those awake

Some Recent Alarms

Alarms | posted by Shaun O

The blog front has (obviously) been quiet.  We've recently gone to the email approach for conversations, and hopefully that will lead to some interesting things to share ... we'll see.  Blogging & comments just still isn't a workable medium for conversations.  What to use, then?

But, I will share some recent "alarms" (moments/things of awakening!) for me:

• Loren Eiseley's The Immense Journey.  This was on the syllabus for the Literary Nonfiction class that I'm sort of auditing right now, and I'm stunned by the beauty of this naturalist's writing.  It's fun to be introduced to someone that you feel like you could "work" with a bit (maybe some scholarship and whatnot) - and that's Eiseley for me right now.  This book is a collection of essays and they stand alone nicely too.  If you can find his essay The Bird and the Machine (rough link to badly layed-out version here), that would be a great essay to get acquainted with! 

• Sigur Ros Heima.  
  Did you see the documentary of their intimate tour around Iceland?  As much as I'm all about this band, I waited and waited to watch this piece at just the right time ... and then I sorta forgot about it (father, forgive me), but then I remembered and watched it recently, clutching the headphones to my ears ... Yep.  I'll never regret time spent listening, and in this case watching Sigur Ros. 

• Thoreau's Autumnal Tints and our tree!  Kyndra has been out of town, but I'm waiting for her to get back so that we can read Thoreau's essay together and watch the leaves around Reno continue to fall.  I don't know if it's finally owning our own place, or just the fact that we have one prominent, cool tree that our front windows look out upon; but watching the leaves change and fall has been meditative for me.  It has woken me up to fall. 

Pine Tree Tops

awake & reading : Gary Snyder Poetry | by Shaun O'Reilly

In the blue night
frost haze, the sky glows
with the moon
pine tree tops
bend snow-blue, fade
into sky, frost, starlight.
The creak of boots.
Rabbit tracks, deer tracks,
what do we know.

Ideas in the Ring

awake & reading : Rand and Brueggeman- | by Shaun O'Reilly

I had an interesting, yet unsurprising experience recently. 
I finally sat down to read some Ayn Rand, and I did so at the local university library.  I'm not a student (yet), so I can't leave with any books.  The reading happens on site.
Not a problem.
Especially with Rand's Anthem.  It is short and engaging, making it the quickest of reads.  *And I enjoyed that nuance of objectivism -- when you believe things are straight-up, to the point, and reasonable - then you write books in that way.  It's a pleasure to read something like that.  No mystery, just narrative ... like a refreshing glass of water after too many colas or beers or capri suns (I teach Sunday school, and I get thirsty doing it, okay?).

So, Anthem is a story of breaking free and being an individual.  I confessed to the friends reading it with me that it's a little tough for me to read and detach the narrative story from where I think the "philosophy" is heading.  I hate to be doing that, but I've got some pent up energy with Rand, I guess.  While reading about characters discovering individuality, I kept thinking - "okay, but how far does this go?  Who really wants to break free so far as to disconnect from community?  What does the world look like when billions of people all go after their own needs above all else?"  But, see, that's not the story of _Anthem_.  The story is about a certain character discovering the freedom of possessing will, imagination, and an open future.

I can't argue with that.  And I wouldn't want to.  I celebrate it!

So, the interesting experience was that directly after finishing the book and driving home, I hopped online to check some twitters.  I got one that linked to "here's some old testament wisdom about the current financial crisis."  So, innocently, I click!  I welcome that wisdom.

Enter, Walter Brueggeman... with a genius article on the holistic advice of the Psalms and other old testament texts.  The tagline is, Biblical faith invites us out of self-destruction toward God's generosity and abundance.  After reading it, I can't argue with a lick of his thoughts either - and they all point to covenant, generosity, togetherness. 

So, then I had these two cool ideas swimming the channels of my cranium.  But it was more like a boxing match than a swimming pool.  Suddenly, my Rand point-of-view is tossed into the ring and a fight ensues.  Because the Bible is such a robust and experienced fighter (in my mind), it worked the body and won in a few short rounds.  The thing is, I don't know who I was really rooting for.  I'd love to see Rand fight again, to learn to appreciate the moves.  But I can't help what happened in this specific case.  It was unfortunate, but I've taken good things away from both.  

So, chime in if you've got an idea on how to stew on/with opposing ideas, instead of letting them begin beating each other up. 

Oh, and all ideas on Rand's Anthem or the Brueggeman article above are most welcome.  I really think B. is on to something we can use in the current econ. crisis ... and I think Rand was on to something that can inspire humanity, a challenge to crawl out of the ruts of tradition and conformity.   

Useful words

awake & reading : Good Poems- by Garrison Keillor | by Shaun O'Reilly

During a recent trip out of town - on the plane, and on all the public transit I took around the great city of Portland - I finally opened up and began to soak in the wonder of Garrison Keillor's selection of Good Poems.  I've had the book for a while, and only now really read much of what was in there.  Perhaps needless to say, it is a collection of absolute gems.  I can't put it down and I'm very interested to learn more about many of the poets I've never heard of.
So, in celebration, here's a poem I read on the plane and have read maybe 20 times since.  It is right on, within and beyond me. 

To be of Use    by Marge Piercy
 
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real. 

(deep breath)
Reading this, I'm thankful for  friends that are awake; I hope and pray I am of use to them as well. 

Some Imagine Well

awakening : Imagination/Church | posted by Shaun O

In her book Holy the Firm, Annie Dillard stitches words together like a fine woven fabric.  I stumbled on a passage that almost perfectly describes the "tension" (or you might say "play") between the different waking alarms in my life:  literature, nature, theology, love.  It seems even to  play at the fact that I recently moved 1,650 miles away and left church work intending to begin literature/nature studies ...and just 2 months later have found myself working within the church again.  I can't imagine where this is going.  (Or can I?)...  It is a wild ride. 

And here's what she writes,

"There is no one but us.  There never has been.  There have been generations which remembered, and generations which forgot; there has never been a generation of whole men and women who lived well for even one day.  Yet some have imagined well, with honesty and art, the detail of such a life, and have described it with such grace , that we mistake vision for history, dream for description, and fancy that life has devolved.  So.  You learn this studying any history at all, especially the lives of artists and visionaries; you learn it from Emerson, who noticed that the meanness of our days is itself worth our thought; and you learn it, fitful in your pew, at church."

So I say, again, see you Sunday. -s.o

Way in the World - theirs or ours?

awake & reading : Sick of Nature - by David Gessner | by Shaun O'Reilly

I'm enjoying my reading of a borrowed copy of David Gessner's Sick of Nature.  My neighbor loaned it to me, in a string of what I hope to be many loaned books through which I scour the margins to find his Phd notes, and read (and re-read) the underlined texts, continuously trying to understand what he's chosen to underline (like, why in the world would he underline "Fuck Thoreau.  Let's party!"?).

It's moot, because I do know why he's underlined that.  It's the point of the book, though the book takes 220 some odd pages to explain what that fiery expletive is getting at. 
And it's good.  Gessner is a varsity nature writer taking time in this collection of essays to ask hard questions about writing and writers and form and all the other seemingly "untouchable" themes in the publishing/literary world.  I have seriously stopped down a few times and asked out loud, "is he really allowed to write about this?"  But like I said, it's good.  Read a more formal review here.

For now I wanted to point to a particular topic that I know has been of interest at this blog and in some of the Wendell Berry writings that we have read together and then blogged about.  Gessner includes a short essay called "A Polygamist of Place."  In it he describes the joy and tension of being about and writing about at least two distinct places (for him, Cape Cod and the Colorado Rockies or the West).  He specifically mentions our holy Berry, along with John Hay,  who have both "made marriage to their chosen places a primary metaphor in their work."  But Gessner is honest about place-ness in his writing and in his life.  He wonders openly about committing to the terms that writers like Wendell Berry have associated with life in one place.  Here is where I sensed the common ground for those of us who admire Berry so deeply and also wonder (daily) how our lives line up with the agrarian standard. 
I found Gessner's candor refreshing; we share the common yoke of living up to our heroes' ideals. 

I searched a bit online for the essay, but haven't found a complete version (that is what is needed).  But here are some out-of-context paragraphs that at least spur on some thought concerning "marriage" to one place. 

The truth is that all this talk of settling and geographical marriage makes me uneasy.  I'm not ready yet to say a forever "I do" to one town or county, and despite the pressure of my nature-writing forefathers, I'm not sure I have to.  For all Berry's agrarian bullying, his is only one way to be in the world.  "Firm ground is not available ground," wrote A. R. Ammons, and so it is for me.  I won't go as far as to say that I am more comfortable with chaos, just that chaos is what life has dealt me.  It would be nice if my world centered on one local place, but it does not.  So I need to find another way.

But if marriage to a place is something of a strange metaphor, it's also a fairly natural one.  Having spent more time on this small neck of land on Cape Cod than anywhere else in the world, I can see how the idea that I will be here forever appeals.  Practically speaking, a long-term commitment to place means you are more likely to undertake a long-term study of place, of its woodchucks or terns, say.  And even if you don't undertake anything systematic, you will begin to notice things over time -- they will come to you.  But of course you can know a place over time without being monogamous to that place, which the marriage metaphor still, hopefully, implies.  Marriage, as a cultural institution, seems too limiting a metaphor for our love of place, particularly since we are the ancestors of creatures who roamed the world over.

So, there they are - thoughts I wasn't sure I was allowed to think!  But, ultimately I know that conversing with the ideas of Berry (or Thoreau, Jesus, Chomsky, or McCain) will leave us wiser and truer to ourselves and our place and our situations, so let's not hesitate.  Gessner fires, "his is only one way to be in the world," and I hope we all find the next, new, right and good ways ... with or without the expletives.    

------------------------

ps- amazing "word" from Stephen Colbert on McCain's lexicon & it's connection to Thoreau!  HERE.

Everything Must Change - reflection 3

awake & reading : Everything Must Change - chp. 26 by Brian Mclaren | by Shaun O'Reilly

Chp. 26 of McLaren's book is titled, "Collaboration for Co-liberation." I'm interested in this section, probably mostly because I know so little about it.  I esteem "collaboration" in art and life, but I feel like I've only scratched the surface of truly working, thinking, or even living intentionally with others.
As for liberation ... do you know my stats?!  Upper/Middle class churchy white male, lived most of my life in the suburbs of DFW.  "Liberty" is something me and my stat-mates (upper/middle class white, "churched", suburban males) have just been happy our forebears fought and won for us back in the 18th Century.  Liberation thoughts aren't on my radar each day.  But, I think I miss something when I ignore them.  McLaren writes about the liberation from rampant capitalism - a system that has become a sort of religion - "theocapitalism."  Earlier in the book, he explained some principles of the system as:

The Theocapitalist Religion (p. 190)
"Theocapitalism" does for its adherents what any religion does [quoting Tom Beaudoin]:

1. gives an identity
2. helps one belong to a community
3. develops trust
4. allows one to experience ecstasy
5. communicates transcendence
6. provides conversion to a new way of life
7. promises rest for the heart

Four Spiritual Laws of Theocapitalism:

1. Law of Progress through Rapid Growth
2. Law of Serenity through Possession and Consumption
3. Law of Salvation through Competition Alone*
4. Freedom to Prosper through Unaccountable Corporations

The "co-liberation" McLaren writes about in Chp. 26th is in response to this sort of system described above.  So here are two paragraphs from the chapter, looking back and thinking forward.  I welcome discussion:

"The twentieth century was, in many ways, a battle between two economic systems.  Communism specialized in distribution but failed at production.  As a result, it ended up doing a great job of distributing poverty evenly.  Capitalism was excellent at production but weak at distribution.  As a result, it ended up rewarding the wealthy with obscene amounts of wealth while the poor suffered on in horrible degradation and indignity.  *[original analysis from thoughts by Rene Padilla]

The twenty-first century began in the aftermath of the defeat of Marxism.  The story of the coming century will likely be the story of whether a sustainable form of capitalism can be saved from theocapitalism, or whether unrestrained theocapitalism will result in such gross inequity between rich and poor that violence and counterviolence will bring civilization to a standstill, or perhaps worse."

Fresh, always.

awake & reading : The Long-Legged House by Wendell Berry|posted by Shaun O'Reilly

This is startling and true.  It feels more real than much of the rest of my life. 
I find such a connection to the writings of Wendell Berry, and it is almost that every time I pick something up and begin to read/take-in the words, I am reading something I've always known, yet it is as fresh as each new morning. 

In what I read today, I thought of Brian, a fellow ThoseAwake blogger and a model citizen that has recently moved into a new household and is also eagerly expecting the birth of his and his wife's first child.

From the essay Some Thoughts on Citizenship and Conscience in Honor of Don Pratt,

The idea of citizenship in the United States seems to me to have been greatly oversimplified.  It has become permissible to assume that all one needs to do to be a good citizen is to vote and obey and pay taxes, as if one can be a good citizen without being a citizen either of a community or of a place.  As if citizenship is merely a matter of perfunctory dutifulness, a periodic deference to the organizations, beyond which it is every man for himself.

Because several years ago I became by choice resident of the place I am native to, which I know intimately and love strongly, I have begun to understand citizenship in more complex terms.  As I have come to see it, it requires devotion and dedication, and a certain inescapable bewilderment and suffering.  It needs all the virtues, all of one's attention, all the knowledge that one can gain and bring to bear, all the powers of one's imagination and conscience and feeling.  It is the complete action.  Rightly understood, its influence and concern permeate the whole society, from the children's bedroom to the capitol. 

But it begins at home.  Its meanings come clearest, it is felt most intensely in one's own house.  The health, coherence, and meaningfulness of one's own household are the measure of the success of the government, and not the other way around.

My devotion thins as it widens.  I care more for my household than for the town of Port Royal, more for the town of Port Royal than for the County of Henry, more for the County of Henry than for the State of Kentucky, more for the State of Kentucky than for the United States of America.  But I do not care more for the United States of America than for the world. 

I must attempt to care as much for the world as for my household.  Those are the poles between which a competent morality would balance and mediate: the doorstep and the planet.  The most meaningful dependence of my house is not on the U.S. government, but on the world, the earth.  No matter how sophisticated and complex and powerful our institutions, we are still exactly as dependent on the earth as the earthworms.  To cease to know this, and to fail to act upon the knowledge, is to begin to die the death of a broken machine.  In default of man's personal cherishing and care, now that his machinery has become so awesomely powerful, the earth must become the victim of his institutions, the violent self-destructive machinery of man-in-the-abstract.  And so, conversely, the most meaningful dependence of the earth is not on the U.S. government, but on my household - how I live, how I raise my children, how I care for the land entrusted to me.

this is an excerpt from the book The Long-Legged House - 1969 - Wendell Berry's first collection of essays.

Everything Must Change - reflection2

awake & reading : Everything Must Change by Brian McLaren | posted by Shaun O'Reilly

Parts 2 & 3 of McLaren's book have really picked up.  I like the interplay; this is a great book for discussion.  He's ventured into the politik of Jesus, and so it's got to be a safe and friendly discussion, mind you, but the ideas are accessible, important, challenging and meaningful.  *That's good for yet another non-fiction Christian book.  But this stands out because it is a book ultimately about action. These first few parts are mostly about the "system" though.  Part 2 is called the "Suicide System," and it resonated with me in many ways.  And then he moves from that close look at current economics (society & church) to a spiritual focus.  Part 3 is called "Reframing Jesus," and while re-iterating some general ideas from the "emergent" side of things, he sums it up nicely in these phrases:     

Personally, I am convinced that Jesus' good news was and is better news than we have been led to believe by the conventional view.  In spite of the stress and anxiety associated with calls for radical rethinking and where necessary, radical reformation, I believe we need to face the real possibility that the conventional view has in many ways been domesticated, watered down, and co-opted by the dominant framing story of our modern Western culture, and as a result, has become "a gospel about Jesus" but not "the gospel of Jesus."

Good point:  about Jesus or of Jesus?  So, in "reframing Jesus" we begin to talk about what His gospel really is ... and one group that first came to my mind is the Simple way - a group of people who have themselves lived out change for the gospel.

Everything Must Change - reflection 1

awake & reading : Everything Must Change by Brian McLaren | posted by Shaun O'Reilly

Over the next month I'll be blogging thoughts and reflections as I read Brian McLaren's upcoming book Everything Must Change.  I responded to an open email from brianmclaren.net telling bloggers they can get an advanced copy to blog before October 1st, and a copy came in the mail.  So here we go. 

I think the first few chapters start slowly for me.  I can sense that things are being "set up" here in the beginning, but it seems slower than some of the beginnings to his other books.  As a non-fiction book about Christian action I understand the need to set the stage and give some introduction to the discussion - at least that's what saying something substantial usually requires.

The book is sectioned in 8 parts, with 4 or 5 chapters for each one. 
Upon reaching chapter 5, the end of part 1 of the book, the tone changes and the writing heats up.  The chapter is a basic (but good) exploration of the beginnings of "postmodern" thought, some history behind the post-modern changes, and how the Christian religion changes therein.  A lot is said simply in the subtitles heading the sections within the chapter; they include:  "A Failed Religion?", "The Story of the Word Postmodern", and "The Roots of Certainty."  Having heard the term "postmodern" tossed back and forth the past few years, sometimes celebrated, sometimes attempting to be understood, and sometimes outright dismissed as evil, this 8 page chapter is a great introductory discussion of a usually confusing and difficult topic, and especially as it pertains to religion.  All 8 pages go together, so it's hard to pick a piece out to share, and yet sharing his words are probably the best way to share reflection on this chapter.  So, at the risk of misunderstanding the chapter, but in hope of spreading some of the discovered clarity, here's an excerpt from the subtitled section, "The Story of the Word Postmodern" :

Because of the ways that the word postmodern has been abused -- by fans and foes alike -- I am often tempted to dump it altogether.  But one of the best ways to better understand something is to learn its story, and the story of the term postmodern is worth understanding and relevant to our conversation, especially as it relates to the word postcolonial.

In the aftermath of World War II, many European intellectuals (eventually joined by Americans and many others) were forced to ask this question: how could this have happened?  This referred to two world wars, and especially to the Holocaust.  After 1945, intellectuals around the world began asking how Germany in particular -- the epicenter of the Enlightenment with its rationality and its scientific mind-set -- could sink into the barbarism of Nazism and all it entailed.  They were simultaneously assessing even greater atrocities in the former Soviet Union under Stalin (1922-1953).

The diagnosis that emerged may be faulty, but one must at least applaud the diagnosticians for asking what went wrong and what should be done about it.  The diagnosticians could have identified the Christian religion itself as the problem.  After all, Hitler was a Catholic in good standing, and Germany was ostensibly a Christian country dually resourced by Roman Catholicism and the Reformation heritage of Martin Luther, both of which contributed significantly to the anti-Semitism that energized Nazism.  But these European intellectuals instead identified a disease shared by the Christian religion and European civilization:  they diagnosed the sickness that had befallen Western Civilization in general and "Christian" Germany in particular to be excessive confidence.

In other words, just as cancer is an excessive growth of cells -- both cells and growth normally being good things -- they realized that Nazism was an excessive growth of confidence --confidence in their national ethos, in their rational and interpretive powers, in their scientific prowess, and so on.  When confidence grew out of proportion, it became malignant, giving the "us" of Germany a kind of manic hyperconfidence to claim racial superiority and global dominance, even if that meant extermination of those who were determined to be "other," "them," or "not us" -- Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, gypsies, the mentally handicapped, and so on.

From here, McLaren notes how thinkers began to ask:  "what was the source of this cancer of excessive confidence?"An answer is found in how we perceive and view the world.  The philosophy of the day (the strong reason of Descartes) along with cultures' and people groups' competing "framing stories" -- stories that account grievances, call for revenge, name the chosen & the despised -- these are sources of a complete confidence that has sometimes proved quite destructive.  The term "postmodern" also provides a vocabulary of understanding modes of life of the past -- pre-modern, modern.  If "modern"/industrial life seemed built upon growing toward an excessive confidence in Reason or in a "Framing Story", then what would come next if people turn from such confidence?

Each chapter of the book ends with group discussion questions, and some of them for chapter 5 are:

• The author speaks of colonialism in this chapter.  As a group, define the term and give examples of it from history.
• How do you respond to the discussion of excessive confidence as a cancer in Western civilization?  Where do you see examples of excessive confidence?
• Give an example of a framing story that has helped one group of people harm another group of people.
• What do you think the author might mean when he suggests Jesus was confronting a set of framing stories in his day and seeking to replace them with another framing story?

And, while I think you'll have to get the book and read the chapter to best answer the questions, I can only suggest that this discussion of Action & Change is good, right, worthy and should be open to all!  I am glad, because I feel like McLaren is (attempting) to bridge a gap between the academics (in religion & philosophy & sociology) and the guy in the pew (Catholic, Baptist, or otherwise) or the girl on the street (inner-city, suburb, DFW or Nairobi).   On to part 2...