post happy

I've been writing all sorts of things today. These two posts are just two of the many. Why am I so writer happy today, you might ask? Well, it's because I should be writing a 25 page paper that I've barely started and it is due in exactly two hours. I won't get it done. But it is absolutely the final last paper that I must, for-sure, absolutely, have to write in all of my Seminary career. And I can almost not bear to do it.

we don’t play that game

I recently over-heard a conversation between my younger brother and our sister-in-law. A few weekends ago, my younger brother who goes to college out east stayed with me for a day. My newly married brother, Tim, and his wife came to visit too, since they live close by. Now, sometimes the interactions between my sister-in-law and my family can be quite interesting because she wasn’t raised Mennonite like the rest of us were.

Here goes the story.
Recently my sister-in-law has been contemplating career path changes due to being laid-off, since November. We were talking jobs and plans, when my sister-in-law mentioned thinking about returning to school to finish up her degree. “So, Tim’s paying the bills!” my younger brother exclaimed. “We both are paying the bills,” my sister-in-law countered. My brother chuckles and says, “And you don’t even have a job.” Then they both laughed sheepishly.

I also recently ran into an article on Mennonites and their approach to relief work in an old copy of Christianity today. It is entitled, "Mennonites Won’t Play the Game." It compares the way Mennonites do relief work and the way other evangelicals do it. The author seemed to suggest that Mennonites have more experience in relief work and sites one leader who challenged the helpfulness of making a distinction between relief work and development work, wording other evangelicals have gotten hung up on. i.e. “We just do what we thunk would help du mostest.” Concerning social conscience, “the leaders (Mennonite) seem less taken with endless talk,”…and have come upon their charity work through helping people, relatives and friends, who live in other countries, separated by emigration situations.

article by J. Alan Youngren

stupid people and heroes

There has been quite a lot of excitement going on around the Seminary with respect to a documentary and a movie that has just recently come out: End of the Spear and Beyond the Gates of Splendor. Both productions are about the story of 5 young men and their young families who went to be missionaries in the jungles of Ecuador. There they learned of a tribe called the Aucas, which had a reputation for killing everyone “from the outside” that they had historically come into contact with. This group of visionaries had met at a conservative Christian institution of higher learning, had learned Greek and Hebrew together, graduated and married, before moving to Ecuador. They knew the Aucas were head hunters and very pointedly felt led to evangelize them. Of special concern to them were the spear killings the Auca’s practiced amongst themselves, to the point where practically no-one died of old age. Everyone died of disease or spearing. Yet when the young men made contact with the tribe, it wasn’t but a little while later that all 5 were speared to death by the tribe. In response, the widows of these men went to make contact with the tribe. They and their children were taken in, fed and taught the language and in turn they evangelized the entire tribe. The result was that the killings stopped immediately.

The evangelical world has long since held these men up as heroes of the faith. And heroes they are. Yet all the more their wives are even more-so, heroes. Within the Christian faith, men and women have always expected to die for the faith. Some more noble than others. Laying down one’s life in sacrifice for another obviously being more noble than dying in the war with the Moors (and taking a few infidels with you) in the name of the Lord, in order to gain the Holy City. I believe the later to be a deceived sacrifice. Paul, in the scriptures, points us to give it all we’ve got for the sake of the gospel, for it is the only cause worth finishing well, even if we must suffer and die for it. Acts 20.24.

The buzz here at the Sem has partly been because a current professor is the nephew of Elizabeth Elliot, the widow of Jim Elliot, one of the five men. Everyone I know reveres these men of great faith and fortitude. They are examples of how we should live our lives. But hold on a second…Examples? Why are Christians not flocking to dangerous places in droves for the gospel of Christ? Why, when I decided to go to an unknown place, possibly precarious situation, in Mexico last year, were many good Christians attempting to discourage me for reasons of safety? I had a mission not too unlike these heroes.

Yet it was telling, while I was watching the documentary, that the parents of one of these young heroes didn’t even know their son was venturing into possible danger, when the group set out to make a second and fatal contact with the Aucas. The news reporters were on the parents’ doorstep with questions before the parents knew their son was even in potential danger. These young men hadn’t even told their parents to pray for them, which is wide-spread evangelical tradition, when someone needs extra support. My read on the matter is that the men and women likely did not tell many people (including their parents) about their mission for the same reason I quit telling people about mine: for reasons of the pleading of good-willed well-intentioned, sensible people who would keep them from fulfilling their heart-call.

Does this maybe expose the fickle nature of people, even evangelicals, who sing praises to their heroes and then forbid their children to be like them. I doubt that these men would have been heroes in the eyes of their family and church had they revealed their bold intentions in the moment. Back then they would have been stupid. Yet now they are brilliant, valiant and heroes.

friendship

Recently, over the past year, I’ve been periodically considering my friendship patterns. Now again, I am considering them, because my sister asked me last week if I considered them important at all.

I’ve considered the friendship patterns my parents have modeled for me. I’ve realized I had inadvertently fallen into the same patterns: aspects of which are good and aspects of which are bad. For one, my parents befriended anyone who wished to spend time with them. Sometimes they would patiently sit and listen for hours as a lonely soul unloaded a week’s worth of conversation onto them. It taught me the infinite value of everyone who casts a shadow on your doorstep, which was good. It also modeled for me to follow a friendship wherever whim should happen to lead, which was bad.

I’ve had two consistent and loyal friends for the past 5-6 years, who I speak with at least once a week. Both are retirement age, one male and married, one female and divorced. All other friendships have been mostly initiated by the other party. In junior high there was the group that would allow me to eat lunch with them. But by college I began to discover my own directing power, simply because there were more possibilities. At first it was difficult. I couldn’t even hang up on a telemarketer. I couldn’t even walk away from a stranger who was being inappropriate. The past few years, I’ve pendulumed back into a more passive role for the purpose of discovering the other. Currently, I sense a yearning for a more dynamic tension.

One factor that assists that dynamic tension is the spirit of the Creator who made us both. I have begun to consistently pray for and dedicate my friends to God. Sometimes it’s difficult because anxiety crops up, possibilities based on memories strike fear into my heart. Yet there is nothing like prayer that redirects anxiety of possibility and motives of selfish control. Anyone I spend leisure time with, I pray for God’s movement in their life and if God so wills, our relationship in purpose and ethos. I’ve also recently, begun to ask God for guidance in stance toward those who are in my life. For instance, just last week I visited with my one friend who has had considerable health issues as of recently. It has affected the frequency at which we converse. For him, I’ve perceived my silence is now more valuable than my words. We used to have animated discussions and told each other unusual and dramaticized stories. At first our time was filled with a lot of silence, later I fell into old habit and chattered away. In reflection, I wish I would have listened and been more silent for I was in the presence of someone with 70+ years of lived wisdom.

what radical leaders and their followers see.

During the time when David was fleeing from Saul for his life, he had men, warriors, which joined him by the hundreds. He was always at risk that some infiltrator allied with Saul, the king, would join his ranks for the purpose of betraying him and ultimately ending his life disgracefully.

Here is the account from 1 Chronicles 12 of his address to a group of men wishing to join him.

16 And some of the men of Benjamin and Judah came to the stronghold to David. 17 David went out to meet them and said to them, "If you have come to me in friendship to help me, my heart will be knit to you; but if to betray me to my adversaries, although there is no wrong in my hands, then may the God of our fathers see and rebuke you." 18 Then the Spirit came upon Ama'sai, chief of the thirty, and he said, "We are yours, O David; and with you, O son of Jesse! Peace, peace to you, and peace to your helpers! For your God helps you." Then David received them, and made them officers of his troops.

One thing strikes me about this interaction.

Both David and the men who seek to join him as well as the narrator all appeal to the unseen presence of parties not immediately present. Particularly, David puts it to the men bluntly, you are here to help me or to harm me—but if you betray me, God will bring you justice.

David’s appeal to God who will bring justice to him, if it should be true these men are present to betray him is a faithful appeal to the God of justice, who only holds the power of making right the wrongs of a potential betrayal. It is not unlike other such assertions of the Hebrews, where someone wronged spoke out against his persecutor who is about to execute him, “Justice will be served to you for putting me to death undeservedly. I will rise from the dead and you will be judged by my God who will raise me back to life.”

more than skin and bones

Some emotions come over people instantly. Like envy or sudden elation. Other emotions come more slowly. They wash in as slowly as a tide. Depression is like that. Joy and satisfaction are like that. The ebb and flow of serotonin and its counter chemicals in the body is a subject of high interest to the psychotropic drug industry, for profit reasons, of course. When I was studying chemistry as an undergraduate, we studied briefly the element of charge related to various bio-chemicals—charge being the airborne evidence or carrier of particular bio-chemicals. Currently, all our cordless and wireless technology has increased concern for the health implications of having our bodies being subjected to more and more numerous electrical charges. Mutations and cancers on the rise—who knows, maybe the concern is legitimate. Some future generation will likely incredulously retell the self-inflicted destruction we have created for ourselves in the same way we retell the bloodletting rituals.

Yet my point is not that electrical charges / waves of signaled energy are harmful to the body, BUT rather that the body does show signs of being affected by these elements. And it also emits various charges congruent with particular bio-chemicals present there. Perhaps there is a chemical explanation as to why joy is infectious and envy is stabbing. In fact, I have felt, stabbing envy. It is like a sudden, pointed invasion that demands my immediate attention. Why is one joyous? One doesn’t ask, one simply enjoys. Why is one envious? Only the moment can tell…coupled by an abrupt turn of the head and the meeting of inquisitive eyes. What then is prayer? What then is evil? What then is the charge of an unembodied subject?

Where I learned critical thinking, argument, and lecturesome commentary.

When I was growing up on the farm, I noticed my dad had a lot to say, while he worked. And work hard, he did. He had bought and old farm with run-down buildings and in the process of about 25 plus years, he had slowly replaced every rotting, falling down structure on the place. Times were always hard and money was short. We lived hand to mouth. Our well-being depended on our work. And my dad was always working on something, whether it was spring planting, fall harvesting, fixing his own farm machinery, building the barn or the shop or welding his own scaffolding so that he could build the silo. He was always working and additionally he was either giving a lecture or whistling a tune. He would talk about foreign policy. He would give critical commentaries on what he had been reading recently. He would also talk about people and give interesting sermons. Sometimes my brothers and sisters would listen in on some of the more fierce lectures. Usually, we already knew or had heard the advice he was dolling out freely to the empty field or to the docile cows. Yet if we didn’t, we soon found out, for my father didn’t seem to care if we heard him or not. Sometimes I feel like my father must have. So much to say and nobody who will hear it—except a child or two pressing an ear to a thin wall...and docile cows. Sometimes I wonder if this is the place that blogging fills in my life. So you my gentle reader...Are you my docile cow? Or my empty field? Or do your knees knock behind a thin wall as I give my fearsome lectures.

rememory

On Saturday I went home to attend the funeral of a woman who died at the age of 89. She was roughly my age when she and her husband became one of the founding families that established the community I grew up in. There were photos on display near her casket. In one photo, she and her husband were pictured with the other founding family in their old age along with both families’ various children who continued the community in the area with their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The photos viewed by gathered progeny and the living representatives of ancestry, silently demonstrated the connection of this individual to an existence behind and before her, yet intimately connected to her.

Her funeral was a celebration of continued community rather than an obligatory blood family gathered to bury their dead. I ate lunch across the table from two Amish men who were discussing the value and quality of grain in Pennsylvania Dutch. I discovered the young Amish man was from the parent community this woman grew up in. He was her brother’s son’s son. I spoke to the two women next to me in Pennsylvania Dutch. One of the women had been up for the deceased’s husband’s funeral as well. She told me she had met my family during that visit and we spoke of our mutual grief: her young daughter had died in a car accident only two months after my sister had died in a car accident at 22. She had showed us photos of her daughter. Later, I sent her a note and the poem I had written and read at my sister’s funeral. I had forgotten but her memory of the comfort received, demonstrated her appreciation for our participation in shared suffering.

I spoke Pennsylvania Dutch to the Amish. I spoke Spanish to the Columbian family and the Guatemalan family, who were new to the community. I was invited to stay with the relatives of the Columbian family in Columbia, if I should ever travel there. I felt a rejuvenation of spirit that none can express as I was connected to those who knew my Doddy’s name. I spoke the language of my past and of my future. I was more than a first name remembered for only a moment.

participating in eternity

Hypothesis: One of the most important functional purposes of community is to connect the individual to eternity both future and past through love (other-centered relationships). So that the energy a solitary individual exerts is not a mere spark that fades quickly into an ash but rather, together with others, is a fantastic display of sparks in unison within the buckle of eternity, uniting one end of time to the other.

symbol in Chronicles of Narnia

I found it interesting that the symbols in Narnia, especially the symbols in relation to evil and the kingdom of the white witch were the same symbols associated with old pagan religion of the Isles. For instance the battle between Aslan and the white witch takes place in the spring. The first of May is the goddess of the Isle’s primary holiday. Christ’s resurrection is also celebrated in the spring. Yet in the spring, the white witch is defeated. She goes to battle wearing a crown of golden stag horns—symbolizing both hunting prowess and fertility rites as well as kingship of the wood. Her punishers are wolves, aligning with the ancient practice of werewolves and shapeshifting. I thought it endearing that Mr Tumnus was half goat—a pleasant reminder to all of us that we are all part goat, in keeping with the parable of the parting of the sheep and the goats. The white witch’s shoulder ornament on the day of battle was the same as the Morrigan’s sacred crow or raven. Legend has it that if her crow was seen by a warrior on the way to battle, he would perish in the battle. She is white and she is dark. She is the goddess of death, war, prophesy and love.

There were many others. This is just a start. Knowing some of the ancient religious images simply made the movie a larger experience. Another movie with similar symbol and attention to the old religion is “Mists of Avalon.”

to be self-made? or other-made?

Only the richest people in the world have the luxury (money) of putting the bite into the bark of what one might consider personal choice and self-made personhood. Self-made personhood is expensive. And personal choice inherently affects other people and necessarily restricts their choices. This is true on a political level as well as on a social level, from the community level all the way down to interpersonal levels. When China expelled all western influence, it had the power, money and psychological control over the masses to do so. If I, as a teenager, decide my parents are too restrictive of my behavior in their house, I must have the money to move out. And if I don’t have the money to live on my own, I am either dependant upon the goodwill of others or their exploitative intentions. One can only move from one system of influence to another.

It is the peculiarities within the system, glitches perhaps, are the catylists for struggle that challenges the reality of personhood based on one’s ability to exercise one’s own free independent choices. There are those who are too young or too old or too disabled to exercise their free independent choices—hence, systemically defined, they are less of a person.

There are other ways of perceiving personhood and defining the positors of the self. Most other societies outside of the western world believe and have social systems which demonstrate the interactive character of personhood. The self is not defined solely by one’s own choices. The self is not self-made. The self is rather a dynamic identity-positing interaction with others. There are philosophically astute ways of articulating this but most simply live it—not as a restrictive mandate but as a comforting embrace. Who one is, is what others tell us we are through words and action. To the self-made individual the risk for exploitation in this sort of relating is too high and the price that is paid is loneliness. Yet there is an internal checks and balances for those that would negatively define others in their community. If one is defined negatively and not encouraged to rise to their best ability, the whole community suffers and wears the scar of that one person or handful of individuals. In a supportive community, there is more power to become a better person. One also tends to also be more tuned to their historical and future existence—as that existence outside their own body, which one participates in through relationship with others.

Most western sorts are terrified to turn over their individual power to the power of community, for the “other” has been cultured into a hostile “other.” They have reason to be terrified. Everyone has seen and critisized the naive individual of rural birth dumped into "the real world." For when the individual cultured to embody the positing power of community is displaced into the masses of private self-made individuals, he or she naturally embodies the exploitative and selfish interests from its subjects, as though it were the gift of love and other-centeredness community requires as a cohesive element. Self-made personhood necessarily involves an intuitive sense of ever-present self-interest. Community necessarily involves an ever-present eye to the other and the whole.

So then, shall one be self-made, or other-made...it sort-of depends on where you live...and money helps...or hurts.

what is the self?

“But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation's relating itself to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation but is the relation's relating itself to itself. A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short, a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two. Considered in this way a human being is still not a self.... In the relation between two, the relation is the third as a negative unity, and the two relate to the relation and in the relation to the relation; thus under the qualification of the psychical the relation between the psychical and the physical is a relation. If, however, the relation relates itself to itself, this relation is the positive third, and this is the self “(p. 13 – Sickness unto death).