Joy

"Alone, even with all the wisdom in the world, we are powerless: castaways adrift in an impersonal ocean. You can't love a computer or a software program or even a book as you can love another person. Sometimes you just need a human." -Tim Sanders, Love Is The Killer App

My last post just after Thanksgiving focused in on 'hurt'. In it, I was approaching the subject from a variety of perspectives, from a sea of ambiguous faces all trying not to say what I really wanted to say. It was a bit maddening. I wanted to write within my current state of disappointment, darkness, and distressed anxiety, but it was difficult. After all, how do you articulate the hurt that so (unassumingly) creeps up on you? How do you put into workable words ideas so steeped in emotion, pain, suffering?

Sometimes, writing feels like a bi-polar, inner-self dance. A dance between the writer's insecurity and their own (failed) attempts to get out the right words, to speak the appropriate truth. The truth, that exists, just in that moment.

Since that day after Thanksgiving, when I wrote about the subject of 'hurt,' I've experienced--particularly in the past week--a grandiose amount of joy. From so many angles, it keeps piercing me, like an unexpected rush of good fortune, good cheer, goodness. Like the word 'Radiant' webbed by Charlotte to save her dear (pig) friend Wilbur, I feel--in some weird way--like the last 5 days have been a gift. A gift so undeserved, blessed, and profoundly overwhelming, I feel as though I can't take it. I'm speechless. In awe. So struck by the beauty and gift of the moment I have to scatter around on the floor in my head to catch my breath.

Blindsided by joy, if you will.

In the Psalms, the writer writes, "My heart leaps for joy, and I will give thanks to him in song." I like this image. Joy leaping up at us via song. One of the first songs that comes to mind after reading this line is the lovely Mac Davis tune, "I Believe In Music." The chorus to the song, says it all: I believe in music, I believe in love, I believe in music, I believe in love.

I think this is partly what I was getting at a few weeks ago when I wrote. My hurt was a loss of faith. A loss of love, in a way. Love for myself, love for my voice as a writer, for my humanness. We all have such a hard time loving ourselves, I think. We don't think we deserve it. We often choose people to love who don't love us well because we don't think we deserve a love worthy of who we really (truly) are. So we settle. Settle for lies over truths, productiveness over playfulness, criticism over kindness. But it's never too late to see it a different way.

Catholic priest Brennan Manning calls the lack of love for self, 'self-hatred'. He believes it is the antithesis of God. The ultimate slap-in-the-face to creation, humanity, and love. Author Donald Miller believes it's one of the most difficult concepts to grasp in life. The still-small-sinking-sick voice telling us we're not worthy, we're not good enough, we're not lovable, often drowns out the simple love-of-self voice within us.

Thankfully, people come into our lives sometimes who help us see the love we're too stingy to give ourselves. For me, this came in three forms (and then some) this past week: 1) a screenwriting professor, 2) a kindred spirit sharing a wonderful art piece with me courtesy of U.P.S., and 3) a new, breath-of-kind-and-fresh-air, friend, who loved on me in a way only a person who doesn't know you can. All seemed to come out of nowhere, yet, all (also) seemed to connect with me at just the right time, just the right moment. It's baffling to me now, even still. I feel joyful, but writing that seems so silly. So insignificant in capturing the rapturous feeling of ecstasy it has brought me.

I've come to realize (this feeling) is more than joy, really. Much more. It's a joy, transformed; transformed into utter gratitude. A gratitude that thanks God, karma, and all the other broken-people-humans out there who've been so gracious, so wise enough to love on me when I can't seem to love myself.

This is when one of Anne Lamott's two prayers is all that can be expressed, at the end of a week like I've had. I must simply close my eyes, sit and silence, and utter: "Thank you, thank you, thank you." That's all I feel now, too. My heart feels full, drunk on gratitude, spinning over too much love, too much grace, too much goodness, kindness, gentleness, happiness.

This is pure joy. What often comes after the hurt.

Hurt

It's hard to feel thankful when you're hurting. When you're grieving, it's even more difficult. Growing up in the church, I often heard people talk about 'giving thanks in all circumstances.' It's in the Bible, yes, it's the way many Christians say we're supposed to feel, supposed to act, supposed to supposed to supposed to.

Do you ever feel tired of living in the 'supposed to' world?

In screenwriting, everything moves because of conflict. Without it, no one would go to the movies. Yet, so many of us avoid conflict, dodge it, suppress it (within others, within ourselves) because we think it will make our life better. But what if the opposite was true? Not 'what if we just made people's lives hell'. Certainly not. But what if we didn't avoid conflict. What if we faced it. They say in movies, audiences are attracted to characters who do the things they only think of doing. For example, if someone cuts you off, gives you the finger in traffic, your inner self may scream out loud and imagine following this person to the nearest Whole Foods to confront them and tell them how 'unacceptable that was.' But who does this? Really? Who has the guts to put into action the thoughts of millions of scared little broken people?

People in the movies.

This is (partly) why we care so much about cinema, about story, about characters. This is why conflict isn't so bad after all.

In Nine Inch Nails' brutal, cut-to-the-core-of-humanity song, "Hurt", Trent Reznor sings: "I hurt myself today / To see if I still feel / I focus on the pain / The only thing that's real." Conversely, there's a line pictured at the end of the film Into The Wild wonderfully summarizing Christopher McCandles' self-realization at his journey's end: "Happiness only real when shared." This was McCandles final entry into his diary before he died.

Two things are posited here as being real: pain and happiness. Like life, both cannot happen alone, in a vacuum. Pain often happens because of others, because of conflict, because of interactions and confrontations with the world. Happiness, according to McCandles, happens only with others. It means nothing to be happy if you're all alone. So why do so many of us avoid pain and believe happiness can happen when we do what we want to do, on our own terms, for the good of ourselves, for the good of what society, parents, friends say we're 'supposed to' do? So many people live lives married to the hope of pleasing others, of not letting our parents down, of being (in a deeply inner sense) found out. We don't want others to know how hurt we are or how much we need them. Of course, there's some good to this. I'm not expecting people walk around all day expressing their deepest hearts' desires to people with whom they don't have a relationship with. Yet, at the same time, it'd be nice to encounter a few more risk takers out there (myself, included). It'd be nice, just once in a very long while, to talk to a person who doesn't let what they're 'supposed to do' dictate what they really should be doing.

I think this is what the writer of that famous (overused) New Testament phrase 'give thanks in all circumstances' was getting at. Giving thanks the for hurt. Why? Because it's real. And because, happiness cannot be felt without it. Friedrich Nietszhe' words first pointed me to this truth, but I don't think I was ready to receive it then. No, I think before you can receive something like this (and when I say receive, I don't mean possess for I'll probably forget this truth in a few years and have to rediscover it in some other place, in some other person and learn it all, over and over again) you have to surrender to the hurt, to the pain, to the suffering inside your own head. It's similar to what John Carroll argued in The Existential Jesus. Like Christ, we all must face the pain of our own mortality, or own deserted, desperate (and painfully lonely) isolation, at times. If we don't, we will break.

Someday.

We will lose it. We can't fight it. We must surrender and accept, not run away and hide. For we won't be able to live with the power of denial and the refusal to see pain and suffering for what it is: real.

This is the water I'm treading in right now (and I have been for the past several months, I think). At times, it's exhausting. At night in bed, it can turn into a kind of all-consuming fear, a morbid sense of detached lifelessness. And then, there are moments (brief glimmers, really) where Joshua Radin's song lyrics struggle to the surface. Where I trust and hope and believe that one day (even though it's not today nor anytime in the foreseeable distance) "everything'll be alright." Where hurt morphs--in a surprise spark of illumination and transcendence--into happiness.

This is 'giving thanks in all circumstances'. When hurt is not marginalized and happiness is not exalted, but both--in all their mystery--are held together, closely. A kind of glorious song and dance of emotional conflict.

Some call this being crazy. I think it's just being.

A (Christian) Reality Check

"It is far easier to ask forgiveness of a god we can't see than from a person we can see." -Philip Gulley, If The Church Were Christian: Rediscovering the Values of Jesus

I'm just finishing up Philip Gulley's new book, If The Church Were Christian, and it's been a breath (blast, at times) of fresh air. Sure, I disagree with some of what Gulley puts forth as 'the values of Jesus,' but for the most part, he's dead on. His latest book might make Matthew and Luke raise their eyebrows (I imagine Mark and John would be smiling all the way through, though). Why? Because this book has a Rabbinic flare to it, in that, it addresses what the Church has too often neglected: today's world, today's people, today's hurting souls. All too often, Christian orthodoxy focuses on future eschatology while leaving John's understanding of realized eschatology far, far behind. It's almost ironic the Left Behind series are called that; for that is exactly what they have done to millions of people. They've left behind an understanding of Jesus, an understanding of living life today, now, here, present in hopes of gaining some personal (eternal) security.

Years ago, I had a thought: "Doesn't heaven sound like the most selfish thing a Christian could ask for? Wouldn't the most sacrificial, love-act be (if love really is laying down one's life for a friend) to lay down one's afterlife, then, as well?" It seems counter-Christian to be so consumed with eternity, yet, this is the way of most church folk.

But that's getting me off track (this is the last chapter of the book, so perhaps that's why I jumped to talking about it because I just finished reading it). In essence, this book is a wake-up call for Christians who want to be real, who want to do good, who want to take life seriously, who want to not check their brain at the door in order to follow Jesus. Some people will tremble and go a little mad after reading some of what Gulley is questioning but this is to be expected. Throughout history, any re-imagining of what Christian Orthodoxy entails has always been met with a firm fist (and sometimes a sword). But Christians need to let go and let loose a bit, and stop thinking that the world rests on their mind's doctrinal stances.

One thing I really loved about the book? It reiterated (within me), why the topic of 'women in ministry' is so important (and still, so behind-the-Jesus-times in so many growing churches). Are we really still telling people that women can't lead--in those most high places--of churches? Are we really still saying their gender has to take a back seat as far as leadership ability goes when it comes to churches? If we are, shame on us. For if we can be so selective of what we will modify (and not modify) within scripture, God help us for what else we are capable of reading (or not reading) into. This book reminded me of the amazing nuances of scripture and how easily we brush over them in hopes of constructing a manageable, livable faith life. How sad it is when people say they're 'living by the good book,' while making slight changes and modifications to their interpretations along the way (and yet, still thinking in their mind what they've done is "absolutely scriptural").

Newsflash: it isn't. So please, don't kid yourself by telling yourself 'this is living like Jesus.' We could all use a lot more humanity, a lot more humility when following Christ. This is the way of Jesus. Additionally, as the book so refreshingly suggests, we need more people willing to follow Jesus and less people who simply want to 'worship him on a Sunday morning.' True discipleship is worship. Maybe that's what the Church has been lacking for so long.

The Beauty of Being Indirect

"He did not hate the Winter now, for he knew that it was merely the Spring asleep, and that the flowers were resting." -from Oscar Wilde's short story, The Selfish Giant

There are a handful of people from history I would love to share a meal with; Oscar Wilde is one of them. When I first came across his short story The Selfish Giant, I did so because I heard he often read it to his children before bedtime. According to one of his sons, Oscar would always start to cry come the story's end. Once upon a night, his son Cyril asked his father why he always cried at the end of The Selfish Giant. Oscar replied, "Because really beautiful things often makes me cry."

Sometimes, these 'beautiful things' can only be approached through story, through metaphor, through a roundabout way. Maybe that's why a movie like The Passion of the Christ didn't affect me personally as much as the movie The Wrestler did. The first is a straight story of the cross. It's about what happened, it's about going through the 'facts' (or, at least, the facts we have come to know), and the lives of Jesus, Mary, and the disciples. The second, however, is a metaphorical story of the cross. It's about the emotional, spiritual undertones. Pain. Suffering. Exclusion. Isolation. All these play into the scenes of the ripped, torn (human) flesh. All of them are as much about the physical as they are about the emotional, the spiritual. Many would argue that The Passion of the Christ succeeded in being about this, too, but I would heartily disagree. The Passion of the Christ gave us torture, gave us violence, gave us torn flesh, but the context was so stooped in religious controversy (and in religious historical debate), the story failed to connect with many people. And why? Because it was too focused on the facts, rather than the spirit and the truth of Christ's lived experience.

In The Wrestler, we see how scared, how confused, how alone Christ must have felt. It's similar, in a cinematic sense, to what Nikos Kazantzakis did in his fantastic novel, The Last Temptation of Christ. In it, Kazantzakis understood what human beings were missing when they were reading the Gospels. They constantly sought out Christ's divinity without every giving much thought to his humanity, his finite nature. That's not wrong or anything, but I don't think it's much help to us in terms of how we live, how we feel, how we love, or how we forgive. Furthermore, there's a distance that's created from the former approach compared to the latter. When you watch The Passion of the Christ you rarely think, "I am like Jesus. He understands my pain." No. All you (can't help but) think is, "I'm sinful. I would have killed Jesus, too. I could never do what he did for me." But when you watch The Wrestler, one is eerily empathetic to "The Ram's" plight because, well, we've all felt like he's felt before. We've failed in relationships, we've let our family down, we've abused our bodies for the sake and pleasure of others and ourselves. The loneliness, the drugs, the wrinkles in our faces. They all reveal time's toll on us. They all reveal the fact that we will one day die.

To take the analogy one step further, it's as if The Passion of the Christ was all about overcoming death and looking towards eternity, and The Wrestler was mostly about facing death and accepting one's own fate, one's own path into eternity. And what does this have to do with Oscar Wilde and The Selfish Giant? Because in it's final sentences, I was reminded of this narrative, literary, metaphorical power. The way you can hear the same story a thousand times and then, hear it told indirectly and finally 'get it.'

I still don't think I've 'gotten it,' but I do think Wilde has helped me see the Passion story in a new light. In the spirit of hospitality, charity, and comforting the week, the lonely, the down-and-out, Wilde has crafted a simple, short, beautiful story that reminds us (through a different type of garden encounter), of how to be human.

And this, Wilde believes, is what makes us divine.

Harvard

"I spent my high-school years staring at the pine trees outside my classroom window and picturing myself on the campus of an Ivy League university, where my wealthy roommate Colgate would leave me notes reading, 'Meet me on the quad at five.' I wasn't sure what a quad was, but I knew that I wanted one desperately. My college friends would own horses and monogrammed shoehorns. I'd spend weekends at my roommate's estate, where his mother would say things like, 'I've instructed Helvetica to prepare those little pancakes you're so fond of, but she's had a devil of a time locating fresh cape gooseberries." This woman would have really big teeth that she'd reveal every time she threw back her head to laugh at one of my many witticisms. 'You're an absolute caution,' she'd bray. 'Tell me you'll at least consider joining us this Christmas at Bridle Haven; it just wouldn't be the same without you.' I fantasized with the nagging suspicion there was something missing, something I was forgetting. This something turned out to be grades. It was with profound disappointment I discovered it took more than a C average to attend Harvard. Average, that was the word that got to me. C and average, the two went hand in hand. I was sent instead to a state college in western North Carolina where the low brick buildings were marked with plaques reading ERECTED 1974, and my roommate left notes accusing me of stealing his puka shell necklace or remedial English book." -David Sedaris, from the chapter "The Incomplete Quad" from his book, Naked

If you haven't read this book, you should. Everyone needs to laugh a little more in life than they currently do. Including me. Including you.

Angels

"Through the open door I could see a sliver of carolers, some faces peering inside at the scattered tatters of money, some faces turned to the sky and the snow, now beginning to fall. And there, in front of them, in the room with us, stood the family, their outlines barely visible within the weight of the room's light. It was a light so brilliant and white it could have been beamed from heaven, and Brian and I could have been angels, basking in it. But it wasn't, and we weren't." -Neil McCormick in Mysterious Skin by Scott Heim

I know this quote probably means nothing to people who haven't read this book (or seen the film adaptation), but it's amazing to me how sometimes, a film can capture the very essence of the written word. It can enhance, enlighten and illuminate the words so brightly, so pitch-perfectly, you feel as though what you're seeing is exactly as you imagined it would be. The tragedy of this scene--in film and written form--is so overwhelming it (almost always) takes my breath away. Brian and Neil, two of the literary world's deeply wounded characters, emerge like angels from heaven, clinging to one another as if their life depended on it.

Something tells me it does. Maybe that's why this scene is so powerful to me. It's where I want to live. Where I want to be. Where I feel safe, inside my own (and some other wounded soul's) mysterious skin.

Existentialism

"Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure. The telegram from the Home says: YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. DEEP SYMPATHY. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could've been yesterday." -Albert Camus, The Stranger

Albert Camus' existential literary masterpiece begins with these (haunting) words. On today, Mother's Day, this quote came to mind. I thought, 'how could someone be so detached from life, from family, from reality to be so nonchalant about his or her mother's death? To not remember the day, the hour, the moment? Obviously, this is a bit of a stretch in the writer's world of this novel as it serves to engage with the reader's thinking, questions, ideas about reality and humanity and life. I know this. But I still find it interesting (and haunting).

It's not just an existential question or problem. It's a human one. And we really should be asking more questions like this, about ourselves (if we want to be really honest) more often.

Dying

"The first step to eternal life is you have to die." -Tyler Durden in Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk

I like the idea of death being linked to eternity. I especially like the idea of this as it relates to reality and our present-day-existence (and living fully in that brief present-day-existence).

I was talking to a friend last night about death as it relates to churches and how funny it is that so many churches (and Christians) fear death as a sort of closing chapter or finality to a life and world in which they have little control over. We talked about how things--and people, and institutions, and ideas--need to die, how it's part of the natural process and a natural (evolving) world. It must happen before anything new can sprout up in its place. Sometimes, before anything good can grow, too.

But for some reason, many of us are surprised, aghast, and even offended when death comes in various forms to ourselves and our ideas and old ways of living our lives (as if we didn't think it was possible to ever end). My friend was telling me how he would go to Catholic church with his parents and how so much of it was just rigid, unchanging, elderly people--a sea of white heads clenching tight to the old ways of living (which are not to be confused with the ways of Scripture, for they are completely different than this). "They mean well," he said. "I know they do...but..." It's not going to last forever. Sooner or later, that physical building, that physical space, that relentless refusal to adapt and learn from life's new lessons (and God's new and ever-changing world) finally caves in and collapses. No more structures. No more budgets. No more people. At least, not in this particular place anymore.

Many Christians are afraid of these days (and claim it's a sign of the apocalypse). Me? I think it's just a sign that we've been doing church wrong for way too long and that our forms of spirituality are not connecting (at all) with the creative surge of life and humanity. And I think it's a good thing, I think it's what needs to happen before this world will be made anew. Before the so-called New Jerusalem will be a place right here, right now, on Earth. Theologians call this a realized eschatology; I call it living life, eternally. Dead, but really, alive.

Gilliam

"The first movie that really got me was Paths of Glory, which I saw when I was sixteen at a Saturday matinee in Panorama City, with kids running up and down the aisle. Suddenly, with Paths of Glory, there was a movie that was about something--about injustice--with themes and ideas, and the good guys didn't win in the end. That film completely changed me and I went around trying to get everybody I knew to see it." -Terry Gilliam (director of Brazil, 12 Monkeys, Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas, and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus) in Gilliam on Gilliam, edited by Ian Christie

I just recently saw Paths of Glory, and still, there are scenes I can't shake away. Like most of Stanely Kubrick's films, the last act just blows you away. Everything comes together. Everything starts to set in, sink in, and simmer from within. From the story's inside-out perspective, Kubrick's direction allows the words (from soldiers who are sentenced to be killed for not following orders, for not respecting authority, by their own generals) and the actions of his characters to bleed a kind of naked vulnerability. I think this may be what Gilliam is talking about. And I think, this is partly why, I enjoy his films (and Kubrick's films) so much. There's an electricity to the dialogue. It feels real, yet it doesn't, all at once. Like a Wong Kar-Wai film, it transcends the space inside the cinematic frame and moves beyond it. Into the audience. Into the living room. Wherever you may be viewing it. And then, out of nowhere, it hits you. And you know you're watching something important and not just another Saturday matinee special.

Silence

"Time is life's fundamental necessity but has become the ultimate luxury--the most expensive and extravagant thing we have. We're in a time famine; we don't need more free time as much as we need more time that is free from desires and demands. No matter what we may think, technology doesn't so much give us more time as enable us to do many more things in the time that we have. In addition, technology makes us more enslaved to work, not less. You don't have to walk far on a crowded beach to find somebody busy at a laptop. What we need is more sabbaticals--time to learn and explore the secrets of the soul. I am not talking about the 'year-off-for-research-and-study' type of sabbatical. I am talking about mini-sabbaticals that are skinny-dips in the fountain of youth. There are three important s's for sabbaticals: stillness, silence, and saying no. Music encompasses and embraces silence though it is made of sound. The rests are what make notes possible. It's the same with life. We need lots of time with nothing to do. Souls are drawn to stillness the way objects are drawn to the ground, the way sounds are drawn to silence." -Leonard Sweet, Summoned To Lead

I've struggled for years with saying, 'no.' At first, it was difficult and then gradually--when my self began reaping the benefits of what saying 'no' meant for it--it got much easier. I think people, in general, are on a continuum when it comes to saying 'no' to others with respect to their own time for silence and solitude: there are those who risk being overly isolated and those who fear isolation at any cost. I think years ago, I was in the latter category. I didn't know how to appreciate alone time, silence, even. As Madeleine L'Engle would say, 'I knew how to be a human doing, but not a human being.'

In today's technological boom-of-an-age, I can't help but think how more interaction through technology and social networking sites doesn't give us more time to be with people, or relate socially, but less. This is not a slam at today's world, only a minor critique of it (and of myself). In a way, we're so connected (and are determined to stay so connected) to our phones, our emails, our computers, we forget what to do (or rather, how to be and live life, in silence, in conversation, in the company of others), when we're away from these devices.

How many times have you been sitting on your couch and for no apparent (pressing) reason, you've thought, "I should check my email." Even though you've been checking it all day long, there still is that need, that urgency, to stay connected, to stay in touch. Ironically, I wonder how out-of-touch this is making us. Not just as people but as societies.

Maybe that's why I like the line in Sweet's book, "We need lots of time with nothing to do" so much. It speaks to everyone of us and is something to remember the next time we're sitting in front of a TV not knowing what we're watching or we're reading Wikipedia on our iPhone trying to find out what "pumice" is, or we're simply scanning through emails and spamming the ones we don't want to read. All of these acts maybe something but they turn to nothing at the end of the day. Whereas, Sweet argues, nothing (or stillness and silence), is something that wouldn't turn to nothing by the day's end.

Branded

"Marketers have convinced these kids that they need a specific set of physical attributes, and that their own qualities must be obviated. For the large subcultures of teens who self-brand into look-alikes with tiny waistlines, bulging biceps, deracinated noses, and copious breasts, the supposed freedom of self-creation is not a freedom at all. What they have is consumer choice, no substitute for free will. Imagine the dark day for marketers when kids look for things that are neither bought nor sold." -Alissa Quart, Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers

Some may read this quote and lament: "Oh, isn't it horrible how hard teens have it these days?" or "Life was much simpler way back when I was young...," and so on. But in reality, this isn't productive thinking or helpful, in my opinion. Perhaps Alissa Quart oversimplifies (and over-blames) marketers' control over teen's free will, but I think the general observation is accurate. Teens aren't left with the freedom to self-create who they desire to be, but rather, they're left with consumer-controlled choices that are carefully constructed to encourage a greater appetite for consumer culture bent self-creation. But what if teens longed for things neither 'bought nor sold?' What if a world such as this, was possible? Will we reach this world in 20 years time, 50 years, 100?

The experiential, the spiritual, the ecstasy of emotions, are all attributes/descriptions that, in and of themselves, are 'not for sale' things in our world. The only problem is they're almost always tied to contexts (and services) that cost something (e.g., concerts, gaming, and plastic surgery, to name just three). But what, in today's branded society, isn't up for sale? I would challenge Alissa Quart's thesis and say that once teens go that route, marketers (and many others) will find away to charge what cannot be 'bought or sold.' This is the underlying problem. French philosopher Jacques Derrida once wrote, "I think, therefore I am." In today's cultural marketplace, it's shifted to "I shop, therefore I am," where are actual identity is so intertwined with an identity of consumption, it's nearly impossible to separate/sever one from the other. Until we recognize the power of living within a culture of consumption (and its affect on our shaped/evolving identities), we'll never move beyond the branded and buying and selling of teenagers (and ourselves).

Unity

"I doubt whether justice, which is a forerunner of peace, will ever be pulled out of a hat, as some suppose. Justice will find a home where there is a synthesis of liberty and unity in a framework of government. And when justice appears on any scene, on any level of society, man's problems enjoy a sort of automatic solution, because they enjoy the means of solution. Unity is no mirage. It is the distant shore. I believe we should at least head for that good shore, though most of us will not reach it in this life." -E.B. White, from the essay, "Unity," in Essays of E.B. White

Jesus' words, 'A kingdom divided against itself will surely fall,' is probably the one sentence that gets me through debates and divisions within the church. Sometimes I feel like we're all getting pushed out towards the fringes, to disagree for Disagreement's sake. Other times it seems there's nothing more we want than to not get along.

In Sara Miles recently published book, Jesus Freak and her earlier memoir, Take This Bread, she talked about how all are welcome at the table. A similar analogy was used by author Bruce Bawer some years ago, as it pertains to gay individuals in modern society. In his book, A Place At The Table: The Gay Individual in American Society, he asks the heterosexual readers if they've ever wondered how it feels to be gay when it comes to showing affection in public. From showcasing photos in office cubicles to going for a walk hand-in-hand with your loved one some cool, summer evening, Bawer argued that it was out of fear of exclusion from society that gay individuals couldn't express love to one another (at least, not in public).

Maybe things are a bit different now, but the principle still remains the same. But I think Jesus and E.B. White's quote is talking about something beyond simply protecting people from exclusion; he's writing about bringing peace through reconciliation and inclusiveness. We can't merely think that the solution--in any social context--is for our position to win out or the majority (or minority) we belong to, to triumph. This is not on the road to that 'good shore.' The way to reach that shore, I think, is by telling ourselves, 'it's not about finding one solution, but about liberty and unity,' and, like the Pledge of Allegiance ends, 'justice for all.'

Penguins

"'I want you to know how much I appreciate your offer of putting my birds in the movies. But I am afraid I have to refuse. I do not believe the life in Hollywood would be good for penguins.' Then Mr. Popper turned to Admiral Drake. 'Admiral Drake, I am going to give you the birds. In doing this, I am considering the birds first of all. I know that they have been comfortable and happy with me. Lately, though, with the excitement and the warm weather, I've been worried about them. The birds have done so much for me that I have to do what is best for them. After all, they belong in a cold climate. And then I can't help being sorry for those men up at the North Pole, without any penguins to help them pass the time.'" -Mr. Popper from Mr Popper's Penguins, by Richard & Florence Atwater

I first heard this story read aloud to me in 2nd grade by Mrs. Rexford. Then, it was a tale of loss with the an undercurrent of love streaming all the way through it. In a sense, I think I loved (but just didn't know it yet) this story because it so resembles the story of King Kong, as well. Despite a different ending, the film is ultimately about society trying to turn a profit on nature, on beauty. In Mr. Popper's Penguin's, it is similar. But the difference is, the penguins are let free and Kong is held captive and dies. Thus, the story becomes a charming, graceful, and lovely little picture of how true beauty needs to stay true to its source, its inherent, creative life. When humans abuse beauty in such a way that it disrupts or degrades its source, humans lose out while the object of affection loses the greatest. Even death, at times.

But not so in Mr. Popper's Penguins. No, in this story, we're given hope that one's admiration for something (in this case, some talented little penguins) doesn't have to turn into mere profit, mere exploitation, mere entertainment. It can--and should--be a catalyst for love. Maybe I wasn't getting all this at the age of 7--when Mrs. Rexford flipped through the pages, her face animated and joyful, her expressions real and empowering--but I'm starting to get it more now. I'm constantly in awe of how beauty (and the subject of beauty) is so instrumental in our daily life. So instrumental in pushing us forward to do good, to give love. It just all depends on what we do with the beauty we're given.

The great Russian writer and essayist Fyodor Dostoevsky once uttered, "Beauty will save the world." I think Mr. Popper, and Mrs. Rexford, might just agree.

Work/Art

"The aim of 'work' in modernity was to produce materials necessary for modern life: food, clothes, homes, cars. In modernity, there was a sharp dichotomy between the puritan work ethic and the hedonistic 'leisure ethic' of self-expression and self-improvement which only a very few could afford to pursue. Society reaches a postmodern condition when 'work' turns into art, that is, when more and more areas of life are assimilated into the logic of the marketplace, when the economy is increasingly geared to providing entertainment, and when the business of America is leisure. In a post-industrialist postmodern economy, goods are produced not to supply pre-existent needs, but to supply needs that are themselves created by advertising and marketing strategies. What gets marketed is not an object so much as an image or lifestyle." Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology

This makes me excited to be alive today.

Nature

"Nature is never constrained to change, and that which is once formed cannot simply will to reverse itself wrongly, since desire is not nature. Desire can alter the character of something already formed, but it cannot remake its nature." -John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century

One of the most fascinating things about people is their capacity for adaptability. In the film Boogie Nights, director P.T. Anderson explored this and the extent to which one would alter and adapt him/herself to fleshy abuse in order to gain a sense of belonging, a sense of being accepted. I wonder how much this is true for the history of homosexuality and the Church (or rather, churches). How often have we marginalized, compromised, or idolized the very nature of the self the Church declares is imago dei? In what areas (besides homosexuality) can we see people mistakenly seeing nature as being synonymous with desire? All too often, it seems the discussion of nature--as it relates to our violent propensities--quickly moves into carnal desire-talk territory because of how we assume that it's in our nature. But what if it wasn't in our true nature? What if that was only mere desire?

As the Church continues to dialogue, debate and argue over the issues of nature with respect to homosexuality, I wish we'd also spend similar energy toward healthy conversation over our views of war and violence, and how this relates to our true nature. It seems, to use Boswell's analogy, we've spent far too many centuries trying to remake nature through our desires (and presupposed ideas of who a person is and what is their purpose) rather than critically looking at the varied nature (and natures) of the human species, and separating what is mere desire (what can be slightly altered) and what is fixed (what cannot be altered). The latter, I think, is the most difficult to articulate and accept because behind our desire (in this) is a growing need to be autonomous and self-sustaining rather than limited and interdependent. The former is our desire, the latter is our nature. Or at least, that's the way I see it.