Your Manager Says for You to Shut Up

The second to the last sentence of that last post was rough:
"It should be deeply troubling to a people that want to be this community that responds to the Word of God to say and do something like, "What does the Bible say about slavery?" and then interpret some texts in The Bible that use the word slavery as having some directly instructive relation to our understanding of slavery in the same way we would understand a sign that read "No Swimming Without Lifeguard Present" posted on a fence surrounding a swimming pool has a relation to whether we should swim- and even that's not enough information to know whether we should swim."

Goodness, that's one sentence?

It's at least one sentence.

I could have made it much simpler by saying: "The Bible is not like a 'No Parking' sign, and any people who think it is ought not call themselves 'the church'."

But How Can You Talk With a Person if They Always Say the Same Thing?

This is tough. Back in the day, the day being the time neither you nor I were alive, the Pope declared himself as being able to speak infallibly when speaking from his throne of heaven. That actual power has only been invoked to declare things about Mary that needed to be declared if the metaphysical system of Christianity is going to stand anywhere other than midair. To wit: Mary was physically drawn up to heaven without tasting death because she was sin free. At least that's the assumption.

Thank you, thank you, don't forget to tip your server.

Anyway, the Pope did this at about the same time Protestant groups were giving birth to their scriptural infallibility/inerrancy statements. For both groups this was a break from what had come before in western Christianity and a consequence of struggles against and possibilities emerging from within the features of some thing we call Modernity. That is, the concept of papal infallibility was declared in the late 19th century and was used in the mid 20th- times of ecclesial shakiness and power grasping. In the broadest, perhaps most illegitimate of senses, for western Christians, Christendom was less and less a possibility, the shrinking world called universal systems into question, the perfectability of civilization was no longer assumed, blah blah blah.

Whatever, the concept of infallibility arose during this period. Though it seems like this is a negative reaction to “modern ideas”, it is at its core a Modern proposition. Though The Church is reacting at this time against Modern concepts, like secularism, the power of a state, Rationalist bases for human rights, etc... it is an entirely Modern claim- that the Pope, as an individual, is above other bishops, as primate, a first among equals. That one person, pope or other, has a clearer sense of what is right than the body of bishops is only possible in the world of Modernity. The idea is a creation.

In the World of At Leasts, since the Second Vatican Council, in the Catholic way of doing things, there has been a return to the conciliar tradition and authority of something collectively called The Church.

But Catholics are Catholics and Protestants aren't. We don't believe in The Church, we believe in The Bible. Still, along with Catholics, we have the rise of inerrancy/infallibility statements among Protestants that root their understanding of the world, just as the Pope would theoretically root his declaration, in something certain: for Proterstants, scripture itself. I mean, a parallel development to papal infallibility is the rise of contemporary scriptural authority claims as we currently understand them, so that by the end of the 20th century, any group that's going to call itself Evangelical, probably Christian even, is going to say something like: The Bible is the final authority in all matters of faith and practice because it, like the Pope, has a special status above others by nature of its essence. Papal and scriptural infallibility are twins. Papal infallibility was struck down just as it was learning to walk. Whereas scriptural infallibility has grown to its obnoxious, pimply, cocksure adolescence: lusty, lazy, convinced of his indestructability and place at the center of the world, consuming well more than it contributes, and stinking of Flaming Hot Cheetos.

But that is not something that has always been. I know that's uncomfortable for many Protestants. Even more uncomfortable would be to pull away the layer of statement in infallibility/inerrancy and get at what we actually do. We say scripture is itself the authority for what we say or do and generally remove the matter of understanding or interpretation from the equation even though it is there. So, for example, a cogent, thorough, unified "Biblical" argument for the institution of slavery or against miscegenation may or may not hold sway given historic conditions. The use of pain relieving agents in childbirth or surgeries may or may not be prohibited by scripture depending on the interaction of gender politics, conceptions of sin and suffering, the power of titles and institutions, the nature of death, what counts as secular against what is religious, and what 1.3 billion Chinese people had for lunch yesterday. So... there are many factors that go into what it takes to make what we call beliefs. But what we do is say, "The Bible says such and such about whatnot, as plain as anything," and then expect that our actions, specifically the do or not do, follow from that. But that's make believe.

I, for one, am not troubled by our manufacturing belief. I am mildly troubled by ignoring that process in our day to day lives. I am deeply troubled by traipsing down paths of moral instruction and ethics without accounting for this process. But more to the point, I am troubled that some "we" thinks we can be (not just call ourselves) the church and get away with this. If we really want to be a people called out of the world, called to sojourn, called to be pilgrims, we're not allowed to be that safe. Firstly because the Bible says we can't. Ah ha- just kidding. Firstly because, the word god has to mean more to us than "Santa Claus" and secondly because we're a people that say the Bible means something to us, and if it's more than a catalogue of data, that is, if it's going to mean something to us we have to be honest and confront that it means nothing to us as a set of instructions.

Yeesh that's a heavy thing to leave hanging, but there it is.

What this likely means is that we'll either have to help our greasy-faced teenager mature through his adolescence into a more responsible and participatory adulthood or remove him from such a a position of responsibility all together.

It should be deeply troubling to a people that want to be this community that responds to the Word of God to say and do something like, "What does the Bible say about slavery?" and then interpret some texts in The Bible that use the word slavery as having some directly instructive relation to our understanding of slavery in the same way we would understand a sign that read "No Swimming Without Lifeguard Present" posted on a fence surrounding a swimming pool has a relation to whether we should swim- and even that's not enough information to know whether we should swim.

Oh well. One day you and I will be dead.

My Goodness That was a Sweet Altidore Goal
Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground- The White Stripes
Paranoid Android- Radiohead
Hypnotist of Ladies- They Might Be Giants
Judy is a Punk- The Ramones
Tommy- The Who
Life During Wartime- Talking Heads
Going to California- Led Zeppelin
Mr. Tambourine Man- Bob Dylan
Mr. Grieves- Pixies
Plateau- nirvana
Tired of Waiting- The Kinks
Jane Allan- Billy Bragg
Jackass- Green Day
Hidden Charms- Howlin' Wolf

Riot Gear is for Riots

There's a story in this morning's LA Times about steps the LAPD is taking to minimize violence at planned upcoming May Day events.

First things first, the first thing being to demonstrate what an old man I have become, it's good that LAPD administrators recognize they were out of control and need to plan how to control themselves. Old Skybalon, who strangely enough would be younger Skybalon, would've said something like:
Hug the police
Comin’ straight from the underground
Young fellow got it bad cause I'm brown
And not the other color so police think
They have the authority to kill a minority...

Whether I'm old or not, I think it's good that the po-lice recognize there are better and worse ways to interact with protesters. In this case, there seems to be at least an awareness of the differences among those walking with their kids, those in the media, someone carrying a sign, and someone who just threw ice at a line of cops wearing kevlar helmets and body armor. This may not seem like much but if you remember last year, cops were beating and shooting at anything that moved. We need to have some degree of sympathy for the difficulty of trying to distinguish between a woman huddled over her children on the sidewalk, an overdressed foreigner holding a microphone (which could be a weapon) standing in front of a camera and lights, and a teenager with empty hands (empty hands certainly indicate you just threw something). Add to the mix that these people all decided to be some shade of brown and you've made the job that much harder. But difficult or not, the LAPD seems willing to confront those challenges. In fact~, Police Chief Bratton recently said: "Now see here. Before we go running about killing people, we'd better make damned sure of our facts. A riot is an ugly thing, and once you get one started, there's little chance of stopping it short of bloodshed." So... that's something.

That said, two things stand out to me as incredibly problematic. One, the old "if all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail" chestnut seems appropriate here, maybe altered to say, "if all you have are sticks and guns everything looks like a minority."

No... wait. I'm sorry, that's not appropriate.

It's not appropriate because it makes the tools stand alone; it does not take into account the culture of law enforcement that sees the use of sticks and guns as the appropriate tools for protecting life. But wait, there's more. That misses the psychological tension that is created when one embraces an intensely defensive posture. It's a strange phenomenon that the more steps one takes to ensure one's security, the more threatened one feels, so the more likely one is to see provocation wherever one turns.

The second problem I see is the use of undercover cops in the crowd. They will ostensibly be there to quickly identify and remove troublemakers... What to say about that? Is it beyond the pale to suggest that the po-lice would feel justified in provoking or instigating problems in the name of safety? That said, if anyone reading this will be at Mac Arthur Park or Olympic and Broadway demonstrations this week: you will know them by their feet. Don't listen to any alleged protesters wearing cop boots.

Anyway, I'll be there with some students registering brown people to vote. It's almost as if I'm asking to be punched in the face.

I Could Say It Stronger, But It's Too Much Trouble

I had a friend in college who did not use butt-wiping paper. She thought it was gross. For her, pooping was a ritual that involved special cups, washcloths, and care. Though, she was often the target for questions and the butt of jokes (because everyone knows that wiping your butt with anything other than thin layers of pressed dry wood pulp is wrong), she did not change that habit the whole time I knew her. She ate well so was very regular and could expect to poo (hmm, "poo" is misspelled but "poop" isn't) at about the same time every day and made it as much a part of her routine as you might make brushing your teeth or putting on makeup. This was in the dorms, so she took her cup, water, and cloth into the toilet stall and did whatever it was she did that was a part of her after poop business. This, as I said before, was strange.

But if you had poop on your arm, or bare foot, or worse, somewhere on your face, what would you do to clean it? Would you think smearing it around with a dry piece of thin tissue paper would leave you clean? Would you figure that, somehow, this paper that you wouldn't use to clean anything else, thoroughly removed the feces from your arm? You likely wouldn't, but somehow, magically I suppose, we do that with our butts.

Of course the magic involved is convincing ourselves that our butts are different and our poop world is normal. Our butts are different from our arms, feet, faces, etc.... Sure, but that act of rationalizing or being convinced that tissue paper works to clean poop, that difference of butt from arm is something we have to think about and negotiate. We create the characteristics of the world around this sense of butts and poo to lead to a world wherein those things become more fixed and given so that something that would actually get you cleaner after pooping, water and washcloths, is strange- or seen as something that would not actually get you cleaner, or is itself dirty, or not appropriate for something like butt. We have a world wherein the ways of our pooping even go to work on our sense of what is natural; the general ugliness and irregularity of our pooping and poop has us thinking that so many warning signs concerning our health are merely the ways we are supposed to poop. We have a world of pooping that accommodates all of the features of our world of poop and the way it is becomes confused for the way it ought to be. When I say world, I mean our sense of what is, what counts as real, the physical features we make that correspond to this sense of what is real, the physical world that we don't craft but see as having a relation to what is, what is or isn't possible, what is and isn't normal, good, right... all of those things that go into the way we know our lives.

Really, all of this is a justification for my way of being, an apology for what I am about to say. I choose apology carefully here. It is an apology, not in the sense that I must express regret or remorse, but a defense or a case for why something could be. I am aware that what I am about to say, needs a defense; it is "the strange" in our world of magic paper and butt differentiation.

I use something called flushable toddler wipes to clean my butt. For a long time now, I've watched what I eat so that my pooping is what I call "fast and furious". (I've called it that for longer than there's been a movie by that name, though it's perfectly appropriate to me that the specific movie of that name brings to mind my poop). Unless something is wrong, unless I've done something wrong, my poop is abundant, solid, quick to leave, and clean (by that I mean not leaving a sticky residue). Still, relatively recently, I've taken to using what we call "baby wipes" to make sure my butt is clean after pooping.

It's strange that I am the odd one, that I am the one who has to defend himself against a world that sees toilet paper as perfectly suited to the task at hand. My butt is likely cleaner than yours, but I am the one who has to explain himself. If cleanliness is what we're after, isn't what I do better? Isn't what my strange college friend did superior? Of course there are other concerns, but I hope we see that those other concerns are, in fact, concerns- things to which we are decidedly attached or committed as we exist. They are not simply "out there" nor exist "just as they are". It is not simply the way the world is though it simply is the way the world is. Hah- what a jerk.

I mean, we make it that way but just because we make it that way does not mean it isn't "right" or reliable. It does mean that we need to be cautious to not take it too seriously. We need remember that what we do is what we do in relation to what we say the world is but it is never more than what we do in relation to what we say the world is.

That said, imagine if there were a people who rightly then distrusted or found our concerns suspect. Imagine if there were a people who knew that as humans, our concerns were never more than human, so they worked hard to prevent those concerns from becoming powers that mastered us or became the means by which we mastered some them.

I suppose that's quite a leap from poop to this imagined people but it seems poop is the right place to start. Especially since, the way we do things now, poop is where we end up.

There Are Devils In Many Ways
Weird Divide- The Shins
Nature Boy- David Bowie and Massive Attack
Transformer- Gnarls Barkley
Crossroads- Cream
Fool in the Rain- Led Zeppelin
Untitled Original- John Coltrane
I Was Made to Love Her- Stevie Wonder
Bluebird- Buffalo Springfield
Symphony in D- JS Bach
I'm Still in Love With You- Al Green

Doing It and Doing It and Doing It Well

I used to teach a health class at a small private Christian High School. That seems to almost certainly be the setting for a curriculum that could only begin with, "When a Mommy and a Daddy love each other very much..."

It was a battle absolutely worth picking, so I was not limited to such a narrow range of speaking. In fact we covered quite a bit about the ins, outs, whos, whats, wheres, whys, dos and do not dos but for all the coverage, at the end of the unit I had a student meekly raise her hand and ask, "So what's sex?"

On one hand, this was the same student who could not understand Africa was a continent, not a nation, but now I see, beyond her confusion and apart from whatever horrible things may have happened to her in the intervening years, she asked a very important question.

What is sex?

I now have an answer.

We have no idea.

Or I suppose a better answer, especially in the midst of my Recording process and all the hand-wringing about what hands may wring, my answer is:

It depends.

Unfortunately we like to pretend it does not.

You may have seen this by now. This being the article:
Sex takes 3 to 13 minutes, Study Says
"A survey of sex therapists concluded the optimal amount of time for sexual intercourse was 3 to 13 minutes. The findings, to be published in the May issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine, strike at the notion that endurance is the key to a great sex life."

What are they talking about?

I'm sure others could do a much better job of decoding the gender and sexual ideology that define sex as the linear thrusting of what we clumsily call sexual intercourse, ah just kidding, I know I'd do a great job of that, but I'm too lazy. Still, good grief is that what we think sex is?

Well, yes. And that's why we're largely so stupid about so many things we think are about sex. So may "things" are about sex but because the above is what we call "sex" we are confused about how to bring these things together and when we do it's a despicable mess of worry over where we put when, with whom, and why.

Thank God for euphemisms. Seriously, pause right now and thank God, and while you're at it, irony, innuendo, jokes, sarcasm, art, prayer, and every other form of non-propositional, self-challenging speech we have as well. We know doing "it," as we do it, involves much more than the idea of sex suggested by this nonsense. But unfortunately, despite the fact that we "know" that, we allow this pretend version of sex and propositions to reign.

Ugh

You would think with how unfortunate our sexual reification makes all of these concerns surrounding sex, we would become more apt to see nonsense as nonsense rather than less. But no, we embrace the stupid. We pretend there is some thing called sex, specifically, some thing removed and independent from what people actually know as sex in their existences. By doing so, we make the thing we call sex something to talk about apart from the way sex is lived and so when we talk about sex we're not really talking about what people know and do when they are doing "it".

Sex as sexual intercourse? That should be a joke. And don't pretend the mention of foreplay is helpful. Good lord, they call it foreplay, it's merely a lead up to something else- sex the "thing".

Worse, again in light of our collective stupid, we do this with other things that seem to really matter. It seems we think because they matter the most, they must be handled the most carefully, the most seriously, and as we do that, we handle these in a way that prevents us from actually handling the "it" we need to handle.

Idiots.

So this is sex?

Oh right- Boobies Not In a Clinical or Anthropological Setting Alert

This is sex?


It's not.

As it is, sex is quite a handy thing with which to attack our sexual propositions, just as actually living with each other as decent and moral people is a wonderful way to undermine the nonsense of our codified abstractions about what it is required to be decent and moral.

Let Me Tell You How It Will Be

This was why I even opened TextEdit.

It's tax day. If you'd like the Qweenbean to have a job in the fall, offer to pay more state taxes.

Oh, I'm kidding, your offer to pay more won't make a difference for her. Any additional funds would have to go for prison construction and the expansion of parole and probation programs. Plus you don't have to offer. You will pay more in the future, but that money will go to President Jesus' war. You owe, beyond the $700,000,000,000 that is spent on defense against the idea of an enemy, an additional $500,000,000,000 on the actual enemies we've recently created. I know, those aren't real numbers. So, if my math is right, which it likely isn't, that's about $2000 from each American owed to the future.

That's it.

$2000.

I guess that's not that much. It's about 270 hours of labor for minimum wage earners, and what, that's only about six and a half weeks of full-time work. You're willing to give that for something we can call victory in Iraq, aren't you?

If you weren't currently employed, perhaps you could do your part by killing a teacher, setting a police car on fire, poison some food, dump some garbage in the street, knock over a stop light, take a dump on the sidewalk, I don't exactly know. You'll have to be creative and think of how you might quickly destroy those things we are slowly destroying through neglect... and active destruction, but don't forget the multiplier effect. You'll need to do a little bit more destruction than you think is appropriate. Don't get bogged down in trying to attribute values to those intangibles like reputaion, sowing the desire for revenge, regional instability, PTSD, what a human might be worth, an imperial corpse of a church, and the like. You'll just get frustrated. Focus on those things that you can enumerate and do.

The point is, we can all do our part to reap $2000 worth of death here that will be the result of our sowing death there. If everyone does a little, no one has to do a lot.

Good News to Some

My school advisor died and it has been a long search to find a suitable replacement (replacement meant very specifically here), but that has just been announced.
Ingolf Dalferth is his name, this is a good thing.
Celebrate as you see fit.
I didn't wake up this morning thinking there would be three posts.

An Open Letter To Olive Garden or The Olive Garden Commercial Creators

Dear Olive Garden,

Our lives are not safe. Appearances aside, we live lives that our well out of control. It's a challenge to remember this let alone embrace it, but those instances wherein we seek a greater security or sense of authority than is possible are the times when we are most devilish.
Any attempt to deny or erase this from our existence is an illusion that will dominate us. We have developed many ways to disguise our contingency but it remains that whether fixed in civilization, nature, or the gods, it's all wind in sails. It's proper so long as it is proper, though it is perhaps our "original" sin that it does not. Or is it that we cannot hold it in its proper place? We are so easily dominated.
That said, there will be times when, apart from my intention or desire I will find myself eating in an Olive Garden. This is as it should be for one who will not hate his freedom
I ask only that you stop portraying me, the person that may someday eat in an Olive Garden, as you do in your commercials. I do what I can to not be that vapid, but even if I did not, you must resist the temptation to create an ideological, destructive template for those who may find themselves in your world.

I remain
-[skybalon]

Seriously?

"You can tell me my president is lying to me, I don't care, I worry about the guy that tells me the truth and says he wants to kill me and has a track record for doing that. I know who my enemies are, I'm gonna keep my eye on the professional hit-man that wants to kill me.
We're a nation of cowards let's see what you're really made of, I'm a sixty year old man I'm an old fart, you'd be the first to do it. I'd like to see how brave you are, let's see what you're really made of. I can take you out in three seconds- the only people you can attack are innocent people. That's how tough you are.
I mock 'em
You know right after 9/11 two months after the attack we have this spirit of America so strong, I'm in Seattle and I stand on the street with a hundred dollars and I said, "You find me a car with an American flag on it, and I'll give you this hundred dollars."
[ Unintelligible]
I'm an educated man, I've read the founding fathers, and I just want to know when we became cowards."

Is it a matter of the monologue seeming louder because I am trying not to hear it or is this guy really this audible from 40 feet away? Maybe it's some physical phenomenon, the sounds he produces resonate in his mass so the soundwaves he emits are able to displace more air for a greater distance. It becomes much like a whale's song. I guess that's possible.

Who Is This That Speaks Blasphemies?

So this past weekend CNN broadcast a hoedown called the Compassion Forum. The three mainstream presidential candidates were invited to speak about matters of faith and morality and two showed up. John McCain cited scheduling conflicts, which is very honest. Really, where would religious gaffes and misstatements fit into one's schedule? The longer he can run against just the idea of an opponent, the better for him.

Both Arsenal and the Galaxy proved yesterday that I pull for losers. Or more specifically, and relevant to the above, I pull for those with incredible but often thwarted potential. Last week in San Francisco, Obama again made the choice to speak to and about Americans as if we were adults who could honestly confront the curses that we're offered to keep things going. He had the temerity to say politicians use gay-baiting, reactionary religious themes, ethnic fears, and the salvation of guns to exploit people who may feel afraid, overwhelmed, and dis-empowered in a system that depends on their being afraid, overwhelmed, and dis-empowered to continue. The speech was initially given to a private group but word got out and some people jumped on it as evidence of how out of touch he is with "real people". He had to address this again at the Compassion Forum, and probably will continue to do so for a bit, especially because you can use fear to get elected but you can't point out that people use fear to get elected. Someone can say they'll make things better, but you can't actually point out how bad things might be. You can speak of the power of faith to change the world but if you actually do something like that you're crucified. All of this is somehow out of line, it's un-American. It's loser talk.

I want to treat this segue carefully lest I be accused of or actually engage in comparing Obama to Jesus in an untoward manner. Obama was talking as if religion is something real in people's lives, as if there is actually some power beyond a quaint piety or its soul-comforting aspects.* He thinks that there is an actual give and take and some relation between people's lives and the expressions of their faith. And he's the elitist. He sees faith as more than a Precious Moments figurine or a Thomas Kinkade print and he's out of touch with how faith may actually exist in someone's life. He's so far demonstrated in concrete ways that his faith is one that understands the possibility of evil in the world. Even, maybe especially, in our religious talk there is that possibility of evil infecting what we say and do so that it is a force for death. He's addressed that possibility in his own congregation and has the audacity to think that it applies elsewhere as well.

Faith and hope, if they are worth being called faith or hope confront that and require self-reflection and a willingness to let it die. This certainly is loser talk. Who wants to hear that what they believe to be good deserves to be destroyed? What's more, who, having much invested in the way things are, would want word to get out that things need not be as they are?

Obama's not Jesus. If you think I'm confused, don't let it be on that point. Nor do I think Obama should be our Christian president- as such. I think Obama should be our president and I happen to think his faith is one that challenges his sense of who we say we are in pursuit of what we could be. Again, that's loser talk. But I'm sick of winners, especially winners so confident in themselves and their sense of the world that they have no trouble pursuing a vision of the world after and for themselves.

That said, first place is better than third and 2-0-1 is better than 1-0-2.

All These I Have Observed, What Do I Still Lack?
Warning Sign- Talking Heads
Hymn of The Orient- Stan Getz
UncleJohn's Band- Grateful Dead
Train In Vain- The Clash
Love Street- World Party
Lola- The Kinks
Trompe Le Monde- Pixies
Gimmie Some Salt- Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
World's a Mess; It's in My Kiss- X
Aluminum- The White Stripes

* Interestingly enough, I find President Jesus** most sympathetic when he tells his own story as the product of "a faith-based initiative". Just be sure to understand what I mean by sympathetic. Sympathetic sure, maybe even inspiring if one includes his years of buttholery in his "testimony", but he should be president no more than Stephen Baldwin.

** Some may have noticed the switch in nomenclature to "President Jesus" from "MY PRESIDENT", the lame duckiness, the drop in approval to die hard support only, the distancing from every corner, all seem to make this appropriate.

Please, Pray For Chewbacca

This past Saturday was our Friends Center banquet. The Friends Center is our YM's locale for ministerial training. The banquet is a fundraiser for said center.

There was a lot one might take from this event. Some might have been struck by this "coaching" our YM is chasing down as the next great tool for developing leaders. Others might think the sexy pendulum swung too far the other way this year. This was last year's entertainment.


They are a violin trio.

Seriously.

Anyway, true as those other things might be, I was taken by two especially outstanding facts. One, our associate pastor, the Friends Center Associate Director, The Voice of Huckabees*, is quite a trooper. And the second is, I could never watch a movie with our YM superintendent.

Anyone familiar with The Voice of Huckabees would know she is not the type to hog the spotlight, shill for silly bits of church programming, or do things unpreparedly, but there she was, up front, under the spotlights, doing a bit of acting with our superintendent meant to demonstrate how easy "coaching" is, only it reinforced the notion that this "coaching" is a strange beast.

If I were doing a skit in front of a couple hundred people meant to sell them and a Yearly Meeting on some program essential to the future, I would do some preparation. The Voice of Huckabees did, our superintendent, however, perhaps to show his total reliance on the Holy Spirit, did not. It was a bit awkward, but the ever faithful Huckabees, stuck with it and carried the pair through their bit of improv. And then Quaker Pope prayed. Specifically he prayed for those things Huckabees mentioned in their skit as her concerns. I should restate that: Quaker Pope, prayed for those things that Huckabees was pretending were her concern in their skit.

She was pretending.

Which brings me to my second point. I don't know what the risk of it ever happening may have been, but I will now go out of my way to be sure I never watch a movie, play, musical, read a story to or do some other bit of make believe with our Yearly Meeting superintendent. Not only would I find it very off-putting to be interrupted at key story points to pray for the characters, but it also seems a bit blasphemous.

*I think this nom du blog might work, though it isn't yet permanent. I know it's a bit obscure. It mostly hangs upon the fact that this is a reference to a character that says "Don't Look at Me".

Come On!

Taking nothing away from Hyypia or Torres, I remember someone saying Senderos is a liability for Arsenal.

It is Finished

Do you remember this advertisement?
Of course you don't. If you were old enough to remember it you would be yelling at kids to stay off your lawn, mailing your great-grandchildren five dollar checks, or going to Honeybears for their early bird dinner special one last time before embracing death's sweet release. Or maybe you remember it from a history class. I suppose that's possible. In any case- offensive isn't it? Not the way Carl's Jr. (Hardee's for you fly-over staters) ads are offensive in their targeting the Bro demographic. I mean offensive in its blatant use of racist and imperial imagery and markers to sell something as banal as soap.

Isn't that something? This ad pulls all kinds of strings we would easily identify as wrong or problematic to sell soap. Soap of all things? Interesting tangent- this bathing every day "bit" most of us do is the result of a large ad campaign pushing "personal" and "toilet" soaps at the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries, much like the tradition of diamond engagement rings is a consequence of diamond interests creating the custom from scratch during the middle of the 20th. These "normal" behaviors are the product of expanding markets. Anyhoo- I hope this gives us a sense of how mainstream these sentiments were. The savage, subhuman status of other cultures, the divine civilizing responsibility of white people, the righteousness of domination, the call to make "them" like "us"- were all good things. They were all virtuous. If you read the poem on which the slogan is based, (The White Man's Burden) you get a sense of imperial domination as self-sacrificing virtue rather than economic or political exploitation. It tows a "We give you railroads, sewers, and medicine and all you do is complain" line. "We give and we give..." That was normal- so normal and good it could push soap.

Thankfully, we live in a much more enlightened time, other than GM, Pepsi, Taco Bell, Nationwide, politicians and all what else, who still thinks it's okay to make these moves to sell something? Oh that was a bit hacky and obtuse. I should just come right out with it. What we find good and normal today is just as susceptible to that moral ugliness. I've made that point in my blog droppings before. But listening to some of the coverage of... what to call it... King's murder commemoration, his death-iversary? I don't know. Whatever these things are meant to celebrate, there's a lot of "We did this," "We did that," and "America learned such and such," throughout it. I suppose "we" are some place that can see what King did as moving towards some "us". The life he lived and gave was for the possibility of a wholeness or community that could see what he did as a good. It has become normal to see him as good though our own Yearly Meeting, like many other "mainstream" bodies, looked askance at the methods and actors of "the Civil Rights movement". He's now "a good" for us. I suppose that's nice... well it's something anyway.

I wonder how much that memory serves an ideology of completion. Maybe it lets us see the present as good and worth something more than it is. And I mean "lets" as in "gets us off the hook" whatever that hook might be. Why, just yesterday I had to listen to my close white friends wonder aloud why Glendora kids should get a day off for Cesar Chavez. Why should they, indeed?

Instead of remembering King as a a revolutionary of the gospel, his story is tamed and used to serve some sense of normal that we should really see as deadly- at least deadly to some community worthy of the name "church".

I know it must get tiresome to read stuff like this. It feels like I'm a bit of a one trick pony through these posts- the trick being complain, complain, complain. Sure, but I'm less and less able to not, it seems necessary to being something called the church that we build and maintain this type of perspective- especially if we take seriously the possibility of sin and the hope of something we might call the Kingdom of God. Unless of course we're willing to leave a discussion of sin for the nominally real and preach a gospel that's good news to no one but those who have an interest in keeping things the way they are. Those being the big fat bad guys.

...
Nice Home Opener
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust

It's Bigger Than Hip Hop

So I innocuously mentioned some time ago that Quakerism, as an ism, is particularly well suited to being a systematic challenge to the world as we presently know it- as well suited as systems can be to challenging other systems. If you don't remember reading that, take some time to skim my other posts, they're quite amazing. Even if you never come across that particular statement, it will be time well spent. Look especially for those instances that I'm a crybaby.

By that, I didn't mean that Quakers had nothing else to offer the world or that's all Quakers were "about". I meant, that as a systematic method of resistance, as opposed to emergent (not TM) or tactical methods of resistance it presents a method of subversion, or transformation if you prefer, that recognizes and challenges the aporetic (if I may anachronisticly say) tension of being- especially that collective being. Now I am careful to say, it "presents" that rather than it "is" that. That is important. If it was a matter of "is" that, it couldn't "be" that.

Christianity might be that possibility in itself, but even that possibility requires some coming into being that needs to be challenged. That is, Christianity isn't some thing until it is some thing in the world. In becoming that thing in the world, though, it becomes reified and destroys the sense of what it is meant to be: the Word confronting world. Sure, it must become actual to mean anything and we can call that anything Christianity, but let's remember that it's not any thing- certainly not any thing fixed and forever. It's an amalgam of much else, much else that we often miss because we are so suited to existing.

So at some time and place, some form of Quakerism has the appropriate features to offer some sense of undermining some type of world and itself. However, this being Quaker is not for everyone. That is, it is not applicable to everyone though it could, I suppose, be for anyone. It is particularly suited to challenge Modern Liberalism, and that includes Western Christian Capitalist hegemony.

Goodness what a load- I suppose to put it more palatably: Quakerism offers the means to challenge the dominating idolatrous tendencies of Christianity as a religion. In that sense it can help keep Christianity Christian.

So?

So...

It is purposefully self-destructive. Take the anti-symbolic act of silence. Silence can be any number of other things that I don't intend to make the case for or against, but will say that as a demonstration it follows from an awareness of contingency and as a symbol of the same. If the infectious tendencies of worldly power were isolated or Western Christianity were not Western Christianity, the act of silence might mean something else, but here we are confronted with the possibility of sin in the world and our religious expression is a part of that world.

I know that in some instances, this silence is tied to the sense of immediacy of revelation and the great Quaker contribution is that of an egalitarian sort of mysticism wherein God speaks to everyone. At the risk of being unpopular, I don't think the Quaker tradition of mysticism is all that rich or unique- at least in the big picture. The greater contribution, as long as mediated and unmediated are understood correctly, is in this unmediated sense of revelation wherein God can be known inwardly but it is acknowledged that we actually exist, so that inward knowledge is sensibly expressed. That is, what we do ultimately reveals what we say about God.

This idea of practice following from that sense of God (rather than leading to it) is also an important understanding in our present context. Especially as it follows silence. The idea that what we say and do is a demonstration of our commitment to what is true is a necessary challenge to the sense that what we do is what we do because it is fixed and right.

Again, so?

So, what we have is the possibility of what we do following from our sense of God rather than serving as the conduit piping God into our buildings where all we need to do is open the tap to get our fill of the divine. I would hope, in that case, that what we do is an act of worship that is done in accordance with what we say God is (which it is anyway, only in this case there is a sense of intentional devotion rather than irresponsible blasphemy). I do such and such because it makes sense to do so if I say so and so is true about God- in much the same way that it makes sense to do certain things and not others if I love my wife. Doing it doesn't "make" it true and following some rigid protocols of love would certainly be a worthless sense of love. Rather what we might have in something called Quakerism is the framework to acknowledge how we sensibly demonstrate that idea of the divine. In that way faith is not only a matter of faith (thankfully, again, after that horrible stint with self-justifying metaphysical nonsense), but also challenges the dominating or spiritually coercive forces at work in religion.

Of course, the challenge may be offered that Quakerism in some circles, many circles perhaps, does not actually live that self-reflection or build that critical perspective necessary to being some people worthy of being called a church so the point is quite literally moot. Eh, well, we do what we can.

List of April Fool's Foolings
Place Compressed Condiment Packets Underneath a Toilet Seat
Steal a Newborn from a Maternity Ward
Change Your Density
Hum with Your Mouth Open
Place Expired Dairy Products into New Packaging, Leave in Refrigerator
Ask Someone Who Wants to Marry You to Marry You, See How Many Years You Can Keep This Gag Going
Tell Your National Team Coach He's Fired (Applies to Femexfut Head Only)
Poop in the Sink
Chop Off Your Head
Randomly Insert the Word "Gland" into Sentences
Make Calculations Requiring Pi Using Exactly 3
If You're a Republican, Donate to the "Obama for President" Campaign

If I Claim to Be a Wise Man, It Surely Means that I Don't Know*

As much as I tell myself it's important, necessary even, for THE CHURCH to be a people open to difference, I wonder what the exceptions are. I wonder if the fact that I think there may be exceptions reveals a problematic position to begin with. Well, I confess that I do more than wonder.

Yesterday, one of our younger members (not capitalized) shared what she had been discovering about herself and others as she has been led to love people very different from her- different in that "they are projects and loving them is a matter of condescension" way. She was discovering what it means to really love someone so that "they" becomes "us"- that way in which silence is not awkward or empty, but a mark of intimacy and a bond that transcends even the division implied by articulating the possibility of one loving an other.

There are those easily kept outside the walls of our church communities. Some are kept so deliberately but there's also the accidental exclusion found in our sense of what it means to serve and love others. Those others can serve as a self-affirming negative contrast. We are who we are (good) because of how we treat others who we acknowledge don't deserve that sort of treatment or allow us in some other way to demonstrate our understanding of goodness.

That's not where she was though. She expressed that at one point she was- that she had a relation to a certain group of people that suggested she was serving them in some way, but through a process of growing and learning she came to be with them. In short, she explained that she was discovering what it means to be in the same boat.

Of course as I relate this I might be putting more words in her mouth than she intended. But I think I understood her, and this is what I think I understand. It's what the Qweenbean seemed to understand as well- she leaned over to me and in a humbled, confessional tone, said, " I didn't realize that until I was in college."

I think what this young person said was good and true, but... The but is not in anything she said, the but is me. This morning a group that rents part of our facilities is hosting a "Creationism" seminar, and, boy, am I not open to that. I think it's wrongheaded, dangerous, and lends itself to a narrow dogmatic aggression incommensurate with features necessary to living in belief.

I'm probably conflating things here, but that openness that I want, that openness that this young person shared seems to require that the Creationist and I share the same space and I don't know how to that.

*Kansas! Really?! Will this otherness never end?

Out Damn, Spot

Sometimes the Qweenbean reads my interblogs. Most of the time she doesn't, though she likes to encourage me to post her funnier comments throughout the course of a day, especially as they come at my expense. It's become on ongoing gag for her... If only. She should get her own online diary for that business. But with that said, she represented to me the subtle temptation of the "moral obligation" argument for the occupation of Iraq. She reveals that even the most gentle of souls can be deceived by the insidious and repeated lie of the "Pottery Barn" rule of militarism. Or maybe it's just that it is the "Pottery Barn" rule that has beguiled her. Despite her aesthetic originality and our poverty, she loves that Pottery Barn. In any case, in reference to the last post, she says that it is difficult to think we do not have a moral obligation to the people of Iraq, or more specifically, to think that our moral obligation is to not occupy their country.

To be clear, I do think we have a moral obligation to the people of Iraq, and I am glad at the opportunity to discuss the moral consequences of the invasion and what we should do. But our moral obligation is to leave now, and until we recognize that, we are not talking about what is good and right. We are talking about what is imperial, strategic, advantageous, Machiavellian, self-serving, bellicose, illegal. We have the moral obligation of an invading destroyer to get out and offer the resources necessary to rebuild and develop the country as reparations. In case we are confused, that is not done with our bullets and bombs. Of course it's difficult to see that because we are sooo good. That monstrous narrative of death-dealing as life-giving has taken hold.

Of course imperial, strategic, advantageous, Machiavellian, self-serving, bellicose, and illegal may all have their own sense of what is good. I grant that, but I know that's not what the Qweenbean, or many of us mean when we confess we are tempted to say it seems that it is the right and good thing to maintain our destructive military presence in Iraq. We probably don't mean that the best way to be imperial or militaristic is to maintain our imperial military presence in Iraq. It's nice to think that what we mean is that we must reluctantly do this to be life-affirming. But sadly, that's just not the case. And I don't know what it would take for us to see that. I know that, though there may be criticisms of leadership, an acknowledgment of mistakes made, some semblance of regret, we would find the idea of half of what we've spent thus far (the numbers to the right) being given as compensation an outrage.

Our sense of good is very limited.

I Hammer in the Morning, I Hammer in the Evening, All Over this Land

So in addition to everything else, I'm remodeling our bathroom. It's taken longer than I anticipated because what was ostensibly my spring break was filled with other things that had to be done. Dentist appointments, Ministry and Counsel meetings, meetings with students, et al. What it meant was I did not have a whole open day to devote to the project until this past Monday, the last day of my break. Also, I under-budgeted the time I figured I would need to add to the project itself in anticipation of unforeseen problems. Things like this always take longer than expected, so I expect them to take longer- but then the time I expect them to take is extended and so they are done on time. It's a helpful self-deception, deception used very specially. Only this time, I gravely underestimated how horrible things would get.

I planned to replace the lead pipes with copper, put in ABS drainage, tile the tub/shower surround, add an outlet, put in a new sink, new flooring, and paint. Termites, severe water damage, and the unique building methods of previous residents have made for an incredibly slow and difficult task. One portion of the floor, thankfully, a seldom travelled area, was no more than the five layers of previously laid floor. Another section was more mushroom than wood, a spongy loose growth nourished with every flush of the toilet. Whole sections of the floor structure were rotted and eaten away. That kind of mess can come with age and inattention, but it was worse than I expected. I also had to overcome the very strange, sometimes dangerous, Mac Guyveresque building methods of previous residents.

If you'd seen our bathroom before you may remember it was "cute". Underneath that surface though was a mess of plumber's putty, duct tape, electrical dangers, salvaged wood scraps, and caulk. Lots and lots of caulk.

I am not a builder, though I have worked as a builder in the past. I know enough to do a job, to know what should and shouldn't be done, to know what to do, and enough humility to ask when I don't. When the bathroom is finished, I will have fixed those things that needed fixing and it will look good enough. Of course somebody, someday, may come along and, seeing what I've done, say, "What was this guy thinking?" That comes with the territory and I suppose someone could make the case that what I did was worse than doing nothing at all, though it wouldn't be a strong case- especially if, as I know now, it was only luck that kept us from falling through the floor. I have good intentions and, though not an expert, a sense of how to get it done well.

It has been a slow but steady process, mostly slow, and I'm still right in the middle of it, even as the luxury of a break has ended and I'm back in the rhythm of school and study. Even if it has so far taken longer than I thought it would and only just can see that it is nearing completion. Of course, once you start something like this, you can't just stop. Well you can't stop for just anything. I'm going to write to the internets. I have to do that. But clearly, this is the kind of thing that, though ugly for the interim, must be seen through and completed as best as can be. There is an obligation to finish what has been started.

Isn't that just like what we are dealing with in Iraq? Isn't it important we remember that as we pass these, for good or ill, landmark commemorations of time and mortality, Five Years... Four Thousand... Isn't it necessary to be reminded that we have an obligation to finish what we started and that, mistakes and all, you can't leave something like this undone?

Seriously? You think it is? Good lord, what's wrong with you? You think the people of Iraq are a construction project? Are you even human? Do you have any capacity for emotion, thought, or empathy? You can't see that is the height of imperialism and domination?

To address a point made these days, if you think we have a moral obligation to continue occupying Iraq for the sake of their liberation, progress, or "own good," you lack the imagination or understanding necessary to know liberation, progress or goodness as anything more than concepts of oppression. What I mean is, you are so blinded by your own sense of idolatrous goodness that death and destruction -destroying actual people- are freedom, are goodness, are a gift for "them." Of course any sense of "them" does not include actual people and is incidental to your project of destruction.

This is not an "agree to disagree" point. Let alone what we have actually done is demonstrate that our priorities are securing energy resources, if you think liberation is something that comes and is maintained in this fashion, you are the destroyer.

But now that you've confessed that, perhaps we can move forward.

So What Was The Permit For?

The coincidence of Spring and Holy Week celebrations required we do this:



The fact that it was a religious celebration meant nothing to our neighbors or the fire department.

Just think what we'll do for Passover and 420.

What's The Worst That Could Happen?

So I submitted a couple of papers to present at this year's AAR in Chicago. Enough time had passed and I'd been concerned with enough other things to let me forget about worrying wether they'd be accepted- oh sorry... there's that Bible line about not worrying... I was able to not think about it. AAR would let presenters know by the first of April and wouldn't you know, that day is approaching. I haven't heard from the session leader or anything saying one of my papers had been accepted though I did just receive an email saying this: "To put your paper, (which is currently accepted for presentation at a session of the AAR/WR 2008 meeting), into competition for this award, send an email to..."

The email is an announcement for a prize being offered for Best Paper Written and Presented by Blah Blah Blah. Do you see how this might be confusing? This email is from the prize committee director, not from a session chair. Does this mean the prize committee knows something I don't yet know? Is this simply a general announcement to anyone who submitted a paper for consideration? Does "currently accepted for presentation" mean I will be presenting or simply acknowledge that I submitted one? Ugh. Now I am thinking about it again.

It was, like so much else in life, only a possibility or goal not yet achieved nor failed, but as a possibility it was a "hope" for what could be... Someday. It's out of my hands. We'll see.

But now. Now I am reminded that the date is approaching. I am reminded moments of decision approach and multiple possible alternatives will collapse leaving only the "path" taken. That's good. It's good because that "it's out of my hands" is not hope. It's "wait and see." It's fatalism. Things are okay now, but in the future they'll be better. It's "that's just the way things are." And that "that's just the way things are" is killing us. Well, it's killing a lot of other people first but we're in line.

Yeesh, where did that come from?

Without being too pointed, I would bet many of us heard a lot about hope this past week (even if you're not a sell out like me), but it is so important for me, for the word faith to have any meaning for me, that hope not mean a Christian existence is one of passivity and acceptance, especially an acceptance of the real manifestations of sin- and a sense of hope as "wait and see" is the height of sin- or I guess the depth. It is the deepest despair.

Here comes the So Long Recording line- The idea that Jesus died for you is an ideology of despair if it means Jesus died for you. Good Lord, that cross is an evil thing. It is the symbol of the coercive, deadly, unjust, hopeless nature of the world and its power. Jesus lived for you (lives as you prefer), but the nature of that life could not- cannot- be overcome by the evil of the world. Obedience to the point of death on a cross is not a call to submission and subjugation, but a call to a life that sees the nature of God as just, liberating, and life-affirming. It emulates that, pursues that- knowing full well that the world has only one way to respond to it. It can't wait and see because it is living now- a life according to a particular nature.

My papers, that's not a hope kind of thing. That's a wait and see kind of thing. History will judge, that's a wait and see kind of thing. Love, that's a hope kind of thing, though I guess I shouldn't call it a thing. But I did. I hope that's okay.

If This Isn't a Horrible Mistake, This Could be Great for My Chaotic Good Half-Elf Cleric Experience
Overture- The Who
Hunting Bears- Radiohead
On Broadway- Tito Puente
Once- Pearl Jam
Big Spender
Soma- Smashing Pumpkins
La Raspa
Little Wing- Jimi Hendrix
Painter Song- Norah jones

ed.- During a self-indulgent reread I noticed I wrote what when I meant that. I fixed it. What you are now reading is inauthentic.

When I Was a Child...

Middle-Aged Guy With a Harley That I Sometimes Talk to at The Coffee Bar I Frequent- It's not bad looking for a rice rocket
Skybalon- Thanks?
Middle-Aged Guy With a Harley That I Sometimes Talk to at The Coffee Bar I Frequent- When are you gonna get a Harley?
Skybalon- Eh- I really only like the Sportster, but if I got one I would make it look like this.
Middle-Aged Guy With a Harley That I Sometimes Talk to at The Coffee Bar I Frequent- Well, when you're ready, you'll get a real bike.
Skybalon- That's cool, when I'm ready I'll get my Harley and a prescription for Cialis

Then I should've said, "Zing!"