but if you're interested in someone who's positively just a pleasure to read, you should check out the Pope's latest. words worth reading just for the quality with which they were placed.
and for something completely different, a must for lovers of CS Lewis and 80's rap everywhere. thank you thankyou thankyouthankyou o thankyou sooooo much for making my morning Dan
31 December 2005
29 December 2005
22 December 2005
and, while quoting...
(and depriving myself of much-needed sleep)
from the Economist, 10/15, during what the British authors might call "that bloody Harriet Miers cock-up": (emphasis added)
from the Economist, 10/15, during what the British authors might call "that bloody Harriet Miers cock-up": (emphasis added)
There are few things quite as hypocritical as American politicians hurling accusations of cronyism. The Democrats are lambasting George Bush about his weakness for promoting people such as Michael Brown, the horseman turned emergency agency chief. But does anybod seriously believe that a Democratic president wouldn't appoint cronies of his or her own?...
"All countries have their cronies. That much-cited model of moral rectitude, Tony Blair, is so surrounded by them that they are called "Tony's Cronies" (he made his old roommate, Charlie Falconer, Lord Chancellor). Edith Cresson, a European commissioner, appointed her dentist to an advisory position. But you expect that sort of thing in Brussels. America's problem is the contrast between high-minded idealism and low practice.
"America regards itself as the world's purest mertiocracy--a country based on talent, not patronage and toadyism. A quick glace at history shows this is rubbish. Most presidents surround themselves with a regional mafia: look at Carter's Georgians or Reagan's Californians or Clinton's Arkansans. These mafias produce some rum appointments: Jimmy Carter made his one-time campaign driver, Jody Powell, his press secretary; Bill Clinton made his chum from Miss Marie's kindergarten in Hope, Thomas McLarty, his chief of staff. Scandals are endemic. harry Truman's missouri cronies had a weakness for gifts of mink coats and freezers (an issue in the 1952 election). As for the antics of Mr Clinton's Arkansas buddies, the less said the better.
"That does not mean every close ally is a "crony": that term inplies incompetence as well as promiximity. Condoleezza Rice is no Michael Brown, for example, just as Robert Reich was no Webb Hubbell...In deed, the trick of ruing a successful administration--as both FDR and JFK demonstrated--is to balance the competing claims of personal loyalty and individual merit. Mr Bush, as the candidate of the Republican establishment rather than a regional insurrection, brought in plenty of bruisers. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are guilty of many things, but being mere creatures of the president is not one of them.
"Still, if the presidential branch doesn't run on cronyism alone, it cannot run without it. A presidential campaign is a large gamble. Presidents acquire obligations to people who spend years toiling for them in the wilderness. Not all these people will be from the first division. Presidents also form a peculiar bond of trust with people who served in the campaign trenches with them. When they are in the White House, the only people they meet are supplicants. So naturally they turn to their old buddies for comfort and advice. Presidents need cronies just as cronies need patrons.
"From this perspective the real question about Mr Bush's appointment of Ms Miers is not whether it is cronyism, but whether he has stepped over the line that separates business-as-usual from offensive favoritism."
in more Timely cheer...
"This is, I say, the time for all good men not to go to the aid of their party, but to come to the aid of their country."
i'd never heard of Eugene McCarthy before last month. i'm starting to like him more and more. i think it's time to add him to my people-to-look-into-list, with a nod of appreciation to the Charmer with his penchant for intriguing conversations that first sparked my interest.
and, props to the Lao for recommending Time in the first place. yeah.
i'd never heard of Eugene McCarthy before last month. i'm starting to like him more and more. i think it's time to add him to my people-to-look-into-list, with a nod of appreciation to the Charmer with his penchant for intriguing conversations that first sparked my interest.
and, props to the Lao for recommending Time in the first place. yeah.
mad mad mega super (I [heart]) uber-props to Time
so here's to Time magazine's POTY: People of the Year. for those of you who need to dig your heads out of whatever it is that is so engrossing as to render you ignorant in the midst of a mass American trend toward awareness of and concern for global issues (aside--for instance, the people who put the Kashmir Quake on page 8B of the Buffalo News--end aside), Time's People of the Year award went to U2's Bono and Bill and Melinda Gates for their three-pronged assault on world health and poverty issues.
so, right next to yet another "I'm-Bono-can-you-hear-the-theme-music?-Strike-a-serious-thoughtful-pose!" slew of the ever-camera-aware (and ever-wearing-a-different-set-of-flamboyant-shades) U2 frontman's pictures are Bill and Melinda Gates. And (thank God for a break from Bono's studied meaningful glances, good for pushing AIDS initiatives AND selling iPods) Bill and Melinda have this wonderful expression on their faces, one I recognize from long experience with my homestay partner Mike.
It's the look of completely futile curiosity as the western mind tries to build bridges during catastrophic cross-cultural shifts: it pretty much played constantly on Mike's face (and, as I'm sure he can attest, rather dramatically on mine) as we grappled with inadequate language skills, exciteable interpreters, physical exhaustion, emotional bombardment, and massive non-parities. and, of course, poverty.
In retrospect, it's a charming look, and Mike's was probably a lot more composed and patient and less prone to vacant stares than mine. But I got to watch him, and not me, so he gets the bad press. At any rate, there's the capitalist megabillionnaire who has little badges that you can wear in his house so that the house knows where you are and where you are going and adjusts the lights accordingly, taking into account the time of day to soften or brighten things up and makes sure your selection of music follows you from room to room. And I've heard he has a "trampoline room..."
So there's Gates in a mudbrick house in India with that loopy look in his eyes, trying to figure out what the interpreter is saying and asking questions about land ownership and inheritance and local economic flows and governance peculiarities, scrunching his eyes together and trying to figure out what happens where and how those effects ripple through an entirely different, and much more lively third-world system. And Melinda's sitting beside him trying to explain with that patient look in her eyes, and their travelling slacks are wrinkled and they flew in just a few hours ago. on the private jet...
Go Bill. and props to Time for an issue half-devoted to some really excellent things that people, from billionnaires to Catholic priests to New Orleans scuba divers to Indonesia guys without last names, are doing in awful situations.
so, right next to yet another "I'm-Bono-can-you-hear-the-theme-music?-Strike-a-serious-thoughtful-pose!" slew of the ever-camera-aware (and ever-wearing-a-different-set-of-flamboyant-shades) U2 frontman's pictures are Bill and Melinda Gates. And (thank God for a break from Bono's studied meaningful glances, good for pushing AIDS initiatives AND selling iPods) Bill and Melinda have this wonderful expression on their faces, one I recognize from long experience with my homestay partner Mike.
It's the look of completely futile curiosity as the western mind tries to build bridges during catastrophic cross-cultural shifts: it pretty much played constantly on Mike's face (and, as I'm sure he can attest, rather dramatically on mine) as we grappled with inadequate language skills, exciteable interpreters, physical exhaustion, emotional bombardment, and massive non-parities. and, of course, poverty.
In retrospect, it's a charming look, and Mike's was probably a lot more composed and patient and less prone to vacant stares than mine. But I got to watch him, and not me, so he gets the bad press. At any rate, there's the capitalist megabillionnaire who has little badges that you can wear in his house so that the house knows where you are and where you are going and adjusts the lights accordingly, taking into account the time of day to soften or brighten things up and makes sure your selection of music follows you from room to room. And I've heard he has a "trampoline room..."
So there's Gates in a mudbrick house in India with that loopy look in his eyes, trying to figure out what the interpreter is saying and asking questions about land ownership and inheritance and local economic flows and governance peculiarities, scrunching his eyes together and trying to figure out what happens where and how those effects ripple through an entirely different, and much more lively third-world system. And Melinda's sitting beside him trying to explain with that patient look in her eyes, and their travelling slacks are wrinkled and they flew in just a few hours ago. on the private jet...
Go Bill. and props to Time for an issue half-devoted to some really excellent things that people, from billionnaires to Catholic priests to New Orleans scuba divers to Indonesia guys without last names, are doing in awful situations.
16 December 2005
woooo-hooo-ful
yes! superfantastiche! i was hoping and hoping as i was reading that i would get tagged and i DID!
Yayyyy Conformity!
okay.
one. i can't find my fingernail clippers--i haven't used them in a while. instead, i carefully tend to my fingernails so that they're all at various lengths, and one at a time half chew one off and floss with it. hey, i hate flossing, but i get bored, and it seems like the healthy thing to do. and if you're a backacker, you can save weight by not having to pack floss.
two. i try to learn curses in other languages at any opportunity. currently, i've got a smattering of Russian, French, Spanish, Yiddish, Mandarin Chinese (thankyou Firefly), Japanese, German, some quite vile Kiswahili, a burgeoning English collection (thankyou, coworkers), Farscape-ish, and my personal favorite, Ki-Musser (Good Lork!).
three. i sleep on a mat on the floor because i want to stay in hiking shape and not have to adjust to sleeping outdoors everytime i sleep outdoors.
four. i like hats. of the warm, fluffy, and flamboyant variety. i collect "gear," which is outdoorsman-ish for expensive toys for living as far away from permanent structures as possible.
five. when driving exceedingly fast in ambulances with the lights flashing and sirens blaring, i love turning up 103.3 The Edge and rockin' it out such tunes as "Into the Abyss Will I Run," "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor," andything by System of a Down, and other assorted angry dark metal-ish music. an added bonus is flipping the siren between modes like a DJ to the tune of whatever it is that's in my head/i'm listening to. a few nights ago, around three a.m., we serenaded the fine people of the Apple District with "Jingle Bells" on the air horn. i think we freaked out some homeless guys...
OK. Now: dave lilley, dan perrine, mark lemke, dan reilley, chris moeller.
Yayyyy Conformity!
Ground Rules: The first player of this "game" starts with the topic "5 weird habits of yours" and people who get tagged need to write an LJ/blog/xanga entry about their 5 quirky habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next 5 people to be tagged and list their names.
okay.
one. i can't find my fingernail clippers--i haven't used them in a while. instead, i carefully tend to my fingernails so that they're all at various lengths, and one at a time half chew one off and floss with it. hey, i hate flossing, but i get bored, and it seems like the healthy thing to do. and if you're a backacker, you can save weight by not having to pack floss.
two. i try to learn curses in other languages at any opportunity. currently, i've got a smattering of Russian, French, Spanish, Yiddish, Mandarin Chinese (thankyou Firefly), Japanese, German, some quite vile Kiswahili, a burgeoning English collection (thankyou, coworkers), Farscape-ish, and my personal favorite, Ki-Musser (Good Lork!).
three. i sleep on a mat on the floor because i want to stay in hiking shape and not have to adjust to sleeping outdoors everytime i sleep outdoors.
four. i like hats. of the warm, fluffy, and flamboyant variety. i collect "gear," which is outdoorsman-ish for expensive toys for living as far away from permanent structures as possible.
five. when driving exceedingly fast in ambulances with the lights flashing and sirens blaring, i love turning up 103.3 The Edge and rockin' it out such tunes as "Into the Abyss Will I Run," "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor," andything by System of a Down, and other assorted angry dark metal-ish music. an added bonus is flipping the siren between modes like a DJ to the tune of whatever it is that's in my head/i'm listening to. a few nights ago, around three a.m., we serenaded the fine people of the Apple District with "Jingle Bells" on the air horn. i think we freaked out some homeless guys...
OK. Now: dave lilley, dan perrine, mark lemke, dan reilley, chris moeller.
more bibliophilic musings
like the Seven Pillars of Islam (quiz: can you name all seven? in Arabic? i can't.), there exist the Nine Literary Pillars of Dan. except now it's Ten. without further ado, i give you one of the vital pieces of me:
Frederick Buechner's Speak What We Feel, Not What We Ought To Say.
yeah. it's about Chesterton, Shakespeare, Twain, and Hopkins. it's not cute, and sometimes it's harsh, but it is enduring and ultimately beautiful. it's one of those handy, necessary texts for navigating deep and unknown waters.
Frederick Buechner's Speak What We Feel, Not What We Ought To Say.
yeah. it's about Chesterton, Shakespeare, Twain, and Hopkins. it's not cute, and sometimes it's harsh, but it is enduring and ultimately beautiful. it's one of those handy, necessary texts for navigating deep and unknown waters.
15 December 2005
i have just one thing to say....
seriously, did you believe the title? c'mon here, it's me talking. let's start with the easy things to say:
so i have finally broken through the wall at work. my new paramedic (who i'll be picking up shifts with when i'm not on my normal schedule) took me out to the ol' Pink...a.k.a. what used to be the Pink Flamingo, and now is functionally nameless except for the wonderful moniker "the old Pink Flamingo."
this medic, who moonlights as a seasonal forest ranger in the 'Dacks and is the only person at work who doesn't think i'm crazy for riding around on my bike in this weather, figured immediately that the Pink was the place for me--it's sort of the last holdout, for people who dance, drink, mingle, or chill for no other reason than a sheer desire to enjoy themselves. it's tucked away nameless in Allentown, and anyone remotely resembling trendy would immediately generate laughs and be shooed out the door. o.k., the first word in the association game running through my head was "dive"...but i'm amending it ex post facto to "family dive", if "family" are the people who drink and laugh and cheer and are completely comfortable with each other's oddities. kind of the first bar i've ever seen with gay couples making out right next to straight ones, and nobody cares even to trumpet their own diversity because the entire place isn't about being impressive...it's about fun in the no-pretense zone. me and my new alpaca wool hat with the pigtailed earflaps fit in just fine.
the medic was right...it's my kind of place. which made me ever happier to turn around to the tap on my right shoulder into the grinning face of Greg Tedesco.
in any other bar, we would have made a scene, whooping and hollering and hugging and spinning around. in the Pink, it's like family Thanksgiving: same spirit, random people. a place of miracles. we hugged and laughed and looked at each other and hugged again. i guess a few Guinesses helped (did i mention they serve Guiness? how perfect can it be?) but it was pure, unadulterated heart-joy to see Greg almost three years after he left Houghton without contact information. we spent little time together there, but what we did is live together on opposite ends of 3rd Shen and always manage to brush our teeth at the same time most nights. sometimes we'd brush our teeth for an hour or two in that beautiful old 3rd Shen bathroom, Plato and Socrates in pajamas waving teethbrushes for effect. He had a voice and an experience that spoke of depth and exacting joy--the meticulous concern for the beautiful in life that marks the steps of a dancer and the pen of a poet. He had eyes that glowed and original, unborrowed dreams.
yeah. Greg Tedesco. in the only bar in Buffalo where three random people like us could all feel at home. i feel the movement of that unseen glorious mischief.
it only makes it better that it all followed a few good solid Guinesses and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. i could write on all night in praise--it's that good. in every way that the Lord of the Rings was something of a disappointment, a departure from the spirit of the original, Narnia the movie was spot on in the spirit of the greatest children's story ever. i really could go on for a long time, but it was beautiful, moving, joyous, British, innocent, childlike, and excellently done. and in sheer sheepish joy, i cannot get over the animals--i kept getting excited. people were teasing me, i got so pumped everytime i saw a new one. the unicorn, the satyrs, the leopards, the cheetahs, and i won't spoil the surprise on my favorites (the African animals!!!! oh the African animals!!!) and most glorious of all: the centaurs. i want to be a centaur now. wow.
and that's just the effects, the battle. the story itself is excellently well done. perhaps a little weak on really introducing and allowing you to love Aslan and understand his death--but that's for the better, i think, considering that Aslan as Christ-figure is only really understandable on screen to those who have read the books or who already have fallen in love with the Christ-story. the children are gorgeous--you want to adopt Lucy, and love her for her open-heartedness.
oh...and most important of all--they put in the mice! it's simply excellent. i'm going to go watch it again as soon as i can. i think it'll probably be better the second time around. that could be the Guiness talking, but i doubt it. by far, Narnia is an excellent, excellent movie for all who watch it. do yourself a favor--go sit in a movie theater and let your heart remember what it was like to be a child, to see the world with a child's eyes and imagination and spirit and now the thrill and fear and courage of a childlike soul.
so i have finally broken through the wall at work. my new paramedic (who i'll be picking up shifts with when i'm not on my normal schedule) took me out to the ol' Pink...a.k.a. what used to be the Pink Flamingo, and now is functionally nameless except for the wonderful moniker "the old Pink Flamingo."
this medic, who moonlights as a seasonal forest ranger in the 'Dacks and is the only person at work who doesn't think i'm crazy for riding around on my bike in this weather, figured immediately that the Pink was the place for me--it's sort of the last holdout, for people who dance, drink, mingle, or chill for no other reason than a sheer desire to enjoy themselves. it's tucked away nameless in Allentown, and anyone remotely resembling trendy would immediately generate laughs and be shooed out the door. o.k., the first word in the association game running through my head was "dive"...but i'm amending it ex post facto to "family dive", if "family" are the people who drink and laugh and cheer and are completely comfortable with each other's oddities. kind of the first bar i've ever seen with gay couples making out right next to straight ones, and nobody cares even to trumpet their own diversity because the entire place isn't about being impressive...it's about fun in the no-pretense zone. me and my new alpaca wool hat with the pigtailed earflaps fit in just fine.
the medic was right...it's my kind of place. which made me ever happier to turn around to the tap on my right shoulder into the grinning face of Greg Tedesco.
in any other bar, we would have made a scene, whooping and hollering and hugging and spinning around. in the Pink, it's like family Thanksgiving: same spirit, random people. a place of miracles. we hugged and laughed and looked at each other and hugged again. i guess a few Guinesses helped (did i mention they serve Guiness? how perfect can it be?) but it was pure, unadulterated heart-joy to see Greg almost three years after he left Houghton without contact information. we spent little time together there, but what we did is live together on opposite ends of 3rd Shen and always manage to brush our teeth at the same time most nights. sometimes we'd brush our teeth for an hour or two in that beautiful old 3rd Shen bathroom, Plato and Socrates in pajamas waving teethbrushes for effect. He had a voice and an experience that spoke of depth and exacting joy--the meticulous concern for the beautiful in life that marks the steps of a dancer and the pen of a poet. He had eyes that glowed and original, unborrowed dreams.
yeah. Greg Tedesco. in the only bar in Buffalo where three random people like us could all feel at home. i feel the movement of that unseen glorious mischief.
it only makes it better that it all followed a few good solid Guinesses and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. i could write on all night in praise--it's that good. in every way that the Lord of the Rings was something of a disappointment, a departure from the spirit of the original, Narnia the movie was spot on in the spirit of the greatest children's story ever. i really could go on for a long time, but it was beautiful, moving, joyous, British, innocent, childlike, and excellently done. and in sheer sheepish joy, i cannot get over the animals--i kept getting excited. people were teasing me, i got so pumped everytime i saw a new one. the unicorn, the satyrs, the leopards, the cheetahs, and i won't spoil the surprise on my favorites (the African animals!!!! oh the African animals!!!) and most glorious of all: the centaurs. i want to be a centaur now. wow.
and that's just the effects, the battle. the story itself is excellently well done. perhaps a little weak on really introducing and allowing you to love Aslan and understand his death--but that's for the better, i think, considering that Aslan as Christ-figure is only really understandable on screen to those who have read the books or who already have fallen in love with the Christ-story. the children are gorgeous--you want to adopt Lucy, and love her for her open-heartedness.
oh...and most important of all--they put in the mice! it's simply excellent. i'm going to go watch it again as soon as i can. i think it'll probably be better the second time around. that could be the Guiness talking, but i doubt it. by far, Narnia is an excellent, excellent movie for all who watch it. do yourself a favor--go sit in a movie theater and let your heart remember what it was like to be a child, to see the world with a child's eyes and imagination and spirit and now the thrill and fear and courage of a childlike soul.
10 December 2005
ooh! a quick fix for ontological lightness!
take a moment to visit Houghton's mainpage and you will see, in the lower right corner of the main picture, the red hair, blue-clad back and lamentably uncelebrated buttocks (bluejean clad, fear not) of myself! [right under the "y" in community, if you still need help] you see, i know it's me because i remember when they carefully staged the picture :) funny, though, about that view from the back--they always seemed to want the pretty girls facing the camera and my back always ended up....
09 December 2005
"the weight of this sad time we must obey/speak what we feel, not what we ought to say"
[excerpts from and thoughts after a recent Rolling Stone article on John Lennon]
[if you want to skip all the quotes and get to the thoughts, scroll to the next orange part]
"For years, starting before the end of the Beatles, Lennon and Ono had pursued a mdia-directed campaign for hte cause of peace--which at that time meant promoting an end to the war in Vietnam, though they were also advocating the larger philosophy of nonviolence that had guided India's Mahatma Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. In March 1969, following their marriage in Gibraltar, Lennon and Ono flew to Amsterdam, where they staged a "bed-in" for peace. For seven days they sat in bed in their pajamas at the Amsterdam Hilton and gave hundreds of interviews, discussing their views that true peace begins as a personal pursuit and talking about intersections between activism, popular culture, ideology, and Eastern and Western religion...Lennon later said that he was trying to change his own heart as much as anybody else's. 'It's the most violent people who go for love and peace,' he told Playboy. 'But I sincerely believe in love and peace. I'm a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence.' "
-
"Lennon also studied feminist history and theory. 'It's men who have come a long way from even contemplating the idea of equality. I am the one who has come a long way. I was the real pig. And it is a relief not to be a pig. The pressures of being a pig were enormous. They were killing me. All those years of trying to be tough and the heavy rocker and heavy womanizer and heavy drinker were killing me. And it is a relief not to have to do it."
-
" 'We sold out. The music was dead before we even went on the theater tour of Britain...The Beatles music died then, as musicians.'...'Fuckin' big bastards, that what the Beatles were. You have to be a bastard to make it, man. That's a fact, and the Beatles were the biggest bastards on earth.' ' One has to humiliate oneself to be what the Beatles were, and that's what I resent...About all we can do is do it like fuckin' circus animals. I resent being an artist in that respect, I resent performing for fucking idiots who won't know--who don't know--anything. 'Cause they can't feel. I'm the one that's feeling, cause I'm the one that's expressing what they are trying to. They live vicariously through me and the other artists.'
"It was difficult to read his words without feeling that Lennon was indicting not just the band but those who had placed a stake in the Beatles. No other major artist ever razed his own image so devastatingly.
"However--not surprisingly--when Lennon applied his hurt and vitriol to his music, the result was transcendant...[for his first solo album he chose] minimalist instrumentation. Lennon sang about the most painful memories and undercurrents of his life--the death of his mother, the failures of faith and fame, the betrayals in misplaced ideals--in such a way that there was nothing to shield a listener from the resulting raw anger and anguish...he decided to 'shave off all imagery, pretensions of poetry, illusions of grandeur....Just say what it is, simple English, make it rhyme and put a backbeat on it and express yourself as simply and straightforwardly as possible.'..."
" 'The dream is over/What can I say?/The dream is over/Yesterday/I was the dream weaver/But now I'm reborn/I was the Walrus/But now I'm John/And so, dear friends/You'll just have to carry on/The dream is over."
[the album sold poorly.]
"With his next album, Imagine, Lennon tried to present his concerns more accessibly...Lennon's lyrics still chased troubling themes--but this time he wrapped them in a savvy pop sensibility. The album's title track, in particular, put forth some daring notions--and it did so in a beguiling and haunting way. The song was a prayer, the most radical prayer that ever played widely on radio. 'Imagine, both the song and the album,' Lennon said, 'is the same thing as "Working Class Hero," "Mom" and "God" on the first disc. But the first record was too real for people so nobody bought it..."Imagine" was the same message but sugarcoated...it's a big hit almost everywhere--anti-religious, anti-conventional, anti-nationalistic, anti-capitalistic, but because it is sugarcoated it is accepted. Now I understand what you have to do: Put your political message across with a little honey.' "
-
"After his death, things changed around us. America entered the years of Ronald Reagan; Britain, the years of Margaret Thatcher. Modern history was reversing its hopes. Rock 'n Roll, and later hip-hop, has still pushed against that reversal, but it has never pushed as hard as it did in the years of John Lennon. That isn't simply because Lennon was killed. Rather, it's because he lived. The Beatles set something loose in their time: a sense of generational transformation that moved quickly from the blissful to the artistic to the political, and for a few remarkable years, it seemed irrefutable.
"The story of our times since then has been the product of a determination to make sure that nothing like that could happen again. While "Imagine" can still be played on the radio because its music sounds familiar and comforting, there's little-if anything-with that sort of nerve in today's mainstream pop. The free market of ideas just isn't that free right now. A pop star as popular as Lennon proclaiming similar ideals in our current environment would run the risk of being judged a heretic.
"So we got something when we had John Lennon, and we lost something when his voice was killed. We lost somebody as fucked up as us, who worked his whole life to overcome himself, and, in doing so, his creativity would help us overcome the madness of our times - at least for a while. Through it all, he told us to keep faith, to keep courage, to defy our hurt, our fear, to find love and hope and fight for their meaning."
--now for the thoughts of the wildebeen--
if the opportunity presents itself to get December 15th's Rolling Stone in your hands, do yourself a favor and read Mikal Gilmore's article on John Lennon. it's concise, profound, and moving. it explores Lennon as a person growing and living and wrestling with redemption and pain through the length of his life.
in particular, it wrestles with the tension between stability and change, the competition between pragmatics and ideals, and the prophet's dilemma of speaking to a people who long for change and comfort at the same time: redemption without repentance, new life without death.
i've been remarkably sad lately over a situation at one of my adopted home-places, Houghton College. the passionate and often exciteable and ever-engaging Dr. Beech, a philosophy professor with a penchant for drawing even the most uninterested student deep into charged discussions and redeeming the potentially boring philosophy requirement into riskily deep introspection and examination, was asked by the administration not to apply for tenure. In short, he's being canned and asked not to make noise about it.
several semesters ago, Dr. Beech gave one of the few chapel speeches i have heard in my four years worthy of presentation at an institution claiming to be academic. he vigorously called for an examination of issues of justice and righteousness, for honest introspection and inquiry into the justice of acquiescing to an overwhelming flood of blind nationalism and patriotic furor.
in the aforementioned philosophy prerequisite, Dr. Beech maintained with vigor and passion the necessity of self-examination. quoting either Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle (i cannot remember which, i did not do so well in the exams) he maintained that the unexamined life is not worth living, and went further to say that Christ himself compels us to examine our lives and our selves and not merely float along on popular ideas or live comfortably as we are pleased to.
the only comparison i can find for Dr. Beech is a hippie--a youthful man driven by ideals and a sense that all is not as it should be, and in the light of such wrongs revolutions of thought and action are necessary. admittedly, he was far too well-dressed and groomed to be an actual hippie, but the spirit was there--the spirit of John Lennon's decade where the idea that humanity was being crushed by machines of metal and social and political construction was felt widely enough to become a popular movement. people threw themselves, en masse, at change.
the movement died. the eighties of greed and power and the reduction of people to systemic grist and numbers in macroeconomic models and marketing plans happened. Lennon died, and now we have the knowledge of our human dilemmas without any real hope for change. there is no The Man and there is no revolution. Just an entire world of pragmatic individuals.
no one rocks the boat anymore. no one speaks the words worth hearing--or they are not spoken loud enough. the church contents itself with a sort of Feng Shui of theological furniture. the only freedom pop culture desires is the freedom to consume. and all around us peace is being slaughtered, any meaningful communities that are not being actively destroyed are dying of neglect, people are lonely, and increasingly visible to all is how disfigured we all are as humans. but no one has the will to speak up, to challenge the status quo or the powers of the air that hold us captive.
Lennon grappled with those powers. That's why his music--even the sellout music, the sugarcoated together with the deeply honest, is treasured for its beauty and ability to speak about life to our cold dark hearts.
Dr. Beech paces behind a podium in a required class in a school specializing in speaking to the happy comfortable people and declaims with a spirit fervor dead and cold and unheard in our society since the seventies. his words kindle little fires, risky scary and necessary, in the ears of his hearers.
why are we stoning our prophets?
[if you want to skip all the quotes and get to the thoughts, scroll to the next orange part]
"For years, starting before the end of the Beatles, Lennon and Ono had pursued a mdia-directed campaign for hte cause of peace--which at that time meant promoting an end to the war in Vietnam, though they were also advocating the larger philosophy of nonviolence that had guided India's Mahatma Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. In March 1969, following their marriage in Gibraltar, Lennon and Ono flew to Amsterdam, where they staged a "bed-in" for peace. For seven days they sat in bed in their pajamas at the Amsterdam Hilton and gave hundreds of interviews, discussing their views that true peace begins as a personal pursuit and talking about intersections between activism, popular culture, ideology, and Eastern and Western religion...Lennon later said that he was trying to change his own heart as much as anybody else's. 'It's the most violent people who go for love and peace,' he told Playboy. 'But I sincerely believe in love and peace. I'm a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence.' "
-
"Lennon also studied feminist history and theory. 'It's men who have come a long way from even contemplating the idea of equality. I am the one who has come a long way. I was the real pig. And it is a relief not to be a pig. The pressures of being a pig were enormous. They were killing me. All those years of trying to be tough and the heavy rocker and heavy womanizer and heavy drinker were killing me. And it is a relief not to have to do it."
-
" 'We sold out. The music was dead before we even went on the theater tour of Britain...The Beatles music died then, as musicians.'...'Fuckin' big bastards, that what the Beatles were. You have to be a bastard to make it, man. That's a fact, and the Beatles were the biggest bastards on earth.' ' One has to humiliate oneself to be what the Beatles were, and that's what I resent...About all we can do is do it like fuckin' circus animals. I resent being an artist in that respect, I resent performing for fucking idiots who won't know--who don't know--anything. 'Cause they can't feel. I'm the one that's feeling, cause I'm the one that's expressing what they are trying to. They live vicariously through me and the other artists.'
"It was difficult to read his words without feeling that Lennon was indicting not just the band but those who had placed a stake in the Beatles. No other major artist ever razed his own image so devastatingly.
"However--not surprisingly--when Lennon applied his hurt and vitriol to his music, the result was transcendant...[for his first solo album he chose] minimalist instrumentation. Lennon sang about the most painful memories and undercurrents of his life--the death of his mother, the failures of faith and fame, the betrayals in misplaced ideals--in such a way that there was nothing to shield a listener from the resulting raw anger and anguish...he decided to 'shave off all imagery, pretensions of poetry, illusions of grandeur....Just say what it is, simple English, make it rhyme and put a backbeat on it and express yourself as simply and straightforwardly as possible.'..."
" 'The dream is over/What can I say?/The dream is over/Yesterday/I was the dream weaver/But now I'm reborn/I was the Walrus/But now I'm John/And so, dear friends/You'll just have to carry on/The dream is over."
[the album sold poorly.]
"With his next album, Imagine, Lennon tried to present his concerns more accessibly...Lennon's lyrics still chased troubling themes--but this time he wrapped them in a savvy pop sensibility. The album's title track, in particular, put forth some daring notions--and it did so in a beguiling and haunting way. The song was a prayer, the most radical prayer that ever played widely on radio. 'Imagine, both the song and the album,' Lennon said, 'is the same thing as "Working Class Hero," "Mom" and "God" on the first disc. But the first record was too real for people so nobody bought it..."Imagine" was the same message but sugarcoated...it's a big hit almost everywhere--anti-religious, anti-conventional, anti-nationalistic, anti-capitalistic, but because it is sugarcoated it is accepted. Now I understand what you have to do: Put your political message across with a little honey.' "
-
"After his death, things changed around us. America entered the years of Ronald Reagan; Britain, the years of Margaret Thatcher. Modern history was reversing its hopes. Rock 'n Roll, and later hip-hop, has still pushed against that reversal, but it has never pushed as hard as it did in the years of John Lennon. That isn't simply because Lennon was killed. Rather, it's because he lived. The Beatles set something loose in their time: a sense of generational transformation that moved quickly from the blissful to the artistic to the political, and for a few remarkable years, it seemed irrefutable.
"The story of our times since then has been the product of a determination to make sure that nothing like that could happen again. While "Imagine" can still be played on the radio because its music sounds familiar and comforting, there's little-if anything-with that sort of nerve in today's mainstream pop. The free market of ideas just isn't that free right now. A pop star as popular as Lennon proclaiming similar ideals in our current environment would run the risk of being judged a heretic.
"So we got something when we had John Lennon, and we lost something when his voice was killed. We lost somebody as fucked up as us, who worked his whole life to overcome himself, and, in doing so, his creativity would help us overcome the madness of our times - at least for a while. Through it all, he told us to keep faith, to keep courage, to defy our hurt, our fear, to find love and hope and fight for their meaning."
--now for the thoughts of the wildebeen--
if the opportunity presents itself to get December 15th's Rolling Stone in your hands, do yourself a favor and read Mikal Gilmore's article on John Lennon. it's concise, profound, and moving. it explores Lennon as a person growing and living and wrestling with redemption and pain through the length of his life.
in particular, it wrestles with the tension between stability and change, the competition between pragmatics and ideals, and the prophet's dilemma of speaking to a people who long for change and comfort at the same time: redemption without repentance, new life without death.
i've been remarkably sad lately over a situation at one of my adopted home-places, Houghton College. the passionate and often exciteable and ever-engaging Dr. Beech, a philosophy professor with a penchant for drawing even the most uninterested student deep into charged discussions and redeeming the potentially boring philosophy requirement into riskily deep introspection and examination, was asked by the administration not to apply for tenure. In short, he's being canned and asked not to make noise about it.
several semesters ago, Dr. Beech gave one of the few chapel speeches i have heard in my four years worthy of presentation at an institution claiming to be academic. he vigorously called for an examination of issues of justice and righteousness, for honest introspection and inquiry into the justice of acquiescing to an overwhelming flood of blind nationalism and patriotic furor.
in the aforementioned philosophy prerequisite, Dr. Beech maintained with vigor and passion the necessity of self-examination. quoting either Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle (i cannot remember which, i did not do so well in the exams) he maintained that the unexamined life is not worth living, and went further to say that Christ himself compels us to examine our lives and our selves and not merely float along on popular ideas or live comfortably as we are pleased to.
the only comparison i can find for Dr. Beech is a hippie--a youthful man driven by ideals and a sense that all is not as it should be, and in the light of such wrongs revolutions of thought and action are necessary. admittedly, he was far too well-dressed and groomed to be an actual hippie, but the spirit was there--the spirit of John Lennon's decade where the idea that humanity was being crushed by machines of metal and social and political construction was felt widely enough to become a popular movement. people threw themselves, en masse, at change.
the movement died. the eighties of greed and power and the reduction of people to systemic grist and numbers in macroeconomic models and marketing plans happened. Lennon died, and now we have the knowledge of our human dilemmas without any real hope for change. there is no The Man and there is no revolution. Just an entire world of pragmatic individuals.
no one rocks the boat anymore. no one speaks the words worth hearing--or they are not spoken loud enough. the church contents itself with a sort of Feng Shui of theological furniture. the only freedom pop culture desires is the freedom to consume. and all around us peace is being slaughtered, any meaningful communities that are not being actively destroyed are dying of neglect, people are lonely, and increasingly visible to all is how disfigured we all are as humans. but no one has the will to speak up, to challenge the status quo or the powers of the air that hold us captive.
Lennon grappled with those powers. That's why his music--even the sellout music, the sugarcoated together with the deeply honest, is treasured for its beauty and ability to speak about life to our cold dark hearts.
Dr. Beech paces behind a podium in a required class in a school specializing in speaking to the happy comfortable people and declaims with a spirit fervor dead and cold and unheard in our society since the seventies. his words kindle little fires, risky scary and necessary, in the ears of his hearers.
why are we stoning our prophets?
08 December 2005
reasons i am happy to be alive:
i. am planning a winter hiking trip with a paramedic/ass't forest ranger from work. for tomorrow. in the snow. sleeping outside. we are packing mango-chai granola and indian rice dishes. we are persevering in spite of of the best efforts of frigid and bitter bureaucracies at work and the threat of hunters in the field.
ii. dan sahli. jared rosenau. seth nichols. chris marshall.
iii. eileen frawley, who can turn failing to finish a bike oddysey into something fun.
iv. the afterglow from an amazing houghton trip. and hi uan's amazing back massage. with paul christensen's company.
v. i saved a life this week. (finally!) within fourteen minutes of calling 911, our young gunshot wound victim was recieving definitive care at the Erie County Medical Center. it didn't look great for him, the .40 cal hole in his ribs with a matching exit wound in the back and the rather white cast his skin was taking on, and the increasing incoherence--he had started circling the drain as we arrived--but word from surgery is that he's going to pull through. i drove, and directed backboarding/extrication while Nils the Norwegian Paramedic prepped the rig.
yeah diggity. so let the tally now stand; as far as immediate life threats go: the Reaper: 4, Me: 1. i am very happy to finally be on the board.
vi. the postal service
vii. The US Postal Service
viii. the very persistent and full of surprises Rosaline Kelada-Sedra, who demanded a story from me last December and finally got it two weeks ago, and with it more soul-searching monologue than she bargained for (and indeed more than i had delivered since...well, certain portentous events). and who likes the Original Pancake House. and embraces her own Africa-time.
ix. a partner who is easy to work with and compassionate with patients. even if a bit disgruntled. and a bigger, shinier, all-around-nicer ambulance. here's to #557: 432864 miles and may she keep on tickin'!
x. Legends of the Fall ...but it makes me sad, too...in a good way?
xi. lunch with Pauls Shaffner, Christensen, and Shea, with guest appearances by Woolseys, Fortes', and Kriggs.
yeah eye candy! (or is it...iCandy? muah-ha hah hah. watch your shoulders!)
xii. driving CHOB 501, the Neonatal Intensive Care Transport, twice in one night, down to my old hospital haunts in Olean and Wellsville, in a blinding snowstorm, to pick up ailing preemies with a Neonatal Nurse Practitioner and a Neonatal Respiratory Therapist. and doing the whole drive basically--nearly to Pennsylvania and back--with lights and sirens on. and having the team compliment me at the end of the trip on being an excellent driver. yesssss...taking care of cute little newborns. and visiting the southern tier. priceless.
xiii. my grandpa told me the other day that he wants to visit my brother in africa and he wants me to come with him. i couldn't imagine a more awesome journey, an epoch for the books of lore.
xiv. christmas is coming--and i am lucky enough to get a few days around the holiday off! then there's new years, a new years i can legally drink at! and shelly bloser's wedding!
xv. the amazingly productive social effects of drinking beer together. it's like the new commensality.
xvi. i'm going to sleep now--in a bed i made, in a room i rent, with money i make, clothes i bought, furniture i fashioned, and food i cook. a comfortable place of my own.
a toast: to living on my own terms. (hah! as much as a disgruntled cog in a bitterly steep and harshly uncaring power structure can...) "to the founder of the feast..."
ii. dan sahli. jared rosenau. seth nichols. chris marshall.
iii. eileen frawley, who can turn failing to finish a bike oddysey into something fun.
iv. the afterglow from an amazing houghton trip. and hi uan's amazing back massage. with paul christensen's company.
v. i saved a life this week. (finally!) within fourteen minutes of calling 911, our young gunshot wound victim was recieving definitive care at the Erie County Medical Center. it didn't look great for him, the .40 cal hole in his ribs with a matching exit wound in the back and the rather white cast his skin was taking on, and the increasing incoherence--he had started circling the drain as we arrived--but word from surgery is that he's going to pull through. i drove, and directed backboarding/extrication while Nils the Norwegian Paramedic prepped the rig.
yeah diggity. so let the tally now stand; as far as immediate life threats go: the Reaper: 4, Me: 1. i am very happy to finally be on the board.
vi. the postal service
vii. The US Postal Service
viii. the very persistent and full of surprises Rosaline Kelada-Sedra, who demanded a story from me last December and finally got it two weeks ago, and with it more soul-searching monologue than she bargained for (and indeed more than i had delivered since...well, certain portentous events). and who likes the Original Pancake House. and embraces her own Africa-time.
ix. a partner who is easy to work with and compassionate with patients. even if a bit disgruntled. and a bigger, shinier, all-around-nicer ambulance. here's to #557: 432864 miles and may she keep on tickin'!
x. Legends of the Fall ...but it makes me sad, too...in a good way?
xi. lunch with Pauls Shaffner, Christensen, and Shea, with guest appearances by Woolseys, Fortes', and Kriggs.
yeah eye candy! (or is it...iCandy? muah-ha hah hah. watch your shoulders!)
xii. driving CHOB 501, the Neonatal Intensive Care Transport, twice in one night, down to my old hospital haunts in Olean and Wellsville, in a blinding snowstorm, to pick up ailing preemies with a Neonatal Nurse Practitioner and a Neonatal Respiratory Therapist. and doing the whole drive basically--nearly to Pennsylvania and back--with lights and sirens on. and having the team compliment me at the end of the trip on being an excellent driver. yesssss...taking care of cute little newborns. and visiting the southern tier. priceless.
xiii. my grandpa told me the other day that he wants to visit my brother in africa and he wants me to come with him. i couldn't imagine a more awesome journey, an epoch for the books of lore.
xiv. christmas is coming--and i am lucky enough to get a few days around the holiday off! then there's new years, a new years i can legally drink at! and shelly bloser's wedding!
xv. the amazingly productive social effects of drinking beer together. it's like the new commensality.
xvi. i'm going to sleep now--in a bed i made, in a room i rent, with money i make, clothes i bought, furniture i fashioned, and food i cook. a comfortable place of my own.
a toast: to living on my own terms. (hah! as much as a disgruntled cog in a bitterly steep and harshly uncaring power structure can...) "to the founder of the feast..."
by popular demand...
wow. comments. i love it--after a rather long work week, it was cheer-i-fying to hear from so many of you. love ya...
for Michelle, and all those who wondered, Plough Publishing's (a now extinct entity) Advent (Watch for the Light) and Lenten (Bread and Wine) devotionals are worth whatever you have to pay to get your hands on them. They are, apparently, out of print. and, for the record, Mr. Ben Howard first introduced me to the fine devotionals, for which i am eternally greatful--in a very serious use of both words.
a few aspirations to liven the mundane workdays of the holidays and the mundane nonholiday holidays of January:
one.
rescue time from the hecticity to put some time and thought into seriously thoughtful and not merely consumerist gifts for my family. because i don't get christmas vacation anymore--i get four days off, and i'm lucky for it.
two.
engage in a literary/visual tour-de-force by watching three exciting movies and reading three literary inspirations. i'm definitely watching The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, to which I'm excited to add Geisha and a little trepidatiously, Pride and Predjudice,. Then, I'll read Pride and Predjudice, Memoirs of a Geisha, and the novella that inspired my all time favorite movie, Legends of the Fall. I've already watched Legends, in fact re-watched it today, and of course from time immemorial read the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. in point of fact, my father read it to me as a child, and I have been thinking of late how greatful I am to him for that. and the (seriously) hundreds of books, biographies, and theological treatises that he read to us, faithfully, night after night throughout my childhood. I owe most of my literary knowledge and vocabulary to those books.
hitch. and shameless begging.
does anyone have/want to loan me Geisha? i think Eileen's going to loan me Pride...right Eileen? right?
three.
somehwere in there find time to watch Peter Jackson's King Kong, for which I am rather excited, Aeon Flux (Matrix with a girl? hmmmm), and The Family Stone (can you say Rachel MacAdams...?), Walk the Line (what can I say? I love Johnny Cash...). and, of course, Mike F and Becca B, you must join me because I have to see Rent and it wouldn't be the same without you...
four.
that's just for fun. for serious, Capote and Good Night and Good Luck demand attention, though they may wait for DVD release. Syriana is billed not just as a excellent movie, but a window into oil politics--and i'm greatly intrigued. let's not even mention the well-reviewed Squid and the Whale and Ushpizin.
five.
and finally. here's the challenge. Brokeback Mountain stars Heath Ledger, who has been billed on various lists as the sexiest man in America, and Jake Gyllenhaal, an up-and-coming actor who is often touted as the otherwise-good-point in recent not-so-amazing movies. Ledger has been playing heartthrob successfully for years (cute Aussie exchange student, witty New Yawk ad executive, and grinning Southern warrior-archeologist) and Jake the man's man and stoic warrior. the twist is, Brokeback Mountain is the somewhat painful love story of these two sheep ranch hands and their homosexual relationship, based on Anne Proulx's novella of the same name. it's been getting tremendous reviews, including an excellent Rolling Stone article that occumpanied my breakfast. why is a chick-flick-for-gay-guys on my must-see list this season?
this is important. a few of my friends, both old and new, are homosexuals. others have dabbled in or struggled with the label and stereotype of "he-who-sleeps-with-guys". in many circles, it's pretty much anathema--entire lives and stories, situations and individuals are redwashed by one category of their lives, one aspect of their human experience and expression. many communities calling themselves Christian live in a kind of terrified ignorance of the increasingly expanding and diversifying cultural phenomena. there's a terrified, eyes-squeezed-shut, someone-please-explain-this-to-me-so-I-don't-have-to-wrestle-with-it-myself mentality effectively isolating entire communities (such as the one from which I just graduated) from a large number of people who, in the eyes of God, cannot be simply thought of as write-offs or deeply flawed individuals.
so. do yourself a favor and do something risky. go watch Brokeback Mountain (or, if you're daring, Transamerica) this holiday. then find a gay friend and strike up a conversation and see what they think. maybe it'll end up being a bomb of a movie, or maybe it will mean to them what Legends of the Fall means to me. if you feel bold, check college campuses and hip coffeehouses for pamphlets advertising films that have sprung up from the gay community. now, i'm not advocating everyone going out and buying a gay porn tape. far from it. don't be silly. you're wasting your time. but: there's been quite a bit of pain involved in being gay all over the world, and the stories and voices from that movement have often made themselves heard through cinema. maybe it's time to start listening to those voices and hearing what they have to say, and how they have become the stories of gay men and women (or is it gay men and lesbian women? my vocabulary is inadequate...) all over the world.
because the most difficult thing in the world, generally, is really stopping and listening to your neighbor before you try to love him.
for Michelle, and all those who wondered, Plough Publishing's (a now extinct entity) Advent (Watch for the Light) and Lenten (Bread and Wine) devotionals are worth whatever you have to pay to get your hands on them. They are, apparently, out of print. and, for the record, Mr. Ben Howard first introduced me to the fine devotionals, for which i am eternally greatful--in a very serious use of both words.
and now
for something Completely
. Different
a few aspirations to liven the mundane workdays of the holidays and the mundane nonholiday holidays of January:
one.
rescue time from the hecticity to put some time and thought into seriously thoughtful and not merely consumerist gifts for my family. because i don't get christmas vacation anymore--i get four days off, and i'm lucky for it.
two.
engage in a literary/visual tour-de-force by watching three exciting movies and reading three literary inspirations. i'm definitely watching The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, to which I'm excited to add Geisha and a little trepidatiously, Pride and Predjudice,. Then, I'll read
hitch. and shameless begging.
does anyone have/want to loan me Geisha? i think Eileen's going to loan me Pride...right Eileen? right?
three.
somehwere in there find time to watch Peter Jackson's King Kong, for which I am rather excited, Aeon Flux (Matrix with a girl? hmmmm), and The Family Stone (can you say Rachel MacAdams...?), Walk the Line (what can I say? I love Johnny Cash...). and, of course, Mike F and Becca B, you must join me because I have to see Rent and it wouldn't be the same without you...
four.
that's just for fun. for serious, Capote and Good Night and Good Luck demand attention, though they may wait for DVD release. Syriana is billed not just as a excellent movie, but a window into oil politics--and i'm greatly intrigued. let's not even mention the well-reviewed Squid and the Whale and Ushpizin.
five.
and finally. here's the challenge. Brokeback Mountain stars Heath Ledger, who has been billed on various lists as the sexiest man in America, and Jake Gyllenhaal, an up-and-coming actor who is often touted as the otherwise-good-point in recent not-so-amazing movies. Ledger has been playing heartthrob successfully for years (cute Aussie exchange student, witty New Yawk ad executive, and grinning Southern warrior-archeologist) and Jake the man's man and stoic warrior. the twist is, Brokeback Mountain is the somewhat painful love story of these two sheep ranch hands and their homosexual relationship, based on Anne Proulx's novella of the same name. it's been getting tremendous reviews, including an excellent Rolling Stone article that occumpanied my breakfast. why is a chick-flick-for-gay-guys on my must-see list this season?
this is important. a few of my friends, both old and new, are homosexuals. others have dabbled in or struggled with the label and stereotype of "he-who-sleeps-with-guys". in many circles, it's pretty much anathema--entire lives and stories, situations and individuals are redwashed by one category of their lives, one aspect of their human experience and expression. many communities calling themselves Christian live in a kind of terrified ignorance of the increasingly expanding and diversifying cultural phenomena. there's a terrified, eyes-squeezed-shut, someone-please-explain-this-to-me-so-I-don't-have-to-wrestle-with-it-myself mentality effectively isolating entire communities (such as the one from which I just graduated) from a large number of people who, in the eyes of God, cannot be simply thought of as write-offs or deeply flawed individuals.
so. do yourself a favor and do something risky. go watch Brokeback Mountain (or, if you're daring, Transamerica) this holiday. then find a gay friend and strike up a conversation and see what they think. maybe it'll end up being a bomb of a movie, or maybe it will mean to them what Legends of the Fall means to me. if you feel bold, check college campuses and hip coffeehouses for pamphlets advertising films that have sprung up from the gay community. now, i'm not advocating everyone going out and buying a gay porn tape. far from it. don't be silly. you're wasting your time. but: there's been quite a bit of pain involved in being gay all over the world, and the stories and voices from that movement have often made themselves heard through cinema. maybe it's time to start listening to those voices and hearing what they have to say, and how they have become the stories of gay men and women (or is it gay men and lesbian women? my vocabulary is inadequate...) all over the world.
because the most difficult thing in the world, generally, is really stopping and listening to your neighbor before you try to love him.
01 December 2005
a gift
i awoke this morning awash in lethargy and disillusionment; i wondered if i would ever escape this bent-inward-self. i thought about how empty and vain and full of sound and fury my life is--i was consumed especially by my ability to pontificate without end on righteousness and justice and truth and the spiritual journey without actually taking part in the holy struggle--the jihad--to make those things realities. i wondered where i would find the strength to shake off a lifestyle of feeling good about rearranging mental furniture and renovating dusty theologies without setting foot outside my very comfortable little life.
i seem to have come to a sluggish impasse; despite all my railings and incisive indictments of modern consumerism identities and drowsy unincarnate churches theology without praxis, i have built a comfortably smug specialist consumer identity, become a drowsily unincarnate fashionable talking head, and filled myself with the importance of my ideas without feeding or clothing or comforting a single hungry, naked or brokenhearted person this week.
so i lay there, troubled and a little perplexed; where is my salvation? who can resurrect the dead, who can bring my sick soul to health?
i stood up and dealt with the sour milk in the fridge and distinct lack of breakfast cereals (my daily staple) in my larder. i called a few friends and invited one to dinner, to break out of my habitual isolation. and later, as i went walking down the sidewalk--i did one of those leaping-and-kicking-your-feet-together sort of leprechaun things that cool people in musicals do and cool people in real life never do. especially not in the middle of my neighborhood. but i felt like doing it, because being outside always cheers me up, even on (sometimes, especially on) blustery days in late fall. and i figure, if i do it enough, i'll be able to manage tapping my heels together twice midjump, instead of my current quick-clap-and-stumble awkward version.
and as i hung there midair, thinking at the speed of light so as to have great and amazing thought frozen in micromoments of action, i remembered that not three months ago i was walking on crutches. For two months i couldn't go anywhere without an ankle brace on. i would come home from work limping like an old man and grab ice packs out of the freezer. Four weeks ago a grin split my face and i leaped for joy (immediately grimacing in pain) for the boy who once ran three miles in twenty-one minutes could finally managed more than a gimpy one-block jog. and sometime last week i was standing on my damaged right ankle stretching really far when i realized how miraculous it was that i was feeling no pain.
so there i am, hanging midair with panache to make that dude from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers green with envy, thinking, wow. i am also talking about girls (i guess they're women now that i'm officially a long way removed from high school) again with Dan Sahli and laughing carefreely more often and speaking and writing with boldness and confidence that were completely shattered last year. i'm no longer so easily blown and tossed by discouragement and stress, and i make bold plans more often and am dreaming and stowing away cash for the future. i'm a long way from that long December.
the body heals when you give it time--it's processes are slow, almost imperceptible until you look at baby pictures. i went from one foot to 5'11" one quarter-inch at a time, and i went from 135 (my pre-college weight) to 160 one all-you-can-eat cafeteria buffet and one step-carrying-sixty-pounds-and-a-canoe at a time. i shave my head and it grows--not when i'm watching, but behind my back, while i'm asleep. i wake one morning after another, one bowl of cereal at a time, over and over and over and over again, dressing for work and shaving and riding off and riding back and sleeping and waking and doing it all over again. and my body is nourished and wore out and rested and life goes on. the sun comes up. the sun goes down. the seasons pass, and turn around, and come again.
and my ankle heals. and so does my heart. and when i peruse the pictures from Tanzania, and the journal and blog entries from last year, i remember a weekend when i couldn't walk for the pain in my ankle and a week where i didn't talk to anyone for the pain that was in my heart. and last week i rode my bicycle fifty miles and at the end knew such richness of fellowship and joy as blows away the word friend. the ways of salvation are slow wrought, painful, meandering, and mundane. they are accomplished over days and months and years, and even generations. they are always quietly lapping like waves on the shore, and as deep and mysterious and mercurial as the oceans.
so, there i was, midleap, and part of my heart was stilled and awe-filled and at peace. but i landed (with a slight wince--i'm still not full well yet) and even reassured, i hunger still to be more than an idea-monger, words without substance and thought without deed, unformed or misshapen steel. i know my need more than ever to be saved and remade and brought to life. and i know more than ever the forces of death and despair that stalk through the streets of the city of my sojourn, how they strike the rich and the poor and the working-to-get-by alike, forces that i feel bound to see but powerless to resist.
that's when i checked my mail (ok, i took a couple more leaps and made my destination and returned home--but for the sake of narrative, seriously, stop interrupting!) and found a package from home. with great rejoicing i discovered an Advent devotional from my mother, an early Christmas gift, the companion to a Lenten devotional which sustained my soul through difficult times in my Tanzanian spring and ever since.
immediately, i opened and read: in classic Christian form, Bonhoeffer (who knew rather intimately the confines of a prison cell), told of Advent as "a prison cell in which one waits and hopes and does various unessential things...but is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside," while J.B. Phillips warned against indifference, urging vigilance and the donning of work clothes, that we may be about our master's business when he comes to finish setting the world aright.
so now i'm not hungering alone, and my longing is not aimless. my soul is set on pilgrimage this winter season, and it is salvation that my heart is working towards. come and join us; watch and pray--time is short and our need is great.
i seem to have come to a sluggish impasse; despite all my railings and incisive indictments of modern consumerism identities and drowsy unincarnate churches theology without praxis, i have built a comfortably smug specialist consumer identity, become a drowsily unincarnate fashionable talking head, and filled myself with the importance of my ideas without feeding or clothing or comforting a single hungry, naked or brokenhearted person this week.
so i lay there, troubled and a little perplexed; where is my salvation? who can resurrect the dead, who can bring my sick soul to health?
i stood up and dealt with the sour milk in the fridge and distinct lack of breakfast cereals (my daily staple) in my larder. i called a few friends and invited one to dinner, to break out of my habitual isolation. and later, as i went walking down the sidewalk--i did one of those leaping-and-kicking-your-feet-together sort of leprechaun things that cool people in musicals do and cool people in real life never do. especially not in the middle of my neighborhood. but i felt like doing it, because being outside always cheers me up, even on (sometimes, especially on) blustery days in late fall. and i figure, if i do it enough, i'll be able to manage tapping my heels together twice midjump, instead of my current quick-clap-and-stumble awkward version.
and as i hung there midair, thinking at the speed of light so as to have great and amazing thought frozen in micromoments of action, i remembered that not three months ago i was walking on crutches. For two months i couldn't go anywhere without an ankle brace on. i would come home from work limping like an old man and grab ice packs out of the freezer. Four weeks ago a grin split my face and i leaped for joy (immediately grimacing in pain) for the boy who once ran three miles in twenty-one minutes could finally managed more than a gimpy one-block jog. and sometime last week i was standing on my damaged right ankle stretching really far when i realized how miraculous it was that i was feeling no pain.
so there i am, hanging midair with panache to make that dude from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers green with envy, thinking, wow. i am also talking about girls (i guess they're women now that i'm officially a long way removed from high school) again with Dan Sahli and laughing carefreely more often and speaking and writing with boldness and confidence that were completely shattered last year. i'm no longer so easily blown and tossed by discouragement and stress, and i make bold plans more often and am dreaming and stowing away cash for the future. i'm a long way from that long December.
the body heals when you give it time--it's processes are slow, almost imperceptible until you look at baby pictures. i went from one foot to 5'11" one quarter-inch at a time, and i went from 135 (my pre-college weight) to 160 one all-you-can-eat cafeteria buffet and one step-carrying-sixty-pounds-and-a-canoe at a time. i shave my head and it grows--not when i'm watching, but behind my back, while i'm asleep. i wake one morning after another, one bowl of cereal at a time, over and over and over and over again, dressing for work and shaving and riding off and riding back and sleeping and waking and doing it all over again. and my body is nourished and wore out and rested and life goes on. the sun comes up. the sun goes down. the seasons pass, and turn around, and come again.
and my ankle heals. and so does my heart. and when i peruse the pictures from Tanzania, and the journal and blog entries from last year, i remember a weekend when i couldn't walk for the pain in my ankle and a week where i didn't talk to anyone for the pain that was in my heart. and last week i rode my bicycle fifty miles and at the end knew such richness of fellowship and joy as blows away the word friend. the ways of salvation are slow wrought, painful, meandering, and mundane. they are accomplished over days and months and years, and even generations. they are always quietly lapping like waves on the shore, and as deep and mysterious and mercurial as the oceans.
so, there i was, midleap, and part of my heart was stilled and awe-filled and at peace. but i landed (with a slight wince--i'm still not full well yet) and even reassured, i hunger still to be more than an idea-monger, words without substance and thought without deed, unformed or misshapen steel. i know my need more than ever to be saved and remade and brought to life. and i know more than ever the forces of death and despair that stalk through the streets of the city of my sojourn, how they strike the rich and the poor and the working-to-get-by alike, forces that i feel bound to see but powerless to resist.
that's when i checked my mail (ok, i took a couple more leaps and made my destination and returned home--but for the sake of narrative, seriously, stop interrupting!) and found a package from home. with great rejoicing i discovered an Advent devotional from my mother, an early Christmas gift, the companion to a Lenten devotional which sustained my soul through difficult times in my Tanzanian spring and ever since.
immediately, i opened and read: in classic Christian form, Bonhoeffer (who knew rather intimately the confines of a prison cell), told of Advent as "a prison cell in which one waits and hopes and does various unessential things...but is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside," while J.B. Phillips warned against indifference, urging vigilance and the donning of work clothes, that we may be about our master's business when he comes to finish setting the world aright.
so now i'm not hungering alone, and my longing is not aimless. my soul is set on pilgrimage this winter season, and it is salvation that my heart is working towards. come and join us; watch and pray--time is short and our need is great.
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