tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75422628812262437452024-02-20T05:50:23.357-05:00Wretched SuccessWriting to see what I think. . .Barry Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277204142613825141noreply@blogger.comBlogger97125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542262881226243745.post-16183109903667439292014-05-28T19:33:00.001-04:002014-05-28T19:35:31.805-04:00Moving Day — Join Me at Dante's WoodsDear Subscriber,<br />
<br />
We've been here at Wretched Success for several years now. I want to thank you for coming to this spot, this Blogspot. For several reasons I've decided to move the blog over to Wordpress.com. For one, I've been working with Wordpress in several different blogs quite a bit over the last few months. I appreciate its versatility, the data it provides, and the ease of editing. For another reason, it will join with the other blogs I write for and work with. That makes it easier to manage all of them.<br />
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Most of the heavy lifting has already been done. All the posts have been moved and everything is ready. All it lacks . . . is you!<br />
<br />
So join me at Dante's Woods right away. Here's the link: <a href="http://danteswoods.wordpress.com/">http://danteswoods.wordpress.com</a><br />
<br />
See you there!Barry Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277204142613825141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542262881226243745.post-14781647670360144272014-04-28T10:47:00.000-04:002014-04-28T10:47:35.104-04:00Shared Governance? What Governance?<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
As the Washington Adventist University campus prepares for Graduation weekend there remains among faculty, students, and alumni a palpable sense of distrust in the statements released by the university on the loss of accreditation by the Nursing Department, the reasons for the laying off of four full-time faculty, and the financial state of the university.</div>
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So it’s interesting to note that Washington Adventist University was the subject of a dissertation, <b>A Qualitative Assessment of the Meaning of Shared Governance at a Parochial University (2012)</b> by Shaton Monique Glover-Alves, a doctoral candidate in education at Northeastern University in Boston. The author gathered data through surveys and interviews with administrators, faculty leaders, and even a student leader, to determine the meaning of shared governance on campus. Not surprisingly, she discovered that it had different meanings to various groups on campus, but that the diversity of perceptions could lead to misunderstandings and miscommunication. While the official statements in the bylaws and regulations defined shared governance, the actual practices in interactions between faculty and administration often diverged widely from the required processes.</div>
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When asked to define ‘shared governance’ both administrators and faculty leaders interviewed said ‘it all depends.’ This led the author to coin the term ‘situational shared governance,’ meaning that while there were official descriptions of the role of shared governance on campus, the changing situation often dictated how that was interpreted. In other words, due process was often not followed.</div>
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The faculty interviewed all said that the many committees on campus had a ‘voice but not a vote,’ that they functioned merely in an advisory capacity, and that their recommendations were often vetoed by the administration. Committees appeared to make a decision, but the real decisions were made elsewhere at another level. Administrators readily agreed that this was the case and one interviewee, referred to as ‘Shane’ (described as the chairman of the Board of Trustees), took care to reiterate that faculty did not have a vote in major decisions.</div>
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Faculty have served on search committees in which they spend countless hours recruiting candidates for positions on campus, vetting them, conducting extensive interviews with them, and then making their recommendations on the best candidate, only to have the President summarily appoint someone else. Their disappointment and frustration suggests that in practice, at least, they have a different perspective on their role as a search committee than does the President. One example of this was the appointment by the President of a person to develop a program in Homeland Security. Neither the program nor the position nor the instructor went through any faculty committee or Academic Council. As it enters into its third year on the budget at an estimated cost of over $100,000 per year, the program still has no students. While it was touted as a full four-year degree it is currently advertised as a six-month certificate training program.</div>
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The researcher noted that “When faced with questions and definitions about collegiality, “Paul” [a pseudonym for one of the administrators] reported that the governance structure supported the collegial model, and that faculty, staff and cabinet got together to engage in the strategic planning process to discuss mission, vision, and goals. Both Frank and Holly [pseudonyms for top-level administrators] describe collegiality in terms of faculty power and reported that faculty committees only had advisory power, but the administrator had veto power (71).”</div>
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The response given by “Paul” is a non-answer. It is a demonstration of his mastery of the sidestep in which the goal is diversion. However, the researcher was not fooled.</div>
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Trust was the second major theme that emerged in the study. There was a strong emotional connotation to the idea of trust among the faculty interviewees. The researcher described an interview in which a faculty leader struggled to control his tears as he talked about the humiliation he experienced in actions taken by administrators. Trust was equated with transparency about financial matters, academic decisions, and the goals and visions for the university. While benevolence, competency, and reliability were highly desired by the faculty interviewed, none of those dimensions mattered without trust.</div>
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“Paul" noted that “trust takes a long time.” Other administrators talked of “deferred trust” and “delayed trust.” While some of the faculty interviewed felt that they were trusted to do their job by the administrators, they still had deep reservations about the consistency of care exhibited by administration. In a carefully nuanced statement the author commented, “Researcher reflection suggested that without the formation of a relationship, and a sensitivity to the corresponding emotions, there would be little basis for the success of situational shared governance.”</div>
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So when President Spence insists that he operates from a position of shared governance, he means something quite different from what faculty actually experience. He thinks if committees gather, discuss, and talk about an issue that shared governance has taken place. He is then free to disregard or veto the committee’s recommendations. Thus, faculty and administration operate with decidedly different expectations and goals about shared governance. The result is miscommunication, misunderstanding, and constant inefficiency.</div>
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The author offers three recommendations:</div>
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1. Campus leaders should assess the level of trust in the leader. “There may be a need to build trust before shared governance can be fully effective.”<br />2. It is wise to periodically "review all documents that describe shared governance to bring them into greater reality with practices on campus."<br />3. Campus leaders should "engage in discussions on shared governance to clarify campus meanings before embarking on project which require shared governance."</div>
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The research was done to discover the meaning of “shared governance” at a religiously-based university. It resulted in more questions about the nature of Seventh-day Adventist higher education. The dissertation concludes with this sentence: "If the institution is academic, then shared governance will flourish; if it is not, then market-driven, corporative, non-input and handed-down decision will be the order of the day.”</div>
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The provost and the president have made it clear in videos, written statements, and public forums that their decisions are market-driven, data-based, and handed down. They have consistently resisted input from faculty and alumni and have couched their language in corporative terms. If we take the findings of this research seriously we can only conclude that shared governance, however defined, no longer flourishes at Washington Adventist University.</div>
Barry Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277204142613825141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542262881226243745.post-91335876296290179132014-03-22T01:43:00.000-04:002014-03-22T01:43:11.015-04:00A Community of Compassion<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Where conventional education deals with abstract and impersonal facts and theories, an education shaped by Christian spirituality draws us toward incarnate and personal truth.” — Parker Palmer, <i>To Know As We Are Known</i>, 14</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have always found the phrase, ‘the real world,’ both perplexing and damnable. It is perplexing because of all the worlds we may think we inhabit there is none more real than the one we all live and move and have our being in. And before the phone lines light up—yes, caller, I am aware of metaphors and analogies and similes. Still, the force with which those three words are usually hurled at someone—“Wait until you have to survive in <b>the real world</b>, then you’ll see!”— suggests the hurler believes the reality of this world transcends figures of speech. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The phrase is damnable because it cordons off a group of people, usually students, and then condemns them for being isolated from the world. The students I teach are well acquainted with the real world. Many of them hold two jobs, take a full load of classes, and care for a child. Some of them play sports in and out of state, while maintaining their classes and work. All of them know the depths of disappointment in striving oneself to weariness and still falling short of goals and expectations. So it is not a phrase I use on students in particular nor most people in general. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There’s no question that we are in the world; the real question is <b>how</b> we are to be in the world. For Christian teachers and students this is the central question they must answer every day.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Recently, I’ve had reason to question what the advantages of an Adventist Christian college education might be for a young person over one in a ‘secular’ college or university. This is a recurring question for me, a kind of diagnostic to be run in those times when the church as the body of Christ seems pocked with disease, to say nothing of being blind and lame. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s not in the buildings, the landscaping, the amenities, or the sports fields. Most North American Adventist colleges were built near the turn of the 19th century and cannot keep pace with state or even private college campus facilities. On the other hand, I’ve taught on a campus where some buildings pre-date the war—the First World War—and yet students and faculty cheerfully go about their days working around the charm of an infrastructure that was new not long after Oscar Wilde was released from the Reading Gaol. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s not in the endowments, the gifts outright, or the scholarships. Nor is it in the tuition rates, the sports teams, the residential halls, or the food service. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s not in the research facilities, the government and military contracts that bring in millions, nor in graduate assistantships and grants. Most Adventist college professors are too busy teaching four or five classes each semester, plus working on committees, and engaging in service to the college, the church, and the community, to do any research except that directly related to the teaching of their disciplines. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And it’s not even in the ‘star’ quality of the faculty, although many of the Adventist college professors I know could walk into any college classroom—from community college to Ivy League—and teach as well, if not better, than current professors. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Where it differs, sometimes dramatically, is in what Parker Palmer calls “a living and evolving community of creativity and compassion.” He goes on to say, “Education of this sort means more than teaching the facts and learning the reasons so we can manipulate life toward our ends. It means being drawn into personal responsiveness and accountability to each other and the world of which we are a part (<i>To Know as We Are Known</i>).” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That kind of community, one that draws in students, faculty, staff, and administration, takes time and nurture and care. It develops when the community weathers financial crises together, when difficult decisions about people, programs, and purposes must be made. It can only develop when there is trust and trustworthiness. And if it is formed in the crucible of hard times, it survives because “truth is not a concept that ‘works’ but an incarnation that lives. The ‘Word’ our knowledge seeks is not a verbal construct but a reality in history and the flesh (Palmer, 14).” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A community like that will not lack talent and expertise in its teachers. They are guided every day by the overwhelming desire to see their students become ‘thinkers and not mere reflectors of other men’s thoughts.’ </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But a community like that is built up over time. It is not the result of data sets, market relevancy, or alignment with fleeting strategies. It comes about when people sacrifice for the purpose, gladly and well, because they know they are in this together. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If, as a leader, you should find yourself fortunate enough to belong to such a community, walk modestly and listen well. It can all be torn away in a day. </span>Barry Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277204142613825141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542262881226243745.post-78239991644574481092014-02-22T03:12:00.002-05:002014-02-22T03:12:59.489-05:00An Education in Transcendence<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“An education in transcendence prepares us to see beyond appearances into the hidden realities of life—beyond facts into truth, beyond self-interest into compassion, beyond our flagging energies and nagging despairs into the love required to renew the community of creation.” — Parker Palmer, <i>To Know As We Are Known</i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That we are alone in this world is a fact which is confirmed by movies, reality shows, advertising, and economic self-help theories. That this is, in fact, false is something we must learn. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I don’t mean alone in merely a physical or social sense. I once had a colleague, a recent arrival from China, who went to a public gathering on the 4th of July in Baltimore and felt a sense of panic because she was in a crowd numbering only a few thousand. It’s all in what you’re used to apparently. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This kind of aloneness is not that of the weary commuter on the train gazing without seeing as the stations blur past. Not even Philip Seymour Hoffman, dying on the floor of his bathroom, a needle stuck in his arm, was alone in the way we are told is the norm. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This kind of aloneness is deeply American, although other cultures are sensing its allure. It’s a strand of ideological DNA which causes moral palsy in some: the hand outstretched to help twitches, the cup of cold water crashes to the floor.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We are taught to be unique at an early age. Ralph Waldo Emerson, in an essay entitled “Self-Reliance,” drummed the message in with eloquence and fervor: “Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist.” And, “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” And again: “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is something thrilling in these lines, and in many others that Emerson writes. He hated the mob, the unthinking crowd so easily swayed by demagogues and charlatans. He wanted people to think for themselves, to see themselves as individuals. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What the nation needed in 1841, he thought, was a sense of the present, not the past. Europe was the past: for all its intellectual glories it could not be the template for America. The country needed to build itself from the ground up and the way to do it was to boldly go where no nation had gone before. A nation of individuals, each one pursuing his or her course with a sturdy vigor, was the ideal. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But somewhere along the way that centrifugal honesty snapped its line and arced away. What we see now is not Emerson’s neighborly self-reliance, but what Parker Palmer calls an endless power struggle between the self and the world. Each self is convinced it is in a battle for survival, with dominance over the world the only possible goal. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Palmer has been a teacher for decades, a Quaker by choice, and a thoughtful critic of an educational system that trains people for arrogance rather than service. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He suggests that our hunger for knowledge arises from two sources: curiosity and control. Curiosity for its own sake is amoral, a need to know that shrugs off any restraint. Control “is simply another word for power.” Together, curiosity and control can generate knowledge that leads us toward death, not life. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But there is another kind of knowledge that contains just as many facts and theories as the knowledge we now possess, but that springs from something other than mere curiosity and control. “A knowledge born of compassion aims not at exploiting and manipulating creation but at reconciling the world to itself (<i>To Know as We Are Known</i> 8).”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is not a sentimental warm fuzzy kind of love, he notes, but a tough love—“the connective tissue of reality”—and we find it most often in community. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Palmer talks about “community” a great deal, a word that splays out in so many directions these days that it’s hard to grasp what it means. I can sense that it’s a good thing, though, and as spiritual qualities go, it tops any wish list I could draw up. I’m just not sure how it comes about.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Palmer ties it to transcendence, a word often misunderstood. We need to think of transcendence as not being drawn up and out of life to an eternal realm, but as a sideways impulse, a breaking in of the Spirit which breathes hope and trust into us. That’s the kind of transcendence which happens in community, a practical notion of love with its feet on the ground and its heart aflame with Jesus incarnate—God among us.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I get a much clearer sense of what ‘community’ can mean when Palmer speaks of a “discipline of mutual encouragement and mutual testing, keeping me both hopeful and honest about the love that seeks me, the love I seek to be (<i>To Know as We Are Known 18</i>).”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At Sligo I have found community in the study group I belong to, Believers and Doubters. For years we have prayed together, argued together, studied the Bible and books about it together, laughed and suffered together, and suffered the loss of members together. I would not trade it for anything. It has been an “education in transcendence.” </span><br />
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Barry Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277204142613825141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542262881226243745.post-31642849375731372892014-02-08T02:31:00.004-05:002014-02-11T10:28:23.608-05:00What's In a Name?<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Just tell the Oneida crowd we know how excruciatingly painful it must be to have to hear “Hail to the Redskins!” but are confident they have the moxie and the manhood to deal with it.” — Pat Buchanan</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Every once in awhile I deliberately move myself out of my well-traveled paths that lead to the Old Testament prophets, the Gospels, the ancient Greek philosophers, Hume, Kant, Mill, Isaiah Berlin, and Monty Python, and check in with current conservative commentators and pundits like Patrick Buchanan and W. James Antle III. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Since the books I read, the people I talk to, and the viewpoints I consider tend to reinforce what I already believe it only seems fair that I should listen to the arguments of those whose views I shun. I shun these views because I think the people who hold them are wrong-headed and I would rather spend my time considering ideas that I believe I can use. But I’ve also spent a good deal of my life encouraging students to listen carefully, think diligently, and talk responsibly. There are conversations going on all around me that can test these resolves; it remains for me to practice what I preach. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If a name offends a minority of people should it be changed? The Washington Bullets changed their name in the 80s when the city was known as the murder capital of the country. The owner, Abe Pollin, didn’t want to reinforce the image of violence that plagued the city in those days. Of course, as soon as the name was changed to the Wizards there were grumblings from conservative Christians about witchcraft and sorcery. The change of name was definitely for the better, but it brought no magic to the team’s win-loss record. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Washington Redskins first played as the Boston Braves in 1932. The owner, George Preston Marshall, changed the name to the Boston Redskins in 1933, and when the team moved to Washington, DC in 1937 they kept the name but changed the city. Along with the Kansas City Chiefs, the Atlanta Braves, and a handful of college sports teams, these names have drawn criticism for decades. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the case of the Redskins, team owners from George Marshall to Jack Kent Cooke have resolutely refused to change the name. Dan Snyder, the current owner, is even more adamant. In a letter to <i>USA Today</i>, May 2013, Snyder said, “NEVER—you can put that in caps.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Pat Buchanan, former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and one-time presidential candidate, wrote a <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2013/10/hail-to-the-redskins/#jOJxKVfq0m0vsLU4.99">column</a> mocking Oneida Indian Nation leader Ray Halbritter, who said in a letter to Snyder, “Native Americans do not want their people to be hurt by such painful epithets.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Buchanan thought this was both absurd and intolerant on the part of Halbritter and his supporters. He quoted an unnamed source who admired the Native Americans because they fought bravely, stood their ground, and didn’t whine when they were attacked by Europeans bent on taking their lands and killing them off. Naming a football team or any team after Indians, said Buchanan, shows real respect for these proud people. Halbritter should suck it up and realize that we mean no harm—it’s actually a compliment. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Furthermore, where would the censuring stop? If Halbritter took offense at Snyder’s intransigence what should be done about Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence which called Native Americans “merciless Indian Savages”? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Should the statue of General William Tecumseh Sherman be pulled down because he wrote to Ulysses S. Grant calling for the extermination of all Indians—men, women, and children? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Should the face of Teddy Roosevelt be blasted off Mt. Rushmore for disputing Sherman’s opinion that the only good Indian is a dead one? T. R. was more sensitive than that: “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Buchanan’s argument followed a familiar tactic of reversing the charges: if Halbritter accused Snyder of disrespecting Native Americans he himself should show some tolerance and respect. I’m sorry you took offense; I meant no harm. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">W. James Antle III, writing in <a href="http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/redskins-manufactured-controversy-9395?page=2"><i>The National Interest</i></a><i>, </i>took a different line. He argued that polls taken over the years do not show a majority of those polled in favor of changing the name. He admitted that institutions should sometimes “change even cherished customs and traditions out of respect for others.” But that would require, he said, “mutual respect, a desire to let other communities keep what is important to them without powerful reasons to the contrary.” There aren’t enough powerful reasons as yet, according to Antle. We must keep the fundamental difference clear between doing what is right and “doing something at the behest of the politically and culturally powerful.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So who has the power here? The Native Americans’ request to cease and desist with offensive names are overruled because a majority of people polled don’t think it’s important. Yet, if the Native Americans got their way that would be bowing to the whims of the politically and culturally powerful. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Have some patience, says Antle. Chill out. Perhaps the tide of public opinion will shift in your favor some day. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">More likely, he concludes, the activists will wear everyone down with their incessant complaining, and the important people, the ones who have important things to worry about, will decide it’s not worth the bother. What a shame that would be, giving in to such pressure. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Buchanan and Antle and those who buy these specious arguments believe that these matters are too trivial for serious consideration. They cling to their stereotypes, formed in their youth, in which the cowboys and Indians fought across their Sunday TV screens—and the cowboys always won. To admit that Native Americans have the right to be treated like any other self-respecting ethnic, religious, sexual or racial group would be to grant them power which they don’t deserve. After all, we won and they lost. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s a Catch-22: teams adopt these names because they admire the toughness of the Indians in fending off genocide, but if the Indians complain they are wimping out and betraying their noble heritage. The team owners won’t listen to them because they lack power, but if they were to <i>get</i> power they would be uppity. The harmony of the Union demands that such groups be kept in their place.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let us restate the obvious: people like Buchanan and Antle have the right to speak their minds. They get paid good money to do so. Those who wish to believe them can line up and pay the admission price for the show under the big tent. But times change and so do ideas and values. They may yet realize they were on the wrong side of history, but by then they will be as anachronistic as cowboys-and-Indians westerns. </span>Barry Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277204142613825141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542262881226243745.post-80269235066537747682014-01-25T07:14:00.001-05:002014-01-25T07:15:46.702-05:00Being Justin Bieber<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I don’t know who I am,</span> <span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But you know life is for learning.” — Joni Mitchell, </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Woodstock</i></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’ve been thinking about Justin Bieber this week, about him racing his Lamborghini up a street in Miami Beach, about him telling the arresting officer that he had been drinking and smoking weed, about him cursing the cop as he was being patted down for weapons, about him smiling as he was photographed at the jail, about him making bail after eight hours in jail, and about him emerging from the police station into a forest of mics and thickets of reporters and clutches of fans. How fortunate he is, I thought, he has been blessed with a stutter-step out of his routine; he now has time to regard himself. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The ancient Romans had a shrine to the goddess Fortuna. She was often depicted with a cornucopia spilling out with all good things, or an orb of sovereignty delicately balanced between her thumb and forefinger. Most who worshipped her also knew to fear her because she was fickle and capricious: she would shower gifts on a person and just as cruelly withdraw them to enjoy her subject’s misery. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cicero, Roman orator and statesman, invoked her as the symbol of the ceaseless rise and fall of people and empires, and Seneca’s play <i>Agamemnon </i>had a chorus which chants, “Whatever Fortune has raised on high/she lifts but to bring low.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Seneca and Cicero might kindly advise Justin Bieber to place his trust elsewhere than in the hands of his publicity agent, his lawyers, and his handlers. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The media, today’s equivalent of Fortuna, raised him up to glory and will now exact its price in blood. There is no pain so deep that CNN and E! cannot make a ratings killing from it. The incident will be examined in excruciating detail, legal experts will be called in, maps will be drawn and bystanders interviewed. The judge will make a statement, the arresting officer will be grilled at length with questions like, “What was going through your mind as Justin Bieber was cussing you out?” And so forth. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s all entertainment, all of it, from the racing to the display of the arrest report to the coverage of Bieber’s release to his inevitable statement afterward. There’s nothing in this whole incident— or any others which may follow — that cannot be commodified, wrung dry for its glitter and grunge, or spun off into auxillary revenue. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1985, Josh Meyrowitz, professor of communication at the University of New Hampshire, published <i>No Sense of Place:The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior. </i>The book won an award in 1986 from the National Broadcasting Association for its insights on television’s power to influence our social roles. Meyrowitz wrote that television is the ‘secret exposing’ machine in society that gives us unprecedented views behind the scenes. What once occurred behind doors or beyond carefully guarded physical boundaries is now exposed for all to see. Meyrowitz argued that the roles we play and witness in our lives are now played out to audiences who are not physically present to us in arenas that do not exist in time and space. In other words, electronic media has made actors of all of us and we are always on stage. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Truly different behaviors require truly distinct situations,” he says. We react in predictable ways because we associate certain behaviors with certain physical and social situations. But our ability to accept each other in specific roles relies on our unawareness of that person in other roles. For example, a young woman might be uncomfortable undressing in front of a doctor whom she recognizes as a boy who had a crush on her in high school. “By selectively exposing ourselves to events and other people, we control the flow of our actions and emotions,” says Meyrowitz. “Compassion, empathy, and even ethics may be much more situationally bound than we often care to think.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The focus of his research was on television’s ability to break down the walls between actors and audiences and to influence the roles we play in our everyday lives. This was in 1985—two years after Sony introduced the first camcorder, a hand-held movie camera that could record film on inexpensive video cassettes. By 1987 JVC had produced a camcorder with broadcast-quality performance. Less than 20 years after the book was published most people carry smartphones that can shoot high-quality stills and video. More than 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, 80% of it from outside the US. Governments have toppled, politicians have been ousted, marriages dissolved, and cats elevated to cultural icons—all because everything we do can be seen by millions in minutes. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“All the world’s a stage,’ said Shakespeare, “and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts . . .” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I can’t help thinking that Justin Bieber, like Kanye West, is a brand rather than a person; that no matter what the occasion or the incident—whether it be carefully scripted or emotionally fraught—it’s all footage for the audience, the beast that must be fed. The fact that both Bieber and West occasionally lash out at the paparazzi only increases the suspicion that they are trapped in a cage of their own making. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Bieber may not yet be fully aware that his life is not his own, that everything he does is on camera for all the world to see and judge. He is a money-making machine, 24/7, with no time off for good behavior. At times he seems both bewildered and bored, yet he compulsively tweets his most solitary and lonely moments. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Joshua Meyrowitz thought that what children had formerly learned at a later stage from parents, older siblings, or books, was now available for the taking from television without preparation or preamble. Television had changed our sense of place and space; all backstage behavior was now onstage. Similarly, the ever-present cameras not only give us almost immediate access to situations and their behaviors, but “They give us, instead, new events and new behaviors.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We don’t know whether to be titillated or embarrassed by behaviors we see on YouTube and television. Through such constant surveillance we are creating situations for ourselves that we have no experience interpreting. But the more awkward the situation the greater the selling point, until we are caught in an escalating rush toward a jaw-dropper such as Miley Cyrus twerking at the VMAs.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Life presents us with countless opportunities to learn, but if we are floating on the surface of our experiences we may not even be conscious of them as anything but a succession of moments. Only as we step back, reflect, and see ourselves can we learn from our changes. It’s a lesson Justin Bieber could learn too, but I’m not hopeful he can see it. </span>Barry Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277204142613825141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542262881226243745.post-45295831571913873282014-01-17T23:05:00.000-05:002014-01-17T23:05:59.339-05:00Exemplary<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Throughout history the exemplary teacher has never been just an instructor in a subject; he is nearly always its living advertisement.” </span></i><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: right;">—</span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: right; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: right;">Michael Dirda, </span><i style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: right;">Book by Book</i></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I leapt at this phrase when I first read it in Dirda’s spry little ‘commonplace’ notebook. It fit my Puritan work ethic and it assuaged the residual guilt that plagues most teachers. This could be the answer to that recurrent nightmare, the one where we are exposed by our students as imposters, pipelines simply carrying the information, subject to any crank that wants to interrupt the flow with a question.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course, the analogy to the teacher as advertisement is not without its problems. Advertisements are there solely to sell us stuff that we don’t want and certainly don’t need. Advertisements lie—that is their <i>modus operandi</i>—and they are almost always flogging trivial stuff like mouthwash, Doritos, and Lincoln Navigators. Advertisements clog the airwaves, occupy every visible surface, and reduce the wisdom of the world to slogans. Teachers are not advertisements. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But there’s another way to regard this. Years ago cultural critic and media theorist James W. Carey wrote a seminal essay in which he distinguished two historical views on communication. One was the transmission model in which communication functions to loft messages long distances and exercise power over others from afar. It works well when we text message our friends or fire a missile or take out an ad in the <i>Washington Post</i>. It is at work when we channel the textbook in our classes or lecture without regard for where the shells we lob are landing. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The other form of communication is ancient; it predates literacy and springs from the impulse to commune with others. It gathers in rather than disseminates, pulls us into a circle of stories around the fire instead of blasting the masses, and works from the inside to the outside. Symbolic, ritualized, it is the way a society defines, maintains, and sustains itself. It is thought embedded in action, the Word made flesh. The message is not simply carried in the shell of the advertisement: it is rather—to ruffle McLuhan’s hair—the message <i>as</i> the medium.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thus, when we imagine ourselves professing before our classes, do we see ourselves as these exemplary sages who at the very least convey an enthusiasm for the subject that can enthrall even the back rows? Probably not, and rightly so.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The best teachers among us wear the mantle lightly. They seem innocent of it, as unconscious as breathing. When complimented they may be startled or slightly embarrassed or just a bit uncomfortable. This hints at the idea that teaching well is not a technique (from <i>tekhne</i>, ‘art or craft’) applied from the outside but the result over time of allowing our natural curiosity to partner with our desire for communion with others. When we tell the stories around our particular fires with enthusiasm (from <i>en theos</i>, ‘in god’), we transcend our egos if only for a moment. We lose the weight of being ‘the teacher’ and we truly ‘profess’ what we know and love. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This “innocence” is not something we can strive for, however. It arrives unannounced, a blessed byproduct of knowledge, love for the subject, familiarity with the process, and experience in handling groups of students. In those moments we become the embodiment of what we say, a living word. On a cold Monday morning we <i>can</i> be so lucky.</span></div>
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<br />Barry Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277204142613825141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542262881226243745.post-23986478080834130372014-01-11T03:33:00.001-05:002014-01-12T14:53:18.219-05:00Mysterium Tremendum<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> “ . . . Above and beyond our rational being lies hidden the ultimate and highest part of our nature, which can find no satisfaction in the mere allaying of the needs of our sensuous, psychical, or intellectual impulses and cravings. The mystics called it the basis or ground of the soul.” — Rudolf Otto, <i>The Idea of the Holy</i> </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">When it comes to the history of religion this element of the non-rational, the awe-ful, the mysterious, is bound into the DNA of the whole experience. Rudolf Otto laid down the premise that religion starts with the apprehension of ‘the <i>mysterium tremendum.’ </i>He describes the experience:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“The feeling of it may at times come sweeping like a gentle tide, pervading the mind with a tranquil mood of deepest worship . . . It has its wild and demonic forms and can sink to an almost grisly horror and shuddering. It has its crude, barbaric antecedents and early manifestations, and again it may be developed into something beautiful and pure and glorious. It may become the hushed, trembling, and speechless humility of the creature in the presence of—whom or what? In the presence of that which is a <i>Mystery</i> inexpressible and above all creatures.”</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I’d venture to say that for most of us who worship on a regular basis the mystery’s gone. We are familiar with the rhythm of the worship service, at times comforting, at other times almost nauseating in its repetition and dullness. Mainstream religious groups, noting the absence of youth and young adults, inject informality into the service, along with music that can get people on their feet, clapping and swaying. What they may lack in depth they make up for in enthusiasm and communal spirit. You’re never alone at such a service.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And yet . . . and yet . . . My <i>mysterium tremendum</i> moments, experiences which Otto says mark real religion through the millennia, are rare enough that I can remember most of them. These are moments that pierce, in remembrance, with feelings and impressions that are almost painful, the sort of pain that makes you grateful to be alive. Without exception they occurred unexpectedly, without preparation or forethought, usually when I was alone, but occasionally in the presence of a few intimate friends. They produced what Otto calls ‘a beatitude beyond compare.’ Almost inexpressible, they gave, as he says, “The Peace that passes understanding, and of which the tongue can only stammer brokenly.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One took place when I was 17, camping with friends in Yosemite, high above the valley floor and within sight of North Dome. Early in the morning, before the others awoke, I clambered up on a rock the size of a house to watch the dawning. While I felt horizontally alone—my friends were asleep a hundred yards downslope—I seemed vertically caught up to the heavens and enveloped in the vast and gentle acceptance of Nature. My eyes were drawn to the rim of the mountains opposite where the first light of morning would break. I waited, and as I did I thought I saw motion in the air far below me, but it could only be perceived indirectly, in a sidelong glance at the edge of vision. Gradually it took form so that in a few moments it could be seen as a vast cloud of black birds, shifting and swooping, moving together soundlessly. It drew nearer and I could hear a rustle that grew to a sound like the wind and I could make out individual birds among the hundreds and as I got to my feet they rushed overhead, around me and over me, just as the sun burst up and over the mountains and lit them and me with a fiery flame. In a moment they were gone, and I let out my breath and I brushed away the tears as I whooped. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A second experience was in Winchester Cathedral. I had hitchhiked down from the college I was attending and arrived before noon. The cathedral, wreathed in mist, seemed almost to float. It was larger than I had imagined and yet more delicate somehow. I pulled open a side door and slipped in. I found myself in a vast, open space under a soaring ceiling, everything dominated by the enormous stained-glass window of the West facade. Something about a cathedral raises the spirit and lowers the voice; footsteps echoed and I could hear voices somewhere, but no one was in sight. I walked quietly up the center aisle and knelt in a row of seats below the altar. While prayer with words has always been difficult for me, I have found peace in simply listening with an open heart. The heavens did not open nor did I see angels ascending and descending, but I was on holy ground nevertheless. Cathedrals were designed to impress, instruct, and uplift the thousands who crowded into them for worship and on festival days. Alone within that cool, echoing space I could give myself over to the stone beneath my knees, the fine, close grain of the wood of the chair against which I leaned, the light pouring in from windows high overhead. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I knelt there as long as I needed to, finally standing only when it seemed there was no more that could be expressed or received. It was a cessation, not a parting. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A more recent experience took place within a small circle of friends I have known for over twenty years. We gather weekly to study, to pray, to discuss and argue over matters of the spirit and the state of the world. There is nothing we can’t say to each other. Still, it came as a shock when, near the end of our discussion, one of our group leaned forward and said with a smile on her face, “I just want you to know I have cancer.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In the silence that followed for a few heartbeats my first thought, incongruously, was of thankfulness. “Now it’s out there,” I thought. “We can talk about it. We can go through this with her. This is a beginning we will not regret.” We don’t know what the outcome will be. But it’s fair to say that act of courage freed us all to bear whatever burdens we can together. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">These moments rise above the norm. They are what Otto calls the ‘overplus’ of experience. When we have them they remind us of forces beyond our control and of our smallness in this universe. They will not fit neatly into a rational schema nor can they be fully understood. But they can be accepted when offered. Experience is a kind of knowing that reveals as we retell.</span><br />
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<iframe src="http://www.haikudeck.com/e/dJauUqVFpB" width="640" height="541" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no"></iframe><br /><a href="http://www.haikudeck.com/?utm_campaign=embed&utm_source=player&utm_medium=text-link" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif; font-size:8pt;">"The Numinous."Created by Barry Casey with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad</a>Barry Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277204142613825141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542262881226243745.post-13543416014783698872013-12-14T01:01:00.000-05:002013-12-14T01:52:40.553-05:00Jesus, One for All<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Praxis will make Jesus alive among us. As a mystery, he is therefore never the exclusive possession of Christians. He is ‘common property.’” — Edward Schillebeeckx, <i>God Among Us: The Gospel Proclaimed</i></span></blockquote>
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At Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus, a name that for people the world over is instantly recognizable as unique, yet for his time was as common as Mohammed is today. Biblical scholars have pointed out that we know very little of the circumstances of Jesus’ birth, that the reports of Matthew and Luke are ‘gospel’ truths, not historical facts, and that he entered the world unnoticed. But of course for his parents, and perhaps for a few friends and relatives, this birth was, like most births, an occasion for joy, tinged with the darkness that waits patiently just beyond the reach of every parent. </div>
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It is ironic that one of the most beloved of Christmas traditions, the “Hallelujah Chorus,” exalts the magnificent titles later bestowed on this little anonymous Jewish boy born under the oppressive rule of the Roman empire: King of Kings and Lord of Lords . . . forever and ever and ever! Matthew pulls in lines from Isaiah about a baby born back in the day who is named Emmanuel, ‘God with us,’ but the angel who appears in Joseph’s dream commands that <i>this </i>child be named Jesus (which is the English equivalent of the Greek transliteration of the Aramaic ‘Yeshua,’ the Latinized version of the Hebrew ‘Yehoshua’) which means ‘Yahweh is salvation.’ Close enough: Matthew’s calling up of ‘Emmanuel’ dovetails nicely with the name ‘Jesus’ in that God moves close to us in the form of the one who saves—Yahweh. </div>
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How do we connect with this child? We usually don’t. Say the name ‘Jesus’ and you most likely see a grown man trudging up and down the roads of Galilee. You just might see a young boy, having slipped the anxious bonds of his parents, stunning the theologians in the temple with his knowledge of scripture. For the most part, though, we jump directly from the manger scene to Jesus’ baptism because the Gospels are silent about those years. </div>
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And yet through countless paintings, sculptures, images, poems, songs, and Christmas cards, we imagine this baby, perhaps one of many born that day called ‘Jesus,’ and we see <i>this</i> one as the Wonderful Counselor, the Prince of Peace, the Redeemer. </div>
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Jesus himself seems almost oblivious to his own identity, caught up as he is in his mission for others. When people ask who he is he sometimes demurs, other times answers obliquely (I and the Father are one), and occasionally, in the presence of his friends, speaks directly—“I am among you as one who serves.” He is a man consumed by his passion for God, yet he grows weary like any man. He constantly threads his way between the messianic and revolutionary hopes of the peasants around him, and the pragmatic <i>realpolitik</i> of the ruling religious parties. The people can see the difference: ‘He speaks with authority, not like the priests,’ and ‘no one speaks like this man.’ “Why do you call me good?” he asks. “Only the Father is good.” And that, says Edward Schillebeeckx, Dominican monk and professor of theology, “can only be said by someone who is so obviously good that he is not even conscious of being good. And precisely that will betray his identity.”</div>
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At times I wonder where Jesus can be found in all the Christmas mashup concocted by the religio-commercialized complex. There’s precious little left of him after the season is over, so obscured is he by our frenetic worship of getting. Occasionally, I imagine the terrible scene sketched by Nietzsche in which a madman rushes into the city square with a lantern in midday, crying “God is dead! And we have killed him!” And after I jump down from my own petard before I am blown up by self-righteousness, I glimpse a figure moving steadily through the crowd ahead. I quicken my pace, but I lose him at the corner. I pause, turning in a full circle, eyes straining, but he is gone. Then I see him, standing alone, the crowd swirling past him, and when our eyes meet he smiles. My eyes tear up in the wind and when I clear them he has vanished. No matter: Imagination will suffice when beckoned by hope.</div>
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Like the first Christians we understand this better when we read back from the unthinkable resurrection to the birth of Jesus. As Schillebeeckx says, “Human birth, life and death are in fact accessible only in a story, and not in theory or ‘theology.’ “</div>
Barry Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277204142613825141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542262881226243745.post-31421169175119751062013-12-07T02:06:00.000-05:002013-12-07T22:04:56.481-05:00Mandela's Choice<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“. . . no matter what a man’s frailties otherwise may be, if he be willing to risk death, and still more if he suffer it heroically, in the service he has chosen, the fact consecrates him forever.” — William James, <i>The Varieties of Religious Experience</i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At one of the campuses where I teach, a student remarked in a symposium that a fellow classmate had just heard of Nelson Mandela’s death. ‘You know who he is, right?” asked my student. “Sure,” came the response, “he’s an actor” — a case of life being confused as art imitating life, as Morgan Freeman played Nelson Mandela in the film, <i>Invictus</i>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A great man passes on and the world mourns. Jailed for 27 years as a terrorist by the South African government, Mandela emerged from the notorious prison on Robben Island in 1990—and the world held its breath. He had the power to plunge South Africa into all-out racial warfare, but instead he worked for reconciliation and peace. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Branded a communist and a terrorist early in his career, Mandela was only taken off the U. S. terror watch list in 2008, long after he received the Nobel Peace Prize with F. W. de Klerk in 1993, and was elected South Africa’s first black president in 1994. Some perceptions die hard.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His life followed an arc unusual for the type of human rights heroes we think we know. Unlike Gandhi and Martin Luther King he was not assassinated nor was he always a pacifist. They lived in the public eye and died violently; he lived for decades locked up for life and died at home in bed. There is no template for these kinds of heroes. A man plays the hand dealt him as best he can and lives—and dies—aware of forces larger than himself at work.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What must it be like to walk out of a cell to stand before thousands of people for whom you are both symbol and cipher? To look into the eyes of those around the negotiating table and see both fear and admiration? To turn at the end of the day to stand by a window, feeling the warm night air fold around oneself as the curtain brushes your cheek? To see oneself from a distance, a thin stick-figure gesturing in silhouette, the words from one’s mouth flying like a dove from an ark, looking for a place to land?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Through film, biographies, autobiography, stories, articles, photos, we attempt to understand the human being behind the image. It is we who build the image, but we demand authenticity, the real Truth about the man. It’s not even as if we knew for sure that there <i>was</i> a truth to be had, but every story, every interview, every anecdote from Those Who Were There tries to shatter the Image and find the Man. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We have need of both the image and the man: the image is portable, can be synced across many devices, and can be updated across all platforms. It is a creation not quite <i>ex nihilo</i>, out of nothing, but if it were not there it would be necessary to invent it. The Man is, literally, another story. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I don’t know that we ever know ourselves completely. Mandela must have searched his soul intently during those 27 years, piecing together an armature upon which he could create a new man, one dedicated to peace. It may have taken him that long to reconcile with this new man, to learn his ways, and to recognize when he weakened and was in need of hope. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If that is the case, if it might be true that Mandela—and any of us—may be recreated into new beings whose very existence defies the logic of circumstance, then we are in constant discovery of ourselves even in those moments when we choose “the road less travelled by,” — the one that makes all the difference. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This theory would run up against the familiar spirit that haunts our discourse about the fitness of those who would be our leaders, for example. Thus, a man, midway through life is presumed to be the same person as the impetuous youth who inhaled or drank or otherwise indulged in foolishness. But do we really believe that no one evolves over time, that we are the same yesterday, today, and forever? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“You’ll become only who you always were.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">says Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, through “Ricardo Reis,” one of his writing personas. We interpret this view of Fate as laying out a path we are bound to follow no matter what. This is the flip side of another American myth—that of the man or woman who rises, despite the odds, to triumph and glory through sheer will power by any means necessary. Both of these stories lead us into temptation. The first resigns us to passivity: we are already what we shall always be. The second gives us false hope that if we just follow this or that self-help program we will emerge the victors. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Perhaps our path lies closer to the center—not because having split the difference between the two we are now trapped in the middle—but rather as a genuine third position. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This position says that we are in a context, a culture, a society, that shapes us through family, education, religion, and social influences, but that does not determine us. Through self-awareness we see our circumstances for what they are: the place we are at in the present, out of all the myriad possibilities within that cultural context. But now that we see where we are we have some choices. They are not infinite but they are choices, and we ignore them at our peril. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We also recognize that we are inevitably the product of our genetic heritage, yet that too is not definitive of our character. What matters, what opens possibilities for change and renewal, is the awareness that arises through reflection. It may come through a faithful commitment to a spiritual path or it may come through the recognition that we are not alone in this world. However we receive it we now can decide, and it’s the decision that matters. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We rightly regard Mandela as a hero because he chose to respond to hate with forgiveness. Ironically, the very system that was designed to break him and force him to submit was itself dismantled, piece by piece, in no small measure by the strength of his patience and the power of his character. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">NOTE: I've decided to continue Wretched Success here at Blogspot and to copy these musings to Medium.com. Look for some changes to come in the next few weeks!</span><br />
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Barry Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277204142613825141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542262881226243745.post-54873375598253885112013-11-30T02:45:00.001-05:002014-01-12T14:34:08.970-05:00And Now For Something Completely Different: Tragic Faith and Gratitude<br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Tragedy is real and by its very nature cannot be explained. Spirituality, accordingly, involves finding or giving meaning to that which cannot be explained or justified.” — Robert Solomon, <em>Spirituality for the Skeptic</em></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the introductory class on philosophy that I teach each year I ask the students to come up with a list of the worst evils that have occurred in all of human history. This year rape was number one, followed by child molestation. Terrorism, mass shootings, violence toward women, and cruelty to animals were also mentioned.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We can learn from their observations. First, nobody mentioned the Holocaust. Second, all the evils were generic; none were the actions of specific persons. Third, allowing for a certain historical inevitability of such crimes, none of these occurred earlier than 2001. And finally, everything, without exception, fit into the ‘moral evil’ category. No hurricanes, typhoons, tornados, earthquakes, avalanches, tsunamis, or fires need apply. That was all stuff for which there is at least a scientific explanation; the real evil was perpetrated by humans upon each other.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That’s a modern sensibility at work. Unlike people of the eighteenth century or earlier, most of us no longer think of natural disasters as punishment for sin nor do we see a connection between God and tsunamis. These things happen, we say. There’s nothing, really, that we can do about it, although some of my students thought the effects of global warming—rising seas, more frequent and more intense storm systems, and wild variations in temperatures for the seasons—could be traced back to human indifference, corruption, and even maleficence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When bad things happen to people we slip on our metaphysical raincoats to protect us from the depressing downpour and are thankful that two buckets catch all the meaning we’ll ever need. One bucket is labeled ‘natural disasters’ — what used to be called ‘acts of God’ —and the other bucket is simply ‘moral evil’— that which we do out of ignorance, hatred, bad karma, or stupidity.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet, while we live in a world that is taut with globalized connections and wired for instantaneous reaction to horrors, our views of evil are provincial and localized. That’s not to say they are trivial or inconsequential, but rather to note the obvious: what happens to <em>us</em> is of the utmost importance, but the significance tapers off rapidly the farther the effect ripples away from ourselves. In another setting, one of the Marx brothers said something like, “comedy is when you step on a banana peel and fall down a manhole; tragedy is when it happens to me.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We don’t have much place for tragedy these days. Outside of assigning it to certain Shakespearean plays and young lives cut short through car crashes, we’re almost embarrassed to use the word. We have an egalitarian notion that suffering is personal, therefore individual, and that everyone is entitled to their own version of it. Perhaps because we are resolutely bound to respect another’s suffering as entirely their own we are at a loss for comforting words and we fall back on such stiff, managerial phrases as ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But as Robert Solomon notes in <em>Spirituality for the Skeptic (2002)</em>, it is as tragedy that suffering has <em>meaning</em>. “Whether or not life has a meaning—whatever that is taken to mean—we <em>make</em> meaning by way of our commitments . . . It is by making meanings in life that we free ourselves from the meaninglessness of suffering.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of the lessons that we learn, sooner or later, is how much that happens to us is simply out of our control. This runs against our pride and our unbounded faith in technological progress. If things break they will be fixed. And if they can’t be fixed someone will pay. Those who are responsible will be held accountable, and the line of responsibility, while sometimes tenuous, can usually be followed back to a person or an organization. Thus, we look for someone to blame before anything else.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sometimes we do things that result in tragedy through shortsightedness or negligence or laziness. But sometimes, despite our efforts and all our best practices, terrible things happen that we cannot find sufficient reasons for and we certainly can’t explain them. There is no one to blame, no one to sue. Why can’t we just leave it at that?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are moments in everyone’s life that are beyond explanation. Reason fails us precisely because there are no categories nor words to express what we are experiencing. In those times we simply gasp in dumbstruck awe and then set about cleaning up, restoring what we can. That is where suffering becomes meaningful in the depths of our tragedy.What reason cannot articulate, spirituality can express through a muscular silence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There’s another position between the arrogance of reason and the resignation of despair—that of tragic faith. I’m not talking about melodrama or narcissism but of a clear-eyed recognition of the limitations of our lives. The human condition is one of beauty and ugliness, nobility and depravity, astonishing courage and shrinking cowardice. That’s us—all of us—without exception. We are tragic figures because we have such greatness in us and yet we fall so far short. As a Christian deeply drawn to an existentialist vision of life I take the centrality of <em>making meaning</em> as part of the action of faith. A tragic faith is not one of despair but of humility and gratitude. To live in hope and in passion is to live with gratitude and good humor. I did not ask to be born, but I’m here! How cool is that?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When we come to the end of our days, says Annie Dillard in one of her books, we take our leave like guests going home from a friend’s house. The natural thing to say to the host is ‘Thank you!’</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dear Readers: This is the last post here at Wretched Success. I'm moving to Medium, a new site for online writers that's been developed by one of the co-founders of Twitter. Please follow this link <a href="https://medium.com/p/8d338db0e235">https://medium.com/p/8d338db0e235</a>.</span></div>
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Barry Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277204142613825141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542262881226243745.post-3647642535663814412013-11-23T01:33:00.000-05:002013-11-29T12:56:00.598-05:00The Passionate Life<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you trap the moment before it's ripe<br />The tears of repentance you'll certainly wipe:<br />But if once you let the ripe moment go<br />You can never wipe off the tears of woe. — William Blake, <i>Riches</i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some of us are constantly caught between exhortations to seize the day and those of a more cautious nature. We hesitate, we muse, we ponder, while all around us (so we suppose) others are grabbing the carp from under our noses. Our culture is made of two types of people: those who act deliberately and those who deliberate and then act. The first group gets all the headlines but the second group meets its deadlines. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s hard not to like spontaneous people, but I suppose if they were around long enough the strains might begin to show. I remember being on a flight from San Francisco to London one summer during my college years. I boarded with a suitcase overhead, a small pack under the seat, and another suitcase stowed on board. Before the flight I fell into conversation with a group of three people my age, two guys and a girl. One of them had driven the couple to the airport and was seeing them off. But while we talked he suddenly decided to come along. Whipping out a credit card he bought a ticket on the spot (this was long before Homeland Security and two-hour check-in times) and boarded with nothing but his wallet and the clothes he came in with. I don’t know if he made it through customs at Heathrow; not many people carry their passports around with them. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I was impressed. There I was, prepared for every contingency, enjoying the moment of boarding as the culmination of months of planning, saving, anticipating, and striving. And this guy comes along and whoosh! Off he goes with nary a thought for tomorrow. Aside from the benefits of an apparently unlimited line of credit from his parents, he seemed unencumbered by responsibilities or plans. He wanted it, he got it. Seize the carp indeed. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In a spiritual sense it’s the eternal struggle between reason and faith, or as Kierkegaard would put it, between speculative philosophy and passion. Speculative philosophy is the result of objectivity in thinking, says Kierkegaard. He’s against it. Objective thinking about the meaning of life, the gospel, about religion and Christianity, can only lead to a certain cold detachment. It doesn’t even come close to a quest for eternal happiness, which is, Kierkegaard says, the whole point of being a Christian. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This has been on my mind, fitfully, for years. Kierkegaard was my sparring partner in college and graduate school, the weird little Dane with enormous ideas, a Socrates for his time, messing up the neatly coiffed hair of the respectables of his society, and poking me in the eye with his insistence on the irrationality of faith. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I wasn’t about to blink, having fallen under the spell of Albert Camus’ cool lucidity and C. S. Lewis’ persuasive reasoning. In fact, nothing in my cultural or religious upbringing could have played along with Kierkegaard. In my brand of 19th-century American evangelical Protestantism we were taught to regard the emotions as suspect. Passions were to be curbed, enthusiasms channeled into acts of obligation. The Bible was a sourcebook, a divinely-inspired Wikipedia of spiritual facts, suitable for going to war against unbelievers and lighting up, like Bilbo’s sword, whenever we found ourselves near where the scornful sat. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, the caution against emotion did not apply to responding to the pleas of pastors to give up our sinful desires and come to Jesus. Every trick in the book—and I can say this now without rancor—every trick in the book could be employed to bend us toward the straight and narrow path. After that, of course, it was mostly a matter of proof-texting our way through our pilgrimage of religious progress. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There didn’t seem to be an alternative between a sober, respectable religious life and a fanatically driven one. Since fanatics were unpredictable it was better to err on the side of reticence and reason. Jesus loves me, this I <i>know</i>, for the Bible tells me so. Faith is belief, belief is assent to the truth, the truth is in the Bible, now go and study. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But that wasn’t nearly good enough for Kierkegaard. “Christianity is spirit, spirit is inwardness, inwardness is subjectivity, subjectivity is essentially passion, and in its maximum an infinite, personal, passionate interest in one’s eternal happiness,” he says. You leave everything to reason and objectivity, you end up with indifference toward the one thing most important: your happiness in this world and the next. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Decisiveness, says Kierkegaard, only comes to those who <i>care,</i> who actually care about how to live in this world. If whatever (or whomever) you put your trust in does not churn up your soul then you are a dead man walking. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Something in me really resonates to that chord. I admire that vigorous, muscular spirituality. I think it’s possible to be passionate about what really matters without becoming an avenging angel wielding the sword of the Lord. God save us from crusades and crusaders. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But I am wary of this word ‘passion.’ In our time it is a ‘God-word,’ a term that everybody uses and approves of without really knowing what they mean. It is often used as a substitute for education and training, as in “You don’t need college. If you have passion enough you can accomplish anything you put your mind to!” Well . . . maybe. Sometimes it’s a synonym for hard work, other times it’s a kind of blind force that bores through any barriers warning of the cliff up ahead. And sometimes it’s just a cover for sublime silliness. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Perhaps if we remembered that ‘passion’ comes from the Latin word <i>passio</i>, which means to suffer, to submit, we would be more judicious in our use of it. Kierkegaard had it right: if you’re going to be passionate about something be prepared to suffer. To suffer means to put aside anything that would distract you from the commitment. You are putting your <i>self</i> into this, not just some passing whimsy. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In matters of the heart what matters is the bond between two people. Where there’s a giving of one’s true self there is suffering—along with consuming joy, delight, pleasure, and desire. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Which brings us back to Blake’s quatrain about our constant dilemma: do we stay or do we go? Leap or turn away? Play or watch? Experience or observe? Maybe that is what the passionate life is about: the suffering we feel in that moment of indecisiveness when we awake to what we long for with all our heart. We are never so alive than when we gather ourselves to leap.</span>Barry Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277204142613825141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542262881226243745.post-80080353308834570482013-11-14T22:48:00.000-05:002013-11-14T22:48:20.763-05:00A Way of Living Toward Death<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; font-size: 12px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">A WAY OF LIVING TOWARD DEATH</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">3 November, 2013</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Homily for Roland Gray</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“Death has come up into our windows, it has entered our palaces . . .” — Jeremiah 9:21 - NRSV. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">No matter how prepared we are for death, it is too soon, too stealthy, too final.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Today I want to tell you three stories about death. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">AUGUSTINE</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The first is about St. Augustine. Simon Critchley writes about Augustine’s paralyzing fear of death in his <i>Book of Dead Philosophers.</i> Augustine, whose book <i>Confessions, </i>is the first and longest open prayer to God, pours out his heart about the death of his best friend, unnamed to us.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b>“Well it was said of a friend that he is the soul’s other half. My soul and his I considered one soul in two bodies—so my life was unbearable, to live with only half of our soul, but my death was terrifying, perhaps to see his remaining half of soul die in me whom I so much loved.”</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Augustine fears death, not so much for himself, as for the extinction, finally, of his friend. Half a life is better than none at all. But that was when Augustine was a pagan. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Some years later Augustine has a different reaction to the death of his mother, Monica. She had been praying and weeping and beseeching for his conversion for years. When it occurs, as Augustine dramatically describes in <i>The Confessions,</i> her life’s work seems complete. Some days later she falls under a high fever and within nine days is dead. Augustine, in private, loosens the tears he had held in, “resting softly on my sobs at ease.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">He writes, somewhat defensively, “whoever wishes can read me and, as he wishes, decide whether I mourned my mother excessively, by this or that part of an hour, but not deride me for it.” He is asking us not to judge him too harshly for weeping over his mother’s death, even though his weeping was for less than an hour! His grief is doubled, he says, by the fact that <i>he is grieving.</i> Apparently, for a Christian, such grief is unbecoming. In his own eyes Augustine is condemned for not having enough reliance on God to tough it out without giving way to his emotions. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And yet later, when his own precocious son, Adeodatus, a fine young man of seventeen, his son by a long-time mistress, is suddenly struck down, Augustine is at peace, for both of them—father and son—had been baptized on the same day. He does not weep nor break stride as he goes about his duties. His son is with God. As he looks toward the Resurrection, Augustine foresees a Mother and Child Reunion—an event greatly to be anticipated. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>For Christians, Augustine’s actions tell us, our fear of death diminishes the nearer we are to God. </b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">MICHEL MONTAIGNE</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But not everyone has seen it quite that way. Our second story concerns Michel Montaigne (1533-1592), Renaissance statesman, philosopher, part of the nobility in France at that time, and the father of the modern essay. When Montaigne was thirty-six, he had a near-death experience. He was riding in the forest with three or four companions, servants in his household, musing over something intriguing to him, when suddenly he took a tremendous blow to his back, was flung from his horse, and landed ten yards away, unconscious. It seems that one of his men, a burly fellow, had spurred his horse to full gallop to impress his friends, and had misjudged the distance between himself and his master, inadvertently knocking Montaigne and his little horse off the path. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Sara Bakewell tells the story in her book, <i>How to Live or A Life of Montaigne.</i> At the time, Montaigne felt himself to be drifting peacefully toward eternal sleep, although he was actually retching up blood and tearing at his belly as though to claw it open for release. For days he lay in bed recovering, full of aches and grievous pains, marveling at the experience he’d had and trying to recall every moment of it. It changed his life, which, until then, had been dedicated to learning how to die with equanimity and grace. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In an essay on death, written some years after the incident, Montaigne rather offhandedly sums up the lesson, “If you don’t know how to die, don’t worry. Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don’t bother your head about it.” </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Bakewell notes that this became Montaigne’s answer to the question of how to live. In fact, <i>not</i> worrying about death made it possible to really <i>live. </i>In an era in which a man of thirty-six could, by the limits of those times, see himself on the verge of getting old, the contemplation of death had been refined to a high art. Montaigne picked this up from his voluminous study of the Greek and Roman classics, his admiration for the Stoics, like Seneca, and the Roman orator, statesman and philosopher, Cicero, who famously wrote, “To philosophize is to learn how to die.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Death was an obsession for Montaigne when he was in his twenties and early thirties. In succession, his best friend died of the plague in 1563, his father died in 1568, and in 1569 his younger brother died in a freak sporting accident. In that same year Montaigne got married; his first child, born that same year lived only two months. Montaigne lost four more children, only one of six living to adulthood. Yet, in spite of all that early sorrowful practice, he had grown no easier with death. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It wasn’t until his near-fatal accident that he began to understand how little his own death need affect his life. His memory of it was one of peaceful release; he had almost kissed Death on the lips. From that experience he gradually migrated from the fear of dying to the love of life.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Sometimes, we may be so concerned with dying that we forget the point is to live.</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Our third story takes places in an era far less sure of itself with relation to God than those of Augustine and Montaigne. It is about our time and it concerns the Irish band U2 and its lead singer, Bono. Throughout its more than 30-year career U2 has addressed subjects usually dodged by rock n’ roll. ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’ is about heaven; ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ is about faith and doubt; ‘Stuck in a Moment’ about the suicide of a friend, and ‘Grace’ is about, well, grace. The band’s spiritual roots go back to a religious revival they experienced as teenagers in Mt. Temple School in Dublin. Their catalogue of songs is a tapestry of a pilgrim’s progress and regress, turnaround and redemption. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But there is one song in particular that confronts head on the death of a loved one—a child, a father, a friend—a song simply called ‘Kite.’</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Bono, the band’s lead singer, was spending some precious time at home with two of his kids, down on Kilkenny Beach, below their house in Dublin. They were trying to fly a kite, and as a Daddy-time venture it ended pretty quickly. The kite went up, the kite came down, plunk, in the sand and that was end of that. ‘Daddy, can we go home and play on the Play Station now?’ But the idea for a song was born, a song about mortality and fatherhood and being a son to a father and being a man who is no longer a child. ‘Kite’ was dedicated by Bono to his father, Bob Hewson, as it became clear that Bob’s health was failing. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Every night on the European leg of their ‘Elevation’ tour in the summer of 2001, Bono would fly back to Dublin after the concert to be at his father’s bedside. Their relationship had been strained after Bono’s mother had died when he was fourteen.They didn’t see eye to eye about much of anything. The home had become a house with two teenage boys and a silent father. Maybe it was the fact that all the band members had passed the liminal age of forty, maybe it was that most of them were fathers now too, maybe it was that friends seemed to be dropping dead all around them, but the song emerges as the clearest statement of the band’s view of life and death so far. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>I'm not afraid to die</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>And when I'm flat on my back</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>I hope to feel like I did</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And then midway through the song Bono sings powerfully,</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>A man who sees</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>The shadow behind your eyes</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">With maturity comes the recognition that death must be faced. As Paul says, </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I reasoned like a child;</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Growing up means understanding that the world does not conform to our wishes. Becoming mature means we don’t hold that against the world. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Who's to say where the wind will take you</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">All our great ideas about longevity, about prolonging our days, become like chaff in the wind. We just do not know which way the wind will blow. The kite will soar on the wind but eventually it will fall. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">‘Kite’ ends with self-reflection: </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Life should be fragrant</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Did we waste our lives? Would we know if we did? This is the question of life which God will ask of us one day. ‘I gave you life, show me what you did with it.’ Won’t we want to make of it the very best that we can in the time we have?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And in this life we recognize that we’re not going to get it right every time. But those glorious moments when we feel as one, when we know as we are known, when we truly have communion with others—those are the moments when we can taste it! </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Roland brought many such moments to us. After a heated discussion in Believers and Doubters would eventually flicker and die down, Roland would quietly offer some insight. It might be from history—he was a man who knew the meaning of world events—or it might be from Scripture — he ran with ease up and down the paths from the prophets to the Gospels. Wherever it came from he would deliver it with grace and dignity. And then he’d smile, his eyes crinkling up with his laughter. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Life should be fragrant</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Roof top to the basement</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Since 1985 our class has met under the name of Believers and Doubters. A couple of times in those years I've asked the class if they have an inclination to change the name. No, they've always said, 'that is what we are and shall remain.' We've always thought of doubt as the left hand of faith, companion on the journey, always an ally, never an enemy. So in sickness and in health, in belief and in doubt, in good times and in bad, til death us do part, we are still together on the journey.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Thank you, Lord, that we were blessed to have Roland for part of the journey. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">— Barry L. Casey</span></div>
Barry Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277204142613825141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542262881226243745.post-45165651501480527552013-02-02T00:31:00.003-05:002013-02-02T00:31:19.433-05:00Hello, I Must Be Going!<br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Michel Montaigne, patron saint of essayists, declared once that “Every man has within himself the entire human condition,” a line as true as it is deliciously politically incorrect. In the introduction to an encyclopedic collection of essays which he edited, Phillip Lopate notes, “The personal essay has an implicitly democratic bent, in the value it places on experience rather than status distinctions.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That anthology, <i>The Art of the Personal Essay</i> (Random House, 1995), gave me the push I needed to get this blog rolling. I’d been raised in the school of thought that credentials gave one license to speak, but I realized along the way that often the most credentialed are the biggest windbags. The personal essay appealed to me because it was a direct line to the reader from the writer—as close to conversation as one could get in prose. It is the perfect form for the unabashedly curious and for those who do not know what they believe about something until they see it in writing—preferably their own. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">William Hazlitt, Henry David Thoreau, George Orwell, Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, and Wendell Berry have been my mentors. To read their work is to eat a loaf of dark, firm, warm bread. They are savory, not sweet; muscular, not soft; wise, daring, and transparent. Each of them is a virtual window thrown open to the world they have discovered, yet to read a paragraph of any of them is to hear a distinctive voice. When I began to write essays I strained to hear my voice, and then I saw that I would grow into my voice. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I began this blog almost two years ago because I wanted to see if I could write honestly and without pretense. Like the bear who went over the mountain I, too, wanted to see what I could see. And I wanted to put to use the books that waited patiently, silently, on my shelves. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I rarely had a subject in mind, but I usually had an epigram, something I’d come across in my reading, a sentence splendid in its isolation, waiting for companions. I used that sentence like Ariadne’s thread as I descended into the labyrinths of thought and passion. The pleasure in the work was to inch my way back to the surface, clutching what I had found. And sometimes, like David Crosby sang, “Beneath the surface of the mud. . . there’s more mud there. Surprise!” At those times I learned to be ruthless, dropping full paragraphs without tears and cutting a new path back to the thread. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The comments have been stimulating, the repostings have been gratifying, the stats on my audience have been intriguing. Next to the United States my biggest readership is in Russia—way up in . . . the double digits. Somewhere in Holland is a regular reader and also in the United Arab Emirates. I see readers from Germany, France, Italy, the UK, Hong Kong, and Brazil. “Of all things,” said John Dewey, “communication is the most wondrous.” Yes, it certainly is: at no other time in the history of the world have we had such possibilities of communication across cultures. What would Seneca have done with a blog or Montaigne with a regular online column? Would H. L. Mencken have tweeted his scathing comments or Mark Twain his sardonic <i>bon mots</i>? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, thanks for reading and listening and responding! I’m stepping back for awhile, writing in some new directions, and going back to the well. If you’re subscribed to <i>Wretched Success</i> you’ll get notice of new posts as they appear. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">See you on the other side of the mountain.</span><br />
Barry Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277204142613825141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542262881226243745.post-19110807190954488432013-01-12T01:43:00.005-05:002013-04-07T18:41:24.580-04:00The Hope in Shame<br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“We have lost a sense of moral clarity that would give rise to the fear that certain actions—whether we privately feel guilty about them or not—could lead to disgrace. For they don’t. If enough, and enough well-placed people do them, the only disgrace you need fear is the failure to get away with it.” — Susan Neiman, <i>Moral Clarity</i>, 369</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1994 Quentin Tarantino’s <i>Pulp Fiction</i> was released and immediately bent the needle of the outrage meter. No matter. It went on to win an Oscar and solidified Tarantino’s bad-boy status. Critics said it glorified violence, but they were not quite right. It didn’t glorify violence so much as trivialize the pain behind the violence. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the outcry died down I went to see it, lured like anyone else by the promise of sex and violence. In one particular scene, John Travolta turns on a guy in the back seat of his car and threatens him with a gun. But the gun accidentally goes off, splattering the guy’s brains all over the back window. Travolta’s reaction provoked an instant response in the theatre; almost everyone laughed. Nervously, at first, and then in embarrassment, but laughter nonetheless. I felt three reactions in rapid succession: shock with revulsion, spasmodic hilarity, followed by shame and bewilderment. It was the shame that stayed with me long after the plot line had faded. I was trying to understand why I and so many others had reacted that way. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s not hard to figure that we cover our embarrassment with laughter, but why are we embarrassed? It’s not as if we need to apologize to the character, a fictional being after all. Would we have laughed watching it by ourselves? It occurred to me that one reason for our embarrassment was that we didn’t want others to think we were heartless, stone-cold bastards. On reflection I came to think embarrassment was the appropriate response. It means that there’s still something in us that can’t bear to watch someone’s humiliation at their most vulnerable moment.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Guilt,” says philosopher Susan Neiman, “is the internal sense that you’ve done something wrong, even if no one ever discovers it. Shame records your consciousness of wrong before a community whose values you honor.” There it is: our moral behavior has a powerful social kick behind it. We want to do right, to be in favor with God and man. Like it or not we carry the community with us and we measure ourselves up against its approval—approbation is what philosopher Adam Smith called it in his <i>Theory of Moral Sentiments</i>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Smith thought that we were basically good people, but he saw the approval or contempt of society as a means for keeping our conduct in line with social norms. It was in our interest to do right and receive the praise of others just as the implied threat of community anger at our actions would fill us with shame. That depends, of course, on whether we cared at all what others thought of us. Smith was pretty sure most people did care, leaving out the insane and the psychopaths. And just as his “invisible hand” guided the spirit and function of capitalism, so his “moral sentiments” appealed to our self-interests as well as the interests of a stable society. The balance and order was kept because most of us had both the need and capacity to love and be loved as well as the need to avoid the disapproval of our community. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Neiman makes a persuasive case that shamelessness is pervasive in our culture and our lack of shame is what made such violations of human rights as Abu Ghraib possible. “If the ideal of human rights is destroyed by the violations that were said to be needed to realize it, our children will pay the price. Many of them are already paying, for they believe in next to nothing.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s easy to lose sight of the presence of human decency when we face into the perfect storm of perversity in the media every day. I’m not ranting about particular TV shows, films, fashions, musicians, Wall Street shysters, TV evangelists, or politicians. What I’m trying to get at is the underlying tone of mockery at the human plight that runs through so much of media culture. You can’t avoid it at movie previews where upcoming films, all PG-13 at least, are reduced to slapstick or thunderous exhibitions of firepower. It was there in the photos of grinning soldiers posing with heaps of humiliated and terrified Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. It is there when Lance Armstrong, a symbol of courage and endurance to millions, bullies his way through years of doping, lying, and degrading the sport. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Neiman believes that the only way to reverse the erosion of shame is to “return to the language of good and evil.” In a culture such as ours, in which a helpless relativism reduces moral dialogue to diatribes or a pouty solipsism, this is strong stuff. The word “<i>evil”</i> is over-used and abused, trivialized and rendered almost meaningless when it is applied where it does not belong. But even more threatening to our own sense of human dignity is when we refuse to apply it to our own actions—we frail, bumbling, confused and pitifully arrogant human beings. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kant thought the foundational principle of right action was this: <i>Act so that you never treat other people as a means to an end, but as ends in themselves.</i> That means that we treat ourselves with respect and treat everyone else, even our enemies, with respect also. To demean and demonize them means first of all that we could wish for such a world in which everyone did just that. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We have the means but not the wisdom nor the right to call anyone evil. But recognizing our limitations in that regard does not mean we should give up on trying to understand why we—and others—may <i>do </i>evil actions. We are so easily drawn into situations in which evil actions are the consequence of fear and ignorance; we need a reverence toward words and language such that we could choose to speak of good and evil again. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The degradation of our humanity sometimes pulls us down through enormous events such as genocide or systemic rape and exploitation of women. But if we regain, as a society, the capacity to be ashamed of our evil actions, there is hope. We can retrace our steps, make amends, learn humility, and receive grace. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If evil is not our nature, but in our actions there is hope. We do have choices, tragic though they might be at times. But if we wish to remain human we cannot be passive. Our humanity erodes, slips away, sifts through our fingers when we look only to our own self-interest. This freedom to shape our responses in situations both mundane and extreme is what separates us from lentils and aphids. It truly is the image of God in us. </span>Barry Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277204142613825141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542262881226243745.post-81938089517887357702012-12-29T02:30:00.000-05:002012-12-29T02:30:01.037-05:00Back to Beowulf and Beyond<br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Whoever lives long on earth, endures the unrest of these times, will be involved in much good and much evil.” — <i>Beowulf</i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What can I tell you about my recent—no, current— obsession with <i>Beowulf,</i> except that it’s caught me like a healthy virus, drawing me through a fiery portal into Denmark in the 9th century? In one of those serendipitous grazings through my library that I’ve come to see as a <i>deja vu</i> in the making, I pulled down <i>The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology, Including the complete Beowulf—</i>the full title—and began to read the main feature. It had been years since I had first ventured into the story, probably through an assignment, and as these things go it had gone poorly. I read as much as was required, did the assignment, and placed it on a mental shelf of books that I resolved to get back to in due time. Apparently the time had come because I read through it in two days and came back for more. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By now <i>Beowulf</i> has been translated many times, edited, commented upon, anthologized, stretched upon the rack of many a Ph.D. dissertation, and even filmed, but its power to enthrall has not diminished. Seamus Heaney, one of the finest poets in the English-speaking world, comments in his translation of <i>Beowulf</i>, that “It is impossible to attain a full understanding and estimate of <i>Beowulf</i> without recourse to this immense body of commentary and elucidation,” but first-time readers, he notes, will be as delighted as they are discomfited by the strangeness of that world.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The strangeness derives from the names (Hrothgar, Hnaef, Hilderburh, Ecglaf, and Ecgtheow), the places (‘the land of the Scyldings’), and the style, but most of all from what counts the most—the virtues they honored and strove to live by. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The story was written by someone in England who wrote about the Swedes, the Danes, and the Geats, the forebears of many who called themselves English in the centuries after the Romans left. Christianity shaped their world but the old gods lingered in stories and songs. The poet lives and breathes a robust Christianity and ascribes belief to Beowulf and his companions. He pities those whose gods are idols and who cannot count on them for deliverance. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Midway through the poem, jacked up on various translators notes, it dawned on me that the author and I have something in common: we both look back in wonder on those times. For him they are the exploits of his distant ancestors; for me they walk in the realm between myth and history. For both of us the poem reveals the epic conflicts of life and death, good and evil, chaos and harmony, light and darkness. In other words, like all great literature <i>Beowulf</i> illumines human experience. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The hero faces three consuming tests of strength and character: he battles Grendel and defeats him, he battles Grendel’s demon mother and defeats her, and late in life he battles the dragon that threatens his people. He battles the first two monsters alone because he is determined to win renown and glory, to be known throughout the world for his strength and prowess. Fifty years later, facing the dragon that is terrorizing his people, he stands alone again. But this time, when he needs them most, his warrior band melts back into the forest, sorrowful in their cowardice. Only one stands with him—Wiglaf—a young man whose loyalty to his king overrides his terror. When Beowulf finally falls it is Wiglaf who buys time, driving his sword into the belly of the beast. The king, his life ebbing away, draws his sword and kills the dragon. “That,” says the author, “was the last of all the king’s achievements, his last exploit in the world.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As the poem draws to a close, Beowulf’s body is burned on the pyre, a massive barrow is raised in his memory, and his deeds are recounted in song. His people, now defenseless, await with dread the attack of their enemies. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The values of honor, loyalty, and courage came to mind as I watched <i>The Hobbit</i> this week. Tolkien, whose epic story of the battle for Middle-earth drew on his deep knowledge of <i>Beowulf</i>, had given the twentieth-century its own ‘ring-cycle’ in <i>The Hobbit </i>and <i>The Lord of the Rings.</i> It was Tolkien’s seminal essay, ‘<i>Beowulf: </i>The Monsters and the Critics’, published in 1936, that changed perspectives on the poem because he assumed, and proceeded to show, the artistic integrity of the piece. It was Tolkien’s view that the author had melded the traditional stories of a heroic past together with the mythic qualities, and through his own oracular artistry had created a masterpiece for the ages. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It does us well to ask why our children are so drawn to heroes such as Superman, Spiderman, Batman, and the myriad creatures that sweep across their gaming devices. Could it be that this hunger for the heroic is a necessary element in their own character formation? The heroic age of the earth is over, but our fascination with them continues. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Coursing through <i>Beowulf</i>, <i>The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings</i> and many other epics is the loyalty to family and clan. Loyalties are put to the test time and time again, and as Michael Alexander, translator of one of the most well-known versions of <i>Beowulf</i> puts it: “Northern heroic tales involve a conflict between the obligation to lord or kinsman and obligations to an ally, a spouse, a host or a guest.” Later in his introduction to <i>BeowulfI </i>Alexander remarks that, “an ethos of retribution for slighted honor or slain kindred governs most of the stories behind the central action.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is striking that we do not condone this way any longer. The Enlightenment emphasis on individuality, personal autonomy, and an ethic of responsibility helped to erode the ties to clan and family. In Western societies the individual’s rights are claimed above all else, often times to the detriment of the community or the family. When we do hear of such things it’s usually in the context of ‘warlords’ in Afghanistan or Pakistan, and it’s anything but heroic. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So I read it in <i>Beowulf</i> and I’m drawn to the courage and the honor exemplified; the idea of following a leader worth following stirs up something deep inside me. Yet, blood feuds sicken me as does any war that purports to defend God’s name. Can we aspire to such virtues without bloody conflict? Can we hold to a view of life that rules out any war on evil? Gandalf, the formidable wizard of <i>The Hobbit</i> and <i>Lord of the Rings</i>, didn’t think so. Evil is always looking to break, corrupt, and destroy, he said. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Is our natural state of existence one of constant conflict, like Hobbes believed? Are we doomed to be cannon fodder for the powers that be? The evil that arises in <i>Beowulf</i> and in <i>Lord of the Rings</i> comes from greed and aggression that is unrelenting and remorseless, serving no end but destruction and chaos. The tragedy for the valiant and the brave is that their nobility is seen only in war and destruction. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Why does it seem that the choices back then, though hard, were at least clear? Either you fought for the right or you capitulated to evil. It was never that easy then and it still isn’t easy today. One enduring lesson of <i>Beowulf</i> is that evil is never just Out There in the darkness of the night; it runs right through us, all of us. In the moment of our greatest triumph we can succumb to the lure of power, fame, and wealth. Our true heroism lies in understanding that we are all ‘poor, blind, and naked’—and fighting bravely anyway.</span><br />
Barry Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277204142613825141noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542262881226243745.post-75754788169658712062012-12-15T02:04:00.006-05:002012-12-15T22:49:34.007-05:00The Mystery of Iniquity<br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Recognizing reality and demanding to change it are fundamentally different activities. Both wisdom and virtue depend on keeping them separate, but all our hopes are directed to joining them." — Susan Neiman, <i>Evil in Modern Thought</i>, 60-61.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In a relativistic world a murder mystery in the hands of a master writer can be a sword, rightly dividing hypocrisy from truth. The mystery writer is also a problem-solver and a moral arbiter; the pleasure for the reader is in the careful twining of many threads to make a coat of justice. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">James Lee Burke, author of 30 novels and two collections of short stories, is a master of the genre—indeed, he was named a Grandmaster by the Mystery Writers of America in 2009 and has twice won their Crime Novel of the year.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dave Robicheaux, former cop for the New Orleans Police Department, a dry alcoholic, and a police detective in Iberia Parish, is one of Burke’s most compelling literary creations. Robicheaux, a Vietnam War vet and a life-long resident of coastal Louisiana, has no qualms about calling out the evil ones in our midst. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Robicheaux’s cultural hierarchy the small-time hoods and grifters make up the lowest level. They are the bottom-feeders, those desperate enough to attach themselves to powerful and twisted people whose need for distance and deniability make them almost invulnerable. Robicheaux is not without sympathy for these figures whose lives are steeped in violence and despair. It’s a measure of Burke’s vision and compassion that he gives them a solid dignity in the midst of every trigger pulled or fist cocked. As for the rich, morally bent, and self-righteous, Robicheaux finds them, binds them to the case, and pulls the threads together. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Reading Burke at his best is like swallowing nails dipped in chocolate. On the one hand, he’s a word-painter who can put you in a late-summer electrical storm along the bayou in a flash. In the next moment, violence erupts as inevitably as lightening. Robicheaux believes in evil because he has seen it in the eyes of the wealthiest, the most powerful, and often, the most revered in his society. What truly distinguishes these people from their small-time counterparts is the level of self-deception they are capable of maintaining. While they believe themselves to be virtuous, natural-born citizens of the elite, educated, and genteel, their feral nature is only a few insults from the surface. In those moments Burke’s prose reveals the skull beneath the skin. It’s like walking in a thoughtful daze through a gallery of impressionist paintings and rounding a corner to find George Bellow’s paintings of bare-knuckled and bloodied fighters surrounded by dissolute ghouls. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But Robicheaux—and Burke—live in a universe that is tragically evil, that is, those who are marked as evil may have chosen their actions, but were acting on compulsions beyond their control. Through a long apprenticeship in deceit and denial, they now look back in anger to see how far from their innocence they have come. There was no moment in which they stepped across a threshold into evil, but they are undeniably in that far country now. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Perhaps the one thing, besides shock and grief, that unites us in the face of an unspeakable tragedy like the shooting of schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut, is that we search for a reason Why? We look for trace elements of aggression in the killer’s childhood, we mine the memories of his neighbors, we sift the impressions of doctors, teachers, relatives—anyone who might be able to put the mark of Cain on his forehead with some degree of certainty. Psychologists and pundits stack up the similarities in the profiles of mass murderers and we all look for patterns. This is natural and even noteworthy, futile though it is for determining cause. But if society does not care enough to search for answers in the face of such tragedies, then we are truly at a moral tipping point. Outrage is a sign of conscience: the lack of it may be the first symptom of moral paralysis. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The moral philosophers of the Enlightenment separated natural evil from moral evil. Tsunamis, wildfires, hurricanes, avalanches had all been thought to issue from the hand of God as punishment for sin. But Rousseau took the evil out of natural evil by thinking of them as simply nature following the laws of God. What mattered more was the ‘evil that men do,’ and especially so since we are beings endowed with reason. Why do we do evil then? It makes no sense from a rational standpoint, so we have to seek an explanation elsewhere. Broadly speaking, Rousseau located the cause of evil in the subversion of the individual by society. Kant saw moral evil arising from our denial of our autonomy and our moral duty.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rousseau thought the key to moral improvement was education. He spent much of his time trying to work out a social contract between the individual and society. Most problems, he thought, could be negotiated by reasonable people working together. One result of this was the decreasing role of God in human affairs. In her rewriting of the history of philosophy in <i>Evil in Modern Thought,</i> Susan Neiman says, “The more responsibility for evil accrues to the human, the less belongs to the divine.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This resistance of nature that we see and experience, says Neiman, is not the work of angry gods “but simply part of the arbitrary stuff of the universe.” They are part of living with limits. Finitude isn’t a punishment, it’s simply part of our structural framework. As Neiman so succinctly puts it: “We have purposes; the world does not.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So the problem of evil became irresolvable. The way Kant figured it the problem of evil was one of us being dissatisfied with the difference between the way things are and the way they should be. The first is the realm of nature, the second of reason. “Happiness depends on events in the natural world,” comments Neiman, and virtue depends on us exercising our reason. We can’t control much in nature—and that includes our happiness—but we may have more control in the realm of virtue driven by reason. “The one [reason] is a matter of what ought to be; the other [nature] is a matter of what is.” For Kant, what was most important was distinguishing between the two. “Recognizing reality and demanding to change it are fundamentally different activities. Both wisdom and virtue depend on keeping them separate, but all our hopes are directed to joining them.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Or as the Rolling Stones said: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kant would agree. The gap between the <i>is</i>—the way things are—and the <i>ought</i>—the way things should be will never be entirely bridged. But we’ve got to try: our dignity as humans and our hopes for this world demand it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Such tragedies as the Newtown shooting, the Aurora killings, the Columbine massacre, demand a rational explanation. We struggle to find one and if we can’t find a common pattern or a series of movements we despair because above all else we want to live in a rational universe. We shudder to think—and we dare not say—that there may not be a rational explanation for these people running amok. If that is true then we are faced with the fact that without a clear cause these events cannot be predicted nor can they be prevented. And the tragic result of that is a fortress mentality and officially sponsored societal paranoia. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We may find a cause someday that will explain—as fully and as clearly as possible—why these killings occur. We should continue to gather evidence, try out theories, hope to understand. But we must also realize, as Kant so brilliantly works it out and as most scriptures testify, that we humans are limited, finite, even broken and fractured. This is not a cause for despair, said Kant, but rather simply the way things are. We can do better and we should try to, even while realizing that all our efforts will fall short of perfection. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And the worth of our striving can be measured by the degree to which we act with compassion toward those who are suffering and with humility and wisdom toward those who bring the suffering.</span>Barry Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277204142613825141noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542262881226243745.post-18275157080595601952012-12-08T02:18:00.002-05:002012-12-08T08:24:36.184-05:00Slow Train Coming<br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Man lives, not directly or nakedly in nature like the animals, but within a mythological universe, a body of assumptions and beliefs developed from his existential concerns. Most of this is held unconsciously, which means that our imaginations may recognize elements of it, when presented in art or literature, without consciously understanding what it is that we recognize. — Northrop Frye, <i>The Great Code</i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Augustine’s <i>Confessions</i>—the original of the species of literary prayers—he devotes a whole chapter to memory. It is as fine a psychological and spiritual study of that faculty as you could find anywhere today. Like a stone in the palm he turns it over and over, tracing out the striata, smoothing its roughness, feeling its weight and shape. He ponders the strangeness that he can remember remembering just as he can remember forgetting, and that somehow forgetting must also be in his memory. “Who can fathom such a thing,” he marvels, “or make any sense of it?”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The book was written a decade after his baptism into the Catholic Church on April 25, 387 CE. The chapter is iike a traffic roundabout that directs the story of the events that drew him—both feverish for God and anguished at surrendering up his old ways—around toward the climatic moment in the garden of a friend’s house when his defenses gave way before a tidal surge of longing for belonging. All of <i>that</i> before he spun off in another direction to discuss the Trinity. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Like a viral agent Augustine gets in through the weak places in our skin of defenses. As much as I rise with him to that summit of emotion at conversion, it’s the passages on memory that I’m most vulnerable to these days since my memory itself seems increasingly vulnerable. Of all the potholes in the road to life’s end the ones that I swerve to avoid the most have to do with losing my memory. Even more than going blind, that seems the worst of the fates, because as Augustine says, “my memory is <i>me</i>.” So I build habits and routines that can bridge my absentmindedness and defuse my anxiety. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Augustine’s analogies reveal him seeking out the deep crevices where memory hides in the mind or striding down the aisles in a capacious warehouse, or pausing at one of many doors in a long corridor to the past. He searches confusedly until “the dim thing sought arrives at last, fresh from depths.” In an envy-producing flourish he boasts that some things are brought up easily, properly sequenced and recalled at will, “which happens whenever I recite a literary passage by heart.” We should all be so lucky.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Alas, my current experience has me hacking my way through a landscape kudzued into a formless forest with few distinguishing marks. More positively, I could see myself swimming from island to island in the sea of memory, regarding them as the tips of sea mounts that go down into the darkest depths but give us stability in the meantime. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Recently, I’ve realized that for months I’ve been re-experiencing some of the pivotal artists and musicians who have helped to construct my inner world. Without design, but surely with some intent, I’ve collected concert videos of Paul Simon, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Paul McCartney’s “Good Evening New York!” and Billy Joel’s “Live at Shea” concert, as well as reading biographies of Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Carly Simon, CSN, John Lennon, and Mick Jagger. These are of a piece with going back to books I’ve picked up over the years about Edward Hopper, Paul Klee, Georges Roualt, Marc Chagall, and Kandinsky—artists whose works are the windows of my soul. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As I write, it is 32 years to the day that John Lennon was shot outside the Dakota in New York City. As hard as it is to imagine, he would have been 72 this year. He died at 40 in 1980 and will be, as Dylan sang, ‘forever young.’ Like many of us, ‘midway through this life he awoke in a dark wood.’ I wanted to see him grow older, and to understand how he found his way out, and what his wit and wonder might have created had he lived. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Which brings me back to memories and the loss thereof and the regaining of them through our tricks to stay afloat, as well as the silent entrance of memories half-formed but more strongly sensed only when our striving ceases and our fences drop. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All those years ago, John said it well:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are places I remember </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All my life, though some have changed </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some forever not for better </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some have gone and some remain </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All these places have their moments </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With lovers and friends I still can recall </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some are dead and some are living </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In my life I've loved them all</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>— In My Life </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We are both the shapers and the shaped when it comes to our identities. We are drawn to those in the arts who sing our stuttering words, who sculpt our unformed desires and paint our fears in light. As Northrop Frye says in the epigram, our imaginations recognize what we may not consciously see. When we need it it will appear. Like the Zen saying goes, “When the pupil is ready, the teacher will arrive.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sometimes memory is a slow train.</span><br />
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Barry Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277204142613825141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542262881226243745.post-35945500839869920982012-11-24T02:28:00.000-05:002012-11-24T02:30:30.527-05:00In Gratitude . . . <br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Gratitude as a discipline involves a conscious choice. I can choose to be grateful even when my emotions and feelings are still steeped in hurt and resentment.” — Henri Nouwen, <i>The Return of the Prodigal Son</i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is fortunate that at least once a year we are reminded of thankfulness and gratitude—lest we forget. To the market forces Thanksgiving is the occasion for the holiest day of the year—Black Friday—when all the bare-knuckled commercialism that has been throbbing resentfully since Halloween can finally burst into the open. From Black Friday until Christmas it is open season on consumers, a vortex of induced guilt that results in final quarter earnings and the measure of economic success. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But Thanksgiving as a concept is harder to identify. For many, “thanksgiving” is part of religious services, a pouring out of praise to God in return for all the blessings received. Thanksgiving, Thankfulness, Gratitude—all live in the same neighborhood, but Gratitude doesn’t get out as much as the other two. Call it reticence or shyness on their part, or even general neglect or misunderstanding on the part of the public, but Gratitude and its sibling Gratefulness do not make it into the public’s eye on many occasions. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gratitude doesn’t appear on Aristotle’s list of virtues nor does it show up in St. Paul’s fruits of the Spirit. You won’t hear it mentioned much, if at all, in politics, except during victory or concession speeches and almost never in the entertainment industry except for Oscar night. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’ve wondered why we seem to find it difficult to utter the words, “I’m grateful for. . . “ or “I have gratitude for . . . “ Perhaps it’s just awkward to speak the words or we find ourselves slightly embarrassed to be uttering them because one never knows where emotions such as these will go. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But it’s more likely, I think, that gratitude is seen as weakness or even a craven kissing-up to those who wield power over us. Who wants to be seen as being in debt to another, especially if that person is someone for whom we also feel resentment? Having to call on someone else for help is embarrassing; it taps into our fears of becoming redundant and it might allow others to see our incompetence. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are days when I walk out of the classroom absolutely convinced that every student there sees me for what I am—an imposter. What gives me the right, I rage to myself, to imagine that my pitiful scraps of shared knowledge will be of use to anyone? Where do I get off thinking that my explanations and descriptions are clear, that my logic convinces and my credibility isn’t fragmented by a well-lobbed question? The dark magic of pride, hypocrisy, and self-doubt combine to become a catalytic converter for resentment. What begins as an opportunity for reflection sours into excuses: If I had better students . . . . If I had more time . . . . If they’d pay more attention and actually <i>study</i> the readings. . . . </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s all a dodge, a pitiful attempt to salvage some self-respect on the barest of pretenses. Other professors make it look so easy. Their discussions flow like cream, their questions are simple and yet profound, their students cannot help but be enlightened. In Kurt Vonnegut’s vivid phrase, ‘they glow like bass drums with lights inside.” Do I forget those who have helped me over the years? No! In moments like these I remember them with shame and embarrassment and shame finds it difficult to be grateful. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Henri Nouwen (1932-1996) was a Catholic priest and author of 40 books. In his commentary, <i>The Return of the Prodigal Son</i>, a meditation on the parable of Jesus and the painting of the same name by Rembrandt, Nouwen says, “Resentment and gratitude cannot coexist, since resentment blocks the perception and experience of life as a gift. My resentment tells me that I don’t receive what I deserve. It always manifests itself in envy.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is in ungratefulness a rough shouldering aside of others, a terseness of speech and a looming sense of denial. In his multi-layered biography, <i>John Lennon: The Life</i>, Philip Norman notes Lennon’s frequent callousness toward those who had served him without complaint, in some cases for decades. Employees were dropped without warning, the prodigious artistry of the Beatles’ producer, George Martin, was dismissed by John as “production shit,” and lifelong friendships jeopardized by his impatience and insecurity. Yet those who knew him best and loved him most could cite many more instances of his kindness and thoughtfulness than of the cutting remarks and cruel comments. As his self-confidence waxed and waned his gratitude did so also. At times his vulnerability was achingly apparent such as in the lyrics to Help!:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the last years of his life, before he was murdered outside the Dakota on December 8, 1980, he reached out to people he had hurt over the years and thanked them for what they had done for him. Spending so much time with his infant son, Sean, taught him patience and brought out in him a paternal instinct that he was not at all sure existed. As he took less and gave more his need to impose his will on others diminished and his generous nature became more evident. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So perhaps that provides a clue to gratitude, that it is there to be drawn upon when we relax our grip and learn to open up to others. Nouwen says that gratitude is a spontaneous response to our awareness of gifts received, but also that gratitude can be lived as a discipline. “The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’d like to think of gratitude as both a virtue to be practiced and a gift to be received. In receiving there is re-cognition, a rethinking of who we are and how much we have been given. In the practicing of gratitude there is constancy and commitment. How much we could transform our world through such simple acts!</span><br />
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Barry Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277204142613825141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542262881226243745.post-20683400163154246352012-11-10T01:57:00.003-05:002012-11-23T20:55:26.168-05:00It's Time For Idealism Again<br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“The inevitability of cynicism often looks like the twentieth-century legacy, but one goal of philosophy is to enlarge our ideas of what is possible.” — Susan Neiman, <i>Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-up Idealists</i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now that our long national nightmare is over we can take up a new opportunity for idealism. In the rather confined circles that I spend my working days and nights in, there was relief rather than ecstasy at President Obama’s re-election. In other parts of the country—and, no doubt, in our fair city—they were dancing in the streets, provided they weren’t splashing through water up to their knees or slogging through sand and mud in the aftermath of Sandy. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Immediately after a battle is as good a time as any to ask oneself, was it worth it? And while I watched the fight from the middle distance, I was fascinated enough by the posturing and the propaganda from both ends of the political spectrum to ask myself some questions: Does it make a difference (the “it” being the right to vote)? Is there still a place for hope in these post-apocalyptic days? What, if anything, does a progressive Christian faith have to offer a society that is fed up with fundamentalists of all stripes? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">[Full disclosure: I do not vote, since my citizenship is Canadian and my card is green, but having lived in this country most of my life I travel on parallel paths.]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It <i>does</i> make a difference, for a number of reasons, whether the citizens vote or not. The usual reason is that every vote counts, a truism which cannot be denied in states like Florida for example. But surely casting a vote, as commonplace as the action itself might be, has some kind of moral validation to it? If we act on our best judgment we make that which we might only tentatively hold dear all the more real. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As Susan Neiman points out in her enthralling argument for a reasoned idealism (<i>Moral Clarity</i>, 2008), “. . . . the American revolution was nothing short of miraculous. ‘We hold these truth to be self-evident, that all men are created equal’ was, metaphysically speaking, an astounding move. . . . In 1776 a band of colonials had the audacity to declare the idea self-evident—and thereby began to make it come true.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even aside from the obvious reasons, the act of voting, like the efficacy of prayer, has less to do with tracing the cause to the effect as it does with changing our attitudes toward “we the people.” Maybe the American people aren’t quite as passive and imbecilic as they are made out to be if they can resist the millions of dollars pumped into the media-political pipeline by <i>Citizens United, </i>Sheldon Adelson, and the Koch brothers. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These people certainly have the right to spend their money as they wish—after all, the Supreme Court likened that spending to a form of free speech—but it’s still somewhat reassuring to see that this time around such blatant manipulating of a Constitutional right came up way short of the goals. And that would still be the case had the Democrats done the same.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Is there hope for those on the left of the political spectrum? If this election served as a wakeup call to the Democratic Party and those affiliated with it, then an unintended consequence of good has glimmered into light. Against the odds, the President has been re-elected, despite a dragging economy, a dragged-out war, and some liberal measures that might not have flown four years ago. Despite four years of ideological gun-slinging progress has been made in human rights, restoring the infrastructure, and setting new directions. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This election blew the gaskets of some on the right to a degree I’ve not seen before. Donald Trump, Ted Nugent, Victoria Jackson and others were apoplectic over the election results. This would almost be funny if it were not for their malignant disavowal of democratic principles. Apparently—if Donald Trump had his way—there would be lynch mobs marching with pitchforks up Pennsylvania Avenue as we speak. Isn’t it time the media fired Donald Trump?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nevertheless, free elections were held, no one was machine-gunned in the waiting lines, millions of people of good will and conviction—Democrats and Republicans alike—made their wishes known and moved the country fractionally ahead by the sheer virtue of acting on their convictions. This is no small thing in today’s world and we should be grateful for it. Immanuel Kant said, “If we depreciate the value of human virtues we do harm, because if we deny good intentions to the man who lives aright, where is the difference between him and the evil-doer?” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So how can idealism be taken seriously again? Susan Neiman, a philosopher who is also an expert on Kant, looks to him: “Kant says you do it by talking about heroes: those who risk their lives rather than resign themselves to injustice.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The form of religion expressed in a twisted and malevolent way by those on the right is seen for what it is by its fruits. By contrast, as a knee-jerk reaction, those on the left who reject religion do so by allowing their understanding of it to be defined by the distorters of it. There is no reason why religion cannot have a voice in the political realm if those who speak for it point us away from the naked grab for power and if they hold out for something better in the world. This is transcendence and Neiman says that the urge for transcendence expresses two drives. “One is to criticize the present in the name of the future, to keep longing alive for ideas the world has yet to see. The other is to prove our freedom, and dignity, by having a hand in bringing those ideals about through some form of human creativity.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The criticism that we fall short of our ideals is no thunderbolt of truth—our sins are ever before us. But neither is it an excuse not to try. As Kant reminds us in his <i>Lectures on Ethics: </i>“The remedy against such dejection and inertia is to be found in our being able to hope that our weakness and infirmity will be supplemented by the help of God if we but do the utmost that the consciousness of our capacity tells us we are able to do.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It would be a change for the better if those who invoked God did so from the humility of hope rather than the hubris of hypocrisy.</span><br />
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Barry Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277204142613825141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542262881226243745.post-70006737833282819142012-11-03T00:49:00.001-04:002012-11-03T01:12:03.883-04:00How to Live With the Election Results<br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Culture is man’s medium; there is not one aspect of human life that is not touched and altered by culture.” — Edward T. Hall, <i>Beyond Culture</i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to Ed Hall, American anthropologist and writer, culture is not innate but learned, all of it. Everything in a culture is bound together and culture sets the boundaries that define one tribe or group from another. The odd thing about this is not that we have to learn our culture, but that having learned it we are no longer aware of it. Knowing our context so well we take everything for granted and only pay attention when we stub our toes in the dark because someone moved the furniture. In other words, we only see what we are when we come up against someone who is not like us.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This can be a profoundly disturbing experience, one that sets us back on our heels and causes tempers to flare. Since we learn best through comparison and contrast we should not be surprised when the contrasts between what we think we know about the world, and the way others experience and shape the world, get up in our face. That becomes an ordinance of humility, a teachable moment, an occasion to learn from our mistakes without rubbing out the one who points out our mistakes. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Amartya Sen, Harvard economist and Nobel Prize winner, explores the presumption that we live in an overarching system which categorizes all of us in exactly the same way. This way can be either religious or cultural, but inevitably it sets us against each other. “A solitarist approach,” writes Sen in <i>Identity and Violence</i>, “can be a good way of misunderstanding nearly everyone in the world.” Sen’s reflection on this leads him to the conclusion that when we are assigned one dominant classification —whether it be religion, or community. or culture, or nation, or civilization — which ignores so much that is essential to our personal identity, the many diverse roles that we play and the interlocking communities we move through — violence is almost always the result. Holding hands and singing <i>Kumbaya</i> no longer works in promoting peace, and the wish to see ourselves as really all the same under our skin ignores the recognition that we are, says Sen, “<i>diversely different </i>(italics the author’s).”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Crises can lead to opportunities for us to learn more about our pluralistic human identities and to use those very differences to wake up and hone our sensitivities. Sen and Hall do not exaggerate when they suggest that our very survival as a species may rely on us understanding those diverse differences, not in seeking to conform us all to one identity. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This understanding is hard work, very hard work. In fact, some virulent strains in our own culture inoculate us to these exposures. Religion and politics, the two things most avoided in close relationships, seem to thrive on the us-them dichotomy. Since we tend to grow our own identities in proportion to acceptance by our groups, the easiest way, apparently, to quickly build solidarity in the group is to turn it against other groups. That’s a shortcut we cannot afford these days. This is such a natural law of group formation, in my experience, that we may well expect it sooner rather than later in the life cycle of the groups we belong to or desire to join.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Many years ago, in the wake of the Second World War, Gabriel Marcel, the French Catholic existentialist philosopher and playwright, grappled with parallel issues of individuality and freedom. Writing in <i>Man Against Mass Society,</i> Marcel asked what freedom meant in a society which routinely places us in situations that erode our ethics. We have a choice, of course, but we may not always have the means to live out our convictions. There are others who rely on us and for whom we make compromises just to survive to fight another day. In a materialist culture, says Marcel, everything is reduced to commodities and objects, even human beings.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While he could not have foreseen the reach and scope of the global economy of today, he seemed acutely aware of how entangled our convictions and duties are. If you have a problem with the economic conditions that make affordable clothes, food, and electronics, how far will you go to buy only those goods produced in fair labor conditions? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We don’t know the future, Marcel says, but it is that very ignorance that keeps us hopeful. By way of revolt against the mass society, Marcel argues that <i>“all philosophies of immanence have had their day </i>(italics his).” And we are called to fight against the idolatries of race and class that they foster. Such a fight, he intimates, isn’t just reserved for those with power, assuming of course, that they haven’t already succumbed to the degradations that go with power over others. He puts it in a sentence: “A man cannot be free or remain free, except in the degree to which he remains linked with that which transcends him, whatever the particular form of that link may be. . . .”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Artists have the possibility of creative action against this materialism more readily than most of us, says Marcel. But he’s quick to note that being an artist brings temptations to startle, to innovate at all costs, to sell oneself to the highest bidder or to retreat into the world of the aesthete. All of us are called to be creators of our own freedom. And the way to that freedom lies through remaining open to others. Materialistic societies like ours, says Marcel, sin against this freedom by excluding as forcefully as possible this openness to others. For Marcel the individual could not claim to be free in a culture which callously excludes some and commoditizes almost everything. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s not easy to reach for the transcendent in a culture that rewards selfishness nor should we presume that our mere opposition to such a culture means that we are open and unselfish. But on the eve of a bitterly fought election perhaps we can remind ourselves that no matter the outcome we may choose the side of the transcendent by learning to listen and to understand those unlike ourselves.</span><br />
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Barry Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277204142613825141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542262881226243745.post-74490096862733455262012-10-27T01:59:00.000-04:002012-10-27T08:47:46.236-04:00American History<br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Life is long if you know how to use it.” — Seneca</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When someone in the public eye passes away it causes us to refurbish old memories. Such was the case when Senator George McGovern died at 90 this week, and Jacques Barzun, perhaps our last public intellectual, died at the age of 104 in San Antonio, Texas. Both men were, in their own ways, the last of a kind, the public figure who lives out his or her convictions with grace and irony right up to the end.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">McGovern is often remembered as the man who lost to Richard Nixon by a landslide in the 1972 presidential election. Nixon, our most paranoid of presidents, was fearful that George Wallace would take away votes and sought to find anything he could to smear Wallace. The assassination attempt that left Wallace paralyzed took him out of the race and all but assured Nixon the victory. While he sympathized with Wallace in public Nixon privately exulted that the way was now clear. As for McGovern, Nixon’s men explored the possibility of trying to link his campaign with funding from Castro’s government. That particular move proved unnecessary: the country resoundingly rejected McGovern and his liberal politics. Nixon went on triumphantly to a second term in which he disgraced himself and the country by attempting to subvert the Constitution. He avoided impeachment only by resigning on Friday, August 9, 1974.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nixon’s resignation speech, a rambling, self-indulgent paean to his mother and his lack of money, was picked up by radio by a group of us that day on a windy, rain-swept headland overlooking the sea in the south of Wales. At the time I remember feeling relief that the whole sordid episode was finally over and that we wouldn’t have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In moments like that you wonder what alternate history might have been written had McGovern miraculously won. The Democratic Party was never so aligned again with politics that was unabashedly for the rights of women, blacks, the poor, the lame, the halt, and the blind. After defeat McGovern went on to devote himself to the war against hunger in the world. Richard Nixon resurrected himself in time as an elder statesman and at his death was feted by the living presidents of the time. McGovern’s political beliefs seem almost impossibly naive by today’s “whatever” standards. Forty years of Democratic centrism has meant that the party has all but abandoned its constituency of the marginalized. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">History unreels behind us, not so much a transcript of orderly actions, but rather a confession of conflicting desires. We gather it up occasionally, expecting a confirmation of our cherished memories. We are often rudely shocked by the distance between our present selves and our reverenced past. The passing of George McGovern, himself a scholar of American history, reminds us that there is more to life than <i>Real Housewives</i> and that we learn best from that which we have understood.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Jacques Barzun, in the words of the <i>New York Times’</i> obituary for him, was a “distinguished historian, essayist, cultural gadfly and educator who helped establish the modern discipline of cultural history.” A man who resisted authoritarianism and the dominance of systems, he lived and breathed a liberal humanism that treasured reflection and gratitude for great learning. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Barzun’s bemused and ironic sensibilities could be read as support for the status quo. In his last major work, <i>From Dawn to Decadence</i>, he notes that “most of what government sets out to do for the public good is resisted as soon as proposed,” and that “The upshot is a floating hostility to things as they are. . . . The hope is that getting rid of what is will by itself generate the new life.” The answer, he suggests, is neither in baptizing the past nor in embracing the new. Rather, “Our distinctive attitude toward history, our habit of arguing from it, turns events into ideas charged with power.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Both George McGovern and Jacques Barzun lived with the assurance that ideas matter—profoundly—and that what today seems so new and unprecedented may have already appeared in our past, either as an Angel of Light or of Darkness. What we do with our interpretations will create our futures. </span><br />
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Barry Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277204142613825141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542262881226243745.post-10809087474182896372012-10-20T02:41:00.003-04:002012-10-20T23:06:21.641-04:00Running to Stand Still<br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “If monarchs have little sympathy with mankind, mankind have even less with monarchs. They are merely to us a sort of state-puppets or royal waxwork, which we may gaze at with superstitious wonder, but have no wish to become . . . .” — William Hazlitt, <i>On Personal Identity.</i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Why would anyone wish to become president? On the face of it, the highest office that we were told anyone could aspire to and some could attain, is a thankless job. Daily the president is assailed on all sides, sometimes by his own kind, but relentlessly by the disloyal opposition. When he does something that approximates the right thing to do, someone—Charles Krauthammer, most likely—will thunder from the <i>Washington Post</i> and George Will will mutter and mewl. Everything he says and does is subject to the kind of scrutiny usually reserved for “persons of interest” by the FBI or Kim Kardashian. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course, anyone in that position should expect that they’ll be held “accountable”—our favorite euphemism for who is to blame—but the accountability factor often becomes a political football and a blanket term for general dissatisfaction. We don’t often hear that someone is held to be responsible, perhaps because that implies actions governed by ethics rather than just a <i>faux</i> economic term. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">William Hazlitt, writing in the early 19th century, had in mind kings and princes when he disavowed any interest in changing places with them, but his words could apply almost as well with the office of the President. In a way we ask the impossible of our presidents. We expect them to be extraordinary communicators who can talk to anybody—Saudi princes or Joe the Plumber, pizza makers or heads of state. We expect them to have the intel at their fingertips to make a definitive statement on horrific acts that are still unfolding. And we believe that everything that happens between their inauguration and their reelection—or defeat—is a direct result of some action they’ve taken or left out. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They must be one of us, yet without our annoying and petty grievances. They should be smart enough to solve world economic problems but they shouldn’t be tarred as one of the ’Harvard elite.’ We ask them to maintain America’s dominance by any means necessary but we don’t want to pay for it. We want them to tell the truth but we don’t want to hear it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are a number of reasons why a person might want to be president. First, they want the perks and the power. It’s not the money: the President makes $400,000 per year plus expenses. The CEO of Goldman Sachs made $16.5 million in 2011; John Hammergren of McKesson made $131.19 million in a recent year. But they get the use of a plane, Air Force One, a helicopter, Marine One, a nice place in the country—Camp David—and a tony address in downtown Washington. They’re referred to as “the most powerful person in the world,” and people wave as they drive by in motorcades. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another reason is that they might be driven to accomplish what few people do—make it to the top in a profession. If you’re a lawyer I suppose the Supreme Court would be your last and best job offer. Some academics aspire to be presidents of universities, actors to win Oscars, and athletes to compete and win in the Olympics, the Superbowl or the World Cup. And politicians want the White House. Lyndon Johnson ran for the Vice Presidency, not because he wanted it, but because his mentor, Sam Rayburn, couldn’t bear the thought of Richard Nixon getting it. In time and tragically, Johnson got his turn and his term, a position he’d been climbing toward since his early days as a Texas congressman. Bill Clinton found his inspiration in a meeting with President Kennedy as a teenager. Kennedy himself was groomed for the presidency by his father, so the legend goes. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And no doubt there are those who believe they might do some good, might shape the events of history toward justice or freedom or prosperity. We believe them enough to elect them but we doubt them before they are done. “Why will Mr. Cobbett persist in getting into Parliament?”, asked Hazlitt about a perennial candidate. “He would find himself no longer the same man.” There’s the rub: if you’re man (or woman) enough for the job are you willing to pay the price? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The price is literally in the millions. Some estimates put the total cost of the 2012 election at over $5 billion, an obscene amount for the return on investment. At least three times a week I get an urgent email from Democratic headquarters: for a mere $3 I can help turn the tide and rout the Republican berserkers. The money will go, I am assured, to paying for ads to refute the latest lies the Romney camp is spouting. Money for truth. . . .</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To run, to put yourself and your family through the merciless gauntlet of American public opinion, you’ve got to have a massive ego, strong enough to withstand the constant criticism, supple enough to dodge the blows and yet deep enough to listen to counsel. You have to realize that you ran to make a solid difference in the world, but now it’s not about you, but the myriad powers that be. And if you have anything different to say about it you’d better be sure the mic isn’t hot and it’s off the record. Because you didn’t get there on your own. There are many who put you there for reasons of their own, reasons that will demand a return on <i>their </i>investment. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But at the end of the day, climbing the stairs to bed like any other person, can you look back on your efforts that day and feel like you rolled the rock up the mountain with purpose and intention? Can you be glad for small victories and brush off the defeats? If you’ve got the ego strength <i>and</i> the humility to realize that the hinge of history may not turn on your command, but you might have pushed the door open just a bit wider for Goodness—then may you sleep well. </span>Barry Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277204142613825141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542262881226243745.post-16859966290359168662012-10-13T02:51:00.002-04:002012-10-13T20:10:09.630-04:00The Moments of Truth<br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When I have a bad day the world does not swerve, is not shaken to its foundations nor rattled to its timbers. This is as it should be. Yet, when Barack Obama has a bad day Democrats gasp and clutch at their hearts, Republicans sneer, and Mr. Mitt comes off a winner. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The wonder of it all! In the hours that followed the first presidential debate of the season, liberal commentators cried out to their deities, examined the entrails of small animals sacrificed to cast light on the mysteries, and pronounced the President unfit for reelection. With the insight only those blind with fury can have, they looked deep into Barack Obama’s psyche and recoiled at what they saw. Ennui, arrogance, an insouciant desire to hang it all up and knock out a few rounds on the links—it was all there. They shuddered. The President does not want to win! He has thrown the election! My high school debate team could have done better! Alarum!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">David Graham of <i>The Atlantic</i> took people like <i>The Beast’s</i> Michael Tomasky, <i>Harper’s</i> Kevin Baker, and unliberal Byron York of <i>The Washington Examiner</i> to task in a perceptive piece which included the great line, “I’m old enough to remember when Obama was running away with the election. It was early last week.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Perhaps in a horse-race where the lead changes from moment to moment those backing a particular steed can be forgiven if their hearts freeze in terror when it stumbles. But let’s be real: no legs were broken. This horse need not be put down just yet. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An hour after the debate I read most of the transcript and I thought the candidates had dealt with some substantive issues. I missed the head-shakes, the downcast eyes, and the pursed lips of Obama, but I also missed the bright gleam in Romney’s eyes as he shape-shifted yet again. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s an interesting experience, reading a debate: it focuses attention on the words and their meanings, not on the gestures, expressions, signals, sounds, and the myriad motions that burn impressions into one’s memory. Researchers in cognitive and perceptual studies tell us that we remember little of what was said but much of what was seen, a fact not lost on political handlers, pole dancers, sales people and senators. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In a mediasphere formed around images, sound bites, and opinions it might not matter all that much what the candidates think or even less, what they believe in. They are blurred in our eyes, distinguishable only by the captions they are tagged with by the media. Like modernist paintings, they take on the shape suggested by the titles conveniently mounted on the wall next to them. “The new Mitt!” “Obama sags!” “Romney takes command!”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">George Gerbner, a communications scholar who studied media effects for decades, believed that the media don’t tell us what to think—they tell us what to think <i>about</i>. They set the agenda; we carry it out and pride ourselves on knowing what’s current. That may not be entirely true anymore. Public figures are primed, prepped, and produced. Like a new line of frozen dinners they come with ingredients listed on the side, a banner with the magic words, “New and improved!,” and attractive packaging. We don’t know what we’ve got until we open it up—and by then we can’t take it back for a refund. This is more than agenda-setting. News organizations used to counter the spin of the public relations people; now they work for them. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For all the scrutiny that candidates for the presidency go through in the long and excruciating path to election, we may not know much about their souls. We see what we’re allowed to see, hear what’s been scripted, and realize that we’re seeing shadows on the walls of Plato’s cave. None of this is deliberately malevolent or deceitful. It’s simply how business works in a contemporary news cycle. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The best illusions are those in which the audience trusts the illusionist. Oddly enough, it’s the burden, the weight, the power of the idea of trust between the people and their leaders that can, occasionally, elude the barriers set in place. If there’s any integrity at all in the leader the trust of the people will elicit a genuine response, one that will be evident in the moment. The unspoken hope that keeps this experiment going is the belief in those moments of truth.</span><br />
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Barry Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277204142613825141noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7542262881226243745.post-71636784101878499032012-09-29T01:16:00.000-04:002012-09-29T01:16:04.464-04:00Lane-Walkers<br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality.” — <i>Walden</i>, Henry David Thoreau</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How much of our life do we truly comprehend? We may feel like political observers at a rigged election: we can see what’s going on but we lack the power to change it. Caught up in our routines, not daring to vary from them lest we lose a step, we see the surface changes of light and shadow, while we sense that tectonic shifts are taking place beneath us. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At a corner of an intersection frequented by panhandlers a man held a hand-lettered sign which proclaimed him to be God’s anointed, a “prophetic, proud, American preacher.” I held a dollar out to him while waiting for the light to change, and listened while he spoke about his ministry. He was a handyman who had been touched by the Lord some years ago and sent on a mission to bring a message of hope, prosperity, happiness, and health to all who would listen. He gave me a flyer he had written up, complete with a website, and resources that, if ordered, would restore a sense of pride in America and gratitude to the Almighty. There was no irony for him in the fact that as the bearer of the message he was a walking refutation of its benefits. But that suspicion was answered by his earnest claim that it was his humility which marked him out for the divine dispensation. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His jaunty sanctity was touching. Far from being an object of pity he thought of himself as a man with a mission. He wasn’t begging, he was witnessing. The transactional nature of his work called for him to give as well as to receive. If I gave a dollar he was happy to bless me and share with me the nature of his work. The dollar, a gesture of solidarity, was less a donation to an indigent than it was a validation of his calling. You’ve got to respect a man like that. As the light changed and the phalanx of cars pulled away, he proclaimed his willingness to work at anything—car repair, house painting, yard work, preaching. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’ve wondered at the necessities and rules of panhandling. No doubt there are social norms that come with the occupation, perhaps even vocabularies and expectations that must be met. Does a median strip belong to those with seniority or is it ‘first come, first served’? Do you dress for the neighborhood or for the rigors of the job? On blazing hot days can the men go shirtless or is that a social <i>faux pas</i> that cannot be tolerated? Must the women always be mothers with four children and no rent money or can they be young, single, and brave—with time on their hands? How does the body adapt to or resist the thrumming roar of traffic, the waves of heat radiated from exhausts, engines, and metal surfaces? Do you stay on the median or walk between the lanes? Smile and thank whoever pauses or keep it to a minimum of gestures? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These are the lines of adaptation to which the organism conforms, the terrain that must be plowed, the rules of engagement for a public transaction of a moment. I’ve seen lithe, well-dressed young men, affable and surefooted in the traffic, whose only indication of need was the hand-lettered sign they carried. And I’ve seen men, perhaps veterans of our interminable wars, whose faces were roasted red from the heat, whose hair was bleached and lifeless from the exhaust and the wind, and whose clothes had lost all semblance of garments.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have found myself imagining, while waiting out the light, what slight movements of the spirit brought them to this place and this moment. What butterfly, blithely flitting from flower to bush in a garden on an island in Japan, set in motion the winds that blew these people up on our concrete beaches? Alone in a crowd, islands in a river of molded plastic and glass, do they wonder as they pace their walkways, if there was an inexorable fate that brought them here? Were they singled out for punishment or just slower than the rest sprinting for the exits? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Matthew Arnold’s <i>The Buried Life</i> comes to mind:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But often, in the din of strife,</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There rises an unspeakable desire</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>After the knowledge of our buried life;</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>A thirst to spend our fire and restless force</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In tracking out our true, original course;</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>A longing to inquire</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Into the mystery of this heart which beats</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So wild, so deep in us—to know</span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Whence our lives come and where they go.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The consistency and persistence of these people is what lingers in the memory. Every day they are out there in all weathers, working the lanes, radiating discomfort and regret, regulating their practice according to the elements they have found that work through necessity and chance. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Every one of them began as a child without guile. Most were loved, some no doubt carried the hopes of the family on their shoulders. I don’t want to romanticize them or bill them as urban artists; they have too much dignity in themselves to be the object of our casual pity. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Perhaps they live with the facts, the bare unadorned necessities of survival. They are not a tribe apart, they are the rest of us stripped down, without our pretense and assurances, without our bored indifference. There was a time when the Fates got the credit for having twisted up these lives in ways that could not easily be undone. Now they are proxies for the millions whose existence is noted by a downward tick on a graph.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“We know not where we are,” says Thoreau near the end of <i>Walden. “</i>Yet we esteem ourselves wise, and have an established order on the surface.”</span><br />
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Barry Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11277204142613825141noreply@blogger.com0