Feral Scholar » Blog Archive » What pulls the heart

What pulls the heart

23rd November 2008, 04:27 pm by Stan

Since a coupla reg’lars asked, here it is. A thread on that key intangible.

Jose expressed interest in my own conversion(s) in light of this question — what speaks to us about right and wrong, in thought and action? Catlady was at the Oregon ferals gathering (and Kim sent me some pictures, but I can’t seem to open them); and she specifically asked for this thread.

No way for me to pin this down. Rather, it is something that appears “without integers,” I think, something we infer — like chaoticians infer “strange attractors.”

Privilege, even temporary privilege, is simultaneously liberatory and amnesiac. So many of the people who have the freedom to think through and write about these things have been unbound — by whatever confluence of circumstance. They are to whatever extent no longer experiencing the same world that most of the rest of humanity experiences. And as we are wont to do with much trauma, we bury the bad experiences and avoid kicking the dirt off of them. In that process, we can “forget” where we came from. That’s the danger, and I’ll come back to that.

But many many people — including the so-called middle-class, whose privilege is dependent on conformity, obedience, and anesthesia (entertainment being the most common form) — experience their lives as moving from one form of confinement to another, day in and day out. Work is a place of confinement. Home and family are different forms of confinement, when this is the place we go to isolate ourselves, when this is where we sit out our dread of the future, when this is where we are abused or taken for granted, or when we rankle against responsibility (mostly a man’s thing, this last one).

I am personally confined to my automobile now for around an hour each day, five days a week, to go to and from my job. I listen to the radio sometimes to get through it; and some of the things I hear are pleasurable and useful. But I’d rather be walking (though not 17 miles), or fooling around in the garden.

Our state of confinement more generally is a state of poverty, or debt, or illness, or combinatons of those, and — most of all — the separation from and suppression of our own creativity and right fellowship with others. When hope is lost of release from confinement, then we come to look forward to what’s left — anesthesia. And, of course, for many — around 2 million here in the US — confinement means state confinement in human holding pens called prisons.

Much of our brokenness can be described in one way or another as captivity.

Christianity has provided me with an expanded vocabulary. Brokenness is a very interesting word. Annie Dillard, a Christian evolutionary biologist and writer, who seldom asserts her Christianity directly in her writing, described brokenness thus:

“I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wondering awed about on a splintered wreck I’ve come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty bats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them…”

I highly recommend her book from some decades ago, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. As a companion piece, I’d recommend Harriet Arnow’s novel, The Dollmaker (not the awful movie adaptation of it). The contrast between these two books — both written by women with powerful attachments to the natural world — can walk us in a broad revealtory circle around the simultaneity of brokenness and love.

Revelation is another one of those vocabulary words. That which reveals. Stories reveal things; and I’m coming back to that.

One word that came up in an kind of assessment at church of our “spiritual gifts” was discernment. The word itself, like the word “concupiscience” (used here a couple of times) has a platonic quality — something that has a non-specific and generalizable essence like “ideal forms.”

The intent of this kind of language is not, however, to establish linguistic neo-Platonism, but to associate creativity with the idea of gifts. This is anachronistic to us because modern, liberal society takes the individual, and thereby the “self” as its point of departure in all things. Any time I claim the ability to “discern” — that is, to achieve a deeper level of clarity about something — if I claim that ability for myself, I am somehow claiming to have (1) created myself or (2) to have created the circumstances of my own personal development.

Both propositions, of course, are self-serving foolishness on their face. When Paul warns the early church against “boasting,” this is precisely the self-delusion he is warning against. What you are and who you are, he says, is not of your doing. These are gifts (that is, something given from another).

If I have any ability to discern, then, it is not “mine.” It was given.

What was given?

Discernment.

There’s no self in that exchange.

In fact, the self that becomes conscious of the self has the habit of getting in the way… quite a bit. Another form of captivity, and one that is linked directly to the addictive quality we see in many of our behaviors. Once the measure of everything becomes the state of my interiority, everything else becomes means to insatiable ends. This is concupiscience. Concupiscience becomes a form of confinement, captivity in that very interiority.

Naturally, this brings us to the Big Question: given by What or Whom? I think the standard modern answer to that — one I myself entertained — is arrogant. There is a perennial assumption by the Keepers of Cultural Knowledge, in every era, that they are on the cusp of knowing all there is to know, even when history shows the perenniality of this self-delusion. Control being the greatest delusion of our own epoch in this regard, we can now look at the world situation — with the global financial collapse, the wars, and the destabilization of nuclear states — as yet another example of the wage of arrogance.

For my own part, I came to a point — via first Marxism then feminism, actually — where I started to peer seriously into this whole question of God, specifically this unitary, single, omnipresent God that began to appear to people most formatively and directly out of an experience of literal captivity. There was philosophical monism there, even if the word had not yet been invented to reduce it… intuited and announced, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. Even more specifically, in that same winding geneology, I started to peer into this icon of a culture that largely claims Christianity (Catholics and Seventh Day Adventists figure prominently among my immediate ancestors): Jesus. Rather, Christ. The latter is a title, The Annointed One — messiah.

I suspended my disbelief — as we all do to read any story — and when I started pushing aside the layer of superficial muck, I found an unfathomable well of water. I looked closer and closer to see into the water… then I fell in. It wasn’t a well after all; it was a womb; it was a river dividing captivity from freedom.

The association of baptism with birth is well-known. There’s no end of people — often people who understand baptism as a form of sorcery — who will tell you they have been “born again.” That’s no reason to trivialize it, or make the idea into a caricature.

Anyone who’s seen a live birth knows how we enter into history on a small, explosive flood. What is less remarked is that Jesus was baptized by a wildman apocalypticist named John (who lived in “the bush” and ate locusts). The place of that baptism was the Jordan River… the same place that marked the end of the journey of the Hebrews out of captivity. And both of them would soon enough be executed by the political establishment. At any rate, baptism is also about release from captivity.

I leave it to each reader to masticate on this as you will. Yoder disputes the eventual separation of the cosmic Christ — the spiritual icon — from the inevitability of politics in life… the idea that “there are issues to which Jesus does not speak… We must therefore supplement and in effect correct what we learn from him, by adding informatioin on the nature and the goodness of the specifically ‘political’ which we gain from other sources.”

If Jesus is confessed as Messiah, this disjunction is illegitimate. To say that any position is “apolitical” is to deny the powerful impact on society of the creatino of an alternative social group. It is to overrate both the power and manageablility of those particular social structures identified as “political.” To assume that “being politically relevent” is itself a univocal option so that in saying “yes” to it one knows where one is going, is to overestimate the capacity of “the nature of politics” to dictate its own direction.

Because Jesus’ particular way of rejecting the sword and at the same time condemning those who wielded it was politically relevant, both the Sanhedrin and the Procurator had to deny him the right to live, in the name of both of their forms of political responsibility. His alternative was so relevant, so much a threat, that Pilate could afford to free, in exchange for Jesus, the ordinary Guevara-type insurrectionist Barabbas. Jesus’ way is not less but more relevant to the question of how society moves than is the struggle for possession of the levers of command; to this Pilate and Caiaphas testify by their judgment on him. (from The Politics of Jesus, pp. 106-7, italics in the original)

At any rate, I seem to be straying from “what pulls the heart,” but I can’t simply state it. The question is a history question… personal and cultural and ultimately also ecological. That Hornborg interactive triad: personhood, culture, ecology.

The act of grasping in the process of discernment is a step toward something. It is teleological. The objective of discernment is clarity. If you know someone who is constantly seeking after greater levels of clarity, then you are dealing with discerner. And whether or not they state it so, the intense desire to understand — if it is not about concupiscience — is grounded in love.

That my personal history in this regard included the formative influence of the Army led me to seek clarity about what it was I was doing. Marxism provided a form of clarity that was very important. It clarified that there are suprapersonal social systems. It clarified that politics in inescapable. It clarified that “capital” is a social relation, and not a very nice one. It clarified something about the “captivity” of work.

Clarity carries with it a new confidence. This is not in itself a bad thing. Good leadership — and leadership is also an inescapable feature of human social being — requires the confidence of clarity. It is only when the display of confidence overrides the desire for actual clarity that confidence becomes performative and is corrupted into hubris. This is not an unimportant consideration in a culture where our whole lives have been turned into serial performances witin our serial confinements. We need constant vigilance against hubris — the bathwater surrounding the baby that is the confidence of clarity. So we need to be able to catch ourselves before we let “the work,” whatever it may be, become simply a performance.

The other danger in the grasping for clarity is the fallacy of the single thread — the idea that there is one key thread we can grasp that will unravel the whole fabric of being. I discovered this fallacy with an awful force after my own exercise of this fallacy with regard to Marxism. As De has noted more than once, if all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. It was feminism’s critique of Marxism that brought this fallacy home to me; and below the real and valuable clarity that is available from Marxism, there was a new layer of clarity on the overwhelming power of gender… and that the most pernicious manifestations of that power gained their force from their intellectual invisibility…

But there is more, somehow. It isn’t just invisibility. It’s our way of knowing the world and ourselves. After all, if invisibility is the impediment to clarity, then we can simply describe that which is invisible and it will be known — like radio waves or dust mites. Obviously, it doesn’t work that way.

As persons, formed by a culture, interdeterminate with our various ecologies, how do we know who we are and how we are to be? One answer, it turns out, is that we are formed by stories. That’s why storytellers have such immense cultural power, whether the storyteller is an ancient oral formulaic, an Elizabethan playwright, a pop singer, a bodice-ripper writer, a television ad crafter, Warner Brothers, Michael Moore, or Harriet Arnow.

Now I’m inching closer to the question, what pulls the heart?

We — the reader, watcher, listener… the audience — participate in stories; then the stories participate in our lives.

I can’t explain this very well, because language is a symbolic medium with the pretension of objectivity. Despite these limitations, language is also the way we transmit culture across generations…. ergo, the importance of The Story. But what I can’t explain is exactly where, when, and how I started to see God. The mere phrasing here is enough to jolt and even raise barriers, but bear with me… we were talking about pullings on the heart and, for my own part, about discernment as gift (which I will now claim as gift from the Holy Spirit). In for a penny, in for a pound.

When I implied above that modernism’s aggressive underlying atheism is arrogance, it wasn’t meant to suggest simple impertinence before some cosmic caricature. We see the arrogance of modernism all the time; this site is obsessed with the reckless arrogance of the belief that “we” (a collective self, by the way) can, for example, control nature. The same arrogance is apparent in any claim (overt or suggestive) that science is the single thread that can unravel all the mysteries of the universe. It is a claim to mastery by an animal that occupies but an infinitesimally small nook in that same universe.

Not that I am against science, or I should say against the study of the physical universe. I honestly believe it s a sacred undertaking when it is done for good purpose and with humility. But it doesn’t answer any question, and the arrogant presumption — in the face of all we know that is beyond the grasp of words — is that if science and-or observation can’t answer a question, then the question itself is worthy only of ridicule.

The science of Bacon, of the Green Revolution, of the Bomb… this is rape-science — objectifying, instrumental science.

Once upon a time, not long ago, I was looking at a riverbank. By our standards, we would say that this was a quiet scene. In fact, it was anything but quiet. The topsoil broke over the edge of the bank in such a way that you could see the ground erupt, even if that eruption was hundreds of thousands of years in the making. You could see the motion and the instant at once. Trees were swaying, animals were chirping and barking, leaves were rustling, the stream was was trickling and splashing, and the light was fastened to the entire scene like a great tractor beam… and I knew for an instant that this was watching me. I just knew it. The minute I started to try and break that all down, I started losing that knowledge in the minutiae. That wasn’t the first time, I don’t think — once several years ago in Colombia of all places, this sense overwhelmed me.

It hits me more and more frequently, and sometimes I get the feeling that I’m catching glimpses of God in everything, even the most scarred and stinking things. I just have to get out of the way. Other times I’m just too tangled up, and I’m this thrashing self-centered thing.

Personhood, culture, and ecology.

The best in my culture is carried on a four thousand year old story — even with its brokenness and contradiction and flaws. It’s the story of a God who pierces the world — not the standoffish God of the Enlightenment deists — an Abrahamic God, a Jewish God, a Christian God, who above all else takes sides, and takes sides with those who are oppressed. That we bitten and scarred and confused primates are still catching up with the implications of this, one segment of humanity at a time, does not change the essential story. Somewhere in our evolution as a society, we began to project our deepest questions — those of ultimate concern — out into the universe, and even with the brutality and sorrow, we started to get answers back… from the rhythms of nature that became songs to the discovery that the love we learn when mothers feed babies can mature and expand to include everyone, can be the basis of shalom. God was making herself known (even as Abba the Provider, “Father,” Love, “the ground of Being”). When you catch glimpses, you risk projecting what you know onto what you don’t.

To see God would kill us; so we (as persons) are allowed glimpses of this very wild God (Hauerwas speaks of “the wildness of the Christian God”) through one another (in common culture) and in nature (our physical and social ecology).

There’s a lot of talk of the human condition, by humanists naturally, and even in the liberal churches that want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to amend the story of the cross, calling it metaphorical or symbolic, so they can acknowledge the validity of rape-science (else they be considered not with it, not modern, not “progressive”) and ask that we temper it with a metaphor that demands sweeping a few crumbs to the poor and learning “tolerance.”

Nietzsche, the will-to-power neopagan, of all people — the guy who proudly called himself anti-Christ — understood better than today’s liberals the implications of Christianity’s essential taking of sides (with rejects, losers, outcasts, criminals, the poor, the possessed). Jesus appears in a real time and a real place, eating and shitting and walking and talking and working and sleeping in this contingent human process we call history… an inescapably political process. What he blows up is the basis of Power in a pagan world where the exercise of strength and the accumulation of power were synonymous with Virtue: the leverage of the fear of suffering and death. That’s the leverage that still holds us all in check. Google search “hauerwas nietzsche” if you want several hits on this interesting philosophical riff.

And I’ve gone on too long on my neophyte theological rambling.

I guess I’ll say that — for lack of a better term — the thing which pulls the heart, that tells us about what ought, is the Holy Spirit… that aspect of God-as-good-fellowship, of seeing a bit of God in every other (a doctrine of spiritual equality in a world where there is no such thing as equality), is the telos of the heart. What this spirit told me, even when I wasn’t paying attention, is not to raise my hand against anyone.

Even when I saw justice as the telos of my secular leftism, I still held fast to professing ruthlessness. That’s a male-world, but it’s also a me-world. It is, in a word, demonic.

Yes, I’ve also found Satan very useful as a way of knowing. Prince of the World (the system based on ruthlessness and revenge).

Even as the church was seized with centuries of demonic anti-Semitism, the essential Jewish Palestinian Christ with his message of revolutionary subordination and the abandonment of fear still broke through with the command to unmake The Enemy and take sides with the poor and despised. That spirit has proven impossible to stamp out.

There is a story about it that is a cultural knowing about ourselves. We have what I call “concealed Christianity” in this culture. That we root for the underdog in any story is a distinctly Judeo-Christian way of seeing the world — the decisive break of Christiainity from the paganism that surrounded it. The irony? Very loud self-professed Christians have taken to rooting against the underdog, and never hesitate to say the name of Jesus in every other breath; while the secular proponents of the meek and poor are most often agnostics who display care and compassion, but never recognize (much less acknowledge) that this is an essential influence of Christ and Christianity on our own culture. If they had been born in Rome in 1 BC, this notion would never have occurred to them… even if they were the underdog. Might makes right was the way of knowing the world.

Our story (for Christians) is an apocalyptic one. The telos is the peaceable kingdom, but the kingdom has to break through again and again between the appearance of the annointed One and the eschaton wherein that kingdom shall be finally established. It struggles with the Prince of the World; it’s “mighty” leader was led to execution for sedition, and that was called a victory. (He rejected the opportunity to sieze power three times before he was hooted and spat upon during the final walk to Golgotha.)

In this time when we are humans, have been humans, will continue to make and be humans, the Kingdom breaks through in levelings. Sabbath is a leveling. Jubilee is a leveling. Catastrophe and civilizatonal collapse are levelings. The wild God punctures reality. Kairos interrupts chronos.

I want to participate in that story. I participated in the world’s story, in modernism’s story, in the story of enemies and revenge, in the story of reduction to the literal. Now I want to participate in the story of the Christians. I want to love my neighbor.

I want to take on the discipline of unmaking enemies, of searching for the God coming through every person I encounter, every passing cloud, every blade of grass. Because without God, I can do anything even as can never do everything. Then I am a captive, an island, an addict.

I’ve gone on way long now; it’s late, and Sherry wants to take a walk. Sorry for my disjointedness, but you all can fill in the spaces of “what pulls the heart” with your own reflections and observations.

Again, thanks for the push.

Category: General | Comment (RSS)

51 Comments

Stan:

stuff on Hauerwas and modernism

Go to page 86-87
23 November 2008, 5:25 pm
Jonathan:

I am currently reading Christopher Alexander’s “The Timeless Way of Building” the theme of which I hope to write about in my own words, as it has much to say that is in line with what Stan and others here have been tacking towards (to use a sailing metaphor), in how we can understand the relationship of individuals and communities in shaping not only the built environment (Alexander as an architect uses this as his starting point) but also in our social relations. The book suffers from the use of male normative language, but with that being said I’d like to share a few quotes that I think goes to the question of what pulls at the heart.

The book begins:

THE TIMELESS WAY: It is a process which brings order out of nothing but ourselves; it cannot be attained, but it will happen of its own accord, if we will only let it.

There is one timeless way of building.
It is thousands of years old, and the same today as it has always been.
The great traditional building of the past, the villages and tents and temples in which man feels at home, have always been made by people who were very close to the center of this way. It is not possible to make great buildings, or great towns, beautiful places, places where you feel yourself, places where you feel alive except by following this way. And as you will see, this way will lead anyone who looks for it to buildings which themselves as ancient in their form, as the trees and hills, and as our faces are.
It is a process through which the order of a building or a town grows out directly from the inner nature of the people, and the animals, and plants, and matter which are in it.
It is a process which allows the life inside a person, or a family, or a town, to flourish, openly, in freedom, so vividly that it gives birth, of its own accord, to the natural order which is needed to sustain this life.

He continues:

Each one of us wants to be able to bring a building or part of a town to life like this. It is a fundamental human instinct, as much a part of our desire as the desire for children. It is, quite simply, the desire to make a part of nature, to complete a world which is already made of mountains, streams, snowdrops and stones, with something made by us, as much a part of nature, and a part of our immediate surroundings….

…And it turns out that, invariant, behind all processes which allow us to make buildings live, there is a single common process… But though this method is precise, it cannot be used mechanically… Indeed it turns out, in the end that what this method does is simply free us from all method… And that is why the timeless way is, in the end, a timeless one.

The power to make buildings beautiful lies in each of us already…
…But as things are, we have so far beset ourselves with rules, and concepts, and ideas of what must be done to make a building or a town alive, that we have become afraid of what will happen naturally, and convinced that we must work within a “system” and with “methods” since without them our surrondings will come tumbling down in chaos… The thoughts and fears which feed these methods are illusions…
…To purge ourselves of these illusions, to become free of all the artificial images of order which distort the nature that is in us, we must first learn a discipline which teaches us the true relationship between ourselves and our surroundings. Then, once this discipline has done its work, and pricked the bubbles of illusion which we cling to now, we will be ready to give up the discipline, and act as nature does. This is the timeless way of building: learning the discipline–and shedding it.

And finally for what pulls at the heart:

There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in a man, a town, a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named. The search for which we make for this quality, in our own lives, is the central search for those moments and situations when we are most alive…

…The more living patterns there are in a place-a room, a building, or a town- the more it comes to life as an entirety, the more it glows, the more it has that self-maintaining fire which is the quality without a name. And when a building has this fire, then it becomes part of nature. Like ocean waves, or blades of grass its parts are governed by the endless play of repetition and variety created in the presence of the fact that all things pass. This is the quality itself.

Sorry for the long quotes – but at this point in time, I couldn’t have said it better myself (other than, of course, his use of ‘man’)
23 November 2008, 9:42 pm
Glenn Lewis:

I first heard you on a CD in a question and awnser interview, concerning American military counter-insurgency and the consequential peril of the unsustainable world system of things (at least, that’s how I perceived it). Since then I looked forward to read your writings on the website “From The Wilderness” as you unraveled the tangled web of lies, that is this world, and confirmed the unrelenting horror of male false bravado, which I hate to admit I sometimes find laughable. For this I thank you.
I’m glad about your progression from Communist to Christian, for I wondered how you hoped Communism could save the world. I have no confidence in man’s rule over man. I do not know you or your ways personally, but because of your words and your unfolding search for clarity, I call you brother.
I can’t explain it, but in my own struggle for clarity I knew in my own heart that the unraveling of lies your writings confirmed, belonged to me already, like a revelation I already knew, though I lacked the ability and world experience to decipher and define it on my own. It is like a calling in our hearts, or, as you put it, “a pulling on our hearts”. We recognize the truth when we hear it. But, at last, not everyone will.
24 November 2008, 1:58 am
Stan:

As the principle of pure self-assertion comes to govern the public world of men, human agency is enslaved by the objects it produces, deprived of the personal authorship and recognizing response that are essential to subjectivity.

-Jessica Benjamin, capturing the paradox of pure self… alienation.

On the question of communism, I was a communist, but I never harbored any “hope” that Communism (capital C) would fix anything. I still agree with myself on that (haha). What I take away from Marxism is the concept of a means of production (the combination of both instruments and relations of production). Socialism is not a decree, but a means of production that has a material basis. I still hold out hope for socialism of some kind, but only if its developed from the ground up in practices that respect not only “workers,” but all people, and the biosphere which is under our stewardship.

Oddly enough, people as diverse as Engels (Marx’s colleague), Catharine MacKinnon (radical feminist), and Stanley Hauerwas (pacifist Christian theologian) agree on one critique of liberalism’s basic epistemology. Liberalism treats history as if it is “a playground of ideas.” It’s the most commonly held fallacy in our culture… that we have an idea, then we act. Some might claim a chicken-egg conundrum on this question, but experience tells us (if we attend to it) that we practice first, and our ideations develop in observation of the results of practice. Because this relationship between idea and practical activity is cyclical and self-reinforcing, we lose memory of the nascence of an idea, and it becomes easy to simply paint the starting line with the idea — often an idea passed along through culture.

My rejection of Marxism is not wholesale; and my attachment to it was never uncritical. As Myles Horton said, “Marx gave us a toolbox, not a blueprint.” The Marxist political doctrine includes the “necessity” to sieze state power, with the claim (most often) that this siezure will “necessarily” be violent. It also lays claim to some “rational kernel” in industrial capitalism that is emblematic of something else called “progress.” Marxism, for me, is a microscope. It’s a way to see some things clearly, but you can’t use it for everything. I reject its doctrine of violence. I reject its notion of “progress.” And I reject its strategic doctrine of aiming the main blow, and its love of machinery and administration. Most of all, I reject its enemizing.

One cannot practice smashing one’s enemies, and hold onto the idea of peace in any meaningful way. Co-related, on the pullings of the heart, the most recent and profound sense of release from captivity, for me as a male human being, has been the acceptance of pacifism in a Christian context. The idea of never again raising my hand against another is a tremendous and culminating relief from the captivity of masculinity.

* * *

Good film, fyi, I just saw, was The Unforseen.
24 November 2008, 6:53 am
GaryE:

Stan -
Check out http://sos.org

I’m sending you a book called – “The Crowm of Life . . . A Study In Yoga” by Kirpal Singh. Probably after Thanksgiving sometime. Check it out . . .
Gary
24 November 2008, 1:15 pm
Kim Sky:

Sifting through WHAT PULLS THE HEART.

in populist language this would be called something like — finding your passion. i like that term less. and, all the new age stuff that accompanies this notion, seems to based around a very self-centered world view. so yes, one walks a thin line when seeking the virtuous in this topic.

you speak of the underlying culture of Christianity that is the U.S.A. [that's how i'm interpreting it] perhaps one might further define some of this as the puritan elements of Christianity (as we are self-conscious people here).

this work ethic. this shame in self-glorification. i guess the word really is shame.

as an artist, and having dealt with creativity, and the aftermath this causes: oppression, jealousy, hatred, guilt, a place where all forms of cruelty are meted out (sure some appreciate you, but it’s the nastiness that will prompt you to quit). why are people so ready and willing to tear you down? i won’t go into a long explanation here, except to say that our society does not support it’s artists, and in Re-evaluation Counseling they have a special category for artists to study the forms of oppression particular to that “profession” — for anyone who creates, this is a worthwhile topic to study.

to “create”, at times, one must necessarily become totally self-absorbed, withdrawn into they’re very own universe. this creates difficulties for anyone living within that sphere. resentments, exasperation, what a pain in the ass you are so bloody self-absorbed. how dare you. why –> virtually any author of a book will mention a thanx to their spouse.

to “create”, disappeared from all reality, is to be in direct touch with “what pulls the heart”. the divine if you wish to call it that.

when a person, at a particular time in their life is so lucky to have removed the chains, and is able to identify what “pulls their heart”. all i can do is hope/pray they can find a way to do it!!! i support them with all my heart and soul!

why true love and compassion are such a necessary ingredient to adopt when relating with each other. why i prefer anarchism to communism, if i’m going to attach myself to an existing political train of thought.

to love and give support to one another. to step away from this puritan self-flagellation for putting oneself above another (hey, there are plenty of examples where this does happen). BUT –> if we do in fact find the divine, in an ideal world we should be supported rigorously in those efforts.

i got together with old friends yesterday. one of them a gifted artist, one who if i buy him a meal, will eat one burrito and place the other one in his pocket for later. one who will go to no end of suffering to live an admirable life. one who seeks truth. we went to dinner, he ordered rice. he looks skinnier than i’ve seen him in a long time. he went to the RNC protests, missed his train back because he was in jail, stayed another month to contribute to a documentary about the events. people rarely pay him even twenty dollars for a print, they think they are free, made from air. another friend quietly slipped him a one hundred dollar bill. this was beautiful.

if you have a gift, how committed are you to recognize and offer yourself up in service to that gift?
24 November 2008, 2:35 pm
B:

FYI: Dillard is not a scientist, though quite well-read in many of the sciences.
24 November 2008, 5:59 pm
Stan:

This discussion of “self” and so on necessarily becomes nuanced. Wherever we choose to stop and look around, there is ambiguity. Like “nation,” the word “self” — this linguistic marker — is one word representing many things, each accessible only from context.

In an abusive household, for example, with an abusive man and an abused woman, the abusive man has substituted self for God (or Love), and practices control. The abused woman has lost her sense of self, but this is a different self than the one that establishes self as the center of the universe. She has lost her understanding of her own existence as beloved (which requires others as control does, but subjects, not objects). There is a self she needs to regain, as there is with anyone who is reviled, oppressed, abused. Her integrity as a subject has been erased as her boundaries have been violated.

A person’s capacity for creative activity — from my own pov — is exactly what is meant by the term “in the image of God,” who is the overarching Creator. That it can be deformed in application — like seeking the solution to an atom bomb instead of beauty or bounty for a beloved community — tells us that there must be something like an ethical standard that directs creativity. So the fact that creativity is a process that sometimes requires our solitude within our own interiority is not what I would call self-absorption (until it becomes an escape from responsibility). Creativity requires us sometimes to be contemplative, to quiet down and let the Spirit (some call it a muse) whisper in our ear. The standard, the ethical guidepost? On this path I’m on, it’s love the neighbor, love the stranger, love the enemy, love Creation. The Wesleyan formula is “do no harm; do good; stay in love with God.”

The latter day (and exceedingly popular) “end-times” fundamentalists don’t trace themselves back to Puritanism (a different distortion of Jesus’ ministry). Our fundies today are actually followers of a heresy called dispensationalism, which took rootin the US in the latter stages of the Civil War, when the national trauma of that bloodbath had psychologically prepared many to enter into the chiliastic cosmos of an Irish preacher named John Nelson Darby. It is based on massive misreadings fo the Scriptures, with special emphasis on the Revelation of John of Patmos, and based on a complete literary retrojection of Darby’s preconceptions that ignores the questions of what John meant when he wrote, and how it was received by his audience. It took hold because (1) it is easy to understand, (2) it is simple of description, and (3) it is described with tremendous confidence by its proponents — who are sincere in their beliefs (as critic James “Mickey” Efird points out, “sincerity does not mean you are right”).

FYI. There is a popwerful current to counteract dispensationalism (and its alliance with right-wing politics) among evangelicals now, called the “emergent church.”
25 November 2008, 6:26 am
charles:

BAD EDITING !

Oddly enough, people as diverse as Engels (Marx’s colleague), Catharine MacKinnon (radical feminist), and Stanley Hauerwas (pacifist Christian theologian) agree on one critique of liberalism’s basic epistemology. Liberalism treats history as if it is “a playground of ideas.”

^^^^Indeed. Liberalism is bourgeois ideology, par excellence. The first liberals were the rising bourgeoisie who wanted the monarchies to “leave them alone” (en Francais, Laissez-faire).

So, of course, not only for Engels , but the central issues in Marx’s whole thinking are critiques of liberalism. Marxism _is_ a critique of liberalism.

^^^^
Liberalism treats history as if it is “a playground of ideas.”

^^^
A good way of stating _philosophical_ idealsm.

( Marxists _are_ idealists as in”idealism” in the common American English sense, enthusiasm for virtuous endeavors. It is unfortunate that the same word is used for both)

^^^The Marxist political doctrine includes the “necessity” to sieze state power, with the claim (most often) that this siezure will “necessarily” be violent.

^^^
The Marxist idea is take state power “by any means necessary” ; the struggle can be a moral (peaceful) one or a physical one or both ,but it will be a struggle.

Venezuela has just demonstrated the reality of taking state power by an election, i.e. not by armed struggle. So, there is a qualitatively new day of the possible in terms of roads to state power.

The Marxist position is more precisely that upon taking state power, there is high likelihood of a violent counter-revolution by the deposed ruling classes that will have to be met with force. Sometimes we must fight fire with fire.

There was very little violence in the Bolshevik _seizure_ of state power in Russia. The Winter Palace fell with hardly a shot. The world historic violence came from the counterrevolutionaries and bourgeois imperialists, including the US, in response to the establishment of a workers’ state.

Just as predicted by Marxist theory, in practice this pattern was repeated in other socialists revolutions, such as Korea, Viet Nam. Even the Soviet Union was finally forced to relent under the onslot of the Nazis warmachine (27 million dead) and then the US nuclear arsensal pointed at them .Every escalation of the nuclear arms race was started by the US; the Soviets constantly demonstrated their peaceloving. Americans have no idea what it is like to suffer a loss of 27 million ( how many casualties were there ?!). The Soviets definitely did not want another war, because they had experienced its horrors more than certainly Americans, who weren’t even invaded in WWII

The vast majority of The People world wide are _workers_ or working people , so, doing for the workers covers the overwhelming majority of the human species, by far.

The struggle continues; victory is certain.
25 November 2008, 4:03 pm
Susan/catlady:

Instructions

Give up the world; give up self; finally, give up God.
Find god in rhododendrons and rocks,
passers-by, your cat.
Pare your beliefs, your absolutes.
Make it simple; make it clean.
No carry-on luggage allowed.
Examine all you have
with a loving and critical eye, then
throw away some more.
Repeat. Repeat.
Keep this and only this:
what your heart beats loudly for
what feels heavy and full in your gut.
There will only be one or two
things you will keep,
and they will fit lightly
in your pocket.

by Sheri Hostetler
A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry
25 November 2008, 6:09 pm
skol:

I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but I just wanted to say that “concupiscience” is the best word I’ve learned in years : -)

STAN: I first remember it from years ago in a Wallace Stevens poem.
25 November 2008, 8:12 pm
skol:

To my note above, which was substanceless and so now I feel guilty and must provide something with substance which I’ll feel guilty for because it’s so (wonderfully) cynical:

I could only be religious if I didn’t take myself more seriously than God.

Cuz sometimes you can feel it – I think anyone can and has – although it seemed to me more of a realization than a thing staring back at me. But then I get thirsty and drink a Coke. Or complain about life. Or whatever keeps “me” going – even though that’s not really me. Satan strikes me as a heavy word, though, so I’ll just call it ego or something.
25 November 2008, 10:06 pm
Stan:

MODERATOR’S NOTE: Out of town for a couple of days. Will restart moderation Friday night or Saturday morning.
27 November 2008, 6:01 am
mark:

I was wondering if you could expand on the idea that “modernism’s aggressive underlying atheism is arrogance.” What do you mean by “Modernism” or a “Modernist?” Is a Modernist the anti-thesis of a Classicist? A Romantic?
28 November 2008, 5:37 pm
Stan:

from the Wikipediea link:

It is a trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology or practical experimentation.[2] Modernism encouraged the re-examination of every aspect of existence, from commerce to philosophy, with the goal of finding that which was ‘holding back’ PROGRESS [caps inserted], and replacing it with new, progressive and therefore better, ways of reaching the same end. Embracing change and the present, modernism encompasses the works of thinkers who rebelled against nineteenth century academic and historicist traditions, believing the “traditional” forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated; they directly confronted the new economic, social and political conditions of an emerging fully industrialized world. Some divide the twentieth century into movements designated Modernism and Postmodernism, whereas others see them as two aspects of the same movement.

I see them as aspects of the same “movement,” ie, post-modernism is the consumer-society expression of modernism, where acquisitive individualism takes root in something called “identity.” Post-modernism began as an interrogation of the arrogance of (competing) “metanarratives,” then itself morphed into a social-constructionist metanarrative… one that became a kind of stubborn academic fad (or a transient orthodoxy).

The critique of modernism is useful (though by no means the last word in “metanarratives”) because it critiques “progress,” which was seen in the 20th C as a “good” by the capitalist, state socialist, and non-aligned nationalist-development camps. In fact, many “meta”-efforts were proudly labeled “modernization.” That it is “good” was axiomatic. “Development,” industrialization (especially of agriculture), delocalization, and the absorption of local cultures into more cosmopolitan ones was synonymous with “progress.”

When you read the work of people like Derrick Jensen, Ran Prieur, and De Clarke, you will see the axiomatic good of “progress” challenged, and not from the post-modern standpoint (a belief system almost exclusively based in academic institutions) that life is an ironic performance art (another version of the “history is the playground of ideas” fallacy of philosophical idealism). Alf Hornborg challenges modernism using a combination of world systems theory (a standpoint that looks at the relation between the West and the Rest) and thermodynamics to demonstrate the abstracting and fundamentally unsustainable character of modernism in the real world (that is concealed by all that abstraction… general purpose money being a major abstraction).

And my comment about “underlying atheism” might be misleading. To clarify, atheism here refers to the refusal to put a creative ground-of-being into the functional worldview… a (without) theism (God); not atheism as a point of view or public debate. Modernism has proceeded — even as modern people have continued to attend church, synagogue, temple, et al, — as if life “in the world” can be controlled to create this good — progress.

One rhetorical gambit used to defend “progress” is when the notion is challenged on the basis of its historical record (the assumption that industrialized life is superior to non-industrialized life, that leisure and entertainment are measures of the “quality” of life, etc.), then progress-proponents will side-step with a redefiniton of “progress” that avoids the issues raised by industrialzation at all… eg, “removing oppressive systems is progress.” It’s a tautological definition-shift, and evasion of what all of us know very well people mean when they use the term “progress.” Progress, for most, means pavement, air conditioning, cars, techno-toys, hospital repsirators, Facebook, et al. What most people don’t recognize is that this “progress” is purchased at a cost that others and the biosphere inevitably pay. Nature provides no free lunch. (De sez: The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics — you can’t win, you can’t break even, and you can’t get out of the game… many dialectical “materialists” are decidedly uncomfortable with what this most material of all realities has to say about their love of levers and cogs).

Among theologians who are critical of modernism and who have written extensivelyon the ethical implications of modernism — among my own reading that includes John Howard Yoder, Amy Laura Hall, and Stanley Hauerwas — their critique is of the church’s cooptation by modernism (specifically the modernist ideology of liberalism) — which has exacerbated a dualism between personal and political, wherein the church has abandoned the core politics of resistance of the “primitive” church. Yoder:

In recent centuries debate around the question of the meaning of history, and the place of Christian decision within that meaningfulness, has generally been a conversation of the deaf, with some so committed to pre-Enlightenment understandings of the stability of the proper social order that any sense of movement is only a threat, and others committed with an equally unquestioning irrationality to the progressivist assumptions of post-Enlightenment Western thought, according to which the discernable movement of history is self-explicating and generally works for good, and therefore is the only terrain of significance from which ethics should self-evidently be derived. [There is an anaconda-sentence for you, De.] From neither direction any expectation that light might be thrown upon the question from the New Testament. What medieval Christendom, with its vision of the divine stability of all the members of the corpus christianum, has in common with post-Enlightenment progressivism is precisely the assumption that history has moved us past the time of primitive Christianity and therefore out from under the relevance of the apostolic witness [which Yoder argues is deeply and actively political] on this question.

Note: Ivan Illich, though a practicing priest, wrote on this topic in terms that were not theological, but very near what the secular writers cited above have had to say.
29 November 2008, 7:39 am
mark:

Thanks for the refresher on “Modernism.” (Isn’t Wikipedia great?) I am most familiar with these terms where they are used to define historical periods in the development of Western Music. In this context Bach is put in the Baroque or early Classical period. Mozart in the Classical period. Beethoven as the beginning of the Romantic era. Stavinsky as the beginning of the Modern era…etc

It is in the post-Stravinsky period where the neat little bifurcations of musical styles start to get blurry. It was in studying music of this period (What they generally call 20th century) where I saw that ultimately all of this dicing up of periods of musical history (Well, specifically Western music)is full of wrinkles and overlaps.

My suspicion is that the same is true of any of the histories of the “West.” The history of Science, Art, Philosophy, Music, Economics, Politics, all of these aspects of “Western” culture or society are all divided into neat little periods of “Classisim” or “Post- modernism” or what have you. And all of these periods have overlaps and wrinkles and bumps.

In the copy of the Communist Manifesto that I have there is a long (Could I say long-winded) introduction written by Francis B. Randall in which Marx is put into the Romantic era. Randall contends however, that Marx “failed to recognize the force of Romantic nationalism” and that this was “flatly false, more obviously and stupidly false than anything else in Marx’s doctrine.” Apparently Randall doesn’t find Marx to be that good of a “Romantic.”

For most of my life I considered Marx to be a crazy bearded guy who screwed everything up for all us good capitalists. (Basically what they teach you in public education) It was only about four years ago when I first read the Manifesto. When I read Randall’s introduction refering to Marx as being a “Romantic” I thought he was full of it. I’m still not really warming up to the idea. I think it would be safe to say that Marx considered himself to be a Materialist.

And this get’s me (Finally) to my point. When I first read your statement that “modernism’s aggressive underlying atheism is arrogance,” I was puzzled because I don’t really see this automatic connection between Modernism and Atheism. Surely there are many Modernists who ascribe to all the blather of “progress” and “development” who are religous believers.
And I know that there are atheists who don’t ascribe to the above mentioned blather – I would count myself as one.

By defining atheism as “the refusal to put a creative ground-of-being into the functional worldview… a (without) theism (God); not atheism as a point of view or public debate,” I’m getting a little better idea about what you’re driving at. Could you could expand upon this some more?
29 November 2008, 2:37 pm
hammer:

an Abrahamic God, a Jewish God, a Christian God, who above all else takes sides, and takes sides with those who are oppressed.

this paragraph does not jive with this paragraph.

There is a story about it that is a cultural knowing about ourselves. We have what I call “concealed Christianity” in this culture. That we root for the underdog in any story is a distinctly Judeo-Christian way of seeing the world — the decisive break of Christiainity from the paganism that surrounded it. The irony? Very loud self-professed Christians have taken to rooting against the underdog, and never hesitate to say the name of Jesus in every other breath; while the secular proponents of the meek and poor are most often agnostics who display care and compassion, but never recognize (much less acknowledge) that this is an essential influence of Christ and Christianity on our own culture. If they had been born in Rome in 1 BC, this notion would never have occurred to them… even if they were the underdog. Might makes right was the way of knowing the world.

it seems to me that the unememy thing in the west began with jc and not a minute sooner.

STAN: Sorry, but I’m not getting your point. Maybe the “west” or the chrnonology is throwing me off your meaning. Christianity was small, and between Palestine and Rome by way of Asia Minor. When John of Patmos wrote Revelation, he was in exile near Turkey, and Domitian was Rome’s head of state. Constantine didn’t co-opt Christianity as state religion until the 4th Century; and the spread through the Germanic hinterlands began then. The first para refers to scripture… the second to culture.
29 November 2008, 4:46 pm
M:

“It hits me more and more frequently, and sometimes I get the feeling that I’m catching glimpses of God in everything, even the most scarred and stinking things. I just have to get out of the way. Other times I’m just too tangled up, and I’m this thrashing self-centered thing.”

I myself have come to think of this state of being as the indication of becoming alive. I don’t have much ability to talk about it, but it seems to me that this is the pulsation which is the pattern of our universe. The blinking on and off. Getting stuck on one side of the vision in either god-ness or thing-ness would be flatlining, wouldn’t it? (In your words, seeing God will kill you. And most people seem more dead than alive to me – practically robotic – or some just too busy to see things. Dead.) It seems to me that this on-off state is the effect of becoming tuned to and resonating with the universal heartbeat.

“When you catch glimpses, you risk projecting what you know onto what you don’t.”

As if you ever know anything However, that projecting throws you back into thing-ness so you continue pulsating. Now you are a living, pulsating being. Maybe you have just become that. Or maybe you were living all along and are just now noticing it. How often dooes a busy person even notice his own heart beating?

On the other hand, achieving this state could also simply be indicative of transitioning. Newborn babies go through this stage, don’t they, when becoming focused into the world? Maybe when we reach this stage again, we are transitioning out.

Anyway, thanks for being.
29 November 2008, 5:18 pm
Stan:

Hey Mark. Thanks for the push. I hope I’m not scaring anyone over a cliff with all this God-bothering. But I hear it’s okay to bother her… she’s cool.

The relation between the church (herein meaning most denominations as a whole, who trace their geneology back through pre-Reformation to the post-Constantinian Catholics), liberalism, and exegesis is complicated; but the biggest obstacle we have with it is the glare of our own cultural assumptions that washes out the surrounding historical stars.

First complication: As time passes between the writing of literature and the reading, the cultural context fades away in the face of the saturating ubiquity of contemporary culture. Frank Reuter, who occasionally checks in here, was my teacher some three-plus decades ago for medieval and rennaissance lit. Something he planted in my head that has never been uprooted is the scholar’s obligation to understand the past in order to understand what the literature of the past was meant to say by the author and how it was received by that author’s reading audience.

For some passing reason, this was considered controversial when he was teaching… mostly because a lot of students, who had been given the power to write subjective evaluations fo their professors (which were then factored in as marketing values by the administration — students were becoming “customers”), were unhappy with the rigor that Frank demanded before he would attest for the record that the students actually learned how to read and interpret literature using evidence to support their interpretations.

At any rate, when you read Chaucer, and you get to “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” you are not reading feminism from olden days. You can claim that because the language used then has taken on meanings that sound plausible now; but you’d be completley, out of the pool, dead wrong. There was no such thing as feminism then, and even had there been, it would not be propounded by a conservative writer who roamed freely among the court of power. Still, many people interpret this tale that way; and they are often encouraged by professors who were probably once writing the whining student evaluations of Frank Reuter.

Christianity began as a highly political movement, one with a specific approach — non-violent resistance and a ministry of love (meaning “concern and care”) that focuses on “nothings and nobodies”, ie, women, children, peasants, crazy people, sinners… It’s leader was given a political prisoner’s execution. The leader’s cadre, when examined closely, were not in the “nobody” category; they were artisans and zealots (fishermen, carpenters, political resistance fighters). Matthew, it is believed, was of the retainer class — a despised tax collector. Everything in the scriptures — once they are unpacked by scholarship, including most importantly a strong critical translation — points to an earthbound participation in history as the basis for this political practice… not in technique, which was highly localized and contingent, but in principle, which was to confront systems of domination with nonviolent resistance. This included everything from the patriarchal family to the Roman Empire.

Ever since the “conversion” of Constantine, the pressure has been on to smuggle new meanings into the New Testamant; but in order to do so on behalf of the powers that Christianity was organized to confront, the actual descriptions of the NT were rendered metaphorical as part of an ongoing effort to establish a dualistic split between the realms of “spirituality” and politics. The cosmic Christ becomes a personal savior; sin is restricted to individual actions; and humans are ostensibly required to go outside scripture to determine what is legitimate practice in our day-to-day secular realm.

In other words, the cosmic Christ had to be part of the hereafter realm of heaven, and the exemplary (political) Jesus of Nazaeth had to be supressed. We make the concrete meanings become metaphorical. “Take up a cross,” originally and clearly meant to resist power nonviolently even to the point of death. Now we hear people describing their struggles with work or relationships or even difficult pets as their “cross to bear.” Even pastoral care now includes preachers telling congregants (during genuinely difficult times) that we all have our crosses to bear, and we are suffering as Jesus suffered. This is comforting no doubt; but it effaces the political mandate that was explicit to contemporaneous readers (and hearers) of the gospels.

Second complication: Liberalism’s “freedom of religion” undermined religious conviction, especially the kind of religious conviction that might translate into confrontations with power. Here is a teaser from Hauerwas’ After Christendom?:

…A more nuanced way to put my case is not that the First Amendment in and of itself has been bad for this society and the church, but that the First Amendment, when interpreted against the backdrop of political liberalism, has had disastrous results for church and society. I do not want to take the sting out of the argument to follow, but I hope it will be clear that I am not suggesting we repeal the First Amendment… [Interestingly, this is the same disclaimer that MacKinnon and Dworkin were repeatedly compelled to repeat in their own critique of liberalism -- particularly MacKinnon's -- who Hauerwas has read and liked. -SG]

…Because Christians have been so concerned with supporting the social and legal institutions that sustain freedom of religion, we have failed to notice that we are no longer a people who make it interesting for a society to acknowledge our freedom. Put differently, in such a context, beliiver and non-believer alike soon begin to think what matters in not whether our convictions are true, but whether they are functional… …The question is not whether we have freedom of religion and a corresponding limited state in America, but whether we have a church that has a people capable of saying no to the state. No state, particularly the democratic state, is kept limited by constitutions, but rather states are limited by a people with the imagination and courage to challenge theinveterate temptation of the state to ask us to compromise out loyalty to God…

…we lose the critical skills … to know when we have voluntarily qualified our loyalty to God in the name of the state. We confuse freedom of religion with fredom of the church, accepting the assumption that the latter is but a specification of the former. We thus become tolerant, allowing our convictions to be relegated to the realm of the private.

The parallels between his critique of liberalism and that found in MacKinnon’s Toward a Feminist Theory of the State are striking; and the co-optation of church as a fellowship of resistance to domination is in very many ways similar to the co-optation of the radical feminism of “difference without hierarchy” espoused by MacKinnon by liberalism’s abstract “equalities.” Domestication through abstraction.

So, finally getting back to Mark’s question about “underlying atheism,” we have seen the separation of “spiritual” from secular, followed by the elevation of a secular form of governance that is now a civic (God-less) religion. Modernism itself was constructed upon the dualism that removed the “exemplary Jesus” from religion, throwing God back into the cosmic realm, and taking matters into our own hands — or at east the hands of the ruling strata — here on the third rock from the sun. It is not coincidental that this civic religion that is supposed to bring peace and harmony, based on equality-as-abstraction, presents us now with anything but practical equal-valuation of human beings, reverence before nature (Creation), or peace…
30 November 2008, 7:54 am
hammer:

right. missed my point. supporting the underdog (as in the old testament) is not the same as the path of unenemy. in your writing you implied that they are. no?

STAN: Ah, got it. Yes, the unmaking of the enemy was a unique ministry of Jesus… taking the underdog thing to something more radical. From Malcolm to Martin, you might say.
30 November 2008, 12:31 pm
hammer:

two things.

jc is not the only unenemy guy in history. not even the first that we know of.

underdog to unenemy is not an difference of degree, but of kind. underdog becomes overdog becomes underdog again. it remains a relationship of enmity and enemies. unenemy changes the nature of our relationships into working with instead of against.
30 November 2008, 9:18 pm
Stan:

I am regretting the underdog reference on just semantic grounds. Yes, “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” But — getting closer to the text and meaning here — the command is to “love your enemy.” This is a simultaneous interior-exterior transformation. Love (agape) defined as concern (interior) and care (an action verb – exterior). This love is not sentimental or self-referential (gets my dopamine levels up). This actually requires work because it’s not only counter-intuituve, it is counter-experiental, perhaps even counter-instinctual. The synonym for Christian is what early Christians called themselves — disciples. It is a discipline. Going deeper than our own first reactions, that shoot at our heels and make us dance, the disciple has to seek “the child of God” in the other, and once that concern is grasped, formulate a caring way to behave in relation to this sibling.

Your description suggests structural antagonisms (this being a more marxist idiom), though I hesitate to put words in your mouth. The important thing (my own pov) about the Jesus ministry that has been obscured by Constantinianism and effaced by dispensationalism is that this ministry was embodied contingently, in a specific time and place. That time/place was 1st Century Palestine, after Babylonian and Persian control, and under military occupation by Rome… an occupation that was being met with zealotry (armed resistance), as well as being accommodated by a comprador monarchy and priesthood. So the structural antagonisms were there aplenty.

There were two major responses by the “underdogs”: violent resistance and passive acceptance. The Jesus ministry marked out a third way that was resistant, but not violent, and anything but passive. It gathered momentum through service (feeding and healing), spread the word through popular education vehicles (parables employing familiar characters and situations for a Palestinian peasantry), and culminated in Jerusalem, where masses were ready to follow the young prophet when he entered in a provocative bit of political satirical theater, riding a donkey instead of a king’s stallion. At this point, he could have made his move to sieze power. The masses were stirred. But he passed it up. Then he arrived at the temple, masses watching again. He slapped the bulls on their asses and stampeded them through the vendors and moneychangers emcamped on Caiaphas’ temple steps (the revenue stream for the priestly class). The crowd roars again… and again the opportunity is there to ride the wave into power. Again, it is rejected. His final opportunity to light the prairie fire is at his trial, in which he stands down, then orders his followers to sheath the sword when he is arrested.

Important to remember, in the desert, where Jesus was tempted by Satan prior to launching his ministry, the temptations are all temptations to secular political power.

In Isaiah 64, there is a good example of the Hebrew prophet apocalyptic poem:

1 Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
that the mountains would tremble before you!

2 As when fire sets twigs ablaze
and causes water to boil,
come down to make your name known to your enemies
and cause the nations to quake before you!

3 For when you did awesome things that we did not expect,
you came down, and the mountains trembled before you.

4 Since ancient times no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.

5 You come to the help of those who gladly do right,
who remember your ways.
But when we continued to sin against them,
you were angry.
How then can we be saved?

6 All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away.

7 No one calls on your name
or strives to lay hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us
and made us waste away because of our sins.

8 Yet, O LORD, you are our provider.
We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand.

9 Do not be angry beyond measure, O LORD;
do not remember our sins forever.
Oh, look upon us, we pray,
for we are all your people.

There is a repetitious and insistent theme here about the passage of time (for people who are exiled or oppressed). …who works for those who wait… …fade like a leaf… …do not remember iniquity forever…

Wait. Forever. Fade. Waiting for water to boil. And righteous deeds are compared to a cleaning cloth that becomes more soiled with every use… waiting to be cleansed (redeemed). This is actually the lectionary text for the first Sunday of Advent (yesterday); and I would point out the contrast between the lamentation and grief and prayerfulness of advent — that starts in darkness and moves week by week toward the light — and the modern shopping frenzy and waiting to “get for me” of commercial Christmas.

At any rate, apocalypse is Greek for “revelation” (that which is revealed), and this poetic theme of God “tearing open heaven, earthwuakes, et al, are signs of God revealing herself. The poet childishly blames God for his sinfulness, because God has remained “hidden.” The world (system) amplifies doubt, fear of death, and finally despair (the ultimate sin). Faith — as radical trust — exercised in beloved community, leads to hope.

The apocalyptic vision is a revelation of God, and of hope.

So we have this series of stories culminating in the story of the newly arrived “king” who refuses kingship three times in a row when it entails taking the reins of “the world” (the system). Instead of tearing open heaven, He inexorably moves to the cross — for a cruel political execution, and to the dismay of his disciples (interestingly, only the women refuse to stay in the background for their own safety during this dangerous mob scene). In this submission to the cross there is a threefold rejection of quietism, conformity, and violence.

Through revolutionary subordination, Jesus makes the example of discipleship himself, the willingness to locate hope not in coercive political power, but in beloved community… even unto death if need be. The earthquake comes when a Roman soldier, of all people, first proclaims Jesus’ “Christ” status as he hangs on the cross, slowly asphyxiating, and asking God to forgive his executioners.

The kingdom does not appear, as all expected, as a triumphal vicory procession, with enemies vanquished through force of arms. With the incarcnational God, heaven is torn open, the peaceable kingdom is come, by an infinite spring of agape breaking into the world… in beloved community. Sounds almost anarchist.

So I guess I’m not willing to parse overmuch about “history” as a recitation of inference from the empirical. Theology is not modern history. Modernism might want to make this conflation in order to judge an orange as an apple; but I’m not going there. This is a story. It is a story that invites participation (beginning with baptism). Where history is important is in finding the correct context for this story… that is, what did the authors mean, and how was the story received by its original listeners? “Enemy love” is not an extricable criterion by which to compare this story to others. It is a specific instance, an apocalyptic one, from within the tradition out of which it came.

Now history as a participatory process… that’s a different story (no pun intended). This is where story meets events — for everyone — and the ground upon which ethical dilemmas are encountered. One of the greatest differences between the discipleship approach and that of, say, the secular left (or right), is that efficacy is the watchword of political engagement. Discipleship maintains that efficacy is a form of idolatry, closely related, I might add, to the “efficiency” of Taylorism in our own age. The rejection of “legitimate (violent) defense” is a radical rejection of efficacy; and reveals the social character of the cross.

If there is one modifier that describes the politics of discipleship, that word would be “jubilary.”
1 December 2008, 8:20 am
milosevic:

quote:

One of the greatest differences between the discipleship approach and that of, say, the secular left (or right), is that efficacy is the watchword of political engagement. Discipleship maintains that efficacy is a form of idolatry, closely related, I might add, to the “efficiency” of Taylorism in our own age.

– in other words, the social function of Christianity is to divert people’s activity in directions that will not be effective, because they are not intended to be, at relieving the oppression and exploitation from which they suffer.

Thanks for confirming that.

A paranoid person person might suspect that Christianity is sponsored by the ruling class for the specific purpose of suppressing meaningful resistance by their slaves. Of course, such hateful thoughts could only occur to those unacquainted with the joy of loving their oppressors.

STAN: The Mennonites who follow Yoder (who I was channeling on that riff) have never hesitated to call out oppression, nor to put their bodies between oppressor and oppressed, whether that was in Haiti during the de facto Cedras regime (where I first met them) or as human shields in Iraq before the bombs fell or in death squad country in Colombia. But then you are being disingenuous in your refusal to differentiate between various “Christians,” and you have completely missed the point that this form of discipleship is anathema to capitalist development. You have also failed to acknowledge that this form of discipleship was precisely the core of the Southern US Civil Rights movement. That I now live in a multiracial household in the former Confederacy is a testament to some measure of success. The effectiveness that is idolatrous is that which answers violence with violence, which inevitably morphs into the elevation of the method over the goal. I would submit that the psychic resistance to this critique of “redemptive violence,” even and especially among the Marxist-Leninists who achieved state power in the 20th Century, has a powerful element of machismo. One of the most discomfiting aspects of my own former activism on the left was how readily I was greeted — because of my military history — as a kind of showpiece alpha-male for the Left. It was like… see, we can be real men, too… we can kill.
1 December 2008, 11:16 am
hammer:

stan;
nice talk. it is a fine story. i only had trouble with connecting underdog helping with the unenemy thing.

my own experience is that the unenemy thing is at the center or core of all experience–totally intuitive and instinctual.

STAN: I suspect you’re right, if I understand you correctly. I have watched too many small children not to believe that the urge to love everyone and everything has to be driven out of them as part of their socialization and “maturation,” or by various abuses.
1 December 2008, 12:30 pm
Howard:

John Woolman, 18th-century American Quaker, in “Plea for the Poor”
–May we look upon our treasures, and the furniture of our houses, and the garments in which we array ourselves, and try whether the seeds of
war have nourishment in these our possessions, or not.

Woolman himself examined the provenance of consumer goods and refused to use things that he found to have their roots in violence (such as goods produced by slaves). He is considered one of the spiritual founders of the American anti-slavery movement.

This tradition continues: In addition to the Mennonites, Quakers (often in close collaboration with Mennonites) are putting their bodies and lives on the line (and sometimes losing them) in Colombia, Palestine, Iraq, and elsewhere. If you Yoder tugs some string for you, you may also want to check out another Mennonite theologian, John-Paul Lederach, who has a recent book called The Moral Imagination (talk based on that book’s themes is here)
1 December 2008, 3:14 pm
Howard:

Add-on to previous comment — here’s a short piece on a Quaker who was killed in Iraq as a member of the broad-based Christian Peacemaker Teams.
1 December 2008, 3:38 pm
BuddhalovesPaine:

I would like to recommend the organization militaryproject.org as an organization to contact if any reader wants to ramp up their nonviolent resistance to those Americans who want to maintain the US as an empire and not a republic, or to those to misinformed to understand that they are enforcers for an empire and not defenders of a republic.
In honor of,
Tess Mayor
1 December 2008, 5:24 pm
mark:

Thanks for all the attention you have paid to this question.

I first delved into history in response to a religious conversion. I took the bible quite literally and surrounded myself with numerous versions, my favorite being The Moffat Bible. I think I still have two Greek/Hebrew lexicons lying around somewhere. Your reading of the history of the church as detailed in your First and Second complication reminds me in a way of the kind of fundamentalism that I once espoused. That there was a “loss” around the time of Constantine. The church became institutionalized. It lost it’s true apostolic foundation and became mired in worldly politics. It’s theology became wrongly orientated.

Also the idea of: “Liberalism’s “freedom of religion” undermined religious conviction, especially the kind of religious conviction that might translate into confrontations with power.”

Is reminiscent of bible studies I have led – minus the “confrontations with power” part. We didn’t get into that. In the general mileau in which I was associated personal faith was most important. That and voting republican (mainly because of the abortion issue) and no sex before marriage and………no beer or cigarettes……unless you were really successful in business……in which case you got to have private meetings with the pastor. (To drink and smoke and talk about man stuff)

This particular version of christian theology (which you have espoused quite well) Is that with which I have the least experience. Back in the late 80′s/early 90′s I seem to recall a serious (Well, in my mind anyway) inroad into conservative christianity by the liberation theology movements. I guess I’m making a parallel to the writings of that period and what you have written here, I don’t know if you will agree or not.

Anyway, Thank you. You have given me much to ponder.

STAN: Two challenges (one really, with two names) to politicized dispensationalism (right wing fundamentalism) are the New Monasticism and the Emergent Church. which is still in a flirtation stage with postmodernism. The challenge to liberalism in the “eccuminical” churches is less well-nominated, but has already taken up residence in Peace and Justice offices (and diocese), as well as being further elaborated by key theologians. In the Catholic Church, there is still a life-and-death-ish struggle over gender, one which is threatening Father Roy Bourgeois (of SOA repute) with excommunicationfor supporting a number of Catholic women who have been ordained among themselves as priests. Yoder’s work has been around for a while now, and has been extended and built upon not only among Mennonites, but among many UCC, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Catholic theologians.
1 December 2008, 9:42 pm
Rev. José M. Tirado:

I want to add a little to this discussion which has so intrigued me. I am again struck by the knowledge base of the participants here, as well as the articulate nature of their comments. But there is a notable referencing away from anything personal to a list or a quote or a set of impersonal, abstract ideas that tell me nothing about what pulls the heart. And frankly, for me, every time we impersonalize—we do violence.

Every time we evade a question about our “heart” and answer from our heads, we are doing violence to the human spirit.

This might sound extreme, and maybe it is, but here’s why I say so. Because the very noble ability we have to reason abstract principles from situations or impute them to situations removes us from the phenomenological reality of being a human. And what that means is a mass of tissue and fluids that thinks and feels and can describe infinite varieties of both thought and feeling. And it is only when we make abstract that we can kill.

Most of us find it hard to imagine killing a person, say, our mothers, but if that mother is a “gook” or “raghead” it becomes easier because we have abstracted the persons humanness out of them and transformed them into an Other than can now be dispensed with summarily. Or children. I’ll bet it unthinkable for most people, even soldiers to support the brutal torture of their children by dismemberment and burning that a bomb creates. Yet when “the enemy” is “over there” and my missile “over here” and I have “orders”, then I have so abstracted myself from the phenomenological reality of that human that it matters not what the consequences are of my actions which, in any other sane circumstance, like a bar-b-que with my family, are unimaginably horrible.

I noticed the macho character of many of us who speak here too. But there are several kinds of “macho” ideas. In Spanish, the word simply means “man”—but it is imbued with an image of a man, and he is one who can live up to those fabulous abstractions of “honor” and “glory”, or “respect” and “dignity”. A man in essence, is one who can abstract and live by those abstractions. Fine. But again, it’s when those noble abstractions are taken and applied to a living breathing system known as a person, that it becomes clear how dangerous it can be.

Stan mentioned the excitement many Leftists (including myself, by the way) at first felt glad about having “one of our own” be (formerly) one of “them”—soldiers. It is so hard to get away from the love of abstractions like “soldier” or “warrior” that we who live so daily removed from the consequences of our many consumer choices, who call ourselves “Leftists” (another abstraction) get excited that we have turned one over and gotten him to “our side”.

But there are no sides apart from the human and that was my point in asking for an inventory of what pulled people’s hearts.

Don’t get me wrong—I am not condemning any of you and am including myself in this group of those-who-find-it-hard-to-talk-personally because abstractions like “Left” and “spirituality”, “Justice” and “Peace” turn me on more. But that also reveals so much of the dual nature of language—to ennoble sentiments of humanity, or to create distinctions through abstraction that keep us apart. Why is so much easier to talk through abstractions over speaking through our hearts? Is this more a male thing? And how might we speak otherwise? (Hint: Stan mentions Jesus, I listen to the Buddha, and there are a number of Rabbis and other spiritual teachers who seemed to do this well.)
I hope I’m not rambling here but this is for me the most significant obstacle we all face if we want to create a more compassionate, “just” world.

I remember in 1982 I met a Thai Buddhist monk who had been a famous judge before entering the monastic life. I asked him his motivation and he said simply “Because I realized that the problem of the world is me”.

I think few things ever said to me were more brutally honest or inspiring, and they were quite personal.
This is what pulls my heart…
2 December 2008, 2:29 pm
Kathleen Greene:

I can’t claim to understand half of what’s been posted here, and I’ve already neglected my garden chores to try, so I’d like to throw up my thoughts to see if I’ve misunderstood.

My earliest schooling was Catholic – we went to Mass every day except Saturday, and we actually were taught that Constantine was counterproductive to spirituality, the Church became corrupt, and that in addition to baptism of water there was baptism of desire.
I was an avid student. However, the only spiritual moment I felt was at 14, when at Mass, praying my hardest that I’d really feel a belief in the sacrament of communion, that is, transsubstantiation, I actually felt a warm glow, and opening my eyes and looking upon the priest who was saying mass, I realized that he was just a man in a funny outfit; that the reason for my inablity to “believe” in this religion was that it is ridiculous; that I was a rational being, and whatever my own provenance I should never again feel guilt for questioning, because it is my nature. I looked around the church, and felt such love and compassion for my fellows who, apparently, did not yet see this.
I raised my two children accordingly, never teaching them one word of any religion; they were born very fine human women and I think I managed not to corrupt them much, if at all. They are characterized by others as loving, caring, understanding, generous, hardworking, funloving and trustworthy.
I believe what peace or wisdom I have in my life is owed to my mother, and my father, who loved us unconditionally. Christianity, yes, was their professed religion, but I believe that Christianity was informed by their love, rather than the other way around.
It seems, Stan, as if you’re saying that human love, agape, began with Christianity. From watching 4 children now, my own and my grandchildren, I am convinced that to love is human, to err, divine.
Finally, I cannot put in words the horror I feel when I hear “God” spoken of as ‘her’. There is no such person. There is only you and me. We must own our own love if we are to nurture it, and give it.
2 December 2008, 2:55 pm
mark:

Thank you Kathleen. Today at work I thought I might have had more to add to my previous comments. What you’ve said however, is much more to the point than anything I could think of.
2 December 2008, 10:57 pm
Stan:

It seems, Stan, as if you’re saying that human love, agape, began with Christianity.

I say neither… neither that love began with Christianity, nor that agape is synonymous with “human love,” a word with a lot of limitations and contradictions, since it stands for so many things. And I live with the paradox that some of my finest associates in the struggle for peace and decency have been agnostic or atheist, while some of the most destructive ideas at the root of our culture are propagated by people who wrap themselves in the cosmic Christ. (I have absolutely no problem or issue with the faiths of others… Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, et al. I do not and will not proselytize.)

By the same token, many of the most committed people I have met and worked with were from communities of faith. I feel compelled to reiterate that the struggle against American Apartheid was led by Christians and enunciated Christian values. Read King’s speech at Riverside Church, when he linked Vietnam with segregation. I hear no responses to that point, and I think it is a pertinent one, albeit inconvenient to the implicit claims against religion-as-a-whole. Convenience is a more destructive notion in our society today than even the Christian Right, I suspect.

Being “against religion” has always struck me — even before my own conversion — as a kind of simplistic notion, and one that serves as a divisive red herring. Isee to this day how many secular leftists who are “against religion” rush to support the organization Iraq Veterans Against the War, eg, but fail to acknowledge that the AFSC in Philadelphia unhesitatingly gave them office space in their crowded building, and have been among their most ardent supporters. When we did the march along the Gulf Coast, Black churches were the ones who gave us a place to encamp and broke bread with us. In my own state of NC, no organizaton has been more effective or consistent in pursuing a people’s agenda on policy advocacy than the NC Council of Churches. The people who display those Darwin-fish on their cars are not only engaged in childish provocation; they fail to realize that many many many Christians are schooled in biology and are not literalist caricatures pulled from the Scopes Monkey Trial. In taking a stand against the “ignorance of religion,” they are displaying their own ignorance.

We were asked “what pulls the heart.” My answers are my own; and I didn’t want to fall into the rationalistic debate-mode that Jose wants us to overcome (rightly, I think, for this thread). My own meditation on sabbath was probably closer to the mark in my case.

I will respectfully disagree that we are “rational beings,” and at the same time I hope I’m consistent in my advocacy of everyone questioning constantly… my issue with many “debates” is not that questions are raised, but that the assumptions that underwrite the questions are seldom identified and that debate-itself in this society easily maps itself onto a culture of point-scoring, verbal retaliation, ego-gratification, and ambush. Accountability and righteous passion are not problems, imo. That other stuff is.

We could begin to examine the issue of rationality by interrogating the existence and meanings of automobiles, I think, but that is another thread. For a good read about the Christian Right and about the relation between affect and reason, I recommend Linda Kintz’ Between Jesus and the Market. Her account of affect is applicable beyond her specific focus on her upbringing in political dispensationalism.

I’m not sure I understand the “horrified” reaction to my regendering the pronoun for God, though I admit I am intentional about regendering pronouns to degender the “ground of being.”

Apologies for a rushed response. I am getting ready for work, and have to get in early today.
3 December 2008, 6:24 am
Rev. José M. Tirado:

Thanks Stan for helping move this along.

I would just add that, other than in this thread, I have no difficulty in using that rationalistic mode we have when we analyze concerns and conditions in order to map out strategies. But for me personally, I wanted a small space whereby I could escape that mode for awhile, and see what it is that motivates us, in order to better understand who “we” are, and to create a community of sorts.

And right you are about the point-scoring dynamic that often interferes with solidarity building. It is all related I believe. The more we attempt to understand the Other, the fewer obstacles of all kinds remain that can keep us apart. And closeness is intimidating. Remove those obstacles of abstraction and labeling and we have naked people, quite vulnerable and frail like we are.

“Love your neighbor as yourself”, “What is not hurtful to you, do not do to others”, etc. these things tear down all obstacles between people and that´s scary. I have been a Buddhist since I was 13, a Buddhist priest for the last 5 years and I was a long time member of AFSC and attended many Quaker meetings when no Buddhist group was around. I spent time with Jewish activists and loved attending the Black churches in south and central Florida growing up. Yep, the prosletyzing was a problem sometimes and you bet I got irritated when yet again, another obstacle, that of religion, got tossed out towards me by people otherwise ostensible allies against injustice.

But by and large I just see people…people struggling with their limited time on earth and when they find something special they cherish it and want to share it. I get it. But there is a point, and I think Kathleen said it beautifully, where we are what we are and why shouldn´t that be enough? “This man loved earth, not Heaven/ enough to die” said Wallace Stevens once and I still like that.
3 December 2008, 7:46 am
BuddhalovesPaine:

TO: Stan Goff,
I came across something today that you wrote a few wrote about some weeks ago. I can not remember your sentence exactly but it was along the lines of the political left in the US remains isolated today because it did not(or it did) takes Karl Marx’s advice concerning materialism vs. idealism or something along those lines. I was hoping that you would like to expand on that theme.
4 December 2008, 1:42 pm
James M:

First, I’d like to report that I had the pleasure of seeing De Clarke yesterday and the day before, and she looks great and is radiating good cheer in all directions. She assures me that her absence from the Feral Scholar-sphere of late is due to exciting, positive, and novel events in her world, and not any kind of disaffection.

I mused with her about how odd it is, having been someone who for so long wanted to speak from a spiritual perspective on this blog, but who recognized that atheism more or less reigned and the majority of those contributing seemed not to have really “ears to hear” what I would have to say. I don’t mean that to be condescending whatsoever — just saying I felt I would be striking a dissonant and perhaps unwelcome tone amid the particular chords being played here.

And now, so many rich spiritually-based insights are flowing forth that I hardly would know where to begin or what to say. It’s somewhat surreal. I just try my best to take them in, as time permits.

I did want to say, however, that I took a strong imprint from Stan’s contention awhile back that (I paraphrase, and sorry if I mangle anything) something approaching the essence of Christianity was the refusal to use the threat and application of violence & death as a social motivator. Which makes one stop and consider how pretty much every form of “civilized” government I can think of has used that threat, and that reality. But also in mulling it over, the thought occurred: What about the threat of Hell? It would seem the threat of eternal violent punishment is the biggest fear card you could possibly play.

Ah, but of course it’s never that simple, is it?

The Devil’s always in the translation and interpretation, if you will permit the joke. But then, I suppose if the inerrant and literal Word of God had just fallen from the sky and into the lap of King James (as certain of my relatives seem to believe,) we wouldn’t have as much fun with Biblical hermeneutics as we do.

Personally, I’ve always liked (though not necessarily accepted as true) Christian mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg‘s vision of Hell. It’s not so much a matter of punishment, as it is of “like attracts like.” If one is “bad,” one arrives in a place of similar badness and hardly perceives it as torture. If one fails to perceive one’s own distance from goodness, then nothing seems out of the ordinary and in fact goodness, being so foreign and far removed, seems quite awful from this perspective.

“Swedenborg recounts that a ray of celestial light once fell into the depths of hell; the damned perceived it as stench, as an ulcerated wounds, and as darkness.” (Jorge Luis Borges, Testimony to the Invisible)
5 December 2008, 4:35 am
(Boer) Tom:

To: BuddhalovesPaine

I’ll speak for myself, but my view on materialism vs idealism:
First, from a philosophical point of view, ideas are abstractions of brains states, and are hence material. No matter what view I take on the older materialistic vs idealistic perspective, I’m strictly materialistic.

What I got from his comment is that people tend to resist (strictly – they tend to push for changes they favor, whatever the specific form of the pushing) when they have hope, which arises from an improvement in apparent conditions, (his) e.g. election of Mr Obama. (Appearances are material – they arise from the interaction of our brain/sensory system and brain states with our social environment, and in turn our influence brain states).

My experience is that when you teach someone something practical, that opens their minds to new possibilities that they’d want to test – the trick is to get them to the point of self-confidence. Teach a child to ride a bicycle, and s/he’ll want to cycle all over.
5 December 2008, 6:14 am
BuddhalovesPaine:

In my earlier posts I may have perhaps seemed like some sort of crazed, and wannabe intellectual Ax wielding baby SEAL killer. Well that is only 90% accurate. I do enjoy a good joke now and then too. In fact I overheard one the other day told by an American soldier. It seems that a number of years ago when the Americans were manning positions on the border with Iran an Iranian man known as Mullah Nasrudin approached the border in a wagon pulled by donkeys filled with hay. When the Americans asked who he was he told the interpreter that he was a smuggler.
Well the Americans searched his wagon very thoroughly and found nothing so they figured that he meant he smuggles in to Iran and let him through. So Mullah Nasrudin became a regular sight crossing the border. The Americans were very suspicious of him so they always searched him and his wagon very thoroughly. Yet their suspicion turned to alarm when it was reported to them that the Iranian Customs officials on the other side of the border were also searching Mullah Nasrudin and not finding anything. In fact they even submerged his wagon in a pond to see if any refugees were somehow concealed in his wagon. So the next day an American General came to supervise the burning of Mullah Nasrudin’s wagon to see if a spectrometer could detect the presence of opium or hashish. But still nothing was found. Over a few short years Mullah Nasrudin became wealthier and wealthier until finally he was able to go to Europe and retire. While visiting Amsterdam an American soldier who had often searched Mullah Nasrudin’s wagon came across the Mullah in a coffee house. He approached the Mullah and said, Heeey Mullah, you remember meee don’t you?? Know you can tell meee what was it that you were snuggling across the border all those years? Was it diamonds! No, replied the Mullah. It was donkeys.
5 December 2008, 10:28 am
charles:

Being “against religion” has always struck me — even before my own conversion — as a kind of simplistic notion, and one that serves as a divisive red herring.

^^^
In Detroit, the main left “houses” are Central United Methodist church ( the pastor is white, by the way), and the Unitarian church, (predominantly white).

By the way, Marx’s famous discussion of religion is not really “anti-” religion, so it is not accurate to claim that Marxism is anti-religion. It is anti-churches that are cornerstones of ruling class rule. The backbone of the Communist Party in Alabama in the 1930′s were Black church deacons ( See _Hammer and Hoe_ )Marx’s famous passage on religion is very sympathetic to religious sentiment, and basically says religion is necessary in society as it is now. To wit,
The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people[1].

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

^^^^
Engels does make a significant identity between religious faith doctrine and idealist philosophy, in defining _philosophical_ idealism and materialism ( See _Socialism: Utopian and Scientific_). The great idealist philosopher Hegel formulated is philosophy at its ultimate stage in terms of a Christian theology, for example. But Marx and Engels _are_ Hegelians in part. The way they say it is that Hegel is standing on his head, and they turn him right side up on his feet, and extract the rational revolutionary kernel of Hegelianism.
5 December 2008, 5:19 pm
charles:

What pulls the heart

^^^
Marx addresses religion pulling at the heart when he says:

“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, _the heart of a heartless world_ (emphasis added -CB), and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. ”

^^^
CB: In Marx’s day, I think “opium” had more of a connotation like aspirin than that of a “dangerous drug” in modern society, though there were Opium Wars in China . Religion is a “headache medicine”, analgesic, painkiller.

My favorite image:
“The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo. ”

Religion is the halo round this vale of woe.
5 December 2008, 5:39 pm
m.c.:

Two quick points. Generally speaking, Science(like Math) can be broken down into Theoretical & Applied. Charles Darwin wasn’t much of an Applied Scientist. He was trying to describe how the natural world worked. In the 20th century, Applied Science{& Technology} has become a type of religion or cult if you wish in itself. It has gone very well with the capitalism system but state-run economies have had problems with this as well. There is even a word, “Luddite” which implies those who are opposed to science, technology & ergo, progress. E.P. Thompson is one in his “The Making of the English Working Class” to addresses this.[wiki]

The other point about language is the rather new Dept. of Homeland Security. Doesn’t this sound right out of the Handmaid’s Tale??? During World War II and after, the US had state Civil Defense organizations. Why not change the name back to the Dept. of Civil Defense or something similar?
6 December 2008, 1:08 pm
charles:

vale of tears
Book article from: The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable vale of tears the world as a place of sorrow and difficulty; the expression dates from the mid 16th century, and earlier variants are vale of woe and vale of weeping .
11 December 2008, 4:07 pm
Kim Sky:

THE DONKEY AND RELIGION

THE DONKEY

Quoting Stan, “riding a donkey instead of a king’s stallion” … thought this was interesting.

TO QUOTE LUKE POWELL, AN INCREDIBLE PHOTOGRAPHER, discovered that the “holy land” actually resided in Afghanistan.

PHOTO: The Blue Burka
http://www.unomaha.edu/afghan/afghanistan/badakshan/an08.htm

“Throughout the ancient world, the donkey was a symbol of upper-class prestige. In peasant Afghanistan, donkeys still are a favored vehicle for well-to-do old men and families that are relatively prosperous. Every Easter Christians are told that Jesus’ ride into Jerusalem on a donkey was evidence of his humility. This is nonsense. At that time donkeys were a symbol of royalty; that was one of the reasons he was killed.”

RELIGION

I am currently reading “The Chalice and the Blade”, this book is a little repetitive in that “women did this and women did that”, but it is a good basic primer on the nature of mythology, the way that the stories evolved and were rewritten, as was prophesied in the “1984″ book. Where actually the practice of rewriting history has existed since the beginning of time. Intuitively this can only be the case. Where the Bible has been rewritten a number of times.

It seems to me that any religion promotes ideas that have been passed down through the ages, but rewritten. That to study any religion gives a person an ability to go back in time and become further in touch with ourselves and our past beings.

But wow, domination of women, acceptance of the divine in governments and slavery etc. The conversion of millions, it all seems to me to be an integral part of Colonization, about a kind of control that is male-centric.

As life in the U.S. has become something of isolation, family in the burbs, woman in a box (the house), religion seems to be the last place in this country were solidarity and caring can take place on a community level. This leaves us humans in a very vulnerable place. We can attempt to rewrite our religious books, attempt to effect change within our religious communities and/or be left in the cold, attempting to participate/create other norms for community.

This task I accept. Seeking other structures for community. In this world of integration and possibility I cannot follow one exclusive religion and remain authentic.

At one point in my life I did participate in an Abrahamic Religion — The Bahai Faith. I suggest anyone take a look. Currently, I practice no religion. To study Marx, Bahai, whatever is good, but for me, I need to keep reeducating myself, keep seeking and seeking.
11 December 2008, 6:29 pm
Stan:

No time and little inclination to do bibilcal exegesis here… but the historic ministry of Jesus as well as the “story” of Jesus emphasizes birth among straw and animal droppings in a town so broken and corrupt that “one couldn’t breathe in Bethlehem,” service to the despised and forgotten, and the unmasking of he demonic in power. He didn’t enter Jerusalem as a member of the upper class, but with the public proclamation that he was a “king.” I don’t even want to get started on Paul here (some time later), but needless to say, Paul is viewed today by friend and foe through the eyes of modernism… and so is almost completely misunderstood. Translations can be slippery at times, and sometimes just clueless. I am studying Revelation right now (and will publish a study-thingy soon on apocalypse as genre); and that has been the most twisted of all by the failure to study what the writer meant, the context in which she or he wrote, and how that was received by its intended audience. The desire to produce apologetics for a modernized view of scripture — by liberal church-folk — has been just as misguided at times as the most over-the-top dispensationalists. There is a consistency in the NT, that does not include the retrojected socio-psychology of liberal or conservative (same thing, imo) modernism. For anyone who is interested, I suggest starting with The Politics of Jesus.
12 December 2008, 6:08 am
m.c.:

I just started reading ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ yesterday. There is a National Homeland reference in it. What about Dept. of Civil Affairs? Too bad they took Obama’s PDA/Blackberry away from him.

Issac Newton’s three laws of motion & discovery of gravity are all examples of Theoretical/Observational(some experimentation) Science. He’s only the most famous and most influential physicists in history.?
15 December 2008, 1:46 pm
m.c.:

Another practical scientist was the 18th century agriculturist, Jethro Tull(the band is named after him). According to wikipedia, the Chinese grew crops in rows and hoed them thoroughly as early in the 6th Century BC, ~2,200 years before Tull advised the practice in the West.
15 December 2008, 6:00 pm
charles:

Frederick Engels 1883

The Book of Revelation

A science almost unknown in this country, except to a few liberalizing theologians who contrive to keep it as secret as they can, is the historical and linguistic criticism of the Bible, the inquiry into the age, origin, and historical value of the various writings comprising the Old and New Testament.

This science is almost exclusively German. And, moreover, what little of it has penetrated beyond the limits of Germany is not exactly the best part of it: it is that latitudinarian criticism which prides itself upon being unprejudiced and thoroughgoing, and, at the same time, Christian. The books are not exactly revealed by the holy ghost, but they are revelations of divinity through the sacred spirit of humanity, etc. Thus, the Tübingen school (Bauer, Gfrörer, etc.) are the great favourites in Holland and Switzerland, as well as in England, and, if people will go a little further, they follow Strauss. The same mild, but utterly unhistorical, spirit dominates the renowned Ernest Renan, who is but a poor plagiarist of the German critics. Of all his works nothing belongs to him but the aesthetic sentimentalism of the pervading thought, and the milk-and-water language which wraps it up.

rest at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/religion/book-revelations.htm
17 December 2008, 9:51 am
charles:

ON THE HISTORY OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY
by
FREDERICK ENGELS
From Die Neue Zeit

Vol. 1, 1894-95, pp. 4-13 and 36-43

I
The history of early Christianity has notable points of resemblance with the modern working-class movement. Like the latter, Christianity was originally a movement of oppressed people: it first appeared as the religion of slaves and emancipated slaves, of poor people deprived of all rights, of peoples subjugated or dispersed by Rome. Both Christianity and the workers’ socialism preach forthcoming salvation from bondage and misery; Christianity places this salvation in a life beyond, after death, in heaven; socialism places it in this world, in a transformation of society. Both are persecuted and baited, their adherents are despised and made the objects of exclusive laws, the former as enemies of the human race, the latter as enemies of the state, enemies of religion, the family, social order. And in spite of all persecution, nay, even spurred on by it, they forge victoriously, irresistibly ahead. Three hundred years after its appearance Christianity was the recognized state religion in the Roman World Empire, and in barely sixty years socialism has won itself a position which makes its victory absolutely certain.

If, therefore, Prof. Anton Menger wonders in his Right to the Full Product of Labour why, with the enormous concentration of landownership under the Roman emperors and the boundless sufferings of the working class of the time, which was composed almost exclusively of slaves, “socialism did not follow the overthrow of the Roman Empire in the West,” it is because he cannot see that this “socialism” did in fact, as far as it was possible at the time, exist and even became dominant — in Christianity.

Only this Christianity, as was bound to be the case in the historic conditions, did not want to accomplish the social transformation in this world, but beyond it, in heaven, in eternal life after death, in the impending “millennium.”

Full at:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_On_the_Histsory_of_Early_Christianity.pdf

http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2007/2007-March/004051.html
18 December 2008, 11:45 am
charles:

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/ollman251208.html

Socialism Is Practical Christianity
by Bertell Ollman
Written for the People’s National Party — P. N. P. — of Jamaica, 1965

Is this true? Listen to the words of Jesus and decide for yourselves whether Socialism is Practical Christianity.

SOCIALISM MEANS BROTHERHOOD:

“all ye are brethren.” (Matthew 23:8)

“Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” (Matthew 22:39)

“All things whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” (Matthew 7:12)

“Let everyone who possesses two shirts share with him who has none, and let him who has food do likewise.” (Luke 3:11)

“Give to every man that asketh of thee.” (Luke 6:30)

SOCIALISM MEANS JUSTICE:

“Give and it shall be given unto you . . . for with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.” (Luke 6:38)

SOCIALISM MEANS BEING FOR POOR PEOPLE AND AGAINST THEIR OPPRESSORS:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor . . . to preach deliverance to the captives.” (Luke 4:18)

SOCIALISM MEANS OPPOSITION TO THE GREEDY RICH:

“Woe unto you that are rich, for ye have received your consolation.” (Luke 6:24).

“No man can serve two masters. . . . Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” (Matthew 6:24)

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:23)

SOCIALISM MEANS CHRISTIAN CONCERN FOR SOCIAL PROBLEMS:

Jesus’ life, as well as his teachings, was a model of concern for his fellow human beings. Though poor in material things, he and his disciples shared what they had with all about them. For centuries afterwards, those who called themselves Christians were most noteworthy for the cooperative fellowship that characterized the community in which Jesus lived. For these men, Christianity was a matter of making over their lives to bring the greatest good to mankind. So, too, for many of the early Christian missionaries who came to Jamaica. It was Churchmen like Knibb, Burchell and Sharpe who fought the planters and got slavery abolished. Land settlement to provide land for the freed slaves and public education for the children of the poor also came about through the efforts of these true Christians. George Williams Gordon and Bogle of St. Thomas were churchmen who were willing to suffer martyrdom to improve the conditions of the people.

SOCIALISM MEANS THE SOLUTION:
26 December 2008, 3:09 pm
m.c.:

It appears childishly simple but was the term created with this connection in the public mind:

{HOMEland = HEARTland}?

In Germany they used to speak of the Fatherland(Vaterland). Does anyone in the U.S. speak or think like this?
15 January 2009, 7:39 pm
m.c.:

According to Wikipedia, the phrase “security of the American homeland” first appeared in a 1998 Foreign Policy report/paper titled ‘Catastrophic Terrorism: Elements of a National Policy’ co-authored by Ashton Carter(Harvard Neocon prof. & former Asst. Sec. Defense for Clinton), John Deutch(former CIA director & Dep. Dec. Defense for Clinton); & Philip Zelikow(former State Dept. lieutenant of Condi Rice & Executive Dir. of the 9-11 Commission)
16 January 2009, 2:28 pm
Elliott:

“I want to take on the discipline of unmaking enemies, of searching for the God coming through every person I encounter, every passing cloud, every blade of grass.” – This was my inner mission, my guiding inner light for years. Slowly it was buried under anxiety, fear of and desperate desire for romance, narcissistic attempts at self help, severe self analysis and a belated attempt at becoming an adult. My only spiritual leanings at this time led me to sporadically practice silent meditation, which was a good thing, yet I still conceptualized it as “self-help” most of the time. Very recently this inner mission was reawakened in me. The simple but unavoidable realization that I was here to help others… it came in overflowing waves of agape that moved me to tears and rendered me momentarily uselessness for standing. I had previously become so hopeless in wanting to help others because for years it had seemed to me i had to be the messiah of my own person revolution… because really I did not want to submit to the authority of the corrupt, or even worse, I thought at the time, submit to those that meant well but were as lost as I.

Now I know my feeling of lack of faith could never have been cured by opening my mind to the right intellectual message and having its earthly, empirical wisdom inscribed into my frontal lobe – nor by becoming a scientific anarchist, discerning material truth “out there” until my data became sufficient to coagulate into wisdom (though surely I am wiser for attempting playing this role.) For years I remained stagnated in an inner world growing ever more starved for reasons to have faith in myself. So I became dedicated to self help regimes in the name of restoring faith in myself in order to become good enough to THEN help others. A clear folly in retrospect.

My world shrank, along with it my inner strength which sprung mostly from my desire to be a boon to others. An island. A lonely man fights vice and his own neurotic tendencies towards self destruction by contrasting them against socially acceptable pursuits [grades, girls, money] and becomes unsure what is not addiction in the absence of true sobriety. But things never went too long without a glimmer here, a glimpse there – of a something behind everything…

If only there were some simple formula: Do X and you will be filled with the Holy Spirit. But it’s beyond calculation – that’s part of the point.

I’m back after many years absence. It’s this spirit, rather than any intellectual point that’s brought me back here. I am trying to pick things up where I left them off.
28 August 2010, 8:07 am

What pulls the heart

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