Luke 4:4 vs. Junie Morrison (1980)

"Man shall not live by..."

"Bread Sandwiches" by Bernie Williams (1981) -->

(dedicated to TB)

T. S. Eliot's "The Elder Statesman" - Part 1 of 4

I’ve recently been floored by T.S. Eliot’s last play “The Elder Statesman.” Eliot’s plays at their best speak with universal brilliance while remaining true to a moving plot. This play tells the story of a retired politician, Lord Claverton, whose past sins have come to back to haunt him. This brief series will reflect on some of the high points of this play in four manageable topics.

"Perhaps I’ve never really enjoyed living
As much as most people. At least, as they seem to do.
Without knowing that they enjoy it. Whereas I’ve often known
That I didn’t enjoy it. Some dissatisfaction
With myself, I suspect, very deep within myself
Has impelled me all my life to find justification
Not so much to the world – first of all to myself.
What is this self inside us, this silent observer,
Severe and speechless critic, who can terrorise us
And urge us on to futile activity,
And in the end, judge us still more severely
For the errors into which his own reproaches drove us?"

The passage above is a perfect description of what theology calls self-justification. We live with a gnawing dissatisfaction with our life and ourselves that pollutes even the simplest of pleasures. For Eliot, the source of this unending dissatisfaction is a “speechless critic” – a figure of judgment. In the face of this criticism (either self-imposed, divine, or a 3rd-party) we seek to satisfy this insatiable and mercurial inner-voice.

We reinvent ourselves in hopes that our new clothes would fit better. Yet this "self" is more constricting and dissatisfied than the one we discarded. The project of self-justification is a self-perpetuating cycle of depression and “futile activity.” With each new attempt, the problem only gets worse.

August Playlist

Extra-cool, as promised:

1. Jump They Say - David Bowie
2. Freedom - George Michael
3. I Can't Let Maggie Go - Honeybus
4. Your Own Back Yard - Dion
5. You Are Not Alone - Mavis Staples
6. The End Of The World Is Bigger Than Love - Jens Lekman
7. Do You Love Me? - Guster
8. When A Man Needs A Woman - The Beach Boys
9. Wishing You Were Here - Chicago
10. Go Away Boy - The Pearlfishers
11. A Vegas Story - The Lost Dogs
12. Did Trouble Me - Tom Jones
13. Chief Of Police In Chicago - Doug Burr
14. Ballad Of Carol Lynn - Whiskeytown
15. Joey's Arm - Sons Of Bill
16. Rapture - Pedro The Lion
17. City With No Children - Arcade Fire
18. Do The Bartman - The Simpsons w/Michael Jackson



Bonus Track: Creepy or inspired? or both? A prize for the best caption...

Hope for Hungary-American Gypsies

"The most interesting conversation was with a Hungarian evangelist to Gypsies. He described Hungary as post-modern, post-Christian, post-reading (they don't like it, apparently), and post-listening (they heard so much propaganda from the communists that they have a hard time listening long to anyone's claims). All in all, it struck me that Americans may not be that much different from Gypsies." . . .

Mark Galli from: A Little Raising of Hands:

How the Pentecostal World Conference compares to your average evangelical conference.

Ivan Karamazov and the Devil

Another One From Marilynne Robinson's Gilead

"Transgression. That is legalism. There is never just one transgression. There is a wound in the flesh of human life that scars when it heals and often enough seems never to heal at all.

Avoid transgression. How's that for advice."

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, p. 122

Three Nice Christian Judges: Why Are They Struggling With The Church?

Three judges are in my mind today. They are the creations of literary craftsmen of the Twentieth Century, and each does his judging in the context of a 'Christian' social order, a small town of 'middle-America'. Each knows his Bible backwards and forwards, each quotes it with zest, and each dispenses mercy from the bench. Each is comfortable speaking in church, and one gives one of the great sermons of the Century, both in print and in the movies. Yet each struggles with 'church'. The most Christian of these men doesn't go any more; the Lutheran one goes but keeps his skepticism to himself; and the third is Senior Warden of his Episcopal church but is trying hard to rotate off the Vestry.

Whom are we talking about here?

We're talking about Judge Billy Priest, the hero of once popular short-stories written by the Kentucky-born humorist Irvin S. Cobb. We're talking about Judge Schlichter, the man who taught Colonel Ross, the hero of James Cozzens' novel Guard of Honor, everything he knows. And we're talking about Judge Lowe, the Senior Warden of Christ Church, Brocton (PA), who presides for the county and is both brilliant and compassionate.

Judge Priest, who is as Christian a character as you'll find in American popular fiction of the post-World War I, pre-Depression era, is a priest, de facto, to just about every person in the town of Fairfield, KY. You can read all about it in short stores such as "The Lord Will Provide", "A Beautiful Evening", and "A Blending of the Parables". But Judge Priest will never be found in church on Sunday mornings. Through careful and quiet deceptions, most of them in the service of the good, William Pittman Priest manages to create an excuse not to go, just about every Sunday of the year. And that's in a Kentucky town where absolutely everyone has a church connection of some sort -- or what the movie Bonnie and Clyde called a "church affiliation". You need to know that Will Rogers played Judge Priest in the movie entitled, wouldn't you know, Judge Priest, directed by John Ford. John Ford himself was so taken with this pastoral figure of Protestant Grace, Judge Priest, that Ford made a second movie based on the Irvin S. Cobb character, entitled The Sun Shines Bright. (Ford placed Cobb himself, the great man, in another movie of that era, Steamboat 'round the Bend.) You can see that one day long ago, Judge Priest was important. He played the part of the merciful Judge, for whom forgiveness readily trumps exaction. Though he didn't go to church.

Judge Schlichter, who is described at some length in a digression late in the body of the Pulitzer-Prize winning novel Guard of Honor, is constantly quoting Scripture on the bench, and to his clerks and staff -- and is sincere about it. Judge Schlichter does attend the Lutheran church, every Sunday, more or less, of the year. He lectures a notorious atheist who will not take the oath on the Bible, and almost puts him out of his court. Schlichter is quite sly and misses nothing. He is the terror and the god of all who know him, and love him. But Cozzens wants to tell us that Schlichter treasures considerable disillusionment in his heart, and has no sympathy for Pharisees. He keeps some liquor deep within the safe in his chambers, and is happy to have his nip (as is Judge Priest) when the right people are around, or, rather, when the wrong people are not. Judge Schlichter values Christian civilization, and especially John Milton, but is not convinced, we could say, about the Holy Spirit.

Judge Lowe, a compassionate and benign man, also a scholar and historian, reigns in the Brocton County Courthouse of Cozzens' By Love Possessed. Monday nights once a month he is right as rain in the Vestry meeting of Christ Episcopal Church. He has served several years as the Senior Warden of the parish, and is the 'grand old man' of the congregation. Almost every Episcopal church used to have a Judge Lowe. They were thoughtful, prudent, dear, watchful, wise, constant; and you never knew exactly what they believed. But it didn't really matter. You needed a Judge Lowe -- how about five! When everyone else was running around panicked about something, or hip-deep in a battle over nothing, or tiring out the rector with innumerable complaints concerning tertiary questions, you could go to 'Judge Lowe'. He would intercede, he would mediate, he would reconcile, he would comfort, he would assure, he would 'make it happen', whatever it was that needed to happen.

Not many churches have their 'Judge Lowe' any more. Such people don't go to church the way they used to. 'Pillars' like that no longer think it their duty to help prop up the local church. It doesn't go quite with the job, the job of being wise and PBS 'News-Hour' sententious, the way it used to. Most of our 'Judge Lowes' are sitting it out these days on Sunday mornings. Not to mention Monday nights. Seriously, the more is our loss.

In By Love Possessed Judge Lowe is trying hard -- and it's only 1957, for crying out loud, not 2010 -- to retire from his church position. He doesn't know 'what it all comes down to' any more, or what it 'really means'. He is talking about church. He has lost his faith in 'church'.

What will happen is that Judge Lowe will stop being Senior Warden. He will start seeming to be 'scarce' Sunday mornings, and 'unaccountably' he will start making excuses about his needing to be available to family, or needing to be out of town for one thing or another. In fact, Judge Lowe will probably be reading the Sunday paper at home and poring over his beloved history books. Maybe like another hero, 'Uncle Tim' in Cozzens' last novel, Morning Noon and Night, our man will spend the rest of his leisure time re-reading Dickens' Dombey and Son. This 'Uncle Tim' becomes one of Cozzens' more memorable characters, by the way, because even while he becomes the "re-reader of Dombey and Son", he is far-sighted enough to save his extended family's entire financial holdings before the collapse of the Stock Market in 1929.

Three judges I show you: all fine men, all compassionate men, all far-sighted and wise-minded men, all Christian men in formal terms, and one of them, Billy Priest, the very embodiment of Grace in his handling of all sorts and conditions of men and women. But they are all struggling with church. Not one of them is getting much from church.

Shouldn't we be trying to do something about this? If we lose our Judge Schlichters, Priests, and Lowes -- and we have lost a ton of them -- who is going to be left? And what were these fine people not hearing on Sunday morning that might have kept them hopeful, and warm, and trying?

From The New Yorker

Another Week Ends: Parenting, Katy Perry, New Weezer, U2 and "God Told me to..."

Filling in for DZ this week...

1. A great article from Chris Gottlieb for any parent who has ever been given unsolicited advice on their parenting skills ( I suppose that includes everyone?).

The author laments: I marvel at how comfortable people feel telling complete strangers about their purported parenting flaws...
No infraction is too small or too strange to elicit comment. (The newspaper was too close to the baby’s eyes?) All my parent friends have experienced this no-win culture of judging parenting. Depending on their personalities, they have cowered, gotten angry or been demoralized by it. Yet as stinging as the comments and glares can be, for most of us they are limited to park benches and supermarket lines or, if we’re unlucky, to visits with the in-laws. Our culture of judging parenting by impossible standards hits some much harder. (ht JD)

1a. As a follow- up check out this article from Lisa Belkin on the same issue. What is it about parenting that emboldens people to criticize so quickly?

Every time I hear a story of a public-parenting busybody I wonder the same thing. What were they thinking? Then I cringe a little. Because, I confess, I have been guilty of being that busybody.

2. On this lighter side, a slideshow by Marc Hartzman satirically wonders why God gives such bad advice. Topics range from toilet papering a tree, to shoplifting, to UFO's! (ht JD)

3. For anyone looking to be overall more happy, read the following:

a. Some interesting findings from psychologist Marina Adshade about the inverse relationship between promiscuity and happiness. (ht SZ)

b. Will buying stuff make you happy? An article by Stephanie Rosenblum on decreasing marginal utility, I mean... why "stuff" does and doesn't bring you happiness and the impact the recession is having on people's spending habits. (ht VH)

4. On the heels of a recent Rolling Stone interview and the deeply religious song "Who am I living for" many people are wondering: what does Katy Perry believe? For a short religious biography of Katy (Hudson) Perry click here. Apparently, KP grew up as a pastor's kid and was once a budding Christian music pop star.


5. Weezer's new album features none other than LOST star Jorge Garcia. Below is a preview of the song "Memories". (ht DZ)
[CONTINUE READING]

The Gospel According to Pixar: Cars

The following post is another preview of the recent Mockingbird publication: The Gospel According to Pixar. To purchase your copy go here.

General Plot: Lightening McQueen is the new rookie race car on the block that is stealing headlines with every race. He’s super fast and he knows it. He’s a one man show and vocalizes it. When his pit crew ditches him, he doesn’t care…He’s headed to California to race the final race (between the King--the current Dinoco Spokescar--and Chick) to decide who will win the treasured Piston Cup and become Dinoco’s new spokescar. But on his way to California and a following a string of unfortunate events, Lightening McQueen finds himself on a barren stretch of road in a little town, Radiator Springs. In the midst of this misfit community, of eccentric cars--who do not know or care who Lightening McQueen is--Lightening McQueen will come to experience community and, thus, love, like he never could before being an island of one. The local Judge, Doctor, and former hot-shot race-car, Doc Hudson (aka The Hudson Hornet) will be swept up in McQueen’s experience; McQueen will force Doc to face his past, which remains desperately hidden, and encourages him out of hiding into community. This community and this love will significantly alter the way McQueen (and Doc) see life…to the point of sacrifice.

Gospel Plot:

“Oh, the places you’ll go! There is fun to be done!
There are points to be scored.
There are games to be won.
And the magical things you can do with that ball
will make you the winning-est winner of all.
Fame! You’ll be famous as famous can be,
with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.
Except when they don’t.
Because, sometimes they won’t.
I’m afraid that some times
you’ll play lonely games too.
Games you can’t win
‘cause you’ll play against you.
All Alone!
Whether you like it or not,
Alone will be something
you’ll be quite a lot”
Dr. Seuss, Oh The Places You’ll Go.

Dr. Seuss is right, alone is something we are quite a lot. We have all been alone. Like Lightening McQueen, we’ve either isolated ourselves intentionally by alienating others on our way to the top; or, unintentionally, like Doc Hudson, by keeping others at a distance, safeguarding our past failures and our present brokenness. Our plans succeed and we are abandoned, left alone, isolated by those who were once close to us; until…

Until something else happens, something meets us from outside of ourselves; even when we are trying like to heck to avoid this very thing.

Eventually we “break down” (McQueen) or we become “found out” (Doc). Being alone is not the final word. At that very intersection of success and brokenness, stands the message of one-way love. At that intersection stands the Cross. McQueen is not left alone, lonely at the top. Doc is not left isolated by his past failures. Something outside of both McQueen and Doc draws them out of themselves; and, thus, into community. Someone loves them by no merit of their own. Mater loves lightening McQueen for absolutely no reason but “just because”. This is one-way love. As Mater’s one-way love flows into McQueen, McQueen can finally love someone else beside himself (Sally, for example). When love is poured in, love pours out. McQueen renovates the town for Sally as a gift, but only after Mater loves him and calls McQueen his “best friend”. The entire band of misfits in Radiator Springs embraces McQueen, and McQueen in turn—against everything that McQueen had stood for—embraces them. And, in light of this one-way love, Doc is affected. Doc is confronted by McQueen and is drawn out of reclusion and back into community (and the spotlight!). McQueen and Doc have true friends and a true family that love them for no reason; and it’s a love that is neither merited by achievements nor conditioned by failures. Mater, Ramon, Flo, Sally, Guido, Luigi, Big Red (etc) love them “just because”, no strings attached.

The Cross: As with many Pixar movies it is not only about giving the audience a warm and fuzzy feeling at the end of the movie and some sort of implausible mandate: Now Go Love! Pixar never leaves us with a feel-good un-substantial ending. Nearly always, there’s one more scene to be played. One more message to communicate: one-way love leads to sacrifice. In the final scene McQueen is racing the best race of his life. He’s implemented the tricks he learned from Hudson, he’s got his best crew: his new family. McQueen is, literally, back on top and rather invincible. He is posed to defeat the annoying and conceited Chick. Everyone is rooting for him. As he is rounding the last turn toward winning his first Piston Cup, something terrible happens. The King has a devastating crash that renders him unable to cross the finish line of his last lap, of his last race, in his last Piston Cup.

(play video from 0.00-8.10) McQueen slams on his breaks, inches prior to crossing the finish line. A moment later Chick goes whizzing by and celebrates his win. Meanwhile, McQueen, still not crossing the finish line, backs-up and goes to King’s side. But it’s not to see if King’s okay; it’s to help King cross the finish line, to allow him the dignity of finishing his last race. McQueen sacrifices his career (he will even sacrifice the Dinoco spokes-car slot for his family of misfits) and comes in not second place but last…dead last. Pixar understands the power of love; and that the power of that love has an appropriate end: sacrifice. This is the Gospel message; this is the message of true, divine, one-way love; this is the message of the Cross. Through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross, we, by faith, are no longer alienated from God, no longer alone, but are in communion with God himself (Col 1:19-22). The one-way love of Christ pours into us and, subsequently, out of us toward others. The church, the body of believers, ideally becomes the created community (out of/comprised of the broken, out of/comprised of the misfits) drawn together by this one-way love—from God for each-other. By one-way love, our possibility is given priority over our actuality (contra Aristotle). Our achievements and our failures no longer rule over us with condemnation—we are not defined by them but by God’s word: beloved; and this ‘word’ makes room for true and real transformation, it causes us to love others as we are loved.

The Law and The Gospel in John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress

This one comes to us from new Mbird contributor Davis Gouldin:

After finding an old copy of John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress in a thrift store for 25 cents, I had to add it to my summer reading. Here's a beautiful passage depicting the effects of the law and the gospel on one's heart. The image he uses is just so good that I don't think I can add anything by way of a preface.

Then he took him by the hand, and led him into a very large parlour that was full of dust, because never swept; the which after he had reviewed it a little while, the Interpreter called for a man to sweep. Now, when he began to sweep, the dust began so abundantly to fly about, that Christian had almost therewith been choked. Then said the Interpreter to a damsel that stood by, "Bring hither water, and sprinkle the room," which, when she had done, it was swept and cleansed with pleasure.

CHRISTIAN. Then said Christian, What means this?

INTERPRETER. The Interpreter answered, This parlour is the heart of a man that was never sanctified by the sweet grace of the Gospel. The dust is his original sin, and inward corruptions, that have defiled the whole man. He that began to sweep at first is the law; but she that brought water, and did sprinkle it, is the Gospel. Now whereas thou sawest that so soon as the first began to sweep, the dust did so fly about that the room by him could not be cleansed, but that thou wast almost choked therewith: this is to show thee, that the law, instead of cleansing the heart (by its working) from sin, doth revive, put strength into, and increase it in the soul, even as it doth discover and forbid it; for it doth not give power to subdue.

Again, as thou sawest the damsel sprinkle the room with water, upon which it was cleansed with pleasure: this is to show thee, that when the Gospel comes in the sweet and gracious influences thereof to the heart, then, I say, even as thou sawest the damsel lay the dust by sprinkling the floor with water, so is sin vanquished and subdued, and the soul made clean through the faith of it, and consequently fit for the King of glory to inhabit.

From Philip Larkin's "Faith Healing"

What’s wrong! Moustached in flowered frocks they shake:   

By now, all’s wrong. In everyone there sleeps   

A sense of life lived according to love.

To some it means the difference they could make   

By loving others, but across most it sweeps

As all they might have done had they been loved. 

Read the whole poem here.

Rising Son: Christian Hosoi - A (Thrashing) Story of Redemption

"There are none nearer to God in this life than these haters and blasphemers of him, nor any sons more pleasing to him and beloved by him!" (Martin Luther)

Because of my adolescent love of skateboarding, and thanks to Netflix instant streaming, I recently watched "Rising Son: Christian Hosoi".  It's a documentary about skating legend Christian Hosoi, his rise and fall from the top of the world as the sport's first "rock star".  He helped define 80s fashion, and was the first guy to sport multiple swatch watches on his wrist, which is still one of my favorite quintessentially 80s fads.  At his peak, he was the richest skateboarder in the world.  His reign as the king of vert lasted throughout the bulk of the 80s and into the 90s, but the lifestyle caught up with him, and, in 1999, Christian was caught with over a pound of meth-amphetimine in an airport.  He then spent 10 years in prison.

The film tracks Hosoi's rise, fall, ...and resurrection.  Going in, I knew about his skating, and I knew about his (not so surprising) downfall.  But his profound and sudden conversion to Christianity came as a totally wonderful surprise to me (as life on the other side of death always does, though I guess it probably shouldn't since I'm a Christian too - pun itended).  Rising Son offers a beautiful portrait of "the same old story of Jesus and his glory."

Upon reflection, one thing that especially stands out to me is the way in which his story breathes life into the notion that "God is sovereign", as He seems to be present in Christian's life long before Christian, or anybody else for that matter, ever recognizes it (i.e., preveniently).  Obviously, for starters, the man's name is "Christian".  Part of his famously flashy wardrobe included a cross which he is seen wearing at multiple points during his skating career, including at some of the darkest moments.  Another little thing that stands out is his signature move (that he invented) called "the Christ air", where he would fly through the air completely cruciform, holding his board at the end of one of his outstretched arms.

Christian is now one of the associate pastors at a church in Huntington Beach, California, the place where, earlier in his life, he helped to define street-skating at its most daring.  Here is the trailer:
  

I won't tell you any more, but, like most true stories of redemption this one has very disturbing and real depictions of an eroded life (primarily in the form of drug addiction), so be warned about that on the front end.  If you like it, you might also enjoy the documentaries "Rize" and "The Gospel According to Al Green".

PZ's Podcast This Week: A More Perfect Church?

This week, Mockingbird is proud to present the latest installment of PZ's Podcast from The Very Rev. Dr.theol. Paul F.M. Zahl. Here are some words from PZ himself on the latest episodes (as always, PZ's Podcast is available for free on iTunes):

"What is and what should never be" (Led Zeppelin): An Almost Perfect Church

In the 1935 novel entitled Green Light, by Lloyd Douglas, there is an extended description of an American Episcopal Cathedral. It is idealized, poignant, surprisingly contemporary (for any who've been close to such a creature); and it points the way. It points the way to something excellent.

Lloyd Douglas is generally pigeon-holed today as being a writer of Christian sermons in the form of novels. And no one has ever praised his style.

But I disagree about the first point. Douglas was a parish minister and university chaplain for decades when he wrote his novels, and this shows. He understood a lot, especially about everyday sufferers and their troubles.

In Green Light Douglas presents to us "Dean Harcourt," an idealized Christian pastor. The Dean suffers with polio and cannot walk. His suffering gives him empathy with "all sorts and conditions."  Dean Harcourt in my opinion is an ideal Episcopal priest. He knows about preaching -- get inside people! -- and worship -- its unstated purpose is to soften up the listener by connecting with the the unconscious and thus help her/him towards an emotional release. Dean Harcourt knows basically everything to do with getting through to people, and all in the context of traditional parish ministry. He is like "Mr. Cudlipp," the capable Episcopal vicar of James Gould Cozzens' Men and Brethren, which was written at the same time as Green Light. But Dean Harcourt is more Christian than Stoic, while Mr. Cudlipp is a Stoic who is also ordained.


In my two-part podcast this week, entitled "What is and what should never be" (Led Zeppelin), I describe the idealized church of Lloyd Douglas' grounded imagination. I then try it, weigh it, and cherish it. You might maybe call this "PZ's ecclesiology." Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. (Note: Part 2 has a 25-second silence at the beginning. A small technical difficulty. Just meditate for about 30 seconds, and then everything starts just right.)

This podcast is published in loving memory of Miss Mabel C. Shepherd.

Weds Morning Baroque N Roll: Honeybus, The Left Banke and the Holy Spirit

On either side of the psychedelic craze in 1967, scaling up to it and scaling back down again, a curious thing happened to pop music. It got interested in classical instrumentation. The resulting and very short-lived phase earned the label "baroque pop."  Not prog rock, a la Emerson Lake and Palmer, that's something different. This is before the music got too druggy and silly, or at least, while it was taking a short break from such indulgences. This is... The Left Banke and Honeybus.

More than a few people would point to The Left Banke's hit song "Walk Away, Renee" as evidence of the Incarnation. I might be one of them. It is 160 perfect seconds of harpsichord, violins and teenage longing - with a woodwind solo! "Walk Away Renee" was written by a 16-year-old kid from New York, Michael Brown, and sung with an eerie amount of emotion by his 17-year-old friend Steve Martin (not that Steve Martin). If you're in need of encouragement that God uses the "foolish things to shame the wise," look no further. Talent is so clearly a gift rather than something earned, something channeled rather than something summoned or studied. It can be approximated perhaps, maybe honed some, but never willed or manufactured. One might go so far as to say that "Walk Away Renee" makes a case for talent being a corollary to grace (just one of the many reasons to love Brian Wilson, btw). The Left Banke's entire recorded output is just 20 songs, about 10 of which are worth seeking out, esp "She May Call You Up Tonight." But there's only one "Walk Away Renee" - and there only ever will be:



"Gentle sounds with strings and things" - that's how one radio jockey described the music of Honeybus, a description that would make even the most tepid punk rocker want to throw up. Honeybus was formed on the other side of the psychedelic revolution. They were older (veterans of Joe Meek's productions actually), casualties of the British Invasion, and not willing to go on tour; they were only interested in recording. Their signature song, 1968's "I Can't Let Maggie Go," carries an undeniable echo of The Left Banke, all clarinet and strings and endearingly lackadaisical vocals, but this time with a markedly English sensibility, esp in the harmonies. "Maggie" was (sort of) a hit in their native land but hardly made a splash in the States. And like The Left Banke, Honeybus were gone as soon as they'd begun, dropping a few singles and one terrific album (without their main songwriter!), never to be heard from again:



Inspiration, like ministry, does not need to be sustainable to be genuine. Talent rarely follows a timetable. To quote our merciful friend, the wind blows wherever it pleases. Just ask Renee or Maggie, wherever they are.

T.S. Eliot's "The Confidential Clerk"

A few highlights from Mockingbird favorite T.S. Eliot and his often overshadowed play "The Confidential Clerk." This play in particular speaks to the tragedy of the divided self in conflict with oneself. For more from Eliot go here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

"I'm not at all sure that I like the other person
That I feel myself becoming - though he fascinates me.
And yet from time to time, when I least expect it,
When my mind is cleared and empty, walking in the street
Or waking in the night, then the former person,
The person I used to be, returns to take possession:
And I am again the disappointed organist,
And for a moment the thing I cannot do,
The art that I could never excel in,
Seems the one thing worth doing, the one thing
That I want to do. I have to fight that person."

"But when I am alone, and look at one [sculpture] long enough,
I sometimes have that sense of identification
With the man of which I spoke [ note: himself] - an agonizing ecstasy
Which makes life bearable. It's all I have.
I suppose it takes the place of religion:
Just as my wife's investigations
Into what she calls the life of the spirit
Are a kind of substitute religion.
I dare say truly religious people -
I've never known any - can find some unity."

"Just when we think we have settled our account
Life presents a new one, more difficult to pay"

"Just when you think you're on the point of release
From loneliness, then loneliness swoops down upon you;
When you think you're getting out, you're getting further in,
And you know at last that there's no escape"

"Wishes, when realised, sometimes turn
Against those who have made them"

"Now that I've abandoned my illusions and ambitions
All that's left is love. But not on false pretenses"

David Foster Wallace on Fear, Achievement and Internal Means

One last quote from the book-length interview Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, after which I promise to give the St. Dave stuff a rest:

That the fear is the basic condition, and there are all kinds of reasons for why we're so afraid. But the fact of the matter is, is that, is that the job that we're here to do is to learn how to live in a way that we're not terrified all the time. And not in a position of using all kinds of different things, and using people to keep that kind of terror at bay. That is my personal opinion.

Well for me, as an American male, the face I'd put on the terror is the dawning realization that nothing's enough, you know? That no pleasure is enough, that no achievement is enough. That there's a kind of queer dissatisfaction or emptiness at the core of the self that is unassuageable by outside stuff. And my guess is that that's been what's going on, ever since people were hitting each other over the head with clubs. Though describable in a number of different words and cultural argots. And that our particular challenge is that there's never been more and better stuff comin' from the outside, that seems temporarily to sort of fill the hole or drown out the hole.

Could it be assuageable by internal means also?

Personally, I believe that if it's assuageable in any way it's by internal means. And I don't know what that means. I think it's fine in some way. [Tape off again; we keep turning it off while he mentally drafts and redrafts answers.] I think its probably assuageable by internal means. I think those internal means have to be earned and developed, and it has something to do with, um, um, the pop-psych phrase is lovin' yourself.

It's more like, if you can think of times in your life that you've treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely loved more than life itself. And I think it's probably possible to achieve that. I think part of the job we're here for is to learn how to do it. [Spits with mouthful voice into cup.] I know that sounds a little pious.

After Stanley

The Guardian has a poignant and terribly sad story about the wife of Stanley Kubrick, and her life after his death.  It touches on a lot we talk about here: suffering, death, funerals, family secrets, parents and children.  Even things like the Nazareth Principle. 

And there are some lovely things you learn about them: like how much Stanley loved his wife and how he danced with her every night in private.  Here are some interesting quotes:

[In referring to her uncle who made horrifying propaganda films for the Nazis] “Nobody can imagine that you can know someone who was so guilty so intimately – and yet not know."

Christiane says her uncle's story reinforced for Stanley and her their great principle in life: always be suspicious of people who have, or crave, power. "All Stanley's life he said, 'Never, ever go near power. Don't become friends with anyone who has real power. It's dangerous.'

"I am very self-conscious and surrounded by his ghost.... I'm always having these conversations with him as I am not terribly secure."

Above is a clip of their daughter Vivian, who figures so tragically at the end of the Guardian piece. The clip is from Kubrick's masterpiece "2001." It was filmed as a conversation between Kubrick and his daughter.

Billy Joe Shaver vs. Satan

More evidence that Billy Joe rocks harder than any man his age has a right to... What a stud, definitely the heir apparent to Johnny Cash's voice-of-God throne. He claims that Bad Blake wasn't based on him, but I beg to differ. Here's a barnburner from his most recent record:

Another Week Ends: Franzen's Freedom, Strippers at Church, Hairdryers, Gender Jokes, Sufjan and Arcade Fire

1. The reviews for Freedom, Jonathan Franzen's much-anticipated follow-up to 2001's The Corrections, are in, and terms like "America's Greatest Novelist" are once again being thrown around, with the decline of the novel itself being re-evaluated as well. Personally, I love Franzen's work, especially his essays (he's got a great one about his involvement in youth ministry growing up) and will be first in line on the 31st. Time Magazine has gone so far as to put him on their cover, the first time they've done so with a living novelist in ten years. Their profile is only moderately interesting, my favorite bit being Franzen's take on busyness and books:

There are any number of reasons to want novels to survive. The way [Jonathan] Franzen thinks about it is that books can do things, socially useful things, that other media can't. He cites -- as one does -- the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard and his idea of busyness: that state of constant distraction that allows people to avoid difficult realities and maintain self-deceptions. With the help of cell phones, e-mail and handheld games, it's easier to stay busy, in the Kierkegaardian sense, than it's ever been.

Reading, in its quietness and sustained concentration, is the opposite of busyness. "We are so distracted by and engulfed by the technologies we've created, and by the constant barrage of so-called information that comes our way, that more than ever to immerse yourself in an involving book seems socially useful," Franzen says. "The place of stillness that you have to go to to write, but also to read seriously, is the point where you can actually make responsible decisions, where you can actually engage productively with an otherwise scary and unmanageable world."

The NY Times Book Review calls it a "masterpiece of American fiction" and describes one of the themes of the book, saying:

As each of us seeks to assert his “personal liberties” — a phrase Franzen uses with full command of its ideological implications — we helplessly collide with others in equal pursuit of their sacred freedoms, which, more often than not, seem to threaten our own. It is no surprise, then, that “the personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage,” as Franzen remarks. And the dream will always sour; for it is seldom enough simply to follow one’s creed; others must embrace it too. They alone can validate it.

2. A follow-up to last week's shocking video about strippers and church. Sounds like they're working things out! ht JZ.

3. The latest innovation in the world of New Atheism is pretty clever: A hairdryer, for de-baptizing. Points for creativity! On a less amusing note, Leisl Schillinger's article in the NY Times "Christopher Hitchens, Not Going Gently," clearly meant to strike a note of quiet admiration for a man "sticking to his guns," instead comes across as surprisingly naive, and even a bit silly. That is, it doesn't stick to its own annihilationist guns, which the man himself did in his recent interview with The Atlantic. It made me particularly sad to read a quote from the great Martin Amis about immortality being something that can be achieved through art. As if...

4. If you're in need of an additional chuckle, The Onion reports, "Person With Almost No Responsibility Constantly Stressed Out." And then there's Harvard Sailing Team's hilarious mirror takes on gender politics, "Girls Will Be Boys" and "Boys Will Be Girls." I could say something about original sin being evenly distributed, or about the law of gender being as confining as it is arbitrary, but it's mainly just really funny [warning: slight vulgarity - ht DB].

5. In music, apparently Sufjan Stevens just released a new EP, a couple of hours ago, entitled All Delighted People. And Arcade Fire's recent tour of primetime culminated in a pretty terrific performance on The Daily Show:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Arcade Fire - Ready to Start
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

P.S. If you haven't checked out our Resources pages recently, you're missing out! There's a bunch of new sermons up.

Young Man Blues

"...much of what teenage boys talk about is wild-eyed or unrealistic. A father has difficulty hearing a teenager's exaggerations for what they are - an experiment in thinking or a necessary calibration of an unfolding identity. When a father hears foolishness, he sees a fool. He fears a collapse of character and intelligence, or an unacceptably cavalier attitude about the future, and he's quick to try to set his son straight."

- from Raising Cain

Frank and Ernest on American Spirituality and Theologians of Glory

I love this cartoon. I’m sure I’m reading too much into it but I can’t help but think this is a perfect commentary on American flavored theology aka, a theology of glory.

Here’s how I see it: Americans tend to view spirituality like a product. Get religion—any religion will do so long as it works for you and you don’t proselytize anyone—and you're on the road to attaining inner peace and balance. Ultimately, because you're a good person, you’re bound to wind up getting all the things in life you want and deserve (The Secret anyone?)

This Oprah worldview essentially says the world's most pressing problems are rooted in the tragic state of being personally unfulfilled. Lucky for you, there’s a remedy for that: lots and lots of money. So here's what you do. Mix a dash of religion to good old go-getter, All Your Dreams Will Come True Americanism into a blender, press liquify and you’ve got a match made in heaven.

“Ka-ching!” indeed.

On the other hand, a theology of the cross contends that our deepest needs are not met in personal fulfillment but in seeing our self-inflated desires put to death as we’re identified with a guiltless man dying on a cross.

Remember the old saying that those that lose their lives for His sake will find it? As in, you’ve got to die to live? That’s a hard sell. But when the beauty of the cross is seen for what it truly is, you know it’s a miracle.

Toy Story as a Trilogy of Heroic Repentance, Part Three: Imputation, Salvation and the Theology of the Cross, Pixar-style

The conclusion to Jeremiah Lawson's AKA Wenatchee the Hatchet's brilliant and very touching look at the Toy Story trilogy. If you haven't read parts one and two, we highly suggest that you do so before reading this final part. To order a copy of Mockingbird's brand-new publication, The Gospel According to Pixar, go here.

When we look back on all the things Woody has said and done in the three films, we see that he could often be bitter, craven, wrathful, envious, fearful, and self-absorbed. Yet he has also become more selfless, more giving, more patient, more compassionate, and more the person Andy has imagined him to be over the three movies. By the end of this third film we can fairly ask whether Woody has become so because of his own capacity for embodying these qualities or whether he has also, to put it in starkly theological terms, been the recipient of imputed righteousness. In other words, has Woody been this good because he is this good or because years of being played with by Andy has given him these qualities? Clearly there is no need to assume a polarized assessment since both are true.

At the risk of putting things somewhat personally, I grew up the son of an American Indian man. I never liked movies involving cowboys and Indians. I never particularly liked how Indians have been betrayed in film whether it's been Dances with Wolves or the token Indian in Predator or Indian stand-ins in Avatar. Woody is the first and only cowboy character in my personal history with cinema that I can root for and relate to. Buzz says simply in Toy Story 2, "Woody once risked his life to save me and I couldn't consider myself his friend if I wasn't willing to do the same." Jesus, of course, said that there is no greater love than this that a man lay down his life for his friends.

There is a great deal that a Christian can appreciate about the Toy Story films and a great deal of character development consonant with the teaching of Christ. Of course this will never be a substitute for “the real thing,” but if your heart and mind are attuned to considering the story of Christ and His people, of the kindness the Father, Son, and Spirit bestow upon us as we await salvation, and most of all as we consider what it can look like to love God and our neighbor, stories like the Toy Story trilogy can inspire us to remember what we are urged to remember.

As I said at the start, those who consider Pixar villains to be weak links, storytelling-wise, are partly right. I believe David Denby has been correct to point out that, in contrast to Disney films that are psychological fables, Pixar films are moral fables--Pixar films have an almost civic-minded sense of duty to one's neighbor in them is roughly how Denby put it. Denby does not go so far as to say (but may as well have) that Disney films have traditionally depicted a central character cast in a faintly Randian narrative milieu struggling to love himself or herself and be admired by others.

The characters in Pixar films, on the other hand, struggle to realize that loving one’s neighbor as oneself does not mean somehow loving oneself more – in fact, loving oneself, as a goal, can actually hamper one’s ability to be loved. For example, Marlin in Finding Nemo does not realize that in protecting Nemo, he is protecting his own interests rather than acting as the best father he can be to his son. Bob Parr in The Incredibles does not realize that returning to a life of adventure without his family robs his family of a thing that can bind them together. Remy in Ratatouille must neither repudiate human or rodent society but recognize that his identity as a cook allows him to bridge both societies in a way that does not compel him to lie to either group. Of course, WALL-E sold us with the tagline that after centuries of doing what he was built to do, he was going to discover what he was born to do.

All of the above forms a narrative and character thread that goes all the way back to Woody and Buzz.
[CONTINUE READING]

PZ's Podcast This Week: The British Invasion

Today two new talks have been published on "PZ's Podcast" (Subscribe free on iTunes.)

The first is entitled The Browning Version and concerns a 1951 movie starring Michael Redgrave and written by Terence Rattigan, which is based on Rattigan's 1948 play.

It is about a man who must lose his life in order to gain it. The material connects directly with the 25th Chorus of "Mexico City Blues":

Is my own, is your own,

Is not Owned by Self-Owner

but found by Self-Loser --

Old Ancient Teaching

This podcast is dedicated to David Browder.

The second cast for this week is called "'Man Gave Names to All the Animals' (Bob Dylan) and he named them Eric Burdon, Alan Price, Chas Chandler, Hilton Valentine, and John Steel." The subject is the legendary "British Invasion" group The Animals. PZ surveys The Animals' career, recalling two personal encounters with them, one in 1966 and then again in 1992. He concludes with a reflection on fun.

Emerging Adulthood and The Age 30 Deadline

An interesting look at the extended adolescence phenomenon in this past weekend's NY Times Magazine. Much of the article is devoted to brain development and the current debate as to whether 20-somethings constitute a new stage in human development, etc. But the crux of the matter boils down to two questions: Why are people growing up later than they used to? And is that a good or bad thing? 

This blogger might argue that it's both: the retreat from conventional responsibilities and commitments can unleash tremendous creativity and self-expression in young people, giving them room and freedom to be changed by external forces rather than conform to them out of mere obligation. But it can also become an exercise in self-indulgence, or worse, foster the kind of imprisoning self-focus/inwardness that ends in despair. After all, commitments and responsibilities, like The Law, can often teach us more about ourselves than a year traveling abroad, e.g. failure to fulfill one's responsibilities has a way of engendering the sort of self-knowledge that is truly freeing. But it can also be profoundly defeating. Meanwhile, the law of "finding yourself," while liberating for those who're struggling against someone's else's idea of who they need to be, can be just as harsh to those who truly don't know. I suppose both options, the embracing of responsibilities or the postponement of them, can have the same effect; one man's Law is another man's Gospel. 

Or perhaps it's much less complicated than that. Perhaps both options are simply two different ways of dealing with life's "oughts," flipsides of the same Law-shaped coin, an elder brother-prodigal dynamic, alternate answers to the same thoroughly wrong-headed question - further illustration of the thirst for glory needing to be extinguished rather than quenched. What do you think? A few excerpts from the article (ht JD):

Getting to what we would generally call adulthood is happening later than ever. But why? That’s the subject of lively debate among policy makers and academics. To some, what we’re seeing is a transient epiphenomenon, the byproduct of cultural and economic forces. To others, the longer road to adulthood signifies something deep, durable and maybe better-suited to our neurological hard-wiring. What we’re seeing, they insist, is the dawning of a new life stage — a stage that all of us need to adjust to.

Just as adolescence has its particular psychological profile, [Clark University psychologist Jeffrey Jensen] Arnett says, so does emerging adulthood: identity exploration, instability, self-focus, feeling in-between and a rather poetic characteristic he calls “a sense of possibilities.” A few of these, especially identity exploration, are part of adolescence too, but they take on new depth and urgency in the 20s. The stakes are higher when people are approaching the age when options tend to close off and lifelong commitments must be made. Arnett calls it “the age 30 deadline.”

Is emerging adulthood a rich and varied period for self-discovery, as Arnett says it is? Or is it just another term for self-indulgence?
[CONTINUE READING]

The Anne Rice Chronicles: Part 2

More news on a story we've been following with some interest here at Mockingbird: Anne Rice's very public rejection of Christianity (while maintaining her personal devotion to and belief in Christ).

The author recently gave a well-worth-a-look interview to Christianity Today. Read it and see what you think. She talks about her thinking on the church, why she left, and her personal spiritual life.

While I found myself at times agreeing, at times disagreeing with her, she made a statement that jolted me:

"Christians have lost credibility in America as people who know how to love."

Discuss.

PS: A nice bonus in the article is we get to find out what she reads. Her answers may (or may not) surprise you:

Are there any other religious authors you read?

I read theology and biblical scholarship all the time. I love the biblical scholarship of D.A. Carson. I very much love Craig S. Keener. His books on Matthew and John are right here on my desk all the time. I go to Craig Keener for answers because his commentary on Scripture is so thorough. I still read N.T. Wright. I love the Catholic theologian Karl Rahner. I love his writing on Jesus Christ. It's very beautiful to me, and I study a little bit of it every day. Of course, I love Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

You mentioned D.A. Carson, Craig Keener, and N.T. Wright. They are fairly conservative Protestants.

Sometimes the most conservative people are the most biblically and scholastically sound. They have studied Scripture and have studied skeptical scholarship. They make brilliant arguments for the way something in the Bible reads and how it's been interpreted. I don't go to them necessarily to know more about their personal beliefs. It's the brilliance they bring to bear on the text that appeals to me. Of all the people I've read over the years, it's their work that I keep on my desk. They're all non-Catholics, but they're believers, they document their books well, they write well, they're scrupulously honest as scholars, and they don't have a bias. Many of the skeptical non-believer biblical scholars have a terrible bias. To them, Jesus didn't rise from the dead, so there's no point in discussing it. I want someone to approach the text and tell me what it says, how the language worked.