No Comments// Posted in Art, Christianity, Philosophy, Theology by turricom on 09.03.10.
We thought that we overcame racism in the 60’s; we thought the church overcame triumphalism at Vatican II, and now forty years later we are right back into this regressive and dualistic thinking all over again. This is the nature of the ego if we have not formed a contemplative mind, a big mind, that sees everything together, with the eyes of God. I predict, with some historical certainty, this judgmental thinking will continue to happen in every group, in every denomination if we see everything with a dualistic mind. No new emerging church will emerge very far.
The judgmental mind is not looking for truth; it is looking for control and righteousness. For some reason when we split and refuse to receive the moment as it is, we end creating and even reveling in those splits as our very identities. These are the culture wars and the identity politics we suffer from today. They will not get us very far spiritually, because they are largely ego-based.
From Emerging Christianity: the conference recordings by Richard Rohr
Painting by Linda Kim
No Comments// Posted in Art, Christianity, Theology by turricom on 09.01.10.
Not that love dispenses with knowing or requires some sacrifice of intelligibility, but love becomes, instead of and in the place of intuitus, the keeper of evidence, the royal road to knowledge: “When speaking of things human, we say that we should know them before loving them—a saying which has become proverbial. Yet the saints, on the contrary, when speaking of things divine, say that we should love them in order to know them, and that we enter into truth only through charity.
—Jean-Luc Marion
Mixed Media Painting by Mari Bland
1 Comment// Posted in Art, Christianity, Theology, Thoughts by turricom on 08.30.10.
I am at an interesting place right now in regard to thinking about the subject of sin. After hearing sermon after sermon on the subject, reading book after book, having conversation after conversation, I’m convinced of pretty much one thing: For me, the biggest problem that human beings have with sin, is that we try understand it and define it.
I doubt anyone would argue that it is evident how focusing too much on defining what “sin” is, has lead people—specifically the church—down a very dangerous road.
What I mean is this: I personally can’t deny that I know sin exists, that is, I know that I do things that I hate. To quote Paul:
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
For me (and most people of the book), all of this sin business can be traced back to Genesis 3. As I mentioned in a post a couple of weeks ago, I would agree that the biggest issue here is that we tend to look at the world in contractual terms as opposed to Agape Love covenantal terms—what is the name of the forbidden tree in the garden? I’m sure the argument could be made that knowing and being aware of good and evil existing in the world is perhaps the heaviest burden imaginable.
Think about it. What happens when we start thinking about sin (or right vs. wrong for you non-spiritual people)? Well, we start to talk about it. Then, since we’re talking about it, we need to define it in order to get a better handle on it. Before you know it, words like “sanctification,” “purification,” “holiness,” and my favorite one “ransom,” start getting thrown around. Maybe in non-religious circles, words like “virtue,” “ethics,” and “morality” might be mentioned. Since we have a nice neat definition to work with, we naturally become obsessed with evaluating, assessing, measuring and judging.
Instead of lovers, we’ve become law makers and punishers, therefore, so have our Gods.
It is no wonder that the term “Christian” has become synonymous with the word “hypocrite.” The church should never have been portrayed or conceived of as a place where perfect “sinless” and “saved” people congregate. It should instead look more like an AA meeting. A place where people confess their shortcomings and addictions and recount their stories to each other in a hopeful attempt to find true healing.
Since I’m convinced that I recognize sin when I do it, see it or experience it, and that I do have the uncontrollable need to define it and point it out (to say I can’t or shouldn’t would be disingenuous), I have found some solace in more traditional Hebraic understandings of sin. Rabbi Eliezer Finkelman explains:
The Hebrew word “hatat,” however, has a clear concrete meaning to go with its abstract one. In the Book of Judges we read about a band of sharpshooters, so trained and talented that every one of them can sling a stone at a hair and not miss (Judges 20:16). The word in this verse that means “miss,” yehetu in Hebrew, clearly has the same root as “hatat.” “Sin,” in Hebrew, means something like “missing the target.”
This notion of sin along with sophisticated Christologies (like those found in process thought, which posit that the uniqueness of Christ is seen in the way he actualized the divine aim for his life), have helped me immensely in attempting to deal with and overcome this problem of sin. For me Sin is the “deviation of aim”; humans in their subjective aim distort or deviate from God’s initial, beautiful and harmonious aim for their lives. In his subjective aims Christ actualized the ideal aim of God (as the cosmic Lover) with such intensity that Christ became the supreme human embodiment of “love-in-action.”
On an interesting side note, this sense that we all have which constantly pulls at us, telling us that there is ‘something more’ that we are meant to do in this world, was examined on a recent NPR piece. I thought it was fantastic!
Moving forward, perhaps an interesting question to ponder would be to ask if in Garden of Eve story, did Adam and Eve sin before they ate from the tree? Or is it possible that they were just unaware of their sin? Did they just live in blissful ignorance, unconditionally loving the way God does? I would like to think so. Does it matter all that much what I think? Probably not.
Drawing by Matt Shlian
5 Comments// Posted in Art, Christianity, Thoughts by turricom on 08.27.10.
This is a developing thought that has influences which are vast. It’s the kind of idea that rattles around with no place to go. So I thought I’d share it, no matter how incoherent it may be. The idea is simple: I’m not afraid to be a hypocrite.
It’s true that traditionally, being hypocritical is more or less frowned upon. I would agree that hypocrisy can be (and is) devastating. It has the potential to lead to obfuscation, apprehension and a general uneasiness toward whoever is behaving in this insincere manner. I know from my own experience that so often if I detect even the slightest hint of hypocrisy coming from someone who is opposed to something that I affirm, their point of view or idea quickly loses value in my eyes. This is what hypocrisy can do to us, it makes us bitter and can lessen our appreciation for the one who is before us. Since we’ve obviously found a flaw or a chink in the armor of our enemy, we’re excused and duly justified in pointing out this contradiction in our foe’s life. This inevitably enables us move past them while we shake our heads in disgust.
“What a hypocrite,” we may think to ourselves as this person standing in front of us, who heats their home with natural gas, preaches to us about the dangerous effects gas drilling could have on the environment.
Hypocrisy makes us angry, as well it should. I mean, Jesus got angry at hypocrites right? He surely did, especially when it involved some sort of oppression, mistreatment, manipulation or intentional deception of people(s). There is a great sense of justice that accompanies the pointing out of hypocrisy, but this isn’t the kind of hypocrisy I’m speaking about. I’m not speaking about the kind of hypocrisy found in the Pharisees whom Jesus accuses. The hypocrisy found there is more or less a disguise that covers a pathetic, feeble and sorrowful nature, one that I’m sure is bound up with issues of power and greed (among many other things).
No, the hypocrisy I’m speaking of, and the one that I’m not afraid of, is one that is often misunderstood. This kind of hypocrisy has less to do with intentionally lying, cheating and deceiving others, and more to do with striving to create a new, better reality. It’s not about deceiving ourselves in regard to how things are, or trying to fool others into thinking or doing something. This kind kind of prophetic hypocrisy is more about honestly assessing the ways things really are in the world, perhaps noticing that some things are not quite right, and then submitting an alternative. Many times this involves having to honestly admit that the justifications for this assertion may fall just a bit short.
Peter Rollins says it better than I ever could:
Take the example of activists who protest against the building of a motorway through a forest. It is perfectly possible to find many, if not most, of the protesters acknowledging both the futility of their mission and even questioning its justification. The protesters may know that, on purely rational grounds, the motorway is needed. They may know that, were they to engage in a public debate, their position would be exposed as lacking the rational framework that would justify their actions. Why? Because, the hegemonic ideological matrix that we exist within dictates the scope and limitations of the rational framework itself. So why do they act? Because the activists are affirming now a reality that does not yet exist, a reality that would, if it was instantiated, justify the actions that they are presently engaged in. They are fighting without justification for a world that would offer that justification.
I’m pretty sure that the Pharisees had mutual feelings toward Jesus. After all, he claimed to follow the Torah yet healed and forgave on the Sabbath. Jesus was indeed a hypocrite. He professed that a new way of life (or Kingdom) was at hand, but did not say that we should do away with the law. He preached this new way of life (and also lived it which is important). He proved that we’re all hypocrites in one way or another, and at the same time, showed that hypocrisy may not be such a bad thing all of the time.
Painting by Russel Leng
No Comments// Posted in Art, Christianity, Poetry, Theology by turricom on 08.25.10.
What theology needs is more copulation. And postmodern theopoetics may well provide it.
The word copulation, of course, denotes coupling: the bringing together and/or union of two things. The related words “copula” and “copulative” are grammatical terms, used to describe the linking of elements in a sentence. How unfortunate, then, that the fertile term copulation has been reduced in meaning, often with the limited connotation of animal(istic) sex.
In the sixteenth century, however, copulation was still robust, the word used not only for sex and grammar, but also for theology. The OED exemplifies the word’s breadth with an illustration from 1548: “The wonderful copulation of the sayed nature vnto ours by his incarnation.” The dictionary’s example from 1623 implies that the copulation of divine and human in the Christ-event elicits copulation on the part of Christ’s followers: “The copulation of a living faith and obedience together.”
Abstract from Theopoetics: Si(g)ns of Copulation, an essay by Crystal Downing
Mixed Media piece by Matthew Cusick
No Comments// Posted in Art, Poetry by turricom on 08.24.10.
The husband wants to be taken back
into the family after behaving terribly,
but nothing can be taken back,
not the leaves by the trees, the rain
by the clouds. You want to take back
the ugly thing you said, but some shrapnel
remains in the wound, some mud.
Night after night Tybalt’s stabbed
so the lovers are ground in mechanical
aftermath. Think of the gunk that never
comes off the roasting pan, the goofs
of a diamond cutter. But wasn’t it
electricity’s blunder into inert clay
that started this whole mess, the I-
echo in the head, a marriage begun
with a fender bender, a sneeze,
a mutation, a raid, an irrevocable
fuckup. So in the meantime: epoxy,
the dog barking at who knows what,
signals mixed up like a dumped-out tray
of printer’s type. Some piece of you
stays in me and I’ll never give it back.
The heart hoards its thorns
just as the rose profligates.
Just because you’ve had enough
doesn’t mean you wanted too much.
Poem by Dean Young
Mixed Media Collage by Danny Phillips
3 Comments// Posted in Art, Christianity by turricom on 08.22.10.
“Papists”, wrote English Protestant Nicholas Lesse in 1550, “although they were right nought for the soul, yet were they good and profitable for the body for civil commonwealths, for the maintenance of civil justice, and all good politic orders. But as for these [Anabaptists] they are neither good for the body nor for the soul: yea, they are most mortal enemies and cruel murderers to both.”‘
Lesse spoke for a good many. It was almost as if he, a “magisterial” Protestant supporting a compulsory state church, found Roman Catholics (the supposed arch-enemy) a good deal less frightening than Anabaptists, whom he called a “corrupt sort of heretics”. Lesse is perfectly frank that the reasons for his preference are political. Both Catholicism and Protestantism maintained “civil commonwealths” and sound political order. Anabaptism led to disorder.
Stumbled across this old essay from Meic Pearse originally published in Anabaptism Today.
Painting: stefan krikl
No Comments// Posted in Art, Christianity, Philosophy by turricom on 08.22.10.
The king had to share his power with the feudal aristocracy, but all alike expected to be allowed occasional outbursts of passion in the form of war, murder, pillage, or rape. Monarchs might repent, for they were sincerely pious, and, after all, repentance itself was a form of passion. But the church could never produce in them the quiet regularity of good behavior which a modern employer demands, and usually obtains, of his employees. What was the use of conquering the world if they could not drink and murder and love as the spirit moved them? And why should they, with their armies of proud knights, submit to the orders of bookish men, vowed to celibacy and destitute of armed force? In spite of ecclesiastical disapproval, they preserved the duel and trial by battle, and they developed tournaments and courtly love. Occasionally, in a fit of rage, they would even murder eminent churchmen.
The History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russel
Painting by Kaja Þrastardóttir
3 Comments// Posted in Art, Christianity, Poetry by turricom on 08.18.10.
My beloved waits. She fills her days with humble tasks.
When I look at her I see myself–my eyes, my thoughts, my cry, my laugh.
Before I knew her I was but half, yet convinced that I was whole. “Now that I know you,
I realize it’s you I’ve longed to hold.”
Together we will be, forever, in the “silent memory of God.”
My beloved waits. She sees me in her dreams.
When we embrace we are alive.
Yet it’s when we’re apart that we become aware of life,
suspended in a temporal cessation, frozen in eternal frost,
until love’s warmth returns to melt our lonely hearts.
My beloved waits. She wakes me and helps me to the door.
Our love is like the water on a lake, splashing on the shores.
With stunted remorse it threatens to devour our hope,
less we loosen our grip on what keeps us afloat.
“To live is to die and to die is to live,” we whisper, and finally succumb.
My beloved waits. She sings to me a song of love.
The love we share is like no other. It’s love we’ve known all our lives!
This love shines from deep within, so bright in fact, it burns our eyes.
Yet when it appears we inhale the mist, allowing it to tempt our hearts.
This fantastic love, it lures us! Beckoning us to come forth.
Then with reprieve it kindly stoops, an utterance from its mouth:
That our love, if it is truly love, will be love that has no bounds.
Poem and Illustration by Jesse Turri for my love Natalie.
No Comments// Posted in Art, Philosophy by turricom on 08.17.10.
“Creativity” is the universal of universals characterizing ultimate matter of fact. It is that ultimate principle by which the many, which are the universe disjunctively, become the one actual occasion, which is the universe conjunctively.
It lies in the nature of things that the many enter into complex unity. “Creativity” is the principle of novelty.
–Alfred North Whitehead
Drawing by Unica Zürn
