I am a post-fundamentalist, post-modern pilgrim, who at most professes to be trying to become a Christian (as Kierkegaard would say) as I seek to learn what it means to live as part of a Kingdom where the first is last and the servant is the greatest, and where the least of these is of deep importance.
This past week, Emerson turned ten months and had some milestones to show for it. Emerson started the week by moving from his baby bath tub into the big bathtub. And boy was he excited!
Now with his fifth tooth coming in, he's moving on to more and more solid foods and learning to eat on his own. We introduced him to whole wheat saltines, and he loved them. Finally, after a few times of trying to shove the entire thing into his mouth, he realized it may not be wise to try to eat the whole cracker all at once! (word of advice: cracker crumbs and overalls don't mix!)
And to round out the end of the week's highlights, later in the week after Amber gave E a bath and set him on the floor, she went out of the room and came back to a smiling baby. After going out of the room again to find him smiling when she returned, she wondered what was going on while she was out of the room. So, she peeked in while Emerson wasn't looking and found that he had discovered and was delighting in his "malehood"! Yes, you are a boy, son.
As I'm sure it has been the case for you, I can't stop thinking about the situation in Haiti, the wreckage, the deaths, the slow progress in getting aid to mourning and poverty-stricken people. I can't stop thinking about how it takes a terrible tragedy such as this to get Americans to think its time to start sending significant aid to Haiti that will finally enable the country to create an infrastructure, how it takes a terrible tragedy such as this to jolt me out of my narcissistic, soulless slumber.
I am struck by mindless comments made by people like Pat Robertson, who seem to think they have a direct line to God, who think tragedies like earthquakes that kill hundreds of thousands of people, have simplistic reasons for their occurrence. And while there have been many quality responses to the "Christian" spokesperson--I was particularly compelled by Don Miller's as well as the bloggers at Sojourners (here and here -- although the cracks by Keith Olbermann are going a tad too far)--I still can't get around wondering why he still has a job, why people still listen to him (no wonder my parents didn't allow me to watch the 700 Club growing up!), how he could fail to realize that most of the people affected by the quake are (or at least claim to be) Christians--missionaries, relief workers, and followers of Jesus living in the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.
Theodicy (our attempts to give a reasoned response for why God allows evil in the world) simply fail. Auschwitz, the killing fields of Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, and even Haiti all point to Emmanuel Levinas's claim that we have reached the "End of Theodicy." There is no adequate answer. To try to give an answer--especially to someone who is hurting so deeply--is not only inadequate, it is grossly violent. Could some of those individuals who have endured the suffering be able to find meaning amidst the pain, terror, suffering, and evil? Yes. But it is not our job to offer it to them. Our only adequate response is an intellectual kenosis (Phil. 2:7), a self-emptying of our position of authority and having-all-the-answers and a bending down to help, serve, give, and sy/empathize.
Those who are there are requesting our prayers -- but who wants prayers from a condescending American who pompously "knows" Haiti's condition and what it needs (that is not a critique of Pat Robertson but all of us who think those "poor Haitians" just need America's money, America's democracy, America's hope, and America's direction)? They are requesting essentials like food and water and medical aid -- but even with our ships and helicopters and airplanes we are having trouble getting them there and we cannot successfully do so unless we parakaleo (come along side/help/comfort; John 15:26) them, work with them, and let them lead. They are requesting we help them rebuild their infrastructure, help them build housing for hundreds of thousands of people roaming the streets, and even temporarily set up a martial law to protect from large-scale vandalism and thieving -- but we must not offer these things from the position of the "Great White Hope," of power, of doing it our way, but by offering a humble strength, we can help Haiti become a better place that is still theirs. We can give money, we can act politically and ask the President to grant "Temporary Protective Status" to Haitians (just go to the link-its not that difficult!), and we can pray. We can leave them a "corner" of our possessions as the Israelites were commanded to leave the poor, the orphan, and the immigrant the edge of their field (Lev. 19:9) [You have to see Rob Bell's video on this topic]. But amidst it all, we must do so with a sense of gratitude, humility, and a healthy regard for the Other--knowing they have just as much to grace us with as we do them.
Let us give up our self-guilted sense of being obligated to provide a reasoned answer and act for Haiti--and for so many other widows and orphans and strangers--with a reckless grace: a grace that offers the poor a helping hand without expecting something in return, but a grace that begins with ourselves, that liberates ourselves from measuring up to some unknown requirement of having all the answers, of being right.
Well, it’s the last day of 2009, which means it is the last day I can conscientiously blog about the six different things I had planned to blog on over Christmas break. But as Christmas breaks always seems to go, I never get as much done as I had planned. Every Christmas break when we go to Indiana, I pack with me far more books and activities than I ever get around to—whether its because I enjoy the time off not feeling like I need to do anything, I am having fun with family and friends, or I get engrossed into my new Christmas presents, all the things I had planned seemed to fall by the wayside. I should feel good that at least this time I actually did read one of the books that I took with me!
Anyways, one of those activities I had planned, as I had already said, was to blog about at least six different things. So, since it’s about 10PM on New Year’s Eve, and I’m going strong on a martini and a half, a quick blurb about all six of them is in order!
EMERSON’S FIRST SNOWFALL
The Saturday before Christmas, Pittsburgh got five inches of glorious snow. It was Emerson’s first real snowfall, so we had to make the most of it. We pulled out Amber’s old sled from her childhood and pulled him around the neighborhood. He couldn’t quite figure out how to hold on yet, so if we started out pulling the sled to hard he just fell backwards and laid still on the ground (he looked a lot like Ralphie’s younger brother in the movie, “The Christmas Story”). But after a while, he was loving it. Later in the day, we took him outside and he watched me throw snowballs at a nearby electricity pole and he would burst out laughing every time I threw one and then turned around to look at him. Here are some pics!
EMERSON’S FIRST CHRISTMAS
Well, it was Emerson’s first Christmas and he pulled in the more gifts than he knows what to do with. Heck, we may even regift some of them and give them to him again at his first birthday! Seriously, he got so many gifts that he had to be put to bed before he even got to open them all. We told our family not to get him any clothes smaller than 18months outfits so he could grow into them and he’s already in 12 month outfits. Well, over the past two days, we’ve put him in some of his new clothes and they fit him like a glove. I never thought I’d have a nine-month old who wore 18-month clothing! Anyways, here are some pics!
SHOP CLASS AS SOULCRAFT
So, my father-in-law gave me perhaps the best (and most meaningful) gift this Christmas. It’s a book entitled Shop Class as Soulcraft written by a former philosophy PhD who is now a motorcycle mechanic (Greg Stoutenburg, this is definitely a book you would love!). One of the primary theses of the book (there are a number of really good points) is that the growth of “knowledge workers” at the expense of “labor workers” in our society has had a negative impact on our society: it has not only let to a shortage of mechanics, electricians, plumbers, etc in our nation, but has further increased our mind-body dualism, caused us to become detached from Nature, and has led us to believe that all physical labor requires little to no mental, ethical, or physical thought. Matthew Crawford not only addresses these issues, but makes many other memorable points. I mention only a couple: (1) Crawford points out that many times in our society we reduce our time to the amount of money we could make during that hour if we were at work. As a result, we reason: Changing my own oil of my car isn’t worth my while because in the amount of time it would take me I could have made $XX.XX. Crawford suggests that such thinking not only dehumanizes us (reducing us to consumers and money makers), but it detaches us from our world and our own things (we have no control over the possessions we own). Furthermore, there is an intrinsic value in learning how to change one’s own oil, learning some electrical, plumbing, or mechanical work that cannot be measured in dollar signs. (2) The caricatures we have made of blue-collar work – as if all such work is as mind-numbing as assembly line work or of the fat plumber with his butt crack hanging out – are poor misrepresentations. In reality, many blue collar workers make more than so-called white collar workers (like the plumber making $60-80/hr), and many white collar or “knowledge” work has now become just as mind-numbing and meaningless as the assembly line work so despised.
AVATAR
For our sixth anniversary (Dec. 27), Amber and I made good use of family members willing to babysit Emerson and went to a movie and dinner (dinner was a bit disappointing. We had planned to do Thai food, but apparently every Thai restaurant in Lafayette was closed for the break, so we had to settle on just going somewhere). So, we went and saw Avatar, which was the first movie we had seen in theaters since last Christmas break (we saw “Slumdog Millionaire” which is amazing) minus the drive in theater movies we’ve gone to this year with Emerson (We saw “UP!,” “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” and “Where the Wild Things Are” in the drive-in this year…all of which would have been worthwhile blog posts if I had found the time….).
Hm…So my review of Avatar is somewhat mixed. The special effects and colors are amazing, making one wish there were such a planet known as Pandora (seriously, they are amazing). On the other hand, the plot is entirely predictable, and if you’ve seen the previews you’ve gotten the entire gist of the movie: White man comes to invade the land of the “savages” and kill them (and the forests) in order to get their natural resources; A couple white people defect to the side of the “savages” and help them defeat the White man. In other words, Avatar is basically a sci-fi version of “Dances with Wolves” with a little bit of adult-level “Ferngully” mixed in. That’s the cold hard truth. And yet, amidst this extremely umambiguous plot line (i.e., not realistic), propagation of the “great White hope” viewpoint, and sad historical fact that the “savages” rarely (if ever) are on the winning side, I actually still liked this movie. Perhaps it was because these problematic issues were so glaringly obvious that I liked it, or simply because I empathize with a story that has been played out so many times throughout and continues to be played out and wish that the tide would somehow turn. For instance, the majority of the white people that side with the “savages” are those who have been assigned to appeal to them on a cultural level – learn their language, build them a school, etc – but these individuals’ roles exist solely to force the White man’s will on the minority. After reflecting on this scenario, it dawned on me that much of modern missions has had this kind of role: missionaries come in under the guise of bringing the minority group humanitarian goods but in reality (intentionally or unintentionally) serve to set the stage for the incoming of the Western power and cultural control. The history surrounding the Boxer Rebellion in China is a really good example of this, but many other examples abound (even down to the minute details, such as White missionaries who think Africans need to wear Western clothing before they get “saved.”).
“HOME”
This one will have to just settle as an intriguing thought: At what point, after you have moved away from the city you grew up in do you no longer call it home? In college, I called Lafayette home, which I’m sure is pretty typical. Even when I lived in Indianapolis owned my own home for over three years, I still called Lafayette home. But over the past couple weeks, between driving back and forth between Pittsburgh and Lafayette for Thanksgiving and Christmas, I have noticed myself calling both cities “home.” I think the switch is finally taking place.
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA
Over the course of this semester, Amber and I have been watching through the entire “Battlestar Galactica” TV series on DVD at the behest of a friend, and I have found it quite intriguing (we also watched the short sci-fi TV series “Firefly” which is also quite good). There is much to be said about this series. When they originally aired, they addressed numerous timely (and some, timeless) issues including racism, torture, terrorism, the misuse of technology, ethical issues related to the justice system, and numerous other political issues. What intrigues me most, however, is the explicit discussion of theological topics. Like the Chronicles of Narnia, it seems like when theology is cast in a completely different light—in a fictional setting—people really listen. Battlestar addresses belief in the supernatural, god (and gods), interpretation of scripture, predestination and destiny, and many other theological topics.
YEAR IN REVIEW/MEMORIES OF 2009
So, after counting, I realize this is now my seventh category. … Ah well. I had also hoped to do a “year in review” or at the very least, recount some of the many memories (mostly of Emerson) that occurred over this past year. There are the many other movies I had seen over the year (at home on DVD since I didn’t see them when they came out last year in theaters!) that were profound and worthy of reviews such as “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Doubt,” “Serenity,” “The Changeling,” and “The Lives of Others” (all of which I highly recommend). And then there were the ones that were not worth my time like the 4th installment of “Indiana Jones” (ridiculous!) and “Twilight” (ugh).
Then, there are the many memories. Emerson’s birth, the day he fell off the bed, the day he first started crawling, the day he conscientiously said “Da-da,” and on and on. And there are the other events – getting rejected from nine PhD programs, and getting accepted into Duquesne (it only takes one!). Receiving my masters degree. My first official Father’s day. Winning an award at a philosophy conference. So many other things could be mentioned, and there’s not enough time to recount them.
So good-bye 2009. Good-bye the 2000s. Wow. I can’t believe its been a decade since Y2K (where were you? I was in Chicago at Navy Pier with a million others).
Ah the semester is finally over--I turned in my papers a couple weeks ago but had to grade some final exams this week which weren't turned in until yesterday morning. It feels good to finally have the stress relieved, which means I actually have time to update my blog. And who knows, there may actually be someone out there who still reads it... And since its snowing like crazy this morning, what better way to spend the time to provide a little update.
Over the past couple weeks, we've been relishing in the Christmas festivities and holiday cheer. We've gone to a number of Christmas parties, had one of our own on the 12th, went to Duquesne's Christmas chorale concert on the 6th (it was ok -- too much Latin music for Amber's taste), and went to the Pittsburgh Symphony Christmas show this past thursday night, which was fantastic. Thankfully, Santa's stage time was kept to a minimum at the symphony (which also included the Mendelssohn choir and some special guests). They sang one of my top five choral pieces, "O Magnum Mysterium," and performed a wide variety of traditionals (portions of the Nutcracker), hymns, and contemporary songs.
As for Emerson, he's keeping us busy, getting his hands into everything and crawling all over the place. Earlier this past week he crawled up our entire flight of steps in less than two minutes (he was pretty proud of himself!). He's taken a liking to a number of activities around the house. Just earlier today, we found him rummaging through Amber's purse and had pulled out a number of items and placed them into his own little pile. Here's a few other things he enjoys:
Going through the tupperware drawer... and licking every single one he pulls out. This is one of his new faves.
Reading, or, er, pulling books off the shelf. Actually he loves to read and even flips to the next page on his own (his books are over to the right and often pulls them all out too). And yes, he did rip that piece of the book out, but alas, I'm not planning on reading Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" anytime soon. "Et tu, Brute?"
Doing the dishes. Ok, so he pulls more dishes out, licks them, and then throws them on the ground more than anything, but he LOVES standing over there so much that we actually wait to do the dishes for when he's really bored and we can't think of anything else to do. He also tries to scamper into the fridge right behind him whenever we open it -- and seriously, that kid can hear the door open from anywhere on the first floor!
And using the restroom. So I wish he was potty trained, but alas, whenever he gets this close to the toilet is usually when one of us is trying to use it (no sense of privacy whatsoever!). It was definitely a shocking moment when I was going the bathroom the other day and suddenly he crawled between my legs and grabbed the toilet seat with both hands!! Actually, I think he likes the bathroom so much because he's come to love bathtime, and he just goes nuts when we turn the water on and take off his clothes. He's also learned that unraveling the toilet paper is quite fun too.
The weekend of the 13th-15th, I was at a graduate philosophy conference in Carbondale, IL (Southern Illinois University) presenting a paper at a conference devoted to "building bridges" between Islam and America. My paper was on Al-Farabi's Religious Pluralism as Prolegomena (isn't that a great word?!) for dialogue between Islam and the West. It wasn't my best paper (actually, it was a paper I wrote for a previous class and just happened to be a great fit for the conference), but every chance to present (and have the promise of the proceedings get published) is good for the resume. The skinny of the paper: Al-Farabi, Medieval Islamic philosopher, had a notion of Religious pluralism/inclusivism that viewed religion as a subcategory of philosophical truth (basically "philosophy for the common people") that viewed any religion as true that could trace its concepts back to the Greek philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. We could debate the problems of such a view (both from a Christian or pluralistic perspective), but my whole point in using his work was to point out the limited number of ways it is relevant to current religio-political discussions between Islam and the West--especially for those Westerners who think Islam is one-dimensional, inherently violent, and exclusionary (ahem, Pat Robertson, among millions of others).
Anyways, like I said, it wasn't my best paper, but the chance to get away and hang out with other graduate students was a blast. Actually, in all honesty, in the past I've felt quite like an outsider at these kinds of things. Perhaps, its because I don't have the cool philosophical look and can't speak all the nice philosophical jargon that everyone else speaks. Who knows, but this one is different. You might toss it up to the fact that SIU is in the middle of nowhere (no exaggeration), but their philosophy department had the best cameraderie of any department I've ever been around. They do everything together, even with some of their professors. On Sundays, for instance, they play flag football together, and two of their 50+ year old professors play with them (and I'm told they hit the hardest!). They even arranged for all the presenters to be picked up at the St. Louis airport (two hours away) and stay with fellow grad students.
What made this trip even more exciting were the people I met that, turns out, I had some commonality with. The second person I met upon arriving on campus, for instance, happened to be a graduate from Cedarville (my undergrad). Now, Cedarville is a small school (3000 students) with tiny philosophy program (there are like 4-5 students a year getting their degree in philosophy). So, for us to meet up well, I guess I'd have to call it providential. We never met at Cedarville (we only overlapped for a semester), but we had so many similar stories and experiences, and a similar theological-philosophical viewpoint to reflect back on them, that we wound up chatting for quite a long time.
Then, as it turned out, one of the other presenters was from Purdue University and knew quite well Justin, an old friend of mine who was in my wedding and now doing philosophy at Loyola-Chicago. He told me some stories about the early years at Purdue and the crazy things he and Justin did, and we got to talking about our faith, the difficulties of being a God-follower while being a philosopher, and various theological topics.
Finally, to top it all off, as I was chatting with my host the last evening I was there, I mentioned a previous paper I had presented at West Chester University. His girlfriend looked at me and said, "Wait, you mean just last January? (yeah) We were there too!" Wow. I live in such a very small world. In my previous life, I lived in a very small conservative baptist world largely in the Midwest. The world I now live in is spread across a much larger part of the country, and there are thousands of people doing philosophy in the U.S., but the contingent of the philosophers I am connected to as a Continental philosopher in the Eastern part of the states may only be slightly larger than the world I've come from. So maybe I'm not a tiny fish in a great big sea. I'm just a tiny fish in a very crowded lake full of much larger fish all vying for the same living space (and jobs!).
Weekends of getting away and having new experiences and meeting new people are so enriching and encouraging. And then I got to come back to see my son so ecstatic to see me after being gone for three days, that he refused to take a nap the rest of the day! There is no hierarchy of "good, better, best" to compare these experiences and opportunities. We cannot place a value on these nuggets of eternity we are given--the laughter of a child, a conversation on faith with a new friend, the experience of camaraderie and hospitality from total strangers. These are the experiences that help mold us and shape us, realize what really matters, and remind us that life is a gift to be taken up and embraced every day. These are the opportunities that show us that each day, each encounter with a new person, can literally change the way we see the world. "This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it." What brings you joy? What fills you with life, hope, and appreciation for what you've been given? What helps you remember to make the most of each day?
[Ok, so it has been way too long since my last post. It is nearing the end of the semester, and its crunch time to write papers--which isn't easy with an infant in the house!]
So earlier this week, we received a package in the mail addressed to Emerson. We're not exactly sure where it came from, but it included a survey that is supposed to be a "Behavior and Symptom Identification Scale." Now, obviously, whoever sent this thing obviously didn't know that Emerson not only is too young to read a survey, he's can't even cognitively contemplate on this level.
Nevertheless, I had a hilarious time giving him the survey and asking him to answer the questions. He couldn't really check the appropriate boxes [each question had five possible answers, essentially using terms like "none/never," "a little/rarely," "moderate/sometimes," "quite a bit/most/often," "all/extreme/always"], so I had to settle for his nonverbal communication. Here are some of the results:
During the past week, how much difficulty did you have...[#2] Coping with problems in your life?
... [#3] Concentrating?
During the past week, how much of the time did you...[#5] Get along with people outside your family?
... [#6] Get along well in social situations?
During the past week, how much of the time did you... [#9] Feel confident in yourself?
... [#10] Feel sad or depressed?
During the past week, how often did you... [#14] Think you had special powers?
... [#16] Think people were watching you?
...[#18] Have mood swings?
... [#19] Feel short tempered?
During the past week how often did you ... [#21] Have an urge to drink alcohol or take street drugs?
This is just unreal. Perhaps you've already heard about this as its been recently highlighted by Steven Colbert and dozens of other media outlets, but the people of Conservapedia have committed to create a new, conservative translation of the Bible, that eradicates all the so-called liberal "translation bias" that exists in every existing English translation. Talk about "remaking Jesus in their own image." Rob Dreher at beliefnet.com depicts it best: "It's like what you'd get if you crossed the Jesus Seminar with the College Republican chapter at a rural institution of Bible learnin'."
The absurdity of this project is unimaginable, and the flaws in their logic, mindboggling. They seek a new translation that is without bias, as if they have no bias of their own. They seek to create a translation that avoids the "wordiness" and "ambiguities" of liberals (such as those updating the NIV) but is also not written at a dumbed down reading level (such as the NIV. How are they going to do that without using big words?). They seek to obtain an accurate translation of Scripture by resorting back to the KJV rather than original texts (and if you read any of what has already been translated, it basically reads like the NIV which they abhor), making it a translation of a(n) (outdated) translation. They state that one of the benefits of this project is that it will force the liberals who criticize them to read the Bible (but if they're the ones translating the NIV, wouldn't that mean they have not only read it, but quite closely?).
They claim terms such as "laborer" and "comrade" in the Bible are signs of socialism--but this political view didn't exist in the time the KJV was written--and propose substituting contemporary conservative terms instead, as if the authors of the Bible had 21st century America in mind when they were writing. They want to highlight the "numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning" (as if parables are meant to be literally interpreted...). And worst of all, they suggest excluding certain passages such as John 8:1-11 and Luke 23:34 because they are supposedly "later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic" (as if those who purportedly inserted these texts in the 2nd and 3rd centuries were left-wing radicals!). How is arbitrarily deleting passages considered conservative?
Really, I'm quite dumbfounded. When one is so right-wing leaning that even the Bible is now deemed "liberal" (whatever that means), something is definitely wrong. But this is a good reminder for all of us, no matter the lens we use to read Scripture (which we can never fully remove), that Ernesto Tinajero from Sojourners points out: "if you read the Bible and it does not challenge you, then you are reading yourself and not the Bible." If the Bible is not provocative, if it does not force us to rethink the way we live our lives and view the world, than we are not really reading it.
