Feb
27
As I listen to the silence, I learn that my feelings about art and my feelings about the Creator of the Universe are inseparable. To try to talk about art and about Christianity is for me one and the same thing, and it means attempting to share the meaning of my life, what gives it, for me, its tragedy and its glory.
- Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water
Feb
25
Ms. Flannery O’ Connor hits you over the head with a hammer in the best sort of way–you can tell she probably spent a good portion of her life reveling in John 2, when Jesus runs into the temple like a maniac, flipping tables, flinging money to the ground like chaff, and chasing the doves and other livestock out the temple doors.
She’s also profoundly aware of the ways in which the Spirit moves within our hearts in a similar manner, convicting us of our humanity when we try to cover ourselves up with religious garments.
“Think of all we have. Lord,” she said and sighed, “we have everything,” and she looked around at her rich pastures and hills heavy with timber and shook her head as if it might all be a burden she was trying to shake off her back.
Mrs. Pritchard studied the woods. “All I got is four abscess teeth,” she remarked.
“Well, be thankful you don’t have five,” Mrs. Cope snapped and threw back a clump of grass. “We might all be destroyed by a hurricane. I can always find something to be thankful for.
-From A Circle in the Fire
Mrs. Pritchard’s jeering, cynical response comes off as tame compared to the abject qualities of Mrs. Cope’s response. Mrs. Cope, in A Circle in the Fire, wears that religious demeanor brashly.
She is the unquestionable queen of her world; Ms. Cope makes this abundantly clear within these first few lines. Her words of thanks seem less like an actual display of gratitude to God, and more like a desperate hold on to her own kingdom of plenty coexisting with human lack. Ms. O’Connor later uses setting to imply that those hills heavy with timber are like the walls of a fortress. They Protect Ms. Cope from the outside world, and from the sound of the dialogue mentioned above it also seems that these fortress walls may have the effect of a prison.
I find Ms. Cope’s attitude and words most disturbing because I have shared her mindset and expressed those same hollow sentiments. I keep walls around all that I care for and shake my head at the tragedies of life that others endure. Like Mrs. Cope, when it comes down to it, all I want is the sun to keep shining on my work, and my home, where my life takes place. And even if trouble comes, that is fine, because God only gives you what you can handle, right?
Suddenly, enter in three wild, trouble making, naked miscreants from the Atlanta slums–well, okay, they don’t just enter into the story naked, but they might as well have considering how Mrs. Cope regards them. These three boys go on a trespassing rampage like no other.
The boys reject all of Mrs. Cope’s attempts to placate their starving eyes with sandwiches and coke, and they reject her insistence that they must leave the farm the next day. Instead of leaving, the three boys live out on the land, choosing to bathe in the cattle trough, ride her horses bareback, and sneak into her dairy shed for fresh milk.
Without completely spoiling the eccentric, somewhat dark ending of Ms. O’Connor’s story, I will say that these three young men intentionally resemble another trio from the book of Daniel who interact with the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar; they are strangers in a strange land. They reject everything that the king and his court offer (see Daniel 1), and they aren’t too keen on worshiping whatever golden image you place in front of them.
Daniel 1:11-13
Daniel then said to the guard whom the chief official had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, “Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food
Granted, the Misfits’ motives in A Circle In The Fire are not to display faith and trust in God. But I think Ms. O’Connor makes these rebellious Atlantan prophets come from seedier origins for a few reasons:
I. When you read the story of Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, church culture almost immediately seats you on their side. I think Ms. O’Connor wants nothing more than to complicate that relationship by making us sympathetic to Ms. Cope at times, and other times sympathetic to the three boys. All of Flannery O’Connors characters are human through and through, full of absurdities, contradictions, cares, and pleasures. There are no villains, only people.
II. You can’t con trespassing thieves with your religious garments. They may be familiar with desperation, but they aren’t stupid. They are people of business, and they can discern what business others are all about. They see through the courtesies of people who are really looking out for themselves.
III. The more we insulate ourselves from the world and build up our fortress walls, our own personal Babylons, the more we retreat from God’s kingdom working into the earth, and the more alone we are when the troubles of the earth fall hard upon us.
I am a graduate student studying english education in the deep south, and I am endlessly in love with Jesus, Flannery O' Connor, and other social pariahs.
Feb
22
A few months back, I was reading a New York Times interview with Anne Lamott on her favorite books. When asked what book made her want to be a writer, she answered with J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories
So because of Anne Lamott, and my love for Salinger, I thought I would spend this post exploring “Teddy,” perichoresis, and kenosis.
“I was six when I saw that everything was God, and my hair stood up, and all that,” Teddy said. (p. 189)
Let’s start here, with panentheism. So Teddy is a described as a Hindu holy man, but so much of what he says can be seen as ascetic Christian theology. (Minus the whole reincarnation thing.) Panentheism, for example, is the belief that God’s spirit is in all things. It’s not that everything is God, but the one God is in all. 10-year-old Teddy isn’t exactly describing panentheism, but to me it’s a worthy interpretation, at least for us here at T&L. What might Teddy teach us about Christian theology?
“It was on a Sunday, I remember. My sister was only a very tiny child then, and she was drinking her milk, and all of a sudden I saw that she was God and the milk was God. I mean, all she was doing was pouring God into God, if you know what I mean.”
So if we view this as panentheism, you can understand this metaphor as perichoresis–God pouring God’s self into God’s self while receiving God into God’s self. Fun, isn’t it?
Periochoresis is an understanding of the Trinity. No one part of the Trinity can stand alone. The Son wholly relies on the Father; the Father the Spirit; the Spirit, the Son. I’ve heard it described with birthing imagery: the Father gives birth to the Son, but the Father cannot be a father without the Son, therefore the Son gives birth to the Father. And so on.
So I love the imagery that Salinger gives to this: milk pouring into milk. The milk in the glass receives the milk in the carton.
A little later in the story, Teddy describes to Nicholson what I understand as kenosis, something even more interesting than the milk metaphor, if you ask me.
Kenosis is derived from the Greek word for “self-emptying” (κενόω), a term used to describe the incarnation. Christ emptied himself of his divinity and took on the human form (Philippians 2:7). Teddy mentions this self-emptying as a vomiting up of all the stuff one knows intellectually in order to hold what you might know intuitively.
“You know that apple Adam ate in the Garden of Eden, referred to in the Bible?” [Teddy] asked. “You know what was in that apple? Logic. Logic and intellectual stuff. That was all that was in it. So–this is my point–what you have to do is vomit it up if you want to see things as they really are.” (p. 191)
I’m working on another post on Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos
Can you actually “know too much”? Can your collection of facts about God keep you from knowing God?
“The trouble is,” Teddy said, “most people don’t want to see things the way they are. They don’t even want to stop getting born and dying all the time. They just want new bodies all the time, instead of stopping and staying with God, where it’s really nice.” He reflected. “I never saw such a bunch of apple-eaters,” he said. He shook his head.
I love Teddy’s commentary on epistemology. How do we really know what we know? Is it by labeling this thing or that? Or is it by connecting with God or with nature? He suggests we teach children how to really listen–to meditate, to see how things are, not just what they’re called. He says he’d want school children to “vomit up every bit of the apple their parents and everybody made them take a bite out of” (p. 196).
“I’d want them to begin with all the real ways of looking at things, not just the way all the other apple-eaters look at things–that’s what I mean.”
This short story has helped me see perichoresis and kenosis played out in different ways and explained with less lofty language. As for perichoresis, I’m able to see the Trinity as someone tangible like milk being poured into milk. As for kenosis, I’m deeper into my exploration of what that fruit in Genesis 3 really says about humanity, knowledge, and Adam’s sin. Was Adam and Eve’s curiosity really at fault–or is there a deeper truth to that story?
I am a student of theology and culture in Seattle, Washington. I love coffee, rainy days, and John Updike. Learn more about me at laurendeidra.com.
Feb
20
Style takes its final shape more from attitudes of mind than from principals of composition, for, as an elderly practitioner once remarked, “Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.” This moral observation would have no place in a rule book were it not that style is the writer, and therefore what you are, rather than what you know, will at last determine your style. If you write, you must believe–in the truth and worth of the scrawl, in the ability of the reader to receive and decode the message.
-William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White in The Elements of Style
Feb
18
I am obviously new to T&L.
And introductions are best when kept short and sweet–so I figured I would give you a nice picture of my home from the most trustworthy source I can think of: the outsider.
The old man [in "The Violent Bear It Away"] is very obviously not a Southern Baptist, but an independent, a prophet in the true sense. The true prophet is inspired by the Holy Ghost, not necessarily by the dominant religion of his region. Further, the traditional Protestant bodies of the South are evaporating into secularism and respectability and are being replaced on the grass roots level by all sorts of strange sects that bear not much resemblance to traditional Protestantism–Jehovah’s Witnesses, snake-handlers, free thinking Christians, independent prophets, the swindlers, the mad, and sometimes the genuinely inspired.
–Flannery O’ Connor writing a letter to William Sessions, Sept. 13, 1960
I am a graduate student studying english education in the deep south, and I am endlessly in love with Jesus, Flannery O' Connor, and other social pariahs.
Feb
14
Last weekend I baked a cake for myself–just because I’m awesome. I announced it to the ends of the earth–OK, mainly just to the boyfriend–and it had never felt truer. I work from home, transcribing the words to video and audio files. Saturday I completed several files, which should have taken me 12 hours, but took me about 6 or 7 instead. Clearly, CLEARLY, I am awesome.
I spread the last layer of frosting on this cake and thought of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” I remember in high school how I took Whitman’s self-praising poem only at an arm’s length. I let myself like only parts of the poem, bits that didn’t seem quite so egocentric. And then in college lit at a Christian university–do I remember a discussion around the dangers of loving oneself that much? (I’m sure this was only in my head.)
But today, today I am singing with Walt, because I am awesome. I’ve done well. I did what I thought would be impossible or just plain exhausting. I earned enough money in one day that I hope to earn in a week. I am really, truly good at what I do–huzzah!
I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content (XX)
I’ve been spending time with the heretics the past few days, reading about them and reflecting. I’m convinced that some heresies need a second look. Dear Pelagius, mainly, and his disbelief in original sin. You are good! You are good! The divine is in all. The spirit of God is everywhere. This doesn’t mean you don’t need the grace of God; it just means that your primary disposition is toward goodness and not evil.
Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from;
The scent of these arm-pits is aroma finer than prayer,
The head is more than churches or bibles or creeds (XXIV)
I wonder if it would do us Christians a bit of good to look with joy at Whitman’s poem instead of fear. (Maybe some already do this well.) I, for one, have always felt a need to qualify. I celebrate myself–but not the bad parts!
I celebrate myself,
and what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you (I)
I’ve been pounding into my brain for so long that I am bad, that I am a sinner, weak, worthless, and empty. Have I forgotten that God called both man and woman “very good!” in the garden? Despite one’s belief on original sin (I’m on Team Pelagius, but let’s not forget all the good Augustine’s done!), I’m convinced we could all use time to relax a bit and consider our own goodness. Because–I am awesome! And so are you!
Christians are the vessels of God. We carry God in us. As Annie Dillard aptly wrote, “Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke?” And we spend all this time putting ourselves and other down? Ridiculous.
I too am not a bit tamed . . . . I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world (LII)
Today I’m going to celebrate myself. Will you join me by celebrating yourself?
I am a student of theology and culture in Seattle, Washington. I love coffee, rainy days, and John Updike. Learn more about me at laurendeidra.com.
Feb
13
Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing againBecause I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoiceAnd pray to God to have mercy upon us
And I pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon usBecause these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.
Have a blessed Ash Wednesday from T&L.
Feb
12
Three years ago, a friend of mine from way back in high school, now a high school English teacher, asked me to send her some book recommendations. I did, but I noticed that of the twenty-ish books I sent her, only one was fiction. It was hard to drum up fiction that I would recommend. Because I was then totally embedded in the doctoral dissertation writing process, that’s not too surprising, but it was a jolt to my system. I used to LOVE reading anything I could find, but it had been a while since I’d read anything that didn’t require a highlighter and a pencil and sticky tabs to remind myself of a bit of text that I would like to use later.
That jolt ignited in me a need to read again – to read for pleasure as well as for study. I had never really stopped, but the process of writing a dissertation marked a time that I knew that I had to read for pleasure again, or my brain would melt. So I got intentional. I started asking for recommendations for “real literature.” I started by looking at previous Pulitzer winners, then learned about other book awards. I read some of them, but I found other, better ways to get book recommendations for myself.
I found Goodreads, which helps me get book recommendations. I rediscovered the library as a source of books rather than just a remote office. I found book review podcasts.
I found that I was not just reading for pleasure, but also paying careful attention to how an author did what she or he did. I found that I was not just reading for pleasure, but also paying careful attention to how an author did what she or he did. I was mesmerized by the stark brown descriptions in The Road by Cormac McCarthy; I marveled at the way I entered into the mind of the autistic main character in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Last fall, while teaching a prayer class at the local seminary, I met a few people – Lauren foremost among them – who had a lit background and were working on that arts & culture intersection. That ignited a more intentional round of reading, which continues.
Here’s what I’ve remembered, or discovered: Good literature is about story. Often, it’s about The Story, it’s just cleverly hidden just underneath the surface. And usually – much liked Jesus’ use of parables to teach a deeper truth than the surface meaning might suggest – the story explodes on me with a profound sense of life which I wouldn’t get any other way.
I still read a lot of nonfiction with a highlighter and pencil and sticky tabs handy. But the creativity and whimsy of a good novel is a completely unique, and complementary, piece of my ongoing reading life.
I'm a software project manager and qa specialist by trade. I also hold a doctor of ministry degree and teach courses in Christian spirituality, both face-to-face and though e-learning systems. My doctoral dissertation looked at Christian spirituality in social networks. And I love to read.
Feb
10
If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only only think what everyone else is thinking.
- Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
Feb
9
This has been a big week. I finished a first draft of my paper on the theology in Updike’s Roger’s Version. I love the thing, and yet hate it, knowing I couldn’t give Barth or Updike (or Roger!) the explanation they all deserve. And I also finished Rabbit is Rich, the third book of the Rabbit Tetralogy, and am on to the fourth and final: Rabbit at Rest. Rabbit dies; I know this. I’m not ready for it. He’s been a part of my life for a year now, and I’ve grown to love the guy. So I’ve been sad and reflective, ready for Rabbit’s story to finish and for my own paper to endure the editing process.
I’ve turned to Lauren Winner for comfort. She is, to be frank, who I want to be “when I grow up.” She’s a brilliant writer, a lover of words, and a professor. She is also, I learned from her most recent book, an Updike fan. Be still my soul. She writes,
Today Ruth and I have come, in the pilgrim economy of writerly tourism, in search of a relic: John Updike lived for many years in neighboring Beverly Farms, and Manchester-by-the-Book received a portion of Updike’s library after he died. [...]
There is, frankly, something of the vulture in me; I want some of those Updike books. I want the books he read, or even just books he kept stacked on shelves in the guest room. [...]
After we have scavenged the fiction, we paw through Updike’s religion books. I make off with three volumes of Barth; two of them I will give away next Christmas, but Against the Stream I will keep. Updike read Barth in his late twenties; he said the Swiss theologian helped him conquer his “existential terror.” He said Barth made him “able to open to the world again,” and Barth shadows Updike’s oeuvre–his novels and short stories, the interviews in which he mostly avoided religious declaration, his poems. In Updike’s fictional world, many of the most compelling characters are admirers of Barth, followers of, or locked in an argument with, the deus absconditus, the God who hides himself. The eponymous hero of Roger’s Version, who invokes Barth at the drop of a hat, knows that God is unknowable–knows even that God’s mystery is somehow tangled up with human hope–but finds that knowledge vaguely unsatisfying. [...] And Rabbit Angstrom is a Barthian, sensing that God is wholly other, that the best proof of God’s existence is Rabbit’s own desire for him, his own undeniable longing.
In addition to those three volumes of Barth, the bookstore’s religion shelves hold one of Updike’s volumes of Buber, some comparative religion texts, and several books about Hasidism, all immaculate, not a hint of marginalia; and then Ruth, who is sharper-eyed than I am, spies in Updike’s copy of Alexander Schmemann’s For the Life of the World a little something penciled on the flyleaf. [...]
What Updike penciled is Deus est qui Deum dat. That is Augustine: God gives us many gifts, but “God is He Who gives God.” This is a good thing to affirm if you live in New England, the land of the hidden God, if you say, as Updike once did, that you find attending church “generally comforting and pleasant,” if you are lauded after dead as a Protestant novelist by an obituary writer who thinks he’s saying something quaint. I keep this book on my bedside table now, this gift from Ruth, and I open it regularly and mostly I do not read what Schmemann has to say about Eucharistic love, though I’m sure what he says is astute. Mostly I look at Updike’s scribble of Augustine and I take it as a good word from a ghost, from someone entered into glory, joined up to the communion of saints; I take it as a benediction from one so keenly aware of the gulch between God and God’s creatures: God is here through our longing for God; God gives us many gifts, but God is He who gives God.
– from “Manchester Pilgrimage” in Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis
I am a student of theology and culture in Seattle, Washington. I love coffee, rainy days, and John Updike. Learn more about me at laurendeidra.com.
