The New Monastic and the Old Monk

JOURNAL 9/28/11 -- Is "Class Warfare" a Biblical Concept?

2011-09-28T17:58:00.001-04:00

PRECIS: first, “class warfare” was a biblical concept thousands of years before it became a term in political discourse; second, therefore, those who are flinging the term around as a form of attack today are on shaky ground.

“When the ungodly behave

arrogantly, the poor are set;

let them be caught in the

counsels they ponder. … They

lie in ambush with the wealthy;

they kill the innocent in hidden

places; their eyes look intently

at the poor; they lie in ambush

in a hiding place like a lion in

his den; they lie in wait to seize

the poor, to seize the poor to drag

them away. They will humble the

poor in their snare; but they will

bend down and fall when they rule

over the poor. For they said in their

heart, ‘God forgets; God has turned

God’s face so as never to see it’.”

[Psalm 9:23, 29-32 LXX,

Orthodox Study Bible]

[FIRST]

Psalm 9 – which I am using as the text above primarily because it “just happens” a part of my biblical meditation this week -- has verses within it which, in my opinion, represent the plurality of the biblical texts and tradition on “class warfare.”

It’s a “plurality” because there exist considerably more than just one “theology” in the Bible, each represented by their own group of texts. But, in my considered opinion, this “theology” is represented by the largest single group of text, even if that those texts don’t make up quite half of all texts. That’s what a “plurality” is. (Although in my reading of the Bible over the years, and done without counting verses in this matter, my sense is that this group of texts, and therefore this theology, makes up far more than half.)

“Theology,” by the way, simply means “words about God.” Our human “theologies” are those words we use about God, and about ourselves in relationship with God, based on our encounters with God. In the Christian tradition, the “Word about God” is Jesus Himself; all other words are human words about the Word.

On to the words of Psalm 9 …

Psalms 9 and 10, in the Hebrew Bible (“Old Testament” to Christians), originally was one psalm. There are many reasons for saying that; but, for purposes of this particular blog post, it takes us too far afield to go into those reasons. But unless you’re using a version of the Hebrew Bible known as the “Septuagint” (“sep-TOO-a-gent”) – see next paragraphs – you will see the original Psalm 9 as two consecutive Psalms, 9 and then 10.

The Eastern Orthodox Church uses the Septuagint version of the Hebrew Bible. Originally, it was a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. When someone quotes from the Septuagint – as I did above – it is noted by adding the letters “LXX” at the end of the reference, as I did above. LXX is “70” in Roman numerals, and refers to the legend that the Septuagint was the work of 72 scholars working for 72 days (later, the legendary number somehow dropped to 70, or LXX).

What’s important about that is, the Septuagint was the most commontranslation of the Hebrew Bible throughout much if not most of Palestine, and all the Mediterranean world, at the time of Jesus. It is the translation used by Paul and almost every other New Testament writer, including the Gospel writers Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

So that version of Psalm 9 –quoted above in English – is what just about any New Testament person would have known just from hearing it read. If they knew how to read – which most people in first century Palestine did not – they would almost certainly have read from the LXX too.)

(Jesus Himself, while growing up, probably heard – and ultimately memorized – an Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Bible known as a “Targum.” But that, too, is a long story that would take us outside the focus of this blog post.)

In these verses, the “ungodly” – often translated as “wicked” – are those who beat up on the poor.

And they are in cahoots with – they “lie in ambush with” – the “wealthy,” thepower élite of ancient Hebrew society. And their target is “the innocent,” “the poor.”

That is biblical “class warfare.”

It does not mean that all the wealthy are bullies who oppress the poor.

And it certainly does not mean all the poor are innocent.

But it does mean just what 1 Timothy 6:10 tells us: "The love of money is the root of all evil." Greed for money -- greed of any kind, for anything -- is worship of an idol (Ephesians 5:5). The former thief is enjoined to work with his/her hands, "... that s/he may have something to give to the one who has need" (Ephesians 4:28) ... and there is no evidence the former thief wasn't a rich person who stole. The Bible is full of examples of the rich whodid steal, Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1ff) being an important example, and the prophets of the Hebrew Bible using as all of their examples of societal wrongs the examples of rich and powerful who stole land, money, and even rights.

The poor likewise are sinners, and are equally able to rob, plunder, destroy. But they lack the capacity to do so on the scale of the rich and powerful. Therefore they are guilty, but not nearly as responsible.

In any event, and on any read, you just have to come to terms with this fact in this, the “plurality” theology of the Hebrew Bible: those who beat up on the poor are the “wealthy,” and the “arrogant” and “wicked” who lie in ambush with the wealthy.

And you have to come to terms with a fact of Hebrew poetry (all the Psalms, along with bunches and bunches and bunches of other Bible texts, are poetry): it “rhymes” by repeating ideas, not necessarily sounds … a “rhyming” known as “parallelism.” In these verses, wicked and arrogant and wealthy are in parallel; they “rhyme”; they mean essentially the same thing.

And furthermore, in these verses innocent and poor “rhyme.” They mean the same thing.

That too is biblical “class warfare” – the wealthy do violence to the poor, and in so doing identify themselves as the “arrogant” and “wicked,” and at the same time the poor in these circumstancesbecome the “innocent.”

It started with a God who is known as the one who “hears the cries of the poor” (Exodus 3:14 et al) … a God who hears and then acts.

And lest we think that’s only for the ancient Hebrews in what later became the nation of Israel, we have the prophets to remind us otherwise. Amos (chapter 1) is pretty blunt in detailing how YHWH’s bias for the poor weighs on, and if necessary against, any nation. All nations. That’s just the way this YHWH is.

And if that doesn’t convince, we have this same Amos bracketing, book-ending, as it were, his own writings with the affirmation than YHWH is in charge of an Exodus wherever needed, not just in ancient Israel oppressed by ancient Egypt (Amos 9:7).

That is biblical “class warfare.”

Now, where it differs from modern notions of “class warfare” is in this: YHWH is Himself the warrior. The oldest written passage of the Hebrew Bible is thought to be Exodus 15:21, the “Song of Miriam,” where Miriam (the sister of Moses) sings that it was YHWH who slammed Pharaoh’s army into the sea.

From that ancient moment onwards, consistently enough to claim at least aplurality of biblical texts on the topic, Hebrew Bible and New Testament alike (and I have no trouble claiming most of texts), YHWH God is clearly revealed as the One who hears the cries of the poor – those beaten up by the rich and powerful, those without any “social safety net” and without any protector or advocate – and becomes their Protector, their Advocate.

That is biblical “class warfare,” and it is the God of the Bible who is the warrior.

And that is solid biblical theology, too.

[SECOND]

For any political party or “movement” to cry “Class warfare!” as a protestagainst any and all efforts to rein in the power of the wealthy and powerful – and to shore up the rights of the weakest and most vulnerable among us – is at bestto go strolling out on ice fragile enough to crack under a serious question mark.

“Class warfare” originated, not with Marxists, not with socialists, not with any of their economic or political progenitors. It originated with the God of the Bible.

(I first wrote that it “originated in the West” with the God of the Bible … but in fact, this isn’t a Western notion at all. It’s at least Middle Eastern, Ancient Near Eastern specifically. And it’s not at all impossible it came there, several thousands of years ago, from even further away from the “Western world.”)

And it is God who works against these inequities … or, more honesty against this political and economic pornography.

Here’s why I say that:

The essence of pornography is to see and react to only the surface features of a body, based entirely on one’s lust for personal gratification (which isn’t necessarily “just sexual” either.) It is, accordingly, to refuse to acknowledge theperson beneath those surface features. And so pornographic acts are those which relate to the largely impersonal surfaces entirely for one’s personal, private satisfactions.

The refusal to take human beings, with their needs and sufferings, into account – into the bottom-line accounting rules of either government or, more commonly throughout the world today, corporate “free market” capitalism – is corporate pornography.

But the main point of Psalm 9 – and of this at least plurality of biblical texts and the theology that grows naturally out of them – is that God works in opposition to that suffering and wrong. God is anti-governmental and –corporatepornography when governments and economic powers begin to ignore – to not see – the face of the poor.

In fact, if God took human nature into the Godhead – which Orthodox teachings about the Incarnation as well as Ascension insist is precisely what happened in Jesus of Nazareth – then God entered our human dimensionality through a Poor Man.

What I call “the demographics of the Incarnation” show without doubt, that God elected to show God’s own nature most fully by becoming an itinerant poor Man, without even a place to lay His head, in the backwaters of the Roman Empire, among the outcasts of the political Empire (Rome) as well as the Religious empire (the élite of 1^st Century Palestinian Judaism).

That – among the poor and hungry, the overlooked and despised – is whereGod’s nature was, and is, revealed … where God was, and is, located (Matthew 25:31-46).

God’s “class warfare” does not take the form of violence, stories in the Hebrew Bible notwithstanding. The fall of the wealthy and powerful – as Psalm 9 (LXX) makes clear – is into the traps they themselves have set. God subtly withdraws uncreated energies from this person, that group, those circumstances … all at the prompting of our own human activity, individual and corporate … and relocates them in other people, groups, circumstances … all likewise at the prompting of our own human activity, individual and corporate.

It is what I call “Christic karma.” We set in motion the ripples that, in time, solidify into habit … and our hearts, like Pharaoh’s, become (self-)hardened … and ultimately we end up trapped in the circumstances of our own making. We choke off saving grace by our own poor choices, compounded in their effect by further poor choices until we have created a provincial hell (as opposed to the ultimate hell) on earth. And our freedom of choice and maneuver, long ago self-strangulated, is gone … and the trap we set has us, whether now or at some indiscernible time in the future.

God’s “class warfare” is to let us go with the momentum of rich and powerful against poor and helpless, until we fall.

Or as Psalm 9:31 (LXX) puts it:

“… [the wicked, the wealthy]

will bend down and fall when

they rule over the poor.”

Better – infinitely, eternally better – to see Christ Himself in and among the poor and hungry (Matthew 25:31ff), and choose instead to join the Father in loving and the Son. There, where He said we'll find Him.

Class love, or else class warfare.

And then the fall, and great will be the fall of it.

The choice is ours. The outcome ultimately is God’s.

JOURNAL 9/22/11 -- Tony Davis

2011-09-22T17:17:00.002-04:00

“Put them in fear,

O Lord; let the nations

know that they are

only human” [Psalm 9:20 NRSV]

Around 10 p.m. yesterday -- Wednesday, September 21, about an hour before Troy Davis was executed in Georgia -- I tweeted the words: “Memory Eternal, brother in this Exile,” followed by Psalm 9:20.

[NOTE: for those of you unfamiliar with Twitter, a “tweet” is a short message sent over the Internet through a website known as Twitter. It is just 140 characters long, so is actually even shorter than a text message on your cell phone. If you aren’t familiar with text messages, it’s sort of like passing notes in school, except you pass these electronically by means of a telephone keypad instead of a typewriter keyboard. If I get a “tweet” from someone that I really like, I can “forward” it to others, in which case it’s called a “retweet.”]

Just why I tweeted that message is the source of three very hard questions the pending execution forced on me during the following hour … as well as the remainder of the night, and thus far into the present day. They are detailed as part of what follows.

None of them have to do with the guilt or innocence of Mr. Davis, I might add. He may have been completely innocent of the crime with which he was charged, or he may have been guilty as sin. The point of all of this activity – as a lot of people and organizations on Twitter repeated endlessly last night – is that there now was serious doubt about the verdict, easily enough doubt to justify a new hearing on the evidence if not a new trial altogether. Nothing last night or in what follows involves the guilt or innocence of Mr. Davis.

Over the next hour, until Mr. Davis’ death was announced at 11:08 p.m. EST, I did my small but fair share of retweeting – “forwarding” on Twitter – numerous news stories and sometimes poignant, sometimes pithy, almost (but not quite) always indignant quotes about the pending execution.

But this flurry of activity on my part was odd, frankly. Uncharacteristic of me in some ways. And that is how it became was the source of the three Ivery hard questions with which these past hours have left me.

I was a “Johnny [or Jeremiah?]-come-mighty-lately” to the campaign to grant Mr. Davis a reprieve and an “evidentiary hearing” (hearing to give a close careful review to the new evidence) and possibly a new trial. In fact, last night was just my third day of giving the whole issue any attention at all.

Troy Davis had been on death row in the Georgia State Penitentiary for much of the past 22 years, ever since he was convicted of killing a Savannah, Georgia police officer.

His execution came after considerable evidence had emerged that cast doubt on the original verdict. A global campaign to grant him a new trial, if not free him altogether, included organizations such as Amnesty International and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and notable figures including Pope Benedict XVI, former President Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, former Director of the FBI William Sessions, and a long list of others.

It was, frankly, the name of the former FBI Director, William Sessions, that somehow caught my attention. I don’t really know why, since, of all the organizations and individuals, ordinarily I would have been most impressed to see Archbishop Tutu’s name. But catch my attention it – or he – did, some three days before. And from then on I began to poke around in the story and, finally, signed an online Amnesty International petition as well as Emailed a county judge in Georgia who, late in day yesterday, was said to be the last person with power to grant a stay.

And then there came my uncharacteristic volleying of tweets and retweets. And then 11:08 was announced … and then suddenly everything else on Twitter seemed trivial and utterly irrelevant … and I gave it up and went to bed.

In the middle of the volleying of tweets and retweets, two things happened that raised the first two very hard questions.

First, someone tweeted a different verse from the Bible (Romans 13:3-4) which would appear to “permit” capital punishment from a Christian perspective. The message stung me, annoyed me; and I barely caught myself in time to keep myself from saying something sarcastic in response.

So the first hard question of the night was: why did this get to me that way? How come I got so defensive, and wanted to hit back? And in particular: am I just as guilty of Bible “proof-texting” as I was muttering, rather loudly, this otherwise unknown Christian brother on Twitter clearly was? (Who, I hasten to say, manifestly did not direct that tweet at me.)

Second, I kept imagining how Mr. Davis would have felt during that final hour – in fact, during all of that final day. It was my own version of things, of course, which means I really was just imagining how I would feel on my last day, during my last hour. And it made me feel almost unbearably sad … and unaccountablyempty. As empty, as void and metallic, as a tin rain barrel. And that is a wretched, an awful feeling, at least my personal “inside me” version of it is.

So, the second hard question of the night was: am I just projecting my own emotions onto Mr. Davis? Projecting them in such a way that I really am not “opposed to the death penalty,” at least in circumstances like these (where there is an apparent deluge of new evidence)?

All the situation in and of itself clearly asked for – and on this point I was and still am adamant – was a new hearing, possibly a new trial. The situation in and of itself did not require me to announce – as I did, above all with Psalm 9:20 – that I was opposed to the death penalty.

And that last sentence by itself raised the final question:

Third, am I really opposed to the death penalty?

Or is this merely a part of my “liberal internal Parent”? My internal “authority figures” derived uncritically from various real-life figures (persons, books, institutions etc.) from over the past thirty-or-so years? Go back more than 30 years, and my internal “authority figures” were quite conservative, even if I never called them, or me, by that name.

And so the third hard question is just that: is my current ethical, political and (maybe above all) religious liberalism just as unexamined, just as “artificial,” as my former conservatism was? Do I just do public knee-jerks when I say what I believe, what I stand for, what I trust the faith is all about?

Let me tell you, those three questions make for one very hard night of tossing and turning and downright bizarre dreams.

I can’t say that today, not quite 24 hours later, I have any “answers.” I’d like to say I have some “directions,” some “directional” sense of where my own personal provisional conclusions might lie. That least my own mental, emotional and spiritual compasses have more/less swung to True North, so that from there I can begin on a journey that isn’t completely random and haphazard.

I’d like to say that ... but I’m not even certain about that. Yet.

Nevertheless, this is what last night’s events and upsets have begun to teach me … or at least to hint about where True North might be located, so at least when I start into the next step I won’t quite fall off the edge of the world. Yet.

[1^ST HARD QUESTION]

There was another Christian who tweeted her own annoyance at statements being made that that were entirely too broad, too unnuanced, and unsubstantiated. I seriously doubt this was referring to me. But in recent months, I have been far more “brazen” than usual in voicing my own opinions all over the place. And so last night I also was growing “paranoid” to to a certain degree, as my string of tweets grew longer and longer. I'm still just not good at this speaking-my-mind business. I would have made a lousy prophet.

Of the three questions, however, this one has stopped ringing around my head the most – ringing as though someone was beating on that tin rain barrel with a sledge hammer. Of my “direction” here, if not my final “answer,” I am increasingly certain today, the day after.

Here's one thing: you just can’t make complex arguments on Twitter – 140 characters will hardly fill out a Hallmark Card birthday greeting.

A second thing is, I know why I chose Psalm 9:20. There just wasn't enough room to say.

I did it for two reasons, other than the fact it, among dozens of similar verses in the Book of Psalms, happened to be part of my own daily Bible reading that morning.

I did it because it is a way of chanting my argument, much in the way aprokeimenon is chanted during Liturgy (and often is just a short selection from a given Psalm) … it summarizes the reading, or in my case the “argument,” to follow. It’s a deliberate pointer; it’s a not-so-subtle hint about what’s to come.

And I did it because I know what that verse means. I know how it picks up previous verses and their themes in Psalm 9 (and anticipates others in Psalm 10, the two psalms originally having been just one psalm, now artificially divided). For that matter, it is a common theme throughout not only the psalter, but the entire Hebrew Bible (“Old Testament”).

I also know, by the way, what Romans 13 means ... but more about that towards the end here.

And that them in the Psalms and elsewhere is: from the biblical perspective, all the nations continue the endlessly repeated “Fall” of the “Adams” and “Eves” of all generations, the folks who populate the nations. And that "Fall" we all go on repeating, individually and corporately (nationally in this case) is to give in to the temptation to be like God (Genesis 3:5). In this case, to bestowdeath (last night, execution by lethal injection) as a curse for actions (murder of a police officer in this case) pertaining to the Fall. It is usurp the right that belongs to God, and only to God, namely to take vengeance (Deuteronomy 32:35 et al.)

Now, interestingly, Paul quotes this Deuteronomy verse at Romans 12:19 and extends its implications to verse 20 – just before the chapter from which the Christian tweeter tweeted. In other words, the state's right to wield "the sword" is prefaced by -- arguably limited by -- a prior, previous injunction against taking vengeance. The key word, "context," is much heeded in these discussions -- but unfortunately, at 140 characters Twitter doesn't allow much of that.

But there is no wiggle-room. It doesn’t matter whether Mr. Davis, or any “Mr. Davis,” also gave in to the temptation to be “like God.” That judgment is strictlybetween God and Mr. Davis.

[NOTE: the Hebrew Bible (“Old Testament”) includes Torah that calls for executions. It also describes in unsettling detail the command of God to devastate and destroy entire villages, inhabitants, livestock. That needs to be the topic of another blog, but in short my reply is: there are “theologies,” plural, in the Bible. Which one qualifies, if not eliminates entirely, parts or all of the others, and under what circumstances, is a complicated answer to a tough question. For me, Jesus is the “Filter” through which everything must flow. Whatever doesn’t get past the Life and Teachings of Jesus, amounts to a series of human scratches on the Divine DVD, the “divine recording.” I will argue forever that Jesus never authorizes taking human life; and that “filters out” Torah and narrative to the contrary.]

A third thing is, I learned long long ago that Romans 13 always has to be balanced with Revelation 13. Sometimes the good and God-fearing state is in fact the Beast. And then one resists. Then one says a loud resounding No! andSTOP IT!

Our nation is only human. We are not deity, are not deities. But we succumb to the temptation to act like deity more and more and more. We have set ourselves up for an approaching Fear, a la Psalm 9:20 ... but that's for yet another blog. Someday.

And that was why I chose that verse for my “prokeimenon,” as it were.

[2^nd HARD QUESTION]

If I have a “direction” – a way to set out exploring this question, as opposed to a firm and forever “answer” – and I do, it is this:

My own feelings and experiences of empty dread are the only way I have of bridging the “gap” between my life and that of another … at least until Jesus hascompletely transfigured me in the Age to Come, and I have His heart entirely suffused through mine.

My experiences, from years past, of a long and empty day, with a dreadful conclusion, are the only way I have – initially – to “imagine my way into” that long and empty day and its dreadful conclusion for Mr. Davis.

Actually that is true for any of us, as we struggle to imagine our way into someone else's situation ... to "walk a mile in their shoes," so to speak. We can only go back to our own miles and remember what they were like.

Jesus, as I am rendered more and more “like Him” through the Mysteries – not to mention the Red Dirt Mystery of the execution of Troy Davis last night – Jesus suffers. And He will continue to suffer in the suffering of humankind, whether it is “innocent” or “guilty” suffering in any given instance, until the End which is the Beginning. I can trust Him to transform my limited (and usually not all that righteous) suffering into His during my pilgrimage of faith, in this Exile away from my true Home; and to the degree that happens, my suffering also will be transformed into the suffering of Mr. Davis, and the Mr. Davises of the world.

But my springboard now is simply to use who I am and what I have, because out of that, aided and strengthened and taught and guided by the Holy Spirit, I will connect in the limited ways I am able at this point of the journey with that of a man about to be executed.

One reason I am a Christian, Orthodox or not, is: God takes human being seriously, God takes history seriously, God suffers.

I wouldn’t have it any other way. Until I am one day, one Age, “mature inChrist,” my suffering will have to do as the starting point, as the springboard.

[3^rd HARD QUESTION]

As the “groundwork” going on in my own soul since last night shows – meaning, what I have said above (and more like it) – I am opposed to the death penalty because of Jesus of Nazareth.

This is not a “right” given to human beings. Statistics argue, not unimportantly, it's not even an effective usurpation of God's right. We are not God.

We may be on our eternal (everlasting, unending) way to participation in the divine nature – our theosis, our divinization – a la 2 Peter 1:4.

But that God is seen most fully in Jesus of Nazareth.

That God loves and seeks out sinners. He does not kill them.

That God washes feet. He does not chop them off, nor the bodies attached to them.

That God gives life, and in setting life and death before us all, begs us to choose life. He does not countenance our choices of death. Death, indeed, whether delivered by a criminal or by the state, is the handout of the Powers of Darkness.

The State of Georgia last night acted on behalf of the Liar and Father of Lies, the one who (not so ironically?) is Murderer from the very beginning (John 8:44). That the case against Mr. Davis contains lies (some now recanted, some not) is, perhaps, on this reading of Scripture, not altogether surprising.

Jesus came to give Life, which He has in Himself.

He has nothing to do with Death. That is our choice, prompted by the Satan, a name that ironically (perhaps? perhaps not!) means “the accuser.”

Memory Eternal, Tony Davis, brother in this Exile.

I am opposed to the death penalty because of Jesus of Nazareth.

JOURNAL 8/26/11 -- a Poem

2011-08-26T18:09:00.001-04:00

This is so trite:

I'm getting older.

Obviously.

But not so obvious is a realization I have had lately, that this encroaching awareness isn't due so much to any laws of physics -- "Time's Arrow" or some such thing -- nor to aches and pains and words playing hide-and-seek with my tongue.

Those things are true, but truer, I am coming to realize, is this:

Sometimes I am just stunned with the utter miracle of things just as they are.

Sometimes I look at a shadow, or the curl of a vine running up and across our back door, or buds on twig, and my breath just plays hooky on me.

My eyes, sometimes, even spring slow little leaks. (Oh, OK, the beauty and majesty and miracle of the simplest things moves me to quick tears.)

If that's not a sign of age, I don't know what is -- beyond, of course, those ornery rebel words that won't come when I call them, and this blasted ticking clock that just keeps on ticking no matter how I feel about things on any given day.

It reminds me of YHWH's own astonishment, His own joy at His own creation (Psalm 104:31b). And by golly, if YHWH is ec-static (outside the divine stasis, presumably, go figure!), I'm in good company.

***********

SYMPTOMS

OF MY AGING

arc of wild shrubs

deep green caverns of shadow

tossing, and behind

immense hazy drift

of ancient trees:

so easy to forget the

parking lot

separating them

and instead dive

into green caverns,

roll around,

grasping at twigs

hugging branches,

nuzzling leaves,

green smears on skin

and scratches, all

smelling of chlorophyll

raw tart virid:

"Glory to God!

What is this thing?

This miracle just here,

just this way?

Glory Glory to God!"

JOURNAL 8/24/11: Two Poems

2011-08-24T16:10:00.003-04:00

¶ JOHN 3:8

Earlier this week I’m having coffee with an elderly friend (not that I’m exactly a spring chicken myself). My friend has two doctorates in subjects so complex I can hardly imagine any details of what goes into either of them. One of them is analytical theology, which I never heard of before I met my friend.

In fact, I have never heard of it since we first met many years ago either. Meeting someone with a doctorate in analytical theology isn’t exactly like meeting someone who says they have a driver’s license.

So this is a highly educated and most perceptive person.

That’s why what he says at one point during our conversation surprises me. He gets noticeably weepy – he tears up enough to attract attention from others in the coffee shop – and says: “Do you know what the proof of the existence of God is, for me? The thing that proves to me that God exists is the existence of Israel after all these centuries.”

That’s not where I expect him to go with his question, especially with all of that analytical theology hovering over us like a cloud of humming birds.

And it’s not what I spend much time thinking about either – maybe I should, I don’t know, but I don’t – so I’m stymied.

Fortunately he changes the subject immediately – ideas rip around inside my friend’s mind like Indy 500 cars doing qualifying heats (I know nothing about car racing, so that metaphor begins and ends right there) – so I don’t even have time to ponder the observation.

But I do ponder it later, and it dawns on me this may be one of those unpredictable and sovereign ways the Holy Spirit works. So I put it in the form of a poem:

JOHN 3:8

old friend’s eyes spurt

sudden tears

at the thought of some

Bible truth or other that

veritably may be true and

very well may not…

but there just is no

(is there)

accounting for the Light

and what it slides

behind or

beneath

to italicize

to illumine

for that Light child or

this

who needs it so

¶ PRICES FOR ONE ITEM AT WALMART HAVE SKYROCKETED

Remember – after reading the previous poem, and after the next one as well – I’m not claiming any inherent poetic value in these pieces at all. They are simply a way for me to focus an experience … verbalize what, for me, is its real-life (“inherent”) rhythm … and allow, insofar as possible, the “spiritual dimension” of the experience at least to wave a little flag, if not exactly come right out and announce itself.

This one may speak for itself, I’m not terribly proud to say:

PRICES FOR ONE ITEM

AT WALMART HAVE

SKYROCKETED

if the smell of four-day

desiccated lobster

turns into something you can see

and if its deathly taste

gets all dressed up

and goes shopping:

it will be this old woman

in Aisle 7 at Walmart:

all four sprigged feet of her—

snappy crab legs for arms

knobby twigs for legs

all turned smeary salmon color

from cheap suntan glop in a tube,

a color that matches her rust-dyed

hair chopped all around

like a pageboy caught in a riot

and the price of seeing Jesus

in her is so high

the household budget has to go

into the can

and a new self

teenier

than her macaroni elbow bends,

tinier than her coccyx (which

no one wants to even think about),

a self small like a pea

that until Aisle 7 happened

was as swollen as a hippo,

has to be found, and that

zippy

fast

because this is what it’s

about, this

crucifixion of –

this denial of –

self, and no

price is too high

for a trendy damned sinner

to buy out

of the trendy damned world

and buy into

the One Who

(the prophet says)

isn’t exactly a hottie,

has no good looks,

no upscale trendy clothes that’ll be

out of style before Aisle 7 ends,

so that anyone would want

to look twice,

most

not even once

JOURNAL 8/23/11: London Fog (Pt. 2)

2011-08-23T18:56:00.001-04:00

[Part 2] SIGNS OF HOPE IN THE LONDON FOG

“A day of little things,

no doubt, but who

would dare despise it?”

~ Zechariah 4:10a (NJB)

* * * * * * *

Rioters came to a pharmacy.

The druggist begged them

not to destroy the place.

It was, he begged, all he

had. The rioters left.

~ an eyewitness, on Twitter

* * * * * * *

DURING the London riots, so many of us looked down (at the rioters) for compelling evidence and “proof” of sinfulness, and looked up (at those in positions of power and wealth) for models of righteousness, decency and order.

Now, after the London riots, so many of us are looking down (at the rioters) for signs that the guilty still are being punished; and up (at those in positions of power and wealth) for signs of decency and order, and for answers, and maybe above all for signs of hope.

Both ways of looking – before the riots, after the riots -- are themselves signs and symptoms of our problem.

Both ways of looking – before and after -- are symptoms of the human condition.

“Our human condition” – our Fallenness – means that somehow, somewhere in our human ancestry – a “somehow” and “somewhere” summed up in the complex parable of Adam and Eve (Genesis 2-3) – we made choices that “leaked” into the “atmosphere,” the ethos of living in this world.

Both ways of looking – before the riots, after the riots – are symptoms of oursin. “Sin” in the singular – meaning a condition. As opposed to “sin” in the plural, meaning separate acts.

This isn’t to justify greed and rampage, plunder and arson.

Rather, it’s to remind us that by mis-looking in these ways, we have missed two terribly terribly crucial features of reality. Biblical reality.

* * * * * * *

THE FIRST feature of biblical reality that we missed was the focus of the first part of this blog (8.12.11 “London Fog [Pt. 1]”).

Most of us missed the simple and biblical fact that greed and rampage, plunder and arson also happens “up there” – in the highest strata of society.

They happen day-in and day-out among crooked media and their moguls, crooked cops, crooked banks and politicians, amoral and greedy mortgage lenders and pharmaceuticals and oil companies and health insurance companies.

And the latter do, by far, immeasurably by far, the most damage. Their decisions and actions hurt the most people, desolate the most villages and towns and even nations, wreck the most homes and health and lives, take away futures beyond imagining for people beyond counting.

All have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God (Romans 3:23). Yes.

All are guilty before a Holy God. Yes!

But some – some few – are inconceivably more responsible for the outcome of their sins.

And just how do we go on missing this first major feature of biblical reality?

We do it by living upside-down and wrong-side-out.

We were created spiritual beings, who were meant to live from the inside-out: everything starting from our spirit, that capacity of the human being for direct connection with spiritual reality in general and Holy Spirit in particular, working outward to soul and body. And the body/soul unity followed the initiative, the lead, of the spirit.

"Soul," it needs to be said, is located in -- is a region of -- the physical matrix of the body. They are not "two different things," but two regions or dimensions ofone "thing -- body/soul. Soul refers to the thinking, imagining and imaging (the two are related), and emotional or feeling capacities of the body. And the body and its capacity for thinking, feeling, imagining and dreaming and imaging, is created to live at the behest of spirit.

We do our living, sadly and often tragically, the other way around. Body and soul dictate to spirit.

We live -- and meet, see, hear and value the world, and ourselves and all others in it -- upside-down. Wrong-side-out.

That is the human condition.

That is what it means to be Fallen.

Our past choices – somehow and somewhere, as sung by that complex parable of Genesis 2-3 – reversed our created nature. As a result – and a result of greed and intense self-centeredness, be it noted; of preferring private consuming to inter-Personal communion with the Holy One – we have chosen to live in reverse.

Now we follow the “lead” of body/soul, of avoiding pain and seeking pleasure of body (physical) and soul (emotional and mental).

Spirit is at best the wagging tail, at worst the bobbed-off tail, long ago left in the dirt.

Our spirit joins the Holy One on the sidelines of life, cheerleaders for what thereal players are all about.

“Spiritual” life is confounded with soul life; spiritual encounters have become aesthetic pleasures. There is no Cross left, no Suffering Servant, no Self-Emptying Savior (Philippians 2:5-11) whose mind is thus to transform ours from within, from spirit.

At best, in the religious communities, there is Entertainment Christianity. Spiritual blessing as emotional thrill, as aesthetic pleasure surge.

We are built upside-down, as it were.

We live outside-in, as it were. Backwards. In reverse.

No wonder we look upwards (in this world) rather than downwards (in this world).

There is -- from the inverted perspective of our inverted life -- only pain, suffering, loneliness “down there.”

There is pleasure, dignity, righteousness, decency and order “up there.”

We miss what the Bible is tying itself in knots to show us, which is exactly the reverse.

Those “up there” have less chance of getting into the Kingdom of Heaven than a mastodon has of doing hip-hop on a postage stamp. (Or, in faithfulness to Jesus’ analogy, as a dromedary does of threading a needle, Matthew 19:24.)

And it’s not so much because they are greater sinners, as it is because they damage more of God’s creation, hurt more of God’s people, out of their vastly greater power and wealth.

But we just go right on looking to them for values and role models and clues and cues.

* * * * * * *

THE SECOND feature of biblical reality we miss, therefore, is the fact hope just isn’t going to be found “up there.”

As always, it’s going to be found where – time after time, age after age, generation after generation after generation without fail – our God always locates these things.

Hope will be found “in the day of little things,” as the New Jerusalem Bible translates those words at the beginning of this post. “The day of small things,” as Today’s New International Version translates it.

Hope will be found, as it always is found in the Bible, among the Abram’s and Sarai’s – the migrants, the undocumented!– of this world.

Among people who drift out to the wilderness wells to get a bucket of life-saving water, but come back with revelations, as is so common throughout the Bible.

Among, not the customary first-born and eldest, but the later-born and youngest.

Among con artists like Jacob, whores like Rahab, foreign immigrants like Ruth, adulterers and murderers like David, tree-tenders like Amos, the immature and verbally awkward like Jeremiah, terrorists like Paul, outcasts at the very bottom of the social scale like the shepherds who first learned of The Birth of them all.

In the cardboard box hidden beneath the expressway interchanges or within the piss-stinking rat-rattling unused subway tunnels beneath the sooted city, a box that in the elegant language of yore might have been called a manger.

Among the sinners everyone else wants to kill (John 8:1-11. The fact this story appears in other gospels, and seems ultimately not to have a single identifiable "home" in any, tells me not that the jabber of the "higher critics" is correct -- namely, this story never happened -- but that it belongs to all the gospels.)

With the Samaritan (foreign and unclean) women who come outside the nice neat polite structures of human social arrangements, to visit with the One Who doesn't live there either (John 4) ... the One Who in fact has nowhere to hang for the night, and indeed, ultimately hangs only at, or on, the Cross.

Among the hungry and homeless, poor and imprisoned and naked, where our Lord Himself continues to be found (Matthew 25).

Among insignificant start-up tries, like a mustard seed, a lost coin, a single smelly sheep out of 100.

Why we haven’t caught on to God’s great slapstick reversals like these! (That's rhetorical, so undeserving of a question mark.) It's not as though they are exactly rare.

Rare, instead, is the one with eyes to see them, ears to hear the lines.

Because, alas and most likely, we are built upside-down and just cannot seem to unlearn those wretched – and often dangerous – old ways of seeing and valuing things. We are slow, at best, to rely on Liturgy and Eucharist, on askesis of world and flesh, on the Word along with those Bible and Holy Tradition words that witness to the Word … all to help us begin to grow ears that can hear the Sacred Silence in Elijah’s silent cave, the silence of a rioting mob walking away from a helpless man’s store … eyes to see the sight of small beginnings, small things.

May we learn them while there still is hope.

While those small beginnings, by the astounding grace of the Holy One, just keep on happening where He said they would.

Down there.

JOURNAL 8/23/11: London Fog (Pt. 2)

2011-08-23T16:38:00.000-04:00