Summer

New Years day painting. Start the year off right:)

The Ole Baby Jesus... he aint what he used to be...

Came across these illuminating thoughts on the "reason for the Season." Which kind of completely re-frames the meaning of the nativity scenes and its message that you see all over the place at this time of year.

These days I look at them and I think to myself, what the hell does it really mean anyway? I think it is simply that the nativity story and what it represents to ( my mind) the modern mind, or any reasonable mind, (a kind of hang over from the cultural values of the 50's), has become (is?) un-tenable.

I was actually shocked, (or maybe I wasnt), to see one of those playbill signs out front of a local Anglican Church that actually had "Jesus is the reason for the Season" posted in big, red block letters. Like they were trying to convince us, or themselves, that its true.

But when you read the nativity story in light of this...

Jesus was thus heavily involved in the political and economic policies of his world, and he was a resistance leader against the structures of exploitation. He was, in other words, a prophet preaching covenant renewal, which is that first ingredient in the “forgiveness of sins.”

It suddenly recovers some kind of relevant meaning.

The Power of Christmas and the Blues

So with apologies in advance if this seems overly religious, ( its certainly not intending to be) I have been following the series of posts about demons and the powers, by Dr Richard Beck at Experimental Theology.

One of the ideas highlighted in his series of posts, is the notion that the physical and the spiritual realms (heaven and earth) , are not , as Christians have predominantly understood, practiced, taught and insisted on over the last century, up there and down here, with the two only intersecting in strange, disembodied, paranormal ways in which human beings are but helpless pawns in a cosmic battle between God and the Devil.

"

Wink's suggestion is that we re frame how we understand "heaven" and "earth." In the biblical witness these locations were framed in an Up versus Down metaphor. Heaven was above us and earth below. As Bultmann reminded us in the first post, this cosmological arrangement isn't tenable for modern persons."

What immediately comes to mind for me is, of course, blues music.

The reason for this is that as many people are aware, Blues music originated in part from early Gospel Spirituals, which if you listen to them carefully, clearly separated the spiritual world and the physical world. The physical world being only "temporary" or, down here and the spiritual world being "eternal" or up there. There were not a few Blues Musicians that abandoned their music, fearing they would be condemned otherwise, for this very reason.
Here is a stanza from a well worn blues spiritual to illustrate:

"I am a poor wayfaring stranger
Travelling through this world below
There is no sickness, no toil nor danger
In that bright land to which I go"


You could be forgiven for thinking that in fact, a cruel trick was being played on people who were suffering a great deal and needed to believe there was something better beyond this life, clinging to apparently empty promises, merely to cope with the abject misery of their day to day existence.

This is often suggested by opponents of religious experience, and might be true.

Yet early Blues music inhabited that tension, (as human creativity so often does), and was a beautifully sorrowful, human, and creative attempt to reconcile the paradox of the real life experience of people, and the Hope in a better world that is the cry of the poor and down trodden, and indeed it could be argued, the cry of all people. The same one held out by environmentalists, socialists,preachers and pastors, both sincere and fake, from pulpits and revival tents across the American South both then and now. However, the two, even at a cursory glance, seem to clearly be in conflict. Any reasonably honest person cannot help but confront this. Here is an example from the bible to illustrate:

"He will Respond to the prayer of the Destitute;
He will not despise their plea." (Psalm 102:17)

"From heaven he viewed the earth,
to hear the groans of the prisoners
and release those condemned to death" (Psalm 102:19-20)

Yet it seems that both then and now, the prayers and pleas of the destitute and the prisoners are not responded to.By God or anyone else. Which brings me to the second point I would like to pick up on from Beck's series.

According to the writers Beck references, not only our concept of heaven and earth, but demonic powers have also been separated from the physical world in which we live. This holds a special significance for me, as someone who was brought up on terrifying stories of the power of demonic forces had over my soul. Rather than being disembodied, malevolent spirits preying on the souls of Blues musicians, unsuspecting fans of Heavy Metal, demonic powers, as understood by ancient biblical writers, are intimately connected to the concrete socio- political dimension.

The "spiritual" or "heavenly" realm is the "inside" aspect of physical arrangements, the "spirituality" (inner life and logic) of nations, political parties, businesses, institutions, markets, churches, and ideological movements. In Wink's model when we think of the "angel of a nation" we are talking about the inner life of the nation, the spirituality of its inhabitants and political structures. For example, socialism has a spirituality as does capitalism. America has a spirituality different from, let's say, France, Canada or Iran.

What immediately comes to mind for me, is of course, Christmas.

It seems like many people feel controlled by the Christmas season and its attendant obligations. Every year you hear the same complaints. "So over Christmas this year!!" "God, I haven't even started my Shopping yet!!" It seems strange that Christmas exercises to a greater or lesser awareness, some strange, vice like power over our culture, seen most clearly, I think, in the consumerist compulsion, and though there seems to be an impulse to break free, there doesn't appear to be any real alternatives to servitude of this ideology, so we continue "buying" into it, year after year.

So when we talk about "fighting against powers in the heavenly realm" we are talking about waging a war against the spirituality of America or capitalism or other sorts of power arrangements. In this light, for example, consumerism is seen as a demonic power, a form of spirituality, an object of worship, a location of idolatry or spiritual enslavement.

Its the same story with work. Why does office chit chat so often revolve around winning Tattslotto so we can break free of our dreary life of servitude to work and money? Yet we turn up, day after day? Could it be that we see little alternative? And you might well ask, what alternative is there, really?

Beck and the writers he has been surveying in these posts, suggest that the ultimate moral force behind these spiritual powers that take up so much of our life and energy is death. The power of death is something I literally see on a regular basis in my work as a Hospital orderly.

Death is—apart from God—the greatest moral power in this world, outlasting and subduing all other powers no matter how marvelous they may seem for the time being. This means, theologically speaking, that the object of allegiance and servitude, the real idol secreted within all idolatries, the power above all principalities and powers—the idol of all idols—is death.

The question, therefore, seems to be, one of whether transcendence of the power of death can truly take place? To offer up another point of conflict to be strummed out in Open G, despite the ideals offered by religious or any other transcendent ideology, it doesn't seem to be the case. At least with the eyes that we have.

Can You Help Me?

Can you help me?

The obligatory, and perhaps necessary Christmas consumer drawing. Most people want out I reckon. A faint pleading in the eyes that calls out, perhaps most prophetically, in the eyes of a teenager from behind the cash register.

Killer Coke

Someone pointed out to me yesterday, that when you buy a can of coke, the actual life cycle of its purpose, (what it is made for ) lasts how long? One hour? Five minutes? Then you put it in the "recycling" like a good little citizen, and never think about it again, right?

Well, what we all know but are rarely consciously aware of was brought home by this illustration presented to me and others by the Ethical Consumer Group, yesterday. The five minute life cycle of a can of Coke actually starts a long time before you see it on the shelf. Like an iceberg, the humble can of Coke has hidden, and far reaching roots that, like icebergs, are silent, and in no way benign.

Moral Problems: A two Sided Coin?

"If your looking at it through the prism of morality, I think you have to come down against embryonic stem cell research, even if it will admittedly, help some other segment of the population."

An interesting point was made about the debate about embryonic stem cell research on the 7.30 report tonight. Those who see a moral problem with using embryo's for research into treatment of major diseases, don't see a moral problem discarding those same embryos as medical waste.

"I do not understand why it might be considered ok to discard these embryos as medical waste in a trash bin, but to use them to help people with devastating diseases...why that is not respectful to life. I do not understand that."

Yeah, well, I dont think your the only one.

Unity and its carnage: The Way of The Cross

"The religiously minded can no longer turn their backs upon the natural world, or seek escape from its imperfections in a supernatural world; nor can the materialistically minded deny importance to spiritual experience and religious feeling."

Those words were written more than half a century ago, in the introduction to Teilhard de Chardin's "The phenomenon of man" I first came across Chardin in a religion and society class in 2002. I next ran into him of all places in a work by one of my favourite authors, Annie Dillard, entitled, "For the time Being."

What first struck me about Chardin was that despite having his life's work suppressed by his  religious superiors until after his death, he never renounced the vow of obedience he made to the Jesuit order. He continued his work as a scientist and Paleontologist, being among those to first discover the Peking Man, despite being exiled from Europe for his ideas and being forbidden from publishing anything he wrote.  

In his search for unity, he managed to embody and hold the tension between violently opposed systems of thought. Christlike, he sacrificed himself on the violent tension between scientific truth and religious dogma that raged through out the twentieth century, and still flares today.

In the end, the Catholic church finally acquiesced to the evolutionary ideas of human origins that Chardin and those before had put forward. As have most other branches of the Religious tree of man. 

As one of the few dim lights in history who have been able to peacefully confront the tensions of the human struggle for unity, he becomes for us, a modern witness. Like those of Gandhi, MLK, and others, who have shown firstly that it is possible for the struggle towards unity to bear fruit, even, and perhaps only under the weight of great suffering and cost. And secondly that for it to bear lasting fruit, it seems that it is most often  embodied in the flesh and bones life of a single person who is willing to hold and bear that tension. And this is true, I think, not only of great ideas of human unity, but also the unity we all seek in our own souls.