The Christian Narrative and Psychology

-1The Christian Narrative and Psychology

The twentieth century marked the formalization of psychology as a way that the modern human could understand their own inner workings which had become important since the Enlightenment. It established itself as a discipline by applying what had developed into the “natural sciences” to humans as objects of inquiry. The ensuing developments created a very specific branch of discourse on human beings called psychology. Psychology and Christianity have had a past filled with various interactions, some positive, others negative.

This is a proposal towards a Christian psychology, which I hope to engage in more concretely as time passes. The reason for this proposal and not an inquiry on various possible integrations is that the Christian faith has a lot to learn but it also has a lot to offer and must remain distinctively itself. Because we believe that what modernity calls psychology will be inherently problematic at some points in its interaction with the Christian narrative, we must avoid syncretism and allow the tradition to speak to us from its own voice.

Contrary to some beliefs psychology did not start in the nineteenth century, it was and is an enterprise that is native to Christianity, and various thinkers in the ancient world. Augustine’s Confessions are a champion example of Christian thought regarding what could be considered psychology. Christianity has always been concerned with the human nature’s relation to God and the world and each other, and this has led to profound inquiries into human nature, and disposition. Furthermore, ours is a religion that has been challenged profoundly to answer questions about integrity, morality, development of persons, obstacles to that development, the structure of emotions, and behavior dispositions. The tradition has often found voices that were strongly concerned about the nature of persons, Augustine, in essence based his whole program of what human nature is on its call to worship God, and sought to define the moral life and the good within the context of that calling. Far from being non-psychological, Augustine’s work reflects some of the most profound inquiry into the human condition ever written.

Psychology as presented by the current establishment is at its heart an apologetic for modernity’s conception of human being. It has at least until very recently, been a way that modernists and secularists could make spiritual and ontological descriptions that we have been taught to implicitly accept as normative. “Psychology” can be a discursive formation among others when used to assert ideas against Christian truths. But Christianity must reject these assumptions and the limitations established in order to maintain her own assertions on what is human nature, and what constitutes a psychology. Psychology can be an instructive and beneficial science when used properly, and while the descriptions of the institution called psychology may be helpful, these are not things which are foreign to the Christian narrative.

So we can see that it is not the case that Christians do not already have a psychology, it is just that its discursive structure differs from the limitations that the current establishment of psychology has demarcated for itself, and it is very narrow in scope indeed. Ancient psychology had the freedom to ask ultimate questions and saw them as affective towards behavior and development, whereas most forms of psychology represented in the American psychological institution and major universities across the world tend to dismiss these questions as secondary to their own discourse, or of an unrelated field, or consider the questions objects of study, without asking the questions themselves. Christians believe that life is integrated and while there are many aspects of being human, the mind is not separable from the rest of life, because Christians believe that the mind is a gift from God. While it is helpful for psychology to have demarcations, it is only to show that a Christian psychology has a broader sweep, and is distinctive from modernity’s project. This distinction is always welcome.

What the twentieth century schools call psychology are not the only things that might have the ability to be justifiably called by that name. What this establishment has sought to claim as a new project unheard of before modernity is simply untrue. While we have to admit the exponential growth of data in the last 150 years, we do not have to assume that with this data comes the chronological superiority of the recent developments over against the past. Christians of all types have been concerned with Human nature, development, and behaviors, St. Augustine, Kierkegaard, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Gregory the Great, C.S. Lewis (in his Screwtape Letters), Fyodor Dostoyevsky, George Eliot, and Leo Tolstoy are all Christian psychologists. The goal of a contemporary formation of Christian psychology seeks to retain their ideas our method will differ, at least mildly. I do not assert that Christian psychology only be an academic way of talking about Christian views on human nature, but that we remember that a lot of Christian psychology has been written as narrative. We should see these authors not as secondary to the main body of psychological work, but as Christians see their work through the lens of psychology and give them equal footing to the works of secular psychologists.

Notice how Christian psychology as cited above is narrative in character, it happens most often within the context of stories, it is the stories we tell and the overarching story that is our own that motivates us to inquiry and action as regards the human person. While we embrace empirical studies, we do not place on them a favor that dismisses as irrelevant the Christian tradition, or what its authors have said about the nature of humanity. We rather give preeminence to the tradition and propose questions that the tradition can answer on its own terms. We are not bound to empirical method, but rather use it as another tool among a multiplicity of others serving the purpose of the church which is to call all humans to recognize that their reality is only as intelligible as its worship to the God revealed in the life of Jesus Christ. Psychology does not have to be an apologetic for modernity’s definition of human kind. The Christian tradition has much to offer as its own discipline alternative to the secular modernist project especially in the areas of personality psychology and psychotherapy.

Christian psychology is an alternative type of psychology that starts with foundations based not in the “third language” of reason and universal perspectives, or individual autonomy, but within the assumptions of the Christian narrative. There are words and thought structures in the Christian story ready to answer, if not already answering the questions of psychology. These answers just need to be illuminated in the context of psychology though a certain hermeneutic lens and we shall see that all over the Christian narrative and history is a rich proliferation of material on various topics that could be grouped together as a Christian psychology.

It will be the task of a distinctively Christian psychology to read these texts for their answers that would be termed “psychological” and see these either presented in full quotations or reinterpreted so that they may form a body of work that could be recognized by our contemporaries as psychology. While we do not embrace their limitations on what constitutes a psychology, we should engage in psychology and its establishment as Christians.

We should seek to allow the Christian narrative to speak to psychological questions, but on it own terms and with its own particular answers. The tradition has many answers to offer about the nature of human persons, what the basic needs and tendencies of humans are, what their teleologies and directions are in regards to their psychic nature. Christian psychology is an alternative to the modern project and its assumptions that human beings are autonomous minds cut off from all other things, and living solely for themselves. The Christian alternative offers meaning in communion and community, development through acts of service, well being through being a peace maker, being willing to suffer for Jesus, and being poor in spirit.2 Modern psychology has proliferated the view that a human being is little more than a brain operating a body, or at best some sort of soul operated by a brain trapped within a body. In most psychological establishments, the mind and its health are detached from questions of being, and seen as programmable and purely physical. The Christian narrative offers another anthropology, and thus another psychology.

Our tradition has from the beginning had a stake in certain claims about human nature, development, motivations, character formations and how to go about achieving the proper character and correcting bad character, all things which modern psychology is about. It seems to me that it is not that Christian psychology does not as yet exist, it just does not exist in a form recognized by the current psychological establishment and many Christians as psychology. Yet it is there, waiting to be interacted with.

It is my concern that liberals, both political and theological will sell themselves short on what makes Christianity Christian in order to maintain a sense of being relevant to the outside world. However, the jettison of Christian convictions in favor of others is not only going against the tradition it is going against the very grain of the universe that Christians understand through the revelation of Jesus Christ. Christians have made a metaphysical claim about the universe, starting with the teachings of Jesus who said that to be blessed (makairos gr.) is to be among other things, poor in spirit, and to mourn, and to make peace. Doing well according to Jesus, and the New Testament witness is compatible with suffering. These claims are not only metaphysical, having a claim in the way we see reality, they are psychological. Jesus is claiming that the person who is well and doing well, is one who suffers for His sake and lives a life directed towards others, wellness according to Jesus is not a private affair, but one which is for the sake of others. People who are psychically whole can suffer, mourn, be meek, reviled, long for righteousness, be merciful, be pure in heart. These are all marks of the psychologically developed Christian.

The integration approach to Christian psychology seeks usually to marry one or another view of psychology with the established Christian tradition in a form of syncretism that leaves neither one the same. Some models are influencing the church towards assertiveness and personal empowerment. We reject this assertion, citing it as idolatry. Christians believe that the real power in the world is had not by people who carry crowns but crosses. Rather than agreeing with the world’s ideas we seek to read the tradition as it presents itself to us through the church and participation in the community, and ask questions that might help us answer the same questions being addressed by establishment psychology.

The only thing that integration between psychology and theology will do is establish a hybrid that is neither here nor there and is ultimately irrelevant because it is based in neither of the two traditions strong enough to maintain a historical presence. It will be modernity’s anthropology with questions about how to see Christians develop as such, which will render largely unintelligible work. This has already been the case in many places where Christianity has been used in the psychology of religion. It is not my aim to have Christians withdraw from psychology, but to engage in psychology as Christians, backed by the tradition to which they have sworn allegiance, informed by Christian anthropology and pastoral as well as spiritual considerations.

Christian psychology is not a matter of applying this or that theory offered by the establishment to the bible or Jesus or psychoanalyzing historical figures to get behind the text. Instead Christian psychology is a way of reading the text, a way of reading the bible the historical narrative and the church as answers to psychological questions. Christian psychology is at its heart a hermeneutic that will focus on reading Christian history, from Jesus through the saints to the world of today as part of a narrative, as part of a story able to answer our questions about ourselves and our development and nature from the convictions of our belief. Thus Christian psychology will look fundamentally different from the psychology offered to us from the establishment that has drawn its story from the Enlightenment.

There is a the question of what Christian psychology looks like in the 21st century, and I think that the answer lies in two fields. I think that Christian psychology should continue to be developed as narrative, in stories, plays, novels, and other forms of narrative that show to us the Christian life as a story we can participate in. These texts will continue to be inspirational to Christians of all levels if they are written as well told, well plotted, stories, not Christian books, but Christians writing books about everything else, including psychology. Dostoyevsky was a master of this, and I think that within the community, Christian psychology should continue to at least in part maintain itself as a storied discourse. If our theology is inherently narrative, then our psychology should be as well.

However, stories alone will not answer all possible questions and a body of work that looks like the psychology of the establishment should also be welcomed. A systematic formation of Christian answers to psychological questions is necessary. Yet this body of work might not be immediately recognizable as a psychology by established psychology because it is approaching with a different paradigm. It is a paradigm that says that The Triune God matters, it is also saying that the alternative psychology is devoid of true or ultimate meaning because it fails to realize this. We should welcome a systematic approach that would draw out a distinctive discourse we could call a psychology from our tradition and set the answers before us, and we should try to draft distinctively Christian answers to questions about behavior and development from within our anthropological commitments.

A Christian psychology must while rejecting the anthropology of the establishment continue to engage it, to assess questions about the two hemispheres of the brain, the cognitive abilities of newborns, the way in which eyewitnesses construct and reconstruct memories, the components of intelligence and many other things. The Christian story may not always have answers for these things nor do we seek proof texts of one or another part of the tradition, but that is why we have a narrative theology, it draws on developments, and sees our theology as developing towards a goal. There will be methodological conflicts, since assertions about the natural world will not lead the Christian psychology I am proposing to make judgments on the nature of God, since we see the created order as partially unknowable, since it is fallen, and mistrust natural theology as a way of reaching the God we see revealed in Jesus Christ.

A Christian psychology that rejects natural theology will be shaped very differently by these questions than a theology that makes every observable detail of ultimate importance in assessing the character and nature of God. We believe rather that only God reveals Himself to us, we cannot find Him, and He reveals Himself to us through the life, death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. To look at the world is to look at both a fallen order, and the birth of a new one, therefore a Christian psychology takes stock of the nature of things, but reserves ultimate judgment to her metaphysical claims, that the world in which we believe is a world where violence is passed, where disability, and personality fragmentation are at an end. A world where all things are made right. We reject the belief in inalienable rights, and the dignity of the human person, because we see these things not as inherent qualities of a person, but contingent upon the climax of our narrative, the cross. Thus our beliefs about the nature of disability, and suffering will differ greatly from those of our establishment counterparts, since our narrative shapes our interpretation of the evidence, as their narrative based in the Enlightenment shapes theirs.

Not only is a Christian psychology sourced differently from an academic perspective, drawing texts not normally considered psychology as sources, furthermore it is pastorally driven. The goal of a Christian psychology is not self-actualization or empowerment, nor is it personal autonomy, but is primarily concerned with the proper worship of God and pastoral developments towards that worship in the life of the individual and the community. Personal aims of a Christian psychology are solidarity with the poor, and the weak, a constructive correction of vices, and a mediation of the Christian narrative in intelligible ways as to make realizable by a wider audience the claims of the faith. For protestant churches, Christian psychology should function largely as catechesis does in Orthodox traditions. It is about the formation of Christians, and interactions with their teleological development, which stated exclusively is that human life is only as intelligible and proper as its worship of The Triune God revealed by Jesus of Nazareth, and all claims about the meaning of life and interpretations of data set forth are subject to inspection by this hermeneutic lens and required to be in coherence with it..

So, to be more specific, a Christian psychology should have a few key elements to make it a psychology in the first place.

I suppose this begins with an understanding of what we mean by human nature, and whether there is at all a human nature to be talked about. Karl Barth rejected the idea of human nature, saying that the only true human is Christ. I think Barth is right, but it does not answer the matter of we face as counselors, pastors and psychologists, so we can call it the fallen nature, or human tendency. But these questions are shaped by Christian teleological and eschatological beliefs, so that the goal is Christ, and human nature looks like Jesus himself. Christ is the source of human nature, and the true humanity, to be truly human one must be truly Christian. So, the goal of human nature is exemplifying what the church has claimed about Christ, historically, and at its heart, human nature is about the Christian virtue of charity. But we must ask specific questions within this framework about the motivations and needs of human persons, not only theologically, but theopragmatically, in terms of the Christian life, what are our needs, desires and behaviors? What in humans is necessary for them to function properly according to the purpose for which they were created?

A psychology should sketch if not at the very least make suggestions on what personality traits characterize a fully developed and mature person, keeping in mind a necessary gap between this side of the eschaton and the fullness of the resurrection. This question is really a development of the nature of pastoral care, by describing in detail what characterizes Christians as Christians in their behaviors. We recognize that modern psychologies have virtues as well, some of their virtues are merely incongruous with certain claims from within Christian orthodoxy. This is basically the work of the church anyways, describing person hood according to certain ideas that Jesus and the church have claimed, but maybe repopularizing them and presenting them in a way that liberal protestants as well as conservatives might understand. Seeing the Christian narrative and participation as part of that personhood, will help create not an autonomous individualized account, but help us ask the question, what sort of relations is a fully developed person engaged in?

When we ask that question a whole new set of ethics is being done that respects the communal nature of human being, and shares the Christian claim that all being is communal. Being itself is a type of communion, especially for Christians. So the propositions set forth should ask about what type of relations such a person is engaging in, and what type of virtues they show forth in those relations. This is the only way to undo modern psychology’s obsession with privatizing the individual. Further this leads to integrating questions about successful personhood with successful developments, especially if we open the bracket of relations to not only interpersonal ones, but questions of relation to their environment and agency.

I suppose the next thing necessary is what psychology calls neuroses, dysfunctions and disorders. In other words, a Christian psychology proposes vices or behaviors that are destructive towards the psychological formation and well being of the person and their relations. Again, this will map not only dysfunction but its effect on community life, studying the strain on relations as well as the strain on the individual, seeing both as in communion. Christian psychology maps dysfunctions and disorders carefully, developing a language about those destructive traits and relations. This again, is an exercise part theory, part pastoral care. It needs to develop a language within which to frame vices opposed to the Christian narrative and meet the needs of the individuals who suffer the vices. A Christian psychology can at this point be highly scientific by testing the responses of the tradition, or developing methods consistent with the Christian narrative and test them to see if they work. If we ever come to a place where a proposed solution does not work, or does not prove fruitful, we can reinterpret the tradition for other solutions, or innovate new methods that do so within the context of the overarching Christian narrative.

These things will help us create a psychotherapy, or in Christian terms, a set of relationships that will prevent or treat the unhealthy interactions and behaviors. Christian psychotherapy should develop itself as what the church is in its pastoral context. Thus Christian psychology will have effects on the way pastoral ministry is carried out, as well as ecclesiological considerations since, what we are talking about in discussing the behavior and well being of persons is really asking the church to consider the care and guidance she will provide to her members. It is grounded in the belief that the only thing that makes a real difference in these matters, is the incarnation, life, death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. Christian psychotherapy is at it’s heart reconciliation. This will take different forms on a case by case basis, but it should include the practices of confession, penance, and recognizing sin, while realizing the call of Jesus for us to conform to His call to be disciples as part of the solution to the problems we will face.

Christian psychotherapy does not ask us to face ourselves, it asks us to face Christ, and confront our sins with the call to being a disciple of Jesus. Christian psychology will be healing to us, but not by mediating us to ourselves, only in mediating Christ to us as the only possibility of a true self. A response to guilt will feature here, but the Christian task is the assumption of such guilt without having it mediated to us by conscience. It is acknowledging that we are judged not by ourselves, but by Christ. The only thing that conscience will give us is ourselves, and Christians must reject this since our teleology is shaped by our relation to Christ and participation in the people that He has called us to be. For Christians conscience is not the voice of virtue, but the voice of self-defense and excusability. For Christians our goal is not moral autonomy, but the recognition that all our wholeness and goodness comes from Christ and is mediated to us by the church. Conscience has no part in a Christian psychology, because it is a tool by which humans remove from themselves the responsibility of the voice of God by making themselves that voice, it is either self-righteousness or self-debasement neither of which recognizes the person of Christ as our judge and savior. For Christians the life that is whole and good is proper response to God’s commands, and necessarily include love of neighbor, proper methods of “treasuring” e.g. Matthew 6:19-24, and the necessity of communion, confession and prayer as ways in which the Christian life is lived truthfully.

In closing, Christian psychology is about living according to the life the church has seen exemplified in Christ and made possible by Him. Christian psychology is a pastoral endeavor shaped by sources outside those of 20th century considerations but should make these sources intelligible both to the outside world and ourselves as psychology through a hermeneutic lens. Christian psychology is a development from within Christianity that offers its own particular set of claims about what it means to be human, and Christian from the perspective that God matters. And Christian psychology must avoid most if not all of modernity’s concept of the human being since it is inherently opposed to the community that Christ has called to Himself. Christian psychology is at its heart a liturgical and pastoral act that is akin to a virtue ethics, but will place its pastoral emphasis on the proper worship of God, and the community which He has called to Himself as the final solutions to the problems persons face. There are methods and means of attaining these and the Christian psychologist is there mostly as an interpreter, showing the faith as a catechist, instructing pastorally, and mentoring with the truth that is Christ and His call in Love.

Christian Reflection On Labor Day

A Christian Response to Labor Day:

I think we should be grateful for our particuar place, which we should feel is a part of our embodiment, and thus our vocation. But we must also critique our penchant for war as a country and the deification of patriots, labor unions and inalienable rights. We should remember that we are creatures, and that labor day is also a call to remember our labors unto God, to steward creation, and to take care of a world which is very good.

A christian engagement of labor day should i think also remember workers, in all countries and concern itself with remembering the struggles put forth to make the world we live in one that comes at sometimes no cost to us but high costs to them. We should remember that what we call labor here is in many cases built on the intensely difficult struggles of others and that our country has reached success through stepping on other countries along the way.

I think that a Chrisitan engagement of labor day remembers that this country we find ourselves in was built in part by slaves, and by the power of people breaking their backs for the institution called industry, by children in factories, and men starving during the great depression.

Further, it remembers that the place of that memory is not as an idealistic ancestor worship but sees labor as part of embodiment and what it means to be created as a human being. It remembers the Labor of God, both in Creation and the cross as labors of love and generosity.

Labor day for Christians means remembering that while we participate in the American narrative, and we do so as Americans, it is only secondarily to our lives as Christians. We are inescapably American, and while we love this country, it is a penultimate love, it cannot claim our total allegiance, not in its stories or its collective memory. We . I further think that labor day can help us reflect on our labors as a church body, while remembering that our lives as Christians are told by another story.

This year, Labor day falls on the monday after the 23rd sunday of ordinary time. And for the church the liturgical color is green, it is a reminder of growth, and for me a reminder of our expectation that a new day is rising and has already risen, and a new world is coming yet is already here. It is a reminder of the coming future and its already present place among us at the Lord’s table where we gather to meet new creation.

It is the feast day of St. Regina who was a martyr, according to what we know of her from some sources. According to these sources

“She was born in the 3rd century in Alise, the ancient Alesia where two hundred years earlier Vercingetorix had fought so valiantly against Caesar. Her mother died at her birth, and her father, a prominent pagan citizen, entrusted the child to a Christian nurse who baptized her…In 251, at the age of fifteen, she attracted the eye of a man called Olybrius, the prefect of Gaul, who determined to have her as his wife. He sent for the girl and discovered that she was of noble race and of the Christian Faith. Chagrined, he attempted to have her deny her faith, but the saintly maiden resolutely refused and also spurned his proposal of marriage. Thereupon, Olybrius had her thrown into prison.”

Her Symbols include: Shepherdesses, Against poverty, impoverishment,torture victims.

What we should do with these things in this particular year is remember where we are at as a country, and what her life can remind us of. While we are in recession, or coming out of one, whatever the case is, we can remember those who are less forutnate than we are. We can remember those who are oppressed, we can remember martyrs who like St. Regina have suffered for the faith. We can remember the internally displaced refugees, and those who are laboring to liberate them, we can remember the labors of those working for peace, and the labors of those who are our neighbors. We can remember the workers without jobs, the people who will not be celebrating today, the people who have no labor to set themselves to, the families concerned about their tomorrow.

We can remember them and pray for them, we can be Christians and offer them a better allegiance, a better society, and a better hope, the Christian hope that What God The Father has done for Jesus, He will do for all of us at the appointed time. That our hope and our labors towards that hope are not in vain but are worth the work which we put into them, because that work will be caught up into God and recreated to justify all things finally at the end of all things.

We can take this time to reflect as well, on the readings for today, and see what they mean, and how they challenge us to encounter Jesus Christ and give up ourselves and embrace Him and only Him.

Reading 1
Col 1:24–2:3

Brothers and sisters:
I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake,
and in my flesh I am filling up
what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ
on behalf of his Body, which is the Church,
of which I am a minister
in accordance with God’s stewardship given to me
to bring to completion for you the word of God,
the mystery hidden from ages and from generations past.
But now it has been manifested to his holy ones,
to whom God chose to make known the riches of the glory
of this mystery among the Gentiles;
it is Christ in you, the hope for glory.
It is he whom we proclaim,
admonishing everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom,
that we may present everyone perfect in Christ.
For this I labor and struggle,
in accord with the exercise of his power working within me.

For I want you to know how great a struggle I am having for you
and for those in Laodicea
and all who have not seen me face to face,
that their hearts may be encouraged
as they are brought together in love,
to have all the richness of assured understanding,
for the knowledge of the mystery of God, Christ,
in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Responsorial Psalm
Ps 62:6-7, 9

R. (8) In God is my safety and my glory.
Only in God be at rest, my soul,
for from him comes my hope.
He only is my rock and my salvation,
my stronghold; I shall not be disturbed.
R. In God is my safety and my glory.
Trust in him at all times, O my people!
Pour out your hearts before him;
God is our refuge!
R. In God is my safety and my glory.

Gospel
Lk 6:6-11

On a certain sabbath Jesus went into the synagogue and taught,
and there was a man there whose right hand was withered.
The scribes and the Pharisees watched him closely
to see if he would cure on the sabbath
so that they might discover a reason to accuse him.
But he realized their intentions
and said to the man with the withered hand,
“Come up and stand before us.”
And he rose and stood there.
Then Jesus said to them,
“I ask you, is it lawful to do good on the sabbath
rather than to do evil,
to save life rather than to destroy it?”
Looking around at them all, he then said to him,
“Stretch out your hand.”
He did so and his hand was restored.
But they became enraged
and discussed together what they might do to Jesus.

Today’s Collect is:
Almighty God, every good thing comes from you. Fill our hearts with love for you, increase our faith, and by your constant care protect the good you have given us. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

-Quotes on St. Regina Taken from http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/calendar/day.cfm

Body and Character in Luke and Acts

Body and Character in Luke and Acts by Mikeal C. Parsons

Mikeal Parsons has illuminated ancient attitudes about the body and its relation to morality in the ancient world that are fascinating and seem to on the whole make more sense of the biblical texts he has chosen to illuminate than other conjectures such as the immediate presupposition of inauthenticity. Parsons has shown continuity with the texts being examined and Luke’s overall message convincingly, while not completely persuaded, I feel that Parsons has done a great job of bringing an orthodox view of the text as plausible back into the academic arena through a brief and scholarly study which presents alternative views of the text informed by a largely ignored area in terms of biblical scholarship.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term physiognomy, it is an ancient pseudo-science about the relation of the physical body to the perception of character, namely ideal bodies were inclined to ideal morals and disabled or deformed persons were considered to have flawed morality corresponding to their physical appearance. Parsons has shown how this consciousness was permeating the ancient world’s perception of literary characters beginning with Greek poetry, and its use in making moral judgments about literary figures. He parallels this to Luke’s presentation of the four characters he has chosen to examine in his inspection of the use and subversion of .

Parsons has chosen four pericopes to cover in his short but penetrating study, the story of the bent woman, Zacchaeus, the man lame from birth, and the Ethiopian eunuch. He provides keen insight to each of these stories, and informs us of how these characters might have been received by Luke’s audience before he turns the tables on the audience by overthrowing the general pathos which their stereotypes have taught them to adopt.

It is interesting to see the way that the “physiognomic consciousness” plays into these stories and seems a plausible way that the authorial audience would have seen the text. I don’t know what my ultimate reservation is, but I feel that my suspicion of the work might lie in its lack of theological finale. While touching on various topics I thought he might delve into more, Parsons refrains, perhaps to keep the work objective, perhaps because he works best as an expositor, but I feel that the conclusions that could be drawn from the work were not present sufficiently, and left me curious to see more. Instead I was left with a brief epilogue whose last two sentences were a wonderful conclusion yet, seemingly unfinished. Although Parsons has invited theological inquiry based on his study, which I hope to see some of soon.

The book also has great virtue though, as a work which forces us to reconsider our own biases of morality based on outward appearance, and we are reminded that the early Christian community is radical, because it includes the weak, the frail, the outcast and the judged. In the formation of theology, especially moral theology in the advent of this century, it is an important work in historical ethics of the Christian community.

I feel that what was important to my observation and inquiry in the characters presented in the stories Parsons presented was the way healing played a role in the stories, because it has different effects on the person being healed at each turn. The bent woman is obviously healed of a disease which afflicted her 18 years, and is physically healed from what has made her outcast, and the same goes for the lame man. While the connecting factor between these two is a healing and common theme of weakness and morally dubious character, which is interesting in itself, my initial concern is with Zacchaeus and the Ethiopian Eunuch.

If Parsons is right about Zacchaeus being a dwarf by congenital defect, Jesus does not restore him to the community by their standards of what a moral person looks like, which while seemingly obvious is still significant. This means that Jesus in Luke’s narrative does not see dwarfism as barrier to the kingdom of God, nor does he see it as a lack of wholeness. For someone developing a theology disability or deformity, it is highly significant that this is the case. For Luke’s Jesus is a healing Jesus, and I think it is noteworthy that Luke’s Jesus does not make Zacchaeus taller. If we look at the text with its physiognomic dimensions Jesus challenges Zacchaeus to become magnanimous in character, which would seem difficult to the people who underrated him as a person small of character due to his physical stature. Jesus also calls him a son of Abraham, Jesus sees Zacchaeus as part of the eschatological community by virtue of the choice which he has made to bring restitution to his failures. His salvation is not merely a matter of his being good now, but is a reinterpretation of his social status as well, making him equal in the community of Jesus’ followers despite his physical differences.

While to us this may seem commonplace, or to be assumed, it is highly uncharacteristic of ancient religions at large and specifically uncharacteristic of Judaism. While it is noted that deformed persons had a popular place in the Roman culture it was as objects of ridicule, collected like trophies by the emperors Domitian and Nero, and Augustus even bought a congenitally short small person as a pet for his niece.

While Jesus encounters him, he makes no move to “heal” Zaccheus as in cure him of his congenital defect, even though in other cases he does, such as the man blind from birth. This raises interesting questions.

The Eunuch as well raises some interesting questions, if he is a castrated or sexually mutilated man is not restored sexually by baptism or by extreme unction as he is brought into the community through baptism which is just as important as if he had been. While he is through Parson’s argument given a new place in the community and a new honor in Christ, he is not healed at least in the sense of a physical restoration of function, and though the audience is forced to reconsider his character, his role in the community is reinterpreted by the early Christian community as one who is ritually pure.

The Christian polemic against the temple cult and a new and radical inclusivism are only part of the whole picture of the moral formation which Luke is using through these illustrations.

It seems that in light of physiognomy early Christians reject the assumptions of morality as inherently tied to physical appearance, which was not to remain so historically as some prominent Christian leaders that Parsons notes were persuaded by physiognomic interests. It might even explain what we moderns think absurd theological considerations when we read about some church theologians and the way in which they think Christians should laugh properly in society.

In conclusion, I feel that this book is important, and should be read by anyone with an interest in the Abrahamic community, healing, or outcasts as themes in Lukan literature. I would like to see the implications these texts have for Christian healing and a theology of disability. While books on the subject of disability and theology are coming from every angle and exploding in the contemporary interest, I think it’s of great value to examine why Jesus healed the way he did and what healing might have been in Christ’s idea of His mission. It seems important to me to know whether Jesus had a particular physiognomic concern, or whether he had a moral or ontological concern for the people he healed. While it would be largely speculation, the text might provide some insights, though we must allow that it was not built in such a way as to answer that question directly. I’d like to do some more work reading Luke-Acts and commentators on the text since it is of great interest to me.

Can I just get this off my chest?

 

I dunno, going to the monastery this break really really fucked with me, head and body, mind and spirit. I feel like i’ve had a few too many screwdrivers and none of it was worth the drinking.

 

But I also feel like I got drunk on something substantial, and am inebriated with longing to return to the simple and unburdened life of the monastic way. Forsaking all things, and living a life in service to God and the world through prayer.

 

It was a challenging experience and I’m not sure I was able to really appreciate it fully because of the emotional baggage I carried with me there that i needed to sort through before i could find any semblance of rest. I haven’t slept well since that first night there. I did all my crying on the way over there, and was just exhausted by the end of the first night.

 

I feel like a shell of a person some nights, and i feel as if since i returned i’ve been living half aware and half exhausted, and fully guilty.

 

I don’t feel like I’m at all present in or even really observing my life. I feel as if all my energy is going towards incessant worrying and all i can do is sit back and wait until my whole world comes crashing down around me. I am honestly afraid, i’m afraid of what I’ll do with myself. Afraid of what she means to me. Afraid of what I mean to myself. Afraid that I’m falling too comfortably into orthodoxy and receding into mother church for the comforts of her ability to supply those answers which I need without being brave enough to seek them on my own. Afraid that I’m not devoted enough to Mary, and simultanesouly afraid I’m too devoted.

 

I’m afraid i’m too flirtatious, but not manly enough. I’m afraid that i am a shell of what it means to be a man even though i love it when she touches my beard.

 

I am restless and in awe at my own ability to choose failure and defeat when sometimes i’ve so clearly reached after success and managed to grasp it. I feel i have fallen in some inexplicable way and become disoriented in the midst of my sudden lucidity about myself and the world.

 

I’m not at all sure what to do with myself, and my once glorious intents have fallen to the wayside as I consider what i mean, and what my existence means.

 

I’m afraid to reach out and just be, i’m afraid to move on, afraid to hold on. I don’t know what the hell to do and i’m everywhere surrounded by fears, and undergoing the sufferings of love, those tender sufferings that wound most truly.

 

My eyes are swollen with restlessness, and my mind is awake in ever increasing streams of inaccessible consciousness.

 

What am I?

 

Who am I?

 

I am not sure how i would even begin to address these questions, or make satisfactory expiation for the blood they require in seeking an answer.

 

I am not as adventurous as I once thought myself to be, and feel as if I carry this unpronounceable weight of duty and devotion.

 

And I feel the part of the unloved child in the midst of all this. This is not a plea for attention, just the reality of me. I feel as if whether i am present or absent makes no difference to most. I feel like I am unlovely and awkward, the boy who wants to be beautiful, the man who longs to be told he is special to someone, somewhere.

 

My relationship with my mom has fallen into a deadening ritual of hellos and goodbyes that are interspersed with short polite withdrawn conversations. She can feel the change in me, i feel it in myself, and I am not aware of if there is a way to make peace. I am questioning my draw towards orthodoxy and wondering if it is out of childish fear, or out of an acknowledgement of truth in fullness that is drawing me.

 

I feel my own death impending, looming, but simultaneously endlessly distant.

 

I hate being the accomplished student. I feel as if I’m nothing else. I wish that Eli was more than just a paper writer, more than a name on the lips of the inquisitive or the disgusted. I wish Eli was the name on the lips of a lover, of a friend calling to check up on me, a name in the back of a mind, at the heart of a pleasant memory. I feel like everywhere i go i leave death and tragedy in my wake, and where it’s not there yet, it will be.

 

I feel overcommitted and under-appreciated, overtaxed and underpaid, mostly aloof even though I long so badly to be connected.

 

As I sit here I make a plea to have a simple life, i wish i could walk away from all of this, say fuck the world and go back to the monastery, back to the simple life.

 

I wish that was my calling. I’m tired of feeling like i’m part of something bigger than myself. I get this feeling like i’m being moved towards something tangible, solid, practical, all-encompassing and “destined” for me. But I hate that feeling sometimes.

 

It’s a wonderful excitement that helps me taste adventure, but I hate feeling this inevitable pull towards something I’d rather walk away from. I would rather just be empty, free of all commitments, devotions, positions, titles.

 

I hate this uncertainty.

 

I wish I was the whispered blessing on a lover’s lips, instead i’m the bane of a middle aged republican history teacher. 

 

I am not what I once was, i’m not an artist anymore. I’m barely a theologian. It all feels like pretend, and I don’t know where the fuck i lost myself, but I feel like i’m barely present here and now.

 

I am hurt and frustrated by unspeakable things that I wish I could take back, change, undo, avoid involvement in, and just never have been a part of. I wish that I could dump all the exteriors and retreat into a life of private faith, just the simple piety of a man trying to live a life as best he can for himself and maybe a family. Farm life in Ireland or something, just raw, and connected to the earth.
For more that I try to be a man, i feel like academics strip that from me. I want simplicity, but the academic circles force me into the realm of speculation on language and definitions, i just want to eat a steak with my hands.

 

Fuck me….

 

I don’t know what i want i’m uncertain on almost every level and feel wretched and terribly lost.

 

I feel like a little boy who doesn’t know how to begin to address coming out of his mother’s skirt and into the world at large.

 

I may be a pillar of boldness on the surface, but my shyness lurks underneath, and I feel the implications of my reservations, of the dignities that I hold onto.

 

I try to let them go, but I feel as if when i do they might be misinterpreted as romantic endeavors. I’m not trying to start anything with anyone. These dignities, these wants, these reservations and self restrictions, these ascetic choices that aren’t beneficial to anyone, these empty formalities that are further away from self actualized manhood than anything else. But I feel as if i look a certain way to the world.

 

I am not trying to fill some sort of empty gap with mockeries and jesting, I wish I had a connection. I wish i could bear my whole heart, and that someone would care enough to listen, to open up too.

 

I’ve hurt too many people along the way, ridiculed too many innocents, broken too many hearts, and confounded too many hopes and aspirations. I am the dark mirror which reflects back only the past, only broken hearts and weeping faces, bleeding eyes and broken places.

 

I am wandering the world in silence and I feel as if I need to scream. No night has ever been this dark, and for some reason though I feel this is one of the darkest nights of my life, I feel simultaneously that this is not the worst i’ve faced though it certainly feels like it in an indirect way. See, I don’t have a manifest panic,it’s more like a resignation to the darkness, that just treats the darkness as a trite formality.

 

i don’t know why that is, because I feel totally abandoned, and maybe this is me being able to meet God in the situation, maybe it’s just numbness, 

 

I can’t be sure.

 

So I wait, and wrestle with these questions in my mind, and let them sweep over me in over growing concentric circles of consciousness.

 

I guess that is all I really have to say, not a pretty poem, or a well crafted internal monologue, just a blurt, with a feeling of emptiness still not sated in the end.

Wounds of Christ

Holy Father, defender of the weak, redeemer and intercessor for the poor, be our shield in the day of battle.

Lord Jesus, mighty one, by the mystery of your great passion, be our crucified God, reminding us of your great suffering.

Holy Spirit, confessor of our intercession and our defense in the day of need, plead with us for the redemption of all things.

Hail Holy Trinity, by your great and ineffable love, teach us also to love.

Have mercy upon me, and upon the whole world.

Holy One, give me wisdom in the face of my trials, that I may lead myself and those around me with your great and everlasting guidance.

Eternal Father this your church, lead your people by your great and merciful love extended to us and to the whole world.

Holy Spirit, affirm the celebration of life and keep us from the snares of destruction, lead us not into the path of blood thirst and oppression, but keep our ways from the path of destruction

Most Merciful God, entreat us to suffer with you, and teach this child to lift up your sacred heart as the foundation of all my doings.

May your sacred heart be my guide, and by your holy wounds, teach me to pray.

May your hands that blessed the little children, nailed to the cross remind me to bless others, who are all your children. May I see in your crucified hands the greatest of mercy, and feel the warmth of your sacred embrace as you lead me to my brethren in mercy. Concerning the wounds oh holy Jesus, teach me to see them as my own, and may my hands bleed with your great and sorrowful passion for the sake of the whole world.

May your crown of thorns remind me to think upon the higher things, to be intentional about pursuing the good of others, and to meditate upon your holy sufferings. May my mind be fixed on your cross, and upon your resurrection, may your great and holy purpose be at the forefront of my mind, even as I remember your cross, and may my eyes look to your wounds for strength.

Wound in the side of Christ, teach me to weep for redemption, teach me to weep for the reconciliation of all things, wash me with this cleansing flow, and let me also become a fount of mercy and grace, a wellspring of your life as others come into contact with me, may they be refreshed by your living waters. Teach me to establish justice in seeking the life of the age to come, and to daily renew my hopes by your great and dolorous passion.

Back of Christ, bearing my sins, the immeasurable weight that is our world’s fallenness, teach me to pray. Holy Christ, with your back torn open by the iniquities of man, teach me obedience, as you yourself suffered as a servant unto the father, so let it be with me as well. Holy Christ, with your aching wounds bleeding for my redemption, and the redemption of all life, thank you for that healing which you bring.

Feet of Christ, teach me to carry the message of peace and support myself upon your holy cross, from which you have ruled the world. Holy Christ, who in your crucifixion made public spectacle of the powers and rulers of this world, teach me to walk in your ways, and against the empire. Feet of Christ, lead me into the path of solidarity, and open my heart by walking in your light. Teach me to love my brother as wholeheartedly as I have loved you, and draw me closer to your everlasting life in this age and in the age to come. Blessed feet, teach me to carry the message of peace, and to make reconciliation a reality, teach me to unite myself with those suffering, and to recognize my own sufferings as well. Blessed feet of Christ, lead me to the feet of Our Lord, where the crucified God stands as both judge and savior of the whole world.

Holy Christ, by your wounds, and the mystery of your sorrowful passion, have mercy upon me and on the whole world.

Holy Christ, by your wounds, and the mystery of your sorrowful passion, have mercy upon me and on the whole world.

The Silence

They say Love makes you blind

They don’t know what blindness is

They claim to wander the long road,

They don’t know that it left them long ago

This dervish wanders in clouds of dust, following a path unknown

Into the ocean we shall see the climax at the gates

They say that they have power,

We ignore it and keep our secrets

We know the way, they know the dialogues

We keep the silence, and they believe the have found us

We do not hide our union,

but merely tell them they do not see us

They light a candle at the ocean’s edge and attempt to tell us they see

They are blind, but we are mute

They speak many empty words

Our language is carried on by our silence.

This conversation will never end,

its language is written into the very cells of my body that burst with new life

It is unspoken to the ear

but the words that carry out from my motions

They’re like ocean waves, and your whispers

they carry over my body in echoes

This dance that I dance, it’s part of the secret of our langauge

my feet scratch mysteries into these grains of sand underneath

We are the sand, and the moonlight overhead,

I am an endless ocean

And light pours out from my eyes

The light of the dawn, makes merry meetings

In meeting, these two hearts beat closer

We have a secret union

The hyacinths blush and the lilies whisper across the banks of our river

The Indus and the Ganges have nothing on us now

The pilgrims search out there for this

They are seeking for the outside in their travels

They know the sights

We keep the silence

Why Sexuality Matters

My Dialogue with Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body: An assertion on why purity is important.

Just recently I’ve been thinking a lot about sexuality, purity and wholeness. In recent dialouges with with fellow students, professors friends and colleagues it has come to my attention that while I have a basic idea of what I believe about sexuality and the body, I’ve not spent much time developing or writing on it much, and this was surprising to me considering how sacred my theology of the body has become. So today i wanted to spend some time in thought about my person, your person and why sexuality matters.

So, first of all, what is the body? Here i’m gonna lay out an assertion of the human person according to what I believe the scriptures are telling us and several interrelated theories on being. From there we’ll talk about being and practical theology and finally conclude with the importance of sexuality to human identity, and ultimately why sexuality matters.

For a long time I’ve been disturbed by the question of what happens at marriage that inherently changes something, how is it that before a ring almost everything is off limits and then by a simple token everything is ok? What difference can a ritual make in ontologically shifting something from one place to another? Is marriage really that important in uniting two persons into one flesh, or is it a formality with pretty metaphors?

So, to answer my own question about marriage and the ontology of such a union, it is my belief that what has happened is in our conception of being when we lost the idea of being in communion we took a shift from the idea of communion as a necessary element of being. To be a person is to be a being-in-relationship, and therefore to necessitate a constant dialogue between an internal and external self-hood.

Sartre shows us in his Being and Nothingness that in reality man is never being in itself as for example a rock is. A rock simply is, but we as people lack being-in-itself because being-in-itself lacks consciousness. We are being for itself and thus lack definite being and are forced to create our being out of nothingness. And as foray into dimension theory and the propositions of time purported by H.G. Wells, if anything lacks duration it cannot be said to exist. Humans therefore are not and cannot be static being or inherently and diametrically dualistic beings, for change affects people in time and therefore their being is dynamic in that when viewed in 4 dimensions height, length, depth, and duration being is never in itself, but in relation to time, space, objects and other objects of being to discern and develop our own being.

This dynamic selfhood is the consciousness that we have of ourselves being aware of things outside ourselves and our idea of the perceptions with which we interact with the world. This, not even this is static since our perceptions change, ideas develop, and over time this self matures, corrupts, decays, grows, evolves, becomes more self aware, less self aware, directed, misdirected and always interactive. The self as relates to other objects in both time and space, in memory, and perception outside the internal perception of what we believe to be ourselves. Sartre helps us do away away with Kant’s dualism of noumena and phenomena, showing us that there is no ungraspable appearance behind things but rather only things in themselves as they appear.

 

The external self constitutes the internal self because that self is projected onto the external world and receives its selfhood back from the dialogue between the projection and reception of meaning. The internal self is not an objective reality but exists as interpreted through our perception of self that emerges through interaction with those things that we have relationality with in the world outside our physical bodies. In Sartre’s idea the for-itself of being makes of the world a blank canvas onto which it projects its being, and in marriage, to get back to the topic at hand, there is a mutual imprint of being which allows both giving and reception of being through mutual imprintedness.

Hopefully I have done some justice to what I believe Sartre is saying.

Marriage is the mystery by which human being becomes truly alive, it is sacramental, holy, and relational. The thing that changes is not the world, but our perception of self, from the myself which we are so involved in in our day to the ourself which is become myself. Therefore as we search for being in the world, the world reaches us through the eyes of another such that as we explore out for ourselves, the meaning of ourselves is presented to us in another. The other becomes the I and vice versa such that the other person is a mirror of ourselves as we explore identity through the perceptions and reflections brought out in the living interlocution of being. So that when we are called to love one another, as we do in marriage, we find our self consciousness should be caught up in neighbor consciousness. The I and Thou becomes the We that is You and the You that is the mirror of myself. 

So how does all this preliminary dialogue take us back to the matter of sexuality?

Let’s begin with an assertion by the brilliant and moving theology of the body by Pope John Paul II:

 

It seems that the second narrative of creation has assigned to man “from the beginning” the function of the one who, above all, receives the gift (cf. especially Gn 2:23). “From the beginning” the woman is entrusted to his eyes, to his consciousness, to his sensitivity, to his heart. On the other hand, he must, in a way, ensure the same process of the exchange of the gift, the mutual interpenetration of giving and receiving as a gift. Precisely through its reciprocity, it creates a real communion of persons.

 

Giving and receiving is perichoretic, it is interpenetrational and dynamic between the two persons of the union making it sacred. The being of two persons becomes completely mysterious in that they become not absorbed in one another, nor annihilated in the other, but having substance in the other each person is a mirror to which the other looks for that penetrating substantiality. The giving is within both parties and the reception is within both parties. The man in the garden received the woman and looked upon her, being given over to him not in the sense of her reduction to object but in the sense of his embrace of her, his reception of her is in itself a giving. In her being received she is also receiving.

 

The man is enriched not only through her, who gives him her own person and femininity, but also through the gift of himself. The man’s giving of himself, in response to that of the woman, enriches himself. It manifests the specific essence of his masculinity which, through the reality of the body and of sex, reaches the deep recesses of the “possession of self.”…At the same time he is received as a gift by the woman, in the revelation of the interior spiritual essence of his masculinity, together with the whole truth of his body and sex. Accepted in this way, he is enriched through this acceptance and welcoming of the gift of his own masculinity. Subsequently, this acceptance, in which the man finds himself again through the sincere gift of himself, becomes in him the source of a new and deeper enrichment of the woman. The exchange is mutual. In it the reciprocal effects of the sincere gift and of the finding oneself again are revealed and grow.

 

It is in giving oneself to the other that the other becomes the mirror through which the self truly develops. The union of marriage sanctifies ontologically what already occurs naturally, and in their giving to each other, they are enriched. Marriage is an invitation to love one’s neighbor, to care for one another and to stand for one another.

So, in short what’s all this talk mean to me? I’ll tell you.

This body is sacred, it is baptized into the already resurrected body of Christ, my person is intimately connected with Christ, through the eucharist, and through the Spirit of life which animated Christ back to life and raised him from the dead. This body has been marked and sealed as a sacrament of the eschaton. Therefore when considering the integrity of the body, it is necessary that I should consider my person an extension of the literal body of Christ which is sacred.

Therefore as a sacramental entity this body and the bodies of my fellow humans are sacred, bearing in them the image of God, the image of Christ. Unity before marriage is not about merely disregarding a tradition, it is a violation of the spirit which animates us all, who is within us and gives us life. It is a violation of being reflecting onto another and being reflected on in such a way that the mirror formed in mutual union is never expunged and the connection is formed, because it has to do not strictly with an unimportant ritual but with the notion and condition of being itself is adultery an inadequate resolution.

To quote liberally someone, I believe it was C.S. Lewis, who said that the person who lusts does not love too much it is that the person loves too little to truly love at all.

In short, those are my thoughts for today. I hope that someone wanted to hear that. I know I’m not done with this topic, but thanks for tuning in.

Also, I realize i didn’t follow my basic outline at the start, sorry for those of you who expected better. whatever.

eli

What Does the Resurrection of the Son of God Mean Today?

I was thinking about my Christian experience today, and as I was considering the implications of a certain emotional state, I got to thinking about the Victory of God in Jesus, and the idea that despite all things God has won a victory in this world and that ultimately, I am participating in that victory.

 

Sure, today I am not in the best state, but I have hope. Hope reaches into me, to lead me towards the victory of God. I am the essence of all consciousness, being constantly resurrected from a fallen state. I am baptized into the body of the Risen Lord, and united with him by one Spirit, made one flesh with him by that same Spirit. I am not forsaken, but am embraced by this beloved who ushers me into his presence with glee, as I approach with trembling reverence.

 

My tears are merely prayers in a different language. In them is the hope of glory, as true suffering somehow brigs true redemption. Our ideals are not God’s ideals. The Risen Lord shows us that in suffering is the cosmos replaced where the chaos once was. Idealism is ultimately backwards, and in those ideals I am further from the Resurrection of the Son of God than closer.

 

So it occurred to me that in order to truly experience the meaning of this great and glorious resurrection, it means that I must not shed the ideas that I have thought were ideal, I must also embrace those which are seemingly backwards to me.

 

Suffering is not the emptiness of dejection, though that is experienced, it shall prove to be more integral to the resurrection of my person than should I never have suffered. The world, I can’t speak for, but for me, for Eli, this suffering is my invitation into God’s plan of redemption.

 

So, as I enter into the lower depths, I know that my war with the forces of evil is not in vain, as I leave behind those things which would lead me from the narrow path, I find pleasure in the backwards ideals of God. Sipping a Lady Grey tea blend and wondering about all this gives me pleasure, and as I pursue my future, I realize that in time I will get there, regardless. Today is a day, tomorrow shall be another, and ultimately, it is completed in such a way that my purpose will be accomplished, I have faith and hope that the path set before me is not in vain and that which I feel called to complete will be completed because I have dedicated myself to it and to enjoying today.

 

I am enjoying beauty, the joys of mentoring, and being mentored, the beauty of togetherness, the bliss of separation, the ebb and flow of presence and absence.

 

Beautiful.

 

As you read this, I don’t think you’ll understand half of what was said here this day, and for that I am sorry.

 

I don’t blame anyone or anything for these things which we pass. We are all journeying towards something, and I am whole in the redemption of my body. I am whole in my expectation that this is going to be well. 

 

So, brothers and sisters, my little children, remember that suffering causes the redemption of things outside ourselves, and in the end, it is not about how God is going to save me. It’s about how God is going to save the universe through me.

 

Love one another, as I remember to do the same. Hold fast. Stand strong.

 

The Resurrection shall live through me today, and in this we are well pleased.

Berlin

Snow falls lightly from the dark onto my gloveless hands, I never asked for this. Blowing on my hands with the steam of my body’s internal combustion i pause a moment, thinking. Everything is grey, like heaven has chosen to abstain from our little city. My hands seek warmth in a pocket as the snow crunches beneath my heavy feet, dragging the white away from the surface like a blight upon the dreamscape.

The narrow streets extend to the skies with building blocks of society, track marks are rare at this time. I am the only sojourner of the white surface tonight, looking to the starless sky, my freedom suspended under the night sky, i am breathless, passing from one sectioned block of night to another. Waiting, moving under the gaze of suspicious eyes. The Stasi rule these streets. Echoes, a typewriter sits vacant, using the red ink of liberation to make its plea.

Unheard. Unheard.

I write for our freedom, as the national census has stopped printing the suicide rate in our land. I write for the unheard voices, and I pass from this night into the next, waiting, echoing, breathing in memories. I pass from this life into another, taking up new, different hands, i remember those lives of the others, actors, actresses, playwrights and thieves, voyeurs, and politicians.

The heavens have chosen to abstain from our blessed little city, and the power of humanity to create grey and unknown spaces has taken hold of our once bright livelihood. Passing in the streets, i am a blight upon the snow covered heaven that the people endure. And I, I, am a blight because I long for freedom.

Stapler, Mr. Plant

Stapler, Mr. Plant, minimalist that you are. Stapler please.

Surely you can’t just let it fall to the ground in such a manner, spilling its prefabricated parts assembled without remorse all over this cold floor. Surely you have sensitivity Mr. Plant, for the fake plants assembled in your bank lobby, falling to and fro, stressed under the unitary budget and global deficit.

Stapler please, Mr. Plant as you can see the minimalism is simply too much with our current society, you are a visionary. Change the world once, and you are celebrated as a hero, change it twice, and you become your own martyr, Tesla syndrome you know.

We picked you, crafted you, and have attempted to prefabricate your success, now will you hand me that stapler?

Surely you’re not just going to let it fall along with your aesthetic nihilism, such a rich beauty, into the oblivion of that concrete floor.

Dreams are prefabricated and plastic wrapped in our generation and you sir, are a subversive, dreaming with minimal efforts, sounds carried on by silence.

So as we attempt to flood you with our red tape shenanigans would you just bear with us and aid our bureaucracy?

Stapler, Mr. Plant, minimalist that you are. Stapler please.

Bad Love Songs and Optional Fish

Hey all, saw Hellboy II tonight. It rocked. I loved the creatures, the story was alright but the design was wonderful. the only thing that bothered me was the Abe Sapien thing, they have officially turned him into optional fish.

 

In the first film Abe couldn’t breathe without his assistance neck collar, but in this one he has the option of hanging out, gills abreast in the open without a fear of suffocation. In the first film, the collar circulated water past the gills, in this one it seemed like an afterthought.

 

i’m a bit ocd I know, but still he seems like an optional fish. Just the idea of optional fish….

 

seems like Aqauaman’s brother that never made it through hero school. “Behold, I am optional fish! I can’t turn into a dolphin, dolphins are mammals asshole. But I can do a guppy, or a flounder.”

 

Optional fish, we sing your praises.

 

All Hail Optional Fish, King of the Hellboy Universe

 

and what was with the moment where the movie turned into a musical?

 

Strangeness, but really, loved the movie overall.

 

 

On a side note to self:

And the chapter shall be called: on the facifulness of long distance loves and their ensuing hillarities which are hereafter mentioned after this aforementioning preface, and the happiness of good friendships, which as everyone knows are like dragon tears, they turn into jelly beans

From the Brook to the Beyond

and as I drifted in the brook the frog passed off to a different branch of the stream, and I beheld a commotion, lifting my eyes i saw birds, of every shape and size in the air, they rattled above me, one swooped low and asked, why do you float there so curiously, between the solid and the sky? Surely the sky is superior to the floatation you are undergoing there friend. Surely it is better to escape the brook altogether, to grow wings and fly away with us.

 

No sir, said I  to him, I am well and aware here, to be in the sky is to forget the lesson of icarus for those who tread where they are not supposed to. All heights have limits, to forget this is to lose sight of what is important. So here I float dear friend, with the air around my fingertips and water logged in my shoes.

 

Surely you must desire to fly though, to ascend to the highest heights, he inquired excitedly.

 

Yes surely all humans do, said I unto him, but I am not so coy as to think myself capable of grasping such a reality as is beyond me without instruction or accommodation.

 

The bird flew off at this looking troubled.

 

Coming upon a bend in the brook i reached out to the deeper waters, and coming upon the gates of hades I stood motionless for a moment before passing in. Coming upon the ferryman there I was asked why it is that I paint, he said surely all things enter into the land of the dead and not one thing shall ever truly remain.

 

I said to the ferryman as he inquired, surely duration is not the only way in which to speak of reality, memory is not forever either, but there are realities which while unspeakable live beyond duration and are outside its limits. Surely there are realities such as the ones we see when we squint and catch glimpses of it behind the world but throughly in the world both this one and the next.

 

Thus they are captured in every generation by every thinking mind and opened eye.

 

At this he smiled, the ferryman did, and laughing a great laugh, he simply shook his head and continued rowing our ferry.

The Toad’s lesson on the arts

so i was sitting in my happy place contemplating and stumbled upon something marvelousa field full of mushrooms inhabited by fairies, the lights were wonderful and of course i tread lightly, so as not to disturb, and coming upon a little brook, i gingerly crossed over, mindful of the stones, so as not to shift them, and came upon a magnificent toad, who looked at me, and told me to paint, and gave me the tools to do so, and when i had painted, he asked me why, to which i answered, Mr. Toad, art is as these great mushrooms and this quaint little brook, it simply is, and must be seen

This Broken Child

I just feel so torn. caught between two things, wondering, waiting, feeling exhausted as i sit here another night, contemplating my life, thinking of what could have been. I was ready to embrace what should have been, but in the end nothing is really as it seems, and so i’m on my way with empty dreams.

I thought it would get better over time, and came to find myself in line for just another lame excuse, now i feel i wear a noose, and tonight i am broken. Tonight, you win. I don’t know if that’s your aim or not but you have reached it.

Screw bad poetry, you fuck with me. End of story.

I’m just tired, and I don’t know what the hell you want from me.

Is it faith? Is it piety? Is it love thy neighbor?

Whatever. I’m done. Holy blessed Trinity, forgive me my arrogance and malice, bless this tender child who beats his fist against his chest and cries “Injustice!”

Forgive the scandal I make, for I know that you alone embrace this broken child.

Imagination and The task of Suffering

yeah, so here’s another question: why is it difficult to be a human being?

As I sit here and ponder my own existence, i’m confused, beholding myself, beholding, myself. I am indeed a strange loop. higher consciousness built on lower consciousness.

Today I feel like the world is decent, i’m a failure, but i’m ok. i am suffering, i cause suffering, i will die, I cause death. what dogma has ever been able to solve that one?

why can’t we seem to accept the mystery of our own inherent good and evil?

mysterion. theotokos. logos.

a community of words beyond simple meanings, beyond reason alone. as I unlock my imagination and set it loose to tackling the task of existence. Imagination.

Where does wonder come from? Why do we wonder?

we wonder because we are weak, because we are children, not one of us is old, not one of us is ancient, wisdom escapes us. we imagine because it is our gift, we have been granted imagination or stolen it and made it our own. We inherently dream, we have made it our business as creatures to dream beyond ourselves, to imagine.

It is our task to imagine, and when we do not do so, we are miserable and weak, fractured beings. Imagination is. We are.

Ever shall God be.

I’m done.

eli

Alive

To feel great suffering is to be alive in today’s world. For with every great deep and chaotic valley, we know we are truly alive among the sedated masses that stumble in and out of bed obedient to every passing whim of authority, be it the job they serve, the advertisements they attend to, or simply the silent desperation of anesthetics for the soul, to feel pain is to be alive.

In past ages we’ve had pain to deal with, agonies of the soul, quiet meditations to life’s big questions. Today, we sit in an emulsion of sound and lights and flashy colors and distractions, so that when we do contemplate ourselves, we despair. We ache and hurt because we are not at rest, we live like the kings of ages past, and yet have not found happiness, and as Nietzsche pointed out, we are the last man, we are the final ones, who will claim with our sleepy eyes, “We have invented happiness.”

So, know then that when you suffer, and ache, and have riddles to ponder, great questions to overthrow and overcome, when you are tortured, you are alive. You are not sedated. You are empassioned, you are not anesthetized against yourself, you embrace your weary bleeding heart, and carry your heavy cross across the landscape of humanity, calling forth with clarion call, ‘this is the way!’

Have we become so blind? So as not to feel our souls retreating as our distractions flood us with less energy, less life. To contemplate is to be alive, to be conscious of oneself is to be a self, without this, we are shells.

Such heavy passions such as burden the hearts of the weary, these are the things which make us alive. We either live in great tragedy and ask why, or have no tragedy at all and are resigned to sedation which is the worst of all evils that can happen to the human soul.

To suffer is to be aware.

Though this by no means resolves suffering, know that you are alive when you feel, your passions are still beating in your weary heart, better than nihilism of the soul, better than sedation, better than a lack of identity, you are still alive.

And in that life we find our passions steady beating, that solemn agony.

It still echoes across our hearts and minds, in the visions of our memories, in the hearts of all children, the knowledge that suffering is within us all.

We are alive in this, and as we near that great consuming fire, we find that we are all alone, outside the walls of normality, outside the jurisdiction of sedation, outside the facets and boundaries of acceptable. We are not acceptable, we are prophets. We are not the joyous announcers of salvation, but the harbingers of awareness, bringing suffering to the forefront of our minds, in order to answer the question which has never been answered successfully. From Buddha to Jesus, to the New Age and beyond, no one can answer.

The Outside is Within.

the mystery of grace

I just feel so afraid, today I’m so alone. And no, this is not a poem, this is my life. Hopeful and ever looking forward, i still find myself pausing, regretting, wasting away in the torture of my own possibilities, things that make me happy torture me with their enjoyability, and i seem to only find rest in misery.

 

I hate myself today. I want to strangle myself today, for how vain i feel. like a fucking insolent prick bastard, conceited and self indulgent, working my way into everything  only to spoil it by touching it. I feel like those thigns which i would gladly preach against, hate, vanity, greed, lust, envy.

 

I feel unkind, unlovely and dirty. I have crossed boundaries, been unfaithful to God and myself, and forsaken the person i thought i was. I have lived life to the fullest, emptied my heart on street corners and sold my body for love. Nothing ever changes. New humanity…where the hell do we get these things?

 

forgive my bitter pessimism, if it disturbs you, well, i’m just tired, i can’t seem to catch a breath and I fear that animal which seems to have become me. even as i approach that person i want to be, find happiness, fulfillment, inner peace, these things drive me to insanity. I can’t just allow myself to catch a moment of peace and absorb the meaning of life set before me, no….i have to complicate thigns, make them painful, difficult and selfish, i have to make them real, because any shred of frivolous pleasure would be too much for a holier than thou good lutheran like me. fuck it all.

 

fuck

 

it

 

all.

 

to hell with charades and bitter tears. to hell with these feelings, this guilt. this elephant in the room, this dying agony that tears at me everytime i have a minute to think.

 

I am a person, and i am hurting. i am a person, and for the first time in my life, i am treated as such, unconditionally, without regret, without remorse, without second guessing.

 

fuck you.

 

today, i am treated like a someone, beautiful, accepted, discipled, welcomed, lovely, today i am transformed rather than beat down, and in that acceptance i find my biggest threat. The thing i have always longed for, that unconditional love we’re all chasing after, it’s at my doorstep, it’s knocking, it’s here it’s upon me tearing at my chains, loving me without regrets, and today i shut my bible. Today i feel like God spoke to me, and it hurt worse than having a broom broken over my flesh, it hurt worse than the betrayal of infidelity, it jurt worse than the separation of death, and it welcomed me into a holy foresight, a peace that lies beyond the fringes of the mind, that comes to dwell in the center.

 

can you understand that?

 

I can’t comprehend this thing….this unconditional love thing. we all say we believe it, but go out and slap someone in the face, see if they love you then. go out and steal someone’s car and bank account numbers, see if they wake up to go find you and embrace you. go out and show someone your flaws, and see if they can accept you, tell someone you’re in love with them and that the world beats at a more painful pace when they’re not around, see if they feel the same.

 

they don’t.

 

not usually.

 

can you believe it? I can’t. I’m beyond words for this thing, this love that just accepts and never condemns, that’s fucking sacred. beyond words, spaces, times, this is the ineffable made into experience. God truly encounters humanity in time, because moments are sacred, spaces are transitory. moments are forever.

 

and as I go on exploring this journey that leads me down twists and turns tugging between holiness and absolute fear, loathing and loving, I feel angered, loved to anger by too beneficial a love, too forgiving a grace, too compassionate a mercy. I feel too accepted by something i could never accept back the way it deserves.

 

that’s frustrating as shit. how the heck are you supposed to deal with a realization like that and be sane?

 

I can never love and accept the love that God has given. it’s too overwhelming, too sacred, too present a reality, far more substantial and real than I can be.

 

I feel like a ghost next to it, hollow, and in pain due to the reality around, and looking at the beauty everywhere, I feel naked, cheated, bare, exposed, torn to bits and hatred spews out of me like an ocean, pouring out onto sacred ground, frothing at the mouth i’m trying to taint it, make it more bearable, make it more mundane, and it just refuses to change.

 

It’s still sacred, it just absorbs all my evil, it just cleanses all my dirt. it just transforms all my guilt and makes me scream on the inside because I can’t be anything base near it. It ust changes my filth, transforms my anger, redeems my sludge.

 

I hate it. oh….i have really come to hate that love of God which I also praise so highly. it’s too accepting, it’s shockingly overpowering, even when i wish to do evil and taint myself, i can’t. inescapable.

 

inescapable.

 

tragically holy. the grace of God is tragically holy, so sacred that facing it draws tears of blood from the beholder. It wasn’t God’s decision that Jesus faced in the garden, it was the power of his own forgiveness. The power of a grace so otherworldly it hurts to look at.

 

It’s made me cry today, made me angry, happy, frustrated, solemn, bitter and accepted.

 

How do you face a love so solid it makes you feel ashamed?

 

How can you reject a love so powerful it hurts when it acts as a mirror showing you how insubstantial your heart really is?

 

It hurts to behold, oh it hurts worse than any physical pain I’ve ever experienced, and yet it’s necessary, and in staring directly into it, i feel like my flesh could melt off my bones, and I feel like every cell on my body is bursting with new life.

 

this is just so incomprehensible to me.

 

fuck…

 

it’s a mystery.