Lapham

While wondering the aisles of periodicals at one of a selection of large bookstores in the Indianapolis area the other day, dragging my heels to the exit, wanting only to linger amongst the words and images a little bit longer, but needing to return to the elements of the non-literary portions of life, my eyes stumbled onto something.

I had a gift card, a Christmas gift card with a snowman on it, that I had managed to hang on to up to that point. I fished it out of my wallet and traded it in: a book of Anne Sexton poetry for Lauren, and the most recent issue of Lapham's Quarterly for me.

LQ is edited by Lewis Lapham (Lapham's). Published four times a year (Quarterly). It adopts a topic each issue, this one hones in on religion. And it explores that topic throughout history by compiling a myriad of writings by figures, this time, ranging from Josephus to Nietzsche, from John Donne to Jon Edwards to John Updike to Jon Krakauer.

You can read some of the excerpts that I've been picking through at the LQ site.

hot topics

I had an opportunity to guest teach for a group of peers at one of the local churches the other day. My dad is their usual teacher, and I've gotten to know them all quite well. We had a great time.
I had taken a poll the previous week to find out what they wanted me to teach about. I took in a few possible "lecture titles" and went with the one that got the most votes: "Selected Topics in Biblical Hermeneutics: Creation, Homosexuality, and Hell".
A few PowerPoint slides into it I had already made my main point which was, more or less, this: everyone who reads the Bible (or anything for that matter) interprets the Bible, there are a variety of options to be chosen from when it comes to shaping an interpretation, own your choices.
Which is to say, if you're confident enough to confess something with confidence then you owe it to the rest of us to trace its roots and track its implications. We all owe it to each other.
If you're interested in the selected topics themselves, I'd be glad to guest lecture at your venue of choice for a small fee and a complimentary lunch at Yats.

Then why?

In light of the frustration I communicated in my last post what is it that keeps me, in one way or another, on the fringes of the religious realm?

Well, here's the thing:
Religions are human productions. Really, they are. People made them. Not deliberately, but people living life at certain times spread out all over the world and all throughout history contributed to the development of the religions.

It wasn't like an assembly line at the religion manufacturing plant where this person added this piece and that person added that piece and it all fit together to become one fancy final product.

It was more like how people make babies. Once upon a time people's questions about life coupled with the reality of their lives and a baby was conceived. This happened wherever people clustered together. Some of the baby's grew up to be strong and active in the world. Others grew up and kind of kept to themselves. Many of them had babies of their own. And several of them, to this day, have dissociative identity disorder.

What I'm interested in is how we, as parents, respond to our offspring. And, even if we don't have our own, how we respond to the presence (and actions) of other people's offspring.

I'm not interested in discussing whether or not such and such a religion should exist, or whether religion in general should be discontinued. In my opinion it's kind of too late for those questions. Religion is too much a part of the family, too much a part of the human story, to be rid of it. Not without a big mess.

Maybe it will come to that. Things are already a mess and maybe before we can clean things up we'll need to make a bigger mess. But an honest appraisal of what the world would be like -- for so many individuals, nations, and cultures -- if the rug of religion was pulled out from under them leads me to conclude that I am not prepared to be the one to tug.

I think we have a lot more to discuss before we go down that road. And if we all open ourselves up to discussion then maybe we won't have to.

Pushy religion

Happy twenty ten. I've been struggling to come up with a bit to write here at the start of this new year. There are plenty of thoughts stirring, but not many taking shape, not the sort I'm interested in posting anyway.
So I've tapped the archives, found something I wrote a while back that I don't think I ever posted. It's a touch morose, but I hope (dare I say plan?) to offer some constructive and good tempered ponderings soon. Meanwhile...

I grow weary of this insistence: authentic faith requires either an attainment of certainty or the fervent pursuit of it.
It frustrates me. Why insist on answers? The questions will return, and the answer isn’t to answer them. The answer is to enter them.

Perhaps religion is nothing more than an institute dealing in the currency of answers.

Once upon a time religion dealt with questions. It didn’t answer them. I’m tired of religion that gives away its answers with the flash of a smile.

I’m tired of religion that offers certainty as a synonym for faith, sewing the two together with a cross-stitch. I find myself tearing at the resultant seams for a glimpse of light, a breath of air.

However you do and whoever you are, as the days begin to lengthen, celebrate life this season. Thanks for reading.


Good cheer and happy tidings!


Peace. Shalom. Shanti.

An open letter to a bully

Ms. Bully,

The moment you laid eyes on me you thought I was dumb, which was disheartening for me because I wholeheartedly disagree.

I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt at first by assuming that perhaps you were tired or sick, perhaps it was because you are old, or you are jealous that your office window lacks a scenic campus view. I met with three other professors in your department; they had lovely views, treated me cordially, and smiled a fair amount. You were mean.

I have tried to give you the benefit of the doubt, but it is difficult for me to do so. I have concluded that, although you are old and you said that you were tired when I asked, “How are you today”, and as I recall the view from your office window does suck, you nonetheless decided in your heart to be neither kind nor encouraging to me when I visited with you the other day.

You see, I am trying to be a student again, seeking an academic program to enroll in for the fall. It has been a while since I was a student, nearly five years. I have never been a student in an institution like the one where you work. I come from a small pond. I am not the most qualified prospective – I haven’t read Plato or Nietzsche, and am unable to spell Nietzsche without assistance. But you could have known practically none of that when you first laid eyes on me, at which point you began to think that I am dumb.

What might you have known about me? And how might it have led you to that conclusion?

Was it because I am young? Surely not, unless you despise the youth of all of your students. I have tangled locks of hair and an unruly beard, I’ll confess to that. But haven’t many radical geniuses been equally unkempt? Perhaps you translated the look of anticipation on my face as a look of apprehension; perhaps you deduced from that look that I was out of my element. Ergo you dubbed me dumb?

I remain perplexed, Ms. Bully.

I was out of my element, but a big reason for my being so was that I am in search of my element. I was there by choice, and I was not uneasy about that.

I am not dumb and I am not a coward, but neither did I feel particularly motivated to prove these things to you when it was all too apparent that you were axiomatically convinced otherwise. I could have engaged you in rich academic conversation, I have the capacity, but since you thought I was faking from the get go I decided not to give you more fodder to supply your suspicions.

Is it possible that it was my intuition and not my lack of wit that kept me from engaging the disparaging questions and comments that you layered my way? I channeled Ishmael’s words that were commentary on his chief mate Starbuck, “that the most reliable and useful courage [is] that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril”. And like Starbuck, for me “courage [is] not a sentiment, but a thing simply useful”. I would rather not use it to unravel unfounded assumptions.

Had it been an interview and you the determining voice I would have exited your office a failure. Which, incidentally, is also how I entered.

A brief admonition, made with the understanding that, given a reversal of power and position, I might do (or have on occasion done) the same thing. In other words this is an admonition to the bully-potential that each of us walks through our days with:

Don’t be mean to people. It’s okay to be honest and lucid, to be direct and realistic, but have the courage and humanity to also meet the other where they are. Take a quick look at the world through their eyes, especially when the way you see them through yours is less than genial. And give them the benefit of the doubt.

I’ll try, again, to do the same for you.

And everyone remember that bullies aren’t scary. Just a different kind of scared.

Sincerely, your prospective student,

AJM

rigidly gooey

I’m moving tomorrow. So naturally I’ve been reflecting on what this season has contributed to life, what I have accomplished and experienced. Between exploring the mountain bike trails that Toronto has to offer, snuggling in for an episode of Mad Men accompanied by a bowl of the gourmet popcorn that Lauren got for her birthday, and stopping into Soma at the Distillery District for a cup of Mayan hot chocolate (i.e. the experiences) I have been working diligently on several applications for graduate school (i.e. the accomplishments).

I am applying for an MA in Religion. After I get these credentials, and maybe a few more, I am going to become a great teacher and change the world. But first I need credentials.

One portion of each application is a statement of interest, a concise essay that is meant to discuss what it is that the applicant is academically into and how it is that the particular program being applied to can both provide for and benefit from the applicant’s area of focus. In this scenario I am the applicant and it’s a pretty straightforward process.

Nonetheless, writing that statement was an intense emotional and intellectual undertaking for me. It couldn’t be too gooey, laden with details about my religious upbringing and personal development. But neither could I allow it to be too cold, rigidly treating the topic as if I was in no way personally invested, as if it was strictly a conceptual undertaking. Ultimately I just had to write it, finish it, without picking it apart too much. I had to make a statement and rest contented with it. I did, and I’m pleased. We’ll see how effective it is come next March and April when the un/acceptance letters start pouring in.

In the meantime I have the residual sensations to sort through. In the process of writing I did explore my religious history and I did examine my current concept of religion. How did I move from the religious expressions that I learned as a child toward the specific interest in religion that I have today? Can both continue to serve me professionally? Personally? Must I denounce the boundaries I grew up with in order to explore beyond them? If I do, may I still honestly be grateful for my religious heritage?

Most of these questions I have answered for myself already, but not publicly, at least not directly. Much of this blog recently has been a public attempt to indirectly betray the fact that I am entertaining questions like these. I think I want to be more direct in future posts. Thanks for reading in the meantime.