Vagabond @ Home

I look carefully in every direction without finding it.
I frown--if not here, then where?
I leaf through magazines, search the web,
Spin the globe that sits behind the sofa.
I pace through the house, following the usual
Circuitous route from room to room,
But I've seen it all before, and it is difficult
To see it now, these old familiar views.
I sigh, finally stopping in front of the bookshelf.
Heart of Darkness? River-Horse? O Come Ye Back to Ireland?
I consider carefully for several minutes
Before heading for my front door.
I guess I will just go for a walk.

Pooh, the sage

"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "What's the first thing you say to yourself?"

"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"

"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully.

"It's the same thing," he said.

--from Winnie-the-Pooh, by A. A. Milne

Poetry abuse

Billy Collins is one of my favorite modern poets although you should not infer from this that I am particularly conversant with the full spectrum of modern poets or their writings. I am reading his anthology, Sailing Alone Around the Room, and one of the poems caught my eye as relevant not only to art but also to my prior post. I want very much to post it here, but it is under copyright and connected to a living poet. It is short and, to my mind, quite worth a quick read. You can find it online at the Library of Congress under the title Introduction to Poetry.

Truth, consequences, and a new vocabulary

For the past several years, I have been on something of a spiritual journey. As I travelled, I discovered that the religious vocabulary familiar to me was inadequate to describe the new places, people, ideas, emotions, and stories that I encountered. I have found help with this language problem in many different places, some of them quite surprising. I have found that Zen and Taoist concepts caused me to see the life and teachings of Jesus with new eyes, for example. Once upon a time, I would have been afraid to even look into such things; but, as God grew larger to me, fear suddenly seemed a silly thing to adopt as a guide on this journey.

One source of help that I have mentioned on this blog before is the NPR program Speaking of Faith, hosted by Krista Tippett. When I found that Krista Tippett had written a book (also called Speaking of Faith), I immediately put it on the shortlist of books I wanted to read. I finally picked it up at Hastings yesterday, and I am finding it to be enormously helpful. The only bad thing is that I am devouring it so quickly I will not have time to post all of the quotes I like on my blog before I am done!

One issue that arose when I began to explore the world with less fear was the relationship between science and religion, a relationship that a very vocal minority on both sides would like us to believe must be oppositional, frightening, and even apocalyptic. The closer I looked, however, the less I believed that this antagonistic approach was necessary. Here is part of what Krista Tippett has to say about faith and reason in the chapter of her book entitled "Rethinking Religious Truth":

In many ways, religion comes from the same place in us that art comes from. The language of the human heart is poetry. Music is a language of the spirit. The metier of religious ideas is parable, verse, and story. All of our names for God are metaphor--necessary license, approximation, and analogy.

...we can't compare faith flatly to reason and declare it intellectually inferior. Its territory is the drama of human life, where art is more precise than science, where ideas are lived and breathed. Our minds can be engaged in this realm as seriously as in the construction of argument or logic, but in a different way. Life and art both test the limits and landscape of argument and logic.

I think the debate about science or reason vs. religion is largely the result of confusion about what science and religion have to tell us. I'm aware that there are lots of people who disagree with me on this, but it seems to me that truth comes in more than one guise with more than one way to get at it. Science is one way. It uses tools like measurement and observation to explore truths that are measureable and observable. Those truths are defined, in fact, in terms of what is measured and observed. I agree with Krista Tippett that religion is more closely tied to art, using tools like metaphor and symbol to explore truths that are difficult to measure or observe, truths relating to mystery and emotion, humanity and God.

Of course, if we mistake one for the other, things can get confused. When we see the Bible, for example, as a book consisting only of literal historical truths, we tend to bump up against measurements and observations that suggest different conclusions about reality. Imagine someone trying to use Robert Frost's poem Mending Wall as a practical guide for stone masonry. Just because this is a bad idea does not mean that the poem contains no truth, just that the truth it contains is different from that being sought. On the other hand, the manual on masonry would likely have little to say on whether you should build the wall between you and your neighbor or why.

Krista Tippett expresses part of her perspective on the Bible below:

The Bible, as I read it now, is not a catalogue of absolutes, as its champions sometimes imply. Nor is it a document of fantasy, as its critics charge. It is an ancient record of an ongoing encounter with God in the darkness as well as the light of human experience. Like all sacred texts, it employs multiple forms of language to convey truth: poetry, narrative, legend, parable, echoing imagery, wordplay, prophecy, metaphor, didactics, wisdom saying.

I think our confusion about the kinds of truth we are dealing with can have serious ramifications. When we treat all of the Bible, including poetic imagery, as presenting literal facts (a tendency that is comparatively modern, by the way), we open our truth to legitimate criticism through measurement and observation. We then either have to believe something that does not match observable facts, and therefore marginalize ourselves, or we have to abandon our claim of truth and stop taking the Bible seriously. When, instead, we realize that religion is the caretaker of a different sort of truth, we can pursue that truth in concert with other kinds of truth in a kind of symbiotic dance, science and philosophy and religion and art all twirling and leaping together to the music of the universe, more closely unified, ironically, than if we perceived all our truths the same.

This realization is a part of the new vocabulary I am learning. It does not make God smaller to recognize truth wherever we find it. On the contrary! The small God is the one held captive to human understanding, to our limitations and the boundaries we draw to keep out those who make us uncomfortable. The Jesus I meet in the Bible seemed to be constantly crossing the boundaries drawn for him, confounding human understanding, and opening eyes to the limitless love of God. That's the Jesus I want to know, the one who opens my eyes to the far horizons, far beyond my understanding, my failures, and my comfort.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other" doesn't make any sense.

Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi - 13th century

Depression's good side?

Our culture has an interesting relationship with depression. Some pundits lament what they see as the overmedication of America. Eric Wilson wrote a book called Against Happiness, in which he talks about a vital need for sorrow as part of the human condition which we medicate away at our own peril. I have heard some people in religious communities refer to depression as a product of selfish thinking, a lack of faith, or simply a "trial" we must walk through. Depression has become the malady du jour for artists, writers, and thinkers. Somehow we think that the darkness that some people descend into holds important insights into the human condition. If they had not fallen into darkness, what would become of their works of genius? Sometimes I think it is an unwritten rule that only dark, depressing novels (paintings, songs, movies, et cetera) can be taken seriously as real art that has something to say.

Peter D. Kramer is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Brown University and author of several books on depression. I stumbled across a 2005 article he wrote for the New York Times magazine called There's Nothing Deep About Depression, in which he examines more closely this odd sort of reverence we seem to hold for the depressed state. Here is a little excerpt:

Audiences seemed to be aware of the medical perspective, even to endorse it -- but not to have adopted it as a habit of mind. To underscore this inconsistency, I began to pose a test question: We say that depression is a disease. Does that mean that we want to eradicate it as we have eradicated smallpox, so that no human being need ever suffer depression again? I made it clear that mere sadness was not at issue. Take major depression, however you define it. Are you content to be rid of that condition?

Always, the response was hedged: aren't we meant to be depressed? Are we talking about changing human nature?

I took those protective worries as expressions of what depression is to us. Asked whether we are content to eradicate arthritis, no one says, ''Well, the end-stage deformation, yes, but let's hang on to tennis elbow, housemaid's knee and the early stages of rheumatoid disease.'' Multiple sclerosis, acne, schizophrenia, psoriasis, bulimia, malaria -- there is no other disease we consider preserving. But eradicating depression calls out the caveats.

I have a bit of experience with depression, both personally and with family members. It isn't, so far as I've been able to tell, a mysterious fount of inspiration, but, rather, a debilitating disease. I sometimes wonder if, in our enchantment with the dazzlingly depressing in various art forms, we have mistaken despair for realism, sickness for courage, and darkness for insight. I suspect our fascination with the thoughts of the deeply depressed is just the most socially acceptable form of voyeurism available outside of reality TV.

Now, I don't deny sorrow a place in our lives. There is certainly a difference--however disputed the line may be--between clinical depression and sadness. Neither do I suggest we only allow happy endings (although I admit to being inordantly fond of them). Life can be brutal and horrific. Denying that suffering exists does nothing to alleviate it. But perhaps it is time to recognize that depression is not a higher state, a nirvana from which to bring back gems of truth, a normal thing for those of an "artistic temperament." Depression is a sickness every bit as real and every bit as dangerous as hypertension or diabetes, and I think we ought to take it seriously enough to separate it from the complex, brilliant creativity sometimes found in those who suffer from it.

Pullman must die!

Well, the loudest Christians are gathering wood, preparing to burn Phillip Pullman at the stake for daring to write a book that spawned a movie that represents his beliefs. The title of this egregious book (and the movie) is The Golden Compass. Yes, Mr. Pullman is atheist or agnostic (depending on the interview). Yes, Mr. Pullman is anti-religion and even admits to promoting said view through his stories. What cracks me up is that the charge leveled at Mr. Pullman is that he is trying to persuade children of his views. Children! Um. Has anyone heard of Veggie Tales? Mr. Pullman isn't the only one foisting (What a great word! Say it again with me: "Foisting!" I knew you could.) his beliefs on unsuspecting young minds. Isn't our job as parents to help our children explore and process all that is foisted upon them? I know, I know; it's much less work to simply abandon them to the Christian entertainment industry. I mean, helping them think for themselves implies we have to, right? What the Flying Spaghetti Monster is that all about?

My wife recently posted on her blog about her views on this horrifying movie event, and I heartily concur. She did a fine job, and I won't repeat what she had to say. Instead, I will add a couple quotes from a recent article on the hubbub that I found on CNN.com titled "Is 'Golden Compass' Selling Atheism to Kids?" The answer to the title's question is: probably. Still, I think the quotes below suggest a better response to the issue than a cheery Yuletide Pullman bonfire.

"If you just say 'no' to your kids without engaging in a conversation, they're going to see the movie anyway and all you're teaching them is power, not really teaching your values. If we have faith, what are we afraid of?"
--Sister Rose Paccate, director of the Pauline Center of Media Studies in Culver City, California

Donna Freitas, a visiting assistant professor of religion at Boston University, goes a step further, calling the books a "theological masterpiece." Pullman's intent aside, she views the trilogy as a treatise on Christian belief.

To Freitas, the series' mysterious "Dust" -- portrayed in the books as connected to original sin -- represents the Holy Spirit. Pullman is not attacking religion but those who use power to corrupt, she said.

I think Freitas is wrong. Pullman is attacking religion. Art, however, is always made up of two parties (artist and audience) connected by a medium. Both parties bring their experiences, beliefs, emotions, and reason to the medium. Most authors would say that it would be hubris to insist that readers "get" their message and only their message from a story. In this sense, I think Freitas' interpretation is certainly feasible.

Ultimately, I want to help my children form values, not merely enforce my power as a parent. They must learn, in age-appropriate ways, to engage with the world in which they live. I want them to react not from fear, but carefully, thoughtfully, and compassionately. Perhaps we should spend more time working through these things with our children and less time campaigning to make everyone we disagree with shut up. After all, If our faith is genuine, what do we have to be afraid of?

But what is it's message?

This weekend I finished reading a book and realized with horror that I had nothing to read!* In a mild panic, I scoured my bookshelf for something I hadn't read enough times to be able to outline the plot from memory. My eye fell on Ursula K. Le Guin's book, A Wizard of Earthsea. That might work. Poking around the author's website, I ran across a wonderful little article that might be of interest to anyone who is engaged in writing or reading fiction. The article is called A Message About Messages, and it describes exactly how I look at meaning and message in fiction. Here's a little teaser:

Readers—kids and adults—ask me about the message of one story or another. I want to say to them, "Your question isn't in the right language."

As a fiction writer, I don't speak message. I speak story. Sure, my story means something, but if you want to know what it means, you have to ask the question in terms appropriate to storytelling. Terms such as message are appropriate to expository writing, didactic writing, and sermons—different languages from fiction.

* "Nothing to read" in this case means "no unread work of fiction that suited my current mood."

Praying in Ink

In her book, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, Elizabeth Gilbert writes about talking to God by writing a dialogue in her notebook. I think my journal is a little like that. It is filled with entries that begin in despair and end in exultation, entries that begin in confusion and end in clarity. Amy says I should gather them all together and write a book!

Is this my talking with God? I would be uncomfortable putting a "Thus saith the Lord" on anything that comes out of my pen, but it does seem to be a key way of finding peace for me. It forces me to slow my thoughts with the physical rhythm of my pen and focus them with the words on the page. It is a way to be still and know, a way to quiet the clamor so I can listen, a way to clear the clutter so I can see and understand.

So these words become my prayer. This page becomes my cathedral. Here I am in the middle of it, naked and quiet, listening for a still, small voice in the scratching of my pen.

Harry Potter

I recently finished the final book in J.K. Rowling's unbelievably popular series. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was actually better than I expected. I had read some well-it's-OK-but-not-as-good-as-such-and-such kind of reviews, so I went in not sure what I would think. Now? My enthusiasm for the series has been completely confirmed.

The thing I like about the series more than anything else is that I find in it what recently deceased author Madeleine L'Engle felt was missing from the Harry Potter story: meaning. I enjoy a good story, but more and more as I get older, I like to take something away from the story: some grain of hope, a deeper understanding of myself or other people, some insight into the world. I do not, however, have any fondness whatsoever for allegory or morality tales. They tend to oversimplify the complexity of life and to be preachy. I think when an author tells it like it is, meaning will arise from the story.

Anyway, until the end, I'd have been hard pressed to slap a meaning or theme on the Harry Potter series. Now, looking back, I do see a theme running all the way through; and, ironically enough for all the Harry-Potter-is-the-devil religious uproar over the books, it is perhaps best expressed with a verse from the Christian bible.

For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. (Matt 16:25)

I'm not suggesting this theme was J.K. Rowling's purpose for writing the books or that there aren't a million other themes to be found in the books, only that this is the one that stands out to me.

I can hear the fundamentalist sputtering starting already: "But--but--but--" Spit it out. "But, Jesus said, 'for me,' and Harry Potter doesn't say anything about Jesus!" Oh? And what about Jesus' statement that whatever we do for "the least of these" we do for him? Kind of broadens your perspective doesn't it? The fact is that Jesus' life, death, and resurrection were a simple testimony of the power of this idea of finding life by losing it and losing it when we are too busy trying to save it.

I know that reading such terrible books was supposed to lead to my sacrificing my firstborn by a full moon and calling for the devil to possess my soul, but instead I found myself lost in contemplation of the wonderful mystery of the resurrection. It reminds me of a part of a verse from Carrie Newcomer's amazing song, "Holy As A Day Is Spent":

Holy is the place I stand
To give whatever small good I can
And the empty page, and the open book
Redemption everywhere I look

Your mileage may vary, but in this particular open book, I did indeed find plenty of redemption.