A Fox News Sabbath

Walking the dogs on a Sunday afternoon

Here’s a question I find interesting, although you may not:

When Moses brought down the Ten Commandments from Sinai, including the admonition to “remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,” did the Children of Israel know exactly what day that was? In other words, if they were to labour for six days and rest on the seventh, was it clear to all and sundry which day of the week was the seventh one and when it would next appear?

I followed a surfing-chain yesterday starting with a forwarded email from a friend suggesting I sign a petition to block Fox News from coming to Canada. That led me to the website of Glenn Beck, Fox’s resident reactionary, on which there was a link to the Restored Church of God, which led in turn to a few talks by a David C Pack on why the Restored Church of God is the only true church in the world, which led further to the debate in the Church of God about whether or not the true Sabbath is actually Friday sunset to Saturday sunset, thence to the article declaring Sunday observation a heresy by said Mr. Pack.

If the Children of Israel had begun to observe six days on, one day off immediately, would the current Saturday still be in synch with them? I don’t think so. Every leap year pushes the calendar one day back (or forward, take your pick) and a strict sequence of six-on, six-off would mean that the Sabbath would rotate through the days of the week over time. Correct me if I’m wrong.

This may illustrate little more than that the exploration of the web is best characterized as a descent into ignorance, silliness and the endless flogging of pet horses. Or it may raise a far more disturbing question: if the reading of the Holy Bible produces such enmity, confusion and strife as we see in the splintering of the Church of God (into The Living Church of God, the Worldwide Church of God, the Global Church of God and now, The Restored Church of God) and the endless bicker about doctrines, should we be recommending other reading instead, or at least, as well?

Maybe we should rise up and block Fox News. The movement across North America toward fundamentalism and “conservatism” is insidious and concerted, and very, very discouraging. It’s a movement that throttles the great potential with which creation has endowed us. It’s a movement that eulogizes the merits of old doctrines and habits and would rather concern itself with mystical meaning in ancient writings than with the expanding possibilities of human intelligence, logic and creativity. It would rather predict the future than live responsibly in the present, and assigns catastrophes to the workings of powers beyond our control. It’s anti-civilization, and to see the church leading the charge back into ignorance would be the most disappointing development of all.

An aside: David Pack makes much of the verses where Jesus is purported to speak of “building my church.” This is not a firm foundation for many of his arguments, since etymologically speaking, the word church was not used in the sense in which we use it until the fourth century AD (see http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=church). Some will say that Jesus never set out to “build a church,” others will say that it’s not possible that Jesus ever said those words, particularly in the sense that we understand them. There’s a difference between “reading” and “reading with understanding.”

So back to the Sabbath. Taking a day off regularly is a good idea, no matter what day it is. Giving that day to contemplation of a greater reality than our daily tasks allow is probably a bonus. Fighting over whether that should be done on Saturday or Sunday was probably not what was intended, to say the least.
　

God feeds Ravens: think about it.

They neither labour, nor do they spin

Consider how the lilies grow. I’ve been wrestling with the meaning of this advice from Luke, where Jesus addresses his “little flock” with several examples to encourage them not to worry so much about the future. “Consider the ravens; they do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barns; yet God feeds them.” (Former residents of Thompson may share a more basic impression of how ravens--aka Thompson Turkeys--are fed.) It’s all in Luke 12: 22 - 31, which is the text for the sermon I’m scheduled to deliver in a couple of hours. As usual, it’s a part of my immediate future that worries me. Ravens and lilies don’t have to get up in front of people to speak.


Here, in summary, is what I intend to present. If you are a member of Eigenheim Mennonite, you can read the below and snooze through the sermon.

1) Jesus asked his disciples to consider how the lilies grow so they would stop letting their worries govern their choices. Lilies don’t work, they don’t weave clothing, they don’t wear cosmetics and still -- with only the attributes God has given them -- their beauty makes Solomon look like a mud fence in comparison!

2) We can learn much by attuning ourselves to the signs of God’s creation around us and focusing less on the wonders of our own technology.

3) The short life of a lily bloom echoes our own lamentations about the brevity of our lives. Although brief, no lily’s life is pointless. Even passing beauty is marvellous.

4) Baird’s Sparrows, Sprague’s Pipits, Meadowlarks, and the Red Western Lily are very fragile remnants of Creation. If they are not worth protecting, then is any of God’s creation worth our concern? We need to address our habits of carelessness with the natural world.

5) The lily can teach us humility. We can accept ourselves as we are made, be thankful for it and stop wasting our time trying to be something we’re not. We need to free ourselves to bloom as we are.

6) The lily is amazingly beautiful. We know this because our mothers and fathers taught us to recognize real beauty. It’s a part of our task as adults to pass the affection for the amazing things God has made on to our children.

The creator feeding the elk.

Get your rapture insurance now.

Angel Glacier, Mt. Edith Cavell.  Indian Paint Brush on Mt. Edith Cavell

Do you have a love/hate relationship with insurance policies and schemes? Do you sleep better knowing that if your house burns down, you won’t be left destitute like those poor folks in the TV news who--when they sob into the camera that they’ve lost everything--actually mean it? Are you bothered by the amount of money this assurance (insurance really is the wrong word) is costing you?

Some insurance is mandatory, some is optional. You can’t get a mortgage or drive your car without insurance, for instance, but additional health insurance, life insurance, travel insurance, etc. are optional. What optional insurance have you chosen to help you sleep soundly? I’ll bet there’s one out there that you haven’t even considered, and I almost hesitate to name it lest it give you new, unnecessary worries.

I think the entrepreneur who dreamed up this scheme called it Rapture Insurance. Here’s the pitch: If you believe that a time is coming when all born-again Christians will be caught up in the air at once to meet Jesus and all the rest will be “left behind,” you may not have considered what will happen to your faithful Corgi after the joyous event. Are you willing to risk his being locked in a house with no remaining human presence to turn the doorknob to let him out, feed him or take him for walks in the park? If this worries you, Rapture Insurance will guarantee for one decade from the date of sign-on that they will look after the needs of your pet should you be caught up in the rapture and your tank of fishes, your budgie or your cat be left behind. All it will cost you is eleven bucks a year.

In case you saw a flaw in this plan, namely that the insurer might also be “caught up” with you, the company guarantees that all their personnel are atheists and the chance that they would be included in the rapture are nil. Some people believe that their pets are definitely coming with them, and therefore have no need of this insurance. Then there are those who are Christians, but have an alternative view of how the end times will unfold, and their version sees no need for this insurance. But there are some takers for whom this additional piece of peace of mind fits right in.

I gathered all this information via an interview on CBC as I was driving to visit my sister in the nursing home yesterday.

To some of you out there, this story might suggest other entrepreneurial schemes by which you, too, could get rich preying on the fears of a segment of the public. How about my scheme: Slip of the Tongue insurance. Who knows when you might inadvertently say something stupid or hurtful, thereby damaging your reputation, a friendship or costing you your job. Should the occasion arise, my company guarantees to put a very persuasive announcement in the paper assuring all and sundry that you didn’t mean it. Premiums are affordable at fifty dollars a year; there will be a small deductible, of course. No preacher, teacher, doctor, husband, wife or salesman should be without Slip of the Tongue insurance.

It’s not a high price to pay for peace of mind; a slip of the tongue could ruin you.

Render thoughtfully

Where we stayed while in Jasper, and where we didn't stay.

In an interview aired on CBC1 as we were driving home from Jasper the other day, celebrated author Ann Rice told about her recent conversion to, and subsequent abandonment of, organized religion when she realized how her church was behaving in relationship to the secular world. She gave as an example the pope’s condemnation of gay marriage in a manner designed to influence voting. She claims that she is now one of the millions who, like her, have lost confidence in the integrity of the institutional church and are exercising their faith privately.

It’s not easy, understanding what separation of church and state involves, or what is meant by “render . . . unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God, the things that are God’s (Matthew 22:21).” I’m not sure I understand it fully myself, but if I had to explain it to an inquiring mind, I’d say something like this:

There are two ideals at play for us in the separation of church and state in our country at this time: one is the Christian ideal based on the laws of the Old Testament and the gospel of Jesus Christ as interpreted by his early followers in the New Testament. The other is the ideal of political democracy, an ideal that says that every person--be he or she Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Atheist, etc.--has equal representation in formulating the laws of the land. Under the democratic ideal, every citizen, whether Christian, Hindu, Muslim or Atheist etc., should work to realize the democratic ideal and seek to legislate to the common good, not to his/her particular good, thus rendering to “Caesar” (today, our democratic ideals) the things that belong to democracy.

For some of us most of the time, and for most of us some of the time, getting our heads around this principle is a daunting task. If, for instance, we find abortion generally abhorrent based on our religious scruples, the liberalization of abortion laws is hard for us to take. Thinking through the window of our democratic ideals, however, we could possibly be convinced that charging women who choose abortion with accessory-to-murder (and the abortion doctor with first degree murder, possibly) may not best serve the common good, especially when we realize that induced miscarriage has been a fact of life through all history and will continue to be a best-solution to a certain problem for certain women--no matter what legislators decide.

That in no way prevents a Christian or a Christian church from practicing its religious ideals, teaching its children a doctrine of the sanctity of life and arming them with proper information and convictions to manage pregnancy as well as they can. It doesn’t prevent the Christian church from setting up clinics to help women who are up against hard choices, to facilitate adoptions, to provide sex education, to influence their neighbours and politicians to make life-giving choices and so on, thus rendering to God what is God’s.

The advantages we have gained by the proper separation of church and state and by the democratization of our politics are almost immeasurable. So peaceful have our lives become, generally, that we could be lulled into a state of ignorance on this subject and neglect to understand and practice the “render[ing] . . . unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God, the things that are God’s.”

We may not regard Ann Rice very highly as a theologian, but I have to think that she has grasped something that might be self-evident to recent converts and obscure to those born into faith. Her testimony is a warning to all established religions: render more thoughtfully.

Greetings from Jasper

Breathing the fresh air of Maligne Canyon

On Reading "The Patience Stone"

The Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan appears to be strengthening. The Dutch are leaving after sacrificing some 24 young soldiers to the futile effort to impose democracy on a country extremely short on democratic sensibility. Canada will give up its combat role in half a year and the rest of the NATO group fighting that peculiar “war” is fast wearying of the routine of runway ceremonies. The illusion of a successful, externally imposed order is fading.

To say that Westerners have failed to understand the mentality prevailing in the Middle East may be the understatement of the “War on Terror” campaign into which we’ve bought so carelessly. In a paternalistic society like Afghanistan, honour and machismo rank highly as evidence of the quality of a man; the Western world has dealt humiliation to the men of the Middle East for decades. The War on Terror is an extension of the policy of paternalism and imperial privilege that set the stage for the current dilemma in Afghanistan. Western men’s machismo now seeks an honourable way out of yet another dishonourable war.

There are things we would understand if we had a memory and the wisdom to connect some historical dots. It’s only 100 years since North American men were scoffing at the idea of women voting; even now, the glass ceiling persists.

There are books to be read that could help us understand where many Middle East men are now. (Yann Martel has so far been unsuccessful in engaging Prime Minister Harper in a dialogue about books; Harper’s favourite reading is Guinness World Records.) The Patience Stone by expatriate Afghani writer Atiq Rahimi could be helpful to our politicians if they would take the hour of thoughtful reading that it requires.

A sang e saboor is a patience stone, a stone to which you bare your soul while it listens uncritically. In this case, the patience stone is the husband of an Afghani woman, deep in a coma from a gunshot wound to his neck, a wound acquired in the conflict that is every-day Afghanistan.



“You talk to it, and talk to it. And the stone listens, absorbing all your words, all your secrets, until one fine day it explodes. Shatters into tiny pieces . . . and on that day you are set free from all your pain, all your suffering (75-6).”As the woman cares for her unresponsive husband, she begins to unburden her soul of all the hurt and humiliation she has had to endure because she is a woman. His comatose bulk becomes her patience stone. And in the silent moments between confessions, she tells her beads, repeating one of the many names of Allah ninety nine times, and she fingers the Koran that is always nearby.

Insurgents burst into her house as she keeps watch and because she is pretty and can read intent in their eyes, she convinces them that she is a prostitute. There is no honour, no manliness in consorting with a willing prostitute; it’s the conquest of the undefiled that marks them as men and they leave her be. Ironically, they steal her Koran.


“The Patience Stone captures with courage and simple, explosive prose, the reality of everyday life for a woman under the oppressive weight of Islamic fundamentalism,” the flyleaf intones. That may be the milieu in which this particular woman experiences oppression, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that fundamentalism of any stripe has, and continues to, degrade women in a variety of ways. Islamic fundamentalism most certainly doesn’t have a lock on paternalism and its consequences.

Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me . . . Exodus 20:5


I have to wonder if the Exodus verse is quoting God or documenting experience. If the latter, then it makes sense to note that the effects of bad behaviour have consequences that reach down through generations. In other words, the democratization of a people will never be effected in a brief war; it’s a transition that will only occur over generations, if at all.

We hate the thought that the resolution for Afghanistan may not be seen until our great, great grandchildren come to peaceful terms with the great, great grandchildren of the Taliban. But there may be no other choice.　

Slaying the corporate dragon

Consider the lilies how they bloom. They sow not, neither do they reap. Yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these.

“A corporation¾ for all intents and purposes¾ is a monster disguised in human form. It preys not on human fear, as did the dragons of old, but on human greed. It bends the world to its will through enticement, not coercion, and that alone has saved it from St. George’s sword. We all are implicated in its rapacious deeds and our guilt prevents us from prosecuting the monster.”


The oyster fishery in the maritime provinces of Canada is having a banner year. You heard it on the news last night. It’s thanks to British Petroleum; their oil spill has shut down the Louisiana fishery, which supplied 2/3 of the US demand for oysters.
In Saskatchewan, the government has decided to give the potash industry a $100,000 tax break for every head-office position they create in the province. They say it will benefit tax payers “in the long run.” this decision was likely struck in a board room, certainly not on the legislative floor.
At the Station Arts Centre in Rosthern, actors and theatre patrons are wrestling with the morality of the corporate development of genetically altered seed and the patenting of it, so that farmers are obliged to pay a royalty to the company for every seed they put into the ground. It’s virtually a license to print money.

Since corporations thrive on the basic commodities of consumer greed, complicity and subsequent guilt, there is really only one weapon that can bring the dragon back into line, and that is the consumer boycott. The scariest words to corporate management and stake holders are, “I will no longer purchase your product.” Since our provincial, municipal and federal governments are all unwilling and/or unable to regulate the behaviour of mega-corporations, it may be time for a bit of anarchy. I propose a consumer-watchdog check on the activities of the mega-corporations, its purpose being to starve the dragons into submission.
Here’s how it would work:


Participants are found by word of mouth, the internet, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, whatever means is cost free.
They sign on through the internet, their email addresses are stored in a central server.
They regularly receive bulletins advising them of activities by various dragons that threaten the environment, seed soverignty, human health, etc., along with names of consumer products on whose sale this particular dragon is dependent.
They voluntarily change their buying habits to ensure that they are not supporting the dragon.
When the dragon has altered his behaviour appropriately, another bulletin advises participants of this fact.

To work, such a program would have to ensure that it was behaving fairly, that its bulletins were squeaky clean and accurate. For that, experts would have to be involved, or else libel and slander litigations would undo the whole.
Without some such arrangement, you can rest assured that BP will continue to drill risky wells at sea, Monsanto will continue its efforts to ensure that the seed supply is whittled down to only its patented products, and the Saskatchewan government will continue its policy of favouring corporate stakeholders over taxpayers.
If you’re not convinced, go to the Louisiana shoreline and count the number of BP executives and shareholders washing the oil off suffering pelicans. Then count the “ordinary taxpayers” engaged in the same activity. Then draw your conclusions.
And by the way, if you’re wondering where the opening quote came from, stop wondering; I made it up this morning. And take a look at this international organization to stop the patenting of life:

http://www.no-patents-on-seeds.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=93&Itemid=56

Seven deadly sins

(This barn has nothing to do with the material below; it just looks nice and speaks diligent conservation.)

Wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony: these are the sins that have been classified by the church as having the power to interrupt the state of grace and land us in perdition. These are the seven “deadly”, “cardinal”, or “mortal” sins, as opposed to the “venial” sins like (I’m guessing here) chewing your fingernails.

We’re reviewing them through a series of sermons by pastor AF, alongside their corresponding virtues (hard work is the antithesis of sloth, for instance). And, I suspect, most of us are being given another look at behaviours we’ve come over time to see as bad habits or addictions as opposed to “sins.” Whether this shift in thinking is a by-product of the advance of Psychological research and practice, an increasing scepticism about the literal existence of an evil god who tempts and entraps us, or just a natural consequence of post modernism is what I’m pondering these days when I should be mowing the lawn. (I don’t multitask very well.)

Call it what you will, there is something decidedly deadly about--for instance--wrath. We’ve seen the deadening effect of that fog of habitual rage in which many people walk their daily lives. We hear news daily about some lost soul killing, kidnapping, raping in an outburst of wrath that has probably been festering untreated for years. Deadly is definitely the right word.

One concern I have with calling wrath a sin is that it may be dismissive of the precursors and the treatment of it, whereas medical practice attempts to find root causes and prescribe treatment regimens. In the church, of course, the solution to rage is rebirth, however that is described: a miraculous reformation in other words. And yet, rage is as much a problem inside the church as outside, and to dismiss this phenomenon among Christians as “backsliding” or failing to embrace real salvation is problematic. At the same time, there are plenty of witnesses to the transforming power of a genuine, born again experience.

In any case, people come under the spell of one or more of the “seven deadly sins” developmentally. Children of abusers are statistically far more likely to be abusers themselves than are children of loving, conscientious parents, for instance. The key must lie in the nurturance or neglect of maturing human beings, and those who repeatedly tout the virtues of punishment as a means to a cure must be shouted down.

Maybe sloth is the greatest of the sins (or bad behaviours) in the end. Too lazy to do the harder work of nurturance and inspired education, we have too often seized on the strap as a quick, handy response to inappropriate actions in children. The prison system is little more than the same, old, slothful response to deviance that the very advocates of harsh punishment have been implicated in causing. An ounce of prevention is way cheaper than a ton of “cure.”

I’m appreciating the sermon series. The use of the word sin probably serves to underline the seriousness of the kind of cultural decay that allows wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony to flourish, while the tried and true virtues (humility, perseverance, moderation, forgiveness, love, generosity and tolerance) wither on the vine.

The Sacred Egg

Sunday morning. I’m still tired after a long day; opening night of The Seed Savers kept us cleaning up until nearly midnight. The play’s the thing/in which I’ll catch the conscience of the king. The “king” in the play is corporate developers and retailers of patented, genetically modified seed; none were there to have their consciences caught.

But there were plenty of “Hamlets” present. The fear of tampering with the genetic makeup of life is almost universal, as if the egg were sacred. Witness the passionate outcries over abortion, fetal stem cell harvesting and the widespread conviction that implanting a bacterial gene into a canola seed is somehow the equivalent of treading on sacred ground with one’s shoes on. It’s not just a religious sensitivity either; we are biologically equipped with survival instincts, and the fear that “improving” on life forces that have stood the test of time might inadvertently threaten our species is a caution worth taking seriously. The Frankenstein monster; the canola that turns into a noxious weed.

Never mind the sentiment that genetic modification is “playing God.”

The profit motive can easily lead to the compromising of values, often incrementally and imperceptibly. The attachment of Joe, Mindy and Sky to the land, the wind and the seasons is as spiritual as it ever gets for most people, while the argument to “get with the program,” --to equate the profitable exploitation of the land with progress-- becomes their devil. We all face this demon daily, and suffer the guilt of our compromises with it.

And now, flip the coin. We have “modified” through selective breeding the character of animals and plants to better satisfy our increasing need for more and more food as the planet’s populations burgeon. Cows now have udders the size of rain barrels, chickens lay an egg per day, corn kernels are digestible (almost) and wheat can produce 60+bushels an acre, even on the dry prairie. It’s not an idle argument that without scientific advances that have sometimes trodden on “sacred ground” we wouldn’t be able to feed ourselves. Truth is, even with the green revolution and the genetic modification of some of our food plants and animals, we are unable to feed all of us well.

At the same time, we know that eggs and seeds are primary vehicles for our nourishment, hence survival. We eat eggs and seeds daily, we eat their offspring, we manipulate them to provide more profit food for the hungry. A lot of the compromising of values surrounding life took place long before genetic modification even became a possibility. We North Americans consume life to the point of obesity, as if every forkful didn’t represent nature’s “dying on the cross” for our nourishment. To cry ‘foul’ over the profit-making of corporations may be appropriate, but also somewhat hypocritical.

Katherine Koller’s play doesn’t resolve this dilemma. Perhaps that’s it’s strength as a dramatic performance; these debates almost always end in a draw, and the consequences are almost always shaped by the evolution of thought and culture that have so far learned to adapt to changing times without completely tearing us apart. It’s other strength is that it reinforces our integration with the natural world. Mindy says of her world of wind, land and sky: “I don’t control it; I care for it.”

We need to heed people who do “care for it,” or else our compromises might actually prove disastrous in the end.

Conversation

The Rosthern Junior College class of ‘60 reunited on Saturday; the decade grads do this every year as a part of the RJC graduation weekend. We talked . . . a lot. Since we are all now 67 years old and more, we noted how our conversations have changed since we last met ten years earlier. Grandchildren and Coping--mainly with a variety of the illnesses of aging--seemed to predominate, with retirement issues a close third.

Later in the day, smaller groups formed and in my case, talked a bit of spirituality, philosophical viewpoints that they’d developed since the end of high school shenanigans and more of the relevant events recalled by people whose lives had already been “mostly-lived.”

In retrospect, the potpourri of dialogue topics reminded me of an adage I’d come across years ago. It says--as closely as I can recall--that there are three levels of conversation. In ascending order, they are about things, people and ideas. Putting aside the apparent snobbery of saying that “ideas” constitute the loftiest plane for the moment, it is nevertheless apparent that our conversations can reasonably be characterized in this way. Although our “conversation” is obviously more than just “talk” (it includes handshakes, embraces, gestures, silences after speech, etc., etc.), here’s my attempt at redoing the adage--in no particular order:

1) Managing the practical conversation: Dialogue about whether RRSP’s are better than tax-free savings accounts, or best ways to deal with crab grass fall into this category, probably our most ubiquitous stream of talking.

2) News and views about people--coffee-row chatter.

a) Gossip: Satisfying a prurient interest in the failures of others in order to make our own seem less disappointing.

b) Spreading community news: a necessary activity if we’re to function as true communities.

3) Confessional dialogue: “Baring our souls” in the search for comforting, healing, forgiveness and restoration.

4) Philosophical conversation: Comparing our personal takes on the questions and answers that fall into the realm of the presently-unknowable, like whether or not time-travel could be possible given what we know about the mechanics of the universe, or whether or not sex is really the motivator for everything we do.

5) Didactic and Religious dialogue: Exchanges primarily geared toward preserving the cultural and religious understandings passed down from generation to generation. Sunday school teachers’ Q and As and most of our education fall into this category, as may sermons or less-formal conversations about the meaning of a scripture passage or the superiority of a certain political system.

6) Assault dialogue: The verbal equivalent of a fist fight or a beating.

7) Spiritual conversation: Prayer, meditation, our conversation with our creator however we experience that. Great music may actually qualify as a spiritual conversation, as might the sweat lodge and sweet grass ceremonies, the Lord’s Supper and the hymn before a potluck.

8) Casual conversation: Dialogue meant primarily to mask the awkwardness of prolonged silence in a group. We ask questions even though we’re not much interested in the answers.

9) Recreational conversation: Meant primarily to entertain, it’s the exchange, for instance, between a stand-up comic and her audience, the storyteller and his listener, the joke teller and the knee-slappers.

10) Sleight of hand conversation: Talk designed to manipulate others into taking actions advantageous to the instigator of the dialogue. Sales people and fraudsters excel in this. Propaganda.

Reunions don’t allow for much prolonged or “deep” conversation, assuming, of course, that some dialogue is “deeper” than others. I think we have an intuition, though, about whether or not a conversation we’ve just had was significant or not. Many of our conversations in the short time we had together may not have been “deep,” but they felt extremely significant, given that we all shared a starting point in lives that once stretched out before us with unlimited possibilities. As graduation added the “end parenthesis” to high school, our reunion seemed to put the close-quote on another phase.

I wonder what we’ll be talking about in ten years.

An aside comes to mind. Are we good conversationalists? Can we express ourselves precisely and fluently, and do we listen attentively and actively? I’ve heard complaints that this ability is not taught well and so isn’t learned, and that the art of skilled conversation is disappearing. That would be a tragedy, I think, if it’s true. But that’s a topic for another day.

And if we talked about that, at what plane would we be conversing?

　

　

The Shack - a commentary

Young, William Paul. The Shack

Rauser, Randal. Finding God in “The Shack”

A lengthy and well-constructed critique of William P. Young’s, The Shack on the Boundless Webzine ends as follows:

“That The Shack is a dangerous book should be obvious from this review. The book's subversive undertones seek to dismantle many aspects of the faith and these are subsequently replaced with doctrine that is just plain wrong. Error abounds. I urge you, the reader, to exercise care in reading and distributing this book. The Shack may be an engaging read but it is one that contains far too much error. Read it only with the utmost care and concern, critically evaluating the book against the unchanging standard of Scripture. Caveat lector!”(The Shack, A Review by Tim Challies, http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0001788.cfm)

Although the book has been around for a few years by now, I didn’t take time to pick it up at the library until just now. The Shack is published as a novel, but Challies says that Young wrote it primarily for his children, and one can only assume from the reading of it that it was his intention to leave them with an alternative view of matters (like the nature of God, the problem of evil and the meaning of the fall and redemption), alternatives to standard orthodoxy, that is. The result of Young’s efforts would not, of course, have raised such close attention by people like Challies if it hadn’t become an international best seller.

People I’ve talked to who have read it seem to fall into two camps--some didn’t like it at all and considered it poor literature, and others raved about it as a ground-breaking and insightful way to think about God, a way that rings true, somehow. It seems the reviewers and critics diverge just as dramatically.

(I’d recommend to anyone reading The Shack that they also read Randal Rauser’s book, Finding God in the Shack. I’d also recommend listening to an interview with author William P. Young at the following web address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYvjRiun3MA&NR=1)

There appear to be a number of issues raised by The Shack that mainstream pastors find disturbing. One is its portrayal of the Trinity, itself a doctrinal conundrum since the birth of the church. Criticisms of The Shack use words like heresy to blast Young’s Trinity: An African-American woman who morphs into a pigtailed male figure is God; A Middle-Eastern man is Jesus and an East Indian woman is the Holy Spirit. Some have found this representation of the three-in-one to be blasphemous. I found it a valid literary attempt to grasp the concept of one God with three aspects.

Another controversial issue surrounding The Shack involves the nature of revelation and the authority of the scriptures. The Godhead in Young’s tale is theologically liberal; He/she dismisses the notion of eternal punishment and says that sin is punishment enough, and that he/she is not interested in retribution, but rather, is passionate about redemption. Various quotations also imply that Christ’s death has saved everyone, that there are numerous roads to God and (by his complete absence from the novel) there is no devil as we have come to know him. There’s too much apparent divergence from scriptures to allow this book to be palatable to orthodox (small “o”) Christianity. Various creedal statements of various branches of the Church have made it clear that the Holy Bible is the only trustworthy revelation of God, of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Experiential revelation is a scary thing to contemplate if one holds such a creed as sacrosanct and non-negotiable.

A third difficulty with The Shack, for critics, is in its handling of the law/grace tension. God explains the purpose of the law in a unique manner to Mack, the central character: the Ten Commandments were given to show us how corrupted we had become. In other words, it is patently impossible to keep the law in any case, but its presence won’t allow us to forget that outside of God’s grace, we are doomed. For those who wanted the Ten Commandments to be permanently displayed at the entrance to the US Supreme Court, this interpretation might be hard to take.

The Shack, although also written loosely in a novel form, is as obviously a tract as is the Left Behind series of books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. As a novel, it is less than memorable; the plot is as contrived as Paul Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, most chapters consist of tedious question and answer sessions and you don’t have to be too far into the book to know exactly where the plot is headed. The dialogue itself is often stilted and the characters representing the Trinity often behave and speak as if they were in a feel-good, Walt Disney movie of the Sixties.

Nevertheless, there is a mighty message in the book, one that should not be dismissed because the book has weaknesses. God is Love, and Love is God. The road to genuine peace and wholeness cannot skirt this truth, and it is most likely for this reason that the gospels emphasize that no one comes to God except through Christ. The central character, Mack, has sunk into The Great Sadness as a result of the murder of his daughter. The road back to wholeness for him forms the backbone of the novel. Predictable, maybe. But simply raising the possibility of a new and better understanding of what forgiveness and love can provide for us in this world is well worth the undertaking.

　

the Seed Saver is coming

This summer's play at the Station Arts Centre in Rosthern will strike a chord with many. It responds to the question, "What's on your plate?" as well as to the concerns regarding genetic modification of food plants and the subsequent patenting of seeds. It gives all of this a human face, however, as a family and a community find themselves catapulted into a new world not of their making.

For more information, see the playwright's website at www.katherinekoller.ca or the Station Arts Centre website at www.stationarts.com

How can I keep from singing . . .

How can I keep from singing

I woke up this morning with the chorus of an old gospel song running through my head. It’s most likely a manifestation of a form of obsessive/compulsive neurosis that it has kept playing like a stuck needle through my mind for hours now. Ever happen to you?

Some might say it’s a message from God . . . or some other competing deity out there. They might say that there are no "coincidences," that every act, thought, word, etc. has a precursor.


Here’s the chorus: "Are you washed in the blood, in the soul-cleansing blood of the lamb? Are your garments spotless, are they white as snow? Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?"


I once brought up the questionable theology expressed in the lyrics of a song we were rehearsing as a choir. Someone said, "I hardly notice the words; for me it’s the music, the cadence, the harmony, the dynamics," or words to that effect. I write; I notice the words, the sentences, the punctuation. It’s my curse, I guess.


The Hebrew people would sacrifice animals as an offering to God, lambs included. If I recall correctly, they would slit its throat and collect the blood in a bowl for ceremonial, "kosher" disposal. It’s a gruesome image, but probably no more so than the slaughter of animals for food. We sacrifice animals to ourselves, drain the blood down the sewer.


In Christian theology—and hymnody—the death of Christ on the cross is compared metaphorically to the animal sacrifice in that its effect is the relief of the burden of guilt and makes a soul once again acceptable in God’s eyes. For this, the innocent lamb must die as a sacrifice. The scapegoat . . . or scapelamb.


To wash oneself in the blood of the lamb, however, is probably a case of extending the metaphor well beyond what was ever intended and, indeed, into the area of the macabre. There’s nothing to like about this hymn except the cadence, the harmony, the dynamics of the tune. It’s catchy. It won’t leave my head.


It’s probably impossible to measure how many innocents die daily as sacrifices for the sins of others. Soldiers conscripted into battle, victims of "collateral damage," children killed by drunk drivers, etc., etc., ad infinitum.


I expect that the writer of this hymn got it all wrong. The meaning of Christ’s death is far better understood in the light of the collateral damage of human greed, selfishness and inhumanity than in the metaphor of the lamb slain on the altar of propitiation.


I’m waiting for a better song today. Maybe it will be that wonderful Robert Lowery tune. "My life flows on in endless song, above earth’s lamentation. I catch the sweet, though far off hymn that hails a new creation."

*********
An hour later: Agnes and I went biking for half an hour and running through my head now is the following: "No storm can shake my inmost calm, while to that rock I'm clinging. Since love is Lord of heav'n and earth, how can I keep from singing. It worked.

The Devil and Miss Prym - Paulo Coelho

The Station Arts Centre

Paul Coelho’s “Novel of Temptation,” The Devil and Miss Prym, is an alternative way of looking at the functioning of the human brain (alternative, that is, to my previous commentary on the Charlie Rose series on Detroit Public Television—thanks, GF for providing me with the name of the moderator of that series on brain function). Coelho’s characters have the devil on their left shoulders, an angel of light on their right. The temptation coming from their left shoulders, in this case, is to sacrifice (read murder) an apparently useless member of the village in exchange for unheard-of wealth. Unapologetically contrived, this plot nevertheless constitutes a parable worth reading about the wrestling match between the demons of fear, aggression and self-preservation with the angels of social decency.

A wealthy arms dealer concocts an experiment to prove to himself that humans are basically and intractably evil. He’s come to this conclusion as a result of the kidnapping and murder of his family in an aborted attempt to extract money from him. His bet is that if he offers ten bars of gold to a certain staid and steady village—if they will murder one of their members—they will conclude that the sacrifice will be worth it. Oh, they will rationalize it somehow—even so far as to say that since Jesus was sacrificed for the benefit of the many, the sacrifice of the old widow (who may be a witch, in fact) follows that precedent!

Temptation and human fallibility are, of course, ubiquitous themes in the body of our literature, from Genesis to Macbeth to Faust to Rudy Wiebe’s Peace Shall Destroy Many. Coelho employs that ancient metaphor where temptation is personified as“the devil,” virtually another god competing shoulder to shoulder with the good God. The panel on Charlie Rose on PBS would likely describe temptation as the urge to ignore civilization-imposed limits on genetically or environmentally transmitted impulses (like sexual lust, or greed).

Some of Coelho’s “sidebars” end up being meatier than his story, actually. Here’s one that I read a few times, probably with a quizzical look on my face. “Playing the part of a charitable soul was only for those who were afraid of taking a stand in life. It is always easier to have faith in your own goodness than to confront others and fight for your rights . . . and it’s only at night . . . that we can silently grieve over our own cowardice (p. 44) .” Coelho raises the possibility that piety arises from fear, not from strength. Not a new argument, actually.

This theme is repeated frequently. Historically, Coelho’s fictional village was inhabited by bandits and murderers and it was only cleaned up after a huge gibbet was constructed in the town square for all to contemplate on a daily basis. At one point, “the devil” says, “There is no such thing as Good: virtue is simply one of the many faces of terror . . . (p. 84).

When goodness is boiled down to the basics—reverence for creation and abiding consideration for those around us—the ancient tension between God and Satan and the more current biological explanations are generally pulling us in the same direction. I, for one, would like to see us carry less of the baggage of good-evil-sin-guilt in favour of more of the light that science has been shedding on the human condition. Biologists, geneticists, after all, are working at the same task as the prophets, namely, understanding what God has made.

It's in your genes - maybe!

Public Broadcasting is doing a series of programs on the human brain. I lucked into an episode where a panel of experts were discussing the emotions and physical reactions we call “fear.” Most interesting was the agreement among them that physical response to danger precedes cognition, i.e. the physiological response to a fear-inducing incident (such as raised hackles, sweating, increased heart rate, etc.) occurs before we are even able to recognize the danger and react to it on the thought level.

Why is this important? For one, it links us more closely genetically to the rest of the animal world; research in the area of fear when done on animals shows a remarkable similarity to research done on humans. Secondly, it means that whatever impulses lead to violence and aggression, they are built into the biological genome structures.

I grew up being told that we are “born in sin” and that we need to be washed clean of our condition in order to be redeemed, an idea I’ve often questioned. In a sense, though, the research on fear and aggression suggests that we are genetically programmed to respond with “fight or flight,” and that it is not so much about a learning of aggressive responses as it is about the curbing (or not curbing) of aggressive behaviour. In other words, fear and aggression are natural states for every creature from the fruit fly to humans. Civilization is only made possible, however by the stifling of natural impulses in the interest of community. A similar stifling among the creatures of the wild kingdoms would be disastrous.

It’s an interesting area of research. Obviously, biological impulses in general can be shown to serve survival needs. Sexual lust, for instance, is necessary to facilitate procreation and the preservation of the species. Where appropriate controls on this other “emotion” are not learned, though, it threatens the kind of cooperation that is required for a safe and functioning civilization.

Old Testament law—and New Testament reconciliation—can be described as humanity’s struggle to come to grips with the great irony presented by the emergence of human consciousness, namely that the genetic endowments with which we are born because we are biological animals must be suppressed for species-survival’s sake. An evolutionist would probably say that our misfortune is that the evolution of civilization and human invention has occurred in thousands of years while the genetic evolution required to keep pace with it requires millions of years. Civilization has rushed way ahead of biology, in other words.

Have a nice day. Curb your instincts. What a prospect!

What about Beatrice and Virgil?

The top plant is good; bottom plant is not good - the plant critic.

--“Except for luminous moments, the book's language lacks luster, and the symbols positively crash.” Michael Autrey, special to The Oregonian.

--“Beatrice and Virgil is so dull, so misguided, so pretentious that only the prospect of those millions of Pi fans could secure the interest of major publishers and a multimillion-dollar advance.” Ron Charles, The Washington Post.

--“This novel just might be a masterpiece about the Holocaust…. somehow Martel brilliantly guides the reader from the too-sunny beginning into the terrifying darkness of the old man’s shop and Europe’s past. Everything comes into focus by the end, leaving the reader startled, astonished and moved.” Published in Deirdre Donahue, USA Today.

--“Extraordinary…. A novel that is ambiguous and inscrutable — but also provocative and brilliantly imagined.” Adam Woog, The Seattle Times.

What do you make of these four quotations from reviewers of Yann Martel’s Beatrice and Virgil? Agnes and I just read it. We both loved Life of Pi and were looking forward to his latest book. Agnes asked me what I thought of Beatrice and Virgil; I said, “7 out of 10.” She said “That’s where I’d put it too.” A friend lent us the book; she said she couldn’t put it down.

“There’s no accounting for taste.” So when one reader loves a book and another hates it, this comes as no surprise.

But when 4 professional reviewers are so far apart in their assessment of a book’s quality, one has to question their skill, their motives or both.

Beatrice and Virgil is a book where the sentence, “It’s sort of like . . .” has no ending. It’s innovative, breaks new ground while it breaks old rules of novel writing. Perhaps new rules of novel reviewing are called for.

I have a theory. When a novel is as symbolic, as allegorical as is Beatrice and Virgil, the readers who “don’t get it” either fly into a frustrated rage and pan it mercilessly, or they praise it fawningly in hopes that others will assume they “got it.” Most of us get it in part, don’t get it in part, and end up judging it on the basis of whether or not it “tasted good.”

Then there’s that other temptation: harsh criticism has the inherent quality of suggesting that the critic is smarter than the one being criticized.

A good piece of art has the power to heighten the observer’s perception of the world. I think Beatrice and Virgil has the potential of doing this for at least some readers.

A modest political proposal

This historic landmark (the former German-English Academy, Rosthern Junior College) is now a venerable 100 years of age. It's currently the Mennonite Heritage Museum.

Sunday morning. Brown toast with apricot jam and a hot cup of Kick Ass coffee (that’s right, it’s a trade name; organic and fair trade and very good; ground and packaged in BC).

A few days ago, Dwain Lingenfelter, leader of the NDP opposition in the Saskatchewan legislature, called our honourable premier, Brad Wall, “the little thief from Swift Current.” It’s been all over the StarPhoenix since. Seems the people of Saskatchewan are clucking their tongues in unison and the clucking is deafening. How dare Lingenfelter accuse anyone of being from Swift Current!?!

I don’t have to tell you what infantile behaviour is generated by the question periods and debates in those bastions of democracy—our parliaments. (Parliament: Middle English from Old French: speaking.) The reason for it seems obvious to me; democratic structures—in particular the adversarial party systems—have remained stuck in the “Old English” period and as time eroded the stiff-upper-lip politeness in our cultures, the gloves came off and parliamentary debate degenerated into a spectator sport.

I regularly get appeals for donations from a political party. Their come-on is not “let’s work together to make Canada a better place by . . .,” rather, it’s, “it’s time and it’s important to throw the current party out of office.” Something is wrong here. We’re wasting everyone’s time, money and energies on childish competitions for power.

Here’s a modest proposal: political parties are abolished. Independent candidates are put forward in each riding by one hundred (give or take) voters and their election hinges on their perceived quality as legislators. Following the election, an orderly process occurs among the elected candidates to appoint a government, committees, ministries, and they’re off. Not having party antagonisms to feed the rancour of debate anymore, legislators would be confined to dealing with the merits of the issues and the proposals put forward by the government or their fellow legislators. The senate, of course, is abolished.

Elections occur every four years and each duly-nominated candidate is limited to a campaign budget of, say, $5.000. Numerous physical and virtual town hall meetings are the primary means for the public to “parliament” before deciding which candidate deserves their support. Granted, election night would be a big bore with no “team” to cheer for, or against, and getting people to vote might take some concerted public education.

Sounds a lot like municipal government, you say? Or like Nunavut governance? Bingo. That’s where we need to go.

I think I’m done with party politics. If no strong independent candidate is proposed in my riding in the future, I may hand in a ballot with “none of the above” scrawled across it.

And Mr. Lingenfelter, there is no good reason to use the word “thief” and the name “Swift Current” in the same sentence. You’re tempting your rivals in the Saskatchewan Party to find out where you and each of your colleagues are from, and then a whole new round of undeserved epithets will take up another week’s debate in the ledge.

Who needs it?

More on Agnostic Christianity.

Grand Canyon serenity

The word agnostic is a borrowing from the Greek where gnosis means “knowing,” agnosis, “not knowing.” In the previous post I referred to the term Agnostic Christians, which some might assume to be an oxymoron. Fact is, there isn’t a branch of Christianity—as far as I know—that claims its basic tenets arise from knowledge; In general, religious tenets are held by faith, not by knowledge, and so Agnostic Christian is no contradiction in terms at all.

Admittedly, a dictionary definition, even when supported by an etymology, doesn’t necessarily complete the picture of what words mean, or what they meant to people who used them in their original form. The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines an agnostic as “a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable [or] one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the non-existence of God or a god.” Most of us would associate the word agnostic with a response to religious faith, i.e. the stance that the existence of God or a god is unknowable, and that there is no reason to be either a believer or a disbeliever.

Agnostic Christians would probably argue that one can believe in God and in Christ and still take an agnostic stance on matters like, for instance, how the death of Christ is able to bridge the gap between God and humankind, or how it is possible for there to be a single, triune God. I admit, the explanations for these great conundrums are unknown, possibly unknowable to me, a stance of agnosis whether I am prepared to admit it or not.

Why bother even talking about this? Because the pretence of certainty is, in effect, a grand delusion, or even worse, a corporate self-delusion that is potentially extremely harmful. The pretence of certainty makes it possible to commit wars, supplies justification to terrorism, provides an argument for raping creation, makes theological mountains out of molehills. It also forces cracking of social cooperation and eventually, is responsible for much societal fragmentation.

Certainty inevitably requires intolerance to sustain it.

We need to shorten our creeds, weed out what is unknowable and what is as yet unknown, and admit that everything we hold as opinion or certainty now may be superseded tomorrow. We need to accept that Creator and creation are as mysterious as they ever were, and live our lives recognizing where agnosis lies.

It’s through this recognition that we might someday be able to live comfortably with the proposition that our neighbour just might be worthy, that she might just be right, or—at least—that a person’s value is not determined by how well we understand him.

Check out this link for further thoughts on the subject.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_theist

On Agnostic Christianity

The duck pond is being born again

For whatever reason, some questions seem too personal to ask, too private to be answered. Simple questions arising from idle curiosity, sometimes, like, “Did your girlfriend dump you or was it the other way ‘round?” or “Did you have a shower this morning?” or “How much money did you give to charity last year?” (I just answered this last one on my income tax form yesterday; I’m actually sure the Canadian Revenue Agency’s curiosity is not idle though.)

Or the question I’ve been asked several times in public places like airports or on busses: “Are you a born-again Christian?” Well I know these people are well-meaning enough; I remember how after my one and only “born-again” experience as a 12 year-old, the adults who declared me to be “born-again” impressed on me the duty to witness, to convince others to be “born-again.”

My first impulse, however, to being accosted so intimately by a stranger is to ask, “As opposed to what, a born-only-once Christian?” But that would be sarcastic. So I just say, “Yes, I am,” and he smiles and says, “Well praise the Lord,” and wanders off, and I wonder how one can be burdened for a another person’s soul without being the least bit interested in the person.

Most Christians, I think, would be better labelled agnostic Christians as opposed to born-again. The term exists although it’s seldom heard where I live. It means that although these Christians try to follow the pattern set by Christ and assume that he represents the Creator of all things somehow, they acknowledge that there is much about this that is unknown, and equally much that is unknowable. Agnostic Christians, therefore, have a very short creed:

· There exists a Creator who is the source for the universe and everything in it.
· Jesus Christ, is an important gateway to a relationship with the Creator.
· A cloud of witnesses and our experience of life on earth teach us that love, compassion and generosity are central to God’s will, a tenet reinforced by the record of Jesus’ teaching in the Gospels.
· It is right that we should pay homage to the Creator who gave us this brief moment of life and whose will it appears to be that we should preserve and enjoy the fruits of creation.

I’ve restated these tenets somewhat, of course.

Although less “evangelical” than the “born-agains” generally, Christians who acknowledge that much is unknowable are more likely to approach others as people rather than as projects. Agnostic Christians don’t presume to know the workings of the Creator in the big picture, nor in the microcosm of another person’s soul. They’re more apt to approach strangers on the “compassion and generosity” level, anticipating that the one who made the universe is the only one who can create newness and life.

What do you say when asked if you’ve been born again? Maybe you’re one of those who have drifted so far from the Creator that the metaphor fits. Most likely not. Try saying, “I’m not sure, but I’m definitely on the Creator’s side!” You probably can’t KNOW much more than that in any case.

Food, glorious food

Sunday morning. I’m writing between bites of toast and jam. I could choose to eat a whole loaf of bread if I wanted and no one would suffer as a result. The fridge is full of eggs, cheese, butter, milk and the freezer half-full of meat. There are five cans of Stella Artois Belgian beer in the downstairs fridge (I drank one watching TV last night, I could have had up to 6 if I’d wanted to).

Food surplus. Store shelves brimming with cheap food. A surplus that can be fully accessed by anyone for about one-tenth of an average North American or European income.

In A history of the World in 6 Glasses, Tom Standage traces the development of the beverages we have come to take for granted. Beer, for instance, was the first ubiquitous drink after water and likely developed as a result of the storing of grain and the subsequent accidents occurring when moisture caused the grain to ferment. The book goes on to trace the history of wine, spirits, tea, coffee and Coca-Cola. It’s a fascinating read.

Standage attributes the rise of Western civilization (a word that in its original forms meant “citifying”) to food surpluses. As I understand this viewpoint, cultures in which every able-bodied person was obliged to struggle with the task of growing or finding meagre sustenance were not only malnourished in many cases (with the concomitant effects on brain function, I suppose) but hadn’t the option of pursuing knowledge, invention, art, music, etc. They simply didn’t have the time. Surplus food results in surplus time and energy. Some of that time can be spent foraging in the world of ideas, scientific exploration, world travel or (as I did for a few hours last night, to my horror) staring at a technology that lets me watch other people play a game. It can also be spent gambling, dissipating, sleeping, reading, building and improving, philandering, doing art, whatever.

Agnes is reading Karen Connelly’s Burmese Lessons, a documentary on life in Burma/Myanmar. She asked a rhetorical question over dinner yesterday (as we were enjoying barbequed steak, baked potato and a salad) about why some people have so much (we) and others have been dealt virtually nothing (Burmese poor). The only response I could think of was to bring up Standage’s “food surplus” theorizing.

I teach ESL to two Karen refugees once a week. We have a great time. One of them was an elephant handler back in Burma until conflict drove many of the dissident Karen people to refugee camps in Thailand, and fate happily dealt two families an opportunity to come to Rosthern two years ago. They are learning, among other things, how one lives in a culture that enjoys surplus food. The elephant handler has a job in a pet food factory just out of town. The other gentleman works at picking up recyclables and garbage (surplus and redundant materials) on the streets of town.

Some random Sunday morning musings. There have to be millions more words on the subjects of civilization, food, privilege, etc., I invite you to write them down and share them. I’m going up to get a second cup of coffee, maybe another piece of toast, although I’ve been putting on a few pounds lately.

My Great grandparents, Mr. & Mrs. Jacob D. Epp, ca. 1860

When I am an Old Woman, I shall Wear Purple. The book was published in 1987 by Papier-Mache Press, and is an anthology of poems, essays and stories about getting/being old. The title piece was written by Jenny Joseph and includes some memorable lines on the subject: “I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired/And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells/And run my stick along the public railing/And make up for the sobriety of my youth.”

What will we do when we are old (like tomorrow) to make one last attempt at flair, particularly if we never dared to be ourselves in the public square before? Will we be 80 before we “learn to spit?”

I chatted with the owner of an auto repair shop this afternoon as the insurance assessor was analyzing the dent I’d stupidly put in our brand-new Ford Focus. We got around to the subject of age and nursing homes when I told him that my mother-in-law’s cousin had died two days ago . . . at age 105. “We haven’t gone to the nursing home since my mother died,” he said. “My wife’s afraid of death.”

“Aren’t we all,” I replied.

“Oh, but she’s different. She chooses denial as a way of dealing with it, and nursing homes make her very uncomfortable.”

We watched a few episodes on video of the British sitcom, Waiting for God, with friends on Sunday evening. It’s set in a retirement home and concerns an aging man and woman living next door to each other. She’s playing out a cynical last act to a cynical life, and he’s compensating for his frustrations by taking trips of fantasy into a world of adventure, romance and grandeur, a life as different as is imaginable from his forty years as a functionary in a large accounting firm. Together, they find new ways to be old. They are two people who in their final years begin to dare to “ . . . go out in slippers in the rain/And pick flowers in other people’s gardens . . ..”

I don’t want to romanticize old age, anymore than I want to perpetrate the myth of the noble savage or energetic youth. At the same time, I want to keep in mind that although aging bodies decay and gradually fail, they are often the vessels for “young” souls and minds betrayed by the perverse cynicism of mortality.

Driving to Edmonton a few weekends ago, it suddenly occurred to me that I would turn 70 on my next birthday. I told Agnes that I’d just done the math and it felt like I’d lost a year of my life somewhere between Lloydminster and Vermilion. She corrected me, of course, and I realized that I’d taken 2011 as the current year (I’d just worked on some budget figures for 2011 at the Station) and just beyond Vermilion going west, I got my year back.

“ . . . I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.

Homecoming - a book commentary

Schlink, Bernhard (translation from German by Michael Henry Heim). Homecoming. New York: First Vintage International Edition, 2009

ISBN 978-0-375-72557-9

260 pages

I expected a book by the author of The Reader to be a gratifying experience, and I enjoyed what I was reading ‘til about page 200 or so when the whole thing fell apart for me. There’s a peculiar syndrome that sets in near the completion of a long project—like writing a book, building a house, circumnavigating the globe in a bathtub (I suppose)—and manifests itself in the urge-to-finish overwhelming the desire to maintain the standard of quality with which one set out. A second factor is, of course, the fact that an author of fiction is as in-the-dark about the ending of his work as is the reader, and sometimes you can almost feel the point where the “how am I gonna wrap this project up and get on to something more interesting?” phenomenon kicks in. The Homecoming, to my mind, reached that point on page 200 where the protagonist ends his Odyssian journey to find a certain author and philosopher—who happens to be his father—by crossing the Atlantic and taking up his sleuthing in New York City. This particular plot “wrap-up” is simply deficient by every standard I can think of.

Homecoming purports to be about, well, homecomings. There is plenty of text about soldiers coming home from POW camps to find their wives married to other men. What do the participants in such a homecoming do? Our protagonist reads Ulysses, and the wanderings, trials and homecoming in that instance become the motifs for this entire story. Unfortunately, these motifs dangle over top of Schlink’s plot rather than supporting it. There’s plenty to learn from the idea of unusual homecomings (like where is home, after all, and can it be owned and bartered away) but this novel tries to do too much altogether, and from page to page, the author loses control of the various threads.

As he does in The Reader, Schlink again grapples—somewhat lightly—with the themes of complicity, evil, goodness and the ubiquitous, haunting consciousness of a holocaust that can’t be undone. Peter Debauer has a ghostly father somewhere in the world, a father who did not die in the war as he was led to believe, but who abandoned Peter and his mother when the boy was still a toddler. This father has left a trail of his meandering thoughts on paper, and Peter—a book editor by trade—becomes obsessed with following that trail.

Central to the father’s philosophy is a theme most pungently described as the replacing of the golden rule with the iron rule: whatever you are prepared to endure yourself, you have the right to inflict on others. Thus, he proposes, evil can be harnessed to serve the good. Thus, many a villainy can be rationalized as an exercise in reaching a “good” objective utilizing a means normally considered “evil.” It’s a mindset where truth and lies become interchangeable, where experimentation on unwitting humans becomes acceptable, where abandoning one’s child has no moral baggage attached.

I haven’t read Homecoming in the original German, and it’s risky to make many judgments about style when a book is filtered through the talents of a translator. I was amused by the comment on the cover of the book, by a writer for The Economist, who (in my opinion) didn’t know what to say about this book and ended up writing: “A beguilingly oblique novel . . .. Despite its intricate, mazelike progression, Homecoming has surprising narrative thrust.” Another cover quote from The New York Times Book Review is similar: “Sensitive and disturbing . . .. The reader’s mind opens to the story like a plant unfurling its leaves to the sun.” Who am I to argue with such erudition?

Well, maybe it’s a great novel. I’m reminded of the warning that when one examines a painting and fails to understand it, assuming that there is nothing there to be understood may be a colossal error. On the other hand . . .

An Ounce of Nard

An Ounce of Nard

Sunday School this morning. The theme was the Matthew version of the anointing of Jesus with expensive perfume. The different gospels have this event occurring in the house of Simon the Leper, a Pharisee’s home or the home of Lazarus, Mary and Martha in Bethany, just east of Jerusalem. Sometimes she pours oil on his head, and in Luke, she washes his feet with her tears and then anoints them with myrrh. In every case, the event involves personal sacrifice and an expression of deep affection.

I spent a long time considering how I might approach this passage, and then decided that it was really one of a number of incidents in which Jesus tries to teach his disciples to avoid categorical thinking . . . fundamentalism, if you will. The disciples, you see, rebuke her in Matthew for wasting the expensive perfume when it could have been converted into cash and benefited the poor. Jesus rebukes them in turn for “bothering” the woman, who has done something wonderful for him.

Because of the variations in fact across the gospels regarding the anointing of Jesus, it clearly falls into the category of legend. It’s what happens in oral traditions where a story may be repeated over decades and may travel long distances. Details evolve, places and times shift until the actual facts are clearly no longer reliable. Amazingly, though, such legends seem to retain a strong similarity in what they are attempting to communicate. In every case, male persons look down their noses at a woman’s act of love and are brought up short by Jesus. Every version has this in common.

I wonder how a director would choose to render this scene in a movie? Take Luke’s version: Jesus is eating supper at Simon the Pharisee’s table, possibly with a group of men. They’re seated on the floor around a low table set out in the courtyard of Simon’s house. A woman known to be a prostitute enters the gate and is unnoticed amid the laughter and conversation. She comes up behind Jesus and wraps her arms around his feet, weeping and wailing. Servants of the Pharisee begin to drag her away and some mutter “If Jesus was a real prophet, he’d know that he’s just been grabbed at table by a whore!” Jesus jumps up and fends them off, shouts at them to leave the woman alone. They reluctantly resume their seats and Jesus tells them the parable of the two men who are unable to pay a debt, one of fifty silver pieces and one five hundred. The point he’s making is that the one who is forgiven the most will love the most; they get that when it’s cloaked in the arithmetic of dollars and cents.

The woman languishes at Jesus’ feet for the rest of the meal, a thorn in the host’s side. She opens a flask of myrrh and anoints his feet with it. The aroma wafts through the air and it’s all the men around the table can do to restrain their desire to throw her out.

I think it could be a great scene.

We, too, can be such Pharisees from time to time. To me, the arts are the myrrh (the spikenard in Matthew) that cannot feed or clothe, but that is capable of blessing the world with an aroma of love. Women seem to get this more easily than men. 2/3 of the people at concerts are women; many come without spouses; there’s a hockey game on TV, or there’s work to be done, or they “just aren’t interested in that stuff.” Categorical thinking. The fundamentalist’s plague. Adopting a singular attitude toward life precluding all others.

An aside. Agnes and I were invited by Persephone Theatre to attend the opening night of Billy Bishop Goes to War on Friday. It’s basically a one-man show with a supporting musician and is a powerful rendering of both the chutzpah and the tragedy of war. The actor was a surprise to us; he also plays the nerd in the A & W commercials. He’s brilliant in this version of this gem of a play. Unforgettable. I’m still spending half my reverie time sorting out the meaning of the play. That doesn’t happen often.
Wow!