The Words I'm Saying Now Mean Nothing More Than Meow to an Animal

So I was supposed to make some huge announcement last week. Apparently I was wrapped up in other things- hogging space in our church blog, teeing things up for The Blonde Buddha to make fun of Dan Kimball's hair, grading midterms, organizing peace "things" (more on that later). Well, all I was going to announce was my selling out, or buying in, to Obama.* And now the time has passed.

I apologize already to the Obama campaign, I have a history of supporting, not just underdogs, but losers.

You may also have noticed that I didn't comment on MY PRESIDENT's veto of the bill bringing the CIA's interrogation techniques in line with the Army Field Manual. Essentially what President Jesus was saying with that is torture is a good thing. That moment passed as well, but beside that, what else could I say in response to yet another demonstration of where we stand?

But over this all, at least hanging over me lately, has been a question about the world we're making. I would require a lot of space to develop why the above things, even those only hinted at, matter to this concern. Space I am not going to take, so you have to just accept that they do. Or not. But in my mind it is connected.

I read this early last week:
"The point of this exercise is to lead us to deep gratitude, repentance, and action"
And it made me angry.

It had been floating over me like a lone raincloud.

What a jerk.

Here's something that's supposed to make people grateful, repentant, and active; and what do I do? I get angry. The line was in a pamphlet promoting and explaining a "Stations of the Cross" installation on our campus. I'm glad Protestants, at least these, don't hate Catholics anymore, or if they do, they don't hate them so much they aren't unwilling to appropriate their practices. Or maybe the way they appropriate them is a manifestation of their hate for Catholics. I don't know. Whatever the reason there they were, all the stations interpreted by different student artists.

I appreciate an openness to others, an experimental and experiential approach with one's faith, a regard for those things that are meaningful to others, but I find myself rejecting much of this (this being things like the above) as a joke at best or, well, something worse at worst. It seems I want people to be open, and when they try to be, it bothers me. Well, it wasn't the installation that bothered me so much. I thought it was cute before I read the pamphlet. And it's not the openness to new practices. I was angered that this was supposed to lead one to be grateful, repentant, and active. And it's not that I find it troubling that people should be grateful, repentant, and active. And perhaps on any other day, well, I know that on other days I wouldn't have reacted like such a baby. It was just a perfect storm of thoughts and experiences that made me such a crank.

And what is there to crank? It's the confusion that this seems to reveal. Whether it's a confusion in the perpetrator or in me is up for grabs but there is a confusion. I think deep gratitude, repentance, and action are good... well depending on for what one is grateful, from what one repents, and how one acts. That is not my concern in this instance. It is this tendency to add strange layers of muddle and falsehood to a situation that is already unclear and fictitious. It seems the height of pretense to say something like, "Wearing head coverings is a meaningful practice to so and so, we should do it too, only don't wear head coverings the way they do it, let's make it artsy and incredibly self-unaware." That probably doesn't seem problematic to anyone for whom that is not problemmatic... Rather, maybe, it seems like saying, "My dead wife used to do 'blank' and it showed me she loved me, will you do that too, please? Then, when you act just as she did, I'll know you love me," or saying, "'Child Number Two,' you need to live your life just as 'Child Number One' did because she did so well. We can only know you're doing well if you're just like her."

I may be overreacting- (yes, maybe), but they seem like similar acts to me, and while I have a great deal of tolerance for confusion, this type of practice frustrates and discourages me. Yeesh. That "tolerance" makes it sound like I am incredibly gracious and understanding when clearly I'm not. What I mean is I expect a good deal of confusion when speaking about things that are difficult to articulate. This may bring something like physics to mind; it shouldn't. That is something that is actually quite easy to articulate- we may need to learn the language/s but it is something sensible and physical. One's being unable to understand certain things about some range of things called physics is not necessarily a problem with physics. It could be our own laziness or unfamiliarity, but with native effort you could do it. But speaking clearly of a subject that is not sensible, things that are metaphysical, ethereal, etc... is not a matter of effort. It is confused. That's as it is; and for me, there is always a measure of confession involved in expressing things that are best passed over in silence. I expect that type of confusion.

But this other practice seems not just confused, it is dangerously confused.

So much of what we do is self-indulgent and at risk of becoming foisted as the way things are rather than tentatively held as what we do. We risk becoming unintentional with our practices and forgetting that we are already trying to say something with our religious habits, they risk becoming normal. And boy, our practices are not normal; we need to remember it is just a familiar voodoo.

We already fabricate ways to express those things that aren't really things. It's how we demonstrate gratefulness, repentance, anger, devotion, joy, love. That kind of "thing". We forget that what we do is not some kind of magic that lures God into our presence nor is what we do the best practices for knowing God. We forget that what we do is already a set of acts meant to say something about something about which it is difficult to say. Further, we forget that it shouldn't be a matter of saying something about this "thing" which it is difficult to say things, rather we are responding in some way. Other people, other better than me people, may remember that easily and readily. For them, the habits of song, sermon, song ad infinitum could be just that. That's why they're better than me. But if there's a risk that we see it leads to God rather than follows as some hopeful response to God, it does not seem to me it is overcome or avoided by taking the strange of someone else as real magic. It is also problematic if we think someone else's magic is more meaningful because it is someone else's. What's worse to me is that the possibility of expressing gratefulness and repentance in action is overlooked. I mean, I don't know that we are likely to say the first thing to do to express repentance and gratefulness is to sing a David Crowder song and listen to a 20-30 minute affirmation. Perhaps that's part of why we look elsewhere for things that might lead us to express gratefulness and repentance.

It may be that the current ways we do that are not the most suitable and we sense a bit of frustration in that. The solution does not seem to be learn someone else's language in an attempt to express what is difficult in any language. I don't know that we can be led to be grateful and repentant by practices, reflecting upon certain things included as a practice. Unless the act of practicing meaningless acts is itself an act that we mean to do to demonstrate who we are.

I do know it's difficult to explain why one feels loved, or grateful, or wishes to turn from one thing and to another. It seems to require, then, that we be more critically familiar with who we are and how things make sense to us. As I hinted above, I've been especially sensitive to that lately. I'm feeling particularly responsible for the kind of world we are creating- not just in the leaving a mess or a better campsite to future generations way- but in a "what are we saying by what we are doing?" kind of way. We're always saying something in what we do, I need to be much more intentional and aware about what that might be.


*I'm sure some of you thought I was going to announce something else to the blogoglobe. Well, I wasn't.

Ugh, Listening to Some Other Guy's Playlist Isn't Right
Gone- Ben Fold's Five
Colorblind- Color Me Bad
Welcome to Jamrock- Damian Marley Feat. The Notorious BIG
I've Got Friends in Low Places- Garth Brooks
BOOTED
Blues for Pablo- Mils Davis
I'm Housin'- Rage Against the Machine
Never Going Back Again- Fleetwood Mac
Don't Worry About the Government- Talking Heads
Dead- Pixies
How Can I tell You- Cat Stevens
Motivation- Tripping Daisy
Killing an Arab- The Cure
September Song- Sarah Vaughan
Outer Space Doesn't Care About You- The Briefs
Nuguns- System of a Down