Jan Zwicky, elliptical and provocative Canadian philosopher, is one of my favorite thinkers. The following quotations are from her book, Wisdom & Metaphor.
“Coming to experience the fit of human thought to the world is a way of finding ourselves at home.”
A major reason most of us find ourselves somewhat less than comfortable, less than “at home” in the world is that we mistake our ideas of things as the sum total of what they are. We get married, having in our mind a clear idea of who this other person is and what they are like.
Disappointment, frustration, disillusionment, and anger follow when our spouse insists on, at some points, being quite different from our idea of who they are. Much of the friction in marriage comes from our efforts to remake the other into who we have thought them to be. “Coming to experience the fit of [our] thought to [the actuality of our mate] is a way of finding ourselves [and making themselves] at home.”
The cook bakes an apple pie, but it does not come out as she thought it should. Yet all who taste it smile broadly and say, “Now that is what an apple pie is all about. That is the real thing.” The cook, however is disappointed and modifies the recipe, the oven temperature, and the cooking time. Never, however, is it quite what she had in her mind, yet always she is praised as the best at baking apple pies. “Coming to experience the fit of [her apple pie] thought to [the actual pies and guests] is a way of finding [herself] at home.”
Zwicky quotes Rudolf Arnheim: “The function of language is essentially conservative and stabilizing, and therefore it also tends, negatively, to make cognition static and immobile.” Coming to a recognition of the limits of language is a way of finding ourselves at home. Our words, sentences, and paragraphs are always somewhat inadequate in what they seek to communicate. We are never wrong when we say, “I don’t know how to put it into words.”
She quotes Konrad Lorenz who, on the one hand says: “I am unshakeably convinced that all the information conveyed to us by our cognitive apparatus corresponds to actual realities,” then, later modifies and clarifies what he means. “What we experience is indeed a real image of reality–albeit an extremely simple one, only just sufficing for our own practical purposes; we have developed ‘organs’ only for those aspects of reality of which, in the interest of survival, it was imperative for our species to take account.”
He continues with, “. . . what little our sense organs and nervous system have permitted us to learn has proved its value over endless years of experience, and we may trust it–as far as it goes [italics mine]. Much of the time our mental, rational understanding of things is adequate for immediate and practical purposes, but if we are to be wise, we will realize that, always, our “image of reality [whatever ‘reality’ we may be dealing with’] is “an extremely simple one.”
Always there is much more, and if we realize this, our thought will have a much closer fit to the complexities and mystery of actuality, and we are more likely to find “ourselves at home” [in the world, in our lives].
I turn finally, to Tom Lilburn, whom she quotes: “Everything exceeds its name.” As Paul of Tarsus wrote, “Now we know in part.” Everything we know, everything we name, every idea and all our use of language (or painting or any other re-presentation of reality) is a limited realization of that which always exceeds our representation.
Lilburn calls all this human thought, “reason’s caricatures.” Always a degree of distortion, a degree of overemphasis on certain aspects, and, inescapably, the neglect of much that is beyond the reach of thought and language.
We are to be grateful that [Roark says, ‘God has created us such that’] we can somehow, to some degree, “participate in what is beyond us, enjoy a brief contiguity with that uncontainability.” Lilburn concludes: “There is praise and then there is sorrow.”
We are graced.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Monday, July 9, 2007
God and Cain
Open Notes on Genesis 4
• Is Eve arrogant, gloating? She remarks how she made this child, Cain, with some help from God.
• Cain must have been, to some extent, a good man. It seems that he took the initiative to bring his sacrifices to God. He initiated the first worship service on record.
• The reason for God’s response is not completely clear. What is clear is that he gave preference to Abel’s worship over that of Cain.
Is this where differences in “worship styles” began? I think not. The difference seems to have been more substantive than mere style.
• This is definitely the first “worship war.”
• Cain’s emotional response to God’s choice are understandable. We have all known envy and jealousy when someone else was chosen over us, and we, in fact, were rejected.
• God questions Cain, “What is the problem? Why are you so downcast?” This is a relational God. He seeks to restore a good relationship with this man.
• When God asks, are we to assume it is a rhetorical question? If we bring no theological presuppositions, on the face of it the question might be real. Is it possible that God does not know?
• The first death in the Bible is a death by violence. The murder grows out of religion, worship, and the first full-blown expression of human emotion.
• Abel seems to have been and done right in God’s eyes, but God does not protect him from violence. Being good and doing right obviously is not enough. Why did not God intervene on behalf of the man whose worship he was pleased by?
• After the death of Abel, God again appears and questions Cain for his brother’s whereabouts. Rhetorical or substantive question? Is your answer based on a theology established much later, and accepted by you based on some authority?
• Cain is given the opportunity to tell the truth. God does not hold a “kangaroo court.” He is allowed to testify on his behalf. Evidence is presented.
• The evidence against Cain is the blood of his brother that cries out against him–the testimony of the only witness.
• Cain is given a way out, an escape from the sin that crouches at his door. His future is open if he does well. If. That indicates choice, possibility.
• Even in his punishment, God is gracious and merciful. The “Mark of Cain,” is given for his protection.
• From Cain’s descendants the first city is built. Is there any possible link–indirectly--between religious conflict, envy, jealousy, and murder and the building of a city?
• Is this whole creation, especially the image of God creation, working out as God intended it to?
• Is God in control? What does that mean? What kind and what degree of “control,” whatever that is.
• When the United States Senate held hearings about the Watergate Scandal in the early 1970s, Senator Baker from Tennessee asked each involved party, “What did the President know, and when did he know it?” That is an appropriate question to ask in this, one of the earliest narratives of an encounter between God and his human: What did God know, and when did he know it?
• Does Cain have a real choice about doing well and avoiding the sin that crouches at his door?
______________________
I don’t know the answers. I do know the theologically correct answers. I do know what the conventional wisdom has to say. I don’t know the answers. I don’t think we can find easy answers.
Maybe you can. Maybe you have. Maybe you know the answers.
Reread Genesis 4. It gives us things to think on, to meditate on, to pray about, to discuss with each other.
• Is Eve arrogant, gloating? She remarks how she made this child, Cain, with some help from God.
• Cain must have been, to some extent, a good man. It seems that he took the initiative to bring his sacrifices to God. He initiated the first worship service on record.
• The reason for God’s response is not completely clear. What is clear is that he gave preference to Abel’s worship over that of Cain.
Is this where differences in “worship styles” began? I think not. The difference seems to have been more substantive than mere style.
• This is definitely the first “worship war.”
• Cain’s emotional response to God’s choice are understandable. We have all known envy and jealousy when someone else was chosen over us, and we, in fact, were rejected.
• God questions Cain, “What is the problem? Why are you so downcast?” This is a relational God. He seeks to restore a good relationship with this man.
• When God asks, are we to assume it is a rhetorical question? If we bring no theological presuppositions, on the face of it the question might be real. Is it possible that God does not know?
• The first death in the Bible is a death by violence. The murder grows out of religion, worship, and the first full-blown expression of human emotion.
• Abel seems to have been and done right in God’s eyes, but God does not protect him from violence. Being good and doing right obviously is not enough. Why did not God intervene on behalf of the man whose worship he was pleased by?
• After the death of Abel, God again appears and questions Cain for his brother’s whereabouts. Rhetorical or substantive question? Is your answer based on a theology established much later, and accepted by you based on some authority?
• Cain is given the opportunity to tell the truth. God does not hold a “kangaroo court.” He is allowed to testify on his behalf. Evidence is presented.
• The evidence against Cain is the blood of his brother that cries out against him–the testimony of the only witness.
• Cain is given a way out, an escape from the sin that crouches at his door. His future is open if he does well. If. That indicates choice, possibility.
• Even in his punishment, God is gracious and merciful. The “Mark of Cain,” is given for his protection.
• From Cain’s descendants the first city is built. Is there any possible link–indirectly--between religious conflict, envy, jealousy, and murder and the building of a city?
• Is this whole creation, especially the image of God creation, working out as God intended it to?
• Is God in control? What does that mean? What kind and what degree of “control,” whatever that is.
• When the United States Senate held hearings about the Watergate Scandal in the early 1970s, Senator Baker from Tennessee asked each involved party, “What did the President know, and when did he know it?” That is an appropriate question to ask in this, one of the earliest narratives of an encounter between God and his human: What did God know, and when did he know it?
• Does Cain have a real choice about doing well and avoiding the sin that crouches at his door?
______________________
I don’t know the answers. I do know the theologically correct answers. I do know what the conventional wisdom has to say. I don’t know the answers. I don’t think we can find easy answers.
Maybe you can. Maybe you have. Maybe you know the answers.
Reread Genesis 4. It gives us things to think on, to meditate on, to pray about, to discuss with each other.
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
A Free Christian
Daddy left the farm and became a Baptist minister when I was not yet two-years-old. Baptist church life has been one of the few constants in my life ever since, Baptist in the sense of “Southern Baptist.” In those early years, one part of Baptist indoctrination was the witticism: “What would you be if you weren’t a Baptist?” The proper answer was: “I’d be a-shamed.” More than sixty years later, I’m still a Baptist, but these days I am too ashamed of Southern Baptists to let many people know of my Baptistity.
So my foundational Christian experience and my theological education developed in the milieu of the “conservative” (occasionally bordering on “fundamentalist”) branch of the Christian church. When, more than two decades ago, Southern Baptists splintered, one group called themselves “conservatives,” and their opposition chose to call themselves “moderates.” Nonetheless, the moderates insisted that they too were conservative. I’ve lived in a world where it seemed that “conservative” was an essential modifier.
When, decades ago, sitting in a Sunday morning worship service at the Southwayside Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, I wrote my personal declaration of independence, two components of that document were: Southern Baptist, and Conservative. I didn’t declare myself a “Liberal.” I felt no need of any sort of label other than “Christ-ian.” At least, that is who I have intended and committed myself to be.
The late Jan Kiwiet, a Dutchman “in whom there was no guile,” gave cogent expression to my self-understanding. Kiwiet was a new professor at our seminary. I was a doctoral student in his first seminar. At times, Dr. Kiwiet talked like a rank fundamentalist, only to sound, thirty minutes later, like a wild-eyed liberal. One day, Charles Fox probed this apparent inconsistency. “Dr. Kiwiet,” he asked, “Are you a conservative, or a liberal.” In his thick Dutch accent, our new professor responded with: “Conservative? Liberal? I don’t know dese tings. I’m a free Christian.”
Why do we add modifiers? Nowhere in the Christian Scriptures is there a commandment that God’s people be conservative. Rather, I suspect that, in the synagogues of his time, Jesus was thought of as quite liberal.
Kathleen Norris, in her book, The Quotidian Mysteries, reminds us that “Christian faith is a way of life, not an impregnable fortress made up of ideas; not a philosophy; not a grocery list of beliefs.” She adds, “The Christian religion asks us to put our faith not in ideas, and certainly not in ideologies, but in a God who was vulnerable enough to become human and die, and who desires to be with us in our everyday circumstances.”
It is enough just to be a follower of Jesus the Christ.
So my foundational Christian experience and my theological education developed in the milieu of the “conservative” (occasionally bordering on “fundamentalist”) branch of the Christian church. When, more than two decades ago, Southern Baptists splintered, one group called themselves “conservatives,” and their opposition chose to call themselves “moderates.” Nonetheless, the moderates insisted that they too were conservative. I’ve lived in a world where it seemed that “conservative” was an essential modifier.
When, decades ago, sitting in a Sunday morning worship service at the Southwayside Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, I wrote my personal declaration of independence, two components of that document were: Southern Baptist, and Conservative. I didn’t declare myself a “Liberal.” I felt no need of any sort of label other than “Christ-ian.” At least, that is who I have intended and committed myself to be.
The late Jan Kiwiet, a Dutchman “in whom there was no guile,” gave cogent expression to my self-understanding. Kiwiet was a new professor at our seminary. I was a doctoral student in his first seminar. At times, Dr. Kiwiet talked like a rank fundamentalist, only to sound, thirty minutes later, like a wild-eyed liberal. One day, Charles Fox probed this apparent inconsistency. “Dr. Kiwiet,” he asked, “Are you a conservative, or a liberal.” In his thick Dutch accent, our new professor responded with: “Conservative? Liberal? I don’t know dese tings. I’m a free Christian.”
Why do we add modifiers? Nowhere in the Christian Scriptures is there a commandment that God’s people be conservative. Rather, I suspect that, in the synagogues of his time, Jesus was thought of as quite liberal.
Kathleen Norris, in her book, The Quotidian Mysteries, reminds us that “Christian faith is a way of life, not an impregnable fortress made up of ideas; not a philosophy; not a grocery list of beliefs.” She adds, “The Christian religion asks us to put our faith not in ideas, and certainly not in ideologies, but in a God who was vulnerable enough to become human and die, and who desires to be with us in our everyday circumstances.”
It is enough just to be a follower of Jesus the Christ.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Love Contradicted
In his book, The Classic Baptist Heritage of Personal Truth, Louis Mauldin quotes the 17th Century Baptist, Richard Claridge:
Holiness which is against Love, is a Contradiction . . .All Church Principles which are against Universal Love, are against God, and Holiness, and the Churche. . . .
‘Tis a manifest Argument we have lost our first Love, when we thus inveigh against those that dissent from us.
________________
I am a recovering Southern Baptist. As early as 1968, long before the so-called “Conservative Resurgence” crusade tore apart the fabric of the Southern Baptist Convention, I sat in the Southwayside Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, and wrote out a personal declaration of independence. Among other things I would no longer be committed to, I declared my independence of the Southern Baptist Convention.
I continue to be a Baptist in the South, a Baptist in the historical sense, or, as Mauldin notes in his title, a Classic Baptist. This is not a Baptist blog–hasn’t been, isn’t going to be. But there are elements of recent Southern Baptist history that are worthy of consideration by any and all Christians. Even nonbelievers, ideally, would take note of today’s emphasis, in order to better understand what Christians are truly about.
Since 1979, the bitterness of the Baptist battles has made front-page news in the secular press. The leaders of the highly successful conservative takeover expressed their strong aversion to the “liberals” in vicious, foul, and intemperate language. The so-called liberals were called skunks and worse. The takeover leaders announced their intent to “go for the jugular.” They had neither read nor considered any ideas like those of Richard Claridge.
Although the “liberals,” who called themselves “moderates,” did not use such vile language, they made up for it with crude jokes and mockery. Many of us Baptists in the South were appalled by the vile, hostile, uncongenial, and aggressive language each side used against the other.
The war has been won by the “neo-conservatives,” but mop-up battles continue, as does the attendant language and attitudes.
Baptists and other battling “Christians” need to ponder the words of Richard Claridge, and think them over in the light of their Holy Scriptures, particularly that part called, The Four Gospels.
Mauldin’s book contains the antidote for the poison that has been, rapidly, debilitating the Baptist life and soiling the Baptist public image..
Holiness which is against Love, is a Contradiction . . .All Church Principles which are against Universal Love, are against God, and Holiness, and the Churche. . . .
‘Tis a manifest Argument we have lost our first Love, when we thus inveigh against those that dissent from us.
________________
I am a recovering Southern Baptist. As early as 1968, long before the so-called “Conservative Resurgence” crusade tore apart the fabric of the Southern Baptist Convention, I sat in the Southwayside Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, and wrote out a personal declaration of independence. Among other things I would no longer be committed to, I declared my independence of the Southern Baptist Convention.
I continue to be a Baptist in the South, a Baptist in the historical sense, or, as Mauldin notes in his title, a Classic Baptist. This is not a Baptist blog–hasn’t been, isn’t going to be. But there are elements of recent Southern Baptist history that are worthy of consideration by any and all Christians. Even nonbelievers, ideally, would take note of today’s emphasis, in order to better understand what Christians are truly about.
Since 1979, the bitterness of the Baptist battles has made front-page news in the secular press. The leaders of the highly successful conservative takeover expressed their strong aversion to the “liberals” in vicious, foul, and intemperate language. The so-called liberals were called skunks and worse. The takeover leaders announced their intent to “go for the jugular.” They had neither read nor considered any ideas like those of Richard Claridge.
Although the “liberals,” who called themselves “moderates,” did not use such vile language, they made up for it with crude jokes and mockery. Many of us Baptists in the South were appalled by the vile, hostile, uncongenial, and aggressive language each side used against the other.
The war has been won by the “neo-conservatives,” but mop-up battles continue, as does the attendant language and attitudes.
Baptists and other battling “Christians” need to ponder the words of Richard Claridge, and think them over in the light of their Holy Scriptures, particularly that part called, The Four Gospels.
Mauldin’s book contains the antidote for the poison that has been, rapidly, debilitating the Baptist life and soiling the Baptist public image..
Saturday, May 19, 2007
"It's our most common landscaping feature and a source of pride for many of us. The ultimate goal is a perfect weed free lawn. A dandelion or two is an indication the owner is negligent and lazy."
:A recent issue of Newsweek brought the news, indirectly conveyed, that this cult remains vividly alive. In April, Pete Barthelme wrote one of those self-celebrating stories about moving away from the pressures of urban civilization to an isolated place in the country, in his case a coastal fishing area in Texas. He told us he's now isolated from movie houses, he gets one TV channel intermittently, the grocery store is four miles away, there are no neighbours for half a mile, and he's happy. But then, inadvertently, he slips in the fact that he has a lawn. In his old life he employed a lawn crew, but he's now replaced them with "a very fine riding lawn mower with a full 11.5 horsepower, which happens to be fun to use." He doesn't tell us why, in the middle of nowhere, he maintains a lawn. He doesn't imagine that the question would occur to us. He knows that even among those who abandon urbanism and "go back" to nature, the lawn remains a necessity. Without it, they would feel incomplete."
"But what is a lawn really?"
"In most cases it is a uniform growth of non-native grasses. Its a source of pollution, (fertilizers, pesticides, lawnmower exhaust....) and represents habitat that has been lost.”
–Robert Fulford
--http://forums.techguy.org/random-discussion/129884-lawn
-north-americas-magnificent-obsession.html
Perhaps nothing illustrates more universally our need to conform, to be socially correct, to fit in–nothing illustrates it more than our deliberately cloned lawns. Vermont, Oklahoma, Florida, Arizona, Minnesota: all lawns look the same, slight variations on a theme, a theme composed by someone in England, centuries ago.
In this land of “individualism” our lawns belie our proud claim; we dare not do anything different. Not even Sinatra, Presley, or Paul Anka (who originally wrote the lyrics) “did it [his] way.” They each had a team of hired lawn-keepers who did it the American Way, which is the English Way.
Artificial, heavy consumer of our rapidly depleting aquifers, repository of fertilizer and pesticide chemicals that run off into and pollute our water systems, Saturday sound polluter and air polluter, by many it is a dreaded “necessary” Saturday chore: the lawn.
But why do I waste blog space on this? Such knowledge is widespread, and has been since Silent Spring, and Sand County Almanac, yet less than .01 percent of us have made any change at all. I am Don Quixote, tilting at windmills; our society will never change. Or is that too cynical?
Our society has changed radically, dramatically, traumatically, since 1960. Prior to the election of JFK, ninety-percent of all adult men wore hats when out-of-doors. Now, maybe 5 percent do. Nuns wore habits, business men were clean-shaven, wore white shirts and neckties, hair trimmed neatly short, and shoes polished. Now, even ministers may be found in blue jeans, sandals, and T-shirts, faces bewhiskered and hair cut to every length or perhaps shaven. Societies can change. The traditional lawn could shrink to a relatively small total acreage nationally. At present, lawns occupy 25,600,000 acres of national landscape.
Do I think this blog is going to change things? No, not really. Yes, significantly. Something changed me and caused me to shrink the area that I mow by 85 percent, and I don’t water that. And yes, I’ve been told that my yard is a disgrace to the neighborhood. The point is, I changed, and I believe that one of you readers will begin to consider the same. One by one until someday a critical mass is formed. Read The Tipping Point, and see how it happens.
Meanwhile, back in the real world and Robert Fulford:
"What I mean by the lawn as moral issue is its place in human relations and its role in public shaming. In North America today, a lawn is the quickest, surest indicator that the deadliest of the seven deadly sins has attacked from within. As the death of a canary announces the presence of gas in a mine, so a dandelion's appearance on a lawn indicates that Sloth has taken up residence in paradise and is about to spread evil in every direction. And when a whole lawn comes alive with dandelions--it can happen overnight, as many know to our sorrow--then that property instantly becomes an affront to the street and to the middle-class world of which the street is a part. Pretty as they might look to some, dandelions demonstrate a weakness of the soul. They announce that the owner of the house refuses to respect the neighbourhood's right to peace, order, good government, and the absence of airborne dandelion seeds.
Perhaps nothing illustrates more universally our need to conform, to be socially correct, to fit in–nothing illustrates it more than our deliberately cloned lawns. Vermont, Oklahoma, Florida, Arizona, Minnesota: all lawns look the same, slight variations on a theme, a theme composed by someone in England, centuries ago.
In this land of “individualism” our lawns belie our proud claim; we dare not do anything different. Not even Sinatra, Presley, or Paul Anka (who originally wrote the lyrics) “did it [his] way.” They each had a team of hired lawn-keepers who did it the American Way, which is the English Way.
Artificial, heavy consumer of our rapidly depleting aquifers, repository of fertilizer and pesticide chemicals that run off into and pollute our water systems, Saturday sound polluter and air polluter, by many it is a dreaded “necessary” Saturday chore: the lawn.
But why do I waste blog space on this? Such knowledge is widespread, and has been since Silent Spring, and Sand County Almanac, yet less than .01 percent of us have made any change at all. I am Don Quixote, tilting at windmills; our society will never change. Or is that too cynical?
Our society has changed radically, dramatically, traumatically, since 1960. Prior to the election of JFK, ninety-percent of all adult men wore hats when out-of-doors. Now, maybe five percent do. Nuns wore habits, business men were clean-shaven, wore white shirts and neckties, hair trimmed neatly short, and shoes polished. Now, even ministers may be found in blue jeans, sandals, and t-shirts, faces bewhiskered and hair cut to every length or perhaps shaven. Societies can change. The traditional lawn could shrink to a relatively small total acreage nationally. At present, lawns occupy 25,600,000 acres of national landscape.
Do I think this blog is going to change things? No, not really. Yes, significantly. Something changed me and caused me to shrink the area that I mow by eighty-five percent, and I don’t water that. And yes, I’ve been told that my yard is a disgrace to the neighborhood. The point is, I changed, and I believe that one of you readers will begin to consider the same. One by one until someday a critical mass is formed. Read The Tipping Point, and see how it happens.
Meanwhile, back in the real world and Robert Fulford:
"What I mean by the lawn as moral issue is its place in human relations and its role in public shaming. In North America today, a lawn is the quickest, surest indicator that the deadliest of the seven deadly sins has attacked from within. As the death of a canary announces the presence of gas in a mine, so a dandelion's appearance on a lawn indicates that Sloth has taken up residence in paradise and is about to spread evil in every direction. And when a whole lawn comes alive with dandelions--it can happen overnight, as many know to our sorrow--then that property instantly becomes an affront to the street and to the middle-class world of which the street is a part. Pretty as they might look to some, dandelions demonstrate a weakness of the soul. They announce that the owner of the house refuses to respect the neighbourhood's right to peace, order, good government, and the absence of airborne dandelion seeds."
:A recent issue of Newsweek brought the news, indirectly conveyed, that this cult remains vividly alive. In April, Pete Barthelme wrote one of those self-celebrating stories about moving away from the pressures of urban civilization to an isolated place in the country, in his case a coastal fishing area in Texas. He told us he's now isolated from movie houses, he gets one TV channel intermittently, the grocery store is four miles away, there are no neighbours for half a mile, and he's happy. But then, inadvertently, he slips in the fact that he has a lawn. In his old life he employed a lawn crew, but he's now replaced them with "a very fine riding lawn mower with a full 11.5 horsepower, which happens to be fun to use." He doesn't tell us why, in the middle of nowhere, he maintains a lawn. He doesn't imagine that the question would occur to us. He knows that even among those who abandon urbanism and "go back" to nature, the lawn remains a necessity. Without it, they would feel incomplete."
"But what is a lawn really?"
"In most cases it is a uniform growth of non-native grasses. Its a source of pollution, (fertilizers, pesticides, lawnmower exhaust....) and represents habitat that has been lost.”
–Robert Fulford
--http://forums.techguy.org/random-discussion/129884-lawn
-north-americas-magnificent-obsession.html
Perhaps nothing illustrates more universally our need to conform, to be socially correct, to fit in–nothing illustrates it more than our deliberately cloned lawns. Vermont, Oklahoma, Florida, Arizona, Minnesota: all lawns look the same, slight variations on a theme, a theme composed by someone in England, centuries ago.
In this land of “individualism” our lawns belie our proud claim; we dare not do anything different. Not even Sinatra, Presley, or Paul Anka (who originally wrote the lyrics) “did it [his] way.” They each had a team of hired lawn-keepers who did it the American Way, which is the English Way.
Artificial, heavy consumer of our rapidly depleting aquifers, repository of fertilizer and pesticide chemicals that run off into and pollute our water systems, Saturday sound polluter and air polluter, by many it is a dreaded “necessary” Saturday chore: the lawn.
But why do I waste blog space on this? Such knowledge is widespread, and has been since Silent Spring, and Sand County Almanac, yet less than .01 percent of us have made any change at all. I am Don Quixote, tilting at windmills; our society will never change. Or is that too cynical?
Our society has changed radically, dramatically, traumatically, since 1960. Prior to the election of JFK, ninety-percent of all adult men wore hats when out-of-doors. Now, maybe 5 percent do. Nuns wore habits, business men were clean-shaven, wore white shirts and neckties, hair trimmed neatly short, and shoes polished. Now, even ministers may be found in blue jeans, sandals, and T-shirts, faces bewhiskered and hair cut to every length or perhaps shaven. Societies can change. The traditional lawn could shrink to a relatively small total acreage nationally. At present, lawns occupy 25,600,000 acres of national landscape.
Do I think this blog is going to change things? No, not really. Yes, significantly. Something changed me and caused me to shrink the area that I mow by 85 percent, and I don’t water that. And yes, I’ve been told that my yard is a disgrace to the neighborhood. The point is, I changed, and I believe that one of you readers will begin to consider the same. One by one until someday a critical mass is formed. Read The Tipping Point, and see how it happens.
Meanwhile, back in the real world and Robert Fulford:
"What I mean by the lawn as moral issue is its place in human relations and its role in public shaming. In North America today, a lawn is the quickest, surest indicator that the deadliest of the seven deadly sins has attacked from within. As the death of a canary announces the presence of gas in a mine, so a dandelion's appearance on a lawn indicates that Sloth has taken up residence in paradise and is about to spread evil in every direction. And when a whole lawn comes alive with dandelions--it can happen overnight, as many know to our sorrow--then that property instantly becomes an affront to the street and to the middle-class world of which the street is a part. Pretty as they might look to some, dandelions demonstrate a weakness of the soul. They announce that the owner of the house refuses to respect the neighbourhood's right to peace, order, good government, and the absence of airborne dandelion seeds.
Perhaps nothing illustrates more universally our need to conform, to be socially correct, to fit in–nothing illustrates it more than our deliberately cloned lawns. Vermont, Oklahoma, Florida, Arizona, Minnesota: all lawns look the same, slight variations on a theme, a theme composed by someone in England, centuries ago.
In this land of “individualism” our lawns belie our proud claim; we dare not do anything different. Not even Sinatra, Presley, or Paul Anka (who originally wrote the lyrics) “did it [his] way.” They each had a team of hired lawn-keepers who did it the American Way, which is the English Way.
Artificial, heavy consumer of our rapidly depleting aquifers, repository of fertilizer and pesticide chemicals that run off into and pollute our water systems, Saturday sound polluter and air polluter, by many it is a dreaded “necessary” Saturday chore: the lawn.
But why do I waste blog space on this? Such knowledge is widespread, and has been since Silent Spring, and Sand County Almanac, yet less than .01 percent of us have made any change at all. I am Don Quixote, tilting at windmills; our society will never change. Or is that too cynical?
Our society has changed radically, dramatically, traumatically, since 1960. Prior to the election of JFK, ninety-percent of all adult men wore hats when out-of-doors. Now, maybe five percent do. Nuns wore habits, business men were clean-shaven, wore white shirts and neckties, hair trimmed neatly short, and shoes polished. Now, even ministers may be found in blue jeans, sandals, and t-shirts, faces bewhiskered and hair cut to every length or perhaps shaven. Societies can change. The traditional lawn could shrink to a relatively small total acreage nationally. At present, lawns occupy 25,600,000 acres of national landscape.
Do I think this blog is going to change things? No, not really. Yes, significantly. Something changed me and caused me to shrink the area that I mow by eighty-five percent, and I don’t water that. And yes, I’ve been told that my yard is a disgrace to the neighborhood. The point is, I changed, and I believe that one of you readers will begin to consider the same. One by one until someday a critical mass is formed. Read The Tipping Point, and see how it happens.
Meanwhile, back in the real world and Robert Fulford:
"What I mean by the lawn as moral issue is its place in human relations and its role in public shaming. In North America today, a lawn is the quickest, surest indicator that the deadliest of the seven deadly sins has attacked from within. As the death of a canary announces the presence of gas in a mine, so a dandelion's appearance on a lawn indicates that Sloth has taken up residence in paradise and is about to spread evil in every direction. And when a whole lawn comes alive with dandelions--it can happen overnight, as many know to our sorrow--then that property instantly becomes an affront to the street and to the middle-class world of which the street is a part. Pretty as they might look to some, dandelions demonstrate a weakness of the soul. They announce that the owner of the house refuses to respect the neighbourhood's right to peace, order, good government, and the absence of airborne dandelion seeds."
Friday, May 11, 2007
Love's Dialectic, 1
The Winslow Boy, a movie, closing scene:
[Young man and young lady, apparently quite “taken” with each other.]
“You continue with your suffragette work, Miss Winslow. Don’t you know it is a lost cause?”
“So little do you know about women, Sir Robert.”
(then)
“I don’t expect I shall ever see you again.”
Robert, with a knowing smile, responds:
“So little, you know, Miss Winslow, about men.”
And the sunshine of a slight smile slowly lights her face.
_______________________________
It isn’t over until it’s over--and it is not over yet.
When love is afield, the dialectic stays active. If love is to continue, a necessary condition is to consider, always, the other.
Actually, the same is true in any kind of continuing relationship, from international diplomacy to the business place to the classroom to a hospital stay. It is necessary, perhaps even sufficient, that we consider the other.
[Young man and young lady, apparently quite “taken” with each other.]
“You continue with your suffragette work, Miss Winslow. Don’t you know it is a lost cause?”
“So little do you know about women, Sir Robert.”
(then)
“I don’t expect I shall ever see you again.”
Robert, with a knowing smile, responds:
“So little, you know, Miss Winslow, about men.”
And the sunshine of a slight smile slowly lights her face.
_______________________________
It isn’t over until it’s over--and it is not over yet.
When love is afield, the dialectic stays active. If love is to continue, a necessary condition is to consider, always, the other.
Actually, the same is true in any kind of continuing relationship, from international diplomacy to the business place to the classroom to a hospital stay. It is necessary, perhaps even sufficient, that we consider the other.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
No Regrets? Not Me!
“In Praise of Feeling Bad About Yourself”
The buzzard never says it is to blame.
The panther wouldn’t know what scruples mean.
When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame.
If snakes had hands, they’d claim their hands were clean.
A jackal doesn’t understand remorse.
Lions and lice don’t waver in their course.
Why should they, when they know they’re right?
Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a ton,
in every other way they’re light.
On this third planet of the sun
among the signs of bestiality
a clear conscience is Number One.
--Wislawa Szymborska
That makes me feel better. Sometimes my head is clear, my sinuses are clear, my goal is clear, but my conscience is never clear. I’ve never understood people who tell me they have no regrets, that if they could live their life over, they would change nothing.
I am good at understanding. I have a very strong imagination. But I cannot understand, I cannot imagine living with no regrets, for “there is none good, no not one.” All have sinned and come short, not only of the glory of God, but of most any set of human standards of conduct. That implicates me. Much that bothers my conscience is irreversible. The damage has been done and cannot be undone.
Although I don’t have a clear conscience, I have found that I can, nonetheless, live with peace in my heart, peace like a river. In Christ forgiven, I am accepted and set on the road to wholeness. My regrets are real, they are strong, but in Christ I do not allow them to haunt me. I don’t know how all of those wrongs and all that pain was made right, redeemed in an incarnate God/Man; I do not understand with clarity how his death, raised--by the purpose and power of God--in newness of life, has reconciled all alienation and estrangement and has transformed suffering into joy and peace. I don’t understand, but I accept and can lie down in peaceful sleep, because my conscience has been cleared through no doing of my own.
But to say I have no regrets would add insult to injury to so many I have wronged. Are there actually humans who like the jackal do not understand remorse? If so, I ask and Szymborska asks if they are indeed human? Perhaps, apart from Jesus, called Christ, there are not true humans.
The buzzard never says it is to blame.
The panther wouldn’t know what scruples mean.
When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame.
If snakes had hands, they’d claim their hands were clean.
A jackal doesn’t understand remorse.
Lions and lice don’t waver in their course.
Why should they, when they know they’re right?
Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a ton,
in every other way they’re light.
On this third planet of the sun
among the signs of bestiality
a clear conscience is Number One.
--Wislawa Szymborska
That makes me feel better. Sometimes my head is clear, my sinuses are clear, my goal is clear, but my conscience is never clear. I’ve never understood people who tell me they have no regrets, that if they could live their life over, they would change nothing.
I am good at understanding. I have a very strong imagination. But I cannot understand, I cannot imagine living with no regrets, for “there is none good, no not one.” All have sinned and come short, not only of the glory of God, but of most any set of human standards of conduct. That implicates me. Much that bothers my conscience is irreversible. The damage has been done and cannot be undone.
Although I don’t have a clear conscience, I have found that I can, nonetheless, live with peace in my heart, peace like a river. In Christ forgiven, I am accepted and set on the road to wholeness. My regrets are real, they are strong, but in Christ I do not allow them to haunt me. I don’t know how all of those wrongs and all that pain was made right, redeemed in an incarnate God/Man; I do not understand with clarity how his death, raised--by the purpose and power of God--in newness of life, has reconciled all alienation and estrangement and has transformed suffering into joy and peace. I don’t understand, but I accept and can lie down in peaceful sleep, because my conscience has been cleared through no doing of my own.
But to say I have no regrets would add insult to injury to so many I have wronged. Are there actually humans who like the jackal do not understand remorse? If so, I ask and Szymborska asks if they are indeed human? Perhaps, apart from Jesus, called Christ, there are not true humans.
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