“More than True” …Christmas Matters

I had a talk not too long ago with a very intelligent person about Christian Christmas stories. He asked, “Surely you don’t actually believe that the Christmas story you preach really happened?” It was a question that I settled long ago, although it reminded me that many people still struggle with their faith around the holidays.

Even though there are probably some good reasons to ponder the “reality” of the Nativity story over the holidays, I honestly don’t even think about it anymore. I read a quote that went something like, “The question is not always whether it is real, but whether it matters… the things that matter most become reality.”

Atheist Sam Harris has written about “tiny lies” and the cost they have on our culture. He even discusses Santa Claus, taking on a popular non-religious Christmas tradition as a form of deception. I see Harris, much like my friend, in a very ‘stuck’ place. When we bring the wrong question to the table, we often feel the need to force-feed answers. No one likes being force-fed.

When it comes to Santa, the question for families is not so much whether or not he and his reindeer troop are real; rather the question is whether or not he matters. Because if he matters, every family finds a way to make him real during the season.

Some families do not think perpetuating a Santa Claus story is a big deal; I respect that choice. They engage perfectly well with their children over Christmas and often find ways to foster the same spirit of giving. The idea that the cultural story of “Santa” may have inspired their own traditions is largely forgotten, but certainly the story had an unspoken effect on when and how the family celebrates and gives.

Santa can be a point of contention among friends (especially when your neighbor’s child starts insisting to yours that there is no Santa), but even with such mild controversies, life moves on. People accept or deny whatever traditions that suit them and the world keeps turning with or without Santa Claus. It turns for good and bad reasons alike: Black Friday shoppers still trample. Credit card debts get racked up. Children experience profound anticipation and joy. Families adopt a giving strategy. Holiday cards, family photos, jingles on the radio, specials on the television, fruitcakes…. all of it keeps moving forward.

Harris and others like him treat the Santa narratives with the same degree of skepticism as the birth of Jesus. I don’t want to be mistaken as equating the Nativity story to Santa Claus here because they matter for entirely different reasons. If I were to be honest, I don’t fret much over the “real history” of either story. To me, it’s the wrong question to ask because it gives us false sense of accomplishment on our way to a cheap truth.

More so than even a Santa-Debate, questions of Christ’s birth are best framed around what matters, not the historicity of the event. At least for me… and to that it, I would say:

It matters… that the fundamental worth of the human body meant enough to God to become human. Christmas reality occurs as we honor and advocate for the sacred value of the human body.

It matters… that God so loved, that He gave fully of Himself. Christmas is real as we attune ourselves to God’s Spirit in order to give generously, without fear or holding back.

It matters… that Jesus was born into poverty and laid in the most unsanitary of places: an animal’s feeding trough. A Christmas reality finds solidarity with our neighbors in need.

It matters… that God came as an infant and depended upon flawed human beings to provide for Him. Understanding this prepares us for the reality of our own need for interdependence and for humility, trust, and grace.

It matters… that Jesus was not born an earthly king and that the government authorities in the birth story were so threatened by a tiny baby that they committed infanticide. A Christmas reality will give birth to a presence in us that uproots and redefines our notions of power.

It matters… that even the most despised workers of the age, dirty “blue-collar” shepherds, were invited to the manger. Christmas reality accepts that we are to be as He was at His birth: inclusive, inviting, accepting.

It matters… that in our Nativity story, every character trusted in a future that he/she could not see. It matters that in some way, they all – even God Himself – trusted us with these wonderful narratives that serve us as “more than truth.”

For many people, questions about whether there was a recorded astronomical event that the wise men followed or whether Jesus truly was born during the census of Quirinius are challenges meant to investigate and check for accuracy.  I can accept that, but I also know that I have lived long enough to see such questions do little more than cultivate an orchard of cold, pale trees which are incapable of bearing fruit. I have long since lost interest in asking them.

It seems to me, the better question to ask is, “What about this story matters?” When we’ve accepted what matters in the story, the Nativity is itself born into our hearts and made real day-by-day as we live it out in a shared community.

Should we find ourselves stuck this Christmas, wondering if Jesus was born during the Spring equinox rather than on December 25,  or even find ourselves wondering if Jesus was ever born at all, then we should probably pause a moment to consider: Some stories are more than true and as such they both ask and deserve more from us.

When a story matters that much, we experience a whole new reality.

Have a Merry (and entirely real) Christmas!

 

Community Gardens: A Conspiracy of Abundance

Several months ago, I heard a TED lecture by Ron Finley that flipped on a light-switch for me. You can view it here, although it is not entirely work safe (Rated PG for mild language):  http://on.ted.com/Finley

A self-described “guerilla gardener,” Finley began planting food gardens on abandoned city lots in south-central Los Angles. He was concerned that not only were too many people going hungry in his neighborhood, but that they when they did eat, they were eating the wrong kinds of foods.

“People are dying from curable diseases,” according to Finley and in his neighborhood, “dialysis centers started popping up like Starbucks” due to the lack of access to healthy foods. In South-Central Los Angles, “The drive-thru is killing more people than the drive-by,” he quipped.

I stumbled on this video at the same time I was reading a book entitled, “Slow Church” by authors C. Christopher Smith and John Pattison. In it, they posit that the “fast food” culture has also infected our nation’s spiritual nourishment with over-reliance efficiency, predictability, and quick fixes. Surrendering to the “cult of speed,” we engage in scripted worship and attempt to apply church growth models with little consideration of the local context.

 

The authors note in the final section that Nature itself offers us an

 “economy of abundance.”

All human economies operate under the law of scarcity. The harder something is to create or obtain, the more the item “costs.” Scarcity drives prices up; while abundance drives prices down.

The reason Ron Finley has witnessed a steady decline in healthy foods in his neighborhood is due to the abundance of unhealthy alternatives. The reason why a cheeseburger costs less in Oak Ridge, than say a market fresh salad, is because the fresh vegetables are less abundant in most of our restaurants.

Ironically, this is actually the EXACT OPPOSITE of what Nature tries to teach us in our relationship with the Earth (and we happen to live on a very fertile portion of it!). I personally believe that God’s economy, like Nature’s, is an economy of abundance: one healthy apple tree produces as many as 100+ apples in a given year. Each apples contains an average of four seeds. That one tree is capable of producing hundreds of trees! This is an economy of abundance, not scarcity. And it works for most everything that grows – beans, squash, okra, peppers, peas, tomatoes, zucchini, corn, etc.!!  

So if God and Mother Nature have co-conspired to provide human beings with an economy of abundance, why are there millions of people in the United States, and several hundred people in Oak Ridge, without access to healthy food? Worse than that, why are some of our neighbors going to bed hungry?

There are several reasons, but here are my top three:

1.    The cult of speed. Most Americans are over-worked and under-paid. Our schedules control us far more than we control our schedules! In the “cult of speed,” taking time to exploit the abundance we are provided in a garden feels more costly than simply grabbing the fish sticks from the freezer and opening a box of dehydrated mac-n-cheese.

Time gardening is time we could be doing something else, or so the argument would go. However, the research suggests that the “something else” we are doing, isn’t nearly as healthy for us as gardening, which multiplies the problem. Research reveals gardening is good for both body and soul and well worth the time we spend in the dirt.

2.     Lack of vision.  Let’s face it, it is very hard to imagine cutting back our city’s hunger problem with fresh vegetables in a community garden. Kids want those chicken nuggets, not fresh okra. One garden, or a dozen gardens, won’t get a kid eating more green. If we’re totally honest even as adults, the super-bacon cheeseburger from our favorite fast food chain sounds better to most of us too.

I love what Ron Finley discovered however in his gardening initiatives: “If kids grow kale, kids eat kale. When kids grow tomatoes, kids eat tomatoes.” It’s hard to imagine a healthy alternative, when the opposite is thrown in our faces every week. We’re bombarded with fast food commercials – nobody advertises fresh kale. Our minds and our senses are constantly bombarded with an “anti-visions” of fresh food and therefore it is difficult to see beyond them.

When we (especially we as churches) dream up solutions, they are often “fast” solutions, like food pantries filled with canned, and often overly-processed, vegetables. It’s easier for us and easier for our visitors to simply take a can off the shelf and send them on their way. In so doing, we unwittingly reinforce the “cult of speed.” Furthermore, we offer a “disconnect” between food and its source (work!) under a banner of benevolence; and though the content is different, the delivery system is very similar to that of a “fast-food” establishment.

3.     The free-loader problem. Anyone that’s managed a food garden knows that it is a thousand times easier to find people during the harvest season than it is the planting season. People would rather pick than plant – that’s just human nature.

Our tendency is to not want to put in any more sweat equity than we have to on things, especially when others aren’t doing the same. “If I help the needy, I would rather just write a check,” we say. “It’s easier to do a can food drive for the hungry.”

Welcome back to problem #1 – “the cult of speed.” Samuel Johnson once said, “What is easy is seldom excellent.” In fact, Nature again teaches us that “easy” often leads to atrophy -- from our own body’s circulatory system all the way to our Western ideals – easy leads to unfit solutions.

The garden teaches us an economy of abundance, but more than even that, I believe it teaches us patience. Lasting change is typically slow change – this is true in biology and spirituality. The best minds and hearts that I have ever known were as patient as they were exacting. I would be willing to bet that the best communities are too.

Community gardens have the potential to be both. I would like to return with a second part to these ideas, offering some practical ways they could be realized in Oak Ridge.

In a given week…

I sit faithfully by the hospital beds or holding the hands of a weeping wife or mother.

I walk among the headstones with grandchildren, searching for the calm, wrinkled hand that once gave the kind of sweet pinches upon their cheeks to calm their little fears.

The divorced father will sometimes walk with me along the riverside, fishing rod slung across his shoulder, and turn in a moment of vulnerability and weep.

The young addict phones at midnight as the shame rockets through his veins much faster than the heroin. He is ready to give up.

I watch the tears well up in the eyes of a college student, alone and afraid after giving her best to a man who took it for granted. We patiently wait for the right moment to depart, the dusk my family enjoys feels a world away.

I am there when the news comes… the word “cancer” falls quietly over the doctor’s lips. I see the tremor in his wife’s hands and hear the silence peel away the noise of the office.

She confesses the brokenness of solicitation in the corner of the busy church. The need to feed her children. The disgust she felt wrapped up in the lingerie of survival. I brush back the tear and we pray.

The phone rings at 2:00AM. Startled and still groggy, I attempt to talk the young boy into laying down the gun he points at his own head.

I stand up on any given Sunday and look out to the masses that gather. I see their faces. In almost all of them, I see even their homes. Nights I have spent, holding a glass of wine, asking about their photos on the walls or the books on their shelves.

I stand up on any given Sunday, somewhat afraid that what I say might be received as an accidental disclosure of a sin or a tragedy gone by.

I look intently into her eyes and read what she is unwilling to say. I see the regret etched in the wrinkles along his cheeks and know better than to ask. The shallow breaths are enough of an exchange between us.

From the podium, I see the way he wiggles when I speak of ethics. I watch his wife nestle close in forgiveness and see the wall between them of a forgiveness he will not give himself.

From the podium, I see the woman whose bruises have healed and whose blood still stains my sneakers from that time I pulled the man off her.

I stand and with every effort attempt to provide those in attendance with the memories that make them weep and with even more effort attempt to provide them with a hope they find hard to feel.

In any given week, my inbox is loaded and my cell phone bombarded with need. I am asked to absorb so much pain or to provide a wisdom I feel that I don’t have, or falsely supply in vanity or ego.

In any given week, I feel alone. No one ever asks how I am doing, nor do they know the weight that I bear. No one asks me to a casual conversation, or invites me to unpack my own pain.

And in all the confessions I attend, never once have I felt a place close enough to confess myself.

With all the deaths and funerals I have overseen, there’s never a question regarding the things inside me that die and are buried with each one.

My tears are always shed alone and there is but one who knows of them.

I have learned and come to accept that a clergyman is a pain sponge. That wringing out the pain is an act of heroism and stamina. And that the more I can squeeze out of me, the better prepared I am to absorb next week’s delivery.

It’s a road I don’t have to walk alone, despite the many hours I chose to. The man who absorbed the world’s pain is with me. And what he takes from me, he owns completely.

I’ve found in any given week, I have to find the will to let go. And in the darkest hours, he calls me and takes the complied grief from my hands.

In any given week, I know the darkness is losing because I take from many and I am absorbed by one.

"Affordable" Health Care Act a Misnomer

Maybe you got the same phone call from your health insurance agent, or maybe you haven't and you will simply be in for a really ugly surprise at your annual enrollment date, but here's the way my conversation went down:

"Under the Affordable Health Care Act, I have the option, as a relatively productive member of the American workforce, to keep the insurance plan I already own."

I've been "grandfathered" in. Whoo-Hoo! Way to keep that promise fearless leaders!

But there's a catch. To keep the plan that our family has, the rates will increase 23% on August 1st. Whoa, wait a second. That's like saying I can keep a deep thigh bruise if I agree to sprain an ankle too.

A 23% increase? That translates to approximately $235 more per month for "the plan I already have." The plan I already have is over a $1000 per month for a family of four. That's right, $12,000 per year in health care costs, not counting a $20 co-pay every visit, plus a $2500 out of pocket deductible.

Let's be honest -- it's a really crappy plan. So, what are the options?

#1  Change doctors. We could drop out of the network of doctors we're in and erase the August increase on its way, plus move about 15% in the other direction for a net savings of $150 /month. That wouldn't be terrible, that is if we didn't have doctors we like, who know our history, who are able to see us in a decent amount of time, and who have decent track records.

But wait... even that has stipulations.

#2  Changing doctors includes a change in co-pays, or +15 dollars per  visit. It also ups lab testing +20 dollars per test. If just half my family goes to the doctor in a given month and has a blood test, then we're only saving $75 per month. If a blood test and a urine sample or a throat culture is needed, the savings are cut even further. Emergency visits, ambulance rides, and other procedures are all higher.

Still, $75 is $75 right? I mean, that's quite a savings for totally uprooting your health care network (sarcasm intended). A savings of $900 per year, maybe a little more, could put my wife and children into the hands of a brand new set of physicians that we don't know, that may be many more miles from our home than our current physicians,

#3   We change doctors, we change co-pays, but wait... I forgot about the deductible increases. The deductible on the new plans jumps to $3500 out of pocket. There goes the savings... in fact, we are back into the increase range. So now we're actually paying the system to uproot our family health care history.

There is another option ... we could pull our family out of insurance altogether. I mean, if we're already going to have to pay $30 per visit anyway, why not negotiate a cash price with our doctors? Even if they charge $80 for a routine visit, our family of four could go to the doctor 12 times per month before crossing the $1,000 we pay in insurance. Even if we each went to the doctor once per month each, we'd have about $700 laying around to pay for lab work or the occasional fractured bone.

But what if something bad happens?

Enter the HSA arrangement, which was of course McCain's plan to begin with. A single-payer system was the way to go anyway, so both McCain and Obama had it wrong. You don't fix an insurance problem by selling people more insurance. But I digress.

#4   An HSA would save us approximately $475 per month, doctors stay the same, co-pays stay the same, labs increase, and the deductible moves to $5300 max out of pocket per person, or $10,000 max per family. The money saved basically equals the amount any one of us would have to pay out in a major medical situation. If two of us are sick or injured, it becomes yet another increase.

Then there's the $6,000 (maximum) tax write-off that comes directly off the bottom line by saving that $475 per month. Not too shabby!

It's still a roll of the dice though. A good year will net significant savings which could be used to meet the higher deductibles in the bad years. It's a dice roll that I would have gladly made at 30 or 35 years old. In fact, if I had done so 15 years ago, given the fact that I've had little to no problems (knock on wood) over the last 15 years, I would have generated well over $100,000 increase to my net worth. Enough to pay for one and a half heart transplants outright, max-out-of-pocket not even considered. Enough to seriously stimulate the local and national economy if millions like me had followed suit.

(Do you see why HSA's and single payer systems were the way to go? It might have worked at 30, but it's risky at 45 or 50 years old...)

#5   Oh, but wait -- I am forgetting something!! I could lower my family income and qualify for reduced payments. Here's how it would work for my family -- I could move to part time and lower my income by about 1/2. Doing this would put my family into some significant health care "savings" at the expense of all you other hard working suckers.

Under this possibility, my health care would again drop by around $450+ dollars per month.... for the exact same coverage, me keeping my doctors and everything! I would get two weeks off every month, or 25 extra weeks of fun and family time every year!

My income would drop considerably (but so does my insurance!). Even so, I certain I could make that up by fencing stolen goods or selling drugs. Extortion, prostitution, fraud, illegal gun sales, bank robbery, kidnapping, selling cocaine, cooking meth, or maybe working odd jobs "under the table" to keep from reporting income ... there are a host of ways for me to enjoy my "time off."  I might even be able to use my cheaper insurance plan to stock up on quite a few prescriptions of Hydrocodone at $10 per bottle, maximizing my "non-taxable" income!!!

Heck, I've got plenty of time of my hands now to get creative and I am certain that I'm smarter than the average criminal. Tax evasion is big business. Idle hands are the devil's playground for sure.

Bottom line is a lesson from the Tao te Ching:

 "The more laws you have, the less virtuous people will be."

The incentive should be toward work, not away from it. Then again, the new law doesn't do much to motivate businesses to even hire... so it's a problem working on the American public from two directions.

It's a real mess ladies and gents. America already spends more on health care per capita than any other nation in the world. When will we wake up and see that the problem isn't one more money can fix, but rather the fact that no one in this country gets what they pay for?

True Detective, Part III

True Detective: A Pastoral Review (Part III)

So I'm over a month late, but what can I say other than the fish have been biting and it happens to be the Easter season, which is unsurprising busy in my line of work. Nevertheless, here comes part three. If you happened to have missed parts one and two they are here:

ONE   //  TWO

I'm calling part three "The Demon of Disconnect," but it seems, from this largely character-driven script, that's about the only thing these two men have in common. Sure they are both cops and for sure they have a bad taste in their mouth from a murder they keep skirting the edges of (and Rust's bad taste is literal), but these are two fundamentally different human beings.

I am tempted to scratch that last line out because I think maybe they represent two extremes of a solitary human male. That ties into my theory about the show in general, but I promise to get to that later. Either way, I believe they function metaphorically as snapshots of what tethers most dysfunctional men away from a happy middle.

I said about the only thing they shared was this "Demon of Disconnect," but that isn't entirely true. They are both dominated by their testosterone -- Marty in his pursuit of extra-marital encounters, and Rust in just a pure risk-taking, hyper-masculinity. But neither men seem capable of confronting what really plagues them, which is their propensity to disconnect not only from the women in their lives, but from themselves.

Let's start with Marty because he's easier. Marty represents sort of an "everyday man" in the series. Marty is the sort who doesn't care to dig too deep on anything and will keep any feelings he has buried beneath a facade of "Life is OK!" Is your boss a real butthole? Play along. Job wearing you out? Grin and bear it. Partner dragging you down with crazy monologues about life's futility? Ignore him, but invite him to dinner because you feel obligated. Wife unhappy? Say what you have to so the boat won't rock.  

Whatever you do, if you are the "Marty-Everyday-Man," just don't dig too deep. Flash a smile and a coy answer if you want to stay sane. Learn the rules of the game and play it as best you can -- that's manning up and finding success. If you're good at it, you can play for years before anyone notices.

Make no mistake, Marty isn't stupid. He's not as smart as Rust, but he is intelligent in a much different way. Marty has learned to work the system while working his cases; learned to work his wife while working on his affairs. That takes know-how and not a lot of men can pull it off. The problem is, Maggie is even smarter than he is. She knows when the clothes are in the wash, something is up. She sees through him in all the ways that Marty is unable to see himself.

Marty's character is disconnected at every level of his life, even from his children. He is so smothered by the need to be perceived as "normal," that he refuses to let those closest to him see his brokenness. (At least until the end, but more on that later.) The women and the alcohol serve as outlets to his pain... disconnects that ultimately rip him apart.

Marty doesn't really know why he behaves the way he does. His inability to form genuine intimacy operates in a blind spot. And we all have blind spots. Marty is wearing a mask and if it weren't for a few really dumb mistakes, he probably could have worn his mask for most of his life and no one would have been the wiser.

That's the first kind of male psychosis: it's a walled-up man, self-imprisoned and self-defeating. This is hardly a life at all, rather a death by a thousand cuts.

When confronted about his distance, he insists that his wife can't possibly understand the stress of his job. Actually, I think he's right -- there is no way she ever could, or anyone else for that matter -- but being fully understood is not the point of intimacy. We all want to be in relationships where our partners really "get us." We especially desire relationships where our pain is readily understood and fantasize that by being understood, the pain will leave. Sometimes though, we best  serve our pain by simply let it out.

Intimacy for Marty was the only healthy release valve, but he was never able to muster the courage to just let go of his pain. He is disconnected and feels he has to stay that way to make it. That's his demon.

Rust is a little further along than Marty when it comes to unhealthy release valves for his own pain. He's mostly a teetotaler at the beginning of the story having learned enough to see that numbing the pain doesn't really work. When he does turn back to the bottle, it's with a purpose. He's interviewing prostitutes in a bar. Problem is, like every addict, Rust can't have just one. He's an extremist, selective about what he goes to extremes over maybe, but definitely an extremist.

Like Marty, Rust mostly avoids deep relationships also. When he does find one, it doesn't last. Not because he's out cheating like Marty, but rather because exactly like him, Rust cannot find intimacy in his relationship. Rust has too much self-respect to cheat; he lives by a code of sorts and that's about the only thing keeping him sane.

Rust has accepted the pain of the job. He admits as much by saying he will no longer "avert his eyes." It takes fortitude to look pain full on without blinking. Rust has that fortitude in spades, whereas Marty does not.

Looking at the most barbaric human acts imaginable without blinking requires disconnect. Both Marty and Rust know this and each disconnects in his own way. Rust mostly awakens from the slumber before Marty, but neither do so without some cost. Rust's cost is deep, affecting him at the most personal levels.

But in the process he develops something else -- the little priest.

To be continued.

 

 

True Detective: A Pastoral Review (Part Two)

Before I unpack the demon of "disconnect" and begin speaking to everything I believe was right about True Detective, let's continue in Part Two with some of the criticisms. In case you missed Part One, clickhere.

The Criticisms continued --

#2  The Ending Removed the Conspiracy & Mystery the Show Built Itself Upon

Only minor plausibility can be applied to this criticism. Granted, the show created a dumpster load of material for fans to form speculative theories. Viewers of most any media these days have been conditioned to expect "plot twists." True Detective lacked the kind of sudden turns that an "M. Night Shyamalan generation" has come to expect.  Shyamalan's work in films like The Sixth Sense and The Village have created their own "media-meme:" an expectation of "getting duped" by the end.

Newsflash for the haters: LIFE doesn't work this way. In fact, we could easily make the case that in situations of extreme anguish or loss, the human mind is wired to grasp blindly at darkened mistruths. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle knew this to be a general human defect as he writes a famous line for his infamous detective:

"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact."   -- Sherlock Holmes

I do understand and appreciate the let-down. Count me among the "duped." I was beyond certain that I had the ending figured out -- and to be totally honest, I wouldn't be surprised to find out in Season Two or later than I was in fact correct. Nevertheless, the twist I envisioned was simply a Nick Pizzolatto implant meant to reinforce the purpose of the script: Humans invent stories to cope with harsh realities.

The ending I envisioned was a projection of resolutions to unsolved problems in our shared human experience. Pizzolatto baited the hook masterfully and I took a bite at the lure. The final episode, "Form and Void" was a perfect illustration of how each of us cling to the implausible in the face of obvious facts when death is on the line. I will write more of this later, for now however, I am of the opinion that the criticism from those who took leaps of logic in the show's script were simply frustrated by the reality of hitting the ground. It's certainly part of what made the show exceptional, and the fact that I continue to hold to my theories despite evidence to the contrary in the season finale indicates how severely tied I am to my own belief structure.

And that's really the point of the ending. The mysterious and the supernatural will always be deceptive and alluring. To quote Samuel Taylor Coleridge, readers (or in our age viewers) will suspend disbelief where authors have infused "human interest and the semblance of truth." The obvious fact is the most deceptive: the human propensity to tell ourselves anything and believe it rather than accept the ordinary hard truths right under our noses, especially when the narratives we employ to escape are intrinsically pleasurable.

#3  The Violence / Language / Sexuality was Too Graphic

I've one simple rule about graphic content. If it bothers you, don't read or watch it. That's fairly straightforward. Personally, I felt like the violence was mostly handled tastefully, at least until the final episode. The black and white footage on the video tape was thankfully never shown, but even the thought of it was enough to make me sick. But overall I think this criticism is ridiculous - after all, part of the problem, if we take Pizzolatto seriously, is the we too often "avert our eyes" anyway.

The profanity felt forced at times, which to me diminishes the quality of the writing. I dislike the way we're made to believe that this is just how detectives speak to each other, but to each his own.

The sexuality presented in the series was rather shallow and rather haphazardly strung together using a variety of different (almost entirely male) fantasies and wish fulfillment scenarios. The Maggie / Rust meet-up, while it might have sizzled a bit, still came across as heavily contrived and felt almost as shallow as the plot-point it served in the script. "Making Flowers" is now the water-cooler expression of the month and may unfortunately serve as the most memorable phrases from a script full of incredible dialogue. All in all, I didn't find the sexuality so much overly graphic as it was distracting.

I suppose if I am to take anything about this particular criticism seriously, it would be that I regret that large swaths of the population will simply refuse to engage with True Detective because of the violence, language, and sexuality. Arguably, these sorts are the ones who would benefit most from watching it.

 #4  True Detective was Ultimately a Shallow Wild-Goose Chase

None of the reviewers have used this terminology exactly. Most of the ways I've heard it worded have been similar to this: "Light vs. dark? That's about as shallow as it gets given all the window dressing." I understand that some might view this work as ultimately pretty shallow literature. I disagree for a hundred and one reasons, only some of them I will make time to explain in the coming sections.

As far as a wild goose chase goes, I think it all boils down to where we chose to believe the real mystery lies. On the surface, the mystery is the murder of Dora Lang. On the surface, Moby Dick is an extended whale hunt tinkering on the edge of mutiny. As far as surfaces go, True Detective is probably a B+ detective story, at least season one. There could be reveals that come out in season two that elevate that grade a bit.

Nevertheless, I believe that anyone who chooses to view True Detective on the surface alone is missing quite a bit of richness. And yes, I do believe it is a literary masterpiece for reason that I will explore in the coming sections...

But first, as promised -- the demon of disconnect.  (continued next week)

True Detective: A Pastoral Review (Part One)

I believe HBO's first season of True Detective is the best television show ever made. It's time to make my case and I hope to do so in several parts... maybe even eight parts like the show. :)

First, the critics:

True Detective earned a tiny bit of its criticism, but most it is utter nonsense. I don't want to name names or slam reviewers, so I won't. For the record though, I really hate half-baked reviews. Anyone can have an opinion, but if I am going to spend time reading it, then I want it to be a well-informed one.

I will list here a smattering of the outcry, which truth be told has been silenced by the vast majority of fans and even many reviewers who've said it's the best, if not among the best, television shows ever made. Here's what we've heard from the naysayers:

#1  The Show Has Woman Problems.  Of all the criticisms received, this is by far the most balanced and worthy of consideration. True Detective is hyper-masculine... so was Palahniuk's Fight Club. I'm not so sure that delving into male psychosis, or as Rust puts it, "high functioning socio-pathology" is a bad thing anymore than a case study of 15,000 years of male psychology is bad.

For better or for worse (and most often for worse), male psychology is what has made the world turn for most of human history. The world's empires, religions, wars, and boundaries have been historically and primarily set by men. Wishing it were not such in a series of politically correct Op-Ed pieces doesn't much change this fact. If we are going to be real honest, it behooves us to understand male psychology if for no other reason than to keep our own shadows from creeping up on the human race.

I recognize and appreciate the need for strong female characters. But to put it candidly, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants this is not. True Detective is set in highly fictionalized (perhaps even fantasized)  male world -- even a man's sick world -- where women and children often end up paying the ultimate price for that sickness. Again, wishing the show wasn't this way in a review will not erase the cost of the suffering inflicted by male psychosis. It seems best, as Rust correctly asserts, "to get as much out in the open" as possible.

As a pastor of over 20 years there is one thing I know for certain: you must meet men where they're at if you ever hope to arouse change within them. If anything, it isn't the only women who should be frustrated by the shallow portrayals and violence against their gender. In my opinion, the men should be too -- at least up until the series finale.

Rust and Marty are anything but upstanding citizens as the show's protagonists. They are heavily fleshed out caricatures of male stereotypes and wish fulfillment. To stop our criticism at the level of demoralization of women, or lack of strong female characters, totally blows past the dysfunctional male characters in the story who have placed them in the narrative's margins. Apologies to my sisters, but harping on the "woman problems" in True Detective is truthfully mistaking the symptom for the disease.

True Detective is perfect if for no other reason than it goes for the jugular: it attacks male illness head-on. It is unfortunate that the mechanism employed is offensive: that strong female portrayals were noticeably absent and that most women were presented at victims; but not only is this our history as a species, it is our silent present we live in today as well. It will be our future if we don't (pardon the French here, but to again quote Rust:) "start asking the right f-n questions."  (Note: this link is NOT work-safe or kid-safe)

 

At the very heart of True Detective are two men, who although are not violent perpetrators against women and children themselves, ultimately engage in violence via a "manhunt" (emphasis mine) which results in each of the men confronting his own inner demon.

That demon has a name and a face -- it's called Disconnect. And it has everything to do with masks, averting eyes,

... and as Errol calls Rust in his sickened Carcosa: it is about "little priests."

More tomorrow.

Dealing with the INFP Pastor

For as long as I have been studying psychology, the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Test has been used as a sort of staple in psychology circles for "knowing thyself." I tend not to put too much stock in these sorts of tests, the validity is questionable and a person can, after taking it once, often manipulate the questions to center up a bit more in order to end up where they want to be described. Nevertheless, I have found the Myers-Briggs to be the most informative and revealing of the personality tests I have taken to date. It's also the one that has felt the most accurate and been the most helpful in helping me identify strengths and weaknesses.

My test results have been consistent over 20+ years, with only slight fluctuations in the Thinking/Feeling Component. I am a predominately Introverted, significantly Intuitive, a balanced Thinker/Feeler, and a highly imbalanced and potentially dangerous Perceptive.  

What does any of that mean for a pastor or a congregation?

Very simply, it breaks down like this:

ENERGY -- An extrovert gains energy when conversing with others, participating in activities, and being in a large crowd. As an introvert, I lose energy in these environments and can quickly become drained in settings with more than three or four people. I am energized by more the internal world of ideas and emotions.

ATTENTION -- A sensing person always has a keen eye on the facts immediately around them. They perceive the world in a mostly literal way and are the best at seeing the factual details of any given situation. As an intuitive, I tend to pay more attention to concepts, imagination, and connections rather than the literal things around me and all their intricacies. I tend not to look at the facts, but through them.

DECISONS -- Very simply, thinkers decide with their head and feelers decide with their heart. I will most often make decisions with both my heart and my head, even though I almost always test on these things as a "Feeler." The difference is very minor, so much so that I could technically go either way. It's probably best to say I try to think through my emotions when I decide, rather than feeling my way through my thoughts.

LIFESTYLE / WORKSTYLE -- People who use "Judgment" to determine their lifestyle or work-style doesn't mean anything bad about judging people. It means that they prefer to gather facts, make decisions, and lead a planned, organized, well-thought-out life. It is an admirable way to be wired up! Perceptive types like to take life as it comes, stay spontaneous, unplanned, and flexible. They are the "go-with-the-flow" types. I am highly unbalanced toward Perception and have never had a "J" score at all, never answered even one question with a "J" response in 20+ years. That's a potentially  dangerous imbalance.

A classic INFP is described this way in most of the literature:

“INFPs present a calm and serene face to the world, and can seem shy, even distant around others. But inside they’re anything but serene, having a capacity for personal caring rarely found in the other types. INFPs care deeply about the inner life of a few special persons, or about a favorite cause in the world at large. And their great passion is to heal the conflicts that trouble individuals, or that divide groups, and thus to bring wholeness, or health, to themselves, their loved ones, and their community.

INFPs have a profound sense of Idealism that comes from a strong personal sense of right and wrong. They conceive of the world as an ethical, honorable place, full of wondrous possibilities, beauty, and potential goods. In fact, to understand INFPs, we must understand that their deep commitment to the positive and the good is almost boundless and selfless, inspiring them to make extraordinary sacrifices for someone or something they believe in. Set off from the rest of humanity by their privacy and scarcity (only 1% of the population), the INFP can often feel even more isolated in the purity of their idealism.
 

Fiercely committed to the positive and the good and possessing an uncanny vision for spotting good and evil, INFP's tend to easily see the evil in themselves more frequently than other types. As a result, they can often come to develop a fascination with the profane, seeking to understand it completely.

Because the INFP is drawn toward the sacred, they are continuously on the lookout for the wickedness that lurks within them and are often driven to acts of self-sacrifice, shame, and other punitive measures that habitually take in atonement for their own evils - whether those evils are real or imagined. Others seldom detect this inner turmoil, however, for the struggle between good and evil is within and the INFP does not feel compelled to make the issue public.

For INFPs, their home is their castle. As parents, they are fierce in protection of home and family and are devoted to the welfare of family members. They have a strong capacity for devotion, sympathy, and adaptability in their relationships, and thus are easy to live with. The almost preconscious conviction that pleasure must be paid for with pain can cause a sense of uneasiness in the family system of an INFP, who may transmit an air of being ever vigilant against invasion.
 

In the routine rituals of daily living, INFPs tend to be compliant and may even prefer having decisions made on their behalf, until their value system is violated. Then INFPs dig in their heels and will not budge from ideals. Life with an INFP will go gently along for long periods, until an ideal is struck and violated. Then an INFP will resist and insist.

At work, INFPs are adaptable, welcome new ideas and new information, are patient with complicated situations, but impatient with routine details. INFPs are keenly aware of people and their feelings, and relate well with most others. Because of their deep-seated reserve, however, they can work quite happily alone. When making decisions, INFPs follow their heart not their head, which means they can make errors of fact, but seldom of feeling. They have a natural interest in scholarly activities and demonstrate, like the other Idealists, a remarkable facility with language. They have a gift for interpreting stories, as well as for creating them, and thus often write in lyric, poetic fashion. Frequently they hear a call to go forth into the world and help others, a call they seem ready to answer, even if they must sacrifice their own comfort.”

And there you have it, almost everything that's good and bad about an INFP pastor is neatly summed up in a few paragraphs. Visionary, sacrificially devoted, and inwardly passionate about a few select causes and people reveal the INFP to be a loving, loyal pastor -- even if those strengths are not readily apparent in his or her introversion.

On the downside however, the INFP pastor will often let details slip, seek privacy when togetherness is needed, and can quickly become a radical, even fanatical crusader when an ideal is violated.  Wrapped up in all the negatives, is the daunting reality that an INFP will always be their own worst critic, acutely tuned in to the smallest inklings of failure, selfishness, or greed in themselves. While we all do this to ourselves at times, the INFP has a propensity to take it to much deeper, personal levels.

Tips for congregations that have an INFP pastor:

·         Celebrate your pastor's loyalty, sacrifice, and his commitment to the job.

·         Recognize your pastor's tendency to totally lose herself in the causes and the people to whom she feels obligated -- to the point of even making un-reasonable self-sacrifices that effect health and financial well-being.

·         In recognizing the above, protect your pastor. When he says that he's not over-worked, listen for the unspoken queues of a Crusader who'd never admit to being tired when his highest ideals are on the line. When she says she doesn't need a raise, or care about the money, believe her -- but don't let her pour out her soul every week for a fast-food wage.

·         Study your pastor's passions and throw yourself behind those passions with him/her. The solidarity and sharing of vision will mean more to an INFP that most other personality types.

·         Allow your pastor to work alone as needed. An INFP is the epitome of a perfectionist in this regard: We are the sort who can walk past a stain on the rug for months without seeing it, but yet we will meticulously wipe every speck of dust off a favorite book and will work without food or sleep to protect the things we hold dear. If it matters to an INFP, you can almost always bet that it will be done right and with unmatched precision. When the INFP pastor is in the zone, he or she takes great care to produce incredibly detailed, well-thought-out work -- but this often requires that distractions be held to a minimum.

·         Understand that regardless of the face your pastor may present to the world every Sunday, beneath that calm, serene exterior, is a rich emotional life. One that is likely battling demons in his or her soul that don't even exist.

·         Realize that occasionally, your pastor will lead a charge against windmills, while insisting they are dragons. Lovingly remind him or her, that God is fully capable of choosing the right battles at the right times. Remind them that playing "knight in shining armor" only works when God is in the midst of their activities. We INFP believers will sometimes forget these things and wildly charge against a perceived threat.

·         Finally, understand your pastor's relentless self-scrutiny, fears, and insecurities. It is likely that whatever complaint you might have against your INFP pastor, he or she has already lost countless hours of sleep worrying about it. Always couple your view of the problem with a potential solution.... and above all, stay positive.

The INFP pastor is a true gift to a congregation and a community. Love them and treat them so, because you can bet every free calorie they have to burn is applied to loving and praying for the church they hold so dear.