happiness?

Its been a good year. The summer was quite probably the best yet, and it was not because I was winning at the rat race. In fact, it felt like it was because I had checked out. It got me to thinking about what constitutes the “good life.”

I knew this marimba player once named Bruce. He had grown up in South Africa. He was one of those guys who just put you at ease to hang out with. He told me that he had a friend from South Africa who had lost his family and everything he owned in a fire, but who carried on. This man said that he only needed four things to be satisfied with life: Fresh food, a place to sleep at night, friends and faith. Bruce said he took this set and added his own two: Family and something to look forward to every week.

I wonder if sailors understand life better than landlubbers. I mean, theres the classic motif of the poverty-striken sailor who can't give up the peril for want of food to put on the table, but we know there's also the money-hungry men who we see on “world's deadliest catch” and moreover, those who just love the ocean- peril and all. They talk about being at peace on the water. Somehow it makes sence, drifting on the great indifference, that you'd feel your place in the universe. Also with the imminence of death. Fishing is apparently by far the most regressive Canadian Industry in terms of worker safety. I wonder if the closeness to death, like Bruce's friend in South Africa, makes the sailor appreciate and even enjoy life more.

Why is it sailors in that parable? You know, the one where the man goes down to the pier to find two sailors smoking and playing chess. He asks why they aren't working. They answer that the fish will be there tomorrow. He insists that they could be catching them today. They ask why they would. He says so they could make more money. They ask why. He says, so they could put some away. They ask what for. So you can retire early, he answers. Well what would we do then, they ask. Whatever you want, he exclaims. One of the men spits and moves his knight. Doin' it a'ready. Of course the story isn't about laziness, its about being alive.

We live in a society that respects the self-made person, the steady worker and the empire-builder, but we envy the person who is happy. Scoff at him if it means he's sitting on a beach waiting for the surf. But we envy him all the same.

I had a long talk with Philosopher Robert recently. Got to talking about how we are all on a journey, how none of us- in any religion or doctrine have a monopoly on knowing God. We are perhaps privy to enough, but encouraged to pursue more. At the end of the day we are a mortal looking into the night sky and wondering, and I wonder, if that's not as good as anyone can do. To be. To sit on that beach and recognize one's place in relationship to their creator. I've made fun of the Yoga freaks, as I jokingly call many friends of mine, but more and more I think they are practicing a discipline which seekers of truth and life, of God, of all kinds have been practicing for millenia. The Bible teachers get uncomfortable now, but I offer Mary who sat at Jesus' feet as preferable to Martha running around trying to make things right. I think about Jesus' teaching on worrying and wonder if he wasn't getting our perspective back in order. Thinking about tomorrow isn't going to change it, but being here, now, is good. Personally, this is what I think the idea of a Sabbath is about. We have a week to be agents of productivity, but on the seventh we should, if we can, relax into who we are as human beings, as creations of the devine. I'm not going to say I'm very good at this, because I really don't think I am. I am the guy who will put my desires to do something “great” before relationships. I am the guy who will forfiet the feast before me by banking it on some pipe dream. Another of Jesus' parables was about the man who stored up food for many years and then died before he could do anything with it and maybe this is about the frailty of life or the importance of sharing or of not being lazy, but maybe if the man had thrown a party with his excess he might have been happier about dying. I don't know. How do we live the good life?

Over the years I've fallen back on that verse from Micah which simply tells us “I have shown ye, oh man, what is good and what the LORD requires of thee. To do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.”
It could be simple.

I've got to make a TV show recommendation. I really do. Its called “Derek” and its available as an exclusive on that movie streaming service everyone uses. Just seven short episodes, but if you have any appreciation for British humour, watch it. The main character is named Derek, who is described by his roommate as not having “a lot going on up there, but what is, its all good”. In the last episode different characters reveal their boiled down life philosophies, deciding that Derek had hit upon a way to live the good life, even if he was a bit simple. He had figured out that being kind to others made his life have meaning and made him feel good. It was simple, but something that no-one else seemed to get. It was like a boulder in the middle of the road which everyone walked around but if you were to climb atop it you would have found a sign that said wait here for the bus.

One of my teachers in high school, i remember, advised my class to not be caught up with getting life all lined up. “First it was finish high school for me,” she said, “Then finish university, then meet a man and get married, then have a child. It was always the next thing, but I don't think it needs to be.” I guess i took her words to heart because i did about eighteen different things between the time i graduated high school and decided to get a university degree, and none of them was get married or have a child. But now even those sound like they could be great adventures. Peter pan thought that even death could be a great adventure.

“Our daily bread” Jesus said. In our society we might be lucky enough to live one that's not entirely “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” as Hobbes put it, but all things in perspective. We don't live forever in this life, and that informs our perspective. We live with the immediacy of temporality. Beauty becomes sacred. Enjoy it before it sets behind the city lights.

considering dogma in 8 scenes

It is hardly possible to overrate the value, for the improvement of human beings, of things which bring them into contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar... it is indispensable to be perpetually comparing [one's] own notions and customs with the experience and example of persons in different circumstances."
John Stuart Mill

Scene 1: Don

“You know, you're the first religious person I've met in Canada”
“Really eh? Yeah... well, frankly the West-coast isn't known for being the most churched part of the country, you're not as likely to find as much of a “religious” culture here. Not in the traditional sense anyways.”
Don was from Ireland. Brainwashed, he would say, by the overbearing Catholic church there, and plenty bitter about it. He would be working with me for another couple weeks on the farm. He was a thoughtful and hilariously explicit musician. I loved having him around.
“They lied to me. Out and out. Compromised my primary education by telling me science was wrong because they couldn't make it work with their system. They held fear over our heads to control us when we were kids and it wasn't till i was a teenager that I got the guts together to call it out for all its bullshit. I mean, I get that religion is a way of self-betterment for some people, and i respect that, and, you know, you seem pretty relaxed and open as a religious person, but in my experience that kind has been anything but the norm.”
“Yeah man, I don't know. I can't speak for others, and I guess that's it. We're all on a journey, and for some that has brought them to a fairly static place. Personally, I feel like I've seen too much to paint the world in black and white. For me there's really something about Christianity that I value a lot. I mean, there has to be, but I get it if you don't. I don't know much of your experiences, but I'm guessing your choices and views on life are based on some pretty unique ones, and I can appreciate that.”
“Its dogma I can't stand” he said. “I mean, I was down in Texas a while back and had a fellow tell me to my face that I was going to burn in hell. You know? Because I didn't believe what he did.”
I sighed. “Yeah... that bothers me too, but I've been thinking about that kind of thing. I mean, I don't appreciate the sentiment either, but you know, if we remove ourselves from that kind of 'blind faith,' if you will, you have to kind of admire it, don't you? I mean, whether you're a Islamic extremist with a bomb strapped to your chest or a Bible-beating baptist who won't give on his particular belief system no matter what is propped up in front of him to illuminate its absurdity, its sort-of admirable that both kinds of fundamentalist tolerate the kind of prejudice they do while sticking to their guns. Its sort of amazing. That's real belief isn't it? I think if I'm going to try to understand others' reasons for believing the things they do and the choices they make, that includes the extreme dogmatists, that's all. Its something."
“I don't know” Don answered. “I wouldn't use the word respect. Unless its respect like I respect that doorjam after i got my foot caught in it and got all bruised up. Its a respect based on fear. Fear of the potential for getting hurt. I'll look out for it next time.”

Scene 2: Olivia

“Ok, well, if you don't mind me asking, could you date or marry a girl who wasn't Christian?”
“Could I or would I?”
“Both?”
Olivia was riding in the car with Don and I. Olivia from South Britain. She's come to work at the farm too, and she fits right in. Unlike Don, she doesn't have a religious background. She's just curious about mine. I love being the center of attention, so I let her drill me on whatever she wants. Plus, she's pretty.
“Well, I don't suppose there's any strict rules against it, although there are some bible verses that churches toss around to argue against marrying out. Personally, I think it comes down to the fact that I wouldn't be likely to marry someone who didn't have some similar faith experience because its integral to who I've become, in the same way that I probably wouldn't marry someone who grew up in a different culture or class. I mean, look around you. It happens, but not often. We tend to pair up with those with commonalities. If i was truly in love with someone who didn't believe what I did, I don't know. I haven't been there. If it happened my answer might be different.”
“Yeah, religion shouldn't keep people apart if they want to be together”
Don, despite his cynicism is yet the romantic. (When I first met him he reminded me of Glen Hansard so much that I had to ask if he'd ever met him. He simply answered, “ah yeah, I've met Glen.”)
“Ok but what about this...” Olivia pressed on, “Wouldn't you not want to marry someone outside the church because then you'd believe that she was going to hell while you were going to heaven? Right?”
“Yeah, I don't know...”
“But isn't that right? If you don't believe then you go to hell? And you wouldn't want your wife to go to hell.” Olivia's sincerity makes me want to marry her, a little bit. Maybe she's right.
“Yeah, the rest of the world gets to go down below 'cause they got it wrong” Don confirms.
“What do you believe about that? That's right isn't it? I hope I'm not putting you on the spot too much asking you all this,” Olivia presses.
“Well that's it. I don't know. I mean, the party line is, yes, pretty much what you say. But who makes up these doctrines?” I stumble along “I mean, I get that the church as an institution has to have its belief systems in a row, but personally, my guess is that a lot of Christians will admit that they aren't sure. There really isn't that much in the Bible, if that's what you're basing your doctrine off of, about Hell. Not really that much about afterlife in general, not in a conclusive way. I think there's quite a bit of room to question and not be sure at the end of the day. I don't have a conclusive answer, but since you're asking me, I just don't see it. The idea that there is a streamlined narrow belief set that you have to subscribe to to get out of here without getting burnt, and the rest are screwed because they weren't lucky enough to stumble onto that path- yeah, that doesn't really make sense to me.”

“What's the difference between Faith and Belief?” Olive again. We are almost back to the farm.
Damn good question.
“I don't know that I've given that enough thought to be honest, but I suppose some might say that belief would be like believing that a car will carry you across the country, whereas faith would actually be to get in the car and drive it across the country. I think that's a reasonable metaphor.”
“Right, that makes some sense I think.”
Don hesitates as we pull up to the farm house “I would rephrase the analogy” he says, “Belief is more like seeing a boat and thinking that it will float and faith is taking it onto the open sea to see if it sinks.”
Don. Always the romantic.

Scene 3: the marriage of Heaven and Hell

I didn't see it coming. I had dragged my lazy summer legs to church in the heat of the summer, secretly hoping for a short, palatable and practicable message. I did not expect the topic to be on “heaven and hell” and for the speaker to spend 95% of his time emphasizing the hell side.
He opened by saying that if we were people who believe the bible should be taken literally as it is written then we should stick around for the remainder of the message. The assumption seemed to be that we did.
I considered leaving right then, but like the time I'd paid for a terrible box office remake of a terrible box office original under the influence of several pretty girls, I stuck around to see what happened.
There were a few classic fallacies to follow. There was the “if-the-preacher-says-it-its-above-question” fallacy (“There are hundreds of references to hell in the Bible”... wait a sec. No there's not. Not even close. What's a “reference”?). Then there was the, drawing a parallel from one section of the bible to another, in this case nehemiah on the watchtower applied to a warning about post-life punishment. “If the bible says it...” even if in several different places. Like playing beatles albums backwards or finding connspiracy plots in peoples magazine using numerology. There was the Jonathan Edward bomb: he said this therefore we believe this. Then there was a collection of quotes on hell, as if by someone else saying it it proved something. They weren't qualified or barred, just stated. Like this one: “If you don't believe in hell you're probably going there”. Wow. If anything fosters a fear-based dogma its that kind of thinking. If I, who as you now know, am not always sure about what I believe, does that mean I'm necessarily going to hell- and not just any hell. THEIR version of hell- because that's the one I don't believe in. What if I don't believe the right things about other parts of doctrine or characteristics of the unfathomable deity we humbly call “God”? Am I in danger of fire? Is this a gospel based on fear? Hold onto your beliefs and bury them deep within the bunker with your shotgun shells and canned goods, 'cause when the day of reckoning comes, we need to protect them as our lives depended on them. Don't question them, because we all know where that leads.

Scene 4: Love and Fear

I don't know how many people brought up that particular sermon at the pub or dinner table after church that night, except I know that I found conference with a couple of educated and experienced thoughtfulls in a back corner who took issue with the sermon as i had, and made me feel better about doing so. Two Sundays on, however, I found myself at a table with a few other church-goers with a prompt to discuss practical ways to love other people. It wasn't long 'till the topic from two weeks ago was brought up. One member at the table had apparently swallowed the watchtower metaphor down to the dregs and was sincerely concerned about the eternal destination of those in his life and wondered how to show love and draw them to the light as an act of well-meaning love.
“How do you translate to someone to whom you are asking to change their whole worldview” he asked. “Why do we get so hesitant, so scared? We are doing them a favor. They need to know.”
None of this was making sense to me and i had to contribute my perspective. It was beginning to scare me how the conversation was ringing with the remaining tones of an earlier fearful bell of my religious history which i thought had been cut down. I began by advocating that a practical way to love others was to approach humbly. We aren't any better than anyone else, i said. Not really. Our decisions are really very attached to our experiences and the more we realize this the more we can speak honestly about who we are, what we believe and why, while adjusting OUR worldviews to understand why others see differently than us. This is where I need to start to really love someone, I said to treat them as equal as God says we are.
But a comment from across the table wanted to make a distinction. Perhaps she heard echoes of pluralism in my monologue.
“But we are different: we have made a choice. Its grace, like you say, but we are different.”
So hard, I thought, to love as we aught while holding fundamentals which seem to embody a politics of othering. Yes, we accept that the difference is grace, but its no more extended to us than to those who aren't inclined to reach for it through the dark. I reminded that we should be careful, if not fearful in expressing our beliefs, because some have very good reasons to have negative associations with religion or faith.
What concerned me was the fear that the message on hell had seem to left on some hearts. I've been there, and I don't think its right. I don't.

I heard a podcast once, about a guy who coined the self-identitifier “possibilitarian”. As funny as it was pertinent, The idea was that in a world of conflicting certainties, he wasn't sure about a lot of religious assurances, but believed that they were possible. Not a new philosophy, but a fun rephrasing for an era worn down by more than a century of years Christian fundamentalism and culture wars. Inter-disciplinary awareness tells me that science has been backing down from absolutes and philosophy has not solved any of the great questions, and I find this invigorating. The conception might be that this perceptions ask one to question their faith. But I don't think that's quite right. Do we trust a system of doctrines, or God? Some will say I've sold out to say that we need to step back to see a bigger picture, but I'm trying to be honest about where this journey is taking me. I don't think I'm out to undermine a belief system, but perhaps faith, for me, is trusting God while realizing that searching for truth will not always jive with what I've believed before. Trust God while discovering his world. Step into the void like Indiana Jones? Philosopher Robert likes to say that if atheism were true then God would want us to be Athiests. Can I trust God to get me through a journey if that journey is a genuine pursuit of Truth and Light? It has been said that all truth is God's truth. What have we to fear?

Ignorance is bliss?
nah...
Ignorance is closing your eyes in the twilight.

We wait for all the cards to be on the table, but we look out the window trying to glimpse the wind.
Limitation is life.
but I trust its enough.

Scene 5: a Red Light

I rolled down my window at the red light and leaned across the passenger seat to say hi to a guy I knew from the church I used to help out at in the town where I used to live. I wouldn't say we got along really well, but he was well-meaning. If anything, I was probably a jerk and he was the guy who ignored the fact. Got to give him that.
“You heading to church?” he asked, we were both driving into the city, away from our small town church. I hesitated. It was sunday. I was on my way to have breakfast with friends. I hadn't been to church on a Sunday morning in a long time.
“Uh, no. Breakfast... You?”
“Yeah, a new church” he gave me the name. “You know it?” I'd lived in the neigbourhood a long time. I knew a lot of the local institutions. I knew this one by reputation. I wanted to ask why he wasn't going to the church back in the town, but i guessed at the answer.
One trades up.
The name of the church denomination made my stomach turn a bit. I've come to know it through a collection of vocal Church people from around town who I'd come to, frankly, avoid. Even showed up to a few of their church services when I followed a pretty girl in. What I couldn't handle was how everyone seemed to be talking at me, from a point of authority. They told me that scriptural authority was ignored by most churches. They told me about the denomination's Bible college in California as some kind of utopia. One guy came back espousing scriptural authority and the importance of exegesis. Fuck. I've heard enough of that greek derivitave cultural contextualizing business. Same as any historical work except that these kinds of Christians are the only ones who seem to think they can achieve an authority on truth whereas the rest realize that there's inherent problems which prohibit any ultimate claim. Two of the loudest of this following had built a reputation in my mind for backing less-confrontational people into corners and telling them how the Catholic church was a heretic pagan institution. Not a fan of that approach, nor the attitude. Also not a fan of how leadership in Christian institutions, whether churches, youth groups or campus ministries, look at the headstrong people like these guys and mistake it as a leadership asset which should be employed in their institution. Scares me, to be honest. Young people don't need a narrow set of ideals and doctrines any more than the rest of us, but it might do them more damage.
The problem, as I see it, is that a group like the one my friend was enroute to congregating with might have been as well-meaning as he was. But when you start saying that everyone else is wrong and only you have it right, it seems like you're on your way to becoming a cult yourself. For better of for worse, people seem to latch onto groups with a strict set of beliefs, and I guess that included me, but a few years ago owning the authority stopped sounding cool and smart and cutting-edge, and started rubbing me the wrong way. When you set up your bible, your interpretative process, your college professors or the word of your pastor from the pedestal as some kind of idol, some kind of authority, I get scared and defensive. When someone starts waving the Bible like a weapon that they alone know how to use, then I'm afraid they might indeed kill and maim, well meaning or not. Knowing the Bible is not knowing God. Categorically its not. Does knowing more make me elite anyways? Does the lubricant from spitting contests sharpen iron, even if a sword is what you wanted? Is scriptural interpretation based on seeking the truth or propping up one's own ability? Authority? Philosopher Robert recently told me that the more he experiences in life the more he has learned to question those in power: those who have something to lose by losing their side of a debate.
The light turned green and I pulled away.
Its tough to get along.

Scene 6: Fear; all that we saw was owing to

I don't know if it was the dreary rain that oppressed my glorious hike on the West coast or my aloneness, the Vampire Weekend song I had just heard on my drive up to the trailhead
(“If I’m born again I know that the world will disagree
Want a little grace but who’s gonna say a little grace for me?

We know the fire awaits unbelievers
All of the sinners the same
Girl, you and I will die unbelievers
Bound to the tracks of the train

I’m not excited, but should I be?
Is this the fate that half of the world has planned for me?”)

but somehow, for some reason, I was transported back to a dark place in my spiritual journey- a place ruled by fear. I fell, like a spirit on my soul or drug on my mind on oppression which drew on the fatal threat of “what if”. If you let the “what if” rule you- succumb to the possiblity that the fundamentalist is right, that those not accepting of the truth and redemption according to their system is doomed- then there was no way out. There was no chancing that it COULD be wrong. The stakes were too high. Must treat it like truth. Not even room to question- to reintrepret it, to re-explain. No room for any of that.
I thought about something I'd read about, I think it was about Brother Laurence who evidently struggled much of his later life in knowing twheter his sould was secured for salvation. Brother Lawrence, the guy who wrtoe the book on just enjoying God's prescence and fnding joy and satisfaction in doing every menial task to his love, rather than regimenting certain blocks of time to disciplined and forced communion. I wondered if he doubted his salvation when he looked around and reaslized that he was doing things differently than everyone else. He wasn't obeying the formula. He doubted. He fell to the “what if” and he stumbled into fear. In fear religion is an opiate.
Its better to die on your feet than live down on your knees.” I'd heard the mantra applied to life in religion and heard it as a sad rebellion against a God who doesn't force us on our knees, but helps us find our bearing. In this moment of regression, this hike of fear, however, I suddenly encountered what I think they really meant.
My sould screamed it to the fear, and my will said “NO!” with but a hint of a quiver, “NO!” I can't go back there! I'd sooner walk away and loose it all.
This is no way to live.
Hell, this is no way to hope.
And so I came back to that odd bit of gospel- like the word “gospel” itslef; the idea that Jesus' message was, in fact, “good news”- I came back to that line, desperate to believe it, “the Thief comes to kill and destroy, but I have come so that you might have life and have it to the full.”
No. This couldn't be gospel: This “what if”- this fear-based unsurety was the thief. It killed. It was destroying.
I looked up and saw cedars and salal bushes and picked some huckleberries and saw the birds and the surf and the people, all the beautiful people. And i breathed this goodness deep into my mortal lungs.

Scene 7: Come all ye weary

Pasta Rob was speaking at church. He offered up some hope. He reminded me of another little bit of gospel which pointed to liberation rather than slavery.
“Come to me you who are heavenly burdened and I will give you rest.” This was evidently saying that the gospel was being made accessible. 'till then the teachers of the law and members of the strict and full-time religious orders had something of a monopoly on righteousness and religion. The lower class people could only do their best to keep up with the books of law and regulations that were prescribed for a Godly life. Jesus said “enough!” A great weight will be lifted. Come to me you who are weary of being yelled at by preachers and told you aren't good enough. I will give you rest. Come to me you who feel weighed down by fear that failing to keep the rules will prove you don't love God enough or belong with his saints- those ruled by the fear of the fundamentalists and the dogma... and I will give you rest. Come to me you who are almost as fed up with religious people as you are with their religion, who are tired of being told to fit a mold- the pharisaic mold, the Sadducaic mold, the stoic mold, the protest line or the show-up-on-time mold, the mold that says you can play piano at church Sunday morning but not at the pub on Saturday night, the mold where a youth master is a near ideal with anything he effuses while a single, thirty-something artist academic who works at a charity which serves sex workers without bringing religion in, is most certainly not. He hasn't shaved in a while. I think he lives with a dealer. He asks inappropriate questions. He votes for the other party. He smokes when he's anxious. He makes us nervous. Why does he bother? Because Jesus said.
Come to me.

Scene 8: the impossibility of unconditionality... and the hope that its not.

We had just run into some Mormons- which was fun. I used to walk past them for the same reason i walk past pushy perfume kiosks at the mall: I'm not in the market. I knew that some people insistently challenge them and talk with them and debate them, but I felt this was equivalent to the same kind of spitting contest that evangelical denominations already have with each other. (Who is smarterest now?!) It accomplishes little. But then i realized that these young missionary guys (why are there never girls?) are all on a journey, literally, traveling on their own pilgrimage. Its really fun to get them off track by asking them about the different small towns they've stayed in. But all that is beside the point.
I was in Salmon Arm for a wedding and was strolling around town with a friend I hadn't seen in a few years: Crazy Chelsea. I love Crazy Chelsea. We used to go to the same college, but then she moved to the big city to pursue her desire to help people and change the world. I think it was there that she both made her mark, but moreover got marked up. But talking to her now was as good or better conversation as ever, and the Mormons set off a dialogue between the two of us as we parted ways with them, that allowed each of us to catch the other up on our lives in the years we hadn't seen one another. We had both re-evaluated our Christian educations. She asked how I managed to enter the academic world with my Christian perspective. By loosing it, I answered. Probably the best thing that could've happened, in hindsight. It was by having it all fall apart that I was able to accept new information openly and honestly and honestly put my faith experience against it. It was liberating, if depressing at times, and that should be telling. When my faith had really been deconstructed I had the good luck to meet people who helped me build it up with out a lot of the ill-foundations it had been built on before. Taking a religion course, for instance, without bias or concern of being proven wrong, was releasing. It helped me relate to people better.
Chels started talking about conversations she's had with her dad, stuff about angels sitting on pinheads or whatever, creationism and salvation and truth and the way one of these hangs on the other. She admitted that she didn't probably believe some of the stuff that her dad insisted on. She believed in the evidence of science, for instance, which he evidently considered an affront to religious truth. The trouble was that these conversations she had with her father wouldn't sit well with her later. The question became, she explained, “well dad, do you still love me. Do you still love me despite what I believe. I mean, I'm still your daughter aren't I?”

I know a guy who ran away from the cultish brethren church of his parents, as a teenager. Upset and looking to escape he ran straight to the continental hell hole of debauchery and decadence: Disneyland. When he ran out of money and food and returned home, however, his parents shunned him. Made him sleep in the basement.
My friend Laurels' grandparents believed that preacher from the states that said that the apocalypse was going to happen last year. I wanted to know how they treated their children and grandchildren in the lead-up. She said it was a chilly relationship. More interesting was after. Her grandfather came back to her mother and apologized. Her mother said no worries; we all believe some crazy stuff.

Chelsea's point was so valid. Does our love/care for others depend on their beliefs? Does God's? And when I was done chewing on that, I flipped it: Can I love the fanatical fundamentalist despite the pain they cause to others? That's a tougher one.

“And then” said Chels, “there's this religious idea I've been raised with that we aren't to be happy, pursue it, or want it. I think happiness is a gift, and something that I feel church has robbed me of.”

Freedom to question. Freedom To be loved regardless of beliefs or conduct. Freedom to pursue happiness. If I can believe that these are valid liberties, will I love people better, worse, or indifferent?

Changes IX: on our feet. on our knees.

I've been wanting to become a better person, and I suppose that is as much as anyone can ask. Its something which has had to begin at a reasserted sense of self-identity- a real desire to become better because its where I believe creator God wants me to be, but also as i realize the advantage it holds for me. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Over the past semester, under the pressure of academic deadlines a tired body and heart I became effected by the duality of, on one hand, my own failures- and on the other, determination. I like the romanticism of positivism and the idea that i can make myself a better person, but I admit that it is God's grace that I continually rely on in a world where I am pulled by two relentless polarities- often failing, ever weak. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So we do the best we can in a world which is fraying under the weight. Sometimes we feel stronger and sometimes weaker and the lies fed to the strong are that they will always be strong and that their strength is a licence to run solo. What I think I've become more aware of is that my strengths are not for me alone any more than my weaknesses are. We help each other, and usually out of a place of shared infirmity, relative limitation, and the awareness of equality that that brings: “beggars telling other beggars where to find bread,” someone once said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “One thing I realize as I get older” Said a friend recently, “is that there is a lot of sorrow in the world”. I think there is a time early in life where you can largely ignore this sorrow, and it might even evade you. At some point, however, it will find you and it might destroy you or it might define you. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Discipline and conviction are, i suppose, what helps prepares someone for an event which his heart would normally respond badly to. It is what helps rescue workers focus on the tasks at hand and ignore shock. It is what makes you want to keep becoming better even after the girl who was your aim and hope cuts you lose. It might help you stay alive when others die. We take a deep breath, and with strength which comes from community and Grace that comes from God we put another foot in front.... And then another.

Changes VIII: encounters

I used to think that Clint Eastwood's movie Unforgiven was a little bit ridiculous. Just because I didn't really think that a woman could change a man. The fact that he finally reverted to his old cold killing self after she died shouldn't have come as a surprise. The fact that she had changed his character at all, and until years after she died seemed pretty far fetched. At least to me. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But then I met someone. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I didn't really get that someone could fall for someone else so fast and so hard. Damn. So hard it hurt. Didn't know that could happen. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The point here being that she made me want to be a better person. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now, its worth saying that it didn't go anywhere. I had to take a lesson in humility and acquiescence. I guess life goes on. But when I was trying to make an impression I felt like I had no ammunition. I felt like any charms up my sleeve had been had been corrupted on shallow flirting and social manipulation. I felt like a politician trying to be a real person offside the campaign trail. He suddenly realizes that aside from gimmicky speeches, honestly proving substance comes hard. Trying to be real, I stumbled and choked and I felt a welling within to be better. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I was no gunslinging killer, but I realized I could be better, that I should be, and that I wanted to be. I suddenly realized what kinds of things motivate people improve themselves. The “WHY” hit me. For her, yes. For friends, yes. For God, yes. Why? Because I was made to be better, it just took some realizing that I wanted to be the way I was made: that this was in fact a very beautiful transformation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Over the past couple of years I have written on my disillusionment with ethics and christian religious life, contouring slowly back to where i have begun to find value in discipline and community once more. I think in more or less words I have decided that it takes seeing oneself as consequential to see a life as something worth improving. The “who” in my life have been cataclysmic.

Changes VII: Chivalry, not quite dead.

I recently have had the opportunity to spend time with woodsman John. John often gets poked fun at for his being a woodsman and all. He lives in the wilderness, carries a knife, has a truck, owns guns, wears suspenders and looks like an offspring of Paul Bunyan. This is why I call him Woodsman John. The interesting thing, though, is his“old fashioned” sense of chivalry. I know enough of the redneck variety, who would live up to their stereotypes of creepily asking girls to go 4x4ing with them, bragging about how many guns they have or talking about killing animals like its something they savour. John, however- I don't think I've even heard him swear, certainly not in front of a girl. He calls senior men and woman as Maam and Sir and saves his words so they don't run off. Staring into the face of the wild he not become wild. And the funny thing is that when he is spending time in the “civilization” of the city he is the one who stands out as being the most collected character- the disciplined type. If you wanted someone you could trust to get your kids home safe from a party, or think straight in a dangerous situation, I think he'd be your man. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I like the romanticism of positivism: the idea that we can better ourselves and are on a vector towards self-made perfection- that is, in as far as it means surrounding myself with fine art and quality workmanship and bowler hats or fedoras. I like fedoras. But the problem remains that we are animals as well as humans- a fact which gets in the way of our humanity. Christians often point to the doctrine of “the fall” to explain our corrupted nature- the part of us that might go wild without checks and balances. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There might be some value, I am led to think, in a disciplined life, but the belief that we can perfect ourselves is historically a recipe for fundamental ideologies and painful falls off big and well trained horses. Chivalry is dead they say. Its true that things have changed. Chivalry was a social construction, existing in a time of dragons or something. Maybe we don't need it anymore. I don't think, however, that the fact that it was only a social construction means that its necessarily destined for death. Does chivalry reflect an ideal which degraded humans, or a discipline which gave them value? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The way i figure is that civilization has always been protected by a “thin red line” somewhere. On that front the animality of men, through barbarous failure to compromise have kept civilians far within cities and borders enjoying peace. In the age of the roman empire, the armies weren't even allowed inside Rome. They were a threat to society. Presently, many don't even like the police officers in their cities- and yet they are the forces which keep a healthy democracy from adopting anarchical violence on the fringes. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When we think about chivalry we think about knights. It was the social construct that took the animal barbarity of a warrior, removed his helmet, replaced it with a hat and had that hat throw down his jacket before a woman lest she should step in a puddle. It allowed the animal to become a human. Couldn't she have figured out a way to go around the puddle? Not the point. The point is the act of discipline which kept the inherent animal an identity of human decency which could contribute to a healthy society of not just men, but woman and children too. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I wonder if some social constructs like this, though unpopular now, have been crucial to what have kept humans “civil”, although even that word has fallen from popularity also. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My point here is that, although I enjoy the romanticism that I can become a better man, making a list of times in the day that i screwed up like Ben Franklin did, believing that by wearing a a bowler cap I might take on an upper class lilt and treat my fellow men with instantaneous Christian benevolence, the case is that I am at once an animal- a fallen human. It is a balancing game of being the best I can, but also being aware of my limitations. I walk like a toddler, doing his best to put one foot in front of another, but with hands above his head, guided and balanced by his father. Only here loosing the fear of stumbling. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In this season when I seek a structure wherewith to interpret what it is to be a good and decent and respectful man, the ethic of chivalry has regained some of its lost popularity, at least to me. Humility balanced with discipline. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Being a good man, perhaps, is not natural at all. From a civilization perspective it is a construct designed so that more of us can live here. From a Judeo-Christian perspective, it is a discipline which resists our fallen nature and brings us closer to what God wants us to be. Good things have been corrupted by selfishness. Fear replaces trust. Lust replaces admiration. Cash value replaces beauty. Materialism makes everything and everyone into an exploitable resource. The spiritual mentality of religion can foster a discipline and, to some extent, a worldview which supports something much better. While realizing the rightly placed criticisms upon both chivalry and religion as social constructs, I nonetheless see elements of both in my life which help me become who I believe I am destined for- an objective which I hope I am collectively becoming. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- An old friend of mine used to be a pastor, and I used to listen to him preach a lot. As it goes, I don't remember very many of the topics he preached about now. The one I remember best, however, was about the will: Will vs. Heart. Follow your heart, everyone says. Rob said don't. Your heart can be lead you good places as well as bad. It is fickle. The will is something grounded in predetermined and thought out convictions which serve as a countercheck against what the heart might be saying. Take control of yourself Rob seemed to advocate: follow your will, not just your heart. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ... and then when that truly true and really real good good comes along and the will agrees, you give heart soul and strength to get it.

changes VI: Impulse

I was reading Don Miller's road trip story again, and I liked the way he said that beauty wasn't, to him, entertainment, a fact which he felt the institutional church had mistaken. Real beauty should make you hurt a bit on the inside. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I never used to miss people very much when I, or they, left town. I had a pretty engrained idea of self that to be independent was to be strong. But I've just had a couple friends leave, just for the summer, and I'm left wanting words that explain that by saying I will miss them I mean that they are so important. It hurts, but its a good kind of hurt. Does this make me weak, to become weak for another person? I think this, rather, roots us in whom we are meant to be. Roots us in one another. God, we might accept, is a Trinity- a community in one entity. I love this idea, that community could be so core to our divinely created identity. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't know if anyone falls in love, but I have observed that lives can make sudden shifts, as if a chemical switch is turned in the brain. My boss told me the other day that he was smoking three packs a day, had tried to quit multiple times but one day he just realized what he didn't want to end up like, and, throwing his last pack out the window on the way from one city to another never had another craving. I wonder if you can't fall, by some extraordinary miracle, into purpose. When I met somebody who made me want to be a better person, who made me want to fall for them, I determined that I would if i could. A shift so strong took hold that it hurt to realize it. A good kind of hurt. A kind of hurt that used the lens of grace and determination against my self-realization to get a glimpse of what could be. Like music: a thousand mistakes and poor decisions and absurd stubbornness to create five or ten minuets of uninterrupted incredulidity. Sometimes this resolve would hit me, just like it was whatever the antonym of depression is. Take that experience (you might know it) when a depression hits so hard that it moves through emotional pain and manifests on the edge of physical pain: the moment that undermines hope and drills a hole from the chest to the stomach, that makes you stoop, grimace, clutch your arms around yourself, reduced to grasping at loose timber after the boat has sunk. It is this, but inverse. The resolve hits the same nerve centre with a different impulse. It strikes a piece of rebar into the hole that depression left and causes you to stand upright, proud, determined, eyes locked on the goal, swimming for shore. A determination that is banked on one side with a clarity which vice falls against, and on the other side with the awareness of self- frailty and the need for divine help.

changes V: Help wanting help

Sometimes we receive without giving anything back. And sometimes we give. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ My favourite American book is “A River Runs Through it” by Norman Maclean. The Redford film is also wonderful. It is a beautiful, though sad, story about our own limitations in helping others who won't or can't accept our help. This idea is fleshed out in the conversation Norman, writing as himself, has with his father about his brother who has gotten himself into serious trouble. Norman's father tries to make sense of the elusive hope of loving someone without knowing if it does any tangible good.

“Help,” he said, “is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly. “So it is,” he said, using an old homiletic transition, “that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don't know what part to give or maybe we don't like to give any part of ourselves. Then, more often than not, the part that is needed is not wanted. And even more often, we do not have the part that is needed. It is like the auto-supply shop over town where they always say, 'sorry, we are just out of that part'.” I told him, “You make it too tough. Help doesn't have to be anything that big.” He asked me, “Do you think your mother helps him by buttering his rolls?” “She might,” I told him. “In fact, yes, I think she does.” “Do you think you help him?” he asked me. “I try to,” I said. “My trouble is I don't know him. In fact, one of my troubles is that I don't even know whether he needs help. I don't know, that's my trouble.” “That should have been my text,” my father said. “We are willing to help, Lord, but what if anything is needed? I still know how to fish,” he concluded. “Tomorrow we will go fishing with him.”

Sometimes, even if we want help, a human doesn't have the ability or strength to reciprocate it. If we, like Norman and his father, are the ones extending love, we might take some redemption in the idea that the limitation we experience might be like what God knows before we know His love. If we are the broken we can perhaps only be lucky enough to feel this love manifested in human form, because just maybe if we survive we will do so to know what love is better than anyone else. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I suppose this is how one might find the strength to appreciate a season of gain against a season of pain: only against a dark canvas could such light be cast. Like flowers from ash, this too might become strangely beautiful.

changes IV: naming the pain

I was talking to my quiet and thoughtful friend Ben recently when he quietly commented that there is a lot of sorrow in the world. The older you get, he said, the more you realize that it doesn't stop. The comment stuck with me. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Another conversation I had with another friend recently opened up a world of pain in their life which I had been unaware of, and the question was thrown into the air with the ambivalence which we knew had moved through frustration and anger: how are we expected to respond when these things happen? And with an exhaustion that only hopes grace can get us out we ask “why?” hardly expecting an answer. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Personally, (because I'm poor at writing at things less than personal and other than self-oriented) I don't know why things got bad, though I know they could've got worse. Still, why? Why did I have to go so long without feeling happy? Why did I have to feel fear of the coming pitfall when I was otherwise manic? Why did i feel so alone? I don't know the answers, but with honesty I am beginning to see that the experience and the healing has made me better, somehow, now. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sometimes we, people, are really too weak to help anyone else. This is where the humility which comes with our own brokenness could be a subtle blessing. It allows us to accept help. And when we do get back up, albeit limping, with what grace is given us to extend our frail hands to another, we do. And we do so not out of religious obligation in the mandated sense, but out of spiritual thankfulness in the love sense. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I guess it took a few months of community healing before I began to think about giving back- and at first it was stiff. Now, a year on, its beginning to flow more naturally. It seems to be coming involuntarily from thankfulness for what has become and what never got worse. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anne Lamott put it so nicely:

“Gratitude begins in our hearts and then dovetails into behavior. It almost makes you willing to be of service, which is where the joy resides. It means you are willing to stop being such a jerk.”

This natural response is so much more beautiful, to me, than the religiosity which religion becomes when we put obligation on our fallen souls, or the stress Ben Franklin must have felt when he kept track of his goodness in relation to his keeping his 13 virtues. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lamott wrote that

“'Thanks' is a huge mind shift, from thinking that God wants our happy chatter and a public demonstration and is deeply interested in our opinions of the people we hate to feeling quiet gratitude, humbly and amazingly, without shame at having been so blessed.”

These days this is the only approach that seems to work to readjust my self-obsessed view of others onto the equilateral field of God's creations on a plane of grace. I want to start at His grace, in my bustedness, and at my thankfulness for it.

changes III: church for real?

...

I've recently realized that I've been experiencing church on a whole new level. It hasn't been the show up sit down and leave of my childhood. Nor has it been the work-horse base of operations model of my missionally indoctrinated teens. Much of my church community has been taking place outside the formal structure now- something I might have advocated for in my idealistic teens when I thought the early church model aught to be copied in all its rootsy informality, but which is now, rather, happening more organically than an ideal. I like it. Here's the thing; this organic and informal community has helped me become and want to become a more decent person, and, I think, for a different impulse than the former paradigms offered. As I've been healed by the giving of those around me I have slowly found the ability and desire to give, again, as well. These, no-strings-attached relationships have felt completely fresh, new, and liberating. Like beauty for beauty's sake: a tree for standing. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ In church we have been surfing through the book of Ephesians, which I take to be very much about God's enormous love for us, and our response in bearing with each others' weaknesses with an eye to our own. This begins to make sense to me. This also is very beautiful. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here is a sidenote: I used to try to get to know people by digging straight into their lives, skipping past where they work and where they're from to who they are and what kind of experiences defined them. It was an approach that didn't get me far. Maybe I wanted people know those kinds of things about me, but, to be honest, if I were asked by the same person I was asking I probably wouldn't answer either. Instead, the community I've come to know rests on a slow and steady and safe sharing of “how was your week?”, and “do you have plans for the summer?”, and “what did you get up to today?” These things mean more when asked with consistency and concern than I knew they could. And maybe, one day, as the fire burns down and we've finished off the marshmallows, “how did you get here?” But no hurry.

changes II: reasons to be better

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In my teens I was lucky enough to have a friend/mentor who emphasized a concept of personal integrity: the idea being that who you were when no-one was watching aught to be in tandem with your life the rest of the time. It was about having depth of character. But when no-one seems to be watching at all, any time, ever, however, I have found that rational for self-improvement and self-worth can diminish substantially. Even more, I think, if we find God to be absent. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Loneliness is a curse. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I was reading this book on loneliness in which E. White discusses how loneliness can be something like a feedback loop. An isolated person may become even more wary of others through being isolated and instead of being drawn toward relationship, is repelled from it. White quotes from Robert Lane's thoughts on his finding that companionship levels recorded in the United States over 20 years fell. The bit I put in italics is what I found most compelling.

"I think that the data shows that you're more likely to be at home with your TV set than you are to be visiting with someone, and when we replace companionship with aloneness we lose the unconscious validation that we're all right, that what we do and think is the right thing to do. The data show that Americans are more anxious than anybody, and I think that's because they feel as though they don't belong."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the movie "Cast Away", Tom Hanks' character spends upwards of four years in solitude, with his friends believing him dead. In this vacuum of community he finds only shards of purpose to pull him against all hope- the idea that he might return to the woman he loved is one that he clings to, even against rational. Where no-one could call him to account for life, he finds a purpose to hold onto his humanity. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- At the end of the film he is talking to his best friend about his experience. "I knew I had lost her" he says, speaking of the woman he left when his plane went down; "I had power over nothing."

"That's when this feeling came over me like a warm blanket... I had to stay alive, somehow. I had to keep breathing, even though there was no reason to hope and all my logic said I would never see this place again. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- "So that's what I did. I stayed alive. I kept breathing. And one day that logic was proven all wrong because the tide came in and gave me a sail, and now here I am. And I've lost her all over again. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- "I am so sad I don't have Kelly, but I am so grateful that she was with me on that island. And I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing, because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Realizing that you can't save yourself is a valuable lesson which is only taught through experience. Despair was like looking over the edge and feeling gravity pulling me over. So what can I claim? A shred of hope? A sliver of faith? God's grace through providence, clothed in guise of blind luck? The promise that a mustard seed was enough? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About this time last year I decided to lean into this remnant once more, even though I felt so damn tired. I had pretty much resolved that if I didn't find something like community by summer's end that I would be leaving town, shaking the dust off my feet as I did. I made a resolution to stop drinking and smoking- trying to do my part to turn a leaf, but in the end feeling that the catalyst could only be people who created substance. Losing Wilson was only a forgone necessity. Incredibly, it happened. I did not move out of town in September, and against my fears that what I'd begun to discover would dissipate with the pace of autumn, I instead continued with this collection of souls which began to heal my helpless self. I don't know that anything in life is as beautiful as real community. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Community. Roll that word around in your mouth. At some point in our lives some of us have decided that this is a utopian ideal which only exists on sitcoms, and not, if less perfectly in real life. But if community isn't meant for us, then why do we get so upset when a character on our sitcom leaves the show? Unless this sitcom character is going to walk out of the screen and into my world I need real people to give my life a vector- to create a storyboard with; to be colors of accent against mine on the canvas of life. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By which we find meaning. By which we find an account, and in that account our story is written, and as we read it, we determine to make it better. We lift up the heroics of others. We are simply glad to be in a good story, and by good we never mean perfect. By good we mean purposeful. And in the purpose we find hope, and in hope, a reason to have integrity, to want to become a better person.

changes I: to be better

How do you become a better person? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Why do you become a better person? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I think I've been over this before, in former posts. My disolusionment with morality etc. Bla bla bla bla bla. But this is important: the slow and intentional shift away from this, which began at a rigid reformation, has gradually turned into experience. From discipline to being. The shift from moralism to morality, from religiosity to religion, from intentionality to habit. Bla bla bla bla bla. In any case, somewhere in here, I think, is the “Why.” ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One of my favourite movies is called “Lars and the Real Girl.” In one great scene, Lars asks his older brother how you know that you've become a man. “Is it sex?” he asks. His brother stammers a moment and then decides that, no, that's not really it. It was deciding to do the right thing when you didn't have to, or when its hard to, or imperfect or when no-one knows or expects more anyways; its when you take responsibility for not only your life but those that it butts up against. Its to be good because its right. Its to be a decent human being. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Is this coming of age innate? Do we just wake up one day with the desire to protect our family for strictly evolutionary reasons? I think that saying yes here is too easy. I wouldn't want to brush off something that I feel sets us apart as human beings. The ability to be civil, and to be good is too profound. In the movie, Lars discovers how to give back only after an entire town has loved him first. They don't feed him to the wolves. Even though they live in Minnesota. Even though Lars carries around a doll which he projects as his girlfriend. Even though. I think the answer to “why” is tied up in the “who” in your life.