peace.  Isn’t this the kind of thing that gets disemboweled over at AUFS?

It’s funny I was actually planning to right a post on my ‘conversion’ experience that I attribute in part to the posts and related scholars and thought that floats around at AUFS.  I am trying to shed vacuous and bankrupt theological language or at least press it for its implied meaning and implications.  This is a good time as I am entering into the ordination process with my conference and need to comment on our confession . . . well, we’ll see how good it turns out.

In any event I am not trying to take some jab at the general thinking and expression at AUFS.  I just find the engagement with this movie to be a little dissonant with the larger environment.  I should also point out that many of the comments were not actually made by AUFS regulars.  But as I mentioned in my comment over there I was really surprised it did not get a harsher review.   I suppose it provided some good intellectual and aesthetic fodder . . . and maybe that is all that it amounts to though the movie and the conversation seemed to be pointing to more.

There were two audible responses to the movie in my theatre.  First was a loud yawn.  This was only a partially accurate review in my mind.  I was sucked into the ‘evolution’ (but would have been just as happy to see it as an I-Max piece) as well as moved by many other visual landscapes.  Some of the social and psychological commentary was suggestive and provocative (as Brad elaborates in his original post).  The other audible review was probably more accurate.  It was a sarcastic wow-wee.  Of course this probably spouted by a white middle-class male.

A call for global everything specialists

I hate feeling at the mercy of other specialists.  I am not thinking so much about my occasional visit to the doctor’s office.  I am thinking particularly of the specialists who trade in information about the state of the world, the whole world that is.  How does one become such a specialist?  How does one negotiate the perspectives coming from the humanities, social and natural sciences as well as economics?  All this to say that I have been sitting with an article from last Saturday’s Winnipeg Free Press in the back of my mind for the last couple of days.  It is an op-ed piece entitled “The world is not running out of natural resources” (May 28) by Brian Lee Crowley.  As the title suggests the article outlines the false notion that there is an imminent crisis in global resources.  The main thesis of this position is that most accounts do not take seriously the ongoing capacity for humans to innovate and change course when necessary.  This is the reason why past prophecies of collapse and destruction continue to miss their mark.  This thinking reflects the first half of the article.  I suspect this sort of voice is necessary to counter the type of mindless hysteria that may actually serve advertising firms more than other ‘good’ causes.  But even here I really have no good idea.  I trust soundbites and articles such as these.  It is in the second half that my reservations begin to intensify.

The second half of the article makes a dramatic shift to the economic in stating that since 1800 global economic product has increased 50-fold and “this increase in human wealth has improved the state of humanity throughout the world.”  This is of course patently false as I think it could be argued that it has not improved the state of the First Nations community in Canada (I will not try and speak beyond my borders).  His point however is proved by statistics.  Yes, I suppose statistical improvement is difficult to deny as it has the power to ignore the cost of the marginal who literally do not figure in.  I am reminded of Kierkegaard’s thoughts on statistics near the end of Stages,

With the help of statistical tables one can laugh at all of life. . . . After all, a person can shut his door on the poor, and if someone should starve to death, then he can just look at a collection of statistical tables, see how many die every year of hunger – and he is comforted.

Sorry.  Off track.  As Crowley begins to conclude things really come off the rails in my mind.  Crowley holds wealthy nations as the beacon of what direction the world should be moving in.  “The richer countries become, the cleaner their environment.  So economic growth is the key factor allowing us to reduce most of the problems facing humanity. . . . [T]he right human institutions, such as private property, the rule of law, contract, incentives and human intelligence all work together reliably to solve those problems.”  Is it just me or should it be hard to make such statements (at least without some gag-reflex kicking in).  I have no doubt that I would be quickly silenced under the statistical ‘facts’ that Crowley would load on me if I tried to refute this thinking.  And again, I have little hard evidence with which to enter this conversation.  However, take the statement of correlation between wealth and environmental cleanliness.  Is this not simply a matter of a nation’s ability to bring in and then off-load undesirable content and processes such as manufacturing, recycling and disposing of the junk wealthier nations desire for temporary pleasure?  Can Crowley continue to say these things under the tenuous economic conditions that still (seem to) exist in the US?  Is it possible to speak of an ‘improved state of humanity throughout the world’ by statistics?  Seriously, I am no expert.  Does it even make sense to enter this argument using the same methodology?  I mean Crowley moves from the natural sciences to economics to existential well-being without any necessary transition, they are all seamless in his conception.  Is this just the worst of ‘ivory tower’ thinking that does not live alongside those whose lives have gone from okay to shit while some larger global trend tracks in a rising graph according a ‘human well-being index’?  Again, I don’t know.  Any global everything specialists out there that can help me?

Is this heaven? No . . . its the 44.

A few weeks ago in the first Sunday of Lent I challenged our congregation to fast from the fruits of privilege.  One minor act on my part has been to ride the bus as often as possible.  As a country-boy the bus has always been a source of fascination for me and this spiritual exercise paid dividends this last week as my experience ended comprising about half the sermon.

Continue reading “Is this heaven? No . . . its the 44.” →

Did you wish . . . could you wish

Either / Or concludes with Judge William offering the transcript of sermon he received from a friend who is a minister.  William is convinced that this sermon reflects what he had been straining towards in his letter (which is what all of vol 2 is considered).  The minister has yet to preach this sermon but believes in time that he will be able to have his entire congregation understand it “for the beauty of the universal consists precisely in the fact that all can understand it.”

Continue reading “Did you wish . . . could you wish” →

Debating whether or not I care

I recently crossed paths with someone heavily involved in an atheists group at the local university.  This person was not of the ‘sort’ I expected.  In any event the encounter spurred me to do a little snooping around on the internet for local atheist blogs and see what was happening.  In the process I ran into The Winnipeg Skeptics.  One of the contributors has his own blog Startled Disbelief.  I started reading various posts and before long I chimed in with a few comments.  Now I have to say I appreciate Gem Newman’s tone at Startled Disbelief and so was quite open to hearing his positions.  After my initial comment Gem directed me to an earlier post which outlined in broader terms his position as a skeptic.  We had a decent little exchange going before I realized that the arc of the conversation was quickly moving into territory I simply had no interest in pursuing.

If you are interested in the full conversation see the last link (I did quite appreciate his overall presentation).  In any event there was one aspect to the conversation that continued to trouble me.  Gem constantly pushed the notion that skepticism was somehow non-political.  Skepticism is simply a method of critically examining claims (as he puts it).  I didn’t think anyone believed in a neutral mode of scientific inquiry anymore.  Gem went on to say that skepticism does not “provide a personal moral framework” and also that “atheism says nothing about politics, economics, or even belief in the supernatural.”  He claimed I was confusing the politics of particular atheists with the politics of atheism (I had earlier proposed that atheism was actually a much more robust approach than skepticism . . . for him atheism is a one-off subject).  Gem claims that he is “a skeptical, liberal, humanistic atheist.”  I suppose it is this combination that clarifies his politics.  However, he continues to maintain a broader skeptical orientation in saying, “I think that everything should be open to question. All conclusions are provisional.”  How is this not political?  How will that not continue to deny participation to decisive and potentially life-threatening postures that need to be taken in response to abusive powers?

Now so far as theology goes I would agree that a skeptical atheism comes much closer to biblical faith than many other contemporary theologies do in its rigor for idol-smashing.  However, biblical faith is a decidedly declared position.  That is, biblical faith will always ultimately undermine earthly authorities which abuse power.  This is Christology (as well as good Old Testament theology).  So I put it to Gem saying that I am much more interested in the proposition ‘love everything’ as opposed to his tagline ‘question everything’.  Love maintains a critical posture (because of its love for others) but always orientates the person towards a constructive and engaged posture.  This is where things started coming off the rails in my mind.  Here Gem began ‘applying’ his method.  His defense of and basis for skepticism was simply the apparently self-evident role of the Enlightenment as “proven to have held up.”  This is exactly my criticism he does not address.  The Enlightenment does not hold up because it offered nothing socially or politically substantive to engage the West.  I am then accused of a ‘false dichotomy’ in my opposition of love-or-question everything.  Though, I should add that love under Gem’s definition is some sort of fond cuddling.  When I advanced my view of love (as something restorative) I was accused of having a definition that “seems vague, misleading, needlessly complex, and in some cases probably guilty of equivocation.”  Oh man, I guess Gem has the definition down for love.

It is at this point at the end of the conversation that Gem offers the strange example of giving lectures to teachers on how to teach mathematics.  In this example it would not interest him to consider how to integrate the possibility that some children are unable to learn due to unstable life circumstances.  That sort of clinched it.  I suspect he would say that indeed would care about it but he also says that he has “neither the skills nor the inclination to be a counsellor, and the fact that some of them may need counselling does not make teaching mathematics any less important.”  Who the hell would argue from that example that mathematics are not important?  Yes, fine we are all able and limited in various capacities but to consider one aspect of education as ‘pedagogically pure’ regardless of circumstance seems unhelpful.

Why am I recounting this?  I guess I wanted to process it for myself.  Christian and skeptical/atheistic apologetics are pretty big these days.  I thought it might be a good exercise to understand why I don’t care.  What this has clarified for me is the reality that by and large these expressions (on both sides of the fences, as I have encountered them) have a drastically insufficient or at least dis-integrated view of politics as though they can go about their business because they are a-political.  Its not my responsibility for what others do with the sacred truth I discover.  In any event it seems more like bullshit than before.

Getting what you ask for – Egypt Update

I am developing a basic framework for a ‘visitation team’ at my church.  This team will help connect with those in the congregation who are physically unable to regularly participate in church.  This morning I was looking through a few resources that I could use to help equip this team with some basic approaches to care and visiting.  A while back I bought a cheap copy of Carl Rogers’ classic On Becoming a Person in which he outlines his client-centered model which is based on the belief that each person has the inherent ability to change and that particular relationships can help facilitate that change.

I have strongly mixed feelings about this approach.  It is very easy to critique this book on its optimism about the possibility of becoming an ‘autonomous individual’.  However, I am respectful of the sort of posture Rogers wishes to nurture.  I am constantly bewildered expressions from those who reject an individualist approach to contemporary issues and those who want to address systemic issues.  It almost invariably seems as though the people wanting to address systemic issues must, must, heap scorn upon actual individuals (particularly if they do not agree with a particular view of systems).  In any event, as I was working through a few his very readable chapters what troubled me more than the dichotomy between systems and individuals is the notion of what positive change could look like.

Rogers cites a study which explores the implication of various parenting styles.  The best model in his estimation is the ‘acceptant-democratic’.  Here is his description the children,

Children of these parents with their warm and equalitarian attitudes showed an accelerated intellectual development (an increasing I.Q.), more originality, more emotional security and control, less excitability than children from other types of homes.  Though somewhat slow initially in social development, they were, by the time they reached school age, popular, friendly, non-aggressive leaders (41-42).

I tried to imagine what these kids looked like and it was not hard.  These are the children of upper-middle class families who excel in school and have enough restraint and insight so as to manipulate passive-aggressive acts for the purpose and maintenance of social dominance.  I also expect that these are the families that nod assent to the value of church and social responsibility but don’t give a shit about making any significant change for those values because they have already arrived.  And they are also afraid of those who ‘unstable’, that is, not like them.

This is just a guess.  But if it is correct then Carl Rogers has unfortunately succeeded because there seems to be a whole glut of these families.

** Update – Perhaps it is with a Rogerian sort of unconditional acceptance that Senator Clinton has approached the Mubarak family.

Christ, Who Fills Everything in Every Way

This past Sunday I preached on Ephesians 4:4-16.  I wanted to draw attention to two themes in the book.  First is the abundance of language about abundance.  Believers are filled with riches, power and wealth.  Second, this is set within the context of the body of Christ which (who) fills all things.  A broad theme in my recent reading is on the notion of capitalism as that body which currently (and rapidly) seeks to fill everything.  From last Sunday’s sermon,

The basis of economic growth is of course to make more money.  This requires more resources to make products and more markets in which to sell them, and ideally cheaper labour by which to make the products.  Consider how coorporations scour the entire globe in search of resources and labour.  Consider the manner in which resources that arguably should be public are increasingly coming under the umbrella of private coorporations.  The issue of access to water comes readily to mind; the patenting of seeds for agriculture is another.  Think of ever expanding marketing we face.  Children are marketed, lifestyles are marketed, environmentalism is marketed, health and beauty, relationships, status; the list could go on forever.  The public space for gathering is now the food court surrounded by the constant refrain of the mall to consume.  High-interest money-lenders are popping up everywhere taking more money (and security) than they will ever give.  The market of money knows no limit to its desire to bring everything under its control.

Borrowing heavily from Philip Goodchild I then went on talk about how the financial crisis exposes both the power and the fragility of contemporary capitalism.  Even governments submit to its whims.  Though the ‘limits’ of contemporary capitalism are also becoming more apparent (increase in material costs).  In this way capitalism forms a mocking portrayal of an expanding and universal body which we participate in.

Also, borrowing heavily on Goodchild, I turned to the role of attention as a primary indicator of piety (whether ‘secular’ piety of religious).  To what then does the body of Christ call our attention to?  Here I returned to the Ephesians text and drew attention to what had seemed like a strange insertion for me.

[E]ach of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it is said, “When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive; he gave gifts to his people.”  (When it says, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions of the earth? He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.) Eph 4:7-10

Here I drew attention to Christ’s descent.  The primary movement for the body of Christ is one of descent.  It is after this movement that ascension occurs, captivity is held captive and gifts are released.  Therefore our attention is turned to the descent.  I described this as attention to suffering and vulnerability.

This is the paradox of the body of Christ.  That in turning our attention to the vulnerability and suffering within and around us we enter in the joy of God’s grace; in feeling bound and helpless by the scope of suffering Christ binds bondage and frees us with his gifts of grace.  We are called to draw near to that strange place where we face each other, where crying and laughing become almost indistinguishable. [I thought of the description of the Cairo protests as by one participant as a ‘wedding feast’]

I had a relatively strong reaction to this sermon both positive and negative.  I ran into one group after the service vigorously discussing the implications of the sermon.  I also ran into other individuals who felt that the message was too ambiguous and loosely connected.  This sermon was part of a small series on ‘lay’ leadership.  In this way I suppose I could (or should) have been a little more ‘practical’.  However, I could not shake the notion that practicality in the church has typically meant ‘plugging into’ existing programs that are often ‘unplugged’ from pressing issues.  While the Mennonite church may have a slightly better track-record in this regard my hope is that ‘abstract’ sermons like this one can eventually build a new framework for church expression.

Born Not of a Husband’s Will

This Sunday I will be preaching John 1:1-18 . . . well were could I possibly go with that?  I took the opportunity to begin with the only joke I can remember which which is Zizek’s Lacanian joke about the man who believed he was a grain.

A man had been seeing a psychiatrist for some time.  The problem it seems was that he kept believing he was a grain of seed.  He and the psychiatrist worked on this issue for some time.  They made slow progress until one day both he and the psychiatrist were sure that the problem solved.  The man no longer believed he was a grain of seed.  The two shook hands and parted encouraged by what was possible.  The man left the office onto the street and a few seconds later returned in fear and panic.  Obviously concerned the psychiatrist asked what was wrong.  The man said that there was a chicken standing right outside the office door.  The psychiatrist responded, “Remember you are not a grain of seed.”  The man replied, “I know that, but how I can be sure the chicken does?”

From here I moved to what seemed like the obvious parallel.

Continue reading “Born Not of a Husband’s Will” →

On My Arc Away From Liturgy

I left an annoying comment on Tony’s recent post about liturgy.  His post briefly explores the possibility of the Church Year as offering the foundation for an ‘irregular dogmatics’.  My comment was simply stating that I wish I could comment because at present the notion and validity of the Church Year and its structural liturgy is, at present, in upheaval.  I thought I might try and trace my thought trajectory so that I can see where it might be heading.

As I alluded to my last post I have been preaching Romans for Advent.  Paul, having little to say about the historical Jesus at the best of times, has no Christmas story.  There appears to be no value in recounting Jesus’s birth for the sake of churches he worked with.  This led to a sort of paradigm shift which began to view liturgical practices not so much as rhythms of resistance but as abstractions displacing what should be existentially integrated (did that make sense?).  So we set baby Jesus outside of us as opposed to attending to the blood, shit and pain that comes with childbirth.

This thinking was further crystallized by a comment Chris Rodkey made on a somewhat unrelated post at AUFS.  He states,

One thing I have been thinking about as I am constructing an outline for a collaborative project a colleague and I are gearing up to write together is Jacob Taubes’ critique of Christianity in his book Occidental Eschatology. Essentially my appropriation is this: The liturgical calendar and liturgical time prevents any sense of Parousia. [emphasis mine]

Perhaps I could be convinced that present liturgies are simply parodies but it hardly makes a difference.  The point is the manner in which our lives are presently and existentially engaged.  As it turns out Dan seemed to push my thinking even further with his recent post.  He writes,

This is the season of Advent and some of my friends are writing pretty words about this time of waiting, hope, anticipation and proleptic action.  They are saying the sort of thing I used to say not too long ago.  As for me, I am tired of waiting and tired of being a good little fellow and “waiting well.”  With all due respect to my friends, I say fuck that noise.  If there is a God out there, and that God is lingering, deciding to postpone an intervention, then I think the only way to wait is to act as if God is not coming or to try and force the coming of God.  Instead of finding ways to make our peace with our godforsakenness we should absolutely refuse to accept it.  Anything is better than that acceptance.  Better to risk everything on the wager that God cares enough to intervene (although that usually doesn’t work out well) than to sit back and make peace with this.  Better to spit at the back of God if that is what will bring God to act.  Besides, it is actions like these, and only actions like these, that actually take God seriously.  Anything else in the context of abandonment is either a pale imitation of worship or idolatry.

I am not quite sure how to take this.  At present I read it as a Psalm which is fully truthful if not entirely complete (is that an insult Dan?).  This leads me to my present reading in Philip Goodchild’s Capitalism and Religion.  Goodchild looks at Henri Bergson’s work on time and freedom.  Bergson critiques ‘measured’ or ‘counted’ time.  Goodchild writes,

For synchronization to occur, real time must be replaced by an abstraction which has eliminated the essential quality of time – change.  Measurable, homogeneous time is an abstraction where nothing takes place.  In countable time, the living is measured in so far as it conforms to the behaviour of inanimate clocks. (105)

In brief, the representation of reality in both science and metaphysics is a commodification, replacing the thing with a quantifiable symbol fashioned for the purpose of exchange.

Bergson’s alternative is to place reason within the temporal process itself. . . . The experience of thinking replaces the object of thought.  Freedom must be encountered in the experience of thinking before it can become the object of thought. (107)

The question this raises is the extent to which liturgical practices actually undermine, overthrow or replace dominant social modes (empire, capitalism, etc.).  Or do they simply fall prey the near omnipotent work of commodification?  Does a flash mob singing the hallelujah chorus in a food court do anything more than make people feel good about their shopping experience?  Even the cultural liturgist Jaime Smith thinks not (I have not read his Desiring the Kingdom). (I also can’t help but cringe at Winnipeg’s attempt to piggy-back on this . . . apparently the press was there waiting for it ‘to happen’)

So that is a bit of the arch.  I still retain theological convictions of doxology as a sort of foundation for practice but as for present form of church liturgy I am becoming increasingly dissatisfied.  The issue remains the extent to which the acts and the structures produce abstractions or commodities that keep one from encountering and entering into the Gospel.  What is my alternative?  At present it is little more than an increasingly social form of (or socially aware) existentialism.  Or to be more naive . . . a biblical faith.  Hopefully, more to come.

I Object!

From a recent Globe and Mail article,

What attracts native-born Canadians to church these days, says religion sociologist David Seljak of St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ont., is the availability of parking, quality of preaching and children’s programs, in that order.

I object!  I know from direct anecdotal evidence that children’s programs ranks higher in drawing attendance than quality of preaching.  As a minister of the Gospel I am deeply offended by this accusation.