…I’m a bundle of stress. Thanks to Kevin, I have cookies, of the Girl-Scout variety. And Rift-Valley Starbucks coffee.
Thanks to my girlfriend, I have support and affirmation that I’m not a total tool.
Thanks to my friends, I have the space to continue reading 40 hours a week and not lose complete touch with the social world.
Thanks to Thom Yorke, I have motivation to finish prelims so that I can get back to the business of listening to rock and roll music.
But for now, I’m ass-deep in political theory, Augustine, and the long story of Christian theology. Call if you get the chance.
mpw
Yesterday, I made another trip to the DFW Airport, and since an early afternoon flight meant the entire working day was killed, I headed up by 10 a.m., grabbing an early lunch in Hillsboro. When eating alone in a strange place, it’s a great excuse to people-watch, to see what life looks like thirty minutes away.
I’m here to report: not that much different. It’s still Texas. It was still hot. I sat on a window booth, and watched a couple eat along the west wall. He had the chicken pot pie; she, the salmon and salad. They talked flirtatiously; he regaled her with tales of whatever it was that he did. “Waco” was mentioned a few times. Perhaps a date? Perhaps a rekindling of a romance? Perhaps business? Both wore rings, but the way they talked was that of curious strangers, people who were intrigued by the other and not bored by their familiarity. And so I all but ruled out that they were, in fact, married to each other. You can always tell the married couples in a restaurant. They’re the ones who for the most part just eat. There’s some conversation, but mostly there’s just eating. It’s what you do when food is served. They make small talk about household things or common interests until the food shows up, and then plow in.
Maybe I just hear about these things because I’m doing a PhD in religion, and my radar is already tuned into those kinds of issues and stories, though I suspect this one was really hard to miss. By way of recap:
Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals and pastor of the fastest-growing church in the U.S., has been accused of soliciting a male prostitute and using meth. By way of further irony, his church in Colorado has been especially vocal about condemning gay marriage proposals.
**
When the accusations first came out, the response was flat denial. Then, the response shifted, that he had called the prostitute, and bought the meth, but used neither. Frankly, this conjured up someone else’s 1992 response to the question if they’d ever smoked pot. I didn’t buy it then either; I’m much more cynical and less inclined to buy this explanation today, as soothing as it might be to accept this whole thing as an enormous misunderstanding.
There have been a run of prominent conservative leaders whose sexual foibles have come to light in the last month, beginning with the revelation that Mark Foley had inappropriate contact with pages, continuing when it came out that Don Sherwood was beating his mistress, followed by the undoing of Ted Haggard. I’m not going to draw any conclusions, aside from the obvious: they were human, male, and subject to the passions of all creation.
In the last year, I’ve known more than one person in these circumstances, living a secret life that came out to the public, and each time, it’s staggering to hear about. Looking back….yeah, looking back, sometimes you can’t even tell. Sometimes, it comes as a massive shock to the system, like throwing a hairdryer in ice water. And in the wake, everybody gets fried: friends, families, admirers, careers, hopes, futures. I daresay you won’t see Ted Haggard in the spotlight. Anyone seen Jimmy Swaggart or Jim Bakker anytime lately?
It’s easy to damn him as a conservative or a hypocrite, except for the fact that I’ll go ahead and say that every man I know under the age of 40–hell, every man I know–struggles with lust in some form or fashion. What, you were surprised at this one, that somehow marriage or Jesus doesn’t keep us from wanting to stick our hands on the hot stove?
I’m reminded of the scene in Super Troopers when Rabbit takes the stolen car out, and Farva busts him, and while being cuffed, Rabbit yells out, “Same team, Farva! Same team!” Same team, Ted. We’re all in this together.
**
Aquinas deals with these desires in an extremely potent way in the Summa, which I won’t delve into here. In a nutshell, we have intellect and passions, both of which are created by God as good. The passions, those things we share with animals, are, like the intellect, designed to serve and enjoy God, but are subject a lot more sway than the mind. In Luther, there’s a massive conflict, that we will to do one thing and desire to do another, and so, doing good is always a struggle. For Aquinas, the two are designed to go together: we never do other than we truly desire to do. Thus, when I give in to lust, it’s only because I wanted to–if the intellect is the higher part of us, and desire the lower, then it follows thus.
What’s important to recall here is that the passions–fear, anger, desire, and all the rest–are part of our God-given faculties, and when harnassed by a vision of the Good–God, fall into line, and start craving that which is good. You ever felt in your bones that if you didn’t get loved that you were going to collapse? That’s kinda what he’s talking about. When trained towards God, the passions become not an enemy, but one’s greatest ally. Instead of wanting to do one thing and choosing another, we choose that which we desire the most, and find our joy in it fully.
So, on this Sunday, here’s to following our desires, and praying that God makes our desires and the will to the good one and the same.
Same team.
I’ve been house-sitting for about a week now, and I think I’ve had a revelation:
I may be a cat person. No, hear me out.
As I type this, the Smith’s cat, Lucy, has repeatedly been thrown out of my lap, and repeatedly crawled back in it. Maybe it’s the fact that I just got done with a run and I’m nice and toasty, but I’d like to think it’s my magnetic personality and fatherly sense of compassion that she’s drawn to. When I get home, she’s waiting in the corner and punches at my feet; she trails me underfeet to the bathroom and walks on my chest when I’m trying to do German.
This isn’t to say that I don’t like dogs, but when cats get up in your business, they do it with a lot more style than dogs. When dogs get up in your face, it’s like a tornado trying to be subtle. When cats do it, it’s more like a smarmy sales pitch. And I’ve had quite enough of tornadoes in my life, thanks.
I think I’ve always had a taste for the subtle. I’m not over-the-top, nor do I have the ability to work the room and love it like my boss, but I like the moving things one space at a time kind of stuff: seeing the form and then putting the pieces into place. It’s more a case of knowing where my strengths are, I think, than being sheerly misanthropic.
Because, really, I like people.
I’ve often thought that cats were among the most aloof animals there were. But lately I’ve been thinking I’ve just been meeting the wrong kinds of cats, that maybe all cats aren’t created equal, that maybe some cats are down to earth and want nothing more than to rub up against your pant leg while you’re distracted doing something less important. The stereotype works as such: dogs= man’s best friend, mostly because they can’t wait to drool on you. But as I’ve been reminded on my morning runs this week, there’s a lot of dogs that want nothing more than to drool on you, but only because they’ve taken a bite out of your ass.
Stereotypes: a quick way home. Living really is, I think, the long undoing of artificial categories: the slow dull death of a lot of mental Tupperware containers.
Check it. When Steven Tyler meets church hierarchy.
I went to bed at 10:30 last night. My body hated me for giving it more than the customary six hours. I think it’s just spoiled, frankly.
With my Nietzsche paper under wraps for the most part, my attention for the semester is going to decidedly turn towards the other crap on the table. I’ve got the one on Bonhoeffer, the one on Frei, and the critical review on Caird left to do for the semester, and they’ll be my babies for the next month or so. I frankly am really going to hate leaving Nietzsche behind so to speak: he’s been a great conversation partner. To be honest, he’s been more convincing than a lot of other voices.
One of his most vaunted opinions has to do with what he terms “slave morality”, that morality which begins with what one considers “bad”, and from that constructing what is “good”. For example: a vulture is in the sky; the lamb is on the field. The lamb looks up at the bird, knowing that the vulture wants nothing more than mutton for lunch, and calls the vulture bad. Nietzsche notes here that it’s ridiculous to call the vulture bad, because it’s responding to its nature. It can do no other than to eat the lamb. It doesn’t waste time calling the lamb “bad”, because, in truth, it really likes the lamb. What the vulture does is preferable to what the lamb does because the vulture’s way of looking at the world doesn’t spin off of what the lamb is, but what the vulture knows it must do.
To extend this further: one’s opinions, when constructed on the basis, positively or negatively, of what someone else wants, is slave morality. When I decide that not killing my roommate who is in the shower is bad because it might really upset my roommate, that’s slave morality. Call it courtesy if you want; really, I’m a slave to the desires of another person. Same thing goes for religion: if you call “good” what God has called good, your creation of morals is predicated on what another person has set before you as bad. For example–the tree of good and evil? To even be able to distinguish between the two is predicated on our saying that one is not the other, that good is “not evil”.
It’s a very compelling argument that how we construct what is good is simply a negative response to what we decide is evil. We decide the Simpsons are bad, so we read. We decide meat is bad, so we then become vegetarians. We decide Wal-Mart is bad, and so we spend our time badmouthing capitalism. For Nietzshce, these are all subtle forms of being a slave: we have let something we describe as negative be the means by which we function in goodness. Rather than living in such a way which rather just ignores the opposite, we spend our energy opposing it.
The lesson for the church is to take this modified lesson, not that we should reject calling some things, like genocide or child molestation, bad all the way down, but that we should remember the subtle temptation of basing our actions on reaction, that we should love God because we have been called by God into love, that we should love others not based on what they have done to us, that we should call all that has been made good because it has been made by God, and that we should be okay with liking Def Leppard even if the really uncool station in town does play them.
Because, holy crap, Photograph is just a great song.
We have but one master, and that makes us all the best kind of slaves.
All you need is __________.
God is _________.
If you gave me eggplant parm with a side of cheese fries and Shiner, I would _________ it.
I really want to drive Karl Barth’s _______________ into the wall for writing such long books.
These three things abide: faith, hope, and ________________. But what I really want is some eggplant parm.
I _________ decaf coffee.
Vowel is to armadillo as cactus is to ______________.
This MadLib brought to you by the letter “V” and the word “Day”.
P.S. You really should check out Kevin’s celebration today. Delicious.
“All the girls with their secret ways
All the girls who have gone astray
Be careful how you bend me
Be careful where you send me
Careful how you end me
Be careful with me
Be careful how you bend me
Be careful with me”
–Patty Griffin
***
Courtesy of the Baylor University library, I’m sitting in my room with the entire Patty Griffin catalog, working on a presentation on an backwater province of the Roman empire, drinking coffee, and listening to the voice of an angel. My heart is full, not because I desperately love Cappadocia, but because I’m able to sit and listen to music for the first time in three weeks. Anyone in the neighborhood, feel free to bring a book to study with. I’ll be parked here until lunch time.
When I think about the forays my musical tastes have made, I’m almost embarrassed to say that at one point I bought into music that couldn’t be made on a back porch. I like the well-used synthesizer as much as the next guy, but when pushed, I have to go with a well-worn acoustic guitar and the voice of God filtered through a beautiful redhead.
There is a silence that only music can communicate.
In French, FYI, the word for “healing” (guire) and the word for “war” (guerre) are one letter apart. Strange stuff. Funny when I translate a passage about a philosopher and wound up saying that he made his living on the art of war, after a whole paragraph about how nice and sedate he was.
This is not at all to mitigate the suck-ness of French, only to note a linguistic funny. So, healing and war, one letter apart.
That is all.
Does anyone else find the social commentary of Tarrantino’s films as sharp as when they first came out? I’m watching Pulp Fiction for the first time in about seven years and am amazed by the opening sequence, where Honey Bunny and her boyfriend are talking about robbing the restaurant, with the rationale that no one will think to rob a diner, because no one really is invested in the diner.
Banks? Too many people, too much security, too much stability invested.
Jewelry stores? Family owned, too much pride and ego.
But the restaurant? No one’s invested in them personally. Not the busboys making minimum wage; not the servers working for tips; not the owners who have insurance. No one really cares outside the fact that this is the place the groceries come from. Do I feel this way about Barnes and Noble? Do I see it as my cash cow, or do I still bristle when someone ignorantly belies the place I’ve called my job for the last two years?
I admit it. I’m invested. I’m connected in some small way to this building and all it does: buying, selling, sweating, brewing. I have, as it were, an investment in what goes on, the people there, and in the fact that Harry Potter is about to bust loose on the world again in less than a month. The places you find yourself knotted up with.
Intesting stuff, this Pulp Fiction brings up.
I do like a tasty burger. Check out the big brain on Brad if you get a chance.
