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Stanley Hauerwas recently gave the Laing lectures at Regent College in Vancouver, BC. Prof Ron Dart (UFV) has previously reviewed both Hauerwas' books and thoughts. Two of these posts warrant republishing for current reflection. Click on the following links to read these Clarion classics:
"Stanley Hauerwas and Noam Chomsky: Anarchist Affinities" - by Ron Dart
A friend suggested to me the other day that Brooks is pretty much like any other white male. He can't stand being told to sit down and shut up.
That could be true ... It probably is true on some level.
I think there's more going on, though.
My sense is that Brooks doesn't want *anyone* to be told to sit down and shut up. He's concerned not simply for himself and his own freedom. In the spirit of Enlightenment, he'd hope for everyone to have their say as they follow their best lights and contribute to the commonweal.
The problem is that he fails to appreciate how suppression and silencing happen in the context of Enlightenment rationality. Appealing to reason alone was about giving everyone a voice--at least potentially. In practice, it looked more like European men dictating how things are going to be.
This is the blind spot for generally thoughtful and caring people like Brooks. They struggle to appreciate how their voices have overridden other voices, even when they are touting the virtues of equality, inclusivity and tolerance, etc.
Identity politics can see through all that and refuses to capitulate. Instead, it fights back with the same weapons of exclusion and silencing, though in a more direct and forthright way, zeroing in on white cis-gendered males as colonizing oppressors.
The conundrum for someone like Brooks is that he's deeply sensitive to injustice though he struggles to appreciate his complicity. And he regrets the militant tactics of identity politics though he fails to see how Enlightenment set the stage for it.
With Brooks, I regret those same tactics, but I'm learning to appreciate where the harsh critique comes from and why.
I think it's really important to hear people speak of their experience on their own terms rather than overriding their stories and plotting them in a different narrative.
At the same time, I don't think it's helpful to typecast people based on identity and exclude/silence a targeted group as a matter of course.
This is what Brooks is wrestling with--not that white males would be asked to stop and listen to the experience of others, to honor the stories of those others, and to give freedom for new social, political and economic arrangements; rather that they'd be written off entirely, on principle, in every context, because they bear the signs of colonial oppression in their skin color and ostensible sex/gender.
Ad hominem was the dirty secret of Enlightenment rationality. It's now become the chief weapon in a fight for justice.God help us find a different way ...
"Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all." Col. 3:11
"There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Gal. 3:28
It's fascinating what Paul is doing with identity in these passages. At first, he seems to be negating these ethnic, religious, cultural, sexual, social and economic categories. But that’s not exactly it. By naming them directly, he gives them a kind of relative importance. The negative rhetorical constructions in these passages don’t serve to erase. Rather, they serve to reorient. In Christ, the distinctions continue to matter, but they are not of ultimate importance on their own. Christ is all and in all and he is the one who unites different people in love.
The Enlightenment made a similar move in an effort to transcend social and political factionalism. Only the appeal was not to Christ, but to Reason.
The difference is crucial.
The Enlightenment hoped to bring unity and peace to the world by overcoming our differences through rational technique. And this meant the suppression or silencing of particularized bodies, places, genders, cultures, etc. What it failed to appreciate were its own ethnic, cultural, and racial biases. People imagined reason to be universal and inclusive. But it kept on presenting a face that was European and male and white. And this made it elitist and exclusionary in practice--often violently so.
The difference with the Gospel is that it honors the particular stories between us even as it refuses to make identity ultimate and absolute. What does this mean for those who would follow of Jesus? Lots I think. But at least this: Rather than seeking either to transcend difference or absolutize it, we look to Christ in what might otherwise divide us, and we extend his love across all the boundaries that would keep us apart.
Christians aren’t known for exemplifying this sort of looking and loving. Often we’re colluding with a kind of Enlightenment ethic that serves to exclude and demean even as it pretends to love all (e.g. #alllivesmatter). Or, in reaction, we’re seeking justice through identity-based revolution.
God help us.
I am very fascinated by philosophical discussions and argumentations, and I often seek these out with both acquaintances and strangers alike. These discussions allow me to challenge my insights, by exposing myself to the views of others, and the several ways by which they reason through these views. One day, I was having a discussion with three other people — two girls and one boy. We were having a discussion about women’s rights and how to expand public opportunities for women, as leaders within society. It was a very fascinating discussion that had the ability to stir up a string of suggestions and solutions to, what happens to be, a very pressing issue that exists within our contemporary society. The boy in the group decided to give, what he thought, was a solution to the problem, but I never got to hear that solution. “You don’t have the right to speak for us women,” said one of the girls in the group, “you are a privileged white male.” The other girl simply nodded in concert.
This is not the first time I have been thrust into an argument where one or more people are shot down simply because they occupy a place of privilege in relation to that discussion. As a woman of color, I am rarely ever put in a situation where my privilege is challenged, and yet, I can recognize the danger in shutting people’s opinions simply because of their identity. This, in a very broad sense, is an Argumentum Ad Hominem (Ad Hominem).
CLICK HERE to continue reading
This article first appeared in HuffingtonPost/Udoka Okafor
Editor's note: for examples of ad hominem, click HERE and HERE.
Christ Wisdom: Spiritual Practice in the Beatitudes & the Lord’s Prayer. Christopher Page. Toronto: Path Books, 2004. 134 p. ISBN 1-55126-420-X
There is and has been a growing interest in the Wisdom Traditions from most of the major and minor religions for the last few decades. Wisdom Traditions (like their contemplative counterparts and companions) are often compared and contrasted with
Confessional and Creedal Traditions. Wisdom Traditions are seen as probing the inner and Divine depths and seeking meaningful transformation while Confessional and Creedal Traditions are about intellectual assent to propositions within a particular faith heritage. Wisdom Traditions are often, so such an interpretation goes, about a deeper unity between religious traditions (at an esoteric level), whereas Creedal Traditions are more about differences and divisiveness. The former tends to be idealized while the latter is demoted and subordinated to the exoteric level.
Continue reading "Review of Christopher Page's "Christ Wisdom" - by Ron Dart" »
Humility.
An evasive and misunderstood virtue. I've not learned it. But together, we can ponder it from five wise voices. Don't figure it out. Just be still and marinate.
1. With Moby - "This Wild Darkness"
Tried so hard to be good
For myself, for you, for the hidden and divine
For everything but I can fail just so many times
Ooh, in this darkness
Please light my way Light my way
2. With Bill - "Perfect Humility"
Absolute humility would consist of a state of complete freedom from myself, freedom from all the claims that my defects of character now lay so heavily upon me. Perfect humility would be a full willingness, in all times and places, to find and to do the will of God.
When I meditate on such a vision, I need not be dismayed because I shall never attain it, nor need I swell with presumption that one of these days its virtues shall all be mine.
I only need to dwell on the vision itself, letting it grow and ever more fill my heart. This done, I can compare it with my last-taken personal inventory. Then I get a sane and healthy idea of where I stand on the highway to humility. I see that my journey toward God has scarce begun.
As I thus get down to my right size and stature, my self-concern and importance become amusing. (As Bill Sees It, 106).
3. With Justice - "Woke?"
"The smaller we become, the less our ego has to feed on."
4. With Arvo Pärt - "Have you thanked God for this failure already?"
5. With Bukowski (feat. Waits) - "Nirvana"
When God shows up in the story of the killing snakes in the wilderness, he shows up as the healer of his people. Anyone who will look on the uplifted fiery bronze serpent lives.
Our superstitions, our misapprehensions, about a God who brings death and destruction, a God who cannot be trusted, led the people, lead us, to hide from the face of God in their complaints and misery.
All of today’s lectionary readings have a common message: all the ways that we walk away from love are the origin of the evil and the death that befalls the cosmos, and the good Creator is the healer who restores his beloved world.
In our superstition and worship of idols we always want to pin darkness on the Light of the world. These superstitions have their basis in our fall from God,
In our self-imposed about the charitable character of the Creator.
It was not the bronze serpent who rescued the people from the death they imposed on themselves but God and so when Hezekiah finds them worshipping it and other pagan idols in the Temple some seven to eight centuries later he destroys it.
When Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night, Jesus mentions the episode with the snake and says that the Human One must be lifted up so that all who believe on him (look on him) will be saved.
Jesus tells Nicodemus that God so loved the world that he sent the Son, his only perfect mirror, so that all who believed in him might share the divine life without end.
There’s that word again: believe. We often think of this in terms of our dialogues with our brother skeptics and atheist friends about the very existence of God. Jesus has something far deeper in mind: trust; trust in the God who comes not to condemn the cosmos but to rescue it from death.
His final comments to Nicodemus require wisdom (the Bible is not self-interpreting). Jesus talks about those who do evil remaining in the shadows, unable to trust in the Good and transforming light that shines from the crucified God.
If we pay close attention it is not “the good” who emerge from the shade but the “true.”
Not one of is good, not one, but the “true” humans approach the transfiguring light of God trusting in his deep goodness; knowing that it’s the enemy of their souls, the prince of the powers of the air, the thief, who comes to kill, steal, and destroy; trusting that the Light comes to bestow on us life without measure; trusting that the uncreated light of God that shines from the human face of Jesus Christ will burn away all that is not of or from God and leave only God’s work in us to shine forever like the son in the kingdom of our Father. It is only the works of God for us and in us that survive when we leave the shadows of shame and gaze on his fiery Love.
This means we trust in the goodness of God, renounce our superstitions about a God who brings or cooperates with evil, see our own hand in our deprivations and false paths and devastations, and fearlessly meet his gaze, where his fire makes us eternal.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”
In the beginning was the myth.
—1st sentence, Peter Camenzind
When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?” “Yes, Lord”, he said, “you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”
—John 21: 15
The publication of Hesse`s Peter Camenzind in 1904 was, in many ways, Hesse`s breakthrough novel. Hesse had published a few minor works of poetry and literature before 1904, but with the publication of Peter Camenzind, Hesse became more widely recognized as an up and coming German writer.
Many know Hesse today, at a more sophisticated level, as the author of The Glass Bead Game (Siddharta being the primer for the larger tome that, in some ways, won him the Nobel Prize for literature in 1946). But, there are the many other compact novels that have held the attention of Hesse keeners: Demian, Steppenwolf, Narcissus and Goldmund, Under the Wheel, Wandering, Gertrude, Rosshalde and If the War Goes On… (to include his more political writings). There is also Hesse`s volumes of poetry, multiple paintings and thousands of letters. Hesse, like Thomas Mann, embodies the best and the highest of the German humanist way that has many a thick root going back to the layered soil of Goethe’s life and writings.
It is somewhat intriguing that Hesse engaged Nietzsche in many subtle and sensitive ways and yet Nietzsche is very much in the ascendant these days and waxing well, whereas Hesse (much wiser and more insightful) has waned. There has been, gratefully so, in the last decade plus, a revival and renaissance of Hesse, and, as such, a return to Hesse`s Peter Camenzind is a fine place to begin a journey with Hesse into the core of what animated and held his soul and mind, imagination and literary life.
Continue reading "Analysis and Reflections on Hermann Hesse's "Peter Camenzind" by Ron Dart" »
Click here for audio of "Missing, God Our Mother" - Poem by Jessica Williams
MISSING: GOD OUR MOTHER
Jessica Williams
Mother God,
How did you become another missing Woman?
Lost amongst the multitude of men making meaning for us all.
You are the Substance holding all things together,
and in Your likeness I have been made.
In feminine form,
I embody,
an image of the living God.
(I need to say it again.)
In feminine form,
I embody,
an image of the living God.
(We need to say it again.)
Is it any wonder that Your daughters have lived in exile?
That we are lost and missing too?
But–
some of us,
some of us,
some of us
have noticed.
We ache at Your absence,
our tongues dry
and thirsty
for Your name on our lips.
We are waiting.
We were waiting.
We are waiting no more.
Now, we are searching.
We’ve gathered a team. (We’ll take anyone!)
The more the better for work like this.
With arms linked together
and lanterns lifted high,
we’re walking through the tall dark grass of ancient texts
to find You.
God our Maker,
God our Mother,
God our Father,
God our Friend,
Teach us.
Like children coming of age,
we are starting to see
how much we didn’t see.
Show us.
How You’ve longed to gather us,
our Holy Mother Hen,
and there beneath Your Wings of Love,
to comfort us again.
Feed us.
Like an Eagle or a Mother Bear,
nourish those in need.
And then,
like all Good Mothers. . .
Set us free.
Continue reading "Poem "Missing: God our Mother - Jessica Williams" »
For Christ came not forth again by the mouth of death, but having burst asunder and ripped up in the very midst, the belly of the dragon, thus from His secret chambers (Psalm 19:5) right gloriously He issued forth and flung abroad His beams not to this heaven alone, but to the very throne most high.
***
Let us not, I pray you, let us not slay ourselves by our irreverence, but with all awfulness and purity draw near to It; and when you see It set before you, say thou to yourself,Because of this Body am I no longer earth and ashes, no longer a prisoner, but free: because of this I hope for heaven, and to receive the good things therein, immortal life, the portion of angels, converse with Christ; this Body, nailed and scourged, was more than death could stand against; this Body the very sun saw sacrificed, and turned aside his beams; for this both the veil was rent in that moment, and rocks were burst asunder, and all the earth was shaken. This is even that Body, the blood-stained, the pierced, and that out of which gushed the saving fountains, the one of blood, the other of water, for all the world.
Would you from another source also learn its power? Ask of her diseased with an issue of blood, who laid hold not of Itself, but of the garment with which It was clad; nay not of the whole of this, but of the hem: ask of the sea, which bare It on its back: ask even of the Devil himself, and say, Whence have you that incurable stroke? Whence have you no longer any power? Whence are you captive? By whom have you been seized in your flight?
And he will give no other answer than this, The Body that was crucified.
By this were his goads broken in pieces; by this was his head crushed; by this were the powers and the principalities made a show of. For,
says he, having put off from himself principalities and powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.
(Colossians 2:15)
Ask also Death, and say, whence is it that your sting has been taken away? Your victory abolished? Your sinews cut out? And thou become the laughing-stock of girls and children, who wast before a terror even to kings and to all righteous men?
And he will ascribe it to this Body. For when this was crucified, then were the dead raised up, then was that prison burst, and the gates of brass were broken, and the dead were loosed, and the keepers of hell-gate all cowered in fear. And yet, had He been one of the many, death on the contrary should have become more mighty; but it was not so. For He was not one of the many. Therefore was death dissolved. And as they who take food which they are unable to retain, on account of that vomit up also what was before lodged in them; so also it happened unto death. That Body, which he could not digest, he received: and therefore had to cast forth that which he had within him. Yea, he travailed in pain, while he held Him, and was straitened until He vomited Him up. Wherefore says the Apostle, Having loosed the pains of death.
(Acts 11:24) For never woman labouring of child was so full of anguish as he was torn and racked in sunder, while he held the Body of the Lord. And that which happened to the Babylonian dragon, when, having taken the food it burst asunder in the midst, this also happened unto him. For Christ came not forth again by the mouth of death, but having burst asunder and ripped up in the very midst, the belly of the dragon, thus from His secret chambers (Psalm 19:5) right gloriously He issued forth and flung abroad His beams not to this heaven alone, but to the very throne most high. For even there did He carry it up.
This Body has He given to us both to hold and to eat; a thing appropriate to intense love. For those whom we kiss vehemently, we oft-times even bite with our teeth. Wherefore also Job, indicating the love of his servants towards him, said, that they ofttimes, out of their great affection towards him, said, Oh! That we were filled with his flesh!
(Job 31:31) Even so Christ has given to us to be filled with His flesh, drawing us on to greater love.
intoxicated with death
mesmerized by death
convinced of the necessary rule of death
technologizing death
acceding to the omnipresence of death
to this omnivorous power.
So his word makes the slight
all but imperceptible difference
(which is finally the only difference).
A good man, himself powerless,
stands at the side of powerless men
and says to death No
for them for himself.
Continue reading "A Meditation on Jesus - Daniel Berrigan (via Jim Forest)" »
This weekend a lot of Christians around the world will hear in worship the story of Jesus and the cleansing of the Temple.
People these days like to reference the whip of cords that Jesus made to drive out the animals. It comes up in a lot of online debates and discussions.
Jesus fashions the whip from what the original Greek identifies as basket-weaving materials, from reeds. It’s not the sort of whip that led to the deep stripes Jesus or Paul bore.
I wonder how many sermons this weekend will excuse all sorts of human anger and violence in the name of this unusual scene?
James tells us that human anger does not produce the righteousness God seeks. The apostle does not qualify his wisdom. He does not give us caveats where human anger works. Yet this particular human driving animals out of the Temple is God enfleshed. Jesus is the human God and that matters for how we understand and how we use this moment.
Continue reading "On Justifying Violence with Jesus' Whip - Fr. Kenneth Tanner" »