Being in Place

 Continuing my cultivated admiration for the work of Wendell Berry, I just completed Nathan Coulter, one of his earlier novels (1960, reprinted 1985). The book opens a window into the world of Port William, the agrarian community in northern Kentucky that mirrors Berry's home and culture. Its narrative style, elegant without being sparse, keeps my attention because it paints so well the mundane details of life. I suspect that many novels keep us rapt with a cavalcade of the improbable and the fantastic. To me, so used to my culture's parade of the shocking, the story of a life stripped down to essentials carries its own fascination.

Berry's plot gives very little quarter to the thoughts of his characters, and his characters give very little quarter to chatter or diatribe. Our attraction to them and their way of life emerges from participation in the basic chores of life--eating, planting, fishing, harvesting, listening to the rain--and witnessing unassuming expressions of love--cooking, working, laughing, teaching. In a brief 180 pages we come to own Nathan Coulter as a friend not because of his exceptionalism but because he unselfconsciously reflects to us the essence of what it means to be human, to be tied to family and land, and to recognize the power of belonging.

Nathan's simple humanity allows Berry, at last, to let the seeds of observation grow into a flower of wisdom. Nathan observes, after family conflict drives his brother away to begin his own life:

"Brother was gone, and he wouldn't be back. And things that had been so before never would be so again. We were the way we were; nothing could make us any different, and we suffered because of it. Things happened to us the way they did because we were ourselves." (pg 158)

In spite of my culture's ambition always to be changing for the better, believing that our natures can change through self-help and therapy and meditation, Nathan's assessment of the human condition does not occasion despair. From the story we glean that there is wisdom in accepting the world, the land, and one's condition as it is. Nathan's experience stands in humble criticism of the neurotic addictions of our age.

Clear vision sees so far as to observe the worldly end of all humanity. Nathan's voice again:

"I thought of the spring running there all that time . . . . still running while Grandpa's grandfather and his father got old and died. And running while Grandpa drank its water and waited his turn. When I thought of it that way I knew I was waiting my turn too. . . . In a way the spring was like him, a part of his land; I couldn't divide the spring from the notch it had cut in the hill. Grandpa had owned his land and worked on it and taken his pride from it for so long that we knew him, and he knew himself, in the same way that we knew the spring . . . We wouldn't recognize the country when he was dead." (pg 179-180)

Nathan Coulter at last reckons with the fullness of human life: the destiny of our bodies to sink again into the soil. Even if the world and its cycles do not change, we belong to it, like the spring and the rock through which it cuts simply by following the pull of gravity.

Nathan Coulter leaves off while Nathan still lives with his parents. Berry's most recent book (The Art of Loading Brush) tells an end of sorts to the story of Nathan Coulter. I know from that story that Nathan is different from the generations past. His acceptance of death and the way things are births in him a compassion that is equally a critique of and a gift from his family. What never changes is that growth and wisdom must follow the pace and patterns of the land. Rushing toward an imagined goal yields a spindly and hollow harvest. To discover what could be we must attend to what is.

Thanks to Warren Muller, who found Nathan Coulter in his book-sifting and sent it to me as a gift.

Christian Art

About a year ago my family read a graphic novel version of A Wrinkle in Time. Somehow this book had escaped all of my high school reading lists (or perhaps I had skipped it in favor of Tom Jones?), so I have not read the original. All the themes and plots as expressed in Madeleine L'Engle's classic book were new discoveries to me.

In addition to my failure to read L'Engle's classic work, I had failed to take notice that Madeleine L'Engle was a confessing and practicing Christian. A book by L'Engle, passed along to me by a friend, entitled Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith & Art (1980) piqued my interest as I pulled it out of the box. What faith was this that I had never heard attributed to this world-famous author?

Walking on Water comprises a collection of mini-essays delivered as talks at an international conference on the topic of faith and art. Through the book I found L'Engle describing her own mature, orthodox faith and a thoughtful, piercing critique of how the Christian faith has neglected the proper place of art--or the proper function of art--in the life of the Church and the believer. As a Christian artist myself (you'll have to read the book to get L'Engle's helpful definition of "Christian art") I found her experience and theology of Christian art deeply inspiring and refreshing.

True to the calling of an artist following Jesus, L'Engle does much of her teaching in discrete stories. So a small sample of those moments is in order when I felt compelled to dog-ear the pages:

~

She cites the story of a village full of clocks but with no horologist (the former one had died). When a renowned clockmaker and repairer later visits the village, he declares he can fix the clocks that--though inaccurate--have been kept wound. The ones left unwound are forever lost.

"So we must daily keep things wound: that is, we must pray when prayer seems dry as dust; we must write when we are physically tired, when our hearts are heavy, when our bodies are in pain. We may not always be able to make our 'clock' run correctly, but at least we must keep it wound, so that it will not forget." (p96)

~

"I have often been asked if my Christianity affects my stories, and surely it is the other way around; my stories affect my Christianity, restore me, shake me by the scruff of the neck, and pull this straying sinner into an awed faith." (106)

~

Upon encountering rigid and sealed theology next to open and wondering science: "I had yet to learn the faithfulness of doubt. This is often assumed by the judgmental to be faithlessness, but it is not; it is a prerequisite for a living faith." (118)

~

"So a children's book must be, first and foremost, a good book, a book with a young protagonist with whom the reader can identify, and a book which says yes to life. Granted, a number of young adult books have been published with a negative view of life, just as with anti-heroes. Again, from all I hear from librarians and teachers, they may be read once, but they are not returned to." (121)

~

Wisdom perhaps for all Christians as well as the practicing artists: "If my stories are incomprehensible to Jews or Muslims or Taoists, then I have failed as a Christian writer. We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it." (p122)

~

"So I start the Ballad of Barbara Allen. I have sung only a couple of verses when Charlotte says, her voice quavering slightly, 'Gran, you know that's a bad one.' 

'What, Charlotte?' 

'You know that's a bad one.' 

Both Barbara Allen and her young man are dead and buried at the end of the ballad; I ask, 'Why, Charlotte? Because it's sad?' 

'No! because she doesn't love anybody.' 

Charlotte knows what it is all about. The refusal to love is the only unbearable thing."

~

Quoting the words of Hawaiian Christian Alice Kaholusuna: "Before the missionaries came, my people used to [pray at the temple] and afterward would again sit a long time outside, this time to 'breathe life' into their prayers. The Christians, when they came, just got up, uttered a few sentences, said Amen, and were done. For that reason my people called them haoles, 'without breath,' or those who failed to breathe life into their prayers."

~

I am especially struck by one thread that runs through L'Engle's mini-essays, mini-memoirs: how Christians are co-storytellers with God. I have always been troubled by the thoughtless repetition of "Word of God" to refer to scripture, especially since the equivalent given by scripture itself for "Word of God" is Jesus Christ. Book = person, person = book, living being = fixed cipher, text = life are troublesome equivalencies for me.

So I have tried in teaching my own children to impress on them that the bible is God's story, and it is Jesus' story, and it is the story of the people of God, and it is our story. I think that to simplify--or mask the complexity of--the nature of the scriptures as story is to take the breath out of them. I think I understand the impulse to make the 66 canonical books into a Third Law, but I am also keenly aware of the chasm between Law and Person that Saul met on the Damascus Road (Acts 9).

L'Engle, in Walking on Water (a work that she herself was hesitant to undertake, as she reflects in the book), brilliantly traces the sinews of the divine story and leads the reader to appreciate its power. One will emerge from L'Engle's work with a greater appreciation for God's story, a greater confidence that our stories are important to that divine story, and a greater determination to tell stories that will help unfold the tesseract of God's love in the world.

~ emrys

Science

There was a time when to be a naturalist was the same thing as being a scientist. To observe the natural world in all of its complexity was to test it, to make hypotheses about it, and to search out patterns. Now "science" has become a discipline requiring knowledge of sterile techniques and statistical analyses. Naturalism has stepped down to the silver or bronze pedestal of fame.

But this shift betrays the meaning of "science," from "scientia" or "experience." Taking human experience--that which can be grasped by the five senses--and drawing conclusions from it. In this sense anyone who wonders and explores, anyone who will touch, taste, turn in the hand, or listen carefully is a scientist.

I just finished a wonderful gift from my brother: Oliver Sacks' Everything in its Place: First Loves and Last Tales. This collection of Sacks' essays, published after his 2015 death, deals with just about everything. Sacks was a physician--a neurologist who spent much time at the bedside of patients with disorders of memory or dementia--and naturalist extraordinaire. Nothing in the three-dimensional world rose above his scrutiny; nothing descended below his sense of wonder.

A work of essays like this does not submit to summing up. Sacks writes about so many different nooks and crannies of life that there is no use in doing anything but reading the whole thing. However it is worth saying in reflection that I deeply enjoyed Sacks' sense of fascination with every phenomenon. His professional passion was the human brain, of which he confessed that there was nothing more interesting or compelling in the world. But he writes with equal zeal and zest about hunting ferns in the crack of New York City concrete, about the power of gefilte fish, and about the joy of swimming. I get the impression that Sacks wandered around the world, all the time, with eyes wide open and mouth agape in enchanted wonder.

What's more, as he observes the complexities and depth of life he refrains from pronouncing meaning or judgment, avoiding all the pitfalls that come with such pronouncements. He revels in the world as it is, desiring less to know the whys and wherefores and more to know what is to be found just a little bit deeper. So, like the hand of a botanist turning over the frond of a fern thought to be extinct, Sacks' mind turns over the leaves of life gently, lovingly, so as to let life present itself.

I want to have this sense of gentle wonder, especially about people. I want to know not what "makes them tick" but what makes their hearts beat and their souls hope. I want to stroll through this grand creation and view every creature as a gift to be admired, explored, and then released to discover if it will fly.

~ emrys

Truth in the Body

Toni Morrison called Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates, "required reading." She is correct.

This little (5"x7" with 152 pages) letter from a father to his teenage son admits no distillation or summary. Like The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin, one must read the whole body of prose-poetry in order to capture its essence. And you, dear reader, will receive a reward for that dedication.

So as I sit with Coates' words, swimming still in their height and breadth and depth, their piercing brilliance and brutal honesty, I can only share one facet of what I read there. This insight, though it is just one of many, hints at the effect on a reader of the fullness of the book.

Coates, as he reveals himself through Between the World and Me, is a materialist. No, not the kind that wants to amass more stuff. His writing embraces philosophical materialism. When he digs down, down, down into the "whys" and "wherefores" of his existence and the existence of the world, he finds only what is physical. Thus the "original sin" of America is its treatment of the body, specifically the black body. The American system, the American culture, the American Dream has been so constructed that the black body is subjected to the unpredictable, crushing forces of those who call themselves white. Every human is dehumanized and rendered an automaton: blacks as expendable bodies, whites as simple machinations of destruction:

"And no one would be brought to account for this destruction, because my death would not be the fault of any human but the fault of some unfortunate but immutable fact of 'race,' imposed upon an innocent country by the inscrutable judgment of invisible gods. The earthquake cannot be subpoenaed. The typhoon will not bend under indictment. They sent the [police officer who killed] Prince Jones back to his work, because he was not a killer at all. He was a force of nature, the helpless agent of our world's physical laws." (p83)

In this rich and honest letter, Coates tries to tell his son what he sees, how the world is. He consciously and purposefully avoids hope. Not in favor of despair, but because hope betrays the facts of the world. There is not betterment, improvement, or hope; only struggle:

"Perhaps struggle is all we have because the god of history is an atheist, and nothing about his world is meant to be. So you must wake up every morning knowing that no promise is unbreakable, least of all the promise of waking up at all. This is not despair. These are the preferences of the universe itself: verbs over nouns, actions over states, struggle over hope." (p71)

Coates keeps his feet firmly planted in the present, in three dimensions, in the body that can act. One might intuit that he was driven to this tight focus: autonomy, ownership and safety of the physical body are precisely the things that America has plundered from those with dark skin. Thus what was or what will be are irrelevant. There is only alive or dead. The overriding concern and fear to which Coates returns is the loss of the body: that America allows the black body to be arrested, incarcerated, and killed at the whim of those who call themselves white.

"I have no praise anthems, nor old Negro spirituals. The spirit and soul are the body and brain, which are destructible--that is precisely why they are so precious. And the soul did not escape. The spirit did not steal away on gospel wings. The soul was the body that fed the tobacco, and the spirit was the blood that watered the cotton, and these created the first-fruits of the American garden. And the fruits were secured through the bashing of children with stovewood, through hot iron peeling skin away like husk from corn." (pp103-4)

Here is Coates' materialism writ large. Here might be the philosophical grounds on which I could accuse him of incompleteness. (I am not a materialist.) But wait! I wonder now whether this--even this!--resistance to materialism arises from the fact that my so-called whiteness has delivered to me privileges that are not afforded to Coates.

The color of my skin and the society in which I was raised (which came first?) give me a bone-deep confidence that I do not need to worry about the safety of my body. (For another time: how my gender also affects that confidence.) Police are a comforting symbol and source of law and order. I expect that they exist to serve and protect us, and will respect my safety even when I should run afoul of the law. And I look at the world and see it as a prelude, a pointer to something greater, something beyond. This body is a gift partnered with the gift of spirit, which will carry on in a different way when my body is laid in the soil. Which is to say: I am something more than my body.

But what if the several generations leading up to me had all been told--directly and indirectly--that their bodies were not their own? That they were not safe, because the typhoon of America could tear them apart without respect for personhood or humanity? Perhaps those raised to wonder if their bodies will survive cannot see so far as to wonder whether their spirits will survive. If the body is esteemed worthless, perhaps we are prevented from finding value in a soul. Perhaps my body must be valued as human before my spirit can be considered divine. That is: perhaps Coates comes by his materialism honestly.

I think about the over-spiritualized understanding of the Christian faith (some of which contributed to the plunder of black bodies throughout American history). But many--if not most--of those I know who verbalize the exceeding value of the spirit over that of the body live with great bodily security. And I think about Jesus' teachings and his resonances with the Hebrew prophets who offered scathing condemnation for those who took away others' physical security. And if we wish to call heaven as a witness, then we must remember that Jesus' resurrected body (!) still had scars from his crucifixion; Paul asserts that we will be given bodies (!!) in the new creation.

So perhaps an understanding of spirit, virtue, and justice begins with materialism. Before we can answer questions of what we will become or what we must do, we must first be able to declare that our bodies are safe. The innovation of Jesus and the prophets with respect to Coates' book is that before we can get to spirit, virtue, and justice we must first confirm that our brothers' and sisters' bodies are safe.

And in America, the answer is still No. So we cannot go any further.

Coates, at least in Between the World and Me, does not have a framework or an anchor for hope. But as for me, perhaps by a gift from God I may have the ability to ask, Is your body safe? and hear the answer. And maybe in hearing that answer we will find the beginning of something different.

~ emrys

What Could We Have Done?

The pandemic has wrought havoc on small businesses across the United States (and, I assume, all around the world). Some businesses, like the outdoor equipment suppliers we have in our town, have made record sales since everyone started trying to get out and away from other humans. Others, such as the businesses that focus on bringing people together--to eat, work out, or socialize--have been struck with huge deficits.

As I listen to the stories of struggling business owners and operators I hear the pain and suffering that results from having to cut payroll, take on debt, and wonder how to plan for every next month with all of its uncertainty. I am an operator of a very small business myself, and we have experienced the pain of covid's economic impact.

At the conclusion of a good commiserating session, when we're about to shrug and get on with our days, several times now I have heard the question, "But what could we have done?" It's rhetorical. The implication is that there is nothing anyone could have done. The appearance of a fast-spreading disease requiring people to stay out of each other's air space brings an inevitability of damage. No, there's nothing we could have done about the slowing of all things in-person.

But from a business perspective, and from a personal perspective, I don't want to give up on that question so fast. What could we have done?

Businesses define life and death financially. If there's enough money, the business carries on. If there's not, it goes under. If the income stream dries up for a time--for 6 months, 12 months, maybe 18 months--then for a business to survive it needs to have cash reserves. If it's going to survive a covid drought of customers, then it's going to need savings.

It occurs to me then that "What could we have done?" is answered by "Save." We could have saved money. We could have operated within a business model that assumes there is a chance, no matter how small, that at some point we'll be crippled for a year or more. So we save up a year's worth of payroll, of electric bills, of essential supplies so that even if the customers aren't coming in right now we can keep telling the world, "We're open and ready when you are!"

Saving is hard. Look at the miserable statistics of Americans' saving habits and see that we're not very good at it. Certainly not good enough that most of us would feel stable if we suddenly fell out of work for a year or more. But life and economics are such complex animals that we ought to assume that we'll suddenly have a break in our income at some point. So saving makes sense.

It's just as hard for small businesses, I think. So much of business is running to catch up with the mercurial interests of a market that always wants something newer, faster, shinier. Every penny must be spent, or else tomorrow's client may not come in through the door. But to be on the edge of bankruptcy all the time makes something like a pandemic fatal. Market anxiety cannot choke out the mandate to save.

We had a surge of interest on our staff last year in the Dave Ramsey phenomenon. What a cool thing: having a group of college students thinking about how to lower their debt, save money, and be in a stronger financial position for the long haul. It takes discipline, and saying "No" to a lot of spending. It sometimes requires feeling like the spendthrift world is passing you by, macchiato in hand, while you're stuck at home drinking drip coffee. It means deferring that dopamine hit of shopping and spending until the frontal lobe says it's wise. It's hard work.

But it makes the difference between riding the tide of a pandemic with a little tighter belt and going under. "What could we have done?" We could have saved money. We could have held back our insatiable desire for cheap and numerous goods in preparation for a couple of lean years. We could have planned for this.

Will we plan for the next one?

~emrys

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

Two Strange Discoveries (Two Days Before Election Day)

One.

This morning I listened to a radio broadcast of one of my favorite political commentators, Mara Liasson. The content of the show revolved around all the political drama of this election week. But one assertion Ms. Liasson made struck me especially: She summarized a Trump and Republican party position that greater voter turnout hurts the Republican party. She indicated that there exists some wide agreement in the GOP that taking actions to limit voter turnout serves as an important party strategy.

Perhaps I have heard this before, but just this morning--maybe because of this election sharpening my political senses--it really sunk in. What a strange thing! In order to assert that limiting voter turnout is better for one's party, it seems that one must necessarily believe something else about the citizenry. For instance, that a majority of citizens cannot--are truly unable to--see what's best for the country (which, if one is Republican, one must believe about Republicanism). Or, as another possibility--closely aligned with the first--that a minority of citizens have the de facto right or privilege to determine governance (because they're Republican). And thus, in either case, the proper thing to do is to limit the right (to vote) of a significant portion of the population.

What an odd thing, to believe that in order to best safeguard the country founded upon basic freedoms like voting is to limit voting.

* * *

Two.

In another interview during the same show, Shelley Moore Capito (Republican Senator from West Virginia) declared that it would be important for a Democratic president and Democratic House to have a Republican Senate as a "firewall"--because government needs "checks and balances."

Color me naive, but I learned (in middle school) that in American governance the phrase "checks and balances" refers to the checking and balancing functions of the three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judiciary. Regardless of the party composition of each, their task is to test each other's work against the Constitution. Internally, their tasks are done as a whole: the legislature makes laws, the president executes administrative tasks, and the judiciary judges. Together. But Capito's statement reveals something radically different.

Rather than working together to devise laws that will serve the majority or totality of the American people, the legislature's task, according to Capito's "checks and balances," is to serve as an arena in which Democrats check Republicans, and vice versa. By logical extension, the task of an individual Supreme Court justice is not to collaborate with her fellows to produce a unified decision for a case, but to "check and balance" the opinions of the other justices who have different political leanings.

Take it one step further, and we might say that these neologized "checks and balances" indicate that we don't elect representatives, senators, and presidents to represent our communities at the federal level; instead we send them up to oppose the other party. So instead of governance by reason, cooperation, and compromise we get governance by opposition, conflict, and martyrdom (or filibuster).

Should we change our middle school curricula to redefine "checks and balances"? Shall we teach our children that the opposing party is our enemy? Or do we have another way?

~ 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

Who's In Charge Here?

President-Elect Donald Trump has all but declared that he will not appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton, as he promised during the campaign. The number of popular and energizing promises that Mr. Trump made before the election which are now being scuttled continues to rise. Some cynical political commentators might say that during the campaign Mr. Trump lied to get votes.

I don’t think Mr. Trump lied on the campaign trail. I think he was acting. Donald Trump was acting aggressive, mean-spirited, and vindictive because he knew (or intuited) that this façade would gain him votes. Like a poker player acting calm with his straight flush in hand, or a negotiator acting like he has the power position, Mr. Trump broadcasts whatever is necessary to make the deal that he wants to make.

Take one step further into this semi-metaphor of acting. Actors do not make films. Writers compose the script, producers arrange the logistics. And directors, as the name implies, really guide the show. Even the best of actors, with poor direction, can turn a good script into a disaster. Actors are lost without a good director.

We have seen what a good actor Mr. Trump is. We know that he can follow the direction of a discontented citizenry who believes that they have been put last on the agenda. We know that he can follow the direction of the real estate market and international business interests. We know that he works well under the direction of reality television rubrics.

In less than two months, Mr. Trump will be the President of the United States. The question is not whether he will be able to act well in that role. The star actor has stolen the show already. The crucial questions are different. Who will his director be? Who in fact will be running the show?

~ emry

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

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

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."