A Plague on Both Our Houses

I read Albert Mohler’s blog entry (September 20, 2010) about Yoga in America only after I read his response to the responses others gave about the article. OK, I know that’s a bit confusing. Here’s a good explanation from the Gospel of Matthew: “Like little children calling out in the marketplace to others” (Matthew 11:16) the President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary once again found himself in a public complaining match in the public square. This crazy Culture War has us so trapped that we’re now evaluating the theology of our local health club practices. Such a needless and heavy burden gets placed on the shoulders of my generation by religious authorities today that it is no wonder we are emerging, according to Jesus, as “twice the sons of hell” as our teachers.


According to Molher’s October 7, 2010, complaint about the complaints on his original September 20 complaint (it really is this silly), there wasn’t enough biblical exegesis in the responses, nor was there enough theological understanding in the objections that people made. Of course it does not seem to matter that Mohler’s original piece contained no discernable theology outside of vague implications of following “foreign religions,” making his original blog posting itself more akin to pop culture than theological reasoning. Neither should we forget that Molher’s original complaint about Yoga contained no scriptural references at all, in spite of demanding that his responders provide them. This is a typical tactic of the plagued generations of war which hold Christianity captive. They will always demand more of others than they do of themselves.


Molher’s critique contained no scriptural evidence of the evils of Yoga; but let’s be honest, how could it and still stay true to the text? We could just as easily build a theological case against most anything as we could Yoga – Acetometaphine, shrimp, or the use of Styrofoam to name only a few. And what about visiting the doctor? That staff and serpent thing hanging on my physician’s wall alongside a pagan Hippocratic Oath (and the Bible gives sound advice about oaths) leaves me confused after every visit. What should my theological position be on that?


I’m neither taking up for Yoga here, nor am I condemning the use of Scripture in our everyday lives. I would go as far as to say that Molher’s continued insistence on applying biblical principles is a good thing, but reasonable people everywhere understand that this application has limits, perhaps not in theory, but most certainly in practice. Nevertheless, we don’t appear to be living in an Age of Reason, at least not when it comes to our self-appointed religious authorities. Our age is one which has fallen to two extremes: one side neglects to apply Biblical principles at all and uses emotion and human wisdom to interpret behavior; while the other side has elevated the Word of God to the fourth person of the Trinity: an object of worship for the sake of communicating an antiseptic God.


My personal exegesis of the Matthew 11:16-17 passage is that Jesus was referring to the "culture war" that had been making news in public places around Him for some time: a war between Epicureanism and Stoicism. Funny how little we've changed in 2,000 years. The same voices are doing all the same debating. Stoic, Albert Mohler, is just as responsible for the demise of my generation’s spirituality as Epicurean, Christopher Hitchens. Mine is a generation that has been drawn and quartered between two sides of a battle that has little to do with us. We are forced to watch the steamy entrails of our faith spill upon the cold ground of theology for the sake of differences between kings and priests to which we have never sworn our allegiance.


And now it seems that we shouldn’t stretch out or breathe too deeply before they rope us up and pat the horses.


In his response to his responders on Yoga, Mohler is quick to point out that even Muslim clerics have banned the practice. Tertullian once asked, “What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?” It would appear that the modern question for our scenario should now be, “What does the Mecca have to do with my health spa?” Are we now taking our cultural cues from restrictive Islamic practices? Is this really the Christ we need? Is it biblically sound to be this culturally intrusive? Since he didn't offer any theological or scriptural insight in his Yoga-bashing article, I suppose we're all left to guess.


I know why Mohler goes in search of exegetical purity in his local health club. He does it because he is scared and afraid, and part of me can’t blame him for that. There is a great deal of “feel good” Christianity out here and many have been defining God via their emotions for quite some time. People are flocking to entertainment-based worship services that are big on light boards and sound mixers, but low on any substantial theological understanding. My generation, as torn and as wounded as we are from these competing voices, is flocking to a "Comfort Gospel." We don't have the spiritual acumen to fix things.


There are some good reasons to be concerned for the future of the Church. I don’t blame Mohler for his fear. I blame him for projecting his fear onto the public instead of surrendering it to the cross of Christ. I am of the opinion that Dr. Mohler has become a sort of torchbearer of fear in blog after sullen blog over the past several years. Even his most recent October 4 article (Between the Boy and the Bridge) regarding loving homosexuals wasn’t honestly presented without first making sure we all witnessed him soak his theological hands in antibacterial cream before touching the subject. It seems like we now have God’s grace footnoted, subscripted, and distributed to masses in triplicate.


Unfortunately, the majority of Christians in my generation are ill-equipped to take on the restrictive biblical exegesis that Mohler presents in his writing. We’re too busy laying our minds at the feet of the worship guitarist; it's a cultural escape mechanism that has triggered in us. We've given up the fight for reason and laid down our swords. Without legitimate counter-voices to this madness, we all but give our hyper-religious authorities the unhindered access they need to club the baby seals.


There is a plague on both our houses. Agnostics, atheists, and practitioners of Yoga everywhere can smell the fear on the modern Christian and it makes them nauseous. This is a difficult time to be a rational believer and we've all but forgotten what the Wisdom literature teaches:

Ecclesiastes 7:16-18

16 Do not be over righteous,
neither be over wise—
why destroy yourself?

17 Do not be over wicked,
and do not be a fool—
why die before your time?

18 It is good to grasp the one
and not let go of the other.
The man who fears God will avoid all extremes .

Uh oh, a Bible verse. Here come the footnotes. And we all know they’re coming because in this backward age, the Good News of Jesus requires a theological “release form” in case of accidental bruising.

Why you haven't seen me at the pole...

Over the last decade and half, the fourth Wednesday of September has been declared, “See You at the Pole” day. It’s the day that Christian students from around the country gather at their school’s flag pole for prayer. I’ve never been. Truth is I struggle with the concept and have had a difficult time reconciling it with the teaching of Jesus. I’m more than open to admit that maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m the guy that has figured this thing wrong and will one day need to offer an explanation about the whole affair.

People are quick to ask me if I hold an inerrancy view of the Bible. I’m equally quick to recognize that inerrancy seldom means “perfect” according to those who ask me. It means “perfect” as they’ve interpreted it for me, and I’m usually pretty quick to say that we’ve bigger fish to fry. Besides, I don’t see much reason to elevate the Bible to the fourth person of the Trinity as an object of worship. Oddly enough, I might even argue that I care for the book more than the people asking me about inerrancy, which is why I'm careful not to use the word (which doesn't even appear in the Bible).

Jesus lays out some pretty specific instructions about prayer in the gospels. They’re about not making a spectacle of yourself or your prayer, or drawing attention to yourself when you pray. In fact, he distinctly urges us all to make prayer a private matter and offer up our words in our own closets, hidden away in secret. Bottom line is that I can’t find any evidence from Jesus in the scriptures that He’d be at the pole praying either.

I know there are some who have gone as far as comparing the “See You at the Pole” event to the pagan ritual of Maypole (which incidentally is where we got the whole “strippers on a pole” motif in today’s culture). Besides the fact that the solstices don’t line up at all, it just seems like a huge stretch to make these kinds of comparisons and the product of a hyper-sensitive culture that is dead set against the idea of Christians being in any public place at all. I am well aware that there is a certain tyranny of the minority at work in culture today, which basically ensures that I can’t live my faith out publicly at all in our culture without someone taking offense somewhere. Common sense, it seems, has passed us by.

I’ve got about a month to seriously contemplate this issue. In the meantime, I’m interested in hearing from pole gatherers how you see it and how you square it with Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 6:5-6. Meanwhile, I've been asking myself about National Day of Prayer, which I traditionally do participate in ... can I do one without the other? Or is it time to apply the exegesis there also?

Seriously open to hear your thoughts, and certainly let's not start a flame war or I will delete the post.

Too many churches?

It seems like every month, sometimes twice a month, I hear about a new church starting up in town. In fact, I read about a new one this last week in the paper and drove past a new one last week that I didn't realize had started up in a familiar location.

One thing that's always gotten my goat is when a new church starts up I tend to hear the same complaint: "There's too many churches!"

First of all, how could there ever be too many churches? Especially if we truly believe that 'where two or more are gathered' thing that Jesus said. I mean that sort of opens the door pretty wide in my estimation. Probably several dozen 'churches' happening in Walmart and Panera bread right now. Even if your interpretation of scripture doesn't let you get that lax, then still, how could their ever be too many churches ... or church buildings?

I've been researching the topic of church buildings lately. There have been several close their doors in Oak Ridge over the last four or five years. The word I get from many around town is that another half dozen churches are a handful of funerals away from shutting their doors too. The next 25 years will be interesting to say the least. We could end up with a metric ton of what I call, "Religious Brown Fields," or churches that for lack of a better term have "closed up shop."

There's not too much 'natural' about this progression. Natural progression would be our older churches growing and planting new churches, but this isn't happening so much -- at least not here. Maybe this happens in other places, I don't know... but in Oak Ridge we've developed a new populations of religious connoisseurs. Like a fine wine taster, the connoisseur of Christianity moves from bottle to bottle in search of the 'perfect' balance of flavor and smoothness.

We have so many connoisseurs of faith that there's a new market built up around the simple concept of providing the connoisseur a 'package' that he/she can't easily walk away from. There's nothing at all wrong with 'shopping' a church for a fit. The problem stems from the 'fashion' of the fit. Yesterday's 'fashion' was a fight over 'contemporary' worship styles verses 'traditional' ones. I'm not going to get into that in this particular blog, it's been done too many times.

The main thing to say is that can't ever be too many churches... the issue is whether or not they are the home of authentic ministry. As a home to authentic ministry, they will be centered on the person of Jesus and that centering can't be packaged or peddled to a connoisseur. You either have Him at the center in a traditional church, or you do not. You have Him at the center in a contemporary church or you do not.

Unfortunately, we know something else about a Christ-centered church. They're going to be pretty rare. They'll be taking their cues from the community they serve, not from a 'what's happening now' spirituality rooted hundreds of miles away. They'll probably go easy on the billboards because their budgets are tight -- and their budgets are going to be tight because they're probably pretty busy meeting needs. They aren't likely to contain a community's "Who's Who" of important people, and their authenticity will be a bit terrifying for connoisseurs who can't bare the thought of shedding a layer of pretension while out shopping packages. They won't pour every second into getting a Sunday service "just right," because the majority of their ministry will be happening Monday through Saturday. They'll seem small and they'll seem poor, if for no other reason than having the courage to look the 99 in the eye while relentlessly pursuing the one.

Too many churches? No, never.

Too many churches decorating the sheep pen? Maybe.

I'm happy to be in a place where I can set out to pasture and search for the missing... serving a people who don't require me to stay in the sheep pen, or see my primary duty as being a shepherd who spends his days changing absorbent newspaper from beneath the woolly loins of those who have never left the trough.

Playing Rook when the Rookie Calls Trumps

"A human being is the only card in the universe that trumps itself." ~ Me

You can write the above down because its a truism I hope to explain. For starters, I love the card game Rook. If you've never played, it's much like Spades. The difference is in the suits (which are colors); the points (which aligned along face cards in spades, except with numbers); and the biggest difference of all -- the kitty.

The "kitty" (sometimes called 'nest') is a set of five cards dealt into the middle, all of them face down (but in some variations you can turn over the top card to get people interested). Bidding starts and with a total of 180 pts possible (meaning you win every hand), you work with your partner across the table to maximize your bid so that you can win the 'kitty.' Highest bidder wins the kitty, then gets to discard his/her five worst cards -- and most importantly, the high bidder gets to call a trump color.

The first time I played Rook, something amazing happened. I can look back on it now as an adult and know with all certainty that God was winking at me. My father, my uncle, my grandfather, and my aunt's husband, used to play this game together every visit to Southern Alabama. The place reeked of cigarette smoke and the game itself was played on a TV tray. None of that stopped me at age 7 from becoming highly interested in the game.

I watched, observed, and learned the rules. That's what we do first in this thing called life -- and the rules we learn are often hard-wired into us by the time we start grammar school. Once I felt like I knew enough to enter the game, I waited for my chance.

It finally came when one of regulars couldn't play, so I sat and took my cards one by one. I will never forget that first hand. I didn't know what to do with it, because I had never seen a hand dealt like the one I received. You see, I had been dealt a full hand of Green cards, plus the Rook.

Let's put this in perspective just a moment.

The odds of being dealt a Royal Flush in poker are .000154. Got that in your head? Now, some genius needs to multiply that out because a Royal Flush is only five cards. I got twelve cards dealt to me in succession, including the Rook.

So I didn't know what to do... I had no proverbial 'losers' in my deck... if I got to call trumps. My dad was my partner and he noticed the puzzled look on my face. Fearing that I truly wasn't ready to play Rook at the grown folks table, he asked for permission to help me. When I told them all that I didn't know how to bid my hand because it was all the same color, they laughed.

When I laid down my hand, they stopped laughing. It was an automatic 180 pts. The perfect hand from the first time Rookie playing Rook.

I know, I know ... you shoddy materialists out there are already working out the math to show its not impossible. You're right. It's not impossible. Just really freaky.

Welcome to the human experience on a much more incredible scale. I'm not even going to start with the Goldilocks syndrome of astrophysics and geology. Let the Intelligent Design crew wear out that motif at the expense of the taxpayer.

I'm going to head in a much different direction and let you know that I very much enjoy the paintings of Paul Gauguin. Now there are an estimated 100 billion neurons in my brain, and while they don't all even remotely serve the same purpose, there's still enough of them to keep us all pretty confused about what's going on with human consciousness.

I suspect that one day science will be able to give us mental 'propensities' for about anything -- from chocolate lovers, to the God spot, this sort of chap isn't going to stop until he's made P-Zombies of all of us. It is the dream of the physicalist to do away with anything deemed unquantifiable, but upon this point I'd love to issue him a dare:

I dare you to empiricize my love of Paul Gauguin.

Imagine a world in which every brain state could be captured and examined. Imagine that the minuscule amount of people out there who like Paul Gauguin could be contrasted enough times to remove the variables and produce the unquestionable Gauguin 'style' of collected neurons. Of course, you will need to imagine this for one simple reason: It won't ever happen.

But let's play dress up in the Emperor's clothes and pretend they do it. We now have the Gauguin signature in the brain. My perfect Rook hand has been coded, the trump cards all laid out to behold. The table "ooohs" and "aaaahs." Even I don't know what it means and I'm the kid holding the cards. The proverbial, ontological 'kitty' is mine whether I realize it or not. I could be a P-Zombie or I could be Dr. Frankenstein. Doesn't matter, I get to call the trump...

Now in spite of being dealt all Greens and given a perfect 180 pt. hand, suppose I choose Red instead? I can do that after all, I am the highest bidder. I am the Kwisatz Haderach! At least when it comes to Rook and Paul Gauguin.

If I choose Green, then it is impossible for me to NOT run the table and take every hand. But what if I choose another color?

For the naturalist, there would need to be some sort of neural representation for my switch, and indeed I have little doubt that the from the muck of humanity some piece of work wouldn't then attempt to go about mapping such neurons in order to try and prove his point. Of course, you need to imagine for the same simple reason: It won't ever happen.

But let's pretend it does. Since the Emperor is out of clothes (and he was swinging his junk in the wind last time we tried this), let's just remove his skin and send him out as an mass of sinew and bone. No better looking theory than this, for certain.

Now we're left with a set of neurons that not only determines exactly when and where I like Paul Gauguin -- a statistical probability, mind you -- we've moved on to the neurons that control those Gauguin neurons. We've discovered that when the Gauguin neurons are laid to bare and communicated to the Gauguin lover, a different set of neurons fire causing the hunk of flesh that they say that I am, to up and un-devote himself.

Well, crap. Someone went and told the talking meat that science had discovered the neurons controlling his neural switch from Gauguin to non-Gauguin, so the assembly of brain cells went and fired a different combination on us. Now he's all about loving Gauguin in rain, but not in the sun. Another set of computations will need to take place.

The lifeless, gutless, and altogether Spock-like scientist will start creating a whole other set of neural criteria to map out his lab rat. And every time that frog he wants to dissect-- the human soul -- stays one step ahead of him.

Why is this you ask?

It's a simple answer. This is my game. I was dealt the perfect hand. I get to call the trump. And no matter how much complaining comes from either end of the table, this won't ever change.

Humanity is more than the sum of its parts. We've been dealt a very special hand to play in this Universe. I learned this the very first time I played Rook. And anyone who says otherwise has never read Achilles and the Tortoise.

Man is the measure of all things... Goldilocks or not -- PZombie or not -- materialist or not. The reason seems simple enough to me:

Genesis 1:26

Welcome to the house of tautological mirrors. If you need a map, give me a call... at age 40, I am about half-way through.

Why Me? I'm busy!!!

Ok folks. I'm a gamer and I use a headset to play for a couple of reasons. First of all, I tend to play into all hours of the night -- meaning I have to have something to keep the noise of blowing things up with my virtual rocket-launcher to a minimum. Second, I use team speak software, so I need a mic built into my headset in order to bark commands and reveal enemy locations to my team, which more often than not, is comprised of members from across the globe.

I have to tell you that after almost a decade of this behavior, nobody makes decent headset. They've all got the same basic issue that any pair of headphones you've ever purchased has -- the wire that leads into the ear piece eventually gets frayed and starts to cause the sound to crackle. It always happens. On every set I've bought, with every brand name I've ever tried, and at every price point that I've been able to find.

It's a crock. I have never had a headset last me more than nine months, even the very best ones. The cheap ones might go three months before they start giving way.

I know what you're thinking -- go wireless. First of all, should I have to? I mean I can get 80,000 miles or better out of my tires and $40 a piece. I can barely get through 300 hours of gaming on a headset of equal value. Second, have you ever tried to find a wireless headset with a microphone in Oak Ridge? Go try it. You can't find squat in Oak Ridge when it comes to quality electronics. You've got Walmart and Staples.

So drive to Knoxville, right?

Forget it. The last set I bought at CompUSA (now out of business in K-town) didn't work worth a crap. Besides the fact that I don't want my neighbors hearing me on their own cordless phones as I scream bloody murder about being beaten to death with a virtual shovel, I just don't dig the cordless stuff because you never know when a battery is going to give out, or a flare from our sun is going to feed your brain with static.

So why do I have to be the guy to go out and design a decent gaming headset? I don't have the time and people with training could do it much faster than me. You know whoever designed such a thing would be an instant millionaire because I don't know a single gamer who sings the praises of their quality headset. Everyone that plays regularly replaces their set annually.

Come on you brilliant people. Get rich for crying out loud! The market is begging for something decent and I don't have the time to do your job for you, no matter how rich I could get off of it.

Maybe I will train one of my kids to start thinking along these lines. By the time I'm 55 and they graduate from college, perhaps the fruit of my own loins can get out there and build something that doesn't fray at the entry to the earpiece. And I'm thinking my kids could do it for less than a million bucks in profit too.

ACK!!!!

Meliorism or Melancholia

Meliorism will change the universe. It's seldom that I make many claims, here or elsewhere. I am sort of possibilities kind of person -- I like the options left open. In fact, the moment I feel someone trying to box me in I start swinging, rhetorically speaking. But I am convinced of the first sentence of this post.

I mentioned transhumanism before in various posts. I suppose tonight just felt like the right time to start laying some things out. After all, I am still on vacation. I've got the time to at least dabble. :)

I should say that nothing here confirms or denies my own personal Christian faith. It is a philosophical rambling about things that haven't been fully determined. I will also say that nothing can really be denied from a material standpoint either, or the view of a naturalist. In fact, it is more likely true that materialism confirms these presuppositions than denies them. Maybe I'll get around to defending that statement, maybe I won't. It's a teleological world view that until the end of it all, remains just a theory.

I'd like to begin with something as common as a stone. Stones are literally scattered everywhere. I'd suggest that the majority of readers are within reach of naturally occurring stone within a few paces of the place they happen to be sitting. Those who are not could easily obtain one, or a dozen, in under a half hour. Stones come in a variety of shapes and sizes, even compositions. Stones can be used for a variety of different things: they can break apart other materials; they can be thrown at people or prey; they can used to construct buildings and bridges; and as Aesop remind us, they can even be used to raise the level of water in a jug.

Naturally occurring stones do a few things on their own too. They can redirect rivers or even block the natural flow of water; they can stand against wind or serve as rooftops for slugs and worms. On their own, stones have some potential to direct the course of Nature and they undoubtedly played a part in the shared history of this planet and beyond. Suffice to say, we are living on a pretty big one.

Somewhere along the way, the ancestors of the modern human figured out stones could be useful. That through a force of volition, stones could be carved into tools; and later, into entire abodes offering protection and shelter from the elements. Imagine walking in the woods and finding a structure of stones, maybe four stone walls comprised of many smaller stones. You'd instantly recognize that something or someone was taking the naturally occurring sporadic spread of rocks and doing something with them.

Welcome to humanity. And not just humanity, all of Life. It just happens that humanity uses stones most efficiently. The development of mankind is undeniably attached to the ability to use stones -- and not instinctively either. Sometimes we exerted our will upon stones just for fun, or for worship, or for aesthetics, or even for murder (ask Cain).

Ok, I'm stopping on the stone thing because you're bored. Here's the law of meliorism at work: the presence of Life, particularly human life, makes Nature work 'better.' Now I recognize that 'better' is a tautology here at this stage of the definition, but it won't always be. You see stones weren't the beginning, they weren't the end, and they don't even put in a dent in the way in which mankind has already and will continue to mold matter.

Replace the word 'stone' and add in the words copper circuit and you've got conductivity and and the potential for a re-organization of matter in something as complex as a computer. Take away the word 'stone' and add in the word 'DNA' or 'photon' and you start to the picture of what we as human beings are capable of doing to matter.

We are re-organizing it. In most cases, and I believe history proves this, we are 'better' organizing it. And we've really only just begun. Provided we don't kill each other in the next 10,000 years it won't be stones we are moving around -- it will be the very fabric of space time, or our own quantum biology.

Nature has already begun giving herself a face-lift and she's using us to do it. The cosmos will follow suit. It seems inevitable -- again, provided we don't kill ourselves in the process. This is what transhumanism is, more or less. Meliorism, contrary to the wiki definition linked above, is more than a metaphysical concept. It's a recorded process. What this so-called 'process' of transformation looks like at the end of the game is a question of teleology.

This is the philosophical position I accept, because it seems to me that the alternative is melancholia. We are fully capable of thinking less than ourselves than we ought, just ask Richard Dawkins. He will give you an answer to the above and when he speaks, he will really meme it. God isn't real, and when he says that, he memes it.

I'll blog that later, but for now either we have some say in our destiny, or we do not. And if we have some say our personal destiny then we have some say in collective destiny; and if our collective destiny, then global destiny, and if global destiny, then cosmic destiny, and if cosmic destiny then perhaps we had some part to play in that original scattering of loose, unorganized stone.

But that too is another day.

For now, the choice seems to me to be a melancholy acceptance of our proverbial lot as a human beings, or a blatant and intentional meliorism to be determined as the teleology of the universe unfolds and Nature begins to see herself as she really is -- through our own eyes, her own eyes.

Of Biting Heels & Crushing Heads

The waters of the Gulf around Destin are normally a pristine white. A quick rinse from a water hose tosses all the loose sand back to the ground from which in came. This morning however, the sand didn't come off. I took a 20 minute walk down the beach and did my very best to avoid the balls and sticky tar that had washed up overnight. Obviously, I wasn't successful.

Marianne Williamson wrote, "Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us."

Sometimes I believe this is true. But on mornings like this, I wonder. In Genesis, God told the Serpent that a descendant of humanity would "crush your head, and you will bite his heal." This has been interpreted in many different ways, but as I glanced down at the heels of my shoe, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I had bitten by a terrible evil. The head of the serpent might have been dealt a punishing blow from the cross of Christ, but it is still wriggling and squirming in the spasm of death. That spasm is no where more evident than in human persons. Call it sin, greed, a selfish gene... whatever. It's alive in us and we need saving from ourselves.

We truly are "powerful beyond measure" and power is a knife that cuts both ways. Williamson continues by saying that our "playing small does nothing to serve the world." Perhaps this statement is nowhere more evident than in our ecological power.

Man may be a great serpent who unleashed a viper's nest of oil on life in the Gulf of Mexico. We've been bitten on the heel, no doubt. The question that remains is:

"Will we find the Light and crush the head of our own greed? And when we finally do, will it be too late?"


More later.

Narcissus, the Post-Oil Haze

Man has power. Nature does too. When the two powers collide nobody wins. Today, I watched millions of tiny tar balls roll onto the sand from the surf. The impact of man's power may be that we bite off our nose to spite our face. The sheer joy of commanding a redfish to the shore has been trumped by the absolute inability we seem to have to stop a gushing hole that we punctured in the floor of the ocean.

I spent the morning prior to the oil's arrival, fishing the surf before retiring the pool for a few hours, then sprinting off to lunch. After a shepherd's pie and two handcrafted wheat beers, my faith in humanity was soaring, literally.

But within a few short hours, I caught word that the Gulf spill had finally hit Destin. I went down to the ocean's edge with my family to witness and lament.

MLK, Jr. once said that man's scientific power had outrun his spiritual power. I believe this is true. We can tear apart entire continents, but for whatever reason, we don't stop enough to consider the consequences.

Like a dagger through the heart, the haze of oil stung my eyes as I walked along the shore. Tiny balls from the size of a dime, all the way up the size of coffee lid had washed ashore. It took all of twenty minutes to transform the white sand of Destin into a shoreline of two black tracks of coal. I fear that by the time I wake and return in the morning, the scene will be much worse than these two pictures reveal.

So much of this future -- from ursurping the power of a 30lb redfish, to tearing back the shell of the earth and drinking her thick, black blood -- this future of ours, and of Nature itself, resides strangely and unambiguiously in our sometimes wretched, and sometimes beautiful hands.

The path we walk is a tightrope. Think too little of ourselves and we'll never take our actions seriously enough to thrive as a species. Think too much of ourselves, and we will become victims to our own hubris.

I will blog more on the oil spill tomorrow. But for now, the sheer joy I felt at reeling in that big fish yesterday has been trumped by the horrifying thought that I may not reel another like it for many years to come.

Narcissus, the Pre-Oil Gaze (Glaze)

My second morning in Destin was oil free. I had taken care of the fishing license the day prior and subconsciously programmed myself to get up at daybreak. (Can anyone else do this?) I made my way down to an empty beach, an empty expanse of ocean that was crystal clear, calm as glass, an awaiting my exploitation. My ancient lover was beckoning me across the expanse of time and I was ever-so anxious to dip a line.

When I have a line in the water, I become a different person -- some dug-up mystical relic of a time long past. They say that early men were divided between hunters and gatherers. If I believed in past lives, I'd say I was neither... maybe some village shaman with magic stick and twine that conjured up healing fillets for the tribe. When I fish, I experience a level of being with the world that I find in few other places. I can hear Chevy Chase not so much telling me "Be the ball, Danny," but instead hear his "chun-na-na-num" of transcendence in each crank of my reel. I am not good at too many things, but I am an excellent fisherman, trained by one of the best in my father. (Happy Father's Day, dad!)

So as I stood in the surf of the Gulf of Mexico, I didn't know whether or not I would catch fish. I only knew that if there were fish to catch anywhere in the vicinity, they belonged to me. After snagging a few ladyfish, I started to notice a school of large redfish swimming through. Quickly, I changed baits.

Power erupted from the calm surface of the water like electricity in my line; and the old fire from the bosom of my soul sprung to life. The line zipped and I waited with a patience one can only learn after having lost many fish to an eager hook set. When I did pull the rod back, the fish was mine.

Seventeen pound test, 25 minutes of fighting produced this beauty: a 40" redfish, weighing in around 30lbs. In the moments that this fish tugged and pulled against me, a felt the joy and anticipation of deeper struggle. A fight that pits all of humankind against nature.

I know there are those who want to view humanity as a tiny red fleck of meat in a huge goldfish bowl. To these sorts of folks, I can only raise a finger to my lips and beg their silence. Humanity is special -- so special in fact that we can unleash ourselves upon her with ferocity and mavolence at a moment's notice. Just ask this fish. Ask him while he shudders and turns beneath the flexing of my wrists. Ask him while his gills absorb a poisoned tar which we've unbottled from the crust of our planet.

We don't do humanity any favors by pretending to be so small. We certainly don't do Nature any either. Perhaps one day soon, I will outline the reasons why I am a philosophical transhumanist. But for today, I am content to bask in a pre-oil glaze, casting a zealous gaze at my prize. It's life in those moments belong to me. And the life of this planet -- all life -- that belongs to us.

What we do with it appears to be another story altogether. Because as I sit typing, our hubris is collecting on the shore in sullen, dirty balls of tar.

What Your Server Knows

I’m on vacation. I’m supposed to be thinking about the beach, the waves, the sun, and one of my great loves – fishing. Yet, I as stare out into the dark expanse of the Gulf of Mexico approaching midnight in the panhandle, I am paradoxically struck by a beauty that I never want to leave; yet at the same time, my mind yearns for home.

We visited a restaurant this evening and when it came time to ‘tip’ on an overpriced meal, I was reminded of a $112 tab accumulated by a group of Oak Ridgers twenty years ago when I was waiting tables. It was a Sunday afternoon (a party of eight or nine) and after waiting on them all basically hand to mouth, I walked away with $2.10, my hourly wage.

Like a bad taste, that flavor still lingers inside me two decades later—and it has less to do with the tip than you might imagine. On that day, I was my own worst enemy. The night before, our manager had put out a call for help. Someone wasn’t going to show up for their Sunday shift and we were a server short. As a newbie to the business, I volunteered. When I did, chuckles erupted from the senior servers. They knew something that I didn’t: The post-worship crowd tended to stiff the help.

My first Sunday afternoon waiting tables will forever live in my memory. I have never been worked harder, treated worse, or made less money in any other job, or on any other working day of my entire life. The real insult was that I was naively excited about taking Sunday afternoon. Being a Christian and having been raised in Oak Ridge, I figured I’d be waiting on people who shared the same values, people I could relate with and talk to while I worked.

I couldn’t have been any closer to heart-break as I learned firsthand the Christian witness being left on tables. As my brief career waiting tables waned, I found myself requesting to work the “smoking section” on Sundays. At least there I would be greeted with a smile, treated with grace, and tipped with charity.

As a pastor of many years, I still look back to those days, wanting desperately to call it a fluke. But I’ve spoken with too many waiters from too many places to accept my experience as an anomaly.

So when the bill came tonight and I thought of all the waiters in the Gulf losing cash to a terrible catastrophe of oil, my mind went back to Oak Ridge. I thought about what a server knows – and how that knowledge speaks so much louder than a suit, or a dress, or a freshly inked salvation track. I thought about Jesus and our mission as believers.

I know there are many who are licking their chops at the thought of a negative blog about believers. They like nothing more than seeing another log thrown on that fire, and that is the very nature of humanity that we’ve been called, by grace, to redirect. This wasn’t written for them; it is for believers. We must accept that we are not only capable of more; we’re commanded to more. If we’ve no grace in our Sunday lunch, even after piously saying it with a bowed head, then we shame the Gospel which is far worse than shaming ourselves.

I love and miss my hometown and I’m excited to be coming back to work, as dysfunctional as that might sound; because come hell or high water, what our servers know about us has got to change.

The American Voyeur

By now, many of you have probably heard the rumors circulating that Gary Coleman's wife, Shannon Price, sold photographs of his final moments in the hospital to tabloid magazines. Whether or not the rumors are true (I suspect that they are), the real issue for me would be that "I am Jack's utter lack of surprise." I suspect many other Americans are probably feeling the same. Imagine two separate, but perhaps equally as damning, realities: one, that a huge percentage of people in this country actually wants to be famous; and two, that many of those who don't would still sneak a peek at dying person to gratify their own personal voyeurism.

I'm telling you the God honest truth here. Sometimes I think I am must be from some other planet, because any similarity I might have with the above defined 'human' population is 100% beyond my ability to comprehend. While it is certain that we must carry some semblance of each other in our respective DNA, I find it difficult to believe that we have anything else in common.

On the first point, the "need to be famous," who'd ever really want it? Would trading everything remotely sacred about life be worth it? Would handing over every last bit yourself to the public be worth the trade-off? In my generation it was Princess Diana's tragic car crash. It's just simply unfathomable, being on either side of those cameras. Taking your last breath while flash bulbs erupt and light reflects off a pool of your own blood. What a hellish way to go, far more torturous than dying beneath a pinned car. Adding insult to injury, even your last breaths couldn't be taken in peace. And please don't get me started on the human parasites on the other side of the lens. In Princess Di's case, those leeches should have been tried for involuntary manslaughter as not a one of them even offered up their shirts to soak the blood. They just kept snapping away, picture after picture; image after gruesome image.

As a pastor of a few years, I can tell you that spending time with the deceased and their families isn't something to plaster across the media. It's a sacred time and as if our culture hadn't already pissed away enough of the sacred through selfishness, greed, and materialist philosophy, our intrusion into the wretched corners of our humanity finds new ways to rear its ugly head. This is the vile fruit growing from the twisted seeds we have planted. This act of human depravity springs up from our new ideological soil, a world view of utter naturalism that rejects the premise that anything in this world is sacred at all.

On the second point, as terrible as Shannon Price's alleged activity may be, doesn't the real blame fall on the shoulders of an American populace which finds no better solace for its many bored and empty lives than to commit a sadistic voyeurism upon other human beings? I am reminded of the way in which serial killers immortalize particular body parts of their victims in hopes of being able relive the thrill of their kills; or the way in which famous figures executed throughout history have been dismembered with their body parts spread around areas of town for all to see. One need not think too much beyond the murder of Neda Agha Soltan in Iran last year and the bystander who managed to capture it on his cell phone video camera, or the numerous stonings of women emerging from the Middle East as they have been caught on cell-phone cameras. These activities, coupled with the American hypocrisy named 'paparazzi,' remind us how little ground we've gained since the ancient Roman arenas and gladiator conflicts. Life and its end are still treated as sport to a great many people.

And such are the offerings of inhumanity littering our supermarket checkouts, right next to Pez dispensers and Snickers bars. Give us another life to follow, and another death for which we are invited to serve as humble spectators. Keep it at a distance though, so the blood won't spill on our shoes.

The Romans had to build 'vomitoriums' into their coliseum seating in order to keep onlookers from puking on each other. And I have to say, as I pause to consider my role as a human person in this tepid and sickened America that we have constructed, that I find myself looking for my own pail at the very thought of anyone wanting to buy Gary Coleman's death pictures, or even look at them.

And I refuse to apologize for calling the voyeurs of wealth and fame anything other than what they are: sadistic, empty shells of humanity needing to reclaim something long since lost. And I must add, that given this morally relativistic age in which we live, I am totally incapable of simply chalking this one up to "Different Strokes."

 

The Unbearable Fabric of Being

For many years now, we've sort of described our church as a people who want to do nothing more than to create spaces for God to show up. Interestingly enough, we tend to do this not by filling a space with our theology or beliefs or music or what have you, but instead, quite the opposite. We've found purpose in pushing away dogma and direction in favor of making empty spaces in order that they might be filled. This via negativa approach to metaphysical space has proven effective, at least in our perspective (which admittedly limited geographically and ideologically speaking). We've tried to remove the trappings of religion in order for community to thrive in an environment of radical freedom and grace. It tends to be welcomed by the non-religious among us, while simultaneously feared by those dressed up in the shiniest faith clothes. Without a dogmatic creed to hide behind, we're often left just exploring the messes of each other's lives in search of wisdom. It's unorthodox, I admit; and yet after 20 years it just seems to be who we are.

So a couple of us get this brainstorm early in 2010 regarding using the historic Grove Theater as nesting ground for creative expression, one that we're adamantly devoted to protect from heavily sharpened agendas designed to gouge and poke and corral people into theological, or philosophical stalls. Anyone that knows us, knows the real paradox of High Places is that as haphazard as any given moment with us can seem, it has been utterly bathed with thought before it saw the light of day. We'll meet and debate for hours behind closed doors about the theological, philosophical, existential, and political ramifications of almost every course of action. Usually by the end of it, we've not advanced too far into any proverbial rabbit holes, so we tend to err on the side that says, "Let's just do it and see what happens. Use the good and bad of it as a learning experience."

So back to the nesting ground of creative expression… a couple of us thought it would be nice for Oak Ridge to have more opportunities for average citizens to just share their thoughts, writings, artistic creations, and songs in the form of an "Open Mic Night." Discussion began in earnest as to what such a thing might look like. Do we invoke censorship? Or does anything go? If anything goes, do we set age boundaries on attendance? How do we ensure that the event doesn't put a spotlight on HPCC and make it about us? Why should we expend time, energy, and resources on this event? What are our hopes, dreams, and goals?

We'll kick these questions around in staff meetings for months and the discussions are good for the soul. Yet, when it really boils down to it, we almost always return to this general feeling of "Just do it; let the chips fall where they may." I think this sort of thing that creates the empty space around which so many of the activities evolving, and revolving around us and/or the theater seems to get created.

Saturday night, we took the gloves off. We decided we'd just let things be what they were. I'm not sure who's reading this now, I know my blog uplinks to FaceBook and that seems to be where these "notes" get read the most; still, I do know for certain that it is impossible for any more than 12 of you to have had a direct experience with "Open Mic Night," because that's what we ran in attendance all sum total. I wanted to relay to any who missed this event that Saturday night was pretty incredible – I'd even go a step further and say it was miraculous. And if you've heard me preach, you know that the word "miracle" is a tough one for me. We live in a world where seemingly God can heal diseases under the surface of the skin (like cancer), but for whatever reason, amputees don't grow new arms and legs. God doesn't heal amputees, at least not any that I've ever seen. As a reasonable person, this casts a huge shadow of doubt on many things for me that I might explain later, using old sermon notes in case you missed that one.

This huge shadow of doubt comes as no surprise to those who know me; I make no real bones about my journey of faith and tend to not hold back my personal struggles from the pulpit. The depths of my struggles run pretty deep, so naturally, a big part of having an "Open Mic Night" for me would include reading some of my own poems that have over time, housed my doubts and simultaneously sheltered my faith. Having picked a long poem, maybe a life-long work of mine, it pretty much turned out that I was the guy doing the self-censoring for the sake of upholding "community standards." I love irony, really I do.

But the real irony of the event Saturday wasn't the preacher with painfully indirect poetic metaphors in need of censorship. The 'miracle' of the evening was in the lack of censorship by eleven other souls, because the space we created for community expression was met with a "no holds barred" humanity that I could not have imagined prior to seeing it with my own eyes. Let me be as specific as I can without attendees feeling like I am blogging their lives for them.

We began a bit late because no one was there. When we finally started, we had two guests. And elderly gentleman named Jim, and his wife. Of all the crazy coincidences, his wife happened to be my freshman algebra teacher from high school. She left my freshman year after tragically losing her son in an automobile accident. She pursued three doctorate degrees after that in physics, mathematics, and administration. But she also wrote a book, readings from which she shared with us. It was beautiful – just reconnecting, sharing losses, living our humanity out loud. As she finished up, three more people came in. As if one crazy coincidence wasn't enough, a second lady separated by a generation from the former shared poems she had written during the loss of her son a few years ago. Now I recognize that statistically speaking, this is possible. Mothers do lose sons early in life. I don't know, maybe one in a hundred experience this kind of loss… maybe one in five hundred… maybe it's more like one in a thousand if we go by health department data. So our first two participants were mothers who lost sons. Certainly unlikely, but also not out of the realm of possibility.

During a transition, a friend named Joe read a bit of prose he had thumbed through in my algebra teacher's book about her standing at her mother's funeral. He said that portion of the book jumped out at him. Well, it just so happens that third person who arrived late I know very well. He lost his mom during that week – I was there, and I knew the depth of the impact it had on him. So in four readings, by approximately 9:15 pm, we had two incredibly powerful shared experiences of identical loss. I don't know, people lose moms… it happens to most all of us at some point in life. Maybe statistically speaking, it would be not so amazing that a young man who lost his mother unexpectedly would happen into a room where a guy was reading a piece of prose about a lady who lost her mom; and that all that could happen about the time that a lady who lost her son shared with a group her experiences of losing a son – completely unaware that that the lady who shared before her had also talked about losing a son. I guess it might could happen, statistically speaking.

But in between it all was wedged this massive poem I had written on science, skepticism, and faith. It was about loss and death and the inability, or at least difficulty, in giving those concepts the same space as a God who claims omni-benevolence. There was more – including a young lady who did two beautiful numbers on a guitar using similar metaphors to describe loss, and the power of faith.

I never met these people – or at least outside of my experience 25 years ago with my algebra teacher, I had no real expectation that this thing would end up being such a tightly weaved fabric of being. The amount of healing and compassion that circulated in that room, in that, statistically speaking, highly improbable assembly of souls, was totally uncensored and overflowing with divine energy. If you were there, you know what I am saying is the truth. Something was happening that defied explanation. The walls had been pushed back through a dozen planning sessions, and in the empty spaces of these moments, grace abounded. The grace was so thick and experienced so personally for me, that I had to take back out my litany of poetic doubt, if for no other reason than to note the heavy lipstick of God as he had playfully kissed each stanza in a friendly mockery of my so-called evolved sense of logic and reason. He had in those moments addressed the doubts by weaving together an unbearable fabric of being. I saw it unfold, reveled in the moment, and took my community home to cover my own nakedness with something much more pure and unfettered than a theological fig leaf. I was reminded that Grace is the primary spiritual meal that we've all been invited to consume -- the meat and potatoes of life and community. I took away from Saturday night, a garment of being. And I stood in awe at the power of the seamstress.

Acts 17:28, my favorite verse in all the Bible… well, there could have been no greater demonstration of its veracity than what I saw in those moments. I am truly sorry you missed it because it was beautiful. Nearly unbearable in its power and beauty.

On Dirty Minds

I was reading tonight about a study presented in San Diego at the American Society for Microbiology. It seems that there is a curious little critter lurking in your flower bed that just might make you smarter. You can read all about it here. Its name is Mycobacterium vaccae and early indications reveal that a steady dose of this stuff can not only reduce anxiety, but make you smarter too. Well, at least in mice.

If you've spent much time with me then you know my affinity for that deviant poet Walt Whitman. It seems that there is a truth in poetry after all, as if any shoddy materialists out there still dare to question:

Smile O voluptuous cool-breathed earth!

Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!

Earth of departed sunset! Earth of the mountains misty-top!

Earth of vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!

Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!

Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake!

Far-swooping elbowed earth! Rich apple-blossomed earth!

Smile, for your lover comes!

—Leaves of Grass, 1855

If this study is even partly correct, then the case should again be made with earnest: our kids need to be outside. Locking them up in a sterile classroom may be doing them more harm than we realize. Teachers, get them outside! Let them poke in the mud or dip the tips of their fingers in – from the garden expulsion to the best of poets, artists, and musicians – and now even from our scientists we see that dirt indeed has a power we shouldn't ignore.

So if you're the wet-wipe type (and I can be sometimes too), then think again as you applying liberally to soiled areas. Because you might be looking all spic 'n span, but shaving off an IQ point or two in the process. Not to mention making yourself an even bigger worry wart.

If there's ever been a better case for having a dirty mind, I can't imagine what it is!

LOST finale, I was blind but now I … ?

I read a story recently; maybe it was true story, maybe just a parable, I don’t know. It went something like this:

Once a man was walking in a park on a beautiful spring afternoon. Along the way, he was stopped by a group of blind women having a picnic. They heard him passing by and asked the man to take a photograph of them. He agreed. As the women huddled closely together and he snapped the photograph, he inwardly mused about the cryptic nature of a group of blind people wanting a photograph of themselves that they would never see. As he continued his walk, it occurred to him that as human beings we are fashioned in such a way that having shared experiences which ultimately rest beyond our human faculty to enjoy could ultimately be enjoyed through others. The photograph, that these women would never see, could be enjoyed by others who could see it -- and the enjoyment of those who saw it would be shared by those who lived and experienced the moment in a very different way.

I think LOST kind of fits that bill for me. I walk away from the show undecided if I am one of the blind women wanting to share an experience that I could never see directly, or if I am a holding a picture of something that I can see and trying to relay it to a group which has known it much differently than me.

That alone made the finale ‘worth it’ to me. I didn’t come away feeling ripped off and some have, most of my disappointments with the show emerged during the writers’ strike and all the plot problems that stemmed from it. Ultimately the ending brought a redeeming quality to the work itself and maybe that redemption, at least for the characters, was the point all along.

Interestingly enough LOST seemed to be geared toward the characters and not the fans from the start. I can appreciate that much about it; at least until the massive advertisement campaign started bleeding into my artistic appreciation of the show. So much of the cliff-hanger design was about neither the characters nor the fans – it existed to bait advertisers into spending more money to keep things rolling.

Cynicism aside, what the finale demonstrated was that all along the story of LOST existed for the characters and not the fans. We are each called into their story and emerging perhaps with little information, we’re left to our own individual imaginations as to the role we might play in it as existential beings.

It’s true that there are likely several dozen different theories about what happened. As a Christian, the old saying from John’s gospel, “No greater love has anyone than this: that they lay down their life for their friends” pretty much washed over the final scene. So did a line from T.S. Eliot – “My end is my beginning.”

Even so, Jack emerged from the tunnel of light in nearly the exact same place as the man in black. His body was contorted in a very similar fashion as the man in black. Could Jack be the island’s new smoke monster? Was Hurley’s selection as island guardian meant to guide Jack back? Is that why everyone else was waiting for him?

Or was it that Jack’s commitment to science and reason that kept him emerging into the afterlife much slower than his peers? Undoubtedly the issues of faith and redemption have been, and will now be codified, as the show’s primary themes.

It was through the theme of faith that everything else on the show will probably be forever interpreted. From the attempt of science to control religious faith (Dharma), to human self-righteousness manifested via the need to own religious faith (Ben), to the battle between good and evil to establish a foothold in religious faith (Jacob and the man in black), to the flirtation between this world and the next (Desmond), to ultimately crafting a human dialogue of purpose and meaning between two opposing ideologies (Jack and pre-monster Locke). The themes are there whether or not we choose to examine them as such.

LOST is a basic metaphor for our culture, of this I have little doubts. Volumes are going to be written about what it meant, and probably already have been, in that this is but one of thousands of blogs on the matter.

So five blind women having a picnic asked a stranger to photograph them… If you can understand the vicarious human nature of such a request, you’re close to becoming a candidate… and of course being a candidate, well, that’s a terrifying beauty all its own.

Earth is crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning


Meet you all on the other side,

DA

Goodnight my friend...

I can't sleep... what's new? Was thinking about my friend Jane as she slips away, then I remembered this prayer I wrote last year. Was nice to re-read, contemplate, and absorb. Thought I was overdue for a post anyway, so here it be.



On These Our Wings of Lonely Lifted Peat

On these our wings of lonely lifted peat
we see from heights above our waiting graves,
the alabaster jar has doused the feet

Of Him whose holy pertinence retreats
and leaves the chaise of human lawns to slave
our thresh upon the floor as sifted wheat.

And what rough beast strolls calmly down our street
and asks those fears to kindly go behave
with perfume poured upon our tombs and feet?

The parlors of the box are not discrete;
nor do the words upon these stones engrave
the kernel of our hope in planted wheat.

To Him whose holy pertinence retreats,
our doubts upon this cross we ask You waive;
take humble jars of fragrance bitter sweet

Raise broken heels above our vain conceit,
trade blessings for the burdens of our graves
until such time Thy work is last complete
on these our wings of lonely lifted peat.

The Science of Flipping Birds

I recently read a quote from physicist Richard Feynman: "Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds." Feynman was a brilliant thinker, of this there can be little doubt. But with this particular quote, Feynman exposes an all too familiar naivety emerging from some of our brightest minds. Ornithology may not be of much use to birds, but birds don't drop atomic bombs. There isn't a middle finger buried in the science of ornithology capable of wiping out the planet, or conversely, a helpful set of thumbs developing MRI technology.

Of course it goes without saying, or at least it should go without saying, that a philosophy of science is what kept Feynman's research funded at all. It was that same philosophy of science that takes what he and others like him do and 'apply' (pun intended) it to the so-called real world. In other words, a fully funded philosophy of science was the teat from which he was 'granted' to drink, as well as the containers into which he spilled his milk. (Yes, granted was another intentional pun.) I say that it should go without saying, but obviously it doesn't or I wouldn't be saying it.

In one sense, Feynman's quote is spot on. You might recall from an earlier blog post, that I mentioned the last mandatory sterilization that occurred in America when I was in the seventh grade, and not a single scientific rule was violated in that process. It should be of no great surprise that a philosophy of science was no use to the actual mechanics of the procedure. Of course the same thing is true in the discovery of penicillin, or the manipulation of the stem cell. At a most rudimentary level of thinking, one could argue that the science itself happened in a proverbial vacuum.

The only problem with such base and archaic reasoning comes from the fact that human beings did the science. And we don't touch anything in this world without a working metaphysic, even if such a metaphysic is an act of primitive nominalism. Maybe I'll come back to that later in another post, but for now, it is sufficient enough to say that our ideological fingerprints emerge all over the science we do. Feynman is right in that these fingerprints have no bearing on the science itself, but it certainly was a force in both funding the laboratory and applying the results. Pharmaceutical science is beautiful for the entire time it's in the test tube, and both the economy and ethics of it are of no account. But to get it under the microscope in the first place required a series of steps that in no way correspond to the scientific method, and of course once it came out of the test tube, we begin in 'earnest' to attach a price tag to it. ("earnest" – three puns, going for a record).

Feynman's resistance to the philosophy of science displayed in this quote is a bit ironic, given his statements dredged up by Ian Hacking in the book, "The Social Construction of What?"

"Mathematically each of the three different formulations, Newton's law, the local field theory and the minimum principle, gives exactly the same consequences. What do we do then?

You will read in all the books that we cannot decide scientifically on one or the other. That is true. They are equivalent scientifically. It is impossible to make a decision, because there is no experimental way to distinguish between them if all the consequences are the same. But psychologically they are very different in two ways. First, philosophically you like them or do not like them; and training is the only way to beat that disease. Second, psychologically they are very different because they are completely un-equivalent when you are trying to guess new laws. Feynman, 1967." (Emphasis mine)

Here we see another potential problem embedded in the science itself. The way we choose to begin often determines the path we take to reach the end. Selling out to one could potentially determine the way you go after the next. This concept is explored a bit in my blog below on marginalization and the booger-ditch of psychological research. Without a philosophy of science, even under the microscope, we might potentially be choosing between two sets of methods, both of which work. With enough funding and application, we might be able to determine which works best, at least in any given moment, but that's unlikely since once a working way is found, the funding gets amplified it that direction. Still, there's no denying that reverse engineering on the stem cell (a mostly ideologically mandated move) did in fact lead to discoveries on a path that tinkering with the stem cell alone would most likely never have forged.

In this particular case, the scientist suckled from the teat of least resistance until he was all but forced to work the other breast by the notorious G.W. Bush executive order, steeped in ideological metaphysics. Now research continues on both nipples and if you read enough, you'll see the scientist takes his lips back and forth between them, trying not to accidentally spill anything on his metaphysical chin. And of course, we shouldn't forget the baby bottle waiting to catch a few drops of this genetic milk -- with a big WiCell sticker wrapped around it. After all, they hold the patent to the bulk of it anyway. They are the ones doling out the samples and stand to reap the first fruits of science applied rewards.

But we, the idle birds of reason, need not think on these things. There is no good reason to flip the birds, or turn the science. Ornithology doesn't matter to birds, even if through such a probing good, our wings will be mended, or sometimes clipped, as we fly across these lawns and man-made nests.

 

 

 

Strife

One of the oft quoted and oft misrepresented verses in the Bible comes from Psalms 46. The way you probably memorized it is – “Be still and know that I am God.” But a more accurate translation probably reads, “Cease striving, and know that I am God.”

People that know me from way back, meaning seminary and before, know that I’ve always been a big fan of that mystical hooligan, Meister Eckhart. At a time that the Church needed something out of the box to challenge papal authority, Eckhart carefully dismantled it and ripped again the veil of religion held up between man and God. Eckhart was a big time fan of silence and of Eastern concepts like ‘emptying’ the soul in order that the goodness of God might refill it. I love the guy and all the reasons I love him put him on trial for heresy so I figure I’m likely in good company because the same psychology nailed Jesus to a cross and burned the best minds of many generations at the stake.

As good and as wonderful as silence and “being still” may be, to interpret Psalms 46:10 as some kind of Eastern spiritual thing just doesn’t come close the absolutely stunning and painful context of the saying. Let’s look at Psalms 46 in the context in which it was written:

8 Come and see the works of the LORD,
the desolations he has brought on the earth.
9 He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth;
he breaks the bow and shatters the spear,
he burns the shields with fire.
10 "Be still, and know that I am God;

Or more accurately put, cease striving and know that I am God.

Like so many of the Psalms, this one is about theodicy, or the problem of evil in the world. Here’s the kicker (and if you’ve read much of my apologetics, getting kicked in the groin is a metaphor I use often, so please forgive if you’re the easily offended type, and don’t get miffed if in learning you are easily offended I intentionally place a few kicks there… it’s a character flaw that I’m working on); so here’s the kicker: This “be still” stuff is written into a context of both divine depravity dispensed upon mankind while simultaneously coupled with its removal.

You might remember from Genesis, and it matters not what you take literally and what you don’t, that God asks a parenthetical question, “How long am to strive with man?” The answer that gets churned out is “about 120 years.” (Genesis 6)

Super. So let’s strive. You vs. Me… It’s on baby. And what I can’t finish, I will leave to my kids, and grand-kids, and great-grandkids, and as history seems to indicate, to generation after generation. Strife. Religious strife, theological strife, scientific strife, political strife… pick it and strive.

I can’t say I loved the movie, but I certainly loved the closing lines of Legends of the Fall:

“I was wrong about many things. It was those who loved him most who died young. He was a rock they broke themselves against however much he tried to protect them.”

So it is with strife when you choose an Eternal opponent who refuses your definitions. He becomes the rock you break yourself against.

The thing I like best in Psalms 46 is verse 8. David, the likely poet who wrote these words, doesn’t even bother with an argument against God’s goodness. He does that in other places. Instead, he acknowledges “the desolations God has brought upon the Earth.” Buber once stated that nothing can doom a man but the belief in doom. Our faith pays homage to the medley of the gods... biology, chemistry, physics: gods which offer liberation from magic and superstition in exchange for the laws of entropy and decay. I guess I fail to see the difference, both are indicative of strife.

Stop striving, the Psalter says. The bows will break, and the shields will burn.

I think the hardest lesson for me to learn – one I still struggle with daily – is the fact that I clothe my strife under the banner of “justice.” And that at the end of the day one truth remained: I loved justice more than I loved God. He knows this about me. And we strive.

“Being still,” at least for me, is about much more than just the silence.

Booger Ditch Psychology, Part Two; or ... The Three Christs of Yipsilanti

Given the below considerations, how exactly is the “self” placed in the context of normative expressions and experiences? Given the fact that verbal and auditory hallucinations are descriptively classified in Western society as “disorders,” they immediately become marginalized as systems of meaning. Not all cultures respond in this way to hallucinations. Many cultures consider these activities as rites of passage, normal expressions of the unconscious, the spiritual world, perhaps even “normal” events within the language faculty of human beings. Speaking with imaginary figures, hearing voices, or disassociating through an “out of body” experience, are descriptively acceptable forms of expression, originating as meaning constructed from the individual. Rather than denying a legitimate placement of the self within this context (as is the approach of most Western psychologists and psychiatrists) these other cultures employ the spiritual resources of the community to help plant the “self” firmly within a (perhaps constructed) universe, which is bigger and more influential than the empirical realities. In other words, the individual suffering from hallucination X may in fact have a completely separate reality in which to construct his experience and interpret his data, and thereby with enough tolerance from the community, lead a relatively productive life.

The disorder of self occurs in the Western paradigm when the value of these illusory experiences becomes marginalized: a self-fulfilling prophecy. Rather than incorporating the individual’s reality and working therein, the therapist (or worse, the pharmacist) develops an “elimination” plan, through which the aberrant behaviors are relentlessly questioned, deconstructed, and hopefully replaced by structured expressions of a more socially acceptable nature.

I don't want to be misunderstood. We should assume that disorders do exist, at least incorporeally, and we need to see them as such for the sake of those suffering from, and those suffering on the account of their manifestations.

Certainly there are cases in which it is the interest of the collective community, or immediate family to adopt this Western approach to problems as they manifest themselves. But what if these interventions involved less deconstructing of the psychosis, and more of a reconstructing approach, using the internal world view of the mentally ill to build an illusory reality in which he or she can operate?

This was precisely the approach of Milton Rokeach in dealing with his, Three Christs of Yipsilanti. As more of a social worker than a psychologist (he was technically a social psychologist), Rokeach worked for several years with three men who each believed they were Jesus Christ. He brought the three men together in a group in hopes of un-establishing the deific world in which they had placed themselves. After one year of the project, Rokeach reported his findings:

"The three Christs had each adjusted to their new way of life; each in his own way had learned to cope with the others and with us…. The novelty and shock of confrontation had worn off. Each one had formulated and stabilized a set of rationalized beliefs to account for the claims of the others, and these rationalizations were bolstered by a silent bargain and repertoire of rituals designed to avoid the tension-producing subject of identity."

He decided to try a different approach after the first year. Entering into their delusions, Rokeach immersed himself into the worlds of the three mean and wrote confrontational letters to each of them signed in the name of their respective delusional creations. The men never knew it was Rokeach who penned the letters. In the correspondence, Rokeach challenged the men’s delusions by becoming a figure of authority as defined by the illusionary “selves” each man had constructed. He found that the delusions were best countered by advice from a perceived authority figure emerging from within the world of the deluded self. Drawing on the work of Bruno Betteheim’s study of concentration camps and anti-Semitic Jews who changed their concepts of self by adopting a new referent, he found that the three Christs were much more likely to identify with the ideology of either an aggressor, or a perceived authority. This approach has been used numerous times, as is currently bedrock to the theory that abductees will often grow to care for and relate to their kidnappers. But Rokeach argues that in the case of a psychotic, the external referents have become all together untrustworthy, and constructing a respectable authority was necessary in his treatment of the three Christs.

He advances the following hypothesis:

"A normal person will change his beliefs or behavior whenever suggestions for such change are seen by him to emanate from some figure or institution he accepts as a positive authority. Either he will change his beliefs and behavior so that thy conform with what he believes positive authority expects of him, or if he cannot or will not change, he will alter his beliefs about the positive authority itself; he will become more negative or more disaffected with the authority and, in the extreme, he will even formulate new beliefs about new authorities to rely on. "

Given the nature of current psychological theories in dealing with disorders, it’s hard to imagine the therapist as a “positive authority,” especially given today’s reliance on prescriptive medication to “cure” patients. This “pharmacological hedonism,” as it is aptly named by historian Edward Shorter, can sometimes only service the individual by the alleviation of symptoms. I can confess to real, unavoidable power of such drugs and have experienced them first hand via anti-depressants and I must truthfully confess that having such symptoms relieved wasn't inherently a bad thing.

Up to this point, I have considered the limits of both statistics and language in collectively classifying and defining disorder (and I have omitted two sections, one on Noam Chomsky and the other on Jung), but what opportunities does language offer the field of psychology — particularly considering that language is one of our only windows into the unconscious? Rokeach’s approach seems beneficial, albeit with a certain degree of risk. Entering linguistically into the world of the psychotic seems like dangerous business, especially given the potential lack of a perceived positive-authority. To the primitive, it was the shaman or spiritual magician who guided individuals through their various psychological states, in a similar way in which the scientific magician, the psychologist / psychiatrist does in the West today. By constructing a mythological tale, even a mythological world, in which to place the individual’s fears and hallucinations, this primitive therapist created a space for the unconscious to structurally express itself through prescriptive speech acts. Unfortunately, there is little research today to suggest if this approach is a valid.

What we do have are modern religious experiences, which border on the cusp of this primitivism and its latent perception of authority. Several empirical studies have been done on a variety of religious states and their effects. Some studies have shown that mystical spiritual beliefs and practices relieve stress and are more likely to define “mental pathology” in a positive light when taken in a spiritual context. Modern psychology would have diagnosed Joan of Arc as schizophrenic, paranoid, hysteric, or epileptic—maybe all of these, but in the context of her own mythological understandings, she was just a woman of devout faith; and in that context, she was able to become a powerful historical figure. How many other Joan’s of Arc are locked away in padded cells, or drooling quietly under the haze of medication? I suppose they at least aren't wielding firebrands... so we have that going for us.

William James defines “healthy-mindedness” as one positive aspect of the religious experience lending itself to numerous positive outcomes. Persons of this type of religious experience are intrinsically motivated to live out their beliefs in a highly personal, altruistic way. He contrasts this type of experience with those religious folk who are extrinsically motivated by creed and dogma. These sorts are called the “sick soul” by James and are continually surrounded by guilt, anxiety, and other neurosis.

Admittedly, I am no expert on the current trends of narrative psychology. But if we are going to rely on magical classifications to diagnose and hopefully “cure” people, I wonder what harm could possibly come from a spiritually-minded therapist, individually focused and willing to help the struggling patient solidify and construct an inner dialogue and mythology to deal with psychological stressors? If our language faculty is truly a part of unconscious make-up, then it seems reasonable to suggest that part of that faculty is the mythological expression. History and anthropology would suggest this is also the case, in that every culture has at least some form of belief structure—be it the sun, an anthropomorphic god, or monotheism. These seemingly imagined authorities are no more incorporeal than current psychological theories and building an empirical vocabulary around them may be beneficial to treating a suffering individual and a society with a steadily increasing influx of descriptively “disordered” selves. Is it a coincidence that the advent of modern Western psychology coincided with rationalism and the decline of religious sentiment? Perhaps, though Thomas Szasz says it is not. It may be that the unconscious of many still need a structured expression of spiritual dialogue in which to place their “selves” and their stressors. Structured speech, given from a perceived spiritual authority and focused on the individual’s needs, may hold at least one key to unlocking the problems of today’s mentally ill. The approach seems no less reasonable than modern psychology and its constructions.

Jung reminds us that in a time when people are disregarding spiritual ideologies, it might be good to remember why they were constructed in the first place: to deal with the brutality, vulnerability, and anxiety of the ancient world. The more they are discarded, the more these brutalities and stresses are unleashed upon the psyche. I doubt I would disagree as to the great psychological “crutch” religion has been to the world since the dawn of consciousness. However, re-establishing the spiritual props of religious dialogue and authority may be as equally helpful as the magic of mental health. We need therapists as brave as Rokeach to find out.

But then again, we could just give them pills.

I admit that after my four month stay as chaplain in an insane asylum, I do find myself wondering.

The Three Christs of Yipsilanti, Milton Rokeach: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. (1964) p. 190- 194

The History of Psychiatry, Edward Shorter: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. (1997), p. 325-326

Booger-Ditch Psychology

“A rose by any other name is still a rose.” At least that’s the way the saying goes. But is this necessarily the case? Words are representations of objects (referents) that are defined by other words and thereby incorporate, often by accident, what is and is not important about the object. In the Western paradigm, or meaning system, what is dominantly important is that which can be seen empirically, or proven logically. Ironically, it is this very empirical existence of the individual that the psychologist / psychiatrist tends to back nervously away from, choosing instead to work in categories & classifications according the dominant scientific paradigm. Creating “kinds” is a primary task of scientists—classifications of reality, which make communication easier, and reality more assessable to logic. This “kind-making” is not a bad practice for the scientist, and arguably helpful to many different fields. The problem for psychology in adopting a “kind-making” approach to human behavior is that humans don’t classify out as nicely as the periodic table. So a great deal of “picking and choosing” has to occur for the psychology to make its classifications. This means some features will be necessarily excluded, and others will be included in the considerations of normalcy and disorder.

Linguistically, this can pose a few problems from the start. Take for example the word “face.” What comprises the face? We would be quick to define it as the front part of the head containing the eyes, nose, and mouth. Some might even add the lips, chin, cheeks, forehead, or eyebrows in their definition. But what do we make of the small trough beneath the nose and above the upper lip? What exactly do we call this feature of the face? When I was growing up, it was referred to as “the booger ditch.” While there most likely exists a medical term for this indentation, there is no common word for it in English. It would be about the last thing one would use to describe the face, because no clear word to describe this area exists. Our system of meaning considers this area obsolete, even though it is present on nearly every human face. In fact, one of the only times the area is noticed at all is when there is an area-specific deformity there, such as a cleft-pallet.

The singularity of the “booger ditch” works against itself in the area of definitions: eyes stare, blink, and tear; mouths move and express, and noses bleed and run. What does “the booger ditch” really do? It doesn’t seem to have much of a purpose for English speakers, therefore as a singular feature this area is conveniently marginalized in our vocabulary. So is a rose by any other name still a rose? The answer is a solid “yes,” but only if our systems of meaning, relevance, and subsequent classifications are identical—or at best, similar. It is possible to envision a language in which the words “red,” “petals,” and “stem” are not the primary features a native speaker identifies with a rose. And while conversing with this native speaker and a divergent interpretation, we may be discussing the same empirical referent, albeit with two completely different understandings. And most importantly, even if we come to the same understanding, we have almost no way of realizing what may have been marginalized and framed into our meanings.

This is cogent to psychological classifications for one primary reason: in generating a label for aberrant behaviors, one chooses to include and marginalize various features of the disorder. What is marginalized is often what is seemingly unrelated, or without purpose. In the Western paradigm, behaviors are included as referents for disorder, as are speech acts, namely because these activities can be seen and/or heard. Provided we all agree together that the empirical referent we see and hear is fundamentally real and not imagined, we are diagnosed as being relatively ‘whole,’ psychologically speaking. Yet what our psychologists operating under the scientific paradigm may quickly marginalize as purposeless is often what cannot be empirically seen or heard, something “incorporeal,” if you will.

Interestingly, incorporeal carries with it two meanings. First, as defined by both Webster’s dictionary and the Oxford Dictionary of English, “incorporeal” means that which pertains to the immaterial, or the spirit. Second, in the field of law, “incorporeal” is something that has no material existence in itself, but attaches itself to some actual thing. An example of the latter definition would be the concept of rent. The house I am renting is corporeal, and I, the occupier of the house, am also corporeal, as is the money I use to pay the rent; however, the rent I pay is incorporeal. The very concept of rent is itself incorporeal, but integral to the ideology of economy and property. Hence to carry this concept over to the ideology named psychology, the behaviors and speech acts manifested within the meaning system are necessarily empirical, while the concept of “disorder,” or a root cause, remains ideological, perhaps even illusionary.

Second, and notably absent in psychological theories, is the definition of incorporeal as “spiritual, or that which pertains to the spirit.” Linguistically, the singularity of the concept of spirit lends itself to be easily marginalized. It is difficult to speak of outside of metaphor. Most things spiritual are, in a sense, the “booger ditch” on the face of scientific psychological theory. This is largely due to the lack of an empirical base and therein, the spiritual type of incorporeal meaning must be determined retroactively, as in a metaphor, or the creation of a new signifier (word).

Safouan describes this quite particularly by relaying the story of one man’s use of the word, “famillionare.” An apparently well-known fellow described his familiarity and social popularity by creating a new morphological term entitled “famillionare.” The signified meaning, which existed semantically in unconscious or incorporeal form, engendered retroactively through language. Now it is possible to imagine a kind-making exercise in which one picks popular millionaires, and locks them into a new classification called “famillionare.” Famillionares existed among us for many years before the creation of the class, and it can be argued that we subconsciously recognized these famillionares as famillionares when we previously interacted with them, or saw them on television. Now that we have brought these famillionares to the surface of thought, we can arrange them better, define them, set limits on how much popularity or wealth is needed to become a famillionare, and perhaps even begin to deal with the anxiety famillionares face on a daily basis. This new “kind” of anxiety is called “famillionitius.”

Why is any of this significant? Because psychology would have us believe that disorders are transformations of, or deviations from established behavioral norms rather than productions of an incorporeal belief structures belonging to an individual. In other words, the sources of some meanings are produced intrinsically and separated from the accepted system of meaning. I may have been suffering from famillionitius, years before I had a word for it. This brings us back to Jung who insists that the “magic” of a classification derived from a statistical mean dangerously grants us the power to negate, or transform, individual meaning. In the same way, language classifications may actually be “magically creating” kinds of aberrant behavior. As soon as we begin to discuss a subject from a theoretical standpoint, the prescriptive productions of the individual are interpreted and defined descriptively.

This is even more dangerous than would first appear. Systems of meaning are not easily challenged; it in fact takes a certain degree of linguistic effort to do so because the words afforded to us are limited by the meaning system. These words actually have profound influences in the way in which we think, as noted by the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The Sapir-Whorf theory of Linguistic determinism implies that the kinds of available words within a system of language significantly shape perceptions of the world, a type of unconscious self-fulfilling prophecy. If some meanings can only be revealed retroactively though language, we may very well be marginalizing meanings by a necessarily limited definition of “disorder” X. For example, “Jerry” never realized he suffered from “famillionitus,” but after learning about the term, he now interprets all his anxiety as derivative of the conditions of his wealth and fame. Jerry understands now why he yells at his wife and kicks his dog. If no other language is advanced to help Jerry define his activity, he is linguistically determined to filter his meanings through this new descriptive language, as opposed to his prescriptive, unconscious tendencies.

In a more recent study (2001), linguists compared emotional expressions in English with those of Russian. The study revealed that the English language to a much greater degree, objectified emotions more than the Russian language. Whereas the Russian language mostly allowed present tense verbs to describe feelings of anger or frustration, the English speakers employed more adjectives expressing emotional “states.” This is not uncommon for English speakers when compared to many other languages. Consider the morphology of the English statement “He will like me.” In our language, the words appear independently, autonomous, and objectified to a large degree. This is not the case in most other languages. In Swahili for example, the statement, “He will like me,” would be represented in a single word, transcribed something like this, “atanipenda.” The phoneme “ni” significantly embedded in the word represents the English word “me.” The objectification of the subject is most noted in younger Western languages, particularly English. This objectification is clearly an influence on the way in which we see the world, indicating that even our language code can limit expression for the subjective.

Given these considerations, it is not too far of a leap to see the way in which psychology utilizes language, particularly through classifications, as a type of “incantation,” whose magic is capable of shifting the incorporeal productions of individual-prescriptive meanings toward objectified theories of “self” from which one deviates descriptively.

(To be continued...)



References:

Journal of Literature and Psychology, Volume 46, Issue ½ (2000), pages 29-42.

Cambridge Encyclopedia Of Language, 2nd Edition. David Crystal, editor: Cambridge University Press (1997), p. 15.

Expressive emotions in multiple languages. Jean-Marc Dewalele & Aneta Pavenko: Language Learning 52, 2 (2002).