Nothing Bad Ever Happens To Me
Hola, amigos, I know it's been a while since I rapped at you but I've been trying to mellow out.* I've been trying to mellow out in a couple of ways. As avid readers may remember, I have been troubled by developments in our Yearly Meeting cum Annual Conference- specifically, by the content of the tellingly not infamous Who We Are pamphlet- and generally, by the communal context that overlooks, let alone, embraces it. I am troubled because it represents a shallowness of hope and thought and because it suggests that I'm a creep. I'm a weirdo. What the hell am I doing here? I don't belong here.
It's probably not necessary to go into what is WRONG with the pamphlet... Do I mean that? WRONG? I do- though not in a sense that someone is saying red is green. Nor is it a case of someone saying strawberry is the best flavor for ice cream. I mean I cannot find my place in it now and if it truly represents who we want to be then I cannot share that goal. It's WRONG in that sense.
But I've already said that. What I haven't said, or haven't explained, is that I am trying to mellow out. I've been asking myself why I care. I don't mean that in a nihilistic, it's all vanity way. I mean, what is it about this that makes me care? The best I've been able to get at is how do I care. Since I am concerned, how should I approach the issue? I shared these thoughts at our last Ministry and Counsel meeting (I think we're still allowed to call it that in our Annual Conference). They are helpful questions- queries- for me to always bear in mind for any type of congregational business. That's nice. Anytime I get at this issue, though, I am discouraged; when I confront myself at the heart of this concern, "Why do I care?" becomes, "Why should I care?" If it is not something that other people are concerned with, why should I bother? I don't mean this to suggest I should be apathetic. I mean, if this is what this community is about- how do I have a place in it? I've showed up to play football at a baseball field. How much sense does it make to suggest everyone else is wrong for wanting to play baseball- especially if others elsewhere are playing football, and should I join them, I could be made a better football player? I use the sports analogies because apparently that's what effective leaders do now.
The Blonde Buddha says I need to exhaust that line of thought. (Blonde Buddha is a much better interblog disguise than a lengthy palindrome.)
Maybe.
It also seems, when I ask "Why do I care?" that this becomes to me like a fight over paint color. It is easy to discuss why one shade is better than an other and feel like something is accomplished when we finally decide on a color but it's not the heart of who we are. It is not meaningless- we probably invest a great deal of meaning in colors, design, accessories, and structure. That's fine- we maybe should do that at some point. However, we will go on doing the things that we do- we will go on doing the things that really say, "This is who we are," no matter what colors the walls are. The color might say "This is who we want to be," but that it is something we can see as possibly contentious or meaningful is more revealing about who we are than the color we ultimately choose in the hope that it says, "We are a purple people- a people that values and strives to be purple." Purple might mean something- and be a thing to discuss and get just right in a certain context, but while we're talking about what it means to be purple and making sure we understand its implications it becomes for us more than a discussion; it becomes our meaning. Don't get me wrong- I believe it is important that what we can say is said clearly and if we are going to say this is "Who We Are" and want to be, we should be clear and thoughtful in it. But saying anything is just another thing we do. What we choose to think we could or should say about anything can say more about who we are than the words we think say anything. Some of it is embarrassing. Or less sympathetically, and perhaps more clearly, is this the equivalent of frat boys arguing the merits of Natural Light over Keystone? Once we're at that point we're finished, right? I feel that if I engage in this discussion I am losing a part of me- a part that feels that following Christ has to mean something more and be deeper than an appreciation for cheap beer. Maybe that window is closed.
It seems that a good number of the conversations that need to take place, or that I think should take place in our Annual Conference already happened in our Yearly Meeting... fifty years ago. The choices that led to the debate over Natural Light versus Keystone have already been made. Long ago, those who looked to "the young Negro students of our country"** as an example rather than a threat went someplace else. I wonder if a long time ago some made the decision to march on Washington while others stayed home. The ones who stayed home started running the shop and now I'm looking for something they don't sell. It's pretty foolish of me to ask for an egg if all they sell are scorpions.
So what is the energy for? Who does it help? Mellow out indeed.
And All The Terrible Things Happen Down The Road To Someone Else That I Don't Know
All Day and All of the Night- The Kinks
War Within a Breath- Rage Against the Machine
Martha My Dear- The Beatles
Little Ghost- The White Stripes
Come Into My Life-Jimmy Cliff
New Killer Star- David Bowie
Search And Destroy- The Stooges
Misery- Howlin' Wolf
Body Movin' The Beastie Boys
Laird Baird- Charlie Parker
Get It Together- The Beastie Boys
Narcolepsy- Ben Folds Five
Louder Than a Bomb- Public Enemy
Doll Parts- Hole
Tiffany Hall- The Coup
I Think I Smell A Rat- The White Stripes
Oh Lately It's Oh So Quiet- OK Go
Electro-Shock Blues- Eels
Another Tape Demo- Quasimoto
*If anyone other than The Blonde Buddha or The Loveshark valued my interweb games there would be a fabulous prize for anyone who identified the allusion in the title or the first line. But no one else does, so there will be no Village People albums for anyone.
**A real quote from 1960 YM.
9 comments:
You're so [very] special . . . but I don't think you're alone. Conversations are still taking place. Perhaps not at the organizational heights, but when have we ever believed that institutional authority conferred any actual spiritual distinction?
The institution may set itself or its representatives up as authoritative, but we don't have to believe it. So in that sense, I don't think we need to care too much about it.
But, insofar as the institution sets itself or its representatives up as authoritative, we should care precisely because we don't believe it.
The... a thing is, the institution doesn't do anything. We do. But then we also do, as you say, not care so much about it.
I don't know how healthy that schizophrenia is. I know it's put a steering wheel in my pants these days.
'We' do? Isn't part of the problem that 'we' are not being appropriately included in the decision-making processes of the organizational leadership?
Also, I am not so sure that 'the institution' doesn't do anything. I am currently engrossed in Mott's analysis in "Biblical Ethics and Social Change" of "the powers" behind the social realities of "the world". Perhaps I am wrong, but I think even ecclesiastical institutions might become susceptible.
Not that that absolves us of our responsibility/complicity . . .
I can't separate the "what they have done" from "what we do." It's no secret I am not a fan of MY PRESIDENT. I could say he does not represent me when he supports and executes things I find morally repugnant, but I would find that a lie. I am responsible for his being in office- not in the same way that someone who voted for him is, but responsible nonetheless. There is a "we" that is excluded from the decision making process but "we" are letting it stand. "We" are not making it clear that it is problematic. I say this analogously.
In other news... Wink I know, You I know, but who is Mott?
If what you are saying Mott says is that institutions have a life apart from that which we give them I have to disagree. Even if we give them some sort of idolatrous existence- it is still us giving them that life and meaning. The/a institution is a set of concretized/formalized human relations. There is no "the economy" that exists apart from what we do economically. What we call the economy might represent an overwhelmingly complex range of relations that we do or do not see. It may even serve as a term to disguise our responsibility or complicity for and in unpleasant aspects of these relations- but the economy is a result of our activities.
I think it's dangerous to minimize that participation. There may be a spiritual component to this- but I don't think I could say that there is a spiritual existence of a thing that precedes the thing. The spirit or power of an institution comes from its fetishization. We create it, we give it life, we imbue it with meaning.
I don't think you are wrong to understand the relation of powers and principalities in relation to "the church" as you do. I think ecclesial institutions are especially susceptible. Ecclesially... ecclesiastically (?) I think we are prone to imagining that this Body of Christ somehow is not an us or we kind of thing. It's easy to see it as some kind of magic that precedes us so that "what we do" easily becomes "the way things are" and we find ourselves serving the thing that is only a thing. The Law was made for the Son of Man and all that.
Anyway, "we" go along because it's the institution and not "we" that is the problem.
An institution (among other things) is (or can become) a 'whole' greater than the sum of its 'parts'. I don't subscribe to the (fully) reductionist view that says our own social entities are all entirely up to us. I think that reductionist view is an artifact of a problematically individualistic modern "enlightenment" ontology.
I do take your point, however, that a false sense of self-justification might arise from the holistic view, but while that kind of irresponsibility may occur in practice it doesn't seem to me to necessarily follow merely from the holism itself.
I agree with you that it is "dangerous" to minimize our participation and responsibility and complicity. But I think it is also mistaken (and perhaps also dangerous?) to "maximize" our responsibility. You already acknowledge various levels of responsibility (for example, between those who vote a president into office and those who do not), and I think I am simply doing the same, though I am arguing that the responsibility extends not just beyond you to me to us all, but also in some sense beyond us. That fact doesn't diminish our own responsibilities, but it might complicate or condition them.
It's the practice that matters to me.
At one point in The Grapes of Wrath, some tractors arrive to raze the Joad and other farmers' homes. Tom, I would guess- I don't remember exactly, threatens to shoot the tractor operator. The tractor operator is a family acquaintance who, down on his luck, took a job as a farm destroyer. After the "How could you do this?" and all that, he says he's just doing his job and there's no point in killing him because someone else will come along on a tractor, and if they kill the next guy, someone else will follow on a tractor, and on. Besides, it's not him destroying the farm, it's the bank. But there's no one at the bank to shoot- there's no "someone" behind this decision to destroy the Joad farm. There is only some nebulous "back East" that demands profits- whatever the human cost. That must be what it is because person after person tells them it is so. Decisions, like mistakes, have been made, and now there is some [?] that makes it impossible to stop the course of events.
There is something to that. Wether it is some demon of finance called Pecunidra who seeks to destroy the Joads' lives and so recruits humans to that end, or it is all of the decisions, as discoverable and dissectable as anything can be, even though they are very webby and complex, is, for me though, a discussion that occurs after what one does when they find they can say, "I have a hand in the loss of the Joad farm."
I tend away from thinking it's Pecunidra, but it is a discussion that matters to me.
So maybe to clarify what I might mean right now- I wouldn't guess you would say "the church" is anything apart from the people who are called to be "the church." But then, I'm a bad guesser. I wouldn't say there is "the church" apart from the people called to be "the church." Don't get me wrong, I say there is some such to our collective activities- our collectivity- that make them/it more than our individual activities or our selves. I should avoid calling it a thing though, I don't think that's right. As for hyper-individualism I should be clear -I am not sympathetic (nor I think, is a scriptural theology) to some... how do I say this without being a butthole? ... some Hegelian or (worse) Cartesian concept of I. I can't go for a self-reflective, pure being kind of I for us humans. Something like I in the modern sense is a bit offensive to me- maybe even the idea of the individual is. Even though a short Corsican artillery officer can be held responsible for the death of millions, I tend to think of us as much more contingent and relative (how else could a short Corsican artillery officer be responsible for the death of millions?) - so when I write about institutions as our formalized relations it's not in a humans as masters of the universe kind of way.
So as our AC/YM might be concerned- I have a hand in the loss of the Joad farm. Am I going to breast feed that starving man or become a fugitive?
Sorry about the deletion above . . . Here is the edit:
I have a hand in the loss of the Joad farm: So do I now "cleanse [my] hands, you sinner" or do I "cut it off and throw it from me"? Or do these amount to the same thing?
As our AC/YM might be concerned: am I going to cut my losses or am I going to seek and to save that which was lost?
Those seem like the right kind of questions- even if they are difficult to answer.
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