I love the city

I love the city. I love the city in November. I love bare trees and leaves, brown and crumbling on the street. I love a clear sky and 40 degrees. I love people walking and running and dogs tied up waiting for their people outside the bagel shop.

Sentiment

Sentiment is poison to the Christian life.

bored tourists

Merton on "oriental philosophy"--

"Can we be content to leave the rich Asian heritage of wisdom on the level of 'comparative religion,' and subject it to a superficial and passing consideration, checking off concepts like 'Tao' and 'Dharma' and 'Dhyana' as a bored tourist might saunter through the Louvre vaguely registering the famous masterpieces as he walked by them?" (Thomas Merton Reader, 302)

...bored tourists! That's how we go through life!

Rock'n'roll

Bob Dylan interview book. A Rolling Stone interview from 1986 about rock'n'roll not being viable anymore. That it was on the outside--listened to by kids who were on the outside... who weren't 'in.' But now rock'n'roll is the norm. Politicians use rock'n'roll songs for campaign themes and corporations use them to sell things. It's not rock'n'roll anymore. It's not outside anymore.

Can't we say that about the Church?

He said that no one wants to hear rock'n'roll that's outside (and, so, still able to strip the lies from the mythology we've created), so the music becomes just an extension of where we are. An uncritical reflection of the world.

In part this is because being outrageous--transgressing--which at one time was a means to an end, is now okay--the NORM even. The expectation. Transgression no longer serves the greater purpose of truth-telling, but is it's own end... it's own purpose. And not just about heavy political issues, but about life, work, sex, love, etc.

Again--hasn't this happened to the Church, too?

Fundamental Loss

Father Schmemann said something in his journals about our fundamental loss...

"Religion is absolutely helpless, not because of the weakness and the fall of
religion, but because religion has ceased to be the essential term of reference,
the basis of a vision of the world, an evaluation of all these 'wants.'"

He goes on to describe the religious awe of priests and bishops (Orthodox) listening to financial advisors... the precise sort of awe that is missing for religion today. This is all very painful to read because it's so obviously true and then I open Merton's Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander and he writes:

"...and we have lost our fundamentally religious view of reality, of being and
truth..."

This after quoting Gandhi who had written about giving up evil no matter the consequences.

Shmemann again:

"...religion does not have such an indispensible place anymore..."

Models

Murray Jardine's book (The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society: How Christianity can save modernity from itself) has a simple, but perhaps useful illustration for Christian anthropology and eschatology.

He says (I'm simplifying this a lot) that doctors have a model of a human being with everything working correctly. That there may not be such a person doesn't invalidate the model. You don't want a doctor to determine her success in curing you on the model of a sick person. Auto mechanics, too. No perfect car, maybe, but when you want them to fix it, you don't want them to settle for doing it according to a model that says your headlights not working is okay.

So, does our model (human, society, etc.) start off sick? If, in the name of being 'realistic' you settle for a model of the world that assumes original sin as normative, you'll never even be able to imagine or recognize the Kingdom of God.

Baseball

2 people are watching baseball.

One is a fan--played when he was young, mabye has kids into it now, etc. When he watches the game, he gets all the ins and outs. Understands the nuances of when to pitch a fastball vs. a curve ball, when and why to let the first pitch go, when it makes sense to bunt, when to slide, why a coach would pull someone out or someone in, etc. This person gets a lot of enjoyment from the game and in fact may even prefer a game that has a lower score if it is close and well played.

The other has never watched it before. Nothing against it, but doesn't know all of the rules and certainly not the subtleties.

If the first person is worried the second person is going to go away hating baseball, what should he do?

The rules are complicated. Way too complicated to explain to someone new. Maybe he can simplify the rules in a new league... Maybe even take the jargon (short-stops, sacrifice, force-outs, ERA's, double plays, etc.) out of the game since that's a lot to remember...

What other ways could we find to make it easy for the second guy to get it? There are probably a lot more than I'm thinking of. But how long before it's no longer baseball?

Isn't the best way to get him to love it to invite him to play?

Knucklehead

Every day I'm asking myself if my talking/teaching/preaching, etc. is pointless. Why can't we just come together and celebrate the Eucharist? Who cares what I have to say when Jesus the Christ is present among us? I sure don't. I'm a knucklehead. I just want to read and study scripture and theology, have good conversations (outside of the Mass) and then come to the sacrament to let it (him) do the talking.

Dark Age?

Sometimes it seems like we have entered a new dark age in the Church... Like no one knows the basic story. Everyone trying to put a stamp on the story, but the stamps are all idiosyncratic.

It's not that I think the Church is gone or anything. The sacraments are still being celebrated. There is still a priesthood and apostolic ministry. That's not what I'm talking about. But maybe we are in another situation like those times in history when priests were undereducated and the Church is benighted. God is working in the Church, yes, but in SPITE of us.

I guess that's the way it always is, isn't it? It just seems especially to be the case now.

Still, our God is the God who brings the dead to life.

Eastern Theology

When I spend a lot of time with Eastern theology I have a hard time going back to Western theology which ends up seeming so clunky in comparison. So prosaic. Does that mean that most of the books on my shelf are worthless?

Scenes from a movie...

Standing in Trader Joe's... feeling romantic... thinking my life only really becomes real (it seems sometimes) when I can imagine it as scenes from a movie.

Rain. A good book. Tea and a fire...

or

The sun shining as we drive down the highway--the world bleached and us free.