Per my being violently attacked by spam, I’m made a slight change to the blog -- from now on, you’ll be required to enter a security verification number in order to make a post. Not a big deal. Just look at the number given to you, and type it in. It’ll make your commenting .25 seconds longer, but save me many minutes of trying to sort through all of the spam.
I generally dislike New Years Eve. I feel as if I ought have somewhere to be, but often end up sitting around, watching the clock tick to 12am and thinking to myself, “Eh. That’s that.” I feel as if something should shift in me when the clock hits 12, some kind of mental change, some sense that things are now different, as if the entire universe were wired on the system of earth years, and an aeonian cog clicks away, measuring and defining and programming the universe’s lifeline.
I once participated in those gargantuan events that First Assembly would put on, but never found that invigorating. If anything, it seemed a bit empty to me -- as if no one was quite sure why they were celebrating, but darnit! streamers are falling and the music is loud, so, hey, let’s give a great shout and jump about wildly.
Someday, I’ll own my own house and have a New Year’s party the way I’d prefer: a small group of friends with each other, discussing the year that was, and the year that is to come. The moment need not be strategic and intentional as it be alive, as one and another experiences the present, past, and future of each other. There’s meaning in that: what purpose is there in empty, clanking celebration? -- a flaw in our society, to believe that noise and movement can simulate true life.
I can find little significance in these events, and what significance I see seems forced and simulated -- which is why I’ve thus far, no matter where I may physically be, always found myself alone and empty on New Year’s Eve.
‘Patience,” I growl under my breath. “Patience, and the time will come...” -- as if patience were all that is required of me.
“Time cures all woes”: perhaps, but it is no good fixer of things. Time destroys more than it builds: mountains are torn down through the aeons, but are created only in a moment. So, it is not time that cures woes, unless it is a destroyer of woes. (Time so rarely creates those mountains)
But a woe is a destruction: of love, of heart -- it is a wound, deep. Can a wound cure a wound, inadvertently? No, wounds do not destroy or heal wounds. In the same way, time cannot heal woes. Time can smooth the woe, make it palatable. It can deepen it... but it cannot heal. Healing is an act of consciousness Time heals no thing; patience solves no problem, except that it -- patience -- is a conscious act, and is therefore proactive. Unless my patience be proactive, it is no solution.
Like, the title states, this is “Boring Picture Sunday”: the Unfortunate Product Name Edition. Insert appropriate or inappropriate commentary, as necessary. Enjoy!
Just finished:
Old School by Tobias Wolff. (A wonderful story about the formation of a writer -- and the nature and texture of literature)
Till We have Faces by C.S. Lewis. (A retelling of the ancient Greek myth concerning Cupid and Psyche; more abstractly, about sacred versus profane love -- well done, I’d love to retell a myth similarly, someday.)
Currently Reading:
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak.
Underworld by Don DeLillo.
Re-Reading:
Christ, the Center by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. (I’ve written this before, and will again: there has never been a book to so powerfully impact my life. Where are such theologians today?)
In the Mail:
How Our Brains Become Who We Are by Joseph Ledoux.
And it’s late. Hopefully, there will be a bit of real posting tomorrow. Been yet another good day -- quite the phenomenon!
It’s been a fantastic two days; I’m unwilling to analyze the reasons, saving the analysis for a more somber time, and somber reflection. Right now, I want to revel in the joy of the moment, the brief warm wash of sunlight on a face that’s been long cloaked in shadow. Happiness comes far too infrequently, these days. When present, it is appreciated.
(A reason for pleasure: discovering that a) I will be, in some way, paid for my Christmas vacation -- just as normal teachers, and b) that I’ve been given a 25% raise -- making my weekly gross income more than double what it was when I was a carpenter... that’s just a fragment of actual good events over the last several days...)
“They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me.” -- Nathaniel Lee
Edit-not-worthy-for-a-full-post: I now recall that, as a kid, I also loved Gustav Holst -- I was endeared to his the Planets Suite, specifically Jupiter...
A difficulty for me is the Church -- not in its moral behavior, so much, as its treatment of Christ and the Truth. I see the church subjecting itself to proof... and, because of the nature of its subject, its proofs fail. What proof is there for something which is transcendent? There is none.
But the Church gives proofs that -- if examined closely enough -- are not proofs, just expressions of possibility. And because these are presented as proofs, they fail in their task -- and the church falls back, weakly, on faith. Weak -- because faith is not central, because it has become an expression of possibility not a paradoxical truth (“the evidence of things unseen...”) Faith, today, is a product of proof, a product of necessity. It is not the evidence of things unseen; it is the result of seen evidence. “Look here! Look there!” We shout, hawking our wears. “Measure this God! Weight him! We place him on the scales and have seen that he exists!” This is not the way of faith; this is the way of science, the way of man... a foolish way, for how can we study and measure a transcendent being?
We ought to revel in the apparent irrationality of Christ! Revel in faith, in the unprovable Christ! -- because the inverse is untenable and if proof were possible, true faith would be impossible.
I read Bonhoeffer -- and I can believe in his expression of Christ. His view is the world I see... paradox, impossibility, transcendence -- offensiveness. This is beautiful to me, not the common Christ we see today. Even mysticism today -- New Age and such -- avoids the paradox. It, too, misses the beautiful impossibility. It, too, has become scientific in its way.
The glory of the church is found in its offense, that is, in Christ. But what is the offense of Christ? That he was a human messiah? No, men have been saved through men before. The Jews long sought an earthly savior. That he was God? No -- we have long known God and known of him and acknowledged his transcendence. The Jews long sought God’s salvation...
Though these are close to the heart of the matter. We do not mind God so long as he remains apart from us -- we expect his apparent distantness, his transcendence. His demands on us are distant and strange; they touch us like an order from a strange, distant nation we cannot understand but rules us. Salvation from a man is also acceptable. A man is a credit to his people. We understand him, since he is one of us. His salvation of is, perhaps somehow viewed as a salvation through us, by us, since he is one of us. We know he is no more than us, so we can accept him.
Christ incarnate is, however, a tangible transcendence. Because he is a man, he is immediately relevant. Because he is God, he makes ultimate demands upon us. His offense is this demand, which causes us to say, “Who are you to forgive sins?” -- how can you, a man, be both immediately and ultimately demanding? Both part of this world and transcendent?
He offends us because he should not be and yet is -- present but not subject to the proof of presence. We ought to glory in this paradox, rejoice and revel in it! This offense is Christ -- both impossible and necessary, God and man. Subject to no proof but the proof of faith.
I fear, sometimes, that what we preach as a “personal relationship” with Christ is merely an expression of Christ, the man -- and that it has come at the expense of Christ transcendent; and therefore, at the expense of the offense... and, therefore, truth faith.
(Related: Choice & Faith, To Follow the Lord)
