Irony - The Free Ride When You've Already Paid

Whatever happened to Alanis Morrissette? A couple of days ago she was trending on Yahoo, but that lists changes pretty quickly. With the internet, things move rapidly. Information is available at your fingertips. I was trying to remember the date of a Bruce Springsteen concert I attended in 1978, and I found out the dates of his concerts that year within minutes surfing the web. Remarkable. Is there a down side, a dark side? Maybe.
Zadie Smith is a novelist and essayist who is sixteen years younger than me. I share this because her cautionary words about social networking, offered in the most recent issue of The New York Review are not the reflections of a fifty-one year old who could be written off as hopelessly out of touch with a Web 2.0 world (the person writing this blog who also read Smith’s article in a print version of the periodical – yes, I have more subscriptions than apps).
Here are some of Smith’s reflections. Of social media like Facebook, she writes: Connection is the goal. The quality of that connection, the quality of the information that passes through it, the quality of the relationships that connection permits – none of this is important…. a lot of social networking software explicitly encourages people to make weak, superficial connections with each other…. When a human being becomes a set of data on a website like Facebook, he or she is reduced. Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility. In a way it’s a transcendent experience: we lose our bodies, our messy feelings, our desires, our fears.Smith is not a Luddite. She raises the issue of the impact of technologies and tools. Tools are wonderful for doing certain things – but do we use our tools or do our tools use us? It is never that simple. Our technologies inevitably shape our sense of self. The question is whether we will give ourselves completely to our Facebook sense of self where relationships are defined by “status,” where we can “like” something or not, where we seem to be our preferences. Malcolm Gladwell, in a recent New Yorker article (yet another subscription) argues that social media are ingenious for developing weak-tie connections which have their strengths. Yet they also have their limits. Other relationships need to be fostered in a rich and full human life. Zadie Smith quotes Jaron Lanier, virtual reality pioneer, “you have to be somebody before you can share yourself.” Developing a somebody may require time off-line, time for quiet reflection, time away from a constantly connected world.
About the time I was thinking about such things, an announcement was made that Facebook would be developing an e-mail system that could link Facebook, e-mail, text messaging in one place. When e-mail arrived, letter writing declined. E-mail is now considered too slow. Who wants to read all that text (who is still reading these words of reflection?). Text messaging is overtaking the human voice of the phone conversation. Pulling all this together in a single site available on smart phones of all kinds, phones that need never be turned off, phones that seem to beg for constant attention lest you miss an update – how might this be changing us, and do we want to be changed in these ways.
Irony. I am posting these thoughts on the web, on a blog linked to my Facebook site. I use the tools and hope they don’t define all that I am.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David

Beauty

Out of all the instinctual needs we humans have to put up with – sex, food, sleep, fresh air, water – the most important and least recognized need of all is beauty. It’s what magnifies us into human beings. character Bob Devonic in Laura Hendrie’s novel, Remember Me

I am in the midst of preaching a series of sermons using themes from Diana Butler Bass’ book Christianity For the Rest of Us. Some 60 to 80 people in the congregation I pastor are reading this book as a way of exploring what a vital Christian faith and a vital Christian congregation might look like in the twenty-first century. Today I preached on worship and beauty (and the sermon will be posted on my sermon blog in a few days).
Moving toward the conclusion of the sermon I said that beauty is better experienced than discussed, and then showed a power point slide show with John Coltrane’s “After The Rain” playing in the background. With Coltrane still playing, I ended by reading Denise Levertov’s poem, “Primary Wonder.”
I hoped people experienced something of the beauty I intended. When worship works, that is when it connects us with God, the world, and ourselves more deeply and honestly, it is because beauty is encountered. God’s way and work in the world could be described as the work of creating beauty, of weaving together disparate experiences in the direction of justice, peace, reconciliation, peace, healing, and love. We need beauty. We need it to open our minds and enlarge our hearts. Beauty magnifies us into human beings.
The irony of the morning was that our projector system at the church is in transition, and was not working today. I had to present my power point slide show using my lap top, a portable projector and a screen. The set up would not have been considered beautiful, the screen, in particular lacked almost any aesthetic value. It was even torn in the corner.
Yet even here there is something to be learned. We all have ugly areas in our lives, and certainly the world is marred by the ugliness of hatred, poverty, war, oppression. The work of creating beauty does not necessarily begin with beautiful materials. It begins with what we have at hand, sometimes a torn screen. Even then, though, God works toward beauty, and when worship works, some of that beauty shows through.


With Faith and With Feathers,

David

Nietzsche II

We, openhanded and rich in spirit, standing by the road like open wells with no intention to fend off anyone who feels like drawing from us – we unfortunately do not know how to defend ourselves where we want to: we have no way of preventing people from darkening us: the time in which we live throws into us what is most time-bound… But we shall do what we have always done: whatever one casts into us, we take down into our depth – for we are deep, we do not forget – and become bright again. Frederich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 378

Why read Nietzsche, son of a pastor (though his father died when Nietzsche was quite young), and later deep critic of the church and of Christianity? Why pay any attention to him? I think we need to hear our critics, listen to those who don’t find faith credible. They can teach us. What often amazes me about Nietzsche is how much I learn from him about aspects of faith. “I would believe only in a god who could dance” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, part I). I happen to think this is the Christian God, and Nietzsche doesn’t.

In the passage cited above, I hear a deep spirituality and hear something of the vocation of the church. We nurture deep places of the Spirit within. We take the darkness of the world around us, let it get to that deep place of God, Christ, Spirit, and give back brightness.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David

Nietzsche I

But an attack on the roots of passion means an attack on the roots of life: the practice of the church is hostile to life.
Frederich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

Is Nietzsche right, even partially so? Yes. Too many have experienced the church and Christian faith as something narrow, rigid, life-constricting. I have had some of those experiences myself but have found them antithetical to my deepest and most profound experiences of Christian faith. My faith, at its best, opens me up to the world and to life – to joy and suffering, hope and disappointment, mystery, complexity, questions, beauty, love – and even passion. Jesus is to have said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). It is when we know and can share such a faith that others might be attracted to it.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David

AAugh!!!

Having internet connection problems at home. Blogging is not much fun when those issues arise. In the words of that great theologian Charlie Brown, "Aaaugh!"

Still With Faith and With Feathers,

David

Weaving New Life

If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. II Corinthians 5:17

It has been awhile since my last post in part because of a busy schedule – travel to Nashville for six days for two United Methodist meetings, and in part because of internet problems at home. I arrived back home earlier this week to find that television service had been lost – missed the Vikings game on Monday (as did the Vikings themselves in the first half), and then once that was repaired to have sporadic outages in our internet even after replacing the modem and router. Anyway, on to other thoughts – thoughts conceived on a hotel treadmill and jotted down on paper in airports.
There is a type, probably no person fits it perfectly, but a type - - - the person who inside never graduates from high school. There is the athlete whose best time in life was sinking the winning basket, scoring the winning goal, throwing the winning pass. There is the homecoming queen who has never felt as adored since. There is the A student never again able to replicate her or his success.
High school for me was a mixed bag. I look back with a certain fondness, but also recall the pain, awkwardness, disappointment. Perhaps this is a type, too, one who too easily looks askance at those who hold too closely to high school.
In reality we all weave and weave again our past experiences into our present reality. A healthy weaving allows us to appreciate the past but live in the present, neither holding on to the past too tightly or rejecting it too severely. New life, even in Christ, is a new weaving, not simply a letting go, and the work of the Spirit is toward creativity and freedom as we do our weaving.
I thought of all of this on a treadmill in Nashville. While at meetings, I was on the treadmill every night and one night this fascinating sequence of songs shuffled through my ipod:

Dan Fogelberg, “Same Old Lang Syne” – song about running into an old class mate –
“felt that old familiar pain”
The Eagles, “I Can’t Tell You Why” – song about love fading away, popular when I was
in high school/college, great slow dance song if you could find a partner
Hall and Oates, “Sara Smile” – enormously popular song in high school, I could
almost feel myself driving wearing my letter jacket on a crisp fall day
Lou Reed, “Coney Island Baby” – the glory of love and playing football for the coach
Herb Alpert, “A Taste of Honey” – a song I remember from childhood. My dad had
this record with a rather unforgettable cover.

And so we live, weaving and reweaving our past – joys and sorrows, desires, dreams, disappointments, accomplishments. Newness of life is a new weaving made possible by a Spirit of creativity and love.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David

18%

In the September 17 issue of the Duluth newspaper, the News Tribune, there was an article about a recent survey conducted of Americans (Associated Press National Constitution Center). “Glum and mistrusting, a majority of Americans today are very confident in – nobody.” When asked about their trust in people running major institutions, 43% said they are extremely or very confident in the military. That tops the list. 39% expressed confidence in small or local business leaders; the scientific community came in at 30%, and next, at 18% organized religion.
That religion is in the top four should bring a modicum of comfort to those of us whose lives are deeply intertwined with organized religion. That the figure is 18% is a bit disheartening. There are many reasons for this, I am sure. Scandals surrounding Roman Catholic priests and other prominent clergy have been reported regularly in recent years. The face of organized religion is sometimes the face of a pastor of a small church who suddenly becomes famous because he plans a Quran burning (and I am pleased he changed his mind). A few Christians can be seen carrying signs that read: “God hates fags” or “Jesus hates sin.” Most of these actions are not the kind that promote confidence in organized religion.
When I read these numbers again, however, I wonder if there is another factor also involved. I notice that the scientific community rates higher than organized religion in evoking confidence. There is little question that scientific discoveries have enhanced our lives. We need to think only of the dramatic advancements in medical technologies to be grateful for the work of scientists. Perhaps one factor that erodes confidence in organized religion is the way some forms of faith have publically battled science. They have tried to substitute poetic bible passages for scientific literature and in the process give the impression that people of faith cannot contend in an intellectually sophisticated manner with the work of scientists. The most blatant example is the insistence of some in the Christian faith community on reading the first chapters of Genesis as science rather than as theological poetry. To do that is both to misread the Scriptures and to create a false battle against scientific work that helps us understand the processes by which life emerges and changes. If we read Genesis as significant theological poetry that grapples with existential questions about the meaning of life in relationship to God, then there is no tension between it and most scientific work on evolution.
This is not to give science a free pass on all its work. Science cannot answer some of our most basic questions, and some scientists reach too far in some of their statements. To claim that evolution proves there is no God is to go beyond science just as to claim that Genesis is science is to misunderstand the nature of Scripture. Furthermore it is important to remember that a scientific description of hormonal changes, blood vessel changes, heart rate changes is not the same as the human experience of being in love. Science worth its salt is open to data of all kinds, including the data of human experience which does not seem adequately captured by the biology of the brain. And some of the data of human experience is poetic, literary, religious. And again we are aware of scientists so narrowly focused on a particular study that they miss the moral implications of their work.
Perhaps if we in organized religion were willing to have some of these kinds of conversations, the confidence level generated might rise. I kind of hope so.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David