hard soul

Also in TO, had a session of throat grinding, heart finding musical tutelage somewhere along Queen Street. Featuring champion busker and free fingered artist: DB Buxton.

coming out

I was in Toronto last weekend, standing on Church Street talking with Aaron, whose family is Indian and Catholic. We were talking and he asked me if I have a girlfriend, to which I responded, “A wife, actually.” I asked him if he has a boyfriend, but he doesn’t. He said he has to be discreet. I wondered out loud if that was because of his family, and he said that, yes, it was. His family doesn’t know. He hasn’t come out yet.

I was standing there on Church Street thinking about Aaron’s discretion, and I thought that probably most of us have something or other that we haven’t come out about to our families. Which doesn’t suggest that Aaron’s situation (being gay in a family that disapproves of his orientation) isn’t uniquely difficult, because it is. It does, however, raise the question: Am I making it difficult for any of my loved ones to be honest about who they are?

love

Moms and Dads give lots to their children. There are exceptions who don't. But most of them do and it's probably generally agreed upon that that's the way it should be.

Then every now and again there comes an opportunity for a son or a daughter to give a bit too.

And hopefully ultimately the flow of love between parent and offspring becomes as vigorously mutual as possible.

Click: part of the flow.

remembrance

I am grateful for the country I reside in. And grateful for the folks who, taking initiative and making sacrifices and believing in the effectiveness of believing, had a hand in crafting the country it is.

Thanks to the soldiers and to the activists, the academics and the farmers, the politicians and the teachers, the journalists and the janitors, the rock stars and the IT guys (and gals). Not everyone does what they do with grace and poise and a heart full of hope. But some of you have. And lots of you do. Thanks to you.

Let's not forget to remember each other.

quest

I have experienced an ongoing call to seek, a convincing impulse to reflect, and a persistent compulsion to express. I trust that the call is good, because it has been good. It has inspired me to quest for compassion, knowledge, integrity, and humanity.

I value this vocation. I consider it to be profound and true.

head

G.K. Chesterton wrote, "The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head."

And without deliberating as to which disposition is the better of the two, it's valuable to know which one you tend toward.

ownership

Granted, I'm taking this out of context... but not very far out of it. And take my word, even in its context it did little else than reek of hubris while providing a distinct example of nationalistic pride gone askew.

Read from a periodical this evening, in an article that I think was trying to say that the U.S. is learning to appreciate soccer and that soccer's popularity is growing here, becoming more of a priority. It said it like this: "Face it, world: the U.S. is going to play, watch, market, manage and own your sport sooner or later."

Then it quoted someone at the head of the U.S. soccer force, "For good or for bad, America has always been the center of the universe, whether it's sports, culture, politics; so it makes sense that as soccer has exploded to become a true global sport, America would hop on the bandwagon."

I agree that America is hopping on the bandwagon, and a fine bandwagon it is, and a fine squad they have to do the hopping (I'm a big fan of Howard's tending prowess). But, dear me, soccer has not exploded to become a true global sport -- it is the global sport.

And I think that ownership is not determined by purchasing power (through marketing, managing, mass viewing, etc) but by the enthusiasm with which it is played.

Soccer -- the world's football -- is for all of us; possibly the one thing remaining that will always shed imperialistic robes for the sake of its own simplicity. Two goals and a ball. Heart, passion, celebration.

It tends to bring us together. I value soccer for that. Let's let it do what it will.

see

Seeing something from where you are is quite natural and easy. Seeing that you see something from where you are is more difficult at times. It's good to perch every once in a while, to see as expansively as possible, to take a moment to value perspective.

grounded

I value having a spot to sit and think, stop and feel, to stay put and let the business of a day pass through my consciousness leaving me more or less at ease with the way things are, situated.

habla

I spent a lot of time the past few months talking with Jesus. I discovered that language is a luxury, helpful, but not a necessity. We saddled horses together, played soccer together, climbed trees, fixed leaky hoses, harvested bananas, shot the breeze -- all with minimal mutual vocabulary. Jesus spent even more time talking at me than I did at him. And he seldom slowed down to ensure my comprehension.

I'm back, feeling rinsed off by three months at the end of the road in southwest Costa Rica. Airing out for now in Indianapolis, recalling the summer days of my childhood, and sorting through the insights that piled up while I was away.

sabbatical

Hey readers. For the next few months you won't hear much from me, but for the occasional photographic representation of my musings and the writing de mi esposa, visit this magical place.

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.

quick read

Here's a great article pertaining to the New Atheist conversation a few of us engaged in a few posts back, an article by Newsweek's Lisa Miller: http://www.newsweek.com/id/219009

My podcast experiment

Over the past couple of months I’ve significantly increased my podcast intake. A couple of trips between Toronto and Indianapolis, as well as a fair bit of time spent strolling the urban terrain of the greater Toronto area has afforded me sufficient time to expand my listening. It’s been a worthwhile and informative endeavor, leaving me more confident in conversation. I often feel now that I have a thing or two to contribute regarding politics, culture, spirituality, or any of a number of interesting topics.

This week I decided to do an experiment. I spent a few minutes browsing for podcasts that would represent opposing perspectives on a particular theme. I chose religion, but any theme would have sufficed I’m sure.

By the end of my research I had sniffed out three free podcasts with an apologetic bent; podcasts which function primarily as a resource for defending certain Christian beliefs against secular threats. According to my understanding the ones I selected all represent, while of course not exhaustively, a conservative evangelical approach to Christianity.

Then I uncovered a few representatives from the opposite end of the spectrum, podcasts that advocated atheism and free thought. I downloaded some random episodes from their archives as well.

At the outset I was not interested in entering too deeply into the actual content of the episodes I listened to, because much of it engaged material that I’ve entertained in other ways at other times. Instead I was listening for tone and approach. And in that regard I found, for the most part, that the broadcasters were quite similar to one another regardless of what they were advocating.

What I had set up in my mind as a boxing match between apologists and atheists ended up being rather an absurd choreographed dance. A mental picture in which the boxers pranced about unaware of one another, beating their fists against the air with smirks of confidence spread across their face.

As a representative from either side of a debate it’s easy to be more interested in defending our propositions against perceived threats than it is to demonstrate ways that our views can contribute to a beneficial style of living.

It’s also common to be so set on attacking the opposition that we fail to recognize the ways in which listening to our opponents may actually contribute to our own formation.

Defending one’s perspective is by no means a thing to be criticized, but the attitude of defensiveness and victimization with which it is so often done is a juvenile habit. And although articulating one’s worldview is a necessary piece of social interaction and personal growth, to do so in a way that degrades another person is blatantly arrogant and intemperate.

I am learning to be more honest with others, and myself, by acknowledging that there are things I think with some degree of stability. I do have strong beliefs, and I’m often stubborn about them. My desire in this, however, is to grow in both honesty and patience. I want to recognize that when I propose a statement of belief it is only reasonable to do so if extended conscientiously and compassionately, because compassion is the soil that my beliefs are rooted in.