Captain Courageous

And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort and advancing on Chaos and the Dark. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

As a child I was not allowed to read the comics because they were, by definition, comical and thus trivial and a waste of precious time. Furthermore, they drew the mind away from loftier themes and indulged the imagination, rendering the loftier themes. . . well, boring. The theory was that reflection on the signs of the times and the coming apocalypse should be enough to sanctify the imagination and result in good behavior. 

This led to a personal and a professional interest in the apocalyptic mindset, the psychological and social conditions that make people think the world is going to end in their lifetime. It also made me ask myself if such beliefs, on balance, had brought more good into the world than not, and if such a perspective could be reconciled with a love for life and for this Earth—extravagances that I associated with enjoyment of the Sabbath.

The mining of the archives of DC and Marvel comics and the upsurge of superheroes in film over the last few years has given me opportunity to test the theory. Why do we find them so fascinating? Do they answer some primal need for reassurance? Does their very presence become another sign of the times? One thing we can say for sure: these films make a ton of money, always a good sign in these times. And they’ll keep coming at us for the foreseeable future. They tap into the huge audience of Boomers who grew up with them and they’re bringing new generations up to speed by keeping them running breathlessly after the sequels, the prequels, and the remakes. 

These films frequently break box office records because they both reflect and shape our response to these chaotic times. Conventional dogma is that people go to the movies to escape their boring lives. This is nonsense. People go to the movies to make sense of their lives because film has become the most powerful form of social education in our time. The movies unveil the mysteries of sex, they give us models of how to raise children, why we should get married, get divorced, or have affairs. They teach us the subtleties of conversation, the morality of money, the lure of power and the bitterness of revenge. They tell us what’s funny, how to regard the suffering of others, the current standards of what’s hot or not, and when all else fails, how to win through intimidation. And they are the most prolific channels for myth in modern history. 

One of the most pervasive themes in film is the battle between good and evil, waged endlessly at every Cineplex every day. Without belaboring the obvious we need only mention Star Wars and Harry Potter, film series that manage to both caricature evil on a grand scale while exemplifying the virtues of courage and loyalty on a personal level. It’s fascinating to watch these stories for the social mores portrayed in the retelling of ancient myths.

Which brings us to Captain America, the latest superhero to make the leap from page to screen. I went, not expecting much, not knowing the story, mildly interested but wary of fist-pumping jingoism. I needn’t have worried. I’ve since found myself turning scenes over in my mind, pulling up associations and parallels, finding the mythic threads: in short, enjoying it far beyond the actual viewing. 

Captain America is the idealized image of what we thought our heroes should be back in 1942—courageous, self-deprecating, fair, almost to a fault, and chivalrous. As Steve Rogers, the original 97-lb. weakling, goes through basic training his characteristics of self-sacrifice, determination, and courage come to light. 

“So,” asks the camp doctor at one point, “do you want to kill Nazis? 

“I don’t want to kill anybody,” Rogers says, “I just don’t like bullies.”

Rogers is most certainly not the choice of the project’s colonel, played with brisk efficiency by Tommie Lee Jones. But Doctor Erskine (Stanley Tucci), Project Rebirth’s scientist, prevails. “He’s smart and he’s got compassion,” he says.

After his transformation into Captain America he confounds military planning and strategy by simply driving in the front door of the enemy’s castle. His square-jawed unblinking fearlessness inspires others to do more than they thought they could in the circumstances—the very embodiment of charismatic leadership.

“Trust thyself,” says Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay, Self-Reliance. "Every heart vibrates to that iron string.” How American, both in its iconoclasm and in its confidence that everybody thinks that way! Emerson demands that we stand out, away from the herd. “Whoso would be a man,” he says, “must be a nonconformist. . . . Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” 

Captain America is the quintessential man of action whose motivation is virtue rather than ideology. His opponent, the demonic Nazi, Johann Schmidt (aka Red Skull), intends to rule first Europe, then America, and soon the world. His megalomania runs to the blood-and-earth variety: even though he is a brilliant scientist he also believes he can conjure up the ancient Teutonic gods. Rogers couldn’t care less about such insanity. He has answered the call of duty and will not be distracted. 

“It is the harder,” says Emerson, “because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

After Rogers defies an order to stay put and single-handedly breaks up Schmidt’s military headquarters, freeing captured American troops and bringing back secret weapons in the process, he is hailed at the American camp. The contrast between Rogers and Schmidt, between democracy and totalitarianism, couldn’t be starker. Captain America wins over the doubters through guts, courage, and defying the odds. Schmidt just kills those who oppose him.  

The other theme that rings through the film is the fascination with technology. At one point, Howard Stark, the best engineer in America (and the father of Iron Man Tony Stark) shakes his head in wonder. “Their technology is several generations better than ours.” But that doesn’t put a crimp in American ingenuity. Stark simply comes up with a MacGyver-like solution to everything that Red Skull throws at Captain America. But the lesson here is that while Red Skull apparently has a budget that would stagger the Pentagon and enough firepower to destroy the world, what finally wins the day is courage and heart. 

Although there are moments when disbelief must be suspended, when tongues are firmly in cheek, the film never descends to parody or campiness. Steve Rogers, the weakling who becomes Captain America, doesn’t forget where he came from and who he is, despite his strength and daring. He’s the one who stands up for the little guys because it’s the right thing to do—not because he gets off on kicking ass. 

However idealized, it’s an ideal worth striving for.

The Self, Finally

I wish I could explain why it oppressed me to tell about myself, but so it was, and I didn't know what to say. . . . That I had ruined the original piece of goods issued to me and was traveling to find a remedy? Or that I had read somewhere that the forgiveness of sins was perpetual but with typical carelessness had lost the book? — Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King

I have often been mistaken for someone else. It no longer surprises me—'I wonder who we are today?' I've been taken for a guy named Clif (yes, only one "f"), a Bill, a Kris, and my favorite—Grosboll. On that occasion I was stopped by a red-faced young man in the campus store who hissed through clenched teeth about a woman dear to him whose honor had been besmirched. He asked me what I had to say for myself. I said I didn't have much to say but neither did I  know the lady in question. "What?" he yelped, straightening up. "Aren't you Grosboll?" I had to admit I was not. "Oh," he mumbled, "sorry about that."

Once a balding man at the Y called me Dan, did the double-take and then apologized. When I laughed and said something about having a generic face he said, "Actually, I think it's the hair, sir," and returned to his newspaper. I checked the mirror, but I'm still not sure what he meant. Yet, there are some advantages to having a face that people think they know, however mistakenly. I can assume a new identity, if only for a few seconds; I can imagine what this named person might be like; and I may once again ask myself who I think I am. It's a question I've been turning over and over in my hand most of my life, like a stone that is smooth to the touch but has a rough patch somewhere on it.

We can't help but wonder who we are. Walter Truett Anderson writes in The Future of the Self that the modern view of the self as a distinct person, separate and bounded from other beings, is threatened in the postmodern age. At the same time he points out that such a view is not the norm in much of the non-Western world. "They do not think of themselves as unique, but rather as more or less identical to others of their kind; and they do not think of themselves as neatly integrated, but rather as invaded by strange spirits and forces that may pull them in many different directions."

The fact that we here in the West agonize over this, that we spend ourselves trying to find ourselves, probably marks us as unique in the world. Most people don't have the leisure to worry about such things, let alone fret about their social standing. That our self-identity, our persona, is an amalgam of biology and culture is fascinating to us but may not occur to millions of people who are just trying to wear their face for yet another day.

But the question, 'Who am I?' stops many in their tracks no matter the century. Jesus asked his disciples, 'Who do men say that I am?' I don't think it was a rhetorical question. I think he really wanted to know. His own quest to understand who he was had driven him into the wilderness to fight the demons of fear, pride, and power; he had emerged stronger, lighter, more pliable, but God-haunted. In everything he did he could not help but gauge the reaction of the crowds around him. On a good day, after healing and comforting, calling and casting out, delivering up and drawing in, he must have thought, 'This is who I am: the one who is to serve without ceasing. I can do this, but only through the Father.' On a bad day, with some around him burning with jealousy and others throwing themselves at him, he may have longed for a clear, cool night of stars and prayer.

Anderson traces the idea of the self through history, pointing out that individuality is a fairly recent invention, as is the notion of privacy. For most of human history people took for granted that the space around them was not exclusively their own nor was their self separate from others. That's not to say that they couldn't see where their bodies ended and another's began; it was rather that they understood themselves to be a part of the whole.

It's ironic that our media-produced mass societies sweep us into any number of demographic groups, but without a sense of belonging. We think we have a persistent self that anyone could pull out of a lineup at will, yet the feedback we need from others is missing or sometimes mocking. Are we a collection of selves, bonded by a body, or do we live our lives exposed "like a candle in the wind," constantly at risk of losing ourselves?

I was taught as a child to put Jesus first, others second, and yourself last. That would bring you joy and teach you a selfless way of life. It's a good teaching, far more sophisticated than its simplistic approach would suggest. The wisdom is in the order—and the purpose. Like a few other profoundly important things in life discovering who we are cannot be approached directly. We find out who we are by doing other things: truly worshiping God by living truthfully in this world, listening more than speaking, trying to understand before putting in the knife, learning reverence for the world. Then, in those moments when we cross some line into a new territory of courage we might catch a glimpse of ourselves as we run to catch up, thinking 'That's the kind of person I'd like to be.'

The epigram is from Saul Bellow's novel, Henderson the Rain King, a story about a brusque, volatile, ham-fisted millionaire who travels the world in search of a cure for his empty soul. Something in him cries out, 'I want! I want! I want!,' and it will not be stilled until it's filled. Read the book. It's a picaresque journey of faith, so I like to believe. In the end Henderson  does find himself, the true self that remains when the dross is burned away. It was there all along, of course, visible only at the edges of a vision that draws the eye forward.

The Geography of Thought

Oh East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet. . . — Rudyard Kipling, The Ballad of East and West 

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. — The Dhammapada

The world is orderly and simple; the world changes constantly and is immensely complex. These two ways of thinking have shaped human behavior and culture for millenia—and lately they have been tested in the laboratories of cultural psychology. 

Richard Nisbett’s book, The Geography of Thought, builds the case that Westerners and Easterners differ in their fundamental beliefs about the world. As one of his graduate students from China said to him, “You know, the difference between you and me is that I think the world is a circle, and you think it’s a line.” Nisbett, a distinguished professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, was skeptical but intrigued. He’d always thought of himself as a universalist, someone who believed humans perceive and reason in the same way. While their cultural practices may vary widely, he thought, their ways of perceiving the world are generally similar. 

He summarizes this tradition in four general principles. First, everyone has the same basic thinking processes when it comes to memory, categorization, inference, and causal analysis. Second, when people from different cultures have different beliefs it’s because they have been exposed to different aspects of the world, not because they actually think differently. Third, reasoning rests upon logic: a proposition can’t be both true and false. And fourth, our reasoning is separate from what we are reasoning about. You can think about a thing many different ways—and you can use your reasoning to come up with wildly different results. Such was the tradition that could be traced back through the Enlightenment to the Greeks. Surely everybody thought in the same way.

But that turns out not to be the case at all. In test after test, Western subjects focused on the objects in the foreground of a video while Eastern subjects took in the whole background. That’s consistent with another finding that Westerners regard objects as most important and Easterners emphasize relationships. Following Greek thought, Westerners think of themselves above all as free agents, individuals who act upon the environment around them, changing their circumstances to match their ambitions. Easterners, following Confucian thought, see themselves as part of a harmonious whole, experiencing the links between people and their environment as continuous. One does not so much wrest control away from Nature as align oneself with it. 

Independence, practically a virtue in Western societies, begins at an early age as we teach our children to “stand on their own two feet,” “think for themselves,” and “grow up.” Interdependence, the way of many in Eastern cultures, helps children to understand the reactions of others. One of Nisbett’s research partners, a 6 ft. 2 inch football-playing graduate student from Japan, was dismayed to discover, at his first American football game, that University of Michigan football fans thought nothing of blocking his view of the game by standing up in front of him. “We would never do anything to impair the enjoyment of others at a public function like that,” he said to Nisbett. It seems that compared to the Japanese wide-angle view Americans have tunnel vision.

Sensitivity to others’ emotions provides Easterners with a different set of assumptions about communication also. Whereas Westerners take responsibility for speaking directly and clearly, a “transmitter” orientation, Easterners adopt a “receiver” orientation in which it’s the hearer’s responsibility to make sure the message is understood. Nisbett notes that Americans sometimes find Asians hard to read because Asians make their points indirectly; Asians, on the other hand, may find Americans direct to the point of rudeness. 

The differences extend to how we think about causality and how we deal with historical events. Japanese teachers, says historian Masako Watanabe, begin a history lecture by setting the context. They then proceed chronologically through the events, linking each one to the proceeding event. Students are encouraged to put themselves in the mental and emotional states of the historical figures being studied and to draw analogies to their own lives. Students are regarded as thinking historically when they are able to see the events from the point of view of the other, even Japan’s enemies. Questions of “how” are asked about twice as much as in American classrooms.

By contrast, American teachers usually begin with the outcomes and ask why this result was produced. The pedagogical process often has the effect of destroying historical continuity and reversing the flow to effect-cause. This reflects the Greek heritage of the West in which we have the liberty to find our goals and define the means to attain them. 

“Easterners,” says Nisbett, “are almost surely closer to the truth than Westerners in their belief that the world is a highly complicated place and Westerners are undoubtedly often far too simple-minded in their explicit models of the world. . . . But Aristotle has testable propositions about the world while the Chinese did not. . . . The Chinese may have understood the principle of action at a distance, but they had no means of proving it.” 

No one is making value judgements about these varying perspectives. They are different ways of being in the world and viewing the world. But if this research is true or even close, we should pay attention to it for it could change how we communicate with  millions and millions of people. 

Occasionally in life we stumble across something that opens a window into our own interior castles. That is the experience I’ve had reading The Geography of Thought. Time and again, as I followed the tests scattered throughout the book, I was taken aback at my unconscious affinity for Eastern thought. More often than not, when I was absolutely honest with myself, I realized how often they are my default positions. That might explain why I found it so difficult to be the ‘answer man’ when working in faculty development at a research university. While some thought I should provide techniques that would work in every classroom—universals in effect—my tendency was to see each teacher and each classroom as distinct. Instead of developing objectives for all to reach my thought was to develop each teacher’s own style to fit their context. Context and background. . . instead of rules and foreground. At the time I lacked the analogies to talk about it, although pushing against that instinctual feeling made me feel off balance much of the time.

Thus we live and learn and discover coves and bays along our spiritual shoreline we did not know were there until we put in to port. 

Pencils to Death

We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them. — Alain de Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy

What should we do when everything we have tried seems to turn to ashes in our hands, when our best and most concentrated efforts have produced. . . . nothing. When we have failed?

We could take the route of Roseanne Rosannadanna, that lovable klutz from Ft. Lee, New Jersey, created by Gilda Radner all those years ago on Saturday Night Live. Roseanne once addressed an eighth grade graduating class on how little things can lead to a full crash-and-burn. You're sitting in a classroom ready to take a test but you have no pencil. You fail the test, get kicked out of school, become homeless and die on the street. All because you forgot your pencil. It's what my wife and I have come to call the Pencils to Death syndrome.

The ability to put failure in perspective is not coded into our genes. It’s a learned response and it takes a lot of failure to learn how to do it well. From an evolutionary standpoint, of course, all of us here today are the triumphant offspring of the winners—the ones who prevailed, adapted, overcame, and survived. The losers, wading in the shallow end of the gene pool, didn’t live long enough to reproduce and are gone and forgotten. But that glib scenario covers up the fact that the winners learned how to win by losing—not fatally, of course—but in enough small ways that effort had to be made and lessons learned. Don’t eat that! Don’t go there! Do we fight or run? Hello, hello? Guess I’d better run. . . .

But the lure of instant success is so powerful. All it takes is the trajectory of Justin Bieber shooting across the YouTube universe and into the welcoming arms of Usher to set the hearts of teenagers aflame with visions of personal stardom. Shortcuts to success abound in the popular mythology, their phrases ringing tinnily in the ear: The One-Minute Manager, Think and Grow Rich, The Secret. The culture encourages nay, demands, riches without work, knowledge without learning, success without sacrifice.

 As civilizations go ours is still an adolescent, beset with all the bumbling enthusiasm of a teenager, endearing in its energy, annoying in its arrogance, dangerous in its naivete. Our shiny hopes are easily bent; we grow surly when thwarted. In our impatience to grow up we bluster and brag, and then whine when we get the inevitable pushback. A country of immense natural resources, endless horizons, boundless opportunities—all those wonderfully elusive phrases that still pepper the speeches of politicians on the run—such a country will not be denied its place at the pinnacle. Will it?

In our unshakable faith in science and technology we believe that every problem has a solution, one that can be downloaded with the click of a finger, a swipe of a credit card, a flick of a switch. We can’t imagine a world in which some mountains cannot be moved or some barrier not be shattered. When in doubt, we say, put the pedal down and smash through it. Who has the time to untie the knot? Just cut the damn thing and we’ll be on our way. We seem to have little patience with difficulties, seeing them not as part of life but a personal slight, almost a slap in the face.

So I hear the wistful lyrics of Paul Simon in a song called American Tune to a melody by J. S. Bach:

I don't know a soul who's not been battered
Don't have a friend who feels at ease
Don't know a dream that's not been shattered
Or driven to it's knees.
But it's all right, all right, We've lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on,
I wonder what went wrong, I can't help it
I wonder what went wrong.

What went wrong is that we never took to heart the truth that life is difficult. Philosophy, religions, literature, psychology, drama—they’ve all been nattering about that for eons. It’s one of the perennial issues that comes up in arguments about why people suffer, what evil is, and what God has to do with all of it. It is not the problem of evil, it is the mystery of evil. Gabriel Marcel, a French poet, playwright and philosopher, called it a mystery that has no solution but calls our very being into question. In answering it or trying to anyway, we discover our own unfathomable depths. We learn who we are in our response to evil and in our response to failure.

There’s something I’ve been living by for years that helps me. I think I may have picked up the terms from William Blake, that mad poet and visionary, but the illustration is my own. We begin in innocence, blessed beyond belief, and then we take a fall into experience. Down in the pit, cursing or sobbing, we look back up to the heights we occupied without realizing there were depths and we choose: death or life? In grace we begin to climb, foothold by foothold, until we arrive, after pain and effort, at innocent experience: the delight of discovery without the cynicism of defeat.  In this context we are no longer innocent for we have taken the inevitable fall into rough experience that comes to all humans. No one is exempt. What matters is how we react in the pit. Will we stay there, raging in our pride, or begin the climb, having sloughed off our naivete and arrogance?  We have learned and moved, on and up. And that’s good, very good, because we will have many falls in life and each one is a new occasion to learn. Failure may not be an option, but it can be an opportunity.

Mind over Murdoch

So, as men become more equal and individualism more of a menace, newspapers are more necessary. The belief that they just guarantee freedom would diminish their importance; they sustain civilization. — Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that after an extended tour of America in 1831. An aristocrat, de Tocqueville was fascinated with the young country, but not blinded to its impulsive nature nor swept away by its potential. But his shrewd analysis of the American character and its experiment in democracy still rings so true today that he is revered by many who span the political spectrum from left to right and in between. Pick up Democracy in America and open almost any page at random and you are sure to find something that perfectly encapsulates the current state of affairs.

Thus, his reverence for newspapers, back in the day, speaks volumes not only about how times change but also how newspapers themselves have changed. Can we imagine that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. empire would be the exalted sustainer of civilization? Could News of the World—or NotW as it's referred to in media today—have risen above its screaming headlines and its contemptible practices to carry the standard of "journalistic integrity"? How many more times could those in power have bowed the knee to Murdoch before they finally summoned the courage to revolt? Don't try to do the math: it's a number arrived at only after the cup of iniquity finally overflowed and the public got fed up.

So it comes as no surprise that politicians on both sides of the Atlantic, sniffing the wind and catching the unmistakable scent of blood on the tracks, shot to their feet as one from behind their protective barriers and denounced the Prince of Darkness. He is to appear before Parliament for questioning, along with his loyal lieutenant, the flame-haired Rebekah Brooks (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Ginger Baker, renowned drummer for Cream of late 60s fame), CEO of his UK newspapers and newly resigned. Les Hinton, the publisher for Dow Jones, the parent company of the Wall Street Journal, also resigned and is widely expected to take the fall for Murdoch, loyal to the end even after some 50 years of working for him.

Reporters at the Journal, watching the tide of effluvia rising around them, are finding their worst fears confirmed: that they are being tarred in the public's eyes with the brush of the New York Post and News of the World. And as the scandal spreads it tends to ignite fires in other places. The FBI may be launching an investigation into the possibility that 9/11 victims families may have had their phones hacked as well. There are a lot of conditional tones in that previous sentence because it's simply not possible in these circumstances to separate rumor from fact. And that is one of the legacies of Murdoch's brand of journalism.

There's a certain justice in the prospect that the hunter may finally be snared in his own traps. For decades Murdoch has bullied, threatened, derided, and seduced politicians, while undercutting the competition and monopolizing the media channels. For those who were drawn to journalism after the Watergate scandal, and those who admired the integrity and courage of the Washington Post, editor Ben Bradlee, and reporters Bernstein and Woodward, watching Murdoch in free-fall is an odd experience. One doesn't want to cheer because he has a reputation for coming back, zombie-like, from the grave. There is the temptation, as if it were even possible, to imagine a world without Fox News, without Roger Ailes, without Glenn Beck and the whole yelping, bug-eyed, pack of chatterati that pass for journalists these days. But there is also hope—an admittedly faint hope—that journalism as a profession can slough off these sleazy tactics, these millions expended on gossip and lies, and finally get back to the work of the Fourth Estate.

In the court of public opinion, a court that Murdoch's media are particularly adept at manipulating, lives and careers can be flash-fried in a matter of days. Like popcorn or onion rings these spectacles are hot to the touch, endlessly consumable, and finally turn one's stomach. We all suffer when the difficult work of searching for truth is jettisoned by news media in favor of chasing rumors into print. It may be too much to hope that this could be a cleansing moment for media moguls, a kind of moral epiphany for discourse in the public square, perhaps even a turning point for American democracy. Perhaps we should put the triumphantly swelling music on hold and aspire to something greater—a finely-tuned historical memory that puts this sorry episode in context and does not forget that it happened. Murdoch and others may be hoping that with our collective attention deficit we'll turn away and be off to something else in a week or so. Then they could breathe a sigh of relief and get back to business as usual. After all, we're consumers before we're citizens, right? Maybe, just maybe for once, we could reverse that condition in favor of meaning over manipulation, memory over Mammon.

When the World is Too Much With Us

And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. John 12:31-33 - KJV

Being a carbon-based bipedal organism with a comparatively short life span has its drawbacks. At birth we are helpless, red-faced, squawking bundles of potential—if we can live long enough to gain a foothold on this third rock from the sun. Most other mammal babies get up and walk within minutes of hitting the ground—we take years. We can't see as keenly as eagles, trot as fast as horses, climb as good as monkeys, or swim like dolphins. Almost everything we've done to overcome these physical deficiencies are through extensions—mechanical devices that give us reach, sharpen our hearing, project our voices, and peel back surfaces to see underneath and beyond. There has to be some payoff for all this vulnerability, and there is—we have imaginations. 

The imagination can lift us out of our everyday reality into another place, even another time. There is no doubt that a vibrant imagination is necessary for a child to try out scenarios, play with images and ideas, and stretch the mind in the process. Somewhere I've read that day-dreaming is part of mental exercise, as important as toughening the muscles and building endurance. 

Our imaginations seem to specialize. For example, architects can visualize their buildings in three dimensions while most of us can’t “see” the structure until it’s built, a disadvantage that is not trifling. Others can spin stories, bring clay to life under their fingers, or discover the beauty in the symmetry of equations. I marvel at those who can leap from intuition to concept to theory like a ninja running up a wall. At times I write like a man trying to thread a needle behind his back: it can be done but it takes a great deal of time and bloodletting is to be expected.  

Blessedly, one form of expression can be triggered by another. When I was a journalism student struggling for a lead to a story I’d often take a break, get myself down to the college library, and spend some time with Communication Arts, a magazine that features some of the best art and design in the country. Something about absorbing all that visual creativity and the possibility of wonder just over the page usually set me free to write my version of the truth. 

So too in my spiritual landscape I’ve found that seeing through another’s creative vision often gives me new eyes to see what was there all along. Through the years I’ve found artists who give me a place to stand and thus change my understanding. Chagall is one, Roualt is another, Picasso, Rothko, Cezanne, Paul Klee—and Dali. One painting of his in particular has been a kind of talisman for me, the function of which is to bring me to a humbling perception of humanity. 

Dali’s Christ of St. John of the Cross (1951) was based on a drawing by a 16th century monk named St. John of the Cross. Christ hangs suspended on the cross above the world, unbloodied, without nails or wounds. The observer looks down at the top of Christ’s bowed head and simultaneously at a landscape of fisherman and boats. The effect is disconcerting at first as we plunge down vertically past the Christ and immediately level off to a horizontal plane. Dali traced inspiration for the extreme angle back to a dream he had, the vision of which appeared to him in color as the cosmic Christ. The painting was purchased in the early 50s by the Glasgow Corporation for 8, 200 pounds sterling, considered quite extravagant at the time. In 1961 a visitor heaved a brick through the canvas, incensed apparently by the angle that looked down upon Christ instead of up. The painting was restored and hangs in the Kelingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow, the curators having stoutly resisted an offer of $127 million by the Spanish government. 

I don’t find the lack of blood or nails theologically upsetting. I know how Jesus suffered, and I don’t need Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ to drive the message home. In Dali’s painting Christ is still on the cross, his sinews twisting, his head bowed, the long shadow of one arm stretching ominously across the open space of the horizontal beam. 

It’s the angle I’m interested in. We see Christ from God’s point of view; His Son, His beloved Son, eternally hanging there above the world, floating in silent and profound dignity, magnificent in death. Down below, the fishermen, oblivious to the Light of the World above them, draw their boat up on the shore. One is standing at the stern in water up to his knees while his companion on the shore drags out the nets to dry. They seem indecisive or perhaps just tired. If they caught any fish we’re not seeing the evidence. They may be heading home, weary from work, wondering how long they can survive without a catch. 

When we see the Christ on the cross from the traditional angle looking upward it provokes our pity. The usual configuration is Mary, weeping on her knees or collapsing into the arms of John, the disciple who stayed to the end. Occasionally, we’ll see John the Baptist, a lamb, and several other well-dressed figures, usually the ones who commissioned the painting and paid the bill. We feel for Mary, her heart torn from her, and for John, whose duty to care for his Lord’s mother overrides his anxiety at being seen as one of the co-conspirators. 

But from the angle that Dali provides we can sense God’s compassion for the world. When the world is too much with us, when we find ourselves loathing humanity, when we feel, with shame, our complicity in the wickedness and suffering of this age, we can be lifted up, free and clear, to look down through Christ and see our tired world from a new perspective—one that through imagination wounds and heals.  

Am I Mything Something?

A mythology is a culture's device for interpreting its reality and acting on it. But what if the reality changes and the mythology does not? — Robert Reich, Tales of a New America

Someone once said—it may have been Joseph Campbell—that there are only six stories in human experience and we keep retelling them with infinite variations. To follow the trail of these stories back to their primal plot lines is like retracing our DNA back through the millenia to what geneticist Bryan Sykes has called the first mothers, the Seven Daughters of Eve.

We're constantly looking for patterns in the restless flow of time. We tell stories to make order out of chaos, to build meaning where there are simply isolated facts and events untethered to a cultural context. Robert Reich says every culture has its definitive parables and the ones America has lived by are four: they are The Mob at the Gates, The Triumphant Individual, The Benevolent Community, and The Rot at the Top. While they are situated in different histories and facts, they interpret and explain reality, they give us a place to stand as individuals and as a people, and they bring coherence to our experience.

Our political rhetoric, says Reich, is not so much pragmatic as prophetic. Our politicians, aided and abetted by the press—which is simultaneously fawning and recalcitrant—speak in tones both messianic and evangelical. We are the land of destiny, the hope of the world, the shining city set on a hill. In the parlance of Christianity, America is the kingdom that is and is yet to come. In its cruder forms all that destiny is reduced to a bumper sticker we used to see in the 60s: America—Love it or Leave it.

One story that has transfixed the press on both sides of the Atlantic is that of Dominique Strauss-Kahn (aka DSK), the former head of the International Monetary Fund, forced to resign because of his brutal sexual assault upon a hotel housekeeper in his penthouse suite at the Sofitel New York. Headlines screamed his guilt, the Manhattan District Attorney confidently locked up the case, and a flood of photos showed the accused, grim-faced and dispirited, headed for Rikers Island for a sleepover. It was a classic story of Rot at the Top in which a wealthy, powerful, and arrogant man runs amok and expects to get away with it. The trajectory was predictable, having been played out numerous times in recent years, with resulting profits and losses calculated not only in dollars but in morality lessons. The rich and powerful overstep the bounds, as is their nature, and get caught. They are brought low (remember Martha Stewart and Michael Milken?), suffer the shame and loss they so richly deserve, and later are returned to grace and wealth in a triumphant second act. Well, not every time, but often enough that we were not surprised when they did their time and reemerged on Larry King or Oprah. We loathed them and admired them, despising their crassness and greed while assuming they couldn't be all bad, seeing as how they had worked hard and prospered against the odds. That feral drive to succeed, corrupted though it was, could also be seen as Just the Way Things Are.

In a stunning reversal of fortune, prosecutors in the DSK case announced that the prime witness, the victim, the maid who had been forced into unspeakable sexual acts by this French predator, was a woman of no virtue, a liar and a cheat who had conned her way into the camp with a baseless story of gang rape in a far-off country and with suspicious connections to genuine low-lifes and criminals. Now the tide surges the other direction and we see the Mob at the Gates, desperate, dangerous foreigners of no breeding or class, who will do anything to get into this country and enjoy the benefits reserved for the hard-working American people. DSK, released from house arrest, gets his electronic ball-and-chain removed, gets his $1 million bail money back, and permits himself the barest hint of a smile as he steps outside for the first time in weeks. Will he be restored to his former glory? Ah, but someone else has taken his job, a woman all parties agree will restore the tarnished image of the IMF. And thus DSK is free to pursue his destiny and to quite possibly become the head of France, Inc. someday soon. The balance is restored, the mighty are back on top, and the lowly get what they deserve.

But the story is most assuredly not over, though media attention will no doubt turn its restless gaze elsewhere very soon. In a binary world of black and white, rich and poor, powerful and weak, DSK's circle will see class and power vindicated while others will smell a conspiracy of the first rank. How could it be otherwise when our cultural drug of choice seems to be the "us and them" dichotomy? That perspective turns issues of justice into entertainment. The struggle for truth gets lost in the call-'em-as-we-see-'em political posturing and the only ones who win are the lawyers and the media moguls. Such a story seems to define America at its basest level these days.

On this 4th of July at countless parades, barbecues, and political rallies, America and "what it stands for" will be invoked. Speakers will vilify the opposition and deify their own. There will be vague but inspiring references to the Founding Fathers and the dust bunnies of popular history will be yanked out from under the bed. Lines will be drawn, ultimatums delivered, much air will be heated, and the bands will play. The comforting illusion of a world in which we "win" and current enemies, domestic and foreign, "lose," will play out as the sun sets and the fireworks begin.

And yet, the wonderful thing about America, the characteristic that offers us the best hope in these sharply divisive times, is the willingness to try something new. The new for us would be the finding of stories which enlarge the boundaries of "us" and which quietly dissolve the brittle ramparts of our fearful individualism. The challenge, says Reich, "is to create settings in which obligation and trust can take root, supported by stories that focus our attention on discovering possibilities for joint gain and avoiding the likelihood of mutual loss." So perhaps we could rediscover an old story—E Pluribus Unum (out of many, one)—and add to it something new: "We're one, but we're not the same."