Psychoanalysis and the Grace of God in Franny and Zooey

 From pp 109-110 of J.D. Salinger's other masterpiece:

"I don't know," he said. "It seems to me there must be a psychoanalyst holed up somewhere in town who'd be good for Franny -- I thought about that last night."  [Zooey] grimaced slightly.

"But I don't happen to know of any.  For a psychoanalyst to be any good with Franny at all, he'd have to be a pretty peculiar type.  I don't know. He'd have to believe that it was through the grace of God that he'd been inspired to study psychoanalysis in the first place. He'd have to believe that it was through the grace of God that he wasn't run over by a goddam truck before he ever even got his license to practice. He'd have to believe that it's through the grace of God that he has the native intelligence to be able to help his goddam patients at all. If she got somebody terribly Freudian, or terribly eclectic, or just terribly run-of-the-mill -- somebody who didn't even have any crazy, mysterious gratitude for his insight and intelligence -- she'd come out of analysis in even worse shape than Seymour did.  It worried hell out of me, thinking about it. Let's just shut up about it, if you don't mind."

Never Tell Tina Fey She's Crazy

The lady is on a roll in The New Yorker. Her column in last week's issue, "Lessons From Late Night," had more than its fair share of pithy wisdom. Number Nine in her list of "Things I Learned From Lorne Michaels" was particularly worth sharing. You figure out why, ht MCZ: 

(9) Never tell a crazy person he's crazy.

There were many times in my nine years at [Saturday Night Live] when I couldn't understand why Lorne [Michaels, legendary producer of SNL] didn't just tell people to knock it off. Eccentric writers would turn in sketches that were seventeens minutes too long, immature performers tried fits and tears when their sketches appeared later in the show than they'd wanted. My instinct would have been to pull these culprits aside and scold them like a schoolmarm. "Please explain to me why your sketch should get to be three times longer than everyone else's." "How dare you pitch a a fit about what time your sketch is on? Some people didn't get to be in the show at all." But there is not one management course in the world that recommends self-righteousness as a tool.

Lorne has an indirect and very effective way of dealing with the crazies. It is best described by the old joke that most people know from "Annie Hall." A man goes to a psychiatrist and says, "My brother's gone crazy. He thinks he's a chicken." And the psychiatrist says, "Have you told him he's not a chicken?" The man replies, "I would, but we need the eggs." Lorne knows that the most exhausting people occasionally turn out the best stuff... Some people arrive at the show sane, and the show turns them crazy.

In fairness to others, I will use myself as an example. In October, 2001, Manhattan was a tense place to work. One Friday morning, I was sitting in my tiny dressing room at 30 Rockefeller Plaza trying to write jokes for "Weekend Update." I was reading a thick packet of newspaper clippings, looking for something funny to say about Afghanistan, the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, the anthrax postal attacks: it was grim. Then Lester Holt came on MSNBC on the TV handing in the corner and said, "Breaking news. Anthrax has been found at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. CDC officials are investigating the potentially deadly substance, which was found in a suspicious package addressed to NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw." If you have decent reading-comprehension skills, you will remember from the beginning of this paragraph that I, too, was at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. "Nope," I thought. "I give up." I put on my coat, walked downstairs past my friend and co-workers without saying anything. I waslked past the host for that week, sweet Drew Barrymore, without telling her what I had heard. I just went to the elevator and left. Then I walked home and waited to die. Several hours later, Lorne called and said gently, "We're all here. You and Drew are the only ones who left. And Drew came back a few hours ago, so.... we're ordering dinner, if you want to come back in." It was the kindest way of saying, "You're embarrassing yourself."

I got back to work that evening just in time to find everyone assembled on the studio floor. Andy Lack, the head of NBC News, was giving the crew an emergency briefing. Nothing is scarier, by the way, than a bunch of adults being very quiet. Lack explained that the CDC would be "swabbing" workers from the second floor to the sixth floor...

As I watched from the audience balcony, I felt tremendous affection for everyone there. It was as if we were all a family and, if we had to go, at least we'd go together. I guess I forgot that just a few hours earlier I had booked it out of there, leaving them all to die. (I have a uniquely German capacity to vacillate between sentimentality and coldness). The point is Lorne did not do what I would have done, which is to say to me, "You're being crazy. Get back in here. Do you think you're more important than everybody else?" He also didn't coddle me, which is what I would have done if I were trying to overcompensate for my natural sternness. "Are you O.K.? If you need to take a couple of days off, I'm sure we can manage, blah, blah, blah." Instead, he found a way for me to slip back in the door as if my mental breakdown had never happened. "We're ordering dinner. What do you want?" He knew how to get the eggs.

Another Week Ends: Grace & Cutting, Depression & Recession, David Foster Wallace, Burned-Over Generations, Greg McElroy, Supernatural, Arcade Fire

1. Continuing this past month's unexpected foray into gender-related topics (i.e. here, here, here and here), Christianity Today published a doozie of an article earlier this week on its Her.meneutics site, "The Gospel of Grace for Women Who Self-Injure". A couple lines from the conclusion (ht DB):

I’m not surprised that self-punishing behaviors occur among Christians. And this is not to blame the church. For legalism — and I would argue that this is what these behaviors are at their core — comes in guises both religious and secular. The desire to control the destiny of a few moments, if not our lives, is a fact of the human condition. But it is a fact that directly opposes the gospel of grace. 

Also female-related, from Medical News Daily (aka Captain Obvious: The Journal) is "Mean Girls and Queen Bees: Females Under Threat of Social Exclusion Respond by Excluding Others First".

2. On the male side of things, and following-up the Man-Child post, Time reports on the impact the recession appears to be having on rates of depression among men, challenging the accepted finding that the condition is more prevalent among ladies, ht TB.

3. Speaking of men and depression, it's been a big week for David Foster Wallace. The New Yorker published an excerpt of his new book The Pale King, "Backbone". To compare the published version with the version he read publicly a few years prior, go here. I also came across a terrific discussion/defense of his fiction by Rebekah Frumkin on The Common Review, entitled "Our Psychic Living Room", which includes a variation of one of our favorite quotes from the man himself via a 1996 interview (ht CR):

The sadness that [Infinite Jest] is about, and that I was going through [when I wrote it], was a real American type of sadness. I was white, upper-middle-class, obscenely well-educated, had had way more career success than I could have legitimately hoped for and was sort of adrift. A lot of my friends were the same way. Some of them were deeply into drugs, others were unbelievable workaholics. Some were going to singles bars every night. You could see it played out in 20 different ways, but it’s the same thing. . . . I get the feeling that a lot of us, privileged Americans, as we enter our early 30s, have to find a way to put away childish things and confront stuff about spirituality and values.

4. By way of self-promotion, Modern Reformation just published "Compassion, Creativity and Connecting with a Burned-Over Generation" by yours truly, which outlines some of the thinking behind Mockingbird, in case you were curious. I'm proud to say I was able to sneak Axl Rose, Michael Jackson, Whit Stillman, Oscar Wilde, Stuart Murdoch, and David Foster Wallace into the party. UPDATE: Mod Ref has been kind enough to unlock the article, so it's now available in its entirety on their site, for free! For more Reformation goodness, be sure to check out their considerably more tricked-out sister site, The White Horse Inn, and then head over to New Reformation Press to hear Rod Rosenbladt's stunning new must-hear sermon "Christianity in Five Verses." It's raining Reformation!
[CONTINUE READING]

Conference Preview: Freedom to Fail - A Conversation about Grace and Failure in Parenting (and Being Parented)

On December 6, 2006, the doctor handed us an 8lb ball of pure fury that sounded more like a baby pterodactyl than, well, a human baby. Filled with romantic notions of being the perfect mom and dad (always calm, always gentle, always smiling), we headed home with our first born son. When he wasn't sleeping (which was scattered) he was screaming. Within two weeks after our son's birth, everything that we believed would be our parenting experience shattered. Our patience and energy levels were depleted, and our frustration and exhaustion levels were sky high. Rather than feeling nurturing, we felt resentful and angry; rather than going to him when he cried, I (Lauren) would crawl under the covers and cry. We couldn't do it; we couldn't be the perfect parents. We were plagued with guilt and convinced of our failure. We were failing, and our failure would be our son's undoing.

But the Gospel told us something different: that it wasn't all up to us or on our shoulders, that we were forgiven and justified apart from our actions. The Gospel put the lie to the equation that perfect parents = perfect children (or that perfection is possible in either party). The Gospel gave us freedom...freedom to be the parents we were--faults and strengths combined--with the freedom to fail.

In recognizing our own failures and faults in parenting, we were able to begin to forgive our own parents--who are (it turns out) as human as we are, faults and all.

This breakout session was developed out of this experience of feeling like a failure in parenting and the freedom that the Gospel message brings. Come and hear our experience; more importantly, we would love to hear yours.

To register, click here.

Brene Brown on The Power of Vulnerability

A courageous address from Brene Brown at last year's TED summit in Houston, jam-packed with insight and premised on a concept of 'enoughness' which has more than a little in common with what we talk about on here so frequently. It's, um, enough to make one wonder where Brown, the social worker responsible for that fantastic article on Perfectionism a few months back, is coming from. That is, it seems positively soaked in Christian understandings, endorsing in roundabout ways the healing power of repentance, our enslavement to self-justification and inherent obsession with righteousness, the entire idea of strength in weakness, she even touches on grace in parenting. And minus a grounding in something a bit more realistic/Eternal, her notion of 'whole-heartedness' is almost a direct borrow from the church, going so far as to co-opt religious language.

Of course, there are plenty of bones to pick - this is not a theological talk - but the congruence is remarkable. And her wonderful delivery is a case in point re: the power of vulnerability. Has she listened to Breaking The Fourth Wall? You be the judge, ht CC:

Another Week Ends: U-Bending Happiness, South Park Religion, Charlie Sheen, Louie CK, Friday Night Lights

1. From one of the December issues of The Economist, some interesting findings about "Age and Happiness". The main discovery being the "U-Bend" - i.e. the finding that people are happiest in their youth and old age, and least happy in between. The most relevant section for us has to do with "the death ambition" (ht VH):

Maybe people come to accept their strengths and weaknesses [as they grow older], give up hoping to become chief executive or have a picture shown in the Royal Academy, and learn to be satisfied as assistant branch manager, with their watercolour on display at the church fete. “Being an old maid”, says one of the characters in a story by Edna Ferber, an (unmarried) American novelist, was “like death by drowning—a really delightful sensation when you ceased struggling.” Perhaps acceptance of ageing itself is a source of relief. “How pleasant is the day”, observed William James, an American philosopher, “when we give up striving to be young—or slender.”

2. A great overview on Slate of South Park's Trey Parker and Matt Stone's dealings over the years with religion. They've certainly not shied away from the topic, as their upcoming Book of Mormon musical boldly drives home. Parker has always seemed to be the driving force, so it's a shame they didn't interview him, but nevertheless [vulgarity warning - duh]:

What Parker and Stone do isn't religion-bashing. It's religion-teasing. And it's born more from fascination than disdain. "I'm an atheist that admires and likes religion," Stone told me in an interview. He describes the new musical as "an atheist's love letter to religion." If you had to classify Parker and Stone's world view, you might call it Hobbesian absurdism.[CONTINUE READING]

Sweet Emotion on American Idol?

Not being a huge American Idol person, or post-Rocks Aerosmith fan, everything in Jon Caramanica's article in this past Sunday's NY Times, "Steven Tyler Escapes From Idolatry," was news to me. Those of you who've seen the episode in question can tell us whether it was indeed a lightning-striking instance of grace on TV or a carefully played media-moment (or both, as the article suggests). But there's an unmistakeable note of Nazareth here - in regards to Mr. Tyler, that is - of folks being caught seriously off guard by his charisma/character/kindness, of their preconceptions being exposed for what they are (myself included), not to mention the sheer unexpectedness of grace, ht CW:

Fame isn’t all gold, honey and massage oils; it’s also the successful navigation of a steady stream of unlikely and uncomfortable situations. At this, the first few weeks of the 10th season of “American Idol” have proved, Steven Tyler is an unalloyed genius.

The moment when Mr. Tyler, one of this season’s new judges, claimed the show as his own came during the third night of auditions. Chris Medina tried out with a muscular version of The Script’s “Breakeven” after telling the story of how his fiancée, Juliana Ramos, suffered a brain injury that left her in a wheelchair, able to move her left arm and little more. After he sang, he brought Ms. Ramos in to the audition room at the judges’ behest. By any measure it was difficult to watch, testing the viewer’s urge to turn away, to wish for a speedy change of scene.

Randy Jackson and Jennifer Lopez introduced themselves to Ms. Ramos, but Mr. Tyler took charge. “Hi, girl,” he said, shaking her hand. “I just heard your fiancé sing, and he’s so good.” At this point, as she teetered back and forth, he was gripping her shoulder and staring at her comfortingly: a rock, a confidant, a seducer. “You know, because he sings to you all the time,” he said, leaning in to her, stroking her hair, kissing her warmly — all with tenderness — then whispering in her ear, “That’s why he sings so good, because he sings to you.”

It was a stellar embrace, the sort of practiced sincerity that’s one of the wages of extreme celebrity. Except that, over time, it can shake free of its dishonesty, as was the case here. In that moment Mr. Tyler was both deeply practiced and deeply humane. It made for a stunning display of kindness unusual not just for “Idol,” but for all of popular culture in matters of dealing with the severely disabled. [CONTINUE READING]

Another Week Ends: Transformation Myths, Eating Disorders, Suicidal Standards, Aging Ungracefully, Rehab Albums, St Elizabeths

1.  The timing just could not be any better. NYC Mockingbird Conference Speaker Mark Galli has been blowing up this past week, most notably on The Internet Monk. Start with The Evangelical Myth of "Transformation" and go from there - the discussion provides a helpful overview of where Mr Galli is coming from, not to mention a few clues as to why we asked him to speak. Speaking of NYC, we can now announce that childcare will indeed be available, for kids under the age of 8. Email us at info@mbird.com if you plan on taking us up on the offer. Register today. Otherwise, brace yourself for a rather somber week ends column...

2.  Why Am I Not Smarter Than My Eating Disorder? on Salon.com is about as unassuming an article on the bondage of will as we're likely to find. Almost comically so - at least, if it weren't about something so unfunny (ht JD):

I know what I need to do to overcome this disorder. I just need to get over it and eat healthily and according to the principles in which my intellectual mind believes. This shouldn't be hard. For whatever reason, I don't seem to be doing it.

3.  From the Scientific American, a revealing but also pretty grim article, "What It Feels Like To Kill Yourself," which gives new meaning to the phrase "the Law kills." The following portion was particularly relevant:

Most people who kill themselves actually lived better-than-average lives. Suicide rates are higher in nations with higher standards of living than in less prosperous nations; higher in US states with a better quality of life; higher in societies that endorse individual freedoms; higher in areas with better weather; in areas with seasonal change, they are higher during the warmer seasons; and they’re higher among college students that have better grades and parents with higher expectations.

Baumeister argues that such idealistic conditions actually heighten suicide risk because they often create unreasonable standards for personal happiness, thereby rendering people more emotionally fragile in response to unexpected setbacks.

4.  In an article entitled "The Myth of Aging Gracefully" in The Daily Beast (via Newsweek) author Susan Jacoby has some refreshingly counter-cultural things to say about the "thirst for glory," ht RF:

"Who wants to live to 100? Just about everyone, if old age fulfills the fantasy that we can sail through our 90s with vigorous bodies and minds and die instantly of a heart attack, preferably while making love or running the last of many marathons. As the oldest baby boomers turn 65, it is past time to take a realistic look at old age as it is—not as a minor inconvenience to be remedied by longevity-worshiping hucksters of “anti-aging” supplements or brain-teasing computer games, not as a “disease” that will soon by “cured” by a medical miracle, and not as an experience to be defied and denied, in the spirit of a 2008 World Science Festival panel on aging titled “90 Is the New 50.” No, it’s not. It’s not even the new 70. The truth is that we are all capable of aging successfully—until we aren’t.

5.  The Wall Street Journal reports on the fascinating relationship between sobriety and hit records in "The Rehab Album", using Mbird favorite Justin Townes Earle as one of their case studies, ht DW.
[CONTINUE READING]

Lifting Up Jeff Lynne and The Wilbury Sound

There haven't been any books written about Jeff Lynne yet, but there will be. ELO was fantastic and would certainly be enough to qualify him as hagiography-worthy. But what separates Jeff from many of the pop musicians of his generation is the extremely potent second wind that he caught in the late 80s.

ELO never put out a dud in their 15 or so years together, refining a "sound" so infectious and cool that it's no surprise it's experienced such a dramatic revival in the past few years (where would the Flaming Lips be without ELO?!). Jeff's outspoken love of The Beatles meant that they got saddled with a pastiche tag early on that didn't remotely do them justice. Sure, his voice sounds uncannily like all four Beatles singing at once, but the space-age obsessions and synth proclivities are all dressed-down 70s prog, brilliantly assimilated into a pop-classicist's sensibility that manages to sound lush yet synthetic at the same time. The highlights are probably the near-bookends of 1974's Eldorado and their unsung 1981 time-travel masterpiece Time (which, more than any of its sci-fi concept-record brothers from the same period, has stood the test of, um, time. Eat your heart out, Alan Parsons). But I digress.

Lynne's second wind, which was really more of an explosion, has as its center The Traveling Wilburys' first album. We've made a lot on here about the genius of that record; the spontaneity, the remarkable ego-less-ness, the sheer joy, not to mention the effortlessly fabulous songs that mark it as a prime example of What We Talk About When We Talk About Fruit, i.e. what can happen organically when plans and pressures are somehow supplanted by love and freedom as the motivating factors of an endeavor. Indeed, the Wilbury period, from roughly 1987 to 1991, marks an outburst of creativity that was fueled, at least in part, by some deep friendships. These guys were having fun, relishing their shared love of rock n roll and of one another, and that joy found its way into the grooves. If you haven't watched the documentary, do yourself a favor (or just watch the corresponding half-hour in Runnin' Down a Dream). It's all highly illustrative of a great passage in Grace in Practice:

For when work is produced from a natural desire and motive, rather than from the idea of actions resulting in proposed consequences, the best work is done. This is because the subject of the work, the “I” of all human endeavor, is not its end. That “I” is dead; it was dead on arrival the day grace arrived on the scene, irrespective of your gifts, talenst and givens. Under grace, career advances only one way: away from the wreckage of the “I” and the absence of any fixed need for achievement. (pg 73).

Truly, there's no hint of youthful self-aggrandizement in any of the Wilbury records. If anything they're self-deprecating - the lack of pretense is astonishing given the talents involved. Yes, lyrically-speaking, apart from Harrison's project, these may not be the deepest tracks ever cut, but they more than make up for it with their uncontrived generosity.
[CONTINUE READING]

A Couple Doozies from Grace in Practice

p. 6: "But the law, no matter where it comes from, is always the law heard. I hear ‘you shall’ and 'you shall not’ as adversarial. This is the key to understanding human psychology and human action. All ideals and all delineations of what is absolutely good are heard and understood as accusatory statements… Say what you will about its idealistic intent, about its being the ultimate ‘design manual’ for men and women, the law is always heard as an attack. I learned this as a child living in a family. My sister might say to me, “How do you like my dress?” and I would answer, “It looks fine.” She would say back, “What's the matter with it?!” I was mystified. Any judgment, any evaluation – even if it approves and speaks a blessing – will be heard as a negation.”

p. 28: “The principle of the divine demand for perfection upon the human being is reflected concretely in the countless internal and external demands that human beings devise for themselves. In practice, the requirement of perfect submission to the commandments of God is exactly the same as the requirement of perfect submission to the innumerable drives for perfection that drive everyday people's crippled and crippling lives. The commandment of God that we honor our father and mother is no different in impact, for example, than the commandment of fashion that a woman be beautiful or the commandment of culture that a man be boldly decisive and at the same time utterly tender."

If you're in or around Charlottesville, VA, we're teaching an eight-week course on Grace in Practice at Christ Episcopal Church. From now until Lent, from 10-11am on Sunday mornings, we'd love for you to join us.

Thank You, M'am - Langston Hughes

Superb illustration of Grace, aka love in the face of deserved judgment, ht SA:

She was a large woman with a large purse that had everything in it but hammer and nails. It had a long strap, and she carried it slung across her shoulder. It was about eleven o'clock at night, and she was walking alone, when a boy ran up behind her and tried to snatch her purse. The strap broke with the single tug the boy gave it from behind. But the boy's weight and the weight of the purse combined caused him to lose his balance so, instead of taking off full blast as he had hoped, the boy fell on his back on the sidewalk, and his legs flew up. the large woman simply turned around and kicked him right square in his blue-jeaned sitter. Then she reached down, picked the boy up by his shirt front, and shook him until his teeth rattled.

After that the woman said, "Pick up my pocketbook, boy, and give it here." She still held him. But she bent down enough to permit him to stoop and pick up her purse. Then she said, "Now ain't you ashamed of yourself?"

Firmly gripped by his shirt front, the boy said, "Yes'm."

The woman said, "What did you want to do it for?"

The boy said, "I didn't aim to."

She said, "You a lie!"

By that time two or three people passed, stopped, turned to look, and some stood watching.

"If I turn you loose, will you run?" asked the woman.

"Yes'm," said the boy.

"Then I won't turn you loose," said the woman. She did not release him.

"I'm very sorry, lady, I'm sorry," whispered the boy.

"Um-hum! And your face is dirty. I got a great mind to wash your face for you. Ain't you got nobody home to tell you to wash your face?"

"No'm," said the boy.

"Then it will get washed this evening," said the large woman starting up the street, dragging the frightened boy behind her.

He looked as if he were fourteen or fifteen, frail and willow-wild, in tennis shoes and blue jeans. The woman said, "You ought to be my son. I would teach you right from wrong. Least I can do right now is to wash your face. Are you hungry?"

"No'm," said the being dragged boy. "I just want you to turn me loose."

"Was I bothering you when I turned that corner?" asked the woman.

"No'm."

"But you put yourself in contact with me," said the woman. "If you think that that contact is not going to last awhile, you got another thought coming. When I get through with you, sir, you are going to remember Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones."
[CONTINUE READING]

Another Week Ends: Brooks on the Subconscious and Failure, DFW Studies, Coldplay, Todd Marinovich, Coptic Drama, and Jail for the 99th Time

1. A fascinating article by David Brooks in The New Yorker about "What the Science of Human Nature Can Teach Us." Bottomline appears to be that people are not the free agents they think they are, the inner life always trumps the outer, and that the subconscious ultimately calls the most important shots in our lives. Also, we are happiest when we are least self-focused:

"...we are not primarily the products of our conscious thinking. The conscious mind gives us one way of making sense of our environment. But the unconscious mind gives us other, more supple ways. The cognitive revolution of the past thirty years provides a different perspective on our lives, one that emphasizes the relative importance of emotion over pure reason, social connections over individual choice, moral intuition over abstract logic, perceptiveness over I.Q. It allows us to tell a different sort of success story, an inner story to go along with the conventional surface one.

[Quoting an anonymous neuroscientist]: "I’ve come to think that flourishing consists of putting yourself in situations in which you lose self-consciousness and become fused with other people, experiences, or tasks. It happens sometimes when you are lost in a hard challenge, or when an artist or a craftsman becomes one with the brush or the tool. It happens sometimes while you’re playing sports, or listening to music or lost in a story, or to some people when they feel enveloped by God’s love. And it happens most when we connect with other people. I’ve come to think that happiness isn’t really produced by conscious accomplishments. Happiness is a measure of how thickly the unconscious parts of our minds are intertwined with other people and with activities. Happiness is determined by how much information and affection flows through us covertly every day and year.”

2. Brooks also had some interesting things to say in response to President Obama's Tuscon speech in his Times column "The Tree of Failure":
 

The problem is that over the past 40 years or so we have gone from a culture that reminds people of their own limitations to a culture that encourages people to think highly of themselves. The nation’s founders had a modest but realistic opinion of themselves and of the voters. They erected all sorts of institutional and social restraints to protect Americans from themselves. They admired George Washington because of the way he kept himself in check.

But over the past few decades, people have lost a sense of their own sinfulness... The roots of modesty have been carved away.

In a famous passage, Reinhold Niebuhr put it best: “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. ... Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.”

3. A great round-up in The Chronicle of Higher Education of the booming state of posthumous David Foster Wallace studies (ht CR). The countdown to April 15th begins now!
[CONTINUE READING]

Top MBird News Pieces of 2010

In the age of the 24 hour news cycle, here are my picks for Mockingbird’s Top News Stories of 2010

10) The Rent is too Damn High, November 2010

Jimmy McMillan, candidate for Mayor of NYC, has found the solution to all of New York’s problems. The rent is just too damn high. Take the rent part out, replace it with unmerited grace, and you pretty much have Mockingbird’s philosophy of preaching- repeat the gospel over and over again till people start to change.

9) Kill the Ump! Grace & Baseball, June 2010

Jim Joyce, professional MLB umpire, blows a perfect game call for Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga. The teary eyed, apologetic ump becomes the woman caught in adultery, and while the rest of the world is ready to stone him, the Tigers extend him forgiveness and grace. The previous M-Bird post can be found here.

8) Katie’s Star Wars Water Bottle, November 2010

Katie, a first-grade gal, was bullied by the boys for having a Star Wars water bottle. Once the all-powerful Star Wars fan base heard her story, Katie was bombarded with toys, lightsabers, and Star Wars school supplies from every corner of the U.S. She was even photoshopped in a poster with a lightsaber! The Gospel in this situation? Katie, who was adopted at an early age, was so loved by her parents (and the greater Star Wars community) that her rejection by her classmates was overpowered by unmerited love of her family. (See Galatians for a further discussion on salvation & adoption)

7) Lindsay Lohan & Tiger Woods- Summer & Fall 2010

In the bound will category, LiLo, child star, actress, and Hollywood socialite, spends the second half of 2010 in and out of jail and rehab. Similarly, Tiger Woods confesses to, well, a lot of marital indiscretion. But still, at the end of the day, we’re just as addicted to ourselves and in need of just as much grace as our starlet and athlete friends. Grace and peace to you both!

6) Wikileaks, Fall 2010

While Julian Assange is no messiah, there is a familiarity about a man who exposes deep dark secrets and is suddenly the target of universal prosecution. I can’t wait till this whole saga gets turned into a movie (the Social Network 2, anybody?). While we may disagree over the moral and political consequences of Mr. Assange’s wikileak organization, let’s take note at how un-David like governments responded to this Nathan-esque situation.

5) Michael Vick's Football season, 2010

Vick’s redemption has been the subject of a prior Mockingbird post, but now that President Obama is throwing his lot in with the Philly Quarterback, it’s worth repeating again. The power of second chances and forgiveness is truly transforming (though Tucker Carlson, who said this week on national television that Vick should have been executed, might disagree).

4) Mel Gibson’s Meltdown, July 2010

Mel Gibson, actor, producer, and Passion of the Christ director, gets caught verbally abusing and threatening his ex-girlfriend/baby mommy over the phone. While other Evangelicals may look down, blush, and shuffle their feet in embarrassment, I think Mr. Gibson was the perfect person to direct the Passion. The real-life passion was meant for such a man as Mel, and truth be told, you and I are no different.

3) The Chilean Miner's Dark Side, Summer 2010

For many, the story of the trapped Chilean miners was the one inspirational news story in a year of oil spills and jobless angst. But every now and then, a piece about the Chilean miners would come out detailing how the families of the miners were confronted by their husband’s secret lovers as both tried to lay claim as the significant other. It just goes to show you- there’s a dark side to any news that celebrates the achievement and tenacity of the human spirit!

2) Jet Blue Employee Quits with Style, August 2010

In a textbook case study of the relationship between law and sin, a flight attendant decided to quit his job in style. After saying a few choice words into the jet’s PA system, he grabbed a couple of beers from the beverage cart, popped the emergency shoot, slide out of the plane, walked to his car, and drove home. It goes to show you that the command to smile and be nice to rude passengers doesn't engender the ability to obey that command, but instantly feeds the desire to disobey. Just as important: the near universal response from the rest of America: “Oh, I wish I could do that…”

1) Antoine Dodson: Bed Intruder, July 2010

What started as an angry, despairing rant with the local news crew turned into an escape from the projects for the Dodson family. After youtube picked up Antoine’s rant and turned it into an autotuned remix, the Bed Intruder Song flipped what was the darkest day for the Dodson family into their ticket out of the slums. It was a true-to-life example of how the darkest day and the brightest day can be joined together- not unlike Good Friday.

Honorable mentions: The secretly Evangelical Insane Clown Posse releases Creationism Rap, BP Oil Spill is Sign of the Apocalypse, and Dallas Pastor Caught Allegedly Burglarizing a House on Christmas Eve.

Happy New Year, Mockingbird! See you all in 2011!

Narrative and the Grace of God: The New ‘True Grit’

Stanley Fish is doing our job for us over on the New York Times Online OpEd Section. Fish, an academic known for his postmodern literary criticism (think interpretive communities) and guest writer for the NYT, wrote a piece entitled Narrative and the Grace of God: The New ‘True Grit’ which sounds like something Nick Lannon would write about here at Mockingbird. Be Warned: Dr. Fish's article contains spoilers though this post does not!

I haven't seen the new Coen Brother's movie yet, but rest assured that will be remedied in the next few days. Until then, I figured I'd post a few of Fish's comments to hold us over:

"The springs of that universe are revealed to us by the narrator-heroine Mattie in words that appear both in Charles Portis’s novel and the two films, but with a difference. The words the book and films share are these: “You must pay for everything in this world one way and another. There is nothing free with the exception of God’s grace.” These two sentences suggest a world in which everything comes around, if not sooner then later. The accounting is strict; nothing is free, except the grace of God. But free can bear two readings — distributed freely, just come and pick it up; or distributed in a way that exhibits no discernible pattern. In one reading grace is given to anyone and everyone; in the other it is given only to those whom God chooses for reasons that remain mysterious...

...A third sentence, left out of the film but implied by its dramaturgy, tells us that the latter reading is the right one: "You cannot earn that [grace] or deserve it." In short, there is no relationship between the bestowing or withholding of grace and the actions of those to whom it is either accorded or denied. You can’t add up a person’s deeds — so many good one and so many bad ones — and on the basis of the column totals put him on the grace-receiving side (you can’t earn it); and you can’t reason from what happens to someone to how he stands in God’s eyes (you can’t deserve it).What this means is that there are two registers of existence: the worldly one in which rewards and punishment are meted out on the basis of what people visibly do; and another one, inaccessible to mortal vision, in which damnation and/or salvation are distributed, as far as we can see, randomly and even capriciously."

I can't wait to see what the Coen Brothers do with this world they've created: especially with this last line about random and capricious grace. If you've seen the movie, what did you think? Did Stanley Fish get it right? What are your thoughts?

PZ's Five Favorite Movies in 2010

The host of our favorite podcast of 2010 gives you the first of two year-end lists [favorite episode of PZ's podcast? The one on Giant Crab Movies. Obviously].

These are not movies made in 2010. They are just movies I have come to love in 2010.
They are also redolent with Mockingbird themes, and evoke, well, a Mockingbird way of life.

1) Pollyanna. This is the 1960 Walt Disney version, with Hayley Mills. I love this movie because it's not "pollyannish"!
Little orphaned daughter-of-missionaries Pollyanna Harrington brings her imputation game to the fractious, captious town of Harrington.
Everyone's at each other's throats.
She starts to see the good that is potential in her alienated fellow citizens of every age.
And they all begin to change, before her eyes.
Then something happens, something emphatically not to be "glad about". What's going to happen now?
This is a feel-good movie which also has some art to it. (There's an underwater scene that is purest Disney.) I used to pour contempt (on all my pride and) on this movie. I was wrong.

2) How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. This was created when Mad Men were really mad men. It's about mad men but is not Mad Men.
Frank Loesser wrote the words and music about young J. Pierrepont Finch, who climbs the ladder of a New York corporation, from window washer to CEO to... Chairman of the Board. The choreography, based on Bob Fosse's choreography of the Broadway production, is incomparable. That you'll see in "A Secretary is not a Toy".
Yet it's pretty talky, this movie, until the last half hour. Then it begins to get, absurdly, profound.
A number called "The Brotherhood of Man", which reminds me of the end of "Metropolis", takes you by surprise. And they really mean it.
Everything about this show is inspired, from Michele Lee to Robert Morris to Mr. Wally Wampers.
But hang on for the end, if you're willing.
[CONTINUE READING]

Mini-Conference Recordings - HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Again, an enormous and very heartfelt Mockingbird thank you to everyone who helped out with last weekend's mini-conference in Pensacola! In particular, Jeff & Kerry Hual and the Christ Church Pensacola staff. We are so thankful for how it all went.

Links to the recordings of the presentations are below. If you find them to be helpful (and you were not able to attend the conference in person), we ask that you *consider* making a donation to help cover the cost of putting it on. In fact, do so and as a token of our appreciation, we'll send you the audio files of Dr. Zahl's fantastic/invaluable pre-conference Preaching Seminar. Enjoy:

Talk 1. Grace Again (and Again) Part 1 - Dr. Paul Zahl

Talk 2. Grace Again (and Again) Part 2 - Dr. Paul Zahl

Talk 3. Broken on the Wheels of Living: Grace in Suffering - Jeff Hual

Talk 4. Addiction and the Theology of the Cross - John Zahl
Closing Question and Answer Session. 

Closing Sermon. The Advantages of a Weak Resume - John Zahl

Entire Mini-Conference.

Terror and Deliverance in Les Miserables

From page 389-390 of the unabridged version of Victor Hugo's unparalleled epic (ht DJ):

Forests are apocalypses; and a tiny soul's beating wings make an agonizing sound beneath their monstrous vault.

Without being conscious of what she was experiencing, Cosette felt seized by this black enormity of nature. It was not merely terror that held her but something even more terrible. She shuddered. Words fail to express the peculiar strangeness of that shudder, which chilled her through and through. Her eyes had become wild. She felt that perhaps she would be compelled to return there at the same hour the next night.

Then, by some sort of instinct, to get out of this singular state, which she did not understand but which terrified her, she began to count aloud, one, two, three, four, up to ten, and when she had finished, she began again. This restored her to a real perception of things around her. Her hands, which were wet from drawing water, felt cold. She stood up. Her fear had returned, a natural and insurmountable fear. She had only one thought, to flee; to flee at top speed, across woods, across fields, to the houses and windows and lighted candles. Her eyes fell on the bucket there in front of her. Such was the dread [her guardians] the Thenardiess inspired in her she did not dare leave without the bucket of water. She grasped the handle with both hands. She could hardly lift it.

She went a dozen steps this way, but the bucket was full, it was heavy, she had to rest it on the ground. She caught her breath an instant, then grasped the handle again, and walked on, this time a little longer. But she had to stop again. After resting a few seconds, she started on. She walked bending forward, her head down, like an old woman; the weight of the bucket strained and stiffened her thin arms. The iron handle was numbing and freezing her little wet hands; from time to time she had to stop, and every time she stopped, the cold water that sloshed out of the bucket splashed onto her bare knees. This took place in the depth of the woods, at night, in the winter, far from all human sight; she was a child of eight. At that moment only the Eternal Father saw this sad thing

And undoubtably her mother, alas!

For there are things that open the eyes of the dead in their grave.
[CONTINUE READING]

Final Pensacola Preview: Revisiting the Gospel Message - Grace Again

The week of the Pensacola mini-conference is upon us! And to entice those of you who are still on the fence, we thought we'd offer one final preview from the main speaker himself, Dr. Paul Zahl. This event is not to be missed, so don't wait another minute - register today. And for the updated schedule and other details, visit the microsite:

This Friday night's talk, entitled "Revisiting the Gospel Message -- Grace Again", will simply describe what grace is, and how it works. I'm interested in what grace, or one-way love, has to offer tortured relationships. For "tortured" you can substitute, "not as close as I'd like it to be".

Some of us are on semi automatic-pilot when it comes to understanding the one really important thing -- our love life. (I mean the phrase broadly: our life of love, and love distorted, and love meant well but unwise, gone wrong, not getting what it's looking for.) This talk examines the human love life, and especially marriage and parenthood. Oh, and also singleness and aloneness. It examines anger and burning hurt; defeat, as in, "I am a defeated person"; aspirations simply never accomplished, dreams gone unfulfilled, and the chronic misfires represented by the phrase "looking for love in all the wrong places".

The text will be Galatians, especially Paul's list of things 'against which there is no law' and Paul's insight that creativity and love exist in direct proportion to their not being called for. Exhortation sentences to death the hapless earthling who only wants to love and be loved. My first talk in the Pensacola Mini-Conference is therefore something quite familiar -- though forgotten in about five seconds -- which is the Gatorade of grace and imputation.

Saturday morning's talk will try to relate the grace-message, that one great inspirer -- or rather, grace itself, electrifying change-agent in love -- to the culture and world in which we are living. I'm focussed just now on some of the 'back-story' character dramas in Herman Wouk's 'Tolstoyan' epic War and Remembrance. He is not a Christian author. Yet there is in that book more wisdom about and understanding of human relationships than exists in a ton, a literal ton, of religious literature. Wouk, together with the television genius, Dan Curtis, who translated the book into a powerful series of images in the 1980s, understood people. He also understood how grace works, without even calling it by name.

I am also interested in some things LeRoi Jones, the African-American writer known as Amiri Baraka, had to say about communicating -- about communicating real things person to person. Between Wouk and Jones, between Paul and Luther, between "The Browning Version" and "Red Beard", we can find a host of friends. These people often know more about grace in practice than we seem to. Let's listen to them. Why did these creators, and their productions, become instant classics? For the same reason the Christian Church recognized in Galatians a voice of diagnosis and truth, and therefore the Holy Ghost.

I hope the first talk will comfort you, delight you, aid you, and give you joy. Hope also it will make you laugh! The second talk I hope will set off some depth charges in your archaeological psychic ocean. I hope it will open some new doors. I hope it will connect you anew with things you already like that have addressed you in the past. As William S. Burroughs never tired of saying, you can only really teach a person what he or she already knows.


Deep down, and sometimes not so deep down, everybody already knows about grace, in practice.

[ed. note: speaking of which, a big congratulations to Dr. Zahl on the just-announced second printing of Grace in Practice!]

So there you have it, your final warning/exhortation (!): "plans" you will always have with you... cancel them, hit the road and join us in sunny Pensacola! 

Do You Have a Zombie Plan? Part 2

And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:5-10)

I hope you (like me) are really getting into the new AMC series The Walking Dead. Great story, great acting, and great cinematography. You see the zombies walking around people's middle-class homes or around a downtown area and it just looks believable (and terrifying). In the midst of this, there is the drama of realistic human interaction with this post-apocalyptic (zomb-pocalyptic) scape and it just rings true. Much like the fight over racial tensions that we looked at in the previous post.

There is something other-worldly, though, that happens in both Episode 1 and 2. And it is as surprising as it is touching. Rick Grimes is the sheriff's deputy who awakes from a coma only to find this terrible new world and reality have replaced that which was familiar. He cannot find his family and there are precious few survivors. In addition, he keeps running into zombies who want to eat him alive.

The first zombie he sees in Episode 1 is a really pathetic one. She is quite disfigured (picture included in the poster) and everything below her torso is unusable. Still, she wants to kill Rick just as much as any of the others do. After Rick later gets his bearings, regains his strength, and arms himself, he returns to the place where he first sees this particular zombie. She has crawled away so, at great risk to himself, he tracks her down. He then does something very un-Woody Harrellson-like. He looks at her with great compassion and says, "I am so sorry that this happened to you." He then painlessly puts her out of her misery.

In Episode 2, a group of survivors kill an exceptionally motivated and virulent zombie. After finding out that they are trapped and zombies identify potential victims primarily by smell, they decide to use the dead one as a source of "zombie grime" that will help them slip past unnoticed (gross, I know). Before they "harvest" the grime (which is not a scene for the kiddies, by the way... as if any of this is), Rick takes out the zombie's wallet and finds his name. There is some money and a photograph or two of his family. In a way, he eulogizes what was once a very real and motivated threat to life and limb. A sense of compassion enters the scene.

This reminds me very much of a section of Paul Zahl's book Grace in Practice called "The Relation of the Un-Free Will to Compassion". Here is a portion of that section:

[CONTINUE READING]

Love and Duty in The Painted Veil

A quick excerpt from chapter 68 of Somerset Maugham's 1925 novel The Painted Veil. The words are spoken by the Mother Superior of the French convent in the Chinese village where a young married woman begins to come to herself after being caught by her husband in an adulterous affair. These are words of farewell from the Mother Superior, who does not know the true situation of Kitty, the main character.

"Good-bye, God bless you, my dear child." She held her a moment in her arms. "Remember that it is nothing to do your duty, that is demanded of you and is no more meritorious than to wash your hands when they are dirty; the only thing that counts is the love of duty; when love and duty are one, then grace is in you and you will enjoy a happiness which passes all understanding." The convent door closed for the last time behind her.

I recommend this novel. It also contains a powerful account of 'backsliding' (i.e., recidivism) and the relation of that to simul iustus et peccator.