Outside the Box- Is Another Box

Among Emergent Hipsters it's popular to not appreciate Augustine. I think it comes from the vague obligatory fondness of some reified mystical "East" whose otherness affords it a bit of a free-ride. It seems among disaffected Western Christians there's the hope of finding something refreshing for the soul- something that hasn't been made mechanical and lifeless by familiarity and rote habit- in the Eastern Church. That may be naive but I don't think it's wrong. Though, it does remind me of a Monty Python sketch wherein a poet father refuses to stand by while his son ruins his life chasing his dream of being a coal miner.

Ha ha ha.

Anyway, being a Latin Church Father, Augustine is on the outs with the mystical, broad-minded, free range "East."

Go figure.

That is, figure it's more a function of church politics than anything else. True, there are things you find in Origen that you won't find in Augustine, and things with Augustine that you won't find with Origen- like testicles. (And how). But if you're looking to avoid dogma and take it or leave it tradition, your journey does not lead to the East. Unless by "East" we mean some idea so wrenched from history that it means whatever we want it to mean.

Of course there is a lot to turn you off in the West, as there is in any tradition. I find plenty objectionable in Augustine's writing. But unfortunately, I am tragically unhip (again with the loser talk) so the source of my distaste for some of his work does not come from being a thirty-something disaffected Evangelical searching for refreshment in something outside of what I know and so assuming that I ditch Augustine for that ride. I guess that makes me a bit of a poseur. Oh don't get me wrong, I am a thirty-something disaffected Evangelical, but I think the perennial mistake, or tragedy of our soul's searching, is the mistake Augustine makes when he turns to what I find problematic. It's the outward gaze; it's the move to compare our selves with some external measure of faith rather than seeing and confronting our self as revealed by God's light.

The parts of Augustine's Confessions that might be called devotional (only because we think of theology as building vast unifying systems) are lovely and hopeful, especially in their honest appraisal of who he is as God reveals it to him. He writes that way elsewhere too. But not often enough, and he is prone to thinking in tedious and unfaithful ways. Then again, so am I. Still, he can remind me it's not in what we search or the systems we erect in our limited knowledge. It's in how we are searched and what God makes of us that is meaningful.

Tu autem eras interior intimo meo et superior summo meo.

Latin! Isn't that the language of patriarchy, High Church Stuffiness and the fake Bible?! I know, can you believe it? But there it is.

God is more present to us than we are to our selves; our journey is necessarily, but not naturally, inward. It is not to a tradition from East or West that we imagine is more relevant or to a time in our history imagined as more authentic. It is to a place where we stand before God.

If someone needs to take a step away from the familiar to see this- if that's what it takes to see our home is not in the traditions of an East or West but is in Christ- well then that's a fine move I suppose. Only, I don't know that the step outside of the familiar leads directly home- even as we are stuck feeding the pigs, it is only after we see our own condition that we begin to sense where we belong.

Hey! My iPod Doesn't Glow and Leave Light Streamers!
You and Whose Army? -Radiohead
At Least That's What You Said -Wilco
The Wind -Cat Stevens
Fiddle Riddle -Frank Black
Wild World -Jimmy Cliff
Is This Love -Bob Marley
Elizabeth on The Bathroom Floor- Eels
Sweet Talkin' Woman -E.L.O.
It's The End of The World as We Know It -R.E.M.
Take The A Train -Dizzy Gillespie
We're Going to Be Friends -The White Stripes
Subterranean Homesick Blues -Bob Dylan
Lithium -Nirvana