Clive

I started reading Mere Christianity over the break back in Wisconsin. Nine pages in, still the preface, Lewis is talking about why he's chosen not to touch on certain subjects and says that he won't comment on issues that he hasn't had personal experience with. "Ever since I served as an infantryman in the first world war I have had a great dislike of people who, themselves in ease and safety, issue exhortations to men in the front line. As a result I have a reluctance to say much about temptations to which I myself am not exposed.”

He then goes on to tell us that he’s never experienced the temptation to gamble. What struck me was that he then said that he probably also lacks the good impulse that gambling is an excess or perversion of as well.

That got me thinking about what could possibly be the inherently good, God-given desire that has been twisted into something so evil that its Mecca goes by the moniker of Sin City. I remembered something Lewis had said in the Four Loves about his personality, how he is a safety oriented creature, reluctant to put himself in vulnerable positions. I quoted it in my Shakespeare paper, and I’ll quote it again here because the simplicity and weight of these words is so good; “Of all arguments against love, none makes so strong an appeal to my nature as ‘Careful! This might lead you to suffering.’” Is the missing good desire here something like risk-taking? Stepping out on a limb that you aren’t sure will support you? It seems to fill the role of an innocent desire that can be the platform and fuel for gambling like a man possessed.

Putting it in terms of stepping out begs the question; Is there a connection between this missing desire and a lack of faith? If faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things unseen, that without it it’s impossible to please God, and if the lacking mystery-gambling desire is related to this, I have cause for concern. Thoughts?

Lists Are Easy Posts

I ravaged the used record shops while in Green Bay and emerged with the following:

Grandaddy - The Sophtware Slump
The Presidents of the United States of America - S/T
Rooney - S/T
The Glands - S/T
Ok Go - S/T
The Apples in Stereo - Tone Soul Evolution
Ash - Free All Angels
The Polyphonic Spree - The Beginnings of...
The Polyphonic Spree - Together We're Heavy
Sondre Lerche - Two Way Monologue
Hollywood Sound Effects - Over 100!
Of Montreal - Satanic Panic in the Attic

An Iron Fist

I just witnessed something in the Post Office that sparked a little observation about part of my view of legalism:

It's busy here. Christmas always floods the Post Office, and I waited in line for about a half an hour to pick up a package. Usually when an employee finishes with a customer, they set up for the next one and say something like "Can I help the next person in line?" A man and woman walked up to the line before receiving this invitation, and the postman behind the counter jokingly said to the man "You know, I didn't call you up," with a smile and a wink.

The man motioned with his finger toward his ear a shook his head without saying a word. He was deaf, as was his companion. They proceeded to explain what they needed done through writing and everything appeared to go smoothly.

What struck me was this: Had something like this happened to me at Kanakuk, or even worse, the Kenworthy, there would have been a rule imposed immediately against joking around with customers. The attitude would be, "Now that this has happened once, it's going to happen again and it's a horrible thing. The only way to be safe is to surround ourselves in rules, and that through them we can ward off any and all complications." There's no trust put in one's own judgment or dealing with situations as they arise. Employers (at my level anyway) seem to want robots, not organic beings that can adapt and shift to a situation. We need to have all the possibilities and scenarios uploaded into our brains so that when sensory input comes our way, we just run it through the matrix of "What does the manuel say?"

England

I finally got around to scanning some of my pictures from England. Here's also Jessica's, and Tori's. Enjoy.

Chuck Norris's tears cure cancer. Too bad he's never cried.

Highlights

I read three things today. A short piece of new fiction out of Harper's, a list of Chuck Norris's characteristics, and an article by Stanley Fish on Intelligent Design. I'll try to hit the high points:

When Chuck Norris's wife burned the turkey one Thanksgiving, Chuck said, "Don't worry about it honey," and went into his backyard. He came back five minutes later with a live turkey, ate it whole, and when he threw it up a few seconds later it was fully cooked and came with cranberry sauce. When his wife asked him how he had done it, he gave her a roundhouse kick to the face and said, "Never question Chuck Norris."

That is all.

Marvell on Righteousness

Here's about what I'll turn in tomorrow, same requirements as Shakespeare, "why is literature important to you." Tell me what you think, and I'll tell you what I think.

I have the pleasure of working at a wonderful place known as Kanakuk Colorado in the summers. Kanakuk (K-Co) is a Missouri based Christian camp that specializes in all things outdoorsy and popular in the west, like rafting, backpacking, rock climbing, and mountain biking. Being a Christian camp, and especially one who’s funding comes from the Bible-belt, there are rules, both for the staff and for the kids that we minister to. Most are well and good and Biblically based and backed. Some however, fall into the category of “things that Christians don’t do” theology. In reading through Andrew Marvell’s dialogue poems I noticed a similar strain, specifically the accepted idea that the body is the Mr. Hyde in the relationship between it and the soul. It had me realize that I’ve always seen these Christian assumptions as new developments, but here we apparently have an example hundreds of years old. The idea of imposed morality in a Christian setting without solid scriptural backing has perplexed me ever since joining the Kanakuk ranks, and in Marvell I see some possible explanation in light of his prose work The Rehearsal Transposed, and through a more careful reading of his dialogues.

My main problem is this: artists have the ability to make ideas/philosophies/words more memorable and accessible, and therefore have a greater responsibility to be truthful with their work. Much of the “youth group theology” around today comes from kids getting their morals from Christian rock and life-application Bible studies. I personally think those two avenues of pursuing truth have some major problems, but aren’t bad in and of themselves. The problem is not always in the end result or the rule that’s being followed but the source of it. As a believer, you lose your footing by taking on other standards of good apart from God. This doesn’t mean that everything you do will be sin or evil, but it does mean that you’ve placed your faith in something else, some other authority of right and wrong.

I’d like to begin by looking at Marvell’s Dialogue Between the Resolved Soul and Created Pleasure, with the help of Thomas Wheeler’s book Andrew Marvell Revisited. Wheeler notes that in the dialogue, the Soul is confined to speaking in only eight syllable couplets, while the Pleasure is allowed a variety of line lengths, rhyme schemes and eight more lines than the body. This portrays an image of the soul being stuffy, organized, and stiff, while the Pleasure comes off as free and refreshing. He also points out that nothing which Pleasure offers is “sin,” but it seems that the Soul sees them as opportunities for it. Wheeler then offers that perhaps this isn’t a Christian poem to be read in Christian context. I would argue that the same way I’d deal with a pastor writing an allegorical piece of fiction without using the word Jesus; given Marvell’s history and previous writing, it doesn’t make much sense to separate them from this poem, especially since it deals with spiritual matters. If it were a poem about spelunking, I might be more inclined to take it at face value without thinking of the Christian parallel. Wheeler then makes a great point that the poem seems to be nearer to Platonism than Christianity. I would agree, in that so far the Soul seems to be resisting Pleasure for no good reason other than an assumption that anything that feels good is bad.

I think that Wheeler is spot on about nothing the Pleasure offering being sin. It’s important to note that because of how the Soul reacts, as if it were not just bad but a blockade between it and heaven. So thus far we have the Soul “valiantly” standing up to the Pleasures of the world, cheered on by the Chorus character. It’s interesting that this is pretty common to most of us, the idea that the Soul’s job is to ward off the evil of Pleasure with abstinence from it. Here we run into the problem of assumption, relating back to the idea of accepted Christian behavior. A close look at instruction in the Bible doesn’t tell us in fact, to abstain from good things. We have a desire for the opposite sex, there’s marriage. There are good things to eat and drink here, and we have tastebuds and appetites that can be excited and satiated. It seems more that God has given a right way for desire to be fulfilled, and the people who fulfill them other ways give the desire a bad name. Drunkards make the beer look evil. Promiscuous fraternity brothers make sexual desire look like a dirty thing. Sadly, often the response of believers is to nix anything that the world has made look bad.

Why is this? Marvell addresses the topic in The Rehearsal Transposed, by saying that people’s own consciences are often their best judges, and one who has the Law on his side feels even better. Isabel MacCaffrey, in her Notes on Marvell’s Poetry, made a wonderful point on this, recognizing that Marvell knew that conscience without any law is helpless, but that men are also much more comfortable with just a set of laws to follow. Legalism, following a list of do’s and don’ts has the positive effect of apparent goodness on the outside, without the soul-scouring required of real righteousness. Thus my problem with Kanakuk.

In Marvell’s other dialogue, Between Soul and Body, Marvell seems to take a different approach in representing the two speakers. Both Soul and Body speak in eight syllable couplets, instead of giving one a more distinct voice. In this poem we get more of a unique view of the bond between the two. Both have very visual arguments against each other, the Soul viewing the Body as a dungeon, and the Body seeing the Soul as a disease. It helps to mention that the medieval church didn’t wholly understand what was meant in the New Testament as “flesh” and “spirit.” From the Greek, they understood them to be terms designating two parts of a man – the higher and lower natures. We can see this in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians where he compares individual members of the church as parts of the body, and acknowledges that there are parts and functions that deserve and receive more or less honor (1 Cor. 12:22-24). The church however took this to mean that things like sex, eating, and working belonged to the “lower” nature, while pious acts like prayer, fasting, and celibacy belonged to the higher. So here we see a bit of the history of the typical “physical things are bad” mindset, the faults of which I’ll address soon.

Marvell goes on in Rehearsal to comment directly on this idea of the responsibility of the artist; “How wretchedly, the one, to uphold his fiction, must incite princes to persecution and tyranny, degrade grace to morality, debauch conscience against its own principles, distort and misinterpret the Scripture, fill the whole world with blood, execution, and massacre; while the other needs and requires no more but a peaceable and unprejudicat soul, and the native simplicity of a Christian spirit!” Marvell is asserting here that it’s a sham to twist your words around truth for the sake of a story, and that relying on the truth of Christ will produce the better work in the end.

So is someone “distorting and misinterpreting Scripture” when they take this stance? Wheeler suggests again in his commentary of A Dialogue Between Soul and Body that the arguments aren’t presented in Christian terms, that the Body’s accusations actually reverse the traditional Christian contrast between flesh and spirit. Marvell’s Body here accuses the Soul of allowing it to sin. Wheeler then said that this abandonment of tradition freed Marvell to make this contest original and open. I think he’s right, but maybe not in the same way he thinks he is. A quick glance at some more notes from Paul reveal that there are two bodies, the earthly and the heavenly. He goes on to say how the earthly body is sown in dishonor and raised to a heavenly one in glory (1 Cor. 15:40-44). One is needed for the other to come about. There seems to be less of a competition and more of a mutually reliant relationship.

It would be wrong of me to leave out one of the more misquoted verses in the Bible that relates to this discussion. 1 Cor. 6:19 asks the believers at Corinth if they’re aware that their bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, and has been the ammunition of many a nervous mother smelling cigarette smoke or beer on her son’s jacket. A little context reveals that Paul is discussing sexual purity, not the evils of alcohol. But in regards to our discussion of the relationship between the body and soul, it seems worth noting that, unlike other religions where the god dwells in temples and mountains, Christians claim that their bodies are the housing of one aspect of the Trinity. How can men make the claim that the body is some worthless piece of meat, dragging the virtuous soul into sin when part of our God lives in it?

I would argue that Marvell’s dialogues are in fact a knock on this thinking and, and not advocating it at all. He seems to share my distaste for invented theology as well, and even goes so far as to say that it incites “blood, execution, and massacre.” In light of his writing on the subject in The Rehearsal Transposed, and his literary history, it follows that when the chorus speaks in the end “Triumph, triumph, victorious soul!/The world has not one pleasure more:” that Marvell’s attitude was one of “Good for you soul, you managed to beat back all of the pleasures of life. But….that’s not what they were there for.”

Stagnant

Last Geography 100 class today. I'd like to say that I've learned a lot about the natural world. That I've discovered things about weather and physical features of the planet that I didn't know before and can add to my understanding of the planet.

More importantly, I'd like to be able to say that I learned a lot about patience, and looking for the good in things. It'd be great to look back at how I felt sitting through this class in September and see a great contrast with today. I'd like to see growth and understanding in this area of my life. But I can't say any of this. I'm just as frustrated, irritated, and bored now as I was in a 100 level class five years ago. It's no great wisdom to point out the faults in entry level state school courses. It's easy as cheese. What's hard (and probably more beneficial to myself and others) is to find the good in these situations. I don't mean to pretend that it's intellectually stimulating and faultless, but to dwell on the negative doesn't do anyone any good.

I still maintain that the instructor is poor and the class worse. But life isn't a bowl of peaches, and if something like climographs and a drab teacher can get under my skin, I'm in sad shape for the real issues of Life.

On Deck

So what I'm working on next is going to be much more rushed and unfortunately might not have the same depth of "I've been wracked by this, like a WEEK ago" as my last essay....but hey, I can only have so many near breakdowns for the sake of decent writing in a month.

What I'm doing is discussing the assumed rules/laws/restrictions placed on us by Christian art and media. And by Christian I mean to include "Christian influenced," since much of the paper will be trying to show the fault in these suppositions. I'm focusing on Andrew Marvell's two dialogue poems, "A Dialogue Between Soul and Body," and "A Dialogue Between Soul and Created Pleasure." Both speak pretty strongly against pleasure being good at all, and emphasizing the body's wickedness and the soul's virtue.

Part of my thesis is the responsibility of artists to accurately portray theology. Ideas like abstaining from anything that feels or tastes or smells good because it's "worldly" are pretty prevalent in art. I think it's important for artists to be correct largely on the principle that a good, catchy song sticks in your head and well written passages come to mind time and time again; the artist can present truth in a more accessible or maybe personnal way and if someone is wielding that kind of clout, I'd like them to be doing truth justice. I'll be in Corinthians a bit again for this essay as well.

Any thoughts/suggestions are welcome, as always. Oh and it's due on Wednesday, so make it snappy.

Mo Shakes FINISHED

This is basically what I turned in, tell me if your opinions changed:

Recently, a lot has been brought to my attention concerning my position in relation to other people. Not so much of a hierarchical question, more to the point of my level of chosen contact with others. I’ve been dubbed many things by many different people; hippy, religious, quiet, wise, reclusive, foolish, outdoorsy, and bohemian to name a few. No one has ever called me, nor do I suppose anyone has ever thought of it, social. It’s something that I think has been developed by years of habit, and choices in my lifestyle that are conducive to solitude. Until lately I had really not thought too much of it, and sometimes even enjoyed having the image. There’s something mysterious and stoic about the “alone” guy, he who goes out into this world and battles out life’s troubles by his own resolve. Mysterious and stoic maybe, but probably not right. Through the course of much reading and listening to those wiser than me speak, I began to have some doubts about this style of life. Two elements of my disposition, self-seclusion and suspended desire, came up again and again in everything from poetry to bible study to conversations with friends. One of the most notable pieces that sparked this thinking was Shakespeare’s 12^th Night, specifically the relationship between Orsino and Olivia.

In the story, Olivia has just lost her brother to death. Orsino has been pursuing her for some time in the form of messengers carrying his declarations of “love,” which Olivia wants nothing to do with. In his book A Theatre of Envy, Rene Girard presents some plausible explanations for Olivia’s aversion to him. Girard supposes that Olivia is in a situation in which everyone immediately around her admires her greatly. The only variable in this is Toby, who, if he doesn’t admire her, is at least dependent on her like everyone else in her household. This constant adoration has put her in a state of aloofness that she now poo poos another person trying to praise her and gain attention, like Orsino.

I think that view is valid, but I think there’s more at work in Olivia’s self-solitude. Her brother has just died, and according to her she was very close to him and misses him quite a bit. We see this early on from Valentine’s statement that she will “water once a day her chamber round with eye-offending brine – all this to season a brother’s dead love, which she would keep fresh and lasting in her sad remembrance.” (I.i. 28-31). Not only will she mourn her brother with tears, but she refuses to let anyone see her face or marry for seven years. She’s experienced something that many of us have, losing someone close to us, and something that Augustine addressed in his Confessions. Having just lost a dear friend, he recalls the shocking face of temporality of this world. “I thought that since death had consumed him, it was suddenly going to engulf all humanity,” he says. He’s realized what happens when you give your love to something ephemeral; you risk losing it at any time. I believe that this was an important motive in Olivia’s motivation for withdrawing herself. Basically, I’ve been hurt by attachment, so none of that intimacy stuff for me thank you very much.

Olivia’s reasons for seclusion have a much more familiar root than Orsino’s. However, his attitude and actions in this story were far closer to home for myself than Olivia’s. Again, Girard has something worth noting on his behavior as well. He comments that Orsino is mostly attracted to Olivia because of her indifference, her stand-offishness. Fine, that’s possible, the “playing hard-to-get” view fits here, but it doesn’t take us anywhere new or interesting in our dissection of desire. Everyone’s heard it before. Girard, however also suggests that Orsino has come across a woman who for the first time has the upper hand in a relationship with him. He also implies that Orsino has probably been pretty popular with the ladies before this incident. Taking that to the next level, it’s reasonable to assume that if he’s currently single, the past relationships haven’t worked out to his liking. He has probably experienced distress of his own from relationships, even if he was the controlling figure in the past. In Olivia, he’s found someone that is almost guaranteed not to fall for him, assuming that she’s serious about the seven years of solitude. Orsino seems to have put himself into this spot of suspended desire, of wanting something forever because it can’t be obtained.

Before I bring this back to my own experiences, I think we need to define what we mean by love and desire. For this I turn to the wisdom of Mr. Clive Staples Lewis’s The Four Loves in which he breaks down our word love into four distinct emotions, and how they manifest and are expressed as a Christian. Affection, the tendency towards liking out of familiarity, is what we feel for our crusty old doorman who’s always been there. Friendship, we feel when we encounter someone else who’s focused on the same things we are and can enjoy similar interests together. Eros, when we are focused on each other, and Charity is the Greek word agape for love, which is specifically the type of love that God shows for us and what we’re supposed to model to others. For our purposes, we’ll be focusing mostly on Eros and Charity.

These ideas and definitions of love and how it should be lived out were what struck me in my own life. The catalyst for all of it was, like many things in life, a girl. Sparing my reader the trite details, I basically found myself in a situation where I didn’t know what to do or how to proceed and needed counsel. What was interesting (only in hindsight) was that every time I thought about my situation, my instinct was not to seek advice or assistance from a friend or teacher, but instead to keep everything to myself and not utter a word of it to anyone. My desire was to figure it out myself, just me and God, no one else needed to hear about it.

So what’s wrong with that? Plenty, as I was being taught through many writers and teachers. One of the first points that caused me to question this attitude came from Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth. In the 12^th chapter he compares the body of believers to a human body, and likewise individuals being the hands, toes, livers, and nails that individually have their own, irreplaceable purpose, but function for the benefit of all. My pastor, in reading through this made the comment that this is a way that God designed us to draw together. The reason we have different gifts is to fulfill needs in other people. In order to receive some benefit or knowledge, we have to seek it from another person, thus bringing us together. It helps to think of it like pieces of a puzzle: there are pieces out there that have a void right where and in the same shape that we have a protrusion. This is a point where I think Orsino would have done better to realize that what he was offering Olivia wasn’t what she lacked.

Lewis continued this denunciation of solitude in his chapter on Charity, by pointing out the flaws of that thinking that were eerily familiar to me. He too commented on Augustine’s sense of sadness from losing something, and admits that it makes good sense to not “put your goods in a leaky vessel.” His statement of “Of all arguments against love, none makes so strong an appeal to my nature as ‘Careful! This might lead you to suffering,’” hit me square in the chest. What came next was even worse. He grants that to love is to be vulnerable and have your heart wrung and possibly shattered. To be sure of keeping it intact, wrap it up in little hobbies and habits, keep all attachments at bay, and lock it up safely. But locked away, he says, it will become an unbreakable, unlovable thing. So now, realizing my tendency towards autonomy, and having these four pieces of literature picking me apart, I needed to examine myself.

First, this idea of self-withdrawal: why do some of us yearn for it? My thought is that there is a longing in us for some kind of peace. I would argue that everyone wants it, but that some people have such a wrong idea about how to bring it about that it appears as though they love chaos and misery. The connection between peace and self-withdrawal is that involvement with others can complicate peace. It’s much simpler to keep your kingdom organized and trouble free when it’s just you roaming about. As soon as other agents enter in, there’s compromise, submission, communication, and all sorts of other things that never existed before. We can apply this thinking to both Olivia and Orsino’s actions, in that they’ve both experienced how loving others can hinder your own efforts in achieving peace. The problem with this is that our very design demands that we interact, to benefit and be benefited.

With regards to suspended desire, I’m speaking of Orsino’s state in the story.

What stood out to me was the fact that I have put myself in these situations of hopeless desire, a want that I probably deep down knew could not be fulfilled. Or even one that I knew I should have but wasn’t ready to take on the responsibility of quite yet. By placing myself in Orsino’s situation, I make it look as though I am in fact pursuing this good thing. But both of us seem to craft situations that deep down we know will fail. It’s a cover up.

Girard puts it quite well with “Since desire dies of its own fulfillment, the road to eternal desire can only lie in the selection of a forever inaccessible object.” I agree on the level that desire doesn’t survive in its original state after fulfillment. Desire is there to motivate us towards what we think will produce happiness. Orsino’s case of desiring desire itself is like falling in love with a sign pointing towards the city instead of what the sign represents. And the results are similar to intentional seclusion, which I think is what suspended desire really is, just wrapped up in a more complicated garment. The other drawback is mentioned in Harold Jenkins’s 1959 essay on the play in which he notes that Orsino is described as being skittish and unfocused in everything save his devotion to love. It’s a case of being swept up in the moment and not experiencing what’s actually happening around you. It’s comparable to someone traveling overseas for the first time, and being so enamored with the “idea” of traveling and Rome, that they completely miss out on what’s in front of them. This, I think points to the folly of desiring desire; while it is a good thing, lingering on it causes us to miss what’s really important, in Orsino’s case an actual relationship.

Some other study of my own yielded some interesting history of this idea of suspended desire. Up until the middle of the fourth century there was a practice in the early church in which man and woman were “spiritually married,” lived in the same house and shared a bed, but abstained from sexually relations. The women who were involved with this were known as subintroductae. Paul actually speaks to this in 1 Corinthians 7:36-38, telling men that if they are unable to restrain themselves, there’s no sin in marrying. What I noticed more than anything was this need to put ourselves in near impossible situations, against all odds. It’s not a new idea apparently.

In the scope of human experience, few things seem to be as meaningful as our relationships with other people. Ever since we’ve been able to create, our artistic expression has been almost exclusively relating to how we interact with others. One reason for this is our innate interest in each other. Stories without personal conflict, paintings of rocks, and songs about metaphysics just don’t press our buttons the way a love story or tragedy can. What’s more important is that art that deals with relationships can speak to us directly with regard to our own interactions with others. It’s much more difficult to pluck something relevant to your dealings with another person from a nature documentary than it is from Macbeth. The overarching feeling I had over the last three weeks was the idea that so many people from different walks of life and times were commenting on something that is pertinent to me here and now. The fact that I wasn’t originally looking for an answer to anything in particular and that these writers stirred up the realization of fault in me was extremely powerful.

Good Clean Pun

If you love puns.

More London

Here are some more pictures from London, taken by Tori who was nice enough to let us invade her home for a week. I'll try to get mine scanned and posted this week as well.

Shakes

I'm working on a paper for my Shakespeare class. I've decided to write about the idea of intentionally suspended desire, why we do it, and why it's wrong all in relation to Orsino and Olivia's relationship in 12th Night. These are my newest thoughts on the subject, many thanks to the Oracle:

Peace is something that we all (should) seek. I would argue that everyone wants it, but that some people have such a wrong idea about how to bring it about that it appears as though they love chaos. Peace seems to be something that's also easier to achieve the fewer variables you have in the mix, like other people. It's reasonable to assume that Orsino had had previous relationships with other women that apparently hadn't worked out, since here he is courting Olivia. He's aware of the difficulty that comes with entanglements with others in bringing about peace. I'm supposing that after his first rejection from Olivia, he felt a kind of comfort that he hadn't thought about before: Here, I can constantly profess my love for this person, but they'll never give in. I'm safe. Orsino is staying in this state as a means of protection, of keeping himself comfortable in a state of suspended desire.

Olivia isn't blameless in this either, but her method of self-protection is a little more obvious I think. She has vowed to love no one for the next seven years in grieving her dead brother. She's taken a similar view as Augustine, when he said in his Confessions that all things of this world pass away, and to give your heart to anything here is to invite misery. Olivia seems to have loved her brother very much, and now wracked with the misery of losing him has vowed to keep herself from attachment again. Basically, I've been hurt before, so no intimacy for me thank you very much.

Thoughts From Travels

Patience

The next time you feel exasperated with having to perform some trivial task, remember that a stewardess has to show a plane full of mostly adults how to operate a seat belt three or four times a day. Now I don't know if she's as cheery on the inside as she is out, but that big toothy smile's gotta count for something, eh? Eh?

Are We Green?

This is some discussion in response to a friend's post asking about what people are doing to help the environment. Thoughts?

Comment from: Gaither [Visitor] · http://derflugplatz.blogspot.com/

I'll get the unpopular comment out first: I honestly don't think that people give nature enough credit for what it can and can't handle, and that when things are getting serious, we'll know and there won't be too much controversy over it.

That being said, bikes make the world go round. In a small to medium sized town there's really no excuse to be driving around unless you're missing a leg. I get around Moscow faster than cars because there are so many lazy college kids driving EVERY SINGLE PLACE THEY GO. The only time I drive is to get to the farm, which is 15 miles away, 3 of which are gravel. A decent sized messanger bag/backpack lets you get your grocery shopping done too. I think I do it out of a dislike for laziness more than environmental benefit. And the only real hope for a positive effect on the planet is that others follow an example.

Comment from: shell [Visitor] · http://www.duregger.net/shell

“I honestly don't think that people give nature enough credit for what it can and can't handle, and that when things are getting serious, we'll know and there won't be too much controversy over it.”

Where’s the controversy? You would have a different opinion if you lived in Donora, PA in 1948 where twenty one people died and nearly 6,000 became ill after a thermal inversion (a cold air mass) trapped steel industry smog in the city. Or if you were a family member of the 4,000 that died from asphyxiation during the “killer smog” of 1952 in London. Or a child growing up with developmental problems from DDT floating around in the air and water. Perhaps you would feel the same if you were living on the watershed of the Snake River in Idaho where chemical companies are dumping chemical and radioactive waste into the bodies of water or injecting it into the ground water—perhaps you would be ok taking that blow for the companies. Some 60% of liquid hazardous waste in the United States is pumped deep underground and has seeped into groundwater. But that’s fine, I mean, they have to make a living, right? Perhaps living on an island of Maldives and seeing the water rise 4-8 inches in the last 40 years wouldn’t concern you too much as your beaches disappeared, or perhaps the Mexicans are ok with the fact that they get only half of the water that they have paid for from the Colorado River because Americans are too greedy. In fact, the Colorado River is so dammed (no pun intended) that there is no water to empty into the ocean at its mouth.
If the world was subdivided into cubes of land and air resources that did not affect any other property owners bubble, you would see the effects and the differences from owner to owner. Then at least your actions would affect no one else—except those who couldn’t afford to own land—and you could pollute all you wanted. But it doesn’t work like that. Aquifers are connected, some internationally. We all need to use rivers and other bodies of water. The ocean is internationally used and all of these resources are finite. They can be depleted. Thinking that the problem is not really serious yet and waiting for it to get to the level of crisis and THEN doing something about it will not work. First of all, what is your definition of crisis? People are dieing from cancer, arsenic water poisoning, and other pollution related problems and we sit by thinking it’s ok?
When will it not be ok? Aquifers take 200 years to replenish, Ocean fish that become extinct do not come back to life. God gave us this earth to use, but not to destroy selfishly. We are to take care of the earth…we were put here to tend it. We are also told to care for our fellow man, how can we do that when, blinded by our Affluenza, we seek only our own good. We can afford to buy bottled water and sterilize our living quarters from the earth’s polluted elements…but not everyone can. And there will come a time when we can’t escape our own messes. One author has said that Humans are the only species that has fouled its own nest in such short order.

Jer 22:3 “Thus saith the LORD; Execute ye judgment and righteousness, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor: and do no wrong, do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless, nor the widow, neither shed innocent blood in this place.”

How can we love our brothers and sisters in Christ and share the love of God on earth as we contribute to the poisoning of their resources. How can we say that we are loving others and not “shedding innocent blood in this place” while we using things up selfishly without care as to what we are doing for future generations, etc.
All the Scientific data recognizes pollution, consumption, fossil fuel depletion, and Global warming as urgent and serious NOW…politics and corporations don’t want to recognize it because this will mean that their millionaires will have to look at what they are doing and spend time and money on making their practices sustainable and environmentally friendly.
Don’t let yourself be overcome with affluenza, selfishness and politics.
Take time today to do what you can: recycle, buy local products (food as well as merchandise), and reduce your consumption. After all God detests gluttony (Pro. 23:21) and it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God than for a Camel to go through the Eye of the Needle (Mark 10:25).
Open your eyes to the reality of our wounded planet!!

2005-11-21 @ 14:49

Comment from: Matt [Visitor] · http://derflugplatz.blogspot.com/

A comment on tone:

I don't doubt that you've read every one of those facts somewhere in the scientific community, and I'm certainly not questioning your passion for "Mother Earth." However, your tone and word choice sounded much more like the raving greenies up here in the liberal northwest than a God fearing Christian.

This tone of anger and bitterness will get you nowhere, especially if you're arguing on moral or ethical grounds. You can't scold into righteousness.

That being said, I agree with you that the earth is not our garbage dump. I tend to place more emphasis on the notion that the earth, like everything else on it, is here for us to prove our responsibility for heavenly duties. If you're faithful with little, you'll be trusted with much, and if not, you won't be trusted with true riches. (Luke 16:10-11) You see it also in Paul's explaining of how marriage is a symbol of Christ and the church.

This world is a shadow. But it does reveal our natures pretty well. If someone is a jerk here, they don't change at death. If they've been irresponsible with the small parcel of responsibility given to them in this life, why would we charge them with eternal things? I admire your your spirit in this, but don't forget that people are essentially what we're worried about, and you don't win people to your cause by railing the ones that already agree with you.

Test

Studying for my Geography test, I came across this:

Definition of an "Arid" climate type: Average temperature is either above or below 64.4 degrees F.

That's it, no other discerning features. When in doubt, go arid.

Seriously

I've watched two PBS aired videos in my Geography 100 class in the last two weeks and both have almost induced fits of laughter.

1.) Watching something on the el Nino effect, narrated by an off screen, pleasant sounding female. Halfway through, we see the narrator. Alanis Morrissette, against a backdrop of the universe, is telling us all about warm ocean currents and sub tropical high pressure systems. I nearly lost it everytime the camera cut to her.

2.) We see polar bears enjoying life throughout the winter, eating all the delicious seals they want. Things turn south as it gets warmer, and in the words of the narrator, "It's summertime, and the living is far from easy." Are Sublime references common in nature videos these days?

Pt. 1?

When he found it, he knew it was special.

He'd had others like it, but this one was different. What happened to the others wouldn't happen to this one. This time he was sure.

"What have you got there?" his friends would ask.

"Got? Me? Nothing, I don't have anything why do you ask?" was always the reply.

"You seem different these days. Have you found something?" the older men would ask.

"No, I don't think so," he would say, knowing they knew better than his friends.

He had never asked the older men what they had done with theirs or when they had found them, or if they kept their first, or how to use his. But he was sure that he knew now. He had to know by now, this was his third, maybe fourth. The others had gone, and without asking anyone about it, he imagined he knew where they went and why.

"If you have one, I can help you with it. I've had some before," said Modsi W.

"I don't need help, but thanks. Really I can figure it out on my own, when I get one, I mean, everyone else did it that way right?"

"I didn't. I had to be told, and hear it from others before I got it."

"Well that makes sense, but I'm sure I can get it, but thank you. I'll let you know."

He liked having it, but still felt like he didn't know it or what to do with it. "If people find out about it, they'll think I already know about it, and when they find out I don't, they'll laugh," he would think. One night he couldn't sleep, so he crawled outside to look at it. As he pulled away the layers of coverings he'd used to wrap the others, he started to see the light coming from it. He'd heard about them giving light, but he'd never seen it. He was scared. This had never happened before and he didn't know what to do with it now. Before he got to the last covering he stopped, letting the light shimmer and play all around him while he stared. "If I see it, I'll have to do something," he thought, and didn't know what that something was. He waited for the light to answer a question he wouldn't ask, until he thought he saw it fading then quickly wrapped it back up and went back to bed.

T

Just when we had given up all hope, out of the rubble there rose a Hero...

Sights and Smells

Walking downstairs to the kitchen for some generic antacid, I'm greeted by an empty teal punch bowl with a red ladle and the smell of Chinese cigarettes.

Dogs and Wool Socks

I can't sleep and felt like writing.

In Shakespeare this week, Rick was talking about how cold it's been lately and said he was out at 2:00 in the morning the night before. Someone asked what he was doing out at that time and he replied that the dog had gotten out and he had to corral him back in.

"Oh right, the dog. You were out partying, admit it!"

Rick smiled, this look of "Oh yeah, that used to be cool a long, long time ago."

"No, I wish my life was that exciting. It's all about dogs and wool socks now."

I like how he threw the student a bone by making it sound like he still had some desire for the college life of 2 am shenanigans. I had a conversation with Rick this week that let me know that what really gets him excited is young people seeing the world and backpacking with his sons.

I like to write. Write write write writey write write wrikey writey I wrike to write a wrot.

Last week I was trying to pray and was feeling really overwhelmed with a sense of self-righteousness about it. All I could think about was telling someone what I was praying about to look good. I couldn't shake it and eventually just started asking for that pride to be taken away, that it wasn't what I truly wanted from my prayer. I felt like such a slug, it makes me feel sick now thinking about it, and writing it now brings some of it back too. What happened was somewhat atypical for my prayers: I was lying on my back in bed and suddenly felt like I was looking at myself from just behind my head down at my prone body, and that some clear, thick coating was breaking up and being pulled away from off of my chest and dissappearing just above me. It went on for about 2 or 3 minutes. The whole time I felt like holding my breath, like breathing would stop it, and that what was leaving was something that had been there for a while and I had gotten so used to it that it appeared "clear" like a varnish on me. I wasn't sure at all that I liked it leaving either. I'm thinking now of the character in the Great Divorce that refuses to part with the lizard on his shoulder because it's been there so long that he doesn't quite know what he'd do without it even though he knows it's doing him harm. Afterwards, the image stopped, and I felt scared to move. Something that had always been there, like a protection, was gone and it's unnerving.

"You know, you can't live on Hamlet forever." another gem from Rick this week.

What made this even more powerful for me was that Taylor and I had just been talking about prayer and how life-changing we should expect each and every prayer to be. I can't say I've felt a more direct and immediate effect of prayer in my life.

I'm reading my nightstand note sheet that I use to jot down late night thoughts and saw that I thought about writing something that symbolized recurring sin not in an action, but in the antitheses of good things that we desire naturally. We were talking about sin not really existing in bible study a few weeks ago, how it's just the completely wrong pursuit of an inherently good desire, just met the wrong way.

Anxiety

I saw Jarhead today and really dug it. Aside from the cinematography, which was great, I really enjoyed the way that Mendes portrayed the enemy of these Desert Storm Marines. Instead of Iraqis or nameless Arabs, boredom and a growing sense of anxiety was what these guys battled with day in and out.

Sounds lame, I know. Maybe it is but what really hooked me was my own experience of being in a situation where you know and expect something to happen, and just have that expectation whittle away at you night after night. These guys change as their stay in the desert lengthens, not just because of each other or the war, but because they know that war is out there, near, and they're not a part of it. Quirky personalities become borderline insanity from the sheer tension of nothing.

I think it might be the feeling that something that's either owed you or that belongs to you is being withheld from you. When we feel anxious, it usually has this aura of something being extremely close to realization or fruition, but that there's something in between it and us. Sometimes it's something as simple as time. Other times we orchestrate situations that perpetually keep us in a state of uncertainty, keeping ourselves afloat in a grey sea with land in sight, but forever out of reach. Or maybe I'm the only one who does that once in a while.

Go see Jarhead. Be warned, there are some nudey bootys (Andy Braner, anyone?), but nothing outlandish. Look for how waiting can do more to someone's psyche than just lull them to sleep.

London

Some pictures from London, taken by Jessica. She's much better at it than I.

Prayer

A friend who attended Kyle's church in Waco just told me about this, and I'd like to ask for your prayers for his family and church. Thanks much

Picture

"He looked like one with good original intentions but always with a hint of regret in the corner of his eyes when he smiled; picture the western conception of Jesus had he decided not to die for the world's sin, but instead to get that desk job and let the stress and worries of a wife, kids, and office politics wear away at his hairline."

The Bar

Music now falls into two categories: Everything Else, and Queen's "Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy."

Taylor and the Renegade

Seattle

Split em

My bike story idea:

While I was cruising down Highway 8 (enjoying every piece of chipseal maybe even more than the people in cars next to me losing paint as it rocketed out from between my tires into their doors) a car turned off on a road across both lanes from me on my left. It was a grey, older Hondsubishiyota, and the two people inside looked as if they were arguing. I think I could make out a larger woman in the driver's seat and a smaller man in the passenger. I immediately started thinking about ridiculous scenarios that involved them being a rag tag husband and wife bank robbing team, and that they'd been told by an inside source that a bicyclist on the road is a sign that the authorities are waiting for them in, say Bovill. The arguement they're having is them debating whether or not the cyclist was supposed to be on this road or another, general misunderstandings. They also start wondering if he's just a sign, or if his arrival in Moscow will spring the cops to attention in Bovill. They can't remember.

Meanwhile, our biker has nothing to do with the above plot and is just out enjoying the weather. We'll jump back and forth between the simple wanderings of his mind and the growing tension in the car, until they decide that they'd better do something about him getting back to town. I think that shortening each section as they get physically closer on the road would be a good technique for building tension. They'll be catching up to him from behind, so he doesn't see what's coming at all. I haven't decided what to do with the ending; dying biker ending the story with his continuing thoughts, a last minute decision by the couple to not hit him, maybe just build the tension and leave you hanging?

Mark of Success

A good sermon, in my opinion, is like water that seeps into the small, unnoticed cracks in a seemingly stout rock, that freezes and expands and cracks the stone to pieces in time.

Edub's talk this morning on the pursuit of wisdom and relating it to a young man pursuing a woman seems to be having this effect on me today. We were in Proverbs 4 this morning, and drawing on verse 18 made the comparison with hiking in the wilderness at sunrise. Things that were invisible and unknown to you only minutes before are suddenly in plain view, whether beautiful or terrible. Someone rejecting wisdom is like one in deep darkness, unaware of what they're stumbling over. I know I've seen that in my life; I can look back on less wisdom filled days and remember the stumbles seeming random, invisible, and appearing out of thin air, but with more insight today I can pick out most of the rocks and roots that were hindering me. I feel that it's a continuing process, that in 10 years I'll be able to look back, hopefully with more wisdom than today, and pick out exactly what was tripping me up this afternoon.

I think I easily fall into a way of thinking that tells me that I've got it mostly figured out. That while there is of course more knowledge out there than I could grasp, that I'm doing alright. Then the water starts to freeze, and I'm thankful for it.

Identity

I just took the Trek out for ride in this amazing weather, and it was a great reminder of who I am. At this chapter in my life, I am without a doubt, a jock at heart.

I did have some ideas for stories on that ride, one of them being told from a split perspective. More to come.

Origins

A friend and I were talking about classes to take in order to meet the University required 128 credits. Knowing that he'd enjoyed reading through my Narnia books and a few others, I suggested that he take some literature class his last semester. He responded oddly, I thought, by saying that he can't really see studying literature as being practical. I thought that strange, I said, since you enjoy reading when you have the time, why wouldn't you want to take a class geared towards better understanding texts? "I don't know, I guess when I want to read a book I want to read a theology book."

In one of my literature classes last week, Rick was telling us how things like poetry, art, and literature are the disciplines that reveal God's mark on us, because we're "creating", using our imaginations. He downplayed the sciences as just guys "recording stuff."

My friend is majoring in the sciences at UI, and "practical" is a great way to describe him. I started thinking more about his reason for staying away from literature study in favor of a book on eschatology. It actually fits pretty well, that someone very practically minded who studies "facts" in a textbook and the actual world, would gravitate more towards that style of book. My own opinion is that theology books are great and have a lot to say and a lot to learn from, but my preference is to become aware of culture, the world, the people in it, Scripture, and it's impact on the previous, and form my own theology. I don't want this to sound like a slam, but it seems that the more "practically minded" scientific is more used to having the facts laid out in front of them and just worrying about memorizing that light travels at 186,000 mps. Or they like having a strict formula to plug variables into to arrive at the practical conclusion. For the most part, I'd rather not be told what to think about God, but see what His creation, all of it, not just theologians, tells me about Him.

Answer?

In regards to my last post, I was reading Lewis's "The Four Loves" at the Kenworthy tonight, and came across something that spoke directly to my question. From the fount of wisdom itself: "When two people who thus discover that they are on the same secret road are of different sexes, the friendship which arises between them will very easily pass - may pass in the first half-hour - into erotic love. Indeed, unless they are physically repulsive to each other or unless one or both already loves elsewhere, it is almost certain to do so sooner or later."

I'm not sure i agree with old Clive on this one. There has to be something besides utter repulsiveness or previous engagement that dissuades two "friends" from slipping into eros. ???

Attraction

What's the deal with attraction to members of the opposite sex? Is it {Pretty} + {Interesting} = Attractive? A better question: Is it possible for someone to be both pretty and interesting, yet not attractive to you? I feel like it's this mathematical impossibility, something you can't get around. Stupid.

Evil

Most of my stories and ideas usually paint some kind of pitiable character that the reader usually can easily sympathize with. I've been reading a lot of Shakespeare lately where he creates really really hateable characters. My teacher tries to look at characters like Falstaff and Richard III as either comically evil, or complex evil, but never just plain bad. I see them more in a straight up bad dude way, and that's the kind of person I want to have a story focus around. Maybe not someone killing their siblings and children to gain the throne of England, but something closer to home that just makes you despise a person.

My first thought for this was of a group of roommates who use a white board to keep track of who owes who what. Jesse takes care of most of the bills, so everyone is usually owing him money on the board. Jesse asks Travis if he wants to make $10 by cleaning up his bike for him. Travis agrees and cleans up the bike. Bills have come in, and instead of taking off $10 of what Travis would owe, Jesse adds $10 to everyone else's, making it look like Travis owes ten less. Things like that, he's not a jerk upfront, just really sleazy and sneaky behind the scenes. I haven't thought much about whether or not he'll get caught and whupped or just keep getting away with it.

Restrained

The idea of a college kid in a low-level philosophy class who's permanently unable to speak struck me as an interesting idea for a story. The thought of it came to me while I sat in my low-level philosophy class wishing that others were permanently unable to speak.

I was actually thinking about the different directions that could take. Would the kid have some kind of quiet, incredible insight that his mouthy classmates lack? Is his rage just building and building with every minute that he can't yell out "It's like in the Matrix.....!" That might be a nice way of illustrating how we all think we have something to say, but that we're restrained from doing so, and when we finally get the opportunity, we make jackasses out of ourselves.

Our character here is unable to speak, but I'm imagining that he has a rarely used kind of speak-what's-typed machine with which he utters his epiphany, either for the class's edification or his own humiliation. More to come.

Marriage

Another interesting thing about Chapter 7 of 1 Corinthians is that it's where the early church formed their idea of marriage being a kind of shameful consolation prize, below the virtue of celibacy. Paul really seems to push the single idea in this Chapter, and makes it sound like "Well, if you can't control yourself, there's always marriage.....not that there's anything wrong with that...." But that fact that he puts them in that order, and points to the example of himself being single a few times tips the scales a bit. I read something brief about the change in that mentality during the Protestant Reformation, I believe, in a great book about Shakespeare. If if find it, I'll post my findings, since I'm not too sure when or why the shift occured.

Mmmmm, Context

Just found out something interesting in a Bible study going through 1 Corinthians at the Big Haus. Towards the end of chapter 7, Paul makes a strange comment seemingly about a father giving away his daughter in marriage and how it's better for him to keep her a virgin. An alternate reading can look like it's better for an engaged couple to stay unmarried if the man can control his desire. Either reading is weird, and neither seems to make much sense. And then the Evan Wilson context kicks in. Turns out there was this "celibate living arrangement" practice called sub interducti (sp?) in the early church in which a man and woman lived together, unmarried, and refrained from sex. The intention was to have the assistance and companionship of a spouse, but to keep your thoughts and actions pure and "towards God", by staying chaste. The things you learn in Moscow, I tell you what....

So Paul seems to be instead referring to this wacky living situation, when he says that if any man feels he is acting unbecomingly towards a Christian daughter, let him marry, he does not sin to do so. But he adds that it's better (in sub interducti) for them to remain celibate and chaste.

Trust

So I just had a conversation with a guy who used to have my bosses position at the theatre I work at. I was telling him about how the place has gone downhill, and isn't living up to half of it's potential as a small, independent cinema. We had a good talk and afterwards I realized that, while I had known Jerry before tonight, it seems that he would place much more trust in me because we shared these common grievances.

For some reason my mind is usually turning towards unpleasant things to write about in stories. Any twist that I think of, or theme, or character type is something uncomfortable, cruel, or twisted some other way. What I was thinking about tonight was a story that takes tonight's situation, but playing up my character as someone intentionally gaining trust with the end result of using it to hurt. I'd definitely want to spend most of the space on the reader seeing me talking with Jerry, with no other intent obvious on the outside. A closer reading should reveal little hints that I was planning this all along, and that I'm just that evil of a guy. No conscience nagging him about completely misleading this guy, just calm, calculated manipulation.

I haven't settled on how I hurt in the end, but I probably won't go into much detail, I just want it to have the shock of realizing what I'd been doing the whole story was a lie.

I (matt the writer) will probably not write this in the first person, I just used "I" and "Jerry" to remember what the original idea was.

Squirm

So this idea of a wonderfully awkward scene came to me a few weeks ago on the farm. I've really been writing a short story that tells of a youngish guy's day to day life away from his home town. He keeps in touch with a high school friend sporadically, and in one of these messages tells him about a girl he's possibly interested in. The girl has to have a fairly unique name, one that would be certainly identifiable in a small town. A few years later, the girl has met and married another guy in town, and this friend comes to visit Youngish. In a small group setting which includes girl's husband, Friend is catching up with Y. and happens to ask something like, "So, whatever happened with you and Girl?" Gut-twisting awkwardness ensues.

What I need to work on is giving the guy the type of personality that would obviously be mortified at the end. Maybe by portraying him as someone who doesn't talk much about his interests in the opposite sex very much, making this such an unlikely event to happen to him. Still debating whether the story continues beyond a few lines after the bomb is dropped.

Mold me

So it's a little early for school griping, but what the hell. I'm sitting in my Geography 100 lab, struggling to grasp the concept of the Coriolis effect in regards to air travel. My grad student teacher comes over, and basically fills in the answers for me. When I ask about the mechanics of it, since they still remain obtuse to me, she dismisses the importance of "actually knowing how it works." I offer my understanding of the effect, and she replies that it makes sense, but that she's been taught to teach this way which she admittedly doesn't understand and therefore can't explain to me.

What is the point of these "rounding you off/making you a better person" required classes if we can't have basic, 100 level material explained to us? The only rounding off going on is of my respect for the education system.

It Begins

At 9:09 on a Monday night in Moscow, I enter the world of blogging. I'm sure if it didn't have such an ugly sounding name I'd feel as if I were doing something much more academic and artistic. I think my first goal that I'd like to see realized in this is to write freely with as little editing as possible. For example, I've already deleted and re-worded two sentences in this post. I'd like to see less of that. As far as where I'm going thematically, I have no set guidelines right now. I've been wanting to get ideas for stories written down somewhere, and this will most likely be a storage of plots, twists, awkward moments, themes, one-liners, frustrations and other bits of things I'd like to put together into to cohesive stories. There's an off chance that I'll be expressing my digust with things going on in my little world from time to time as well, but don't worry, probably 97% of the people who read this won't recognize any of the context that I'm griping in (ie, you won't hear a lot about the President from me). That being said, I think I'll close and hit the sack with intentions of an early rise when I plan to destroy some homework.