Resident Aliens

I just completed the first chapter of Resident Aliens by Hauerwas and Williamson.

For me, being able to digest this text really speaks to the quality of Christian education I have received at Malone. The book centers around this idea that Christians represents somewhat of a "colony" in mainstream culture.

Although we are called to reform culture, we will always feel the rub of the Gospel against competing, and sometimes more appealing philosophies.

I guess this is something I am coming to embrace, and to be proud of. Not in the sense that I am better than all the other un-saved savages (sarcasm), but in the sense that I feel like I am becoming more firmly rooted in the Christian worldview and starting to understand how Christian belief is very particular, and not always amenable to the life I would want to live if I simply listened to my culture or to the deception in my head.

I need to work on the idea of Christianity as "relationship" in addition to "worldview," however...headiness should not supersede friendship with God.

Culture Wars

"What matters ultimately in the culture wars is what we do in our daily lives--not the big statements that we broadcast to the world at large, but the small messages we send through our families and our neighborhoods and our communities." Michael Medved

I read this statement yesterday as I was catching up on some social psychology reading.

It resonated with me because I have found this to be true in life.

Oftentimes the people who are crying out the loudest drown in their own noise, and this is exactly what they want--a universe that revolves around the important statements they make, a world that waits on their next vitriolic attack against injustice, a nation waiting for them to pitch the next Big Idea...

Why do we praise the revolutionary and overlook the family man?

Which of these is actually slave to the system?

Highlights and Lowlights

Highlights

1. Learning about Coordinated Management of Meaning.

2. Sitting on the back porch with Erika.

3. Learning that my workload is not as heavy as I thought.

Lowlights

1. Stepping on my laptop

2. Rain.

3. Almost passing out in Senior Seminar.

This is the stuff of life.

The Last Kind Words

Well, Joel and I have named our band, The Last Kind Words.

Joel suggested the name, which comes from an old-timey blues song by Geechie Wilsey.

I had never heard it, but it fit our idea of an obscure traditional song as a name.

O Death didn't work--taken by some indie band.

Nine Pound Hammer didn't work--taken by some other folks.

But now we have something to call ourselves.

It has been a really great experience playing with Joel this semester, and I am looking forward to playing some gigs. It is one of things that I don't really have to do (when there are many things I do HAVE to do), and it has come together so seamlessly.

In many ways, Joel and I are different people, but we seem to have this affinity for mountain/bluegrass/retro culture and a good intellectual conversation...Our friendship has brought me great joy, and it will be great to start going out gigging with him.

We are playing dark, rootsy, folk music.

I'll keep ya' posted on gigs.

Triage

My life is a little like triage right now...

Except there is no "emergency"...

It's more like balancing out a bunch of awesome stuff...

Like a kid at Christmas sorting out his presents...

Thanks be to God!

Music as Mystical Union

Well, I am taking this course this semester called "Love, Sex, and Marriage," and it is quite the money's worth of a course. We're reading excellent authors like Plato, Lewis, Aristotle, Pope John Paul II. An excellent reading adventure.

One of the concepts we've been talking about is the idea that sex represents the union between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that it also models for us the closeness that we ought to desire with God. In some ways, the connection is abstract--but, man, is it there.

I realized today that music might be one of the only other things that comes close to revealing the essence of this mystical union. My buddy Joel and I were jamming early this evening, and I was getting caught up in the music. My eyes were closed. My pulse was pumping. I was astonished at the tones that were reverberated off the walls and at the power and beauty of what we were creating together. I was connecting with Joel and with the music--this abstract notion of music--that is outside myself.

And that's very much like sex. Union with another being and Beauty--God--shows up.

Hmm. Maybe that's why people always chase after sex, drugs, and rock n' roll. They confuse the mirror with the Man, and settle for the quick fix rather than the Long Trip.

Hmm.

The Stuff of Dreams

This morning, as far as I can tell, I had a very disturbing and compelling dream.

In this dream, I ended up on a tennis court. I was turning to leave the tennis court, and I heard something crying.

I looked back and saw a baby carrier sitting in the middle of the court, and I walked toward it. Before I could get there, my old roommate Dan attacked me, punching me hard in the stomach. A second time, I approached the carrier again. This time I saw a baby in the carrier.

The baby was bi-racial, with tuffs of black hair. I started teasing the baby, and he started to laugh and smile. Yet, almost as soon he started crying and grasping for my neck.

Dan confessed that he had just left the baby on the tennis court so that someone might pick him up. This was horrifying, but I suppose I was simply content that I was not being beat up.

At this part of the dream, the scene cut to the inside of a nasty, yellow-ish bathroom. Dan and I were in the bathroom and we had the baby with us. The atmosphere was pungent and dangerous. I was in a stall and I looked to the stall to the left of me. There was a black hand protruding over the edge of a stretcher. I could not see the face, which made the experienced all the more disturbing.

As I was leaving the bathroom, a man passed by me with a look on his face that was extremely unsettling.

This was about where my dream ended.

I am not big into hocus-pocus Christianity, and I rarely think that God tells me anything specific, but this dream has sparked my thoughts about adoption.

I just imagine a baby out there in the inner city that will be subjected to an environment of violence and instability if I do not fetch him out of it.

O the Humanity!

Yesterday, I was--fore the most part--pleased with the efficiency of my day. I plowed through homework, ran errand, exercised, was an all around nice guy to everyone. And then at the very end of my day, my little pinky finger caught the edge of my desk drawer while it was returning to its rightful position, and then:

Owww! That frickin' hurt! Damn desk! (I was trying to keep my language under control--its a new concept for me.)

And why did God let me slice my pinky open at the end of a perfectly good day?

Maybe it was to remind me that I am not perfect, that I am invulnerable to the powers of nature and cannot even keep the skin on my little pinky from breaking open.

That hurt, but thanks God.

Forever and Ever, Amen

I listen to Randy Travis while reading the Symposium by Plato.

And I am very proud of that.

It represents two seemingly opposed parts of my identity.

You see, it occurred to me last week when I was preparing for class, the odd pairing academia is with the outside world. So many things at this level of education deal with abstraction and morality and ways of knowing, whereas so many things in the outside world deal with paying bills, feeding your children, and not going crazy while doing so.

This distinction has become increasingly apparent to me as I have grown older, and as I approach graduation. Some of the experiences I have had in the last several years (working at Pine Ridge, working in Kentucky, working around the Mennonites) have opened up my eyes to the fact that there are a whole other host of "issues" that are equally as important as those issues which colleges find paramount to a "good education."

I have felt this rub for quite a long time, too. Being the son of a highly educated pastor in an severely under-educated post-industrial slump of a town, I know the character of people who are enmeshed in a system that is not as nice and tidy as the orderly nature of a college. Now, I am not attempting to patronize anyone, nor am I attempting to even praise--not all people who live "close to the ground" deserve veneration.

But what I am saying is that, as I continue my studies, I will always remember that there is an outside world, and the rules out there don't exactly work like they do in academia.

I will continue to listen to Randy Travis while I read Plato.

Forever and ever, amen.

Tragic

This morning, caught somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness, I heard these words:

"A tragic event for our nation..."

And in my mind, I thought, "Oh no, something has happened again."

As I became more aware of my surroundings, of my place in the world, I peered over my bunk ayt the television and realized that there was not really any danger at hand, but that FOX news was purveying eight years into the past, recounting all the horror that happened on this day, this 11th of September.

It made me realize this:

The greatest atrocity could be occurring, and I might be sleeping, completely unaware of the nature of reality around myself.

It made me wonder this:

What suffering is occurring in my sad little world that I do not even recognize?

Some tragedies are apparent, and might be talked about on FOX news for the next twenty years, but some tragedies are latent--hidden in the fabric of life all around us, hidden in the proverbial corners of our communities.

Sleep is great, but perhaps we all need to arise from our slumber and attend to the tragedies around us.