An R-Rated Review of Swear Words

Upfront notice to both readers of this blog (hi, J.R. and Annmarie): This post is of the confessional/diary type, not the usual commentary/literary type.

I've been swearing a lot recently. Don't worry about the mild mannered James you know, it has been mostly only in my head or under my breath. But, I'm curious about these common curse words -- of the "bs" and "mf" variety -- floating in my mind eager for an audible exit; why have they come suddenly upon me?

For some ten years I've made a practice of avoiding crude words (excepting the instinctive "shit" when I bang a body part against an uncomfortable surface). The catalyst was a scribbled note from a monk. While participating in the Self Knowledge Symposium spiritual community in college and after, I wrote an extended existential email whose contents I can't remember. The thing is it was circulated to an elderly monk at the Mepkin Abbey monastery in South Carolina. A printout of the email was returned with a few encouraging remarks from Father Christian scribbled in the margins about seeking God. He also circled a word (was it "fuck" or "fucking"?) and said something to the effect that such language was unnecessary and distracting. I was persuaded.

Insight followed action (or restraint from action, as it were). I noticed that friends and colleagues used swear words not so much to be vulgar but as to signal seriousness or authenticity. The implicit message was that if you broke out a swear word, you were either expressing a genuine emotion (e.g. "I'm fucking pissed off") or you were so world wearing that you couldn't be bothered with maintaining a facade of politeness (e.g., "his bullshit makes me sick"). The problem is swearing is easy. There is not the cost of actual genuineness nor the requirement of enduring real suffering. And so it is often cheap and sloppy communication, just the opposite of what it means to be -- never mind the deleterious effect on one's vocabulary of adjectives and adverbs.

(There is also the more serious discussion of actual cursing, i.e. damning, and real swearing, i.e. vow-taking. However, I leave that issue for both readers to ponder on their own; here I am referring only to the common use of "swearing" and "cursing" as speaking vulgar, impolite words.)

So am I repudiating my own wisdom by mumbling "motherfucker" as I workout at the gym or react to a minor inconvenience with "oh shit"? I hope not, so I'll propose an alternative. What I think is going on is that in holding my tongue I have also been swallowing my words. I have been not only not swearing but also not airing the kind grievances that swearing gropes at expressing. There's a place for grievances. They can be the first step in confronting an injustice. But there's also a risk. A grievance spoken aloud can be grounds for a legitimate rebuke. (Imagine the grievance that would provoke this rebuke, "You think I need to respect you more but you don't even take the time to greet me in the morning!" Or what about this one, "You want a raise but you're late to half the meetings you attend!") And the trouble is you usually don't know the result you speak the words. Being outraged is necessary, risky business.

So, for now I'll take my impulse to curse as a call to outrage. We'll see how it goes over with friends, family and co-workers....


Addendum: My wife notes that my swearing could equally well be explained by a more simple theory. We have been caring for two young boys for the last two and half years, sleep deprivation and all. That can make you frustrated. When you're frustrated you want to swear.

I Meet Oscar

By one account, it’s not too hard to figure out what’s going on in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: Junot Diaz is drawing an exaggerated, fantastical version of himself – a sci-fi loving, bookish boy from the Dominican Republic who grows up in New Jersey and comes of age at Rutgers University. By another account, it’s just good storytelling (not so controversial to say about a book that won a Pulitzer Prize).

I’ll leave it to the experts to tease out how Diaz limns his characters and arranges his plot; I can only testify to being a casual reader who could now talk about Oscar de Leon as if he were a kid with whom I went to high school. I have a hunch about the swing of Dominican-American life and language, and have been introduced to the late Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. I also laughed a bunch of times.

I believe the book met its aims with me. I miss Oscar and am glad Trujillo is dead.

Now, the book is crass. It is animated by sex. Its main dramatic tension is that Oscar is an uncouth nerd in perpetual virginity born into a culture that prizes male virility:

Our hero was not one of those Dominican cats everybody’s always going on about—he wasn’t no home-run hitter or fly bachatero, not a playboy with a million hots on his jock

Both aspects, virgin boy and concupiscent culture, are played up … constantly. But here’s what keeps it from the clutches of pornography. First, it’s a coming of age story, and it’s hard to talk about a boy coming of age without acknowledging the huge share of attention and energy that goes towards the imagined paradise of the ladies’ upper legs. Second, if Diaz is right, all the dialog involving pussy, asses, bitches and the like – i.e. fornication – is essential for conveying Oscar’s social climate. Finally, as said above, Diaz is deft. Words that would be crude in another publication are often colorful or clever in Diaz’s.

That said, a couple of the characters were over-the-top “ghetto” for me: the mother’s first boy friend as well as the sister’s main boyfriend. But then again, I’m probably not the best arbiter of what’s authentically ghetto.

Tying up loose ends, it must be mentioned that street Spanglish runs throughout the book in dialog and narration. Without looking up any Spanish, I caught on to a bit and even chuckled when I came across “culocracy” in describing the D.R. under Trujillo – a.k.a. government by pursuit of ass. That’s the one overt political message to an otherwise private tale: Diaz vents a generation’s rage against the brutal Trujillo whom he describes in unflattering terms at nearly every turn in the book. And speaking of looking up words, I had to get out the dictionary to decipher at least a dozen English (and should have done so more often). All that sci-fi reading Diaz did as a kid come through in words such as “pulchritude” (a poetic term for beauty) and “incubus” (a man or god who mysteriously ravishes a woman).

This is the point in a post where I’d normally do a Sunday school move and cleverly relate Jesus to the topic at hand. Alas, I don’t think Trinitarian metaphor in the making for this one. There are references throughout Oscar Wao cosmic curses and blessings, “Fuku” and “Zafa” in Dominican parlance, but in my humble opinion they are pretty stylized and more meant to convey a culture than to press a pagan spirituality. I think I can just let Oscar be Oscar and Jesus be Jesus.

A Father Figure: Michael Lewis' 'Home Game'

In a year, I may not remember much from Home Game . That's not to say Michael Lewis' writing is bad; it isn't. He writes here in just the style I like -- a kind of themed memoir that weaves together anecdotes and life lessons. The theme is, per the subtitle, An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood. Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott is a parallel that quickly comes to mind, and Paris to the Moon too (Adam Gopnik), which contributes to a laugh line in Home Game.

I laughed more than once. Home Game was easily entertaining. I suppose Lewis would have been in trouble if I -- an educated new father with a dry sense of humor and sympathies for themed memoirs -- didn't laugh. I was I believe, part of the book's target audience. He hit his target.

Here's my one knock. Lewis playfully describes how fatherhood is, at least in his experience, for the bourgeois America. He hardly touches on how fatherhood should be. This isn't strictly a criticism as Lewis doesn't claim to cover this ground (can you deride baseball for not having enough tackling?). But fatherhood itself -- the ideal, the archetype, the form -- is what I find moving, compelling. Wisdom along those lines is what would have made the book, more than entertaining, memorable.

Where was God in 1776?

1776 by David McCullough reads like a novel, but is in fact a historical account of that year in the Revolutionary War. Of course, I’m years late in saying so. The book was published in 2005 and McCullough is already well established as an excellent writer and historian (and from what I hear third-hand a very decent man in person).

The book is written in the classic historical style, with military battles as the main drama and generals as the chief characters. This might be a knock against it in a college history department, but I was snowed. I am convinced that George Washington and Nathanael Greene are men of great courage and integrity, and yet still human. Plus, some of my ignorance about the basic events of the war – the siege of Boston, crossing of the Delaware – was remedied. (Germans fought on both sides!)

My one reflection comes from having just read City of God. 1776 narrates an undeniably pivotal moment for the city of earth. 1776, the year, is when the mantle of world’s-most-powerful-empire began to pass from Great Britain to the then-emerging thirteen united colonies in America. My question is, what was going on in the city of God?

The primary answer 1776 gives is that white Christians were killing each other on the continent where they had recently killed off most of the Indians on the east coast. Exceptionally in 1776 , there was the pastor in New York who condemned the torture of a soldier, but most all other references to God and Christians are in the sense of imploring the creator of the principle of liberty to give victory to the colonists (or in the case of the British, that the God who created order would give victory to the king’s army).

So, I guess I’m now making a personal statement: I’m interested in church history. I also hope there's also a universal statement here, something like God is the ultimate arbiter of history.

Facing the Waves: A Portrait from Fatherhood

Recently, my family joined my brother-in-law's family at the beach for a long weekend. I wasn't sure how my older son, almost two, would enjoy it -- the sun, sand, waves and two older cousins. Last year on a similar vacation, Levi was too young to play with his cousins and he recoiled from the surf.

This time, he and I headed out alone for our first walk down to the beach. Upon arriving, Levi did what he often does in new places: He picked a direction and just kept walking. He may have walked 300 yards (a long way for a two-year-old), when I turned him back around. On the way back, I coaxed him to the edge of the waves. At first he was apprehensive but over the following minutes he experimented with the waves -- running from them, planting his feet in them, taking a few more steps towards them.

Soon, he was in the ocean up to his knees and the stronger waves would knock him down. I watched to see if being thrown to the wet sand would end our frolic. It did not. He turned the maneuver into a game. When a bigger wave came, he let it push him down so he could ride it out on his bottom.

The position he eventually took was lying on his stomach facing the sea near where the waves crested on the beach. The effect was the most junior form of body-surfing; the stronger waves reached just high enough to envelop his body. I saw an opportunity for father-son solidarity and lay down next to him. As each wave came in, I turned my head to check if the saltwater had overwhelmed him.

"More," Levi said between waves ("more," being one of his thirty words).

This is the image I'm left with from that weekend: My older son sprawled in the sand, saying, "More," as ocean waves lap at him. I pray this is his posture in life. I pray he doesn't fear life's waves, but makes a game with them -- points his head towards them and says, "more."

Felonious Jazz, A Novel

A colleague’s husband had the gumption to come into the office and hawk his self-published novel. I respect that and so read the book. It’s called Felonious Jazz.

My gut reaction is that it reminds me of The Da Vinci Code in pace and tone. It sticks to the murder mystery genre with the plot being driven by the dark mind of the villain. The mood is conspiratorial. A dashing detective is in pursuit. Can he match the mind of the criminal before another innocent woman is savaged?

A superficial comparison of Felonious Jazz and Da Vinci Code would put the two worlds apart – the suburban culture of north Raleigh, N.C. and the ecclesial intrigues of Europe. But, besides the tone, the quick, page-turning scenes seem similar to me. I am reminded of the advice of radio producer Ira Glass to close out a scene every 30-45 seconds with a flourish that will carry a listener forward. Bryan does that, well, in Felonious Jazz. With my brother-in-law visiting, I snuck off to find out if Jeff Swain would catch up to Leonard Noblac before baby Jacob was harmed….

Finding a Friend in the City of God

So I’ve finished City of God. I went in with an eye towards the parallels between the Roman empire of the fifth century and the American empire of the twenty-first – and especially the location of the church then and now. But, I’m coming away with something more intimate: a portrait of a Christian man concerned with the place and character of Jesus’ bride.

Augustine, I can imagine, in America, born in small town Iowa circa 1950. He moves to Chicago in the 70s, encounters Eastern religion and begins his intellectual ascent at the University of Chicago. Soon, he is rhetorical superstar, moves to Washington, D.C. and is immersed in the think-tank world of ideas and influence (his girlfriend and their child are conveniently left behind in Chicago). It is in the swirl of D.C. power that he has his conversion. As his faith unfolds, he retreats from Washington and secular power, returning to Chicago and accruing ecclesial authority. It is in his waning years, as the American empire begins crack under attack by raiding terrorists, that he writes his opus differentiating the church from America, apologizing against Enlightenment Deism, popular consumerism, and the Eastern religions he once embraced.

OK, I admit to already having this sketch of present-day Augustine in my head before reading City of God (having read Confessions a couple of years ago). But, City of God did nothing to disabuse me of it.

Augustine’s mind, as I come to it in City of God, is accessible. He is a pastor who cares to give his people political cover by answering the charge that the Christian faith was responsible for the sack of Rome. He is an intellectual evaluating the marketplace of ideas from Christian ground. He is a scholar determined to understand the truth in scripture through various translations and conflicting hermeneutical traditions. He is a contemplative who hears the words of the psalms echo in the quiet of his soul. He is crazy in the Christian way of believing that angels and demons are at war around us during this time before Jesus’ judgment.

I like this man. My sense at the end of City of God is of personal affection. I acknowledge there’s much to learn and say about Augustine’s wisdom (best done in a forum more demanding of rigor than this), but reflections now are of veneration.

Augustine the Liberal, Evangelical Contemplative

It’s an obvious game to play: If Augustine were around today – Twenty First Century America – in whose church camp would he be? Of course the answer is that he doesn’t fit easily into anybody’s, but the question provides an accessible frame for reflecting on his treatment of scripture.

He is one part liberal in his highly allegorical reading of Genesis. For example, he says the six days of creation should not be understood as 24 hour periods of time:

Of course, what we mean by the ‘days’ we know in experience are those that have a morning because the sun rises and an evening because the sun sets. But the first three ‘days’ of creation passed without the benefit of sun, since, according to Scripture, the sun was made on the fourth day. Of course, there is mention in the beginning that ‘light’ was made by the Word of God, and that God separated it from darkness, calling the light day and the darkness night. But no experience of our senses can tell us just what kind of ‘light’ it was and by what kind of alternating movement it caused ‘morning’ and ‘evening.’ Not even our intellects can comprehend what is meant, yet we can have no hesitation in believing the fact.

With this basis for an allegorical reading, Augustine is off and running to find figures for the cities of man and God throughout Genesis. Interestingly, he is sometimes quite concerned with textual criticism. In playing out the allegory of the two cities in the descendants from Adam to Noah, Augustine has a lot riding on the actual ages of the named men and women. Are these people truly of another age, living many hundreds of years? Or, should these years be understood by a measure other than the 365-day solar year? Augustine takes up point and counter, discrepancies in various translations, and the possible motivations of redactors. It all sounds very nineteenth-century-Germany (only the conclusion is different!).

Augustine is also an evangelical. When apologizing to pagans and philosophers, he leans heavily on Paul’s letter to the Romans, especially Paul’s contention that the splendor of creation is its own sufficient argument – to all – for the existence of one truth God. He has no problem calling competing gods “unclean spirits”. There’s no political correct impulse to call non-Christian religions and philosophies different-but-equal.

He is, though, at heart – according to my contention –, a contemplative so steeped in prayer that he slips into speaking with fragments of Psalms. It seems that as he writes he has ideas that are either inspired by pieces of psalms or confirmed by them. And so snippets of psalms appear in a pious mode – because they resonate with truth and elegance – without regard to literary criticism or even apologetic logic.

Augustine Attacks

So I’m up to book XI of City of God and here’s what I appreciate about it: Augustine is on the offensive. In a way, the whole book is a defensive reaction to the charge that Christianity caused the sacking of Rome; however, instead of wringing his hands over this charge for 600 pages, Augustine assails the failings of other religions and philosophies. No one escapes – Roman syncretists (popular and erudite), astrologers, Stoics, Epicureans and even Neoplatonists. It’s not that conflict is always good, but what I see in Augustine’s rhetorical pugilism is a refusal to give up the ground that matters most. He’s willing to give up the Christian claim on the Roman Empire but not its authority on what actually is – the truth.

Incidentally, Augustine is a great guide through Antique thought. He names his opponents and summarizes their views before delivering his blow, so the books thus far have been almost equally devoted to describing classical religion and thought as giving a Christian apology. That Augustine stands so squarely at the center of Christian tradition makes his judgments especially insightful and trustworthy. Here’s a nugget that must be useful in present-day discourse: “None of the other philosophers has come so close to us [Christians] as the Platonists have, and, therefore, we may neglect the others.”

Or, what about this one:

Natural theology cannot be discussed with men in the street but only with philosophers, that is, as the name implies, with lovers of wisdom [my note: that is "philo-sophia"]. Since divine truth and scripture clearly teach us that God, the Creator of all things, is Wisdom, a true philosopher will be a lover of God.

Ooooo ... Kapow!

Enter Augustine

My last couple of posts have been critical (first of an article by Barbara Brown Taylor and then of a book James Fowler). I’m breaking from that here, as I read City of God by Augustine of Hippo. I haven’t finished it (not even close), but I’m realizing it would be a long time before my next post if I were to wait until then.

Augustine wrote in a different time. Today, you simply couldn't say in print that some women (virgins, no less) had the pride of their virginity exposed when they were raped by an invading army. It wouldn't help to say that other virgins who were raped, truly humble ones, were not defiled in God's eyes because of their purity of heart.

My hunch is that Augustine is particularly relevant for the church today (not necessarily because of his analysis of pride and virginity). The analogy between the Roman Empire and the present-day United States I've heard a number of times. I'm just repeating it. The sack of Rome and 9/11 have to have some parallels.

The distinction between a powerful empire that is Christian in culture (Rome and America), and the City of God was a pressing one then, and now. Augustine writes from within the empire, even a place of some power. He writes to an educated reader and draws learnedly from the literary and philosophical canon of his reader. He writes of God's hope -- a political vision -- as the polity around him disintegrates. I look forward to hearing what he has to say....

'Stages of Faith' Book Belies Its Faith

The book Stages of Faith by James Fowler was recommended to me. My overall reaction is that it expresses what I believed – more or less – before I acknowledged Jesus as Lord. So, I have a rebuttal of sorts in mind, but I also am reminded by it, in a therapeutic way, of my own spiritual seeking.

Fowler’s intellectual project is to put Christianity and other faiths on a Freudian foundation. More specifically he takes Erik Erickson’s model for human development (as well as a couple other psychologists’) and layers it with an account of God and man from Reinhold Niebuhr. What comes out is a kind of humanistic Deism, in which people ascend a ladder of transcendence via an expanding perspective of their place in the world. To buttress his case, Fowler provides excerpts from the many interviews he and his grad students have done, in which they probe for people's life narratives and core beliefs.

One interviewee, the book's main case study, reminds me of my own journey in faith. The woman, called “Mary”, came of age in the late sixties and early seventies. She says, “I was involved in all sorts of things; you know Eastern religions, pop psychology, the occult, illicit drugs and sex, and all that kind of stuff.” Then at age 22, she has a conversion to Christ (spurred in part by an LCD trip) and begins bouncing around among Christian communities, some more faithful and filled with grace than others. At the time of the interview (1978), she is 28 with a child, recently separated from her husband, and still firm in her faith. My story follows a similar, but (at least outwardly) tamer, arc.

This is helpful: To be remind that, like Mary, I am a pilgrim. Many people are. My two boys are. They will no doubt struggle with the issues of identity, trust and independence that Fowler lays out, and I will help shape how they do that.

Fowler rates Mary a three, on a scale from one to six, for his “faith stages” of spiritual maturity. Here is where my sympathies break from the book. The faith stages chart is, to me, a predictable psychological model of increased appreciation for complexity and broadening of perspective. I’m all for recognizing complexity and expanding my horizons; I just don’t think it works as a religion. True religion is a person’s relationship with his heavenly father; it's hard to map out the course of a child-father relationship in six steps.

My real bone to pick with the book is in what Fowler describes as form versus content. In short, this is a tension he sets up between in what you have faith (Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, etc.) and how you live out your faith (prayer, alms giving, meditation, etc.). For most of the book Fowler wants to set aside the question of “what” and focus on the “how.” He claims true progress runs along the lines of maturing in how you practice a faith – from childish fantasy to fundamentalist literalism to a wise appreciation of symbol and ritual. Towards the end of the book he begins to grapple with the content -- the particularity -- of faith (he did, after all, get some training in theology). However, he comes up way short. The best he can do is:

The issue is finally not whether we and our companions are on this globe become Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Taoists, Confusionists or Christians, as important as that issue is. The real question is, will there be faith on the earth and will it be good faith—faith sufficiently inclusive so as to counter and transcend the destructive henotheistic idolatries of national, ethnic, racial and religious identifications and to bind us as a human community in convenantal trust and loyalty to each other and to the Ground of our Being?

To me now, this statement so obviously lacks intellectual integrity as to be boring. However, that wasn’t always the case. In college, I joined a group called the Self Knowledge Symposium, which espoused a philosophy along the lines of Fowler’s (“process over content”), only more Eastern/Gnostic in its goal of an all encompassing enlightenment experience (Fowler presents a blander Deist theology centered on an amorphous, impersonal Ground of Being). My conversion from this brand of Gnosticism to Christ could be material for another post, but I’ll summarize here the intellectual insight that accompanied it. The assertion that particular faiths – Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, etc. – rest on top of a deeper more ultimate structure of faith stages is itself a faith, a particular one. It is not a benign observation. It stands in conflict with, for example, the Christian claim that Jesus is the one true Lord of the universe in unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Pointing out the conflict (and there are many) does not immediately settle who is right -- the question of truth. But it does unmask the falsehood that one can smugly stand on neutral ground and point out “faith stages” of the world’s religions.

To illustrate my disagreement with Fowler, I’m going to rank the two of us on his stages of faith scale. They go from one (infantile) to six (saintly). Fowler never says it, but it’s clear he fancies himself a five. This is the proper rank for a professor. He understands the great complexity of the world and yet is able to navigate wisely through it. However, he is not a six because this is reserved for men of greater action – Martin Luther King, Gandhi, etc. (An engineer would be a four, with his logical mind, and a religious fundamentalist a three because of his literal interpretation of scripture.) I will give myself a one. That’s because the faith I admire most in the book is that of a boy call Freddy. He is Fowler’s interview subject who is used to illustrate the first faith stage. Freddy is described as “an alert six-year-old from a Catholic family.” Here is how Freddy articulates his faith.

Interviewer: What happens when you die?
Freddy: I don’t know. Never been up in heaven before, only when I was a baby.
Interviewer: When you were a baby you were in heaven?
Freddy: Yeah.
Interviewer: How do you know that?
Freddy: Well ‘cause I felt the cold.
Interviewer: It’s cold in heaven?
Freddy: Yeah, no, I think it’s warm, real warm.
Interviewer: Where is heaven?
Freddy: Uh, high, high, high up in the sky.
Interviewer: What’s it look like?
Freddy: Uh, high mountains, so I know about heaven.
Interviewer: Who is in heaven?
Freddy: God.
Interviewer: Just God? Is he by himself?
Freddy: No.
Interviewer: Who else is there?
Freddy: There’s, there’s the shepherds—the shepherd man—I mean the wise men that are dead.
Interviewer: Is there anyone else in heaven?
Freddy: Baby—no, not baby Jesus.
Interviewer: No?
Freddy: ‘Ca—yeah, baby Jesus is God.
Interviewer: He is?
Freddy: Yeah.
Interviewer: Okay. Is anybody else in heaven?
Freddy: There’s Mary. Saint Joe—that’s all I know.

May God give us the faith of Freddy.

What's Wrong with "Practicing Incarnation"

I was recently directed to an article in Christian Century "Our bodies, our faith: Practicing incarnation" by Barbara Brown Taylor, which was given as an exemplar of contemporary theology. While it may be representative of current mainline theology, I disagree that it is worth emulating. My response to the sender follows.


Regarding the article, I take Talyor's point about the intellectualization of the faith among mainline Christians; however, I’m unpersuaded by her prescription for it.

Her call, as I read it, is for Christians to be more bodily engaged in church stuff, particularly in the therapeutic sense of bodily engagement – rituals that look more like yoga, cathartic moments that envelop the body, appreciation of the goodness of bodily pleasures, etc. “The daily practice of incarnation” is the name she gives for this kind of renewal. In contrast, she cites doctrine, which is supposedly dry, intellectual and divisive.

If I had to pick the most prominent malaise in mainline spiritual formation -- from my little outpost in the church body – it would be this campaign for lowercase “i” “incarnation”. It takes the event of the Incarnation of the Son of God and then generalizes it into a spiritual principle of the meeting of the natural and supernatural. Untethered from the historical particulars of Mary, Jesus, the Apostles and the Church, “incarnation” then can become a verb or adjective applicable to one’s life without respect to doctrine. Theologians, liberal ones, then mine scripture for Christian language and examples to attach to it (something they scewer conservatives for doing on other issues).

That’s what Taylor does. She reads the foot washing in John as an expression of this “incarnation” principle, even though it is not particularly connected to John’s discussion of the Incarnation. Why not look for understanding about the Incarnation in John’s Gospel in, say, the first chapter? The foot washing is certainly connected to the Incarnation in the sense that the bodily coming of God in Jesus is its backdrop, but that’s true of everything else in the Gospels – Jesus’ healing with his hands, upturning tables with his arms, speaking parables with his mouth. Similarly, foot washing could be called “crucifixional” because it sets the stage for the crucifixion, or “messianic” because it is performed by the Messiah, or “apostolic” because it is witnessed the apostles. And yet Taylor does not exhort us to the daily practice of “crucifixion”, “messianism” or “apostlicism” (or resurrection, pentecostalism, etc.).

Still, I am sympathetic to Taylor’s frustration with wan faith. But, I’d amend her diagnosis slightly. Instead of calling it “intellectualized”, I would call it “hobby-ized”. Plenty of people who would hate to give up the designation of “Christian” are bored by, unimpressed with or contemptuous of the faith. The bargain they cut with the church is to treat it as a hobby – something occasionally engaging (intellectually or emotionally) and occasionally useful (baptisms and weddings) but peripheral to the core concerns of life.

(I note the danger of setting up straw men.)

My own prescription for renewal, for what it’s worth, is different than Taylor's. Instead of invoking a principle of incarnation, I would say to trust in the sacramental worship life of the church. This may sound boring and obvious, but I’m not convinced it is fully heeded. Sacramental worship is rooted in the Incarnation in what I think is, frankly, the Christian way. It exists as a consequence of the particular life of Jesus of Nazareth rippling through history and being worked out in the church (with all its quirks and blemishes). It is articulated in dogma! It does not need to be spruced up or embodied because it is already powerful and physical. This is where I locate foot washing. It is a sacramental act the church has received from the moment John describes.

None of this is to say that personal spiritual experiences at the laundry line or elsewhere are worthless or that the church is not still working out its mission in ways that may seem new. The point is that the historic sacramental worship of the church is a more true context for these things than a general principle of divine and human meeting.

Extending my sketch of Christian life will, I think, further address this issue of “embodiedness”. I would add holiness, on top of sacramental worship (which itself rests on the Incarnation). Here I’m speaking of basic Christian disciplines such as regular prayer, chastity, service to the poor and tithing (and peacemaking and martyrdom!). Again, this list may seem too plain to mention, but there is, of course, a big difference between saying these things and doing them – not as a hobby but with more shrewdness and vigor than most Americans pursue their careers. And in such doing, I think there is more “embodiedness” than most of us are prepared to handle. In prayer, there is standing and kneeling, icons to gaze at, prayer beads to touch, candles to light and shoulders to touch. In chastity, we mold the raw sexual energy that pervades our body. In serving the sick, hungry, widows, orphans and prisoners – even when we are poor ourselves -- we are likely in physically uncomfortable places (hospitals, housing projects, prisons) and probably doing some amount of manual labor (preparing food, cleaning sheets, changing diapers). In tithing, we give up ten percent of the goods and services we would otherwise consume, which may not seem to be a spiritual discipline until it is attempt; at any rate, it certainly has to do with the comforts that condition our bodies. I am talking about, dare I say it, living according to Christian doctrine.

Jesus’ example of foot washing is relevant here again. It is a teaching on holiness, on having a posture of humility and service. It need not inspire a workshop on embodiedness. It is already physical; it has already been received as part of the worship life of the church. It just needs to be done.

Trembling

For a time, my son's hands would tremble when he sat in his high chair and began to eat this breakfast. It wasn't a long time, neither in the moment (maybe ten minutes at a time) nor in his development (about a month). This was mildly concerning to my wife and me, but it was short lived enough not to cause real anxiety. What stays with me is the sight of a little boy, fifteen months, shaking slightly in innocence and vulnerability. For me, it's an image of the Christian. We are, of course, God's children. And in moments of truth we see we are helpless; we shutter, then, in weakness and for glory.

Praying Poetry: Wendell Berry's "Given" Poems

Two images stay with me having recently read Wendell Berry’s Given book of poems. An older man, after a snow, comes to his wife’s grave and wishes he could lift the snow like a blanket and join his wife as if climbing into bed. “But he is not her husband now./ To participate in resurrection, one/ first must be dead. And he goes/ back into the whitened world, alive.” This, from "The Rejected Husband".

The other image is of trees standing patiently in just the place where they were put by God. Then, this poem, "IX" in the Sabbaths 2000 series, turns the image upon man: "I stand and wait for prayer/ To come and find me here."

Robert Frost comes to mind, reading these poems from Berry. That may not be such a profound thought given that I just discovered a blurb from his publisher that says the same (along with a comparison to William Carlos Williams). Frost and Berry both write about nature and eternity -- but don't all poets! (I leave it for someone else to sort out how the Christological orientation of Berry's poems separate them from Frost's.)

Lastly, given the character of this blog, I can't ignore Berry's "How to be a Poet". "Stay away from screens," he says -- uh oh, reader! Craft, place and silence are the poem's themes, in that order. Poems are, it concludes (itself included, I suppose), "like prayers prayed back to the one who prays."

Spanking

My wife and I recently went to a parenting seminar, at which spanking was condoned but not emphasized. Neither of us have a philosophical objection against it, but neither do we have an inclination towards it. So, I asked a friend attending the seminar, who has children older than ours, whether he spanks them. He said he once spanked his son. The boy started crying and said, “Daddy, why are you hitting me?” My friend started crying too and replied, “I don’t know.” He stopped spanking his son and hugged him. That was the end of spanking for him.

I have s sense that’s how it would go for me too. I know the Bible says it’s not good for children to spare them the rod; however, I think Christians have to ask the question, Who would Jesus spank? He’s quite gentle with children and doesn’t even smack the Pharisees who obviously infuriate him. Going strictly by Jesus’ example, it seems the worst physical punishment you can mete out on your child – if he’s really doing something notorious – is to overturn his coloring table.

Severe Rebuke

When I worked in sales I learned the expression "tear him a new asshole." It's not the most gentile saying. The Christian translation is, I believe, "severe rebuke." I'd hate to call it schadenfreude, but I find it encouraging to read the occasional severe rebuke in a Christian publication. Two recent examples are on my mind -- Will Willimon's review of Bart Ehrman's God's Problem in the Christian Century and in Books and Culture Stanley Payne's critique of a book on Basque history by a Cameron Watson. These let me know that some editor still cares about the truth and some writer is not wringing his hands worried about offending a colleague who might blurb his next book.

Generous Orthodoxy: The Case of Joseph Lowery

The slogan "Generous Orthodoxy" is appealing. I've read the Brian McLaren book by that name but I'm not thinking only of his articulation; really, I'm thinking of Paul's direction to speak the truth in love. It's hard to be against that, but, as I think Jesus' example shows, the power is in the particulars -- nice sayings have to intersect with the specifics of Christian doctrine and practice. I recently came across an actual example worthy of consideration -- the Rev. Joseph Lowery.

Lowery spoke at Duke Sunday, Jan. 18, in celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr., before giving the benediction at Barack Obama's inauguration. I didn't attend, but I have since listened to his address. First, it's funny. He pokes fun at preachers and academics alike. I'd quote a joke, but it truly is all in the delivery. Second, he's old (Wikipedia puts him at 87). He can tease and exhort in ways that would be unkind or unwise for a younger man. He playfully (and ambiguously!) declared the university president's speech to have been "pretty good". He shook his finger at the single women in the audience, telling them to say "uh awn" until their men say "I do".

As for "the issue", he blasted Rick Warren for campaigning for Proposition 8. He teased, in condemnation, anyone who would take up the cause of preventing same-gender marriage. But then he turned and said in his contemplation of marraige, he could envision only a man and woman. In holding together these two positions, he made some interesting distinctions (as I read them). First, he separated law from communal practice. Law, he said, is meant to protect the rights of a minority group, not enshrine the customs of the majority. Second, he separated attitude and practice. He is suspicious of any attitude that says, "I am telling you are wrong for your own good." He seems to lean heavily on the injunction to first take the log out of your own eye. Finally, he implies a distinction between your community and my community. His "live and let live" attitude applies among communities but not within his own. If a son, church member or young pastor asked him about marriage, he seems to have a different answer than for the outsider. For those in his care, he says he can only see the union of man and woman.

I respect this teaching, even before taking into account Lowery's work in the Civil Rights Movement. I don't think he needed to knock Rick Warren, whose teaching I also respect. The distinction between American law and Christian practice I think is an important one (aren't we resident aliens!). I suspect black Christians can more clearly see the difference between America's legal system and God's standard for justice and holiness. I also appreciate the sensitivity to tone when in relationship with gay and lesbian people. In my last post, I said a weakness of (stereotypical) Protestant conservatism is that it largely reacts against liberal Prostantism, instead of casting a positive vision of the church. I take Lowery's point about "homophobia" to be similar.

In sum, I like Lowery. In his 50-minute sermon/speech, I heard a Christian voice, generous and orthodox.

Seeing Marriage within the Church

I'v been sitting on this one for the weeks since it came out over Christmas -- "Our Mutual Joy". It’s a Newsweek cover story making the “religious” case for marriage being possible between people of the same gender. It's hard to let pass such a hot-button issue. It's also hard, I've found, to bang out a pithy blog post about it....

Here's the difficulty: I disagree with the argument writer Lisa Miller makes; but, when I started writing a rebuttal I found myself disagreeing with myself, at least in tone. The exercise has sharpened my view that an understanding of marriage cannot be isolated from a wider vision of the world and the church. The vision I'm increasingly enamored with is the "catholic" Christian one (hmmm ... to capitalize the "c"?), which understands marriage as being between a man and a woman, but that's not the foundation of the catholic vision.

The weakness I see with Miller's case is that it rests on a thin vision of the church. She repeats the mainline liberal mantra of "inclusion." Inclusion is all well and good -- as I understand it, Islam, the Communist Party and the College Republicans are all happy to include you, too. The question is, inclusion into what? The liberal Protestant answer is "inclusion in an accepting community". And that seems about where the visions ends because to say anything more specific runs the risk of not being inclusive or accepting. There's no problem with that vision as such, it just doesn't seem specifically Christian in its detail, nor does it set my heart on fire.

The problem with making such a point is that it appears to argue against inclusion and acceptance, which is certainly not a Christian attitude and is understandably a turn off for some. Also, it argues against, which is to say it is presented as a reaction to the liberal vision. As bland as "inclusion and acceptance" are, the (stereotypical) conservative mantra of "don't change things" is even less appealing. It is cast primarily in the negative and has the incredulous assumption that the world hasn't or won't change. Of course it will, and so a full vision of the church must be forward facing, in addition to embracing tradition.

Here's where I use that rhetorical tool of sympathetically presenting a third option after having pointed out the shortcomings of two others. You already know its the catholic vision. It's anthem is the unity and singularity of the church across time and space. There are many, many implications of this, and of course I'm not equipped to articulate them. For my own thinking on the subject of marriage, two are most important: surrender of sexuality and authority of the church. The first addresses homosexuality in a way that is kind and comprehensive mostly because it does not particularly address homosexuality. It addresses all Christians in saying that your bodies are set apart for God -- temples for the Holy Spirit -- and so your sexuality is not meant ultimately meant to be managed for pleasure and/or convenience no matter if you fit easily into the 1950s American nuclear family ideal or not. As Christians, we have three "lifestyle" options until Jesus returns: the priesthood, marriage or a religious order. Each has its discipline for turning sexuality from manipulation and harm towards holiness. (Note that "mutual joy" is not the only dimension to the discipline of Christian marriage.) None affords a special privilege to middle class heterosexual couples.

The second aspect of the catholic vision, authority, speaks to what's actually the bulk of the Newsweek article, interpretation of scripture. Miller picks her way through the Bible and church history with the help of some liberal theologians and not surprisingly comes to the conclusion she set out to reach. And frankly I take her point that she's just doing what conservatives having been doing -- finding the parts of the Bible that suit their case. Now, for what it's worth, I think there's more intellectual integrity in the conservative position that the communities that produced the Bible, Jewish and nascent Christian, understood marriage as only being possible between opposite genders. But, that said, part of Miller's argument is that the world changes and Christian and Jewish understandings of their scriptures unfold over time. Indeed. However, a problem arises when Christians see that unfolding occurring in such different ways. Enter the authority of the church. By the scriptures own account, the church, small as it was, was the community that the Bible (the New Testament anyway). It is the church -- and there can be only one -- that decides the faithful range of interpretation of scripture. She discerns the ongoing implications of the resurrection.

Such a personification of the church, in a catholic mode, may well raise more questions than it answers, but I increasingly see it as the only viable alternative. Admittedly, I've caricatured only two alternatives; I've not tackled visions of the church such as new evangelical, pentecostal, deliverance (prosperity) and emergent. (My short answer is that each of those emphasize a characteristic of the church, but are not comprehensive visions of the church's full character.) There very much remains the "one true church question". What is it and how do you recognize it? Well, raising that question has sufficiently made my point for this post, which, remember, is about marriage. The point is you have to see marriage within the church.

The Jesus of history and the Jesus of faith meet at the church

... just finished E.P. Sanders' The Historical Figure of Jesus, a very helpful primer on the academic tools used to understand Jesus. Most helpful was Sanders candor in noting what can be said with certainty by scholarship about Jesus, and what involves some degree of conjecture. My take away is that what can be said assuredly about Jesus by the academy in no way disputes what the church says about him.

Here is Sanders' list of points about Jesus "almost beyond dispute":

Jesus was born c. 4 BCE, near the time of the death of Herod the Great;
he spent his childhood and early adult years in Nazareth, a Galilean village;
he was baptize by John the Baptist;
he called disciples;
he taught in the towns, villages and countryside of Galilee (apparently not the cities);
he preached 'the kingdom of God';
about the year 30 he went to Jerusalem for Passover
he created a disturbance in the Temple area;
he had a final meal with the disciples;
he was arrested and interrogated by Jewish authorities, specifically the high priest;
he was executed on the orders of the Roman perfect, Pontius Pilate.

We may add here a short list of equally secure facts about the aftermath of Jesus' life:

his disciples at first fled;
they saw him (in what sense is not certain) after his death;
as a consequence, they believed that he would return to found the kingdom;
they formed a community to await his return and sought to win others to faith in him as God's Messiah.

(Reading the list again I'm reminded of ... the Apostle's Creed.)

Since this list is given in the second chapter, most of the book is spent, understandably, dealing with conjecture. I find it all fascinating, about pericopes, author agendas, proto-gospels and such, but I don't have the tools for commenting upon it.

The one comparison that does come to mind is with N.T. Wright's The Challenge of Jesus (and also his The Meaning of Jesus with Marcus Borg). From what I remember, there are many similarities, especially regarding the importance of the Jewish context of Jesus' life. Wright seems to emphasis more the power of Jesus' kingdom of God claim. Sanders emphasizes more the political relationship between Ciaphus and Pilate, while down playing Jesus' conflict with the Pharisees. No big deal. The real contrast I see is in the Christian identities of Wright and Sanders. Wright, now a bishop, doesn't set aside his identity as a follower of Jesus as he cranks out books about him. He is not satisfied to let the "historical Jesus" be some real-world twin of the "Jesus of faith". Sanders does not tackle this intersection, which is fine. I just want to be clear that that is where the real action is. I believe we call it "the church".

Christian Identity from Rwanda to Durham

Here's a poignant article in Sojourners on the factors contributing to the Rwandan genocide -- The Pattern of this World.

In it, Emmanuel Katongole and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove say Rwandans took on the identities of Tutsi and Hutu over and above their Christian identity. It then draws an analogy with Christians in America (here in Durham, N.C., in particular), saying that we are beset by the same problem of taking on (racial) identities given by the world rather than from Jesus.

I'm not exactly sure why I found this moving. I think it was the combination of the lucid explanation of Rwandan history and the specific Christian call to “not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

Why books should always have happy (redemptive) endings

I am an honorary member of my aunt Ann's book club. Every year she sends me the best couple of novels she read. I got Atonement from her (Ian McEwan) and read it. While reading it, I remembered bits and pieces of Crime and Punishment, which I read six years ago. Why? Here's my guess.

The landscape of Atonement is as much interior as exterior, that is, as much in the characters' minds as outside in the visible world. The main character Briony, a budding writer, in particular is described by her thoughts about the malleability of reality. The book's drama centers on Briony's false witness -- intended? -- that sends an innocent young man to prison. The sympathetically portrayed psyche of a guilty person is what brought to mind Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. Briony's "crime" is not nearly as severe or overt as Raskolnikov's, but the believable layering of rationalizations is similar.

I liked Atonement; I snuck away from family during Christmas to read a chapter or two now and then. I attribute that to the masterful description of the characters' thoughts. I recognized some of Briony's thoughts as my own, and I'm sure I know people like her mother, father and older brother (her sister Emily I can't quite place). This is not what reading was like for me as a boy. I didn't like to read up through my sophomore year of high school. I thought novels assigned in school were loaded with boring "description", by which I meant scene setting, as opposed to cool "action", by which I probably meant depictions of events that would stir my hormones. What changed my mind about reading is that I found books were a way to engage in philosophical debate with heavyweight minds. I was, and am, contemplative by nature. So when my friend Brian lent me The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, I realized I was getting some high-powered thinking delivered directly to my mind. I was hooked. To tie this back to Atonement, I was reminded while reading it that I still don't like lots of scene-setting verbiage. I like action and thinking. That's what the book had.

I disagreed with Atonement the way I disagreed with Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Both stories carried me right along but the existential shape of the world being presented in each did not sit with me. In the case of Dan Brown I thought he was being decitful in his use of fiction to propose a conspiracy theory about the church. With McEwan, I just honestly disagree. Back to Crime and Punishment to explain. Dostoevsky sees Raskolnikov redeemed at the end. McEwan leaves Briony's situation ambiguous (on a couple of levels). There's no doubt about the ending's cleverness, and I know the mantra about literature relishing ambiguity, but I don't think you're telling the whole truth in fiction if you leave out God's providence. I'm not saying every ending has to be happy, but if you're going to depict a world shouldn't you give a nod to the character of its creator?

A Blog is Born

The optimism of a new year brings this blog to birth.

I aspire to grow as a writer and every book I've read on writing says writers need to do two things: 1) Read. 2) Write. Stephen King says he reads 80 novels a year (On Writing). Anne Lamott says she rarely takes a day off from writing, not even Christmas (Bird By Bird). Keeping a blog is not necessarily a reading discipline but it can help because of this: You don't know what you think until you write it. That's from Natalie Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones). It's my other cornerstone of writing advice. I do read; keeping a blog begs that I write.

Also, there's my dad. One time during college, back when I kept a journal in various notebooks, he and I were traveling and shared a hotel room. He noticed my routines of yoga, meditation and journaling. He already knew about the yoga and meditation, and teased me about the journaling -- gently, as is my dad's nature. He said I was writing my memoirs for posterity. Ah yes ... we can't forget aiming for grandeur. Making the move from diary to internet just makes it more explicit.

Reader advisory: This blog is going to be "churchy". The church and Christian life is what I think about, and per the Goldberg rule it will be what I write about. I also hope to get some poems up here, and of course vignettes involving friends and family.