If I had a million dollars, I'd buy you . . .

 Money, money, money

Coleus, coleus, coleus

I’m a bit preoccupied with money these days. Oh, I know; “a bit preoccupied” is an oxymoron. I should say that when I’m at work, I’m preoccupied with money matters and when I’m at home, well, I’m enjoying the relief of not thinking about that for a while, except that the news tends to intrude. 

           

Let me explain:

     I do payroll for the actors and crew in the production currently running for 31 performances at the Station Arts Centre. Our core is made up of actors who belong to the Canadian Actors Equity Association, a professional union. Others are not. They are paid differently and receive unequal remuneration for doing, basically, the same job. None receive a fair living wage when the blood sweat and tears they throw into the work, the working hours, the itinerant nature of their profession—they’re always job hunting—are considered.

     We are silently auctioning a donated painting by a talented local artist at the Station. The bidding has gone from $200.00 to $350.00 so far. A painting in our gallery was purchased recently by a patron for $3,000+.

     What’s the right price for a great dinner out? How much is a ticket to Jasper Station or a Canadian Tenors concert worth? The dollars patrons pay for the entertainment product we provide is seldom enough to cover the cost of producing it. What happens when cultural grants dry up federally—which they probably will under the current balance-the-budget drive?

     A commentator on the East African famine said that there was food to be had in Somalia, but with increasing prices, the majority of people simply hadn’t the money to buy any of it. Should we help people in this dilemma by sending money? And if so, how much would be fair? Will one child live who would otherwise die if I send a hundred dollars? Five hundred? 75 cents?

The desk at which I’m sitting along with the computer on which I’m composing could be sold for more than the average two-thirds world farm family is “worth.” Should I sell them? do my writing at the kitchen table with a pencil? send the difference to Africa? Should I at least feel guilty about my good fortune?

    One thing seems clear to me in all this. Inequities—whether in the area of arts & culture or in the availability of food—are systemic. They are symptoms of problems of policy, the failures of national governments and international monetary systems, the rapidly-increasing control of multinational corporations over the marketplace. To try to patch up the symptoms with band aids is one thing; to insist that the policies change to prevent the next famine takes the real courage. Have I got it? Have you?

    Two actions we can take now. Send $500.00 for Eastern Africa to MCC or a similar organization that you trust. You can find it. Write letters to your MP and your MLA to tell them you favour keeping the Canadian Wheat Board in place. If it dies, the most vigorous hurrahs will come from Cargill and the other mega-corporations that are determined to control all the world’s food resources for profit.

    You may be thinking: what a crass subject for a Sunday morning. If you’re headed off to church today, though, one facet of the worship service will undoubtedly be the passing of the offering plate. Yet one more money decision: do I put in a tooney, a twenty or a two-hundred dollar cheque?

Have a relaxing Sunday . . . anyway!   

              

What is Man, that Thou art Mindful of Him?

 There shall be . . . tomatoes

"The problems for humankind begin when myths are taken literally. In fact, one might go so far as to say that if myths and legends were not taken so literally, there would be far less trouble in the world." - Robert Buckman

               We’ve long known that there are areas of the brain that arouse us to action, and there are areas that moderate our actions, that say, “Hold on, mister. This is neither the time nor the place to submit to that urge!” We know the names of these parts of the brain and because our research tools are becoming more and more sophisticated, we are getting better and better at observing the anatomy of various human actions. We now know which areas of the brain are active during sex, during anger, during periods of peaceful well-being. We can observe the effects of hormones and pheromones on behaviour with a precision that is still relatively new. For instance—as Buckman points out—we have found through measurement of brain activity that the right temporal lobe is active in both ecstatic religious experience and in aggression. As Buckner points out, this proves nothing by itself, but does demonstrate our ability to view human behaviour in a much more specific manner than heretofore.
               My interest in this area of research arises partly from observing the mess Christianity has made of its dialogue on sexuality. Determined to describe this significant human behaviour using terms like sin, lust, fornication, adultery, and a whole host of pejoratives, Abrahamic religions have tried to cope with the reality of sexual lust and its potential danger to family, culture and community without one important piece of information, namely a precise and observable description of the biological functions inherent in human sexuality and the differences from person to person. Spiritual and cultural models of sexuality on their own just haven’t been able to reach a satisfying understanding of what it means to be sexual human beings, remarkably similar in this wise to monkeys, donkeys, lions and rattlesnakes. We’re shocked by the news of priests molesting children, evangelical pastors addicted to pornography, incest in conservative Mennonite communities, as we should be. But until we broaden our discussion and our views to include the current research on the biology of sexuality, expect the mess to get worse and worse.

               We’ve got to stop enforcing ignorance as a defense against doubt and apostasy. So let’s think of ourselves in broader ways for a change. For instance:

1)      Varying thresholds are observable in the human limbic system. Simplified, it means that Jake is more quickly aroused to anger and aggression--and also to fanatic highs--than Ben.

2)      The control system varies from person to person. Simplified, it means that Ben’s frontal lobes are bigger and more active than Jake’s and insert a stronger influence on his limbic system in times when “busting out” is a danger.

3)      Jake grows up a handful in school and later, is abusive as a husband. He is repeatedly repenting in tears and ashes, but falls into the old trap again and again. Ben is a gentle, amiable man, a valued church member.

4)      Describing their differences in spiritual terms without reference to their biological makeups opens the door to injustice and silly solutions.

I certainly don’t want to leave an impression that we are what we are because we can’t help it--end of story. Jake has got to stop abusing his wife, period. For him, a combination of sensitive counselling with a therapy that recognizes his biological weaknesses and builds his coping strategies might be the ticket. Altering the thresholds that trigger aggression with drugs may be standard therapy in the future, but for now, anger management classes might also be an answer for Jake. In any case, rejecting the biological side of our natures for some fantasy of what we would rather believe we are can’t be good in the long run.

               If God made us, he made all of us: biological included.  If nothing else, Buckman can help us take another step in understanding what that might mean.

If I like it, it ain't art

 Fire and Ice

Artist and Creator collaborate

I eat my lunch in an art gallery most working days. This month, I’m surrounded by the landscapes of Darrell Bell; last month by the Illuminated Spaces exhibit of artist Carri J. McKinnon. Before that—the exhibits change monthly—I have eaten soup and bread among fabric art, photography, tattoo art, and even some tradigital art, a cross between digital manipulation of photo images and painting. I’m a lucky guy.

               Sometimes we exchange opinions around the lunch table on the quality of the exhibits. The nouns art, craft, kitch, mere illustration and . . . some I won’t mention here . . . occasionally intrude into the conversations. And then the whole question of what, in fact, can and cannot be considered art gets another airing. I’m reminded of Red Green’s summary answer to this question: “If I like it, it ain’t art.”

               Not so long ago we had a display called “Wayne Gretzky’s Last Game.” It was a series of framed, hockey-rink-shaped canvasses on which the artist had traced all of Wayne’s movements in his final game in the NHL with a china marker. One was called “First Period,” another “Second Period . . .:” you get the drift. It elicited quite a few responses in the “What the hell is that??” vein, or “My three year-old could have done that with his foot!”

               One judge in his ruling involving a different sort of “art” is reported to have said, “Pornography may be hard to define, but I know it when I see it.” Maybe all art falls into a similar category? Most of us can look at a painting or photo or drawing and although we can’t be certain that it’s good art—or even art, for that matter—we have an idea whether or not we’re looking at something of quality or not. We can’t define it, but we know it when we see it.

               Thing is, we look at questions like this backwards. ART is a nominative, a noun, a word that has rather loosely come to refer to a certain human activity and the resulting product. Like abstract nominatives, it represents an attempt to convey in language something that defies clear definition, like love. That activity—which involves a concerted and skilful attempt to create something symbolic and beautiful—has come to be called art. The activity and its product wouldn’t change even if we lost that word and called the activity foop, or dorp, or croot. As the bard said, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
               I’m convinced that there’s a whole broader category of human striving that includes art, but also includes exploration, architecture, scholarship, plant breeding, gourmet cooking . . . etc., etc. All are expressions of our longing to fly, to rise above the mundane, the vulgar, the mortal. There are those among us who learn—if haltingly and tentatively—to fly, and taking us by the hand, they lead us to realms above whether through food, through gardens and architecture, through literature or music, through whatever they have created that is new, is pleasing and elevates us—if only for a moment—above the toil and sweat and weeds of our mortal lives. We call them artists. They are pastors and priests, intermediaries and teachers between us and what we long to be. Many of us “don’t get it,” and how can we, when we’ve never been taught to aspire to flight? In desperation, we seek our fulfillment in the pursuit of comfort, money and/or notoriety, in the momentary ecstasies of hysterical religions, in physical and emotional gluttony. The saddest of all are those of us who retire into our private enclaves and make a fetish of gloomy despair.

Jesus, too, was an artist, his object to raise us up from the mire in which we languished. Unfortunately, very few understood—or understand—his art. Like investors who buy paintings and hide them away as a hedge against the market, his art was overtaken by the religious “investors” who substituted a vision of immortal blandness in place of the promise that, mortal as we are, we may soar with the eagles. They convinced us that living forever was the right compensation for wallowing in the muck for three score and ten. They took art and made of it . . . wallpaper.

An Aside: I once took a university half course called “The Psychology of Aesthetic Responses.” In it, I learned what appeals to people visually—statistically—and some theories of why things appeal or don’t. I got the top mark in the class, so if you’re ever wondering if the object you’re looking at is or is not art . . . just ask me.

If you look back at the top of this blog page you’ll find an object titled, Fire and Ice. It’s not art. Or is it? You tell me. Does it inspire you to flight?

Maybe dorp is the appropriate nominative.

Guns, butter and the Stanley Cup - a few scattered thoughts

Summer at the Station

*Economics 101’s basic tenet: what is spent on guns cannot also be spent on butter. (Are you listening, United States of America, Greece, any other countries that finance domestic or military projects with borrowing because they flunked Economics 101?!?) Fanatics (fans) spent millions for seats at that seventh game snorer; those millions ceased to be available for groceries, charitable giving, gardening tools . . . whatever. Guns or butter.

 *Next to the fear of death, the fear of boredom ranks second. Sports fanaticism provides an illusion of engagement, an occupation for minds that doesn't tax the imagination. The bottle must be filled; if not with fine wine, then with Kool-Aid.

 *Welding a link between professional sports and militarism seems pretty natural. Witness that guru-of-hockey-knowledge and military booster, Don Cherry. In the minds of many people, apparently, life is a zero-sum game. For there to be a win, there must be an equivalent loss. Pride of victory demands equivalent agony of humiliation. And if it’s the home team that must bear the humiliation, well, then, police cars must be set on fire. Somebody who is not me must be humiliated.

*The pride of Rosthern, Robyn Regehr has been traded to Buffalo by the Calgary Flames, which means that it won’t be possible for Rosthernites to nip over to home games to watch him play next winter. What a crisis in fan loyalties this is going to create around here! I suppose a four million dollar a year salary takes some of the edge off the uprooting.

 *Sport: an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment. ▶success or pleasure derived from an activity such as hunting (Oxford).

*Vancouver/Boston playoff series – by the numbers

Henrik Sedin’s salary in 2010-11                                $6,100,000

What the average nurse can earn in a lifetime       $1,500,000 (est)

Vancouver losses to vandalism and looting             $4,500,000

Distance travelled by players in final series             16,089 km

Cost of fuel for team travel in final series                $275,760 (est)

Cost of insulin therapy for 9,500 diabetic

     Kenyans for one year (MCC)                                  $275,760 (est)

% of Canucks who are Canadian                                55

% of Bruins who are Canadian                                    65

% of Canucks who are American                                19

% of Bruins who are American                                   12

Cost of a keg of champagne for Bruins party          $100,000

No. of players on the Canucks active roster            36

No. of persons arrested during riot                           99

No. of persons injured during riot                              140

 But when all's said and done, it’s OUR GAME!

              

Food, glorious food

And the winner for the best Moussaka made by an Anabaptist is . . . ARNE!!

Order me another, please.

Like most of you—probably—I am in love with food. Furthermore, I am extremely promiscuous in my affections. I can devour with equal relish a hot dog on a store-bought bun heaped with mustard and relish as I can a rare and delicate avocado and butter lettuce salad with balsamic and virgin olive oil dressing topped with sesame seeds. Nothing starts up my salivary glands like a perfectly roasted asparagus Rinderoulade with a side of mashed potatoes and garden-fresh baby peas. But if that’s not available, I can be perfectly happy with a cheezeburger and a pile of French fries with ketchup.

               What’s more, I like watching cooking shows on TV and reading cookbooks. It’s through the variety of cooking shows that I’ve come to the following conclusions about the relationship between people and food. Food is religion in our culture—and in many others, I suspect—with the French and Italians leading the way. But differences that are the most striking—attitudes toward food and cooking—can cross cultures just as there can be African Jehovah’s Witnesses and Swahili-speaking Mennonites.

               I begin with that attitude of near-worship of food, of food plants, etc., that characterizes some people. To them, tradition is everything; they practically faint at the sight of someone trying to whisk a sauce with a fork on high heat. They are adamant that there’s only one way to roast a duck properly. They can’t abide anything that’s even slightly overcooked or underdone; pasta that’s not done el dente is only fit for hogs. They lean heavily toward food names that are in a foreign language. Not only will they not eat at Tim Horton’s; they can’t even bring themselves to say “Tim’s.” They are the high church of food; eating is a highly structured, liturgical event. They pay homage to butter and cream. They are proud to call themselves Conservative.

               Next come the food fundamentalists. They see food in black and white, figuratively speaking. As adamant about the rights and wrongs of food culture as the traditionalists, their choices are driven by a combination of conspiracy theories, Biblical injunctions and reverence for an ever-changing procession  of health gurus. So preoccupied are they with balancing their mineral, vitamin, protein and carbohydrate intakes that they hardly have time for anything else. But that’s OK; they have truth on their side. Also like the traditionalists, they wouldn’t be caught dead in a fast-food joint, but unlike the traditionalist, they are quite evangelical; they feel compelled to win converts.

               There are those, of course, who can’t much be bothered with the niceties of consuming or not consuming food. They’re right at home in the whole range of eating establishments from Boston Pizza to restaurants with “Chez” in their names. They are not intimidated by gravy or ketchup, and yet, know how to eat a whole lobster gracefully. They appreciate caviar on a boiled egg, but they enjoy nothing better on a weekend evening than frying up a batch of eggs and potatoes, opening a beer and watching a baseball game on TV while they eat out of the frying pan. They are the food liberals, and they don’t care what anybody else eats, as long as they don’t eat their lunch.

  And at the bottom of the food chain, so to speak, are the food agnostics and atheists. They ignore others’ preoccupations with food altogether and sneer at the pronouncements of the traditionalists, the fundamentalists and the liberals alike. They neither eat nor dine—they feed. They feed so they don’t die or because they’re angry, upset, depressed or because it’s a day that ends in “y”; they order in a lot, throw frozen pizzas in the oven, drink until the beer runs out, eat until they’re comatose. If they have a kitchen, their tools consist of a few burnt pots and half a wooden spoon; neither cooking as an art nor eating as a social sacrament would ever occur to them. They have terrible table manners; tend to shovel their food while bent over their plates with one arm in their laps. Even liberals find them irritating.

               As for me, I can’t think of a greater pleasure than sitting at length around a table with friends and eating well-prepared and perfectly spiced and herbed food. I guess laughter and banter are my two favourite condiments. I’m probably a food socialist.

               By the way: I invented a new way to enjoy cauliflower yesterday; here’s the recipe: 

Herbed Cauliflower Florentine

Ingredients:

10-12 cauliflower florets

ca. 10-15 pak choy or spinach leaves, chopped

½ cup freshly shredded old cheddar
1 Tbsp butter
1Tbsp whole wheat flour
½ cup milk
1 tsp oregano flakes

Salt & pepper to taste

Method:

Bring cauliflower to boil. After 5 minutes add pak choy or spinach. After 2 minutes, drain and cover.

In a frying pan, make sauce with butter, flower and milk. Stir in shredded cheddar. Add oregano and salt and pepper to taste.

Toss cauliflower and pak choy or spinach with sauce and serve.

Serves 2-4 as side dish.

Guten Appetit!

I Will Wear my Trousers Rolled

 Endings

Beginnings

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--

(They will say: 'How his hair is growing thin!")

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--

(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")

I’ve had occasion recently to revisit T.S. Eliot’s masterful stream-of-consciousness poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, and since several of the lines are currently impressed like skipping tracks of a vinyl disc in my head, I decided to ease the repetition by writing a bit about that whole subject—aging and the reflection on the meaning of what we have been.

In my case, the “with a bald spot in the middle of my hair” would be understatement—by quite a bit—and “how his arms and legs are thin” could be replaced with “how his midriff is preceding him,” but I recall how my father’s clothes were all too big on him when he reached three score and ten, and I can empathize with Prufrock.  Besides his hypersensitivity about his changing appearance, Prufrock is plagued by world-weariness, the “why bother” syndrome; why keep up the rituals of coffee times and repetitive, mundane, silly conversations:

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

Being “elderly” grants permission to be honest, frank, impolite if necessary when faced with the same-old, same-old of conversation for conversations sake, but will one have the courage?

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

But knowing finally that we have settled for “shallow” in a universe that cries for “depth” may not be of much use when the truth of the matter finally comes home to roost:

And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

Would it have been worthwhile,

To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

To have squeezed the universe into a ball

To roll it towards some overwhelming question . . .?

There must be a word for that; I think it’s part regret, part too late and part would it have made any difference. Perhaps the right word is ennui.

            Whereas old age used to be an arm’s-length, somewhat mythical phenomenon belonging to a culture that was not mine, I now live in its midst. I have come to appreciate what has been called the wisdom of age in, for instance, my 98-year old neighbour who recently bought herself a new house and asked me a few days ago to help her locate the biography of Mahatma Gandhi’s wife because she’s interested in the life of that forgotten woman. And I’ve seen its opposite, the interminable assembly of jigsaw puzzles in seniors’ centre foyers, the tedious search for tiny pieces of the universe that will fit, and the exultation when a picture that was scattered has been made whole. What a metaphor!

            And yet, it’s hard to assign blame to whatever sadness accompanies old age for many people. My mother-in-law lamented as she approached 90 that all her bosom friends were dead. That recognition alone must be daunting to even the strongest among us. I’ve seen the powerful need to grasp whatever intimacy is left in the world in people in nursing homes and seniors’ centres. I’ve seen how their eyes light up with the hope that my entrance will mean someone to talk to, someone to attend to their existence.

Our institutions for the elderly are wrong, somehow. Like our prisons and hospitals, they group people with similar needs together and isolate them from the population. The reason for this might be obvious; we are so afraid of being old, sick and/or terrified of deviance that we can’t stand to be reminded of our fragility by seeing aging, by seeing illness, by seeing the variety of hurts and angers that combined to make criminals. (I’m exaggerating for effect, here.) Or else we just couldn’t possibly find the manpower to service their needs except we house them close together.

Resignation is the ubiquitous option, isn’t it? I find the penultimate lines in Prufrock as compelling as any in modern poetry:

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--

Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Perhaps that’s the inevitable finale: I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be . . .. Resignation? Acceptance? Feeble excuse?

Take your pick.

Eat a peach.

You go, girl! . . . or maybe . . . I think . . .

You go, girl! . . . or maybe . . . I think . . .

I’m sure most of you saw the video clip of the House of Commons page with the “STOP HARPER” sign, soiling the pageantry and decorum of the speech from the throne. In an interview after she was fired and turfed out of uniform and job, she said (this is not a direct quote): “I felt I had to . . . like . . . do something. I don’t think his policies are . . . like . . . good for Canadians.” 

               I thought: if she was my daughter and had got this plum job as a parliamentary page, what would I have said to her when she walked in the door? Would I have said, “What’s the matter with you girl? You may not like Harper or his policies (as if you were old enough to understand them), but whatever made you think that this spectacle was justified?” Or would I have said: “Way to go, girl. That took massive courage.”

               The fact is that for the next four years, the Opposition won’t have the ability to “Stop Harper” on anything; the public will have to do it when necessary. A recent poll reported on Yahoo News showed that on some of the more contentious policies—the long gun registry, ending of public funding of political parties, the purchase of billions of dollars’ worth of jet fighters—the majority of Canadians are not on side. I would add the unwarranted and unconditional support of the state of Israel to that list.

If Harper is to be stopped on particular, unpopular policies, it will have to be by Canadian citizens mustering the courage to state their opposition to some of these policies vocally and loudly. We can’t all get onto the floor of the Commons like pages, but maybe we could pick up the STOP HARPER logo, put it on T-shirts that we all wear at crucial times of parliamentary debate. And if that would be too undignified for us, petitions and letter writing do have considerable effect if the numbers are there. Let’s write our MPs . . . copy to the PM and the relevant ministers . . . and say what we favour and what we don’t. That’s not too “out there,” is it?

               Or would that still be making too much of a spectacle of ourselves? Here’s an old saying I just made up: I’d rather be dead than embarrassed. (Actually, I think I read it in some novel a long time ago.) This following one is genuinely mine (I think): Timid citizenries are inevitably rewarded with regressive policies. People can find themselves meekly following political ideologues.

   The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them. (Isaiah 11:6)

You go, girl! You may be dead wrong . . . or you may be the only really courageous person to set foot in the Commons for a long time. I really hope it wasn't just a stunt to get your face into the media. Lots of people will write it off as just that. Perhaps—whatever the final judgment on your action—you shamed some of us out of our silence, and that can’t be all bad. 

   

A Longing to Move Stars

One who doesn't read has no advantage over the one who can't

A long-time friend, AR-F, confided the other day that a series of articles he wrote for our church bi-monthly elicited very little reader response. I admitted that this blog doesn’t produce a landslide of reaction either, although enough to make of it a gratifying avocation, if not a reasonable vocation.

               I’m reminded of a passage in Flaubert’s Madame Bovary:  

. . . since no one can ever give the exact measure of his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sorrows; and since human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars. 

               That, probably, sums up the core reality for anyone who picks up a pen to write anything for public consumption: it includes a longing to move the stars along with the disappointment that all one has really accomplished is setting in motion the feet of a few dancing bears, and that briefly. How many preachers have delivered sermon after sermon without experiencing reaction or response, let alone genuine dialogue? How many newspaper columnists have ground their teeth in frustration, realizing that only their missteps will be noted—responded to?

               In a letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville—author of Moby Dick—lamented the writer’s frustration by blaming it all on the ignorance of the public: 

. . . for not one man in five cycles, who is wise, will expect appreciative recognition from his fellows, or any one of them. Appreciation! Recognition! Is Jove appreciated? Why, ever since Adam, who has got to the meaning of his great allegory—the world? Then we pigmies must be content to have our paper allegories but ill comprehended. I say your appreciation is my glorious gratuity.^[i] 

Has anyone ever understood “the meaning of [Jove’s] great allegory—the world?” I wonder. The quote alerts us to Melville’s intention that his writing be recognized as illuminating allegory, and that’s been how Moby Dick has typically been reviewed and analyzed. His self-deprecation may be typical of artists of every stripe (“we pygmies;” “our paper allegories”): part low self-esteem; part, a fishing-for-compliments.

               That’s one side of the coin.

               On the other side lies the observation that great writing and great speeches have shaped history from time to time. Once in a while, writers hit some sweet spot that resonates, and what they have written or said, painted or sung ‘goes viral’, as they say in this digital age. Will Shakespeare, Rembrandt van Rijn, Caruso, Martin Luther King, Mark Twain, Karl Marx, St. John, The Beatles, Pete Seeger, all artists who managed to hit the sweet spot; you could name a hundred others, no doubt.

The pen may well be mightier than the sword, but knowing where to point it—and when, and how—remains the elusive goal. There will most certainly always be a thousand misses for every hit.

Not long ago, we staged a great concert at the Station Arts Centre . . . and drew all of thirty people. We planned another concert of Mozart’s life and music and cancelled after only fourteen tickets had sold. More misses than hits. A musician in the former group said that there are now so many bands clambering for stage time that it’s hard to draw an audience and I think he’s right; we constantly get phone calls from artists and performers looking for a venue, longing to be heard, and writers wanting us to sell their books.

So what does it all mean?

The argument that it’s all been said a thousand times before in a thousand different ways may be relevant here. But as a final explanation, that would deny that every age, every generation needs fresh poets and artists to illuminate its world, if simply in response to cultural and material evolution. In the 21^st Century, unfortunately, the shifts are so sweeping and broad that anyone aspiring to be an artist is scrambling to find the relevant voice. This scramble is not pretty; there’s enough bad art, bad music and bad writing out there to discourage even the most liberal tastes. Maybe the 22^nd Century will have to pick from our plethora what actually qualifies as art.

It doesn’t help that most of the artists, writers, musicians currently at work were trained in the middle to late 19^th Century and are scratching their heads over life outside their windows. I’m told we’re witnessing the birth of a “post-modern” age; an age that sees the universe more subjectively following a long period of clinging to the virtues of objectivity. Included in this change of perspective is the rejection of many modernist and pre-modernist categories: male vs. female, hetero vs. homo, black vs. white, planning vs. spontaneity, etc., etc. Can our aging artists convert, or does one have to be born into an age to be a genuine part of it? That’s the burning question. I favour the former but suspect the latter.

The futility in trying to save the silverware when the ship is sinking.

So what if writers, artists and musicians can’t move the stars? At least they can take some satisfaction in the fact that their efforts have set a few dancing bears’ toes a-tapping.

30 at a concert may not be many, but it’s not zero either.

And AR-F, I read your columns and appreciated them; I’m sorry I didn’t say so at the time.

              

---

[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby-Dick#Moby_Dick, retrieved April 18, 2011.

Long live the Democratic State of Nee-Mennogrebelmanzheim

Parliament of Nee-Mennogrebelmanzheim

Imagine this:

In southern Manitoba a portion of land bordered on the north by Highway #1, on the east by Highway # 12, on the west by Highways 240 & 31 and on the south by the US border is separated from the Province of Manitoba by UN declaration and declared a “Mennonite Homeland.” They are a people who have, after all, been hounded around the world – Netherlands, Poland, Ukraine, Bolivia, Mexico; they are a people who have been martyred for their faith, persecuted relentlessly by both mainline Catholic and Protestant rulers of the 16^th and 17^th Centuries. They deserve an ethnic homeland, don’t they? Their holy city, Winnipeg, will be shared because it is also a holy city to Grain Exchange stockholders, the ethnics of North Winnipeg, Ukrainians etc. North Kildonan will be the ethnic Mennonite allotment in the city and a corridor will be fenced off to the South Perimeter.

               Over time, Mennonites from Mexico, Uruguay, Saskatchewan and other faraway places begin trickling in to embrace the future of life with “their people,” and land becomes a factor and non-Mennonites “squatting” in this new country are irritants to the goal of homeland. They are bought out if possible, gangs of Mennonites less convinced of the efficacy of non-violence harass them until life becomes too dangerous and unpleasant for them and they leave. Their farms are handed over to the migrants and ethnic solidarity gradually builds.

               But it’s not enough. The country of Canada has always seen this ethnic cleansing as unreasonable and illegal, and launches an attack on the temporary capital of the new country— Steinbach—but the Canadian Army is easily defeated by thousands of men in overalls who know how to use pitchforks. They occupy the battleground—Sandilands Provincial Forest—and begin building settlements for Mennonites from Thompson, The Pas, Glenbush and Peace River who are partial to trees. This, of course, also requires harassing the people already living there until they leave and become refugees in North Dakota, which really doesn’t want them.

               Mennonites in Germany, Netherlands, the USA, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta continue to pour funds into this new country—Nee-Mennogrebelmanzheim—in the interest of the existence and prosperity of an ethnic homeland where Low German is spoken and churches don’t have steeples. Security will, of course, always be an issue because Canada, Manitoba and the thousands of refugees who have been driven out will always continue to challenge the sovereignty of Nee-Mennogrebelmanzheim, and exiles who abandoned farms that had been in the family for ten or more generations will continue to press for a right of return.

               A few days ago, the current Prime Minister of Nee-Mennogrebelmanzheim, the Rt. Honourable Tchnalz Freezen met with President Obama, who urged him to stop building settlements in the Sandilands Provincial Forest and to return the area to Manitoba. Prime Minister Freezen scoffed and declared that “the reality on the ground” made that option unthinkable. President Obama also pointed out that the land the exiles had vacated had never been relinquished legally and that they should be given the right to return to live in Nee-Mennogrebelmanzheim if they so desired. This proposal met with similar disdain and Freezen declared that no settlement with Manitoba would ever include the right of return. Freezen then reiterated that the Mennonites have a right to an ethnic homeland and that their existence is fragile because of the unreasonable hostility surrounding their borders and the occupation of the Sandilands Forest was vital to these interests.

               Many said Obama came out of the dialogue looking like an unreasonable idiot.

               Score one for Tchnalz. Long live the Mennonite Kingdom Democratic State of Nee-Mennogrebelmanzheim!

              

I'm off to Sunday school

Valley Mennonite Church near Rosthern

It’s Sunday morning. So let’s think about Sunday school for a minute or two.

Here’s the short form: In many churches, there’s an hour before the worship service in which people are gathered into age-appropriate groups and a leader guides them through a theme focused on a Biblical passage or concept, a current issue from a moral/ethical standpoint or historical stories that reinforce the theology of the particular denomination in question. A simplified definition (and somewhat cynical, to boot) is that for children, it’s indoctrination time and for adults, it’s something to do while volunteers are busy with the children.

Sunday school arose as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution and the concomitant rise of a way of thinking we call “modernism” for lack of a better word. Begun by a socially-conscious Anglican minister in England in the mid-18th Century, it was an attempt to provide some literacy education for children working in factories and mines on their only day off. Churches picked up the idea and it grew, particularly in North America.

Child labour legislation eventually cut the children free from the factory floor and to prevent their running wild, compulsory public education was invented. Instead of dropping Sunday school because the need had passed, churches saw in it an opportunity to teach the faith to their children and to proselytize neighbourhood children at the same time. Prizes, parades and picnics were introduced and American children trooped to Sunday school, even if their parents didn’t.

All of this was too much change for conservative branches of Mennonite churches, and both Sunday school and public day school were seen as modernistic, worldly encroachments on the faith while other, more liberal branches saw in these developments a golden opportunity for a better faith in a better world.

But time always overruns even good ideas, and like the Sunday bulletin, the Christmas concert, the mass, a style of baptism, innovations like Sunday school eventually fossilize and become routine.

There’s been a steady decline in church and Sunday school attendance since the 1960’s. The word post-modernism could be applied but it might not explain much. If you don’t attend Sunday school anymore—or never have—you can possibly provide us with some good reasons for the decline. For my part, it seems obvious that failure has been built in from the start. Where the rubber hits the road—in that little classroom off the gym, in some cases—a lay-teacher is passing on to children whatever she or he has gathered up in concepts, preconceptions, prejudices, priorities, etc. picked up who knows where, possibly through radio and TV religio-babble. The next year’s teacher may present an entirely different message, and so on, and so on.

It’s always been an institution built on a foundation of sand. All you had to have to become a mentor and teacher to children (and to adults, for that matter) was a pulse and a church membership. Far too little screening or training has ever been done to allow it to be taken seriously as school.

Educationally, the Sunday school has faltered. In its community-building function, it’s shown itself to be a poor pastiche of the public school system. As a proselytizing mechanism, its age has all but passed. What’s left?

The post-modern age we live in allows us independent thinking, and so I’m sceptical about agreement on what should replace it, what it’s focus should be and who should have the right and the responsibility to make it happen. Robert Raikes saw a social need and a church obligation to address that need, and so he started a Sunday school in 1780. Could something similar happen again? Could there be someone who would so succinctly name the relevant needs of 2011 and initiate a workable response that would address them?

Or would we independent-thinking, post-modernists bury that someone under reasons why it could never work, etc., etc., etc. Or would we squelch the attempt under a mountain of indifference?

I’m leading an adult Sunday school discussion this morning. The topic is Sunday school: past, present, future. No need to be there.