On Death (II)

 It's worth me typing it again:

"It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death--ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us."

~ James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time 

Preachers have a popular trope in sermons in which they dwell on the bible's comparison of God's people to sheep. (Full disclosure: I am a preacher and have used the trope.) The Hebrew Scriptures refer to the Israelites as the sheep of God's pasture; Jesus describes himself as the good shepherd with us as the flock of his pasture. Many a time have I heard the preacher launch into the offense of being called sheep. Sheep, after all, are stupid creatures--so the trope goes--who follow mindlessly and get their heads stuck in fences.

Or it's the opposite. I have also listened to preachers and teachers who have spent time with real sheep declare that they are quite smart animals who have admirable, or at least serviceable, instincts. Having not done research on the intelligence of sheep relative to cows, ducks, or goats, I do not know whether these testimonies offer a condemning corrective to the "sheep are stupid" narrative or simply a warning to judge sheep on their individual merits.

But I do know that, in the context of the Ancient Near Eastern realm from which the bible arose the sheep had but one destiny: death.

Though the wool of sheep can be harvested without harm to the animal, it is clear from many references in the Hebrew and Greek scriptures that when it comes time for ritual sacrifice, feeding your festival, or serving honored guests in your home, the sheep is going to give up its life. This is the end of sheep: to provide for worship and for food. And the sacrifice of an animal for religious rites ended in consumption of most of the meat, so we can simplify that end to "food." (Thanks are due right here to Allen Presby, for bringing the stark reality of this before us in the Tuesday morning group.)

Those who keep flocks are, of course, interested in the health and contentedness of those flocks (factory farms notwithstanding) so they will do what they can to ensure the health of the sheep. This should be read into the scriptural narratives of the people of God as sheep. However, the reason that herders keep sheep is in order one day, swiftly and respectfully, to kill them. When sheep have gone to the altar or the table they have fulfilled their destiny.

I think that when we consider the trajectory of our own lives we ought to reflect on the fact that we have been born in order to die. (And to pay taxes. We mustn't forget that other necessity. Pay your taxes. Especially if you plan to run for president.) As followers of Jesus, who went to death as a protester against a power-hungry temple cult and a practitioner of love and justice, we ought to consider to whose table we go when the world slaughters us. When we have surrendered our last breath to this hungry world, whom will our lives feed?

Here I find James Baldwin's concept of "earning one's death" intersects with the call of Jesus to take up one's cross and follow him. This following is precisely on the road to death: There is no cross that does not kill. But in Jesus' crucified body is life, broken and offered to feed the world just as the Church does in the Lord's Supper (the Eucharist, Communion, the Mass) every time she celebrates it. Jesus' continued feeding of the Church--and the world through the Church--made possible by the Resurrection functions both as a denial of the finality of death and a defiance of the powers that do the slaughtering. We give ourselves to the banquet table in order to feed those who need the strength to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. When it is time, they must give themselves to the banquet table in order to feed more folks who need the strength . . . and on.

I am less concerned about the sheep metaphor referring to my intellect. I am more concerned about embracing a life which, through the shearing, serves the needs of others and at last, through the slaughter, feeds the lives of those who come after me. I have but one destiny, one door through which I will pass on the way to eternity: death. I do not want to be a sickly sheep who dies in the paddock, to be picked apart by the ravens. I do not want to be a rebellious sheep who breaks through the fence only to be eaten by wolves. I want to be a sheep who, when Christ's family gathers at the table, commits the singular greatest act of provision and hospitality.

Perhaps by keeping an awareness of this final purpose I can make my decisions more wisely, serve more humbly, and love more earnestly. And when the time comes for a life to be poured out on the altar of the world, perhaps I will earn the privilege of being chosen.

~ emrys

On Death (I)

 "It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death--ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us."

~ James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

The State of Colorado just added a new level to its Covid-19 "dial." Until last week, the highest level of danger in a county from Covid was Level Red. This level put in place the most restrictions and the tightest recommended changes to travel, gatherings, and so on. Now the worst is Level Purple.

What does Level Purple mean? The principle trigger for Level Purple is that a county's hospital capacity is close to being exceeded.

Since March, hospital capacity has been the real looming specter of Covid-19. It's one thing if my community has a lot of people who are being treated for the disease. It's an entirely different thing--and existential problem--if my community's medical system cannot treat all of those with symptoms that require treatment.

What if five new patients with life-threatening (or potentially life-threatening) symptoms appear, and the local hospital only has one bed left with treatment capacity? Which patient do the physicians, nurses, and administrators choose? We have now crossed from the libertarian prattle about rights not to wear masks to the stuff of graduate-level ethics courses.

I am in my mid-40s. I have a job. I am white and male. I am married with two children. I have good quality health insurance and reasonable life insurance. I am fairly healthy. I have a family member who is immunologically high-risk. If our county were in Level Purple and I manifested life-threatening or potentially life-threatening symptoms--it need not be Covid-19 to blame--and our local hospital had neither adequate bed space or sufficient staff to transport me (to . . . where?) then would I be told, "Sorry, friend. You'll just have to tough it out at home"? Or would someone else be kicked out of the hospital so that I could have a bed?

I suspect that communities faced with insufficient medical care for a spike in Covid-19 cases (on top of the usual load of heart attacks, pneumonias, traumas, and so on) would have a sudden and startling wake-up call. The call would direct our attention not only to the nature of our medical system, but also to our relationship with death.

When James Baldwin wrote the words above he was meditating on the problem of racism in America. (The entire book, The Fire Next Time, deserves your attention. Read it.) But this concept of "earning one's death" would come jarringly to the fore in the case of health care capacities collapsing under the weight of Covid-19. If five of us lay on gurneys outside the Emergency Department, and only one bed was open inside, how would we earn our deaths?

Would I have the capacity to say, "No, don't take me in. Take her"? Without trying to imagine "reasonable" justification (she's 7 months pregnant; he's 18 years old with "his whole life ahead of him"; I made a mistake and didn't wear my mask to a party; and so on--this is a rabbit-hole) I am left with the bare question: How would I "negotiate this passage nobly"?

Most of the behaviors of American life either assume that death is not a factor or spend considerable energy running away from the specter of death. These behaviors include what we expect of our medical systems. We may be in a situation, unique in our generation, of having to stare that "terrifying darkness" in the face and "confronting it with passion." How shall I prepare myself such that any decisions I make will be done out of virtue rather than fear?

I find language and passion in the knowledge of Jesus Christ's resurrection. While the thought of leaving behind loved ones--especially the young ones--gives me sadness, I take comfort and courage in the conviction that my death will usher me into glory and perhaps offer someone else an opportunity for fuller life. To lay hold of this comfort and courage, however, I find I must practice saying, "Yes, I know that I'm going to die," and "Yes, I am willing to put my life on the line for this--for you."

Just saying these two phrases seems to put the rest of life into perspective. Not the syrupy perspective that serves only to make me appreciate more the things that I have, but the perspective that forces me to evaluate whether I want the things that I have or am told I ought to pursue.

It is a strange intersection that Level Purple should appear in our common language at the same time that the liturgical Church enters into the Advent season, whose liturgical color is usually purple. Advent recalls that Jesus Christ will return to get the twin works of judgment and glory done. In this season the Church meditates on the question, "How do I want this life to end?"

I think that, should someone go to the cost of etching something on my headstone, I should like to see both "He lived well" and "He died well." I would like to "negotiate this passage nobly," and in love. Anything less would be unworthy of the Prince of Peace.

~ emrys

Just a Game

I have a dirty little secret. Well, actually I've got a lot of them, probably on account of being human. But I have one in particular that I'd like to get off my chest today. (Thanks for hearing my confession.)

I hate the game of Monopoly.

I know: You can't believe it. How could any freeborn American hate a game that so beautifully encapsulates the American dream and its pristine dynamo of capitalism?

Well, since you asked, there are a few reasons. First, while I appreciate games that have a randomness factor established by dice (see this great Uncle George gift: Unearth), Monopoly relegates all motion on the board to the roll of the dice. That's too much for me. Second, it just takes so blooming long for the whole course of the game to play itself out (i.e. "the winner" to be realized). I have played my share of Risk in my younger years, and I'm spent on that bleary-eyed "but we have to finish it" experience. Adding to this downside, the "first loser" is going to be ejected from the game table for so long, and I like to have game sessions in which losers can come back into play sooner rather than later. Third, the Parker Brothers version of Monopoly, which is the one that we still play today, emerged in the midst of The Great Depression (specifically 1935), when American society struggled with economic collapse. I am struck by the cruel historical irony that a game in which the one who bankrupts opponents first and fastest became so popular when so many had been bankrupted. It's naive to blame Parker Brothers for this, but the game symbolizes for me a bitter cancer in our system.

(By the way, for a fascinating dive into the original, original version of the game by Lizzie Magie, check out the wikipedia article on Early Monopoly.)

However . . .

My kids like Monopoly. They like the full version, they like the Junior Version (a much faster, but even more boring version meant for elementary-age kids), and they like their own home-made "Stuffie Monopoly" that they produced by reclaiming my old French version and adapting it with paper, crayons, and glue sticks. They come by it honestly--I thought Monopoly would be a good format for an semi-educational game that I invented called "Ecclesiopoly: Profiting from Church History." (It has not taken off.)

So we play Monopoly with some frequency. And therefore in spite of my antipathy for the game. I try to be patient and joyful . . . and try at least to find some helpful teachable lessons in it. In the spirit of appreciating the lessons that come even from difficult experiences, it occurs to me to share some important pieces of wisdom that Monopoly puts into sharp relief.

1. Going into debt costs more money than the debt itself. I have had to point out to my kids several times that the cost to get a property out of mortgage costs significantly more than the cash received from mortgaging it. It's like the $300,000 we would have paid to the bank for our old house that was "valued" at $187,000, or like the 10-20% (compound) interest that we pay on credit card expenditures after the first month.

2. The baked-in goal of the game is to get more while others get less. It's zero-sum. Within the written rules of Monopoly, my getting Park Place means that no one else can benefit from it. It gives us the chance to reflect: Is this the way property ownership is best viewed in our life together?

3. Money accumulates in a snowball effect. That is to say, aside from the admittedly powerful effect of a series of "lucky" dice rolls, the player who gets ahead in possession of property and money will continue to get further ahead faster. No matter how wise the later decisions of players with less money, they are fairly well doomed after a certain point of inequality. (But it's so tempting to keep playing, because maybe the dice rolls will change that . . .) Though we often don't see it starkly, America's economics works in similar fashion, especially where land acquisition is involved (see #2). Do I want acquisition at others' cost to be central to my life and achievements?

4. We must be ready to lose. This is, of course, a lesson for all games, but I find in Monopoly both because of the gradual, scraping decline of the losers and because of the massive discrepancy apparent when we're about to go bankrupt (witness my pile of mortgaged properties and three $1 bills and my opponents' rainbow of property groups and stack of $500 bills). Seeing that loss is coming (very different from, say, Spoons, in which winning and losing are 0.5 seconds apart) from a distance and its crushing inevitability can be tough. But maybe this trains us up for times in life when it's clear that we must depart from a road of long-held hopes. We might be faced with the question: If I'm clearly going to lose this game, why am I sitting here at this table?

5. I can watch on my kids' faces--and still feel in my own soul--the anxiety that rises when I realize I'm about to land on someone's Boardwalk With A Hotel. This observation is the emotional flip-side of the intellectualized #4. If I want the positive emotions of winning, how will I deal with the negative emotions of losing? Whence do those arise, and what do they reveal about my sense of success and value?

6. I watched my kids discover that they could make extra-legal deals. For instance, one agreed to a property trade that was less advantageous on condition that s/he be given rent-free passage on those properties. A few turns later, the one who had guaranteed rent-free passage got walloped by rent on the other's well-developed property. The cry was immediate: "But I give you free passage over here!" It turns out that offering grace does not guarantee reciprocal grace. In Monopoly grace doesn't trickle down or spread around. (There's a more specific lesson here, I suppose, on the boundaries of contractual relationships, too . . . for another time.) We had to take a time-out from this game and talk (again) about how Monopoly is designed specifically for the emerging winner to financially drain the other players.

7. Sometimes you might just decide not to play in the first place. There's no way really to play Monopoly in any meaningful way (as with all games) without buying into the assumptions and structure of the rules as written. There's no "community development Monopoly." (That would be "The Game of Polypoly"? But do try cooperative games like Pandemic or Forbidden Island!) I try to opt out when my kids clamor for Monopoly, but my reasons for being at the table don't generally involve winning--they involve refereeing and trying to squeeze learning opportunities out of these situations. And being a cheerleader when they make good choices and show good player ethics. So whether I want to be a part of the game per se is usually irrelevant. However, games being what they are, I usually need to remind myself of the pitfalls of Monopoly and take lots of deep breaths.

It's not about winning or losing this board game. It's about whether I can help my kids win in the larger game of following Jesus. And whether I can convince them to choose Spot It! instead.

~ emrys

Going with the Flow

Upon seeing that the Forward began with a poem authored by none other than William Paul Young (writer of The Shack), I knew that this book would be exceptional. That expectation was not disappointed. Richard Rohr's newest book, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation ("with" Mike Morrell, Whitaker House, 2016) makes a new case for embracing Trinitarian theology and its implications for the Christian life.

Following the tradition of seventeen hundred years of Trinitarian theology, The Divine Dance contemplates the grand mystery of one God, three persons, "blessed Trinity." Though not explicitly revealed until page 101, Rohr's book sets aside the promise of rational certitude. And with that mainstay of so much traditional theology, it also leaves reason herself on the sidelines. The book presents an unabashed meditation in mystery, often dancing from one opposite in one chapter (such as immanence) to the other in a later chapter (transcendence). Divine Dance leads the reader through a poetic exploration of Trinity's contours and potential for transforming one's experience of God.

The idea of "experiencing God" forms one of the rhythm-section baselines of the book. Mentioned lightly at points along the way--but ever present as an axiom--personal experience anchors Rohr's theology. He rails (as strongly as a Franciscan contemplative can) against theologies emerging from solely cerebral understandings of God. A Trinity performing a continuous dance of love, he asserts, necessitates a God who is present in and with our whole lives, even bodily, that interact with creation and each other. It is at this point that I found the book most appealing and most refreshing: It offers a hope that God can be not just a Something, but a Someone.

Rohr's view of God's presence in and presence with creation, however, flirts with panentheism. And consummate with the idea that God is present in and with all things is Rohr's articulation of the problem of sin. "Articulation" is a strong word in this case, as the only definition Rohr offers for the problem of sin is an image of "going against the flow." Since God's "Trinitarian flow" is in Rohr's view irresistible, however, "sin" (he often puts it in quotation marks) may not be a true problem, but instead an attempt only to delay the inevitable. The repeated use of the word "flow"--a thing as certain as water moving downhill--conjures for me the image of an old hippie telling the type-A personalities in a self-medicated drawl to "just go with the flow, man."

And the problems with the Church described by Rohr, the raisons d'etre for this book, reflect a generation of Christians who grew up with something quite different than I. Rohr's criticism of the Church resonates with what I have deduced from many anecdotes was the situation of the "mainline" churches in America through the 1960s, '70s, and '80s: rigidity, judgmentalism, legalism. But whether I'm right or wrong in that assessment, most of Rohr's (albeit mild, Franciscan, and contemplative) chastisement addresses problems different from what I see. If anything, Rohr's singular focus on an individual's "going with the Trinitarian flow" ignores the crucial matters of community ethics and the pursuit of justice in an evil--yes, sin-filled--world, and is therefore deficient.

It is difficult to say whether I would recommend this book to friends, except as a foil for discussion about the Trinity and discipleship to Jesus. Perhaps I am not mystic enough. Yet.

Thanks, Chris, for sending this gift which has given me occasion for much fruitful reflection.

~ emrys

On Character

A dear friend recommended to me David Brooks' book The Road to Character (Random House, 2015), and she commended it with such strength that I put it on my short list.


Brooks takes up the centuries-old question of how to cultivate strong character. In the introduction he quickly gives up on the idea of teaching character, relying instead on the exemplar, the hero, as the font of maturity and goodness at which the rest of us may drink. In making this decision, Brooks destines The Road to be both intriguing and unsatisfying.


The book intrigues with its explorations of historical figures of deep character. Brooks offers brief but intense biographies of eight famous persons. The way he highlights the peaks and valleys of their lives reveals the vast amount of research and thinking he has done about these figures. His scope spans from the fifth century (Augustin of Hippo) to Bayard Rustin of the mid-1900s. (One could hope that Brooks had increased his geographic scope. He stays in the Western European stream, though examples of character like Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi present themselves readily from other parts of the globe.) Brooks reflects in great depth on experiences that shaped these heroes, whitewashing nothing but asserting that all parts of a person's life contribute to their character. Even without the goal of finding a path to character, The Road is worth a read for the fascinating discussion of these eight personalities.


His good-bad-ugly approach arises from Brooks' "crooked-timber" model of human nature. Throughout the book, he laments the loss of past generations' understanding of the self as deeply flawed, sinful, and in need of control. Though Brooks dodges a simplistic definition of "character," every chapter directly or indirectly shows that struggle with one's darkness gives birth to character. And without the struggle--as his critique of author Michel de Montaigne suggests--real character never comes to life. Beneath his writing is Brook's anchor-hold on "moral realism": Humans are complex creatures because there is, in fact, a right and wrong and we live between those sides. The struggle--within and without--to find the right in the midst of the wrong creates character.


The tone of The Road teeters dangerously close to nostalgia at many points. In the final chapter Brooks attempts to soften the charge against our present generation by saying that the cultural swing of 1950s America went too far. Self-esteem and affirmation are all right, he asserts, but too much has been forgotten. Whether The Road is a condemnation of or corrective to our current culture must be left to the reader to decide. Perhaps the struggle of that judgment will be character-building in itself.


The Road leaves the reader unsatisfied. One might expect from any book entitled "The Road to . . ." to provide some sort of map. And in the final chapter Brooks offers "the Humility Code": 15 things that attempt to summarize what the book has been getting at. The list is however bulky and awkward, perhaps because of its attempt to be inclusive, and offers none of the helpful "shall/shall not"s that we expect from a "code." This weakness in the text serves, on the other hand, to illustrate Brook's point.


There exists no code for the development of character. The stories of those who show good character--as famous as Frances Perkins and Nelson Mandela, or as unknown as my grandmother--are the instruction books for wisdom and maturity. And we ought not to neglect the great silent player, unmentioned in much of Brooks' book: the cause of suffering. Suffering itself comes up many times as the agent of character-building struggle, but the cause of suffering seems so often beyond summoning or control. Catastrophe, abuse, illnesses mental and physical, economic hardship--these all serve as crucibles in which character takes shape.


Perhaps great hope for Brooks' beleaguered generation comes from some impending suffering, some revelation of its own darkness, that will call forth the kind of struggle that brought character in the past. All is not lost: If we are indeed made from "crooked timber," then this hull of cultural positivism will soon breach and we will be cast into the tide of hardship to sink or swim. And in the swimming many more exemplars of good character will be born.


Thanks, Phyllis, for recommending this book!


~ emrys

Expanding Legacy

Dois Rosser stands as an example of someone who uses immense giftedness for good. A seasoned Christian, capable businessman, and dedicated philanthropist, Rosser's life work has become helping small Christian communities in developing nations build worship buildings and spawn new congregations.


The 2011 memoir, The God Who Hung on the Cross: How God Uses Ordinary People to Build His Church, published by International Cooperating Ministries, presents the highlights of ICM's twenty-five years of Spirit-driven work. The fascinating and powerful stories of generosity, determination, and faithfulness reveal what an exciting calling it is to follow the God of Resurrection into unlikely places.


The book presents a series of vignettes from ICM's work which are poignant, funny, startling, and inspirational--at times simultaneously so. The weaving together of these stories creates the picture of a man--Dois Rosser--and his fellow Christians who will go anywhere, eat anything, and talk to anyone in service to Jesus Christ. With just a little money (by American standards) and a great deal of persistence and prayer, ICM gives Christian communities a hand up to creating their own houses of worship. Part of the "payback" is that these communities covenant to plant several new churches in future years. Thus, in the process of helping to construct hundreds of buildings around the world, ICM has helped to create thousands of new congregations.


Add to this the Mini Bible College translation program, which has worked hand-in-hand with ICM, and the dividends of blessing multiply to an even greater degree.


Even if we call can't be a part of International Cooperating Ministries, would that we all could use our talents to multiply God's blessings in such an intentional manner. This book leaves me wondering how I can be part of such a wonderful legacy.


Thanks to Nancy Croker, member of ICM's Board, for giving me a copy of the book!


~ emrys

After Reading Billy Collins' book: Aimless Love (2013)

Poetry Is

like a conversation with my physicist friend

whose eloquent descriptions of molecular interactions

leave me wondering

whether we speak the same language

until I realize

with a big silent bang

as I run to catch up with her words

that the results of her labor

have changed the way I tell time

and have put a global web of information at my fingertips

and in one Oppenheimerian flash

could change the course of civilization,

and I am struck by awe

not at how different we are

but at the eerie perfection with which

she understands the smallest parts

of me.

~ emrys

Stand Up for Truth

I am fascinated by the current discussion--which description may be giving the participants greater honor than their words deserve--about athletes "taking a knee" during the playing of the national anthem. Though the great emotional charge of black citizens killed by police transfers easily to any event even loosely connected to it, that intensity is not what keeps my attention.


I am already convinced that race relations in our country require continued, sustained attention. I am already convinced that I am not competent to comment on the employer-employee relationship between athletes and their management (and the restrictions that may be there).


I keep chewing on the question of whether it is ultimately good for Megan Rapinoe, Colin Kaepernick, and their colleagues to express social protest in this way. Is their expression "disrespectful"? And, if so, what should I make of it?


Those following the story will be familiar with the response of--to name one thoughtful and outspoken commentator--Bill O'Reilly, which points out flaws in Kaepernick's protest. Most of the same observers will also be familiar with the response of Hrafnkell Haraldsson, which furthers the discussion by suggesting flaws in O'Reilly's argument.


I do not know whether Kaepernick's action was "disrespectful." I do suspect that this judgment arises entirely from personal opinion rather than arguable grounds. As for the goodness of the gesture, I am reminded of some words of John Stuart Mill, whose philosophical work On Liberty seems to resonate with the very ideals for which the American flag stands. He wrote:


"The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error" (On Liberty, Chapter 2, Leonardo's kindle version location 289).


Kaepernick's action will serve, I hope, to keep up the conversation about race relations in our country. It will also spark thoughtful conversations about the right ways and proper fora in which to protest: conversations that will ring in high school locker rooms, living rooms, and perhaps even on morning news shows. Some may decide kneeling during the national anthem is disrespectful; some may decide not to condemn it, but never to do it; some may be challenged to consider what problem might trouble them so deeply that the act would be worth the public scorn. And all those conversations, all those decisions, will touch on the matter of freedom, giving us a "clearer perception and livelier impression of truth."


Thank you, Mr. Kaepernick, Ms. Rapinoe, and so many others, for driving us to consider the issues that really matter.


~ emrys

Certainty Craving Disorder

Now the commentators (not the journalists, I think--there is a distinction) are calling for both candidates to publicize their medical records.


Let's set aside for a moment (in a move similar to suspension of disbelief) that there is no law that in order to run for president a candidate must publicize his or her medical records.


What are the commentators looking for? When they blame imaginary "voters who want to know," what are they accusing voters (like me) of wanting? What information would help me to make a better (distinguish, please, from the vacuous "more informed") decision on election day?


Perhaps if I knew that one candidate had suffered pneumonia four times in the last fifteen years, I would deduce . . . what? Perhaps if I knew that one candidate was taking medication for high blood pressure (but that the numbers were presently "under control"), I would deduce . . . what?


I expect that, with medical records in hand, the commentators will parade before us medical experts (suitably vetted to deem the opposing candidate's cholesterol to be nearly fatal), and then it will fall to us not only to judge the candidate's positions on issues but also to judge their physical fitness for the next four-year term. As if I didn't have enough filtering to do already.


I can't wait until Congress passes a law requiring candidates to reveal the contents of their genome--I will be able to make a much better decision, then!


Privacy issues aside (see line 2 above), this frenzy grows out of an assumption that medical history is an accurate predictor of near-future vitality. This assumption is false. While individuals are wise to chart a life course based on the general trends of their medical history, an electorate that guesses whether its candidate will become physiologically unable to govern sometime in the next four years is foolish. There is no way that we can meaningfully predict the future health of our candidates, no matter how much medical information we have.


Your job, dear voter: Ignore it. Ignore the frenzy, attend to the issues, listen to the debates.


If you really are concerned about the candidates' physical durability; if you really do fear that your vote might go to someone doomed to the grave in the next four years; if you want to make sure that good governance will go uninterrupted through the next term; then make sure you vote for a good vice-presidential candidate.


~ emrys

A Clarifying Tool

Sometimes a little help to cut through the verbal clutter is in order. I found this quiz, which calls for me to get clear on my stance on issues first, helpful in aligning my issue choices with a presidential candidate:


http://2016election.procon.org/2016-election-quiz.php


Still much more reading to do, but this helps narrow the field a bit.


I'm hoping I can find a similar site for congressional candidates . . . though that may be too much to ask (given the number of candidates). We'll see.


~ emrys

Frozen and Empty

Jessica Valenti's Sex Object: A Memoir (2016, HarperCollins): heartbreaking. Valenti recounts a harrowing, life-spanning series of encounters in which she is abused, depersonalized, and objectified. Even if her case is extreme, anyone in twenty-first-century American culture must encounter it with horror. A grotesque cavalcade of perverts, miscreants, aggressive boyfriends, and silent watchers--many of whom qualify as "normal people"--leaves the author of Sex Object empty except for fear, and frozen before the possibility of genuine love.


The world around Valenti is inexorably evil. That evil devours the souls of girls and women by making their bodies the expendable tools of self-satisfaction. The ubiquity of the darkness makes every relationship part of the spirit-killing trap: "If we have no place to go where we can escape that reaction to our bodies, where it is that we're not forced? The idea that these crimes are escapable is the blind optimism of men who don't understand what it means to live in a body that attracts a particular kind of attention with magnetic force" (kindle location 898).


I lived some of my life on the other side of this shadow, these crimes. I helped, over many years of my life, to perpetuate the objectification of girls and women with my own beliefs and actions. It has taken me a long time to realize the dark truth of Valenti's experience--which I'm sure is the experience of many more women than we can guess.


I am also struck with horror at the possibilities opened up by Sex Object for my children--a young girl and a young boy. I am terrified by the prospect that either of my children--and, increasingly, any of the children around me--might have to endure even a slight fraction of what Valenti has endured. My daughter could be a victim like Valenti; my son could be a perpetrator like so many she describes. I am now sitting with the question of how to illumine the darkness around us.


The end of Sex Object surprised me with its abruptness. I did not expect Valenti to end with a sure-fire prescription for change. I was not sure even to hope for a list of suggestions. I did expect encouragement, perhaps a plea, perhaps even a direct chastisement (consonant with the tone of the book) to fight for change: a "dear reader" challenge. Perhaps its subtitle, A Memoir, was supposed to exempt it from those expectations. Or, perhaps the book was intended to leave us in a dark and doubtful place.


Or perhaps I tend to look too much for hope. I heard almost none in Sex Object. The "endnotes," a profane litany of evil responses sent to Valenti's past work, provided the frost on a frozen and empty vessel. In my aching search for hope, I observed two things about the narrative of Sex Object.


First, I did not read about any positive community around Valenti. Family, friends, teachers, colleagues--and of course boyfriends--were sources of fear. If positive, supportive, consistent voices might have done something--no matter how small--to counter the vicious violence of her sexualized world, Valenti was deprived of that possibility.


Second, the seeming antidote to love's destruction--genuine, tender care and love--does not work quickly or readily. Valenti writes about encountering kindness after years of perversion: "Being treated nicely felt wrong somehow, as if we were acting out what a relationship should be rather than being in it" (location 1334). As I read along and got invested in Valenti's story, this stuck in me as an excruciating conundrum: to be so twisted by evil as to be unable to recognize good. (It reminds me of Jesus' blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.) Recovery from objectification must then be a long road--perhaps too long a road for this book to trace.


~ emrys

Things That Matter

The few times that I have been exposed to network news yielded the even fewer times that I have heard the commentary of Charles Krauthammer. But those few times have made me think more deeply about the topics at hand. So I borrowed my mom's copy of Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes, and Politics by Krauthammer (Crown Forum (Penguin Random House), 2013).


Krauthammer's duo of complimentary gifts is witty concision and brilliant incision. He cuts to the quick, as a physician of ideas and therapist of words, to find the core and source of the issue at hand. And though his book touches on various and sundry topics--science, ethics, and baseball for instance--the "driver of history" is, for Krauthammer, politics.


He is a dedicated, wise, and articulate conservative. "Conservative" here refers not to a sweeping desire to keep things the same, but holding fast the twin anchors of individual liberty and limited government. Krauthammer's conservatism draws from his pen--ever more starkly evident in this book as the pages turn--stinging criticism of the Democratic party and American Liberalism, especially the kind he sees in the Obama administration. (Given Krauthammer's clear capacity in the book to praise strong individuals, I am surprised at the lack of support for the Bush presidencies. Perhaps he did that more in other venues.)


Krauthammer's articulate demarcation of the boundaries and ideals of conservatism and liberalism have forced me to examine my own values. I don't know whether to call myself a liberal or a conservative (socially, politically, or academically). But now I must wrestle with Krauthammer's compelling arguments. They are arguments which, like all the best arguments, call attention as much to their premises as to their conclusions. And just as the assertion that "politics is the driver of history" is an article of faith, liberty as greatest good and American exceptionalism (historical and existential) are articles of faith. What do I believe about human liberty, and a nation's role with respect to liberty? Is the United States of America exceptional in a meaningful sense? What is the character of its exception? And how does that shape my actions as a citizen?


Most importantly for my current position in the global scene: For whom do I vote in November?


I am weighing a thought that occurred to me as I finished the last essay in Things That Matter: perhaps a good (or the best?) criterion I can use as a voter is not whether I agree with all the policy and personality traits of a candidate. Perhaps a better, or more fundamental, criterion is whether a candidate believes the way I do about what America is supposed to be.


These are beginning thoughts. More to come, I'm sure.


~ emrys

Sharpening Your Roots

The September 2016 issue of The Atlantic (page 20) has a vignette about "Canada's ax-hurling renaissance": Backyard Axe Throwing Leagues. Besides the obvious genetic attraction I experienced reading the article, I was struck by the League's founder's description of its mission: "to show people the power of being good to each other, using the axe as a tool to build community inspired by our backyard roots."

"The power of being good to each other." I'm a fan of that. Ditto for building community.

Reading further into the article, however, I noticed a theme in the monikers and terminology used by this community. Ax-hurler nicknames seemed to run along the lines of "Arm" and "Killface." The attraction of ax-hurling amounted to "murdering a wood target for an hour" for catharsis. Montreal's Rage Axe Throwing "promises a violently good time."

Be good to each other . . . by venting rage and murder. Strange.

Perhaps these contradictory descriptions arise from ax-hurling's origins in an inarticulate "primal man," honored in the League's oath: "Remember primal man / who only had his hands / who forged in fire and steel / the tools to kill his meal." "Primal man" here refers back to the inspiration for the oath, Conan the Barbarian.

God help us if our model for community is the golden age of Conan.

And, while I'm wondering on this phenomenon: What does "our backyard roots" mean?

~ emrys

Family Dialects

Moving from 1900 square feet in Harpursville, NY to 1000 square feet in Pagosa Springs, CO means opening a lot of boxes and doing triage on what to keep. Part of this process is, for me, unsealing boxes of records and memorabilia from my dad's estate (he died in 2005) and finally rifling through it.

My dad kept many letters from family members--including a host that were from his parents' storage. So I find myself reading letters from my great aunt Louisa to her brother, my grandfather. Grandpa Tyler's name was George (Horsley), but when writing, Louisa never addressed him as such. Her name for him was "Keats." It took me some time to figure out who the players were, because Aunt Louisa always signed her letters to him "Weed."

I think "Keats" stuck to Grandpa because he fancied himself a poet, or at least enough to have impressed his little sister. "Weed" stuck to Louisa not for the reasons one humorously suspects in 2016 Colorado, but probably because she was a younger sister but growing fast.

Weed signed her correspondence to Keats "Siempre, Weed"--reflecting another facet of the Tyler side of the family: a love of many languages. It is not uncommon in correspondence between my dad, his siblings, their parents, and their extended family, to find postcards written entirely in French or German. And it is very common to see phrases or sentences appear in any one of a number of foreign languages, certainly marking some inside family or personal experience.

I won't be saving most of these letters, but I hope to be able to savor them as I bring them out of the earth of storage. The process will be long--the Tyler family was known for its archiving ability. But c'est la vie!

~ emrys

Tennyson's Idylls of the King

From The Holy Grail, as King Arthur addresses those few returned from the errant quest, of whom only a couple actually saw the Grail:

"For every fiery prophet in old times,
And all the sacred madness of the bard,
When God made music through them, could but speak
His music by the framework and the chord;
As ye saw it ye have spoken truth."

Getting Played

My brother George, a gift-giving uncle extraordinaire, gave my daughter a book for her birthday. The book is about middle-school reading level, which is still a wee bit above my seven-year-old's abilities. But she'll get there soon.

So as to keep the book from languishing unattended on the shelf, I picked up Ellen Raskin's The Westing Game (1978, reprinted 2003). And I had trouble putting it down.

Thrilling, confusing, hilarious, strange, silly, and utterly compelling.

I actually pulled out pen and paper at one point, in an attempt to solve the puzzle at the center of this Clue-like mystery. I got one part, only to discover--like all of Raskin's characters along the way--that I had missed the point.

And when the point finally appeared, I was so intrigued that I went back and read the whole book again. And still:

Thrilling, confusing, hilarious, strange, and utterly compelling.

And through her strange style Raskin masterfully achieves the great goal of all novelists: I was so attached to the characters that I wept at our parting.

The Westing Game.

~ emrys

Renewing Biblical Interpretation

Renewing Biblical Interpretation (Scripture and Hermeneutics Series, Volume 1, 2000) was a challenging read. This collection of essays by academic theologians presents a great variety of material that was at times enlightening, obscure, and wandering, but consistently thoughtful. The unifying force of these authors' work was a sense of crisis in the world of biblical interpretation.

An academic text published in 2000 is old. Nonetheless, reading it in 2016 gave me a renewed appreciation for the bind of contemporary Western Christianity. 18th- and 19th- century historical-critical scholarship, and its sibling changes in philosophy, have together left the Western Church wondering how to interpret our 66 ancient texts. I knew about this difficulty, but Renewing Biblical Interpretation deepened my thought about how the Church handles her scriptures.

A few highlights of the book for me:

Al Wolters offered not only a theoretical 10,000-foot view of the crisis but also a process of interpretation (complete with example case) that included lexigraphical analysis, historical analysis, and "confessional discernment." From the stratospheric soaring of Cambridge academia Wolters' essay provided a refreshing visit to the earth and sea in which most faithful Christians live.

Karl Moller offers a helpful reminder that historical-critical scholarship can carry with it its own theological views and preferences. Rather than throw away historical-critical scholarship, Moller suggests (in harmony with several other contributors to this volume) that we "cultivate an awareness of our own subjectivity and cultural rootedness." He says that Christians need to allow "the text to criticize these and, by so doing, to contribute to . . . the reshaping of our own selves" (p157). My own understanding is that the Spirit through the text shapes and reshapes us, but Moller's point about the biases we bring to scripture is well taken.

Colin Greene's chapter (with the daunting title "'In the Arms of Angels': Biblical Interpretation, Christology and the Philosophy of History") provides an excellent overview of the rise and influence of historical-critical scholarship, and hence the rise of the crisis at hand. For any reader trying to grasp the sweeping historical moves in biblical scholarship, Greene's article is just the thing.

Stephen Wright draws a helpful distinction between the logos of the bible (what the words say), and the poiema of the bible (what the text does). He asserts that historical-critical work can benefit our listening to what the text does in the lives of believers and the Church.

I am intrigued by the references to (and short response by) Nicholas Wolterstorff. Wolterstorff seems to be a Christian philosopher focused on the import and effect of words, divine and human. Sometime I hope to get his kindle edition of Divine Discourse . . . .

Walter Brueggemann offers a reflection on the entire consultation (the gathering which gave rise to this book). A key insight from his piece is that though biblical interpretation has certainly been changing over time, the "crisis" has really come from the bible's place in society. For about 1500 years in Western society everyone was Christian and assumed that the bible was somehow the basis for our society. The ubiquity of assent to the bible is no longer true. Christians are no longer "preaching to the choir," but instead find they need to do "street preaching" (Brueggemann's term) with its concomitant heckling, disbelief, and challenges. I'm on board with his assessment.

The tap root to which this book delivered me was expressed in Brian Ingraffia's article, as he reflected on the work of Baruch Spinoza. From the latter's work Tractatus (15), Ingraffia quotes: "Revelation has obedience for its sole object, and therefore, in purpose no less than in foundation and method, stands entirely aloof from ordinary knowledge; each has its separate province, neither an be called the handmaid of the other" (p290). In my experience, this is still--and might always be--the cutting edge of biblical interpretation. As long as Christians believe that the most basic act of faith is to obey the bible, then they will be in conflict with all the other gods clamoring for obedience: reason, logic, and experience. We cannot serve two masters. If the bible, reason, logic, and experience (all refined by critical study) stand equally ready to serve God, the only master, then we have a hope of using all four in service to God.

I was disappointed to see only one female name in the grand list of authors for this volume. I was also disappointed in the silence of reflection from Latin American, African, and Asian theological perspectives. Perhaps the "crises" of those regions of Christianity would be very different from the reflections in this text; on the other hand, perhaps their crises and insights would be instructive to us Western European-derived traditions.

~ emrys

The Undivided Heart

A critical comment on the cover of Anita Diamant's The Red Tent (Picador, 1997) hails, "It is tempting to say that The Red Tent is what the Bible would be like if it had been written by women . . ." This assertion raises all sorts of wonderful literary, philosophical, and historiographical questions. But those questions are so important neither to the book nor to this reader.

The Red Tent moves with the tidal pull of a regal aunt who finally tells your father's story from her perspective. True to how pre-literate agrarian culture must have felt, the narrative sticks to the reader's feet with all the grit, scents, and daily gore of human society protected only by sheets of canvas and its slow mobility. The appearance of biblical characters grown too familiar in the churched imagination of European minds sets the narrator's hook. There is no escape after the prologue: We are pulled, inexorably, soul-seduced, on the shore of the river where Dinah has her way with us.

The radical division of the sexes hinted at by the Old Testament takes on robust flesh in the life of Dinah. Diamant gives us cause to wonder: If the matriarchs were not silent chattel in the real Ancient Near East, is it possible that the patriarchs were not noble, courageous, and strong? Just as the Old Testament narrative gives women over to uncleanness, is it possible the men were brutish, mean, and deceptive? Exploring the poles of human sexuality and relationship opens up a whole spectrum of human experience, including the possibility that the journey of God's people was not direct, but more complex and mysterious. The cleft of doubt yawns wide: As Dinah herself puts it, life means learning to live with a divided heart.

Diamant ushers us with magnificent skill through innocence, loss, pain, and joy. Aside from one laborious passage leading in to Joseph's story (near the end of the book, after we fully trust Dinah), the complex scents and flavors of Dinah's world carry us naturally from one scene to another, hungry for the next encounter even in the mundane activities of cooking and spinning. We learn from Dinah that every relationship exists in perpetual danger of feast or famine, flood or drought; every next conversation could explode with joy or shatter with anger. And each moment, light or dark, affects the balance of the whole.

Perhaps the greatest feat of The Red Tent is its marriage of the Old Testament ethos with the zeitgeist of the turn-of-the-century West: There is no happy ending, only endurance. There is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but there will be another storm against which the sun will shine. This division between rain and light, storm and silence, is the rending of every human heart. It is why the reader can both weep and laugh in the space of three pages, then hunger for the time it will happen again.

This division is why The Red Tent probably speaks the true other half of the bible.

~ emrys

Jury Duty

I recently completed a term as a grand juror four our county court system. This first opportunity I had to serve on a jury proved fascinating and enlightening. In spite of all the middle- and high-school classes intended to teach us the uniqueness of the American legal system, only serving on a jury brought home the reality that the jury--both the grand and trial versions--is the thing that keeps the United States from becoming a police state.

Without a group of peers--united only in the reasonableness of the common person--to assess the quality of evidence behind a charge, nothing keeps police and attorneys from trumping up charges against anyone they please and thereby ruining lives.

An essential part of this system which pivots on the jury is the character and quality of our police force. Ubiquitous human evil notwithstanding, I think our law enforcement does a good job of conforming to both the letter and spirit of the law. They of course put themselves in harm's way on a regular basis, and must be ready to adapt to a dizzying array of difficult and obscure circumstances, ascertaining how to uphold the law and guard safety within a complex world. I thank God that, although as far from perfect as any human system is bound to be, our police forces generally serve the rule of law and not the whims of personal gain or political party.

What surprised me most was the difficulty we reasonable peers had in keeping ourselves tied to the narrow task of a grand jury. Our mission was to determine whether the evidence presented serves as reasonable cause to believe that an accused person committed a crime. We were not to determine the guilt of the accused, "beyond the shadow of a doubt." We were not to play defense attorney (whose role was conspicuously absent from the proceedings), and decide what other evidence might be pursued to establish guilt or innocence. We had to limit ourselves to the evidence given and what it suggested to us reasonable people.

A few times among the twenty or twenty-five cases we heard, the defendant would choose to address us. I  was surprised by how the testimony of the defendant polarized us. Some of us would hear the defendant and come to the conclusion that s/he was guilty. Some of us would hear that testimony and from it begin to second-guess the possible interpretations of the district attorney's evidence. We would begin to seek a "shadow of doubt" on the defendant's behalf. Neither of these pursuits fell under our job description. Only in the rare case that the credibility of witnesses came into play did a defendant's testimony change our course; but how easily we were drawn into the tempting work of a trial jury rather than a grand jury. How swiftly, it seems, we savor the opportunity to play the judge of persons rather than evidence! How often we wanted to say the final word in the case!

Drawing ourselves back, time and again, to our designated course we managed, I think, to do our job in good conscience. I would gladly serve again. In my case juggling jury duty and work was not impossible, though my time with my family certainly suffered deficiency during those four weeks. (Perhaps after my children are out of the house, or after I have retired from my primary employment, I could volunteer to serve as a juror more regularly.)

I believe with even firmer conviction now, however, that serving on jury duty constitutes one of our core obligations as citizens. If I were a defendant, rightly or wrongly accused, would I want juries that rubber stamp the opinions of district attorneys--especially those who bare their teeth quickly so as not to appear "soft on crime"? Would I want jurors examining my case whose first priority was getting it over with and getting back to their mundane routine?

I would rather make this valuable system the best that it can be, which means precisely being one thoughtful person, in a group of twenty-two, for ninety hours every six years. It's not much to pay for a better justice system.

And we twenty-two strangers, thrown together in the secret society of the jury room, bonded in small but important ways. We were generous with our coffee-making skills, took an interest in each other's stories, and one of our number even baked apple crumb bars to celebrate our last day of work together. I speculate that the combination of difficulty and value in our work served to bring us together. Most people I hear talk about getting a jury summons roll their eyes and sigh. I hope that now twenty-two fewer of us will think that way about our duty.

~ emrys

Imperial Dreams

Few international news arenas garner as much attention in American media as conflict in the Middle East, and especially conflict in the Middle East connected with Israel. So from page one I felt that Ephraim Karsh's 2007 book, Islamic Imperialism: A History, would bring some helpful context to much of the media chatter around me.

The subtitle "A History" has a fascinating multivalence about it. "A history" says that this book is not a policy manifesto. With thorough notation revealing great depth of research, Karsh's text gives the reader an expansive look at the topic from the days of Muhammad up to the first decade of this century. The knowledge brought to bear about Middle Eastern history, literature, and politics reflects what I would expect from the founding director of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King's College London (among many other distinguished titles). Nonetheless Karsh remains focused on one slice of history; this is not a history of Islam, or Islamic cultures, but rather a history of Islamic imperialism. The focus is on the historical pattern of Islamic leaders seeking to unite Muslims, or Arabs, or the known world, under a single political entity.

"A history," emphasis on the indefinite article, suggests that it would be possible to write another history of the same topic. And many other authors undoubtedly would.

This history was, I took note early on, written by an author born of parents who moved to Israel under the British Mandate of the early 20th century, attended Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and attained the rank of major in the Israeli Defense Forces. This personal context might explain why this book, undergirded on every page by such clear and extensive research, evinces a tone of disdain for all things Islamic or Arab. Even the positive cultural attributes of past Middle Eastern societies are treated with an upturned nose. The space between the lines of this text declare that there is nothing good--perhaps nothing redeemable at all--about Islam or Arabs.

Karsh's hammer drops in the Epilogue, ringing in the conclusion built up throughout the book that imperialism is an unworthy fantasy: "if the political elites of the Middle East and elsewhere were ever to reconcile themselves to the reality that there is no Arab or Islamic nation, but only modern Muslim states with destinies and domestic responsibilities of their own, the imperialist dream would die" (p240). The idea that Islam or "pan-Arabism" could unify a people worldwide, says Karsh, is a complete illusion. The only real geopolitical entity is the modern nation-state.

The book raises enough examples of Muslim and Arab leaders behaving poorly so as to secure the prejudices of anyone with a shred of bias against those descriptors. This attitude may be the factor which will keep the book in circulation, especially now that ISIS/ISIL fits Karsh's mold so nicely. But Karsh's assertion that worldwide Islamic unity must surrender to the lines on a map (which same lines are the sole proof of Israel's legitimacy, let us not forget), comes part-and-parcel with another assertion about Islam as a faith. Muslims must "reconcile themselves to the reality of state nationalism . . . and make Islam a matter of private faith rather than a tool of political ambition" (p241).

Many of us would, I think, agree that an imperialism (of any faith) which seeks to destroy others--like Karsh's historical examples and ISIS/ISIL today--should be dismissed. However, I wonder if privatization of faith and the limitation of social ambition to national boundaries provide a desirable--or workable--solution. I can sympathize with this book's desire to offset the atrocities of past empires, but I don't know that "imperialism," as a desire to influence those currently outside our sphere of influence, is the proper dragon to slay.

To brass tacks: As a Christian I believe that Jesus Christ is the Lord of all creation and history, the head of an empire both spiritual and temporal. I believe that this is good news, on many levels, to those who hear it. I also believe that in Jesus Christ humanity has been given an ethic of self-sacrificing love which, no matter the present faith of a person or group, is the best ethic to follow.

If I, as a voter and potential leader in my own nation, privatize my faith and allow the nation-state to which I belong to establish its own ethic and priorities, then are we better off? Is it not precisely because I believe my nation-state is capable of reflecting the commands and ethics of my Emperor--who calls us to move outward to others--that I can function and serve in this nation-state?

Though I apply to myself the challenge Karsh makes to "Middle Eastern political elites," one of the fascinating minor chords in this book is its absolution of Western, European nation-states in the dilemmas of the Middle East. He insists, against the common interpretation of Middle East conflict as resulting from Western (imperial?) meddling, that all the conflict and tension have arisen from the choices and desires of Middle Eastern leaders themselves. Karsh even goes to so far as to say that the Western powers, even as they take actions against which Middle Eastern leadership protests, are acting as pawns of the Islamic imperialist machinations of the region. It is as if to say that upon entering the seventeenth-century political enlightenment of nationalism, all societies west of Istanbul (not Constantinople!) washed themselves of any responsibility for problems in the Middle East.

As much as I appreciate having my nation (and not insignificantly the State of Israel in the process) absolved, I am suspicious of such a clear line. I have the impression from my own study of history that international affairs are a tangled web of darkness and light. And perhaps, as Karsh's labors imply (but do not say), the value of a political philosophy is best tested not by asking "Nation-state or Empire?" but by asking, "Does it produce good for those within and without?"

Thanks to Frank Amalfitano for allowing me the blessing of this book from his library. It has been an enriching read!

~ emrys