In continued celebration of National Poetry month, here is a poem by my friend Keely Lewis, a student at Olney. Keely has been published in TeenInk, The Mad Hatter, The Connector (which is a newspaper for her presbytery) and has won honorable mention in The Florida Review's "Young Voices Award".
M2F
He's read the pen marks on my palm
and glanced across my arms
looking for the brand
of a woman on trial.
I'm getting in touch with my feminine side,
adding a slash mark with an S in front
to the dominant pronoun of the world,
looking forward and backward
for who won the game of Life
and Health and Every Good.
Amen, he sighs, which is my prayer too.
He's all rolled up in such a mess
that even the magic word--love--can't separate
the strands of must from the fibers of can.
Keely Lewis
Monday, April 27, 2009
Paul Mills on Peace: II
In his pamplet, The Bible and War, published, apparently, in the mid-1940s, Mills argues that the "social gospel" of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries justified war. What he calls a new theology, "was destined to minimize if not eliminate the miraculous from the Gospel, adopt the moral influence theory of atonement, and consider the value in Jesus' teaching to be principally in their ethical content." The central purpose of the church was to build the kingdom of God on earth. Democracy was the best form of government for building this kingdom, Thus, Mills writes, most of the Christian churches supported World War I because they thought it would make the world safe of democracy (this sounds very similar to the Roman Christians fighting for the Roman Empire in order to "protect" Christianity) and be the war to end all wars.
It was neither, as Mills is quick to note. And by de-emphasizing the possibility of depravity in mankind, MIlls writes, the new theology essentially let Hitler slip under the wire.
Mills points out that many turned against pacifism because of Hitler. He quotes one former pacifist, Mr. Milne, writing in the Christian Century in 1941 saying, "I would rather go to hell for fighting than have my son brought up to think it was funny to kick a Jew in the stomach." He says that after Pearl Harbor, many theologians revised their pacifism as they witnessed atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese on the Chinese or because of German actions. Mills calls this sort of pacifism 'relativism."
The answer, he says, is not to model our actions on " a refined and cultured paganism" that says peace is ideal but rejects it as soon as some group violates our notions of civilized behavior. This leads to shifting standards and confusion, Mills says. However, "if we look to Jesus Christ, he is the same yesterday, today and forever."
Mills continues: "...war is economic folly and suicidal to civilization, but this conviction is not Christian pacifism. The pacifism of the "social gospel" ... is a light that will fail at the darkest hour. ... A conviction that is rooted in the Bible and quickened by the Spirit of God to a Christian conscience will be necessary in hours of crisis."
Do you agree that the pacifism of the social gospel is a light that will fail at the darkest hour? How do we get beyond a social gospel articulation of the peace testimony?
It was neither, as Mills is quick to note. And by de-emphasizing the possibility of depravity in mankind, MIlls writes, the new theology essentially let Hitler slip under the wire.
Mills points out that many turned against pacifism because of Hitler. He quotes one former pacifist, Mr. Milne, writing in the Christian Century in 1941 saying, "I would rather go to hell for fighting than have my son brought up to think it was funny to kick a Jew in the stomach." He says that after Pearl Harbor, many theologians revised their pacifism as they witnessed atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese on the Chinese or because of German actions. Mills calls this sort of pacifism 'relativism."
The answer, he says, is not to model our actions on " a refined and cultured paganism" that says peace is ideal but rejects it as soon as some group violates our notions of civilized behavior. This leads to shifting standards and confusion, Mills says. However, "if we look to Jesus Christ, he is the same yesterday, today and forever."
Mills continues: "...war is economic folly and suicidal to civilization, but this conviction is not Christian pacifism. The pacifism of the "social gospel" ... is a light that will fail at the darkest hour. ... A conviction that is rooted in the Bible and quickened by the Spirit of God to a Christian conscience will be necessary in hours of crisis."
Do you agree that the pacifism of the social gospel is a light that will fail at the darkest hour? How do we get beyond a social gospel articulation of the peace testimony?
Friday, April 24, 2009
Frank Lloyd Wright
Last Sunday, I went with Roger and a student at Olney who is writing his senior thesis (called the Grady essay) on Frank Lloyd Wright to Oberlin to tour a Wright Usonian house there called the Charles E. Weltzheimer house.
Usonians were houses Wright designed, starting in the 1930s, to be affordable for the average American (Usonian is supposed to evoke "USA.") About 100 of these houses were built around the country and a few are open to the public. Usonians could well appeal to a Quaker sensibility because they are built with simple, clean lines out of ordinary, low-cost (at the time) materials, were meant to be homes people could build themselves and were designed with some awareness of what we would today call "green" building. (I wouldn't push that too far, but Wright did orient the houses to take advantage of passive solar). The typical Usonian is L-shaped and built on one level with a living room/dining room "core" centered on a large fireplace and then a "tail" of bedrooms and bathrooms.
This Usonian was large for the time (it was designed in 1947, built in 1948 and the family of five (soon to be six) moved in in 1949). It had four bedrooms, rare in that era, and two full baths. Also unusual for a Wright house, where kitchens are usually treated as small, utilitarian workspaces, similiar to laundry rooms, the kitchen is incorporated into to the living room plan.
Although the house is named for a man, it's existence is primarily women driven. Weltzheimer's wife wanted a Usonian and wrote a letter to Wright asking him to design one for her family. In the mid-1960s, the house, which had been sold to a developer, was "saved" by a female art history professor at Oberlin, who couldn't bear what the developer was doing to the house (Installing white formica countertops in the kitchen, etc.) and bought it from him. She willed it to Oberlin before she died in the early 1990s.
Unlike other Wright houses we have seen, this one is treated not as a shrine but as a working home. Oberlin groups come in and use the house for conferences and other meetings. You see electric blankets in the linen closets and a modern coffee maker on the kitchen counter. The entire house is accessible to visitors and you are allowed to sit on the furnishings, some of which are the original Wright-designed pieces. So you come away with at least a fleeting sense of what it was like to live in the house. At one point, our Olney student sat down at the Steinway baby grand piano and began playing the Truman Show theme (I call it the official Olney theme as it is always wafting down the corridor of our Main building!). Nobody minded at all.
It was an enjoyable trip and Oberlin was a beautiful campus. Of course, the house stirred my already overactive imagination, reminding me of descriptions of similar "modern" houses in my old Donna Parker and other childhood readings, where walls of windows in bedrooms opening to patios were the height of "glam" (and often viewed with suspicion by narrators who who seemed to prefer the cosy clapboards the heroines always seemed to live in). Well, today, the glam house looks like a dated period piece, but I think we still often find "modern" architecture suspect. Do you think this is true? If so, is there a good reason for this?
Also, I was quite taken with the story of the forward looking "woman" art history professor who saved the house and fancied her having gone to college with my Majorie Dean series cohorts in the 1920s. (Anybody else read this series?) If she was anything like Majorie and her friends, this professor would have been a New Woman type, athletic (daringly playing basketball), not afraid to become educated, and above all dedicated to higher purposes, such as truth, beauty and helping the less fortunate. In a word, the type of woman who would become a college professor and dedicate herself to saving a house.
Above are an exterior and interior photo of the Weltzheimer house. You can see the L-shape of the house in the exterior photo and the piano in the interior photo.
Reading the Bible in 20 months: cowardice and peace ..
When I was reading the Bible straight through a hierarchy I had never seen before emerged. By this I mean that some forms of social organization worked better than others. I never "got" this big picture context when I jumped in and out of stories.
Every so often during the last decade an e-mail has circulated ( now that mass e-mails seem to be out of favor, maybe not anymore) in which a person, with feigned naivete, asks if he can enact various elements of the Mosaic law, along the lines of, do I really have to kill my neighbor for wearing clothes woven of two different fabrics, do I have to stone my neighbor for planting on a field that should have lain fallow or can I just kill him another way, and since I need to sell my daughter to raise money into slavery, what would be a fair price to ask? These e-mails are obviously meant to ridicule people who claim to be Bible literalists. They also carry the subtext of who would ever want to follow this faith other than an irrational nut?
Context is everything. Taken out of context, these laws do seem irrational and barbaric. And while I was reading the Bible straight through, the strictness of the law in the early days and the severity of punishment caused a few shocks to my system. ("my nerves, my nerves" as Aunt Pittypat would say.)
As I continued reading, however, my view began to shift. After the early days, Israel rises to greatness under David, an ascent that probably reaches its pinnacle under Solomon, who is both wealthy and wise. (At least this is impression you I get from the Bible itself; the scholarship may disagree.) Solomon constructs the costly temple in Jerusalem, and the Jewish people seem to enjoy prosperity and peace.
At the same time, however, that Solomon is building the temple, he is sowing seeds of Israel's destruction by marrying a multitude of wives, apparently to solidify relationships with neighboring tribes. These wives lead Solomon in the direction of moral relativism, and introduce other forms of worship--including hill shrines to Baal--into the nation.
After Solomon dies, the country is ruled by a succession of weak kings and begins its slow, sad decline into dissolution. It loses its moral center as people move away from strict adherence to the Mosaic law and into more and more desperate attempts to appease the gods as their political situation increasingly unravels. More hill shrines spring up, child sacrifice appears, wooden idols are worshipped and a statue/pole (?) dedicated to Baal is actually erected in the temple. This is a depressing section (mostly Chronicles if I remember correctly), and not the stuff of standard Sunday School fare. In fact, although I have spent a great deal of time reading the Bible, there were sections here in Chronicles I had never read. And as I read, I found myself wishing God would appear in the middle of all this with a miracle. (He doesn't.)
Clearly, Israel is doomed. It's surrounded by increasingly powerful enemies and seems to have lost, along with its faith (of course, a few do keep the faith) its basic common sense, cohesion and courage. I found myself saying, no, no, no, what on earth can you be thinking? when the Israelites melt down the gold and silver implements in the temple and strip the gold and copper from the walls and send these to more powerful rivals to the buy them off from invading the country. Of course, once Israel has made itself poor and helpless, what's to prevent the invasion?
Anyway, the point is, I found myself, as I was reading, looking back with nostalgic longing to the days of the strict interpretation of the law. My view of those early days changed. Yes, at that early point the group might have been stoning people and casting them out for seemingly minor infractions, but they were a cohesive community with a moral center and a strong sense of purpose. Their acts of aggression against their enemies were hair-raising, but somehow not as bad as the slothful child sacrifice practices (victimizing the innocent) of the later years. At least, in the early years, a group that felt beleagured and threatened on all sides hung together and did what it believed it needed to do to survive, not just for the day but into future generations. The later Israelites seem a more contemptible lot, willing to sell off the fate of their descendants for a few years of immediate comfort. And this sounds uncomfortably like elements of our current society.
So the story as a whole left me pondering the hierarchy of social organization. While a peaceable kindgom ruled by God through his priestly emmisaries (or today, through the direction of the Holy Spirit written onto hearts without need of priests) might be the ideal, and a military king something that brings its own heartache and sorrow to the people, the story as a whole tells us that a strong warrior state centered around serving God (even if the people are misinterpreting how best to serve him) is preferable to a state whose center has collapsed into cowardice and moral confusion. This the hierarchy I came away with: Best: Peaceable kingdom centered on faith in God, not carnal weapons. People willing to die courageously rather than kill others. Not too bad: a strict military regime creating a cohesive community centered around following God's law and fighting to preserve themselves as a people of God, Questionable: a military state led by a warrior king who is partially following God's will and partially following the leader's (or the world's) own will and passions, Poor: a cowardly, slothful, uncohesive, morally relativistic nation state narrowly focused on preserving it's own comforts. Cowardice parading as peace.
As a pacifist myself, I was able to modify my views a bit to see militarism as not all bad. This helps me with things such as the totalizing debate over World War II. Going to war with Hitler might not have been the best thing, but it wasn't the worst thing. However, the challenge becomes how to develop past the warrior state to aim for the peaceable kingdom. And of course, we can't do it on our own.
Also, I am open to my "hierarchy" being amended. It's the result of a raw read of the Bible and a stab at seeing the world through God's eyes. What do others think?
Every so often during the last decade an e-mail has circulated ( now that mass e-mails seem to be out of favor, maybe not anymore) in which a person, with feigned naivete, asks if he can enact various elements of the Mosaic law, along the lines of, do I really have to kill my neighbor for wearing clothes woven of two different fabrics, do I have to stone my neighbor for planting on a field that should have lain fallow or can I just kill him another way, and since I need to sell my daughter to raise money into slavery, what would be a fair price to ask? These e-mails are obviously meant to ridicule people who claim to be Bible literalists. They also carry the subtext of who would ever want to follow this faith other than an irrational nut?
Context is everything. Taken out of context, these laws do seem irrational and barbaric. And while I was reading the Bible straight through, the strictness of the law in the early days and the severity of punishment caused a few shocks to my system. ("my nerves, my nerves" as Aunt Pittypat would say.)
As I continued reading, however, my view began to shift. After the early days, Israel rises to greatness under David, an ascent that probably reaches its pinnacle under Solomon, who is both wealthy and wise. (At least this is impression you I get from the Bible itself; the scholarship may disagree.) Solomon constructs the costly temple in Jerusalem, and the Jewish people seem to enjoy prosperity and peace.
At the same time, however, that Solomon is building the temple, he is sowing seeds of Israel's destruction by marrying a multitude of wives, apparently to solidify relationships with neighboring tribes. These wives lead Solomon in the direction of moral relativism, and introduce other forms of worship--including hill shrines to Baal--into the nation.
After Solomon dies, the country is ruled by a succession of weak kings and begins its slow, sad decline into dissolution. It loses its moral center as people move away from strict adherence to the Mosaic law and into more and more desperate attempts to appease the gods as their political situation increasingly unravels. More hill shrines spring up, child sacrifice appears, wooden idols are worshipped and a statue/pole (?) dedicated to Baal is actually erected in the temple. This is a depressing section (mostly Chronicles if I remember correctly), and not the stuff of standard Sunday School fare. In fact, although I have spent a great deal of time reading the Bible, there were sections here in Chronicles I had never read. And as I read, I found myself wishing God would appear in the middle of all this with a miracle. (He doesn't.)
Clearly, Israel is doomed. It's surrounded by increasingly powerful enemies and seems to have lost, along with its faith (of course, a few do keep the faith) its basic common sense, cohesion and courage. I found myself saying, no, no, no, what on earth can you be thinking? when the Israelites melt down the gold and silver implements in the temple and strip the gold and copper from the walls and send these to more powerful rivals to the buy them off from invading the country. Of course, once Israel has made itself poor and helpless, what's to prevent the invasion?
Anyway, the point is, I found myself, as I was reading, looking back with nostalgic longing to the days of the strict interpretation of the law. My view of those early days changed. Yes, at that early point the group might have been stoning people and casting them out for seemingly minor infractions, but they were a cohesive community with a moral center and a strong sense of purpose. Their acts of aggression against their enemies were hair-raising, but somehow not as bad as the slothful child sacrifice practices (victimizing the innocent) of the later years. At least, in the early years, a group that felt beleagured and threatened on all sides hung together and did what it believed it needed to do to survive, not just for the day but into future generations. The later Israelites seem a more contemptible lot, willing to sell off the fate of their descendants for a few years of immediate comfort. And this sounds uncomfortably like elements of our current society.
So the story as a whole left me pondering the hierarchy of social organization. While a peaceable kindgom ruled by God through his priestly emmisaries (or today, through the direction of the Holy Spirit written onto hearts without need of priests) might be the ideal, and a military king something that brings its own heartache and sorrow to the people, the story as a whole tells us that a strong warrior state centered around serving God (even if the people are misinterpreting how best to serve him) is preferable to a state whose center has collapsed into cowardice and moral confusion. This the hierarchy I came away with: Best: Peaceable kingdom centered on faith in God, not carnal weapons. People willing to die courageously rather than kill others. Not too bad: a strict military regime creating a cohesive community centered around following God's law and fighting to preserve themselves as a people of God, Questionable: a military state led by a warrior king who is partially following God's will and partially following the leader's (or the world's) own will and passions, Poor: a cowardly, slothful, uncohesive, morally relativistic nation state narrowly focused on preserving it's own comforts. Cowardice parading as peace.
As a pacifist myself, I was able to modify my views a bit to see militarism as not all bad. This helps me with things such as the totalizing debate over World War II. Going to war with Hitler might not have been the best thing, but it wasn't the worst thing. However, the challenge becomes how to develop past the warrior state to aim for the peaceable kingdom. And of course, we can't do it on our own.
Also, I am open to my "hierarchy" being amended. It's the result of a raw read of the Bible and a stab at seeing the world through God's eyes. What do others think?
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Happy Birthday Shakespeare
Today is, I believe, Shakespeare's birthday. Did you see the portrait of him that was recently authenticated? Do you have a favorite play or sonnet?
Because I was an English major in college and then working on a Phd. in English, I was exposed to quite a bit of Shakespeare in "the day." Some of my happiest memories are of being an card-carrying member of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. The librarians--underpaid and twentysomethings, just like me--would gleefully fill me in on gossip about the famous scholars. Also, every afternoon, the library served an English tea, an elegant event that a starving graduate student living in a bleak bauhaus apartment complex couldn't help but appreciate.
I have found that in recent years I am still especially fond of Hamlet and A Midsummer's Night Dream. My first exposure to Shakespeare was watching cartoon versions of these two plays performed on television by Mr. Magoo. I still remember Mr. Magoo talking to the ghost of his father in Hamlet and running around with an ass's head in A Midsummer's Night Dream.
In any case, I imagine the author of the love sonnets would appreciate my leaving graduate school for amore ... or so I hope!
Because I was an English major in college and then working on a Phd. in English, I was exposed to quite a bit of Shakespeare in "the day." Some of my happiest memories are of being an card-carrying member of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. The librarians--underpaid and twentysomethings, just like me--would gleefully fill me in on gossip about the famous scholars. Also, every afternoon, the library served an English tea, an elegant event that a starving graduate student living in a bleak bauhaus apartment complex couldn't help but appreciate.
I have found that in recent years I am still especially fond of Hamlet and A Midsummer's Night Dream. My first exposure to Shakespeare was watching cartoon versions of these two plays performed on television by Mr. Magoo. I still remember Mr. Magoo talking to the ghost of his father in Hamlet and running around with an ass's head in A Midsummer's Night Dream.
In any case, I imagine the author of the love sonnets would appreciate my leaving graduate school for amore ... or so I hope!
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Paul Mills on Peace
I found a box on a shelf in the Olney school library containing pamphlets about peace.
One was called "The Bible and War" by Paul M. Mills.
Mills makes an eloquent argument against war. I wonder that pamphlets such as these moulder away on the back shelves of libraries and aren't everywhere. Does anyone know of a link to this pamphlet on the web?
This pamphlet has no copyright date, but the latest citation dates from 1945. It was issued by Oregon Yearly meeting.
Some points Mills makes:
--The moral damage of war is worse than the physical. Do you agree? This counters the kind of liberal anti-war arguments that make me uneasy: In the liberal mindset, war is an evil because it costs money that could be spent on medicines and food and housing for the poor. War is too expensive. But then I wonder: if war were cheap or economically beneficial to the poor, would that make it OK?
--Mills notes that for the first 300 years after Jesus, the church considered war and revenge as unChristian. He cites Origen: "We no longer take up sword against nation, nor do we learn war anymore, having become children of peace, for the sake of Jesus who is our leader ... And none fight better for the king than we do. ... we fight on his behalf, forming a special army--an army of piety--by offering our prayers to God."
Mills also quotes Hippolytus to the effect that no Christian should kill or become a soldier and that "weaponlessness" is "becoming to the Gospel."
-- In the mid fourth century, the peace stance changed. Mills attributes this to the Christian response to the pagans invading the Roman Empire. Augustine, who relied on the Roman Empire to protect the church, believed that if Rome fell, Christianity would be finished. Christians needed to fight alongside the Romans to preserve the faith. Out of this sprung "just war" theory.
About just war theory, Mill writes: "Sixteen centuries with their wars should be sufficient to disillusion us regarding Augustine's dream of wars conducted in a good, kind, Christian way. It cannot be done."
--Mill writes that Augustine's "great mistake" was in trying to adjust the Bible to circumstances and not circumstances to the Bible. War was a way out, but it "was not the Christian way out. Now we can see that his way did not work."
As Mills highlights, Christians joining the Roman army did not prevent Rome falling to the pagans. Rome fell. However, the power of the Gospel did not fall, but spread, despite the dissolution of the Roman Empire. Scattered Christians converted the pagans to Christianity through peaceful means. They didn't need the military might of the Romans.
I had never considered that the lack of a strong, coherent empire did nothing to impede the expansion of a different kind of kingdom. Although the pagan tribes of the north became more powerful than the Romans, the pagans became Christian and not vice versa.
What do you think of Mills's assertions? And do you agree that the moral damage of war is worse than the physical?
One was called "The Bible and War" by Paul M. Mills.
Mills makes an eloquent argument against war. I wonder that pamphlets such as these moulder away on the back shelves of libraries and aren't everywhere. Does anyone know of a link to this pamphlet on the web?
This pamphlet has no copyright date, but the latest citation dates from 1945. It was issued by Oregon Yearly meeting.
Some points Mills makes:
--The moral damage of war is worse than the physical. Do you agree? This counters the kind of liberal anti-war arguments that make me uneasy: In the liberal mindset, war is an evil because it costs money that could be spent on medicines and food and housing for the poor. War is too expensive. But then I wonder: if war were cheap or economically beneficial to the poor, would that make it OK?
--Mills notes that for the first 300 years after Jesus, the church considered war and revenge as unChristian. He cites Origen: "We no longer take up sword against nation, nor do we learn war anymore, having become children of peace, for the sake of Jesus who is our leader ... And none fight better for the king than we do. ... we fight on his behalf, forming a special army--an army of piety--by offering our prayers to God."
Mills also quotes Hippolytus to the effect that no Christian should kill or become a soldier and that "weaponlessness" is "becoming to the Gospel."
-- In the mid fourth century, the peace stance changed. Mills attributes this to the Christian response to the pagans invading the Roman Empire. Augustine, who relied on the Roman Empire to protect the church, believed that if Rome fell, Christianity would be finished. Christians needed to fight alongside the Romans to preserve the faith. Out of this sprung "just war" theory.
About just war theory, Mill writes: "Sixteen centuries with their wars should be sufficient to disillusion us regarding Augustine's dream of wars conducted in a good, kind, Christian way. It cannot be done."
--Mill writes that Augustine's "great mistake" was in trying to adjust the Bible to circumstances and not circumstances to the Bible. War was a way out, but it "was not the Christian way out. Now we can see that his way did not work."
As Mills highlights, Christians joining the Roman army did not prevent Rome falling to the pagans. Rome fell. However, the power of the Gospel did not fall, but spread, despite the dissolution of the Roman Empire. Scattered Christians converted the pagans to Christianity through peaceful means. They didn't need the military might of the Romans.
I had never considered that the lack of a strong, coherent empire did nothing to impede the expansion of a different kind of kingdom. Although the pagan tribes of the north became more powerful than the Romans, the pagans became Christian and not vice versa.
What do you think of Mills's assertions? And do you agree that the moral damage of war is worse than the physical?
On Poetry
April is National Poetry Month, and I don't want to miss mentioning it.
On May 10, Olney held a poetry reading to celebrate the month. Anybody could get up and read or recite a poem and 44 people did. Roger read "Tent" by Reed Whittemore, a NOT deceased but still alive University of Maryland poet and mentor of his who was poet laureate of the United States in, I believe, 1988. Roger also read "Dog" by Ferlinghetti. I was going to read a Mary Oliver poem, but decided not to. Then our friend Ela, the admissions director, asked Roger and me to read a poem with her that had three "voices."
Anyway, it was quite moving to hear the poems. Some were in foreign languages, some were written by the person reading them, and many of the students memorized their poems. I was reminded of the power of poetry to convey truth and to reach a deeper part of us. Near the end of the session, one of our students, who had previously been in a gang in New Jersey, read a poem he had spontaneously written that revealed some of his soul and made me glad that the school can reach out at least to few teens who mightnot otherwise have made it.
In any case, I wanted to share a poem written by John Karsemeyer. John is a Quaker and the father of Jaya Karsemeyer, admissions assistant at Olney and a friend. John and I had the privilege of visiting Fallingwater together on one of the most glorious fall days ever, when all the leaves were golden, the sun was out, the sky was blue and the temperature was perfect. These things are a grace that you can't control but only accept. In any case, here is one of John's poems as I feel it's important to share the voices of those around us:
Delight/Sacrament
awakening.
I light the fire/it warms me.
Night
I surrender.
Letting go of day/effortlessly/it slips away.
Dreams
of day
fill the spell of sleep/until dawn breaks.
God
is simple,
everything else/complex.
********
Do you remember a poem or poems you'd like to mention?
On May 10, Olney held a poetry reading to celebrate the month. Anybody could get up and read or recite a poem and 44 people did. Roger read "Tent" by Reed Whittemore, a NOT deceased but still alive University of Maryland poet and mentor of his who was poet laureate of the United States in, I believe, 1988. Roger also read "Dog" by Ferlinghetti. I was going to read a Mary Oliver poem, but decided not to. Then our friend Ela, the admissions director, asked Roger and me to read a poem with her that had three "voices."
Anyway, it was quite moving to hear the poems. Some were in foreign languages, some were written by the person reading them, and many of the students memorized their poems. I was reminded of the power of poetry to convey truth and to reach a deeper part of us. Near the end of the session, one of our students, who had previously been in a gang in New Jersey, read a poem he had spontaneously written that revealed some of his soul and made me glad that the school can reach out at least to few teens who mightnot otherwise have made it.
In any case, I wanted to share a poem written by John Karsemeyer. John is a Quaker and the father of Jaya Karsemeyer, admissions assistant at Olney and a friend. John and I had the privilege of visiting Fallingwater together on one of the most glorious fall days ever, when all the leaves were golden, the sun was out, the sky was blue and the temperature was perfect. These things are a grace that you can't control but only accept. In any case, here is one of John's poems as I feel it's important to share the voices of those around us:
Delight/Sacrament
awakening.
I light the fire/it warms me.
Night
I surrender.
Letting go of day/effortlessly/it slips away.
Dreams
of day
fill the spell of sleep/until dawn breaks.
God
is simple,
everything else/complex.
********
Do you remember a poem or poems you'd like to mention?
Saturday, April 18, 2009
On literature
I have read some good--or at least "interesting"-- books lately. They include:
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter Thompson
Run by Ann Patchett
Nickled and Dimed by Barbara Erhenreich
I am in the middle of Crime and Punishment by Dostyveosky
What good books are you reading?
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter Thompson
Run by Ann Patchett
Nickled and Dimed by Barbara Erhenreich
I am in the middle of Crime and Punishment by Dostyveosky
What good books are you reading?
Friday, April 17, 2009
Reading the Bible in 20 months: cowardice and peace
One of the things that can clear to me while I was reading the Bible straight through was the hierarchy that emerged. By this I mean that some forms of social organization worked better than others. I never "got" this big picture context when I jumped in and out of stories.
Every so often during the last decade an e-mail has circulated ( now that mass e-mails seem to be out of favor, maybe not anymore) in which a person, with feigned naivete, asks if he can enact various elements of the Mosaic law, along the lines of, do I really have to kill my neighbor for wearing clothes woven of two different fabrics, do I have to stone my neighbor for planting on a field that should have lain fallow or can I just kill him another way, and since I need to sell my daughter to raise money into slavery, what would be a fair price to ask? These e-mails are obviously meant to ridicule people who claim to be Bible literalists. They also carry the subtext of who would ever want to follow this faith other than an irrational nut?
Context is everything. Taken out of context, these laws do seem irrational and barbaric. And while I was reading the Bible straight through, the strictness of the law in the early days and the severity of punishment caused a few shocks to my system. ("my nerves, my nerves" as Aunt PittyPat would say.)
As I continued reading, however, my view began to shift. After the early days, Israel rises to greatness under David, an ascent that probably reaches its pinnacle under Solomon, who is both wealthy and wise. (At least this is impression you get from the Bible itself; the scholarship may disagree.) Solomon constructs the costly temple in Jerusalem and the Jewish people seem to enjoy prosperity and peace.
At the same time, however, that Solomon is building the temple, he is sowing seeds of Israel's destruction by marrying a multitude of wives, apparently to solidify relationships with neighboring tribes. These wives lead Solomon in the direction of moral relativism, and introduce other forms of worship--including hill shrines to Baal--into the nation.
After Solomon dies, the country is ruled by a succession of weak kings and begins its slow, sad decline into dissolution. It loses it's moral center as people move away from strict adherence to the Mosaic law and into more and more desperate attempts to appease the gods as their political situation increasingly unravels. More hill shrines spring up, child sacrifice appears, wooden idols are worshipped and a statue/pole (?) dedicated to Baal is actually erected in the temple. This is a depressing section (mostly Chronicles if I remember correctly), and not the stuff of standard Sunday School fare. In fact, although I have spent a great deal of time reading the Bible, there were sections here in Chronicles I had never read. And as I read, I found myself wishing God would appear in the middle of all this with a miracle.
Because clearly, Israel is doomed. It's surrounded by increasingly powerful enemies and seems to have lost, along with its faith (of course, a few do keep the faith) its basic common sense, cohesion and courage. I found myself saying, no, no, no, what on earth can you be thinking? when the Israelites melt down the gold and silver implements in the temple and strip the gold and copper from the walls and send these to more powerful rivals to the buy them off from invading the country. Of course, once Israel has made itself poor and helpless, what's to prevent the invasion?
Anyway, the point is, I found myself, as I was reading, looking back with nostalgic longing to the days of the strict interpretation of the law. My view of those early days changed. Yes, at that early point the group might have been stoning people and casting them out for seemingly minor infractions, but they were a cohesive community with a moral center and a strong sense of purpose. Their acts of aggression against their enemies were hair-raising, but somehow not as bad as the slothful child sacrifice practices (victimizing the innocent) of the later years. At least, in the early years, a group that felt beleagured and threatened on all sides hung together and did what it believed it needed to do to survive, not just for the day but into the future generations. The later Israelites seem a more contemptible lot, willing to sell off the fate of their descendants for a few years of immediate comfort. And this sounds uncomfortably like elements of our current society.
So the story as a whole left me pondering the hierarchy of social organization. While a peaceable kindgom ruled by God through his priestly emmisaries (or today, through the direction of the Holy Spirit written onto hearts without need of priests) might be the ideal, and a military king something that brings its own heartache and sorrow to the people, the story as a whole tells us that a strong warrior state centered around serving God (even if the people are misinterpreting how best to serve him) is preferable to a state whose center has collapsed into cowardice and moral confusion. This the hierarchy I came away with: Best: Peaceable kingdom centered on faith in God, not carnal weapons. People willing to die courageously rather than kill others. Not too bad: a strict military regime creating a cohesive community centered around following God's law and fighting to preserve themselves as a people of God, Questionable: a military state led by a warrior king who is partially following God's will and partially following the leader's (or the world's) own will and passions, Poor: a cowardly, slothful, uncohesive, morally relativistic nation state narrowly focused on preserving it's own comforts. Cowardice parading as peace.
As a pacifist myself, I was able to modify my views a bit to see militarism as not all bad. This helps me with things such as the totalizing debate over World War II. Going to war with Hitler might not have been the best thing, but it was hardly the worst thing. However, the challenge becomes how to develop past the warrior state to aim for the peaceable kingdom. And of course, we can't do it on our own.
Also, I am open to my "hierarchy" being amended. It's the result of a raw read of the Bible and a stab at seeing the world through God's eyes. What do others think?
Every so often during the last decade an e-mail has circulated ( now that mass e-mails seem to be out of favor, maybe not anymore) in which a person, with feigned naivete, asks if he can enact various elements of the Mosaic law, along the lines of, do I really have to kill my neighbor for wearing clothes woven of two different fabrics, do I have to stone my neighbor for planting on a field that should have lain fallow or can I just kill him another way, and since I need to sell my daughter to raise money into slavery, what would be a fair price to ask? These e-mails are obviously meant to ridicule people who claim to be Bible literalists. They also carry the subtext of who would ever want to follow this faith other than an irrational nut?
Context is everything. Taken out of context, these laws do seem irrational and barbaric. And while I was reading the Bible straight through, the strictness of the law in the early days and the severity of punishment caused a few shocks to my system. ("my nerves, my nerves" as Aunt PittyPat would say.)
As I continued reading, however, my view began to shift. After the early days, Israel rises to greatness under David, an ascent that probably reaches its pinnacle under Solomon, who is both wealthy and wise. (At least this is impression you get from the Bible itself; the scholarship may disagree.) Solomon constructs the costly temple in Jerusalem and the Jewish people seem to enjoy prosperity and peace.
At the same time, however, that Solomon is building the temple, he is sowing seeds of Israel's destruction by marrying a multitude of wives, apparently to solidify relationships with neighboring tribes. These wives lead Solomon in the direction of moral relativism, and introduce other forms of worship--including hill shrines to Baal--into the nation.
After Solomon dies, the country is ruled by a succession of weak kings and begins its slow, sad decline into dissolution. It loses it's moral center as people move away from strict adherence to the Mosaic law and into more and more desperate attempts to appease the gods as their political situation increasingly unravels. More hill shrines spring up, child sacrifice appears, wooden idols are worshipped and a statue/pole (?) dedicated to Baal is actually erected in the temple. This is a depressing section (mostly Chronicles if I remember correctly), and not the stuff of standard Sunday School fare. In fact, although I have spent a great deal of time reading the Bible, there were sections here in Chronicles I had never read. And as I read, I found myself wishing God would appear in the middle of all this with a miracle.
Because clearly, Israel is doomed. It's surrounded by increasingly powerful enemies and seems to have lost, along with its faith (of course, a few do keep the faith) its basic common sense, cohesion and courage. I found myself saying, no, no, no, what on earth can you be thinking? when the Israelites melt down the gold and silver implements in the temple and strip the gold and copper from the walls and send these to more powerful rivals to the buy them off from invading the country. Of course, once Israel has made itself poor and helpless, what's to prevent the invasion?
Anyway, the point is, I found myself, as I was reading, looking back with nostalgic longing to the days of the strict interpretation of the law. My view of those early days changed. Yes, at that early point the group might have been stoning people and casting them out for seemingly minor infractions, but they were a cohesive community with a moral center and a strong sense of purpose. Their acts of aggression against their enemies were hair-raising, but somehow not as bad as the slothful child sacrifice practices (victimizing the innocent) of the later years. At least, in the early years, a group that felt beleagured and threatened on all sides hung together and did what it believed it needed to do to survive, not just for the day but into the future generations. The later Israelites seem a more contemptible lot, willing to sell off the fate of their descendants for a few years of immediate comfort. And this sounds uncomfortably like elements of our current society.
So the story as a whole left me pondering the hierarchy of social organization. While a peaceable kindgom ruled by God through his priestly emmisaries (or today, through the direction of the Holy Spirit written onto hearts without need of priests) might be the ideal, and a military king something that brings its own heartache and sorrow to the people, the story as a whole tells us that a strong warrior state centered around serving God (even if the people are misinterpreting how best to serve him) is preferable to a state whose center has collapsed into cowardice and moral confusion. This the hierarchy I came away with: Best: Peaceable kingdom centered on faith in God, not carnal weapons. People willing to die courageously rather than kill others. Not too bad: a strict military regime creating a cohesive community centered around following God's law and fighting to preserve themselves as a people of God, Questionable: a military state led by a warrior king who is partially following God's will and partially following the leader's (or the world's) own will and passions, Poor: a cowardly, slothful, uncohesive, morally relativistic nation state narrowly focused on preserving it's own comforts. Cowardice parading as peace.
As a pacifist myself, I was able to modify my views a bit to see militarism as not all bad. This helps me with things such as the totalizing debate over World War II. Going to war with Hitler might not have been the best thing, but it was hardly the worst thing. However, the challenge becomes how to develop past the warrior state to aim for the peaceable kingdom. And of course, we can't do it on our own.
Also, I am open to my "hierarchy" being amended. It's the result of a raw read of the Bible and a stab at seeing the world through God's eyes. What do others think?
On Leadership
I am currently interested in the question of what makes a good leader. I cringe at the idea of separating people into categories of "leader" and "follower," as I believe everyone is called at times to lead and to follow and that much damage has been done by insisting that certain groups of people were born to be either leaders or followers. But given that all or most people have leadership abilities, when people are, in fact leading, what attributes do they possess that make them good at what they do?
The Abbess a month or so ago mentioned several books on leadership. One was by MaryKate Morse, but I can't think of its name. Any other books to recommend?
The Abbess a month or so ago mentioned several books on leadership. One was by MaryKate Morse, but I can't think of its name. Any other books to recommend?
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Hello and update
Hi to everybody and thanks for the comments. I continue to have trouble accessing my own blog, but plan to buy a new computer very shortly and hope this will solve the problem. Of course, is it a problem? There's a certain liberation in limping along on life support between two old laptops. In any case, I'm posting this third blog in one day to explain that the two blogs beneath it, on the Old Testament and peace, were one big long blog cut in half.
I have a few more things to say over the next few days (or weeks) about the Bible and peace, and need to address some of Marshall's comments, as I apparently nearly gave his Biblical-scholar self a heart attack with my untutored commentary. Well, there is an explanation for everything! One of the problems with blogging is the need to keep things short. Also, time is short. If journalism is the first draft of history, blogging is the rough draft of the first draft ... or something. So the dialogue back and forth is great for clarification. It seems as though every time I think something and don't write it down, it comes back to haunt me ...
And of course, I struggle with the balance problem. Part of me would like to blog more frequently, but then there is that life that interferes! Perhaps I can blog about that a little too!
I have a few more things to say over the next few days (or weeks) about the Bible and peace, and need to address some of Marshall's comments, as I apparently nearly gave his Biblical-scholar self a heart attack with my untutored commentary. Well, there is an explanation for everything! One of the problems with blogging is the need to keep things short. Also, time is short. If journalism is the first draft of history, blogging is the rough draft of the first draft ... or something. So the dialogue back and forth is great for clarification. It seems as though every time I think something and don't write it down, it comes back to haunt me ...
And of course, I struggle with the balance problem. Part of me would like to blog more frequently, but then there is that life that interferes! Perhaps I can blog about that a little too!
Reading the Bible in 20 months: OT peace, part 2
As I alluded in my last post, I have long wanted to place the grid of a peace document over the Old Testament and at times I can almost do it, but not quite. I can explain away much of the Old Testament violence--or fit it into my peace frame--but not all of it. For example, I can understand the Samson stories. In one initially horrifying tale, Samson kills 30 non-Israelites because he needs their 30 suits of clothes to pay off a bet he lost. He murders them without blinking an eye--and in fact, the story seems to approve his resourcefulness in getting himself out of a jam. The mind reels, but then realization strikes: this is a folk narrative, a classic trickster tale, a Paul Bunyan tall tale. It's meant to be read in a nonliteral context. In another case, there's the psalm often used to clinch the case that Christian are psycopaths (even though it's a Jewish text. (These same critics would never, ever use this text to attack Jews.)). In this psalm, the writer prays for the dashing out of the brains of his enemies' babies. Not pleasant stuff, but we can see it as a cry of anguish and anger against oppressors. And as many have pointed out, stating emotions and acting on them are two different things.
Other acts of violence are harder to explain away. Why would God tell Saul to kill all the Amalekites, a case of ethnic cleansing if there ever was one? I'm tempted to think the Bible writers got the feed wrong, that they misinterpreted God's words. This may be, but isn't it self serving to decide that episodes I don't like are mistakes? What if God really did mean for Saul to wipe out the Amalekites? (The whole tenor of the Bible works against this interpretation but still ....) I've also heard the Amalekite story interpreted as a metaphor: in this reading, the Amalekites become the stand-in for evil. In that case, the story illustrates that we can't compromise and wink at evil when it is comfortable to do so, but need to get rid of it enitrely. Saying we're doing the self-serving thing for God, as Saul does (and haven't there been evangelists flying around in private planes "for God?"), doesn't wash. I can agree with that reading, but a residue lingers: why is the story then put into this confusingly literalistic guise? Have I missed a bunch of cues? Why not make it explicitly metaphoric, ala Aesops' Fables? Why does Elijah kill (or to use the term in the New English Bible, "slaughter") the 450 prophets of Baal? Why do we Quakers gloss over that "detail" when we talk about Elijah hearing "the small, still voice of God?" And what about the verse that exorts the Israelites to prepare for war and beat their ploughshares into swords? I've heard this explained as more derivative and less authoritative than the evocation to beat swords into ploughshares. But the point is: it's there.
Like many people, I'd like the Old Testament to be something other than it is. I would like it to be gentle book full of stories of lovingkindness and wise sayings about attaining peace and serenity, a sort of Zen prelude to usher in Christ. I would like it to be a beautiful book. What I'm really saying, however, is that I'd like the human race to be different than it is. I wish those Isrealites had been more civilized. Yet when I look around, I see that violence is still here. Beyond the private realm of violence, there are the wars with Iraq and Afghanistan, violence in Pakistan, the periodic outbreaks of horrific violence in Africa, the series of genocides attempted in the supposedly rational and enlightened 20th century that ran from Germany to Cambodia to Bosnia to Rwanda, etc. etc., stories-we've-all-heard-why-repeat-them. So I have to conclude that the Old Testament reflects how the world still lives. And for that reason, the stories still have relevance. I admire the honesty of the writers. They didn't, apparently, whitewash their story. They let it all hang out. And their story is our story.
To be continued.
Other acts of violence are harder to explain away. Why would God tell Saul to kill all the Amalekites, a case of ethnic cleansing if there ever was one? I'm tempted to think the Bible writers got the feed wrong, that they misinterpreted God's words. This may be, but isn't it self serving to decide that episodes I don't like are mistakes? What if God really did mean for Saul to wipe out the Amalekites? (The whole tenor of the Bible works against this interpretation but still ....) I've also heard the Amalekite story interpreted as a metaphor: in this reading, the Amalekites become the stand-in for evil. In that case, the story illustrates that we can't compromise and wink at evil when it is comfortable to do so, but need to get rid of it enitrely. Saying we're doing the self-serving thing for God, as Saul does (and haven't there been evangelists flying around in private planes "for God?"), doesn't wash. I can agree with that reading, but a residue lingers: why is the story then put into this confusingly literalistic guise? Have I missed a bunch of cues? Why not make it explicitly metaphoric, ala Aesops' Fables? Why does Elijah kill (or to use the term in the New English Bible, "slaughter") the 450 prophets of Baal? Why do we Quakers gloss over that "detail" when we talk about Elijah hearing "the small, still voice of God?" And what about the verse that exorts the Israelites to prepare for war and beat their ploughshares into swords? I've heard this explained as more derivative and less authoritative than the evocation to beat swords into ploughshares. But the point is: it's there.
Like many people, I'd like the Old Testament to be something other than it is. I would like it to be gentle book full of stories of lovingkindness and wise sayings about attaining peace and serenity, a sort of Zen prelude to usher in Christ. I would like it to be a beautiful book. What I'm really saying, however, is that I'd like the human race to be different than it is. I wish those Isrealites had been more civilized. Yet when I look around, I see that violence is still here. Beyond the private realm of violence, there are the wars with Iraq and Afghanistan, violence in Pakistan, the periodic outbreaks of horrific violence in Africa, the series of genocides attempted in the supposedly rational and enlightened 20th century that ran from Germany to Cambodia to Bosnia to Rwanda, etc. etc., stories-we've-all-heard-why-repeat-them. So I have to conclude that the Old Testament reflects how the world still lives. And for that reason, the stories still have relevance. I admire the honesty of the writers. They didn't, apparently, whitewash their story. They let it all hang out. And their story is our story.
To be continued.
Reading the Bible in 20 months: OT peace, part 3
For all the Old Testament violence, a strong strand of peace testimony threads through the Bible. The Garden of Eden is a peaceful place. Samuel, dismayed that the Israelites want a military, warrior king like the other nations, is inspired by God to tell them in some detail of the woes that will fall on them when they appoint a military king. And God seems to be willing to let the Israelites discover for themselves the evils of over-reliance on force and violence. Here is 1st Samuel 8:5 (I use the New English Bible translation because it has a paragraph structure): "the elders of Israel.. said '... appoint us a king to govern us, like other nations.'" God tells Samuel in verse 8/9: "They are now doing to you what just what they have done to me since I brought them up from Egypt: They have forsaken me and worshipped other gods." He instructs Samuel to warn the people about military kings: "...you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out against the king you have chosen, but it will be too late; the Lord will not answer you." (v.18/19). I think it's notable that, at least in this translation and the NIV, following a military leader is seen by God as idol-worship.
Abigail offers us an alternative to violence. When her husband Nabal (which apparently means "churl") rejects David's polite request for food after David has protected his flocks, David vows to destroy Nabal and his household. Nabal, from his perspective, sees himself as being blackmailed by David and digs his heels in. Abigail, "beautiful and intelligent," decides to load asses with food as a gift for David. She does it, at what we must assume is risk to herself, and humbly begs David to reconsider his attack. He blesses her for turning him from violence: "A blessing on your good sense, a blessing on you because you have saved me today from the guilt of bloodshed and from giving way to my anger." (1 Samuel 25:34). A little later, when Nabal dies of a seizure, David says: "Blessed be the Lord, who has himself punished Nabal for his insult and kept me his servant from doing wrong." (1 Samuel: 25:39) Much could be said about this story but three things stand out: David understands that killing Nabal and his people would have been wrong, Abigail is not a coward, but brave and wise, and both Nabal and David both have "sides" to their stories.
I don't want to go on too long, but certainly the prophecies of Isaiah speak compellingly to us of a peaceable kingdom, and the psalms refer often of a God of mercy and lovingkindness. Even stories that horrify modern sensibilites, such as Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac, point to a more loving, peaceful God than the false tribal gods surrounding the Israelites. As we find out in Chronicles, as Israel is spiraling out of control and adopting foreign religions, child sacrifice was a regular part of other faith group's strategy of appeasing angry gods. That the Jehovah God should so early and forcefully reject child sacrifice is a significant rejection of violence. And even the Elijah story, at least to me, seems to question Elijah's violence. He gets very frightened after the murders, which he apparently committed in a frenzy. He hides under a broom tree and, once Jezebel puts a price on his head for killing her priests, hides in the cave. He reminds me of Adam in the garden, hiding from God. When he does hear the voice of God, asking him what he's doing, he doesn't answer the question (perhaps knowing God won't be happy), instead calling himself God's zealous servant. What I take from the story is less tacit approval of the murders than a vivid portrait of the terror and dissonance Elijah experiences once he enters the world of violence.
And overall, doesn't much of the Biblical bloodbath critique itself? All of Israel's military conquests and adventures seem to get it nowhere in the end. It's vanquished by the Babylonians. It lives in almost perpetual fear of its neighbors. At the end of the OT, Israel appears to be at an impasse. What it's tried hasn't worked in terms of building a secure, independent nation state with Jehovah at the center. Conventional warfare, even under a king like David, doesn't seem to have built the Kingdom of God. Hhhhmmm ....
Soon I will blog about a pamplet I read recently on the Bible and peace, written in the 1940s, that makes a case much stronger than any I am making. In the meantime, I am interested in other peace stories in the Old Testament that might pop into people's minds.
Abigail offers us an alternative to violence. When her husband Nabal (which apparently means "churl") rejects David's polite request for food after David has protected his flocks, David vows to destroy Nabal and his household. Nabal, from his perspective, sees himself as being blackmailed by David and digs his heels in. Abigail, "beautiful and intelligent," decides to load asses with food as a gift for David. She does it, at what we must assume is risk to herself, and humbly begs David to reconsider his attack. He blesses her for turning him from violence: "A blessing on your good sense, a blessing on you because you have saved me today from the guilt of bloodshed and from giving way to my anger." (1 Samuel 25:34). A little later, when Nabal dies of a seizure, David says: "Blessed be the Lord, who has himself punished Nabal for his insult and kept me his servant from doing wrong." (1 Samuel: 25:39) Much could be said about this story but three things stand out: David understands that killing Nabal and his people would have been wrong, Abigail is not a coward, but brave and wise, and both Nabal and David both have "sides" to their stories.
I don't want to go on too long, but certainly the prophecies of Isaiah speak compellingly to us of a peaceable kingdom, and the psalms refer often of a God of mercy and lovingkindness. Even stories that horrify modern sensibilites, such as Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac, point to a more loving, peaceful God than the false tribal gods surrounding the Israelites. As we find out in Chronicles, as Israel is spiraling out of control and adopting foreign religions, child sacrifice was a regular part of other faith group's strategy of appeasing angry gods. That the Jehovah God should so early and forcefully reject child sacrifice is a significant rejection of violence. And even the Elijah story, at least to me, seems to question Elijah's violence. He gets very frightened after the murders, which he apparently committed in a frenzy. He hides under a broom tree and, once Jezebel puts a price on his head for killing her priests, hides in the cave. He reminds me of Adam in the garden, hiding from God. When he does hear the voice of God, asking him what he's doing, he doesn't answer the question (perhaps knowing God won't be happy), instead calling himself God's zealous servant. What I take from the story is less tacit approval of the murders than a vivid portrait of the terror and dissonance Elijah experiences once he enters the world of violence.
And overall, doesn't much of the Biblical bloodbath critique itself? All of Israel's military conquests and adventures seem to get it nowhere in the end. It's vanquished by the Babylonians. It lives in almost perpetual fear of its neighbors. At the end of the OT, Israel appears to be at an impasse. What it's tried hasn't worked in terms of building a secure, independent nation state with Jehovah at the center. Conventional warfare, even under a king like David, doesn't seem to have built the Kingdom of God. Hhhhmmm ....
Soon I will blog about a pamplet I read recently on the Bible and peace, written in the 1940s, that makes a case much stronger than any I am making. In the meantime, I am interested in other peace stories in the Old Testament that might pop into people's minds.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Reading the Bible in 20 months: peace in the OT
Often in the past when I read in the Bible, I wanted to force it to fit the grid I'd placed over it.
Controlling the Bible, however, is like trying to hold a living, hopping frog in my hand: The only way I can control it is to kill it. We often do kill frogs--this is in science class-- and pin them down and cut them open and catalogue their insides. This can be interesting, once we get over that we've killed a sentient being. But the key thing is that once the frog is dead, you can catalogue it's parts, but whatever made it a living being is gone. It's lost its essential frogness.
Thus, you can dissect the Bible, but once you do that, whatever makes it alive goes away. And you are left, I think, with a lot of pieces that can never really be put back together again. Somewhere, the spirit is lost or distorted.
When I understood that the Bible was alive and that to try to control it was to kill it, that changed my relationship to it. I suddenly didn't need to control it. I didn't need to force it into my pattern. I could just let it hop around (well, sometimes I could do this). I also understood that the term "living Bible," which I had often heard and thought was some sort of evangelical weirdness, was actually descriptive.
When I embarked on my one year (actually 20 month) Bible read, I decided to approach the bible with as open a mind as possible. For me, this meant an old-fashioned New Critical reading: What do I learn from what's "in" the text? (Yes, I know, I know, there is no "in," that's a metaphor, etc, etc). Nevertheless, I have found the old-fashioned New Critical approach to be fruitful. Without much scholarship (and I know I am reacting to people who over-rely on the flavor du jour book "on" the Bible), I can glean an amazing amount of information and wisdom, as long as I read attentively. I also find that the Bible teaches me how to read it. I don't need an external guide. So, while, of course, I have a little background in secondary sources, history, etc,, as almost everybody does who hasn't grown up in a complete vacuum, I chose to read the Bible straight through primarily as a standalone document. I found this a Quakerly and useful approach.
Now, naturally, there were parts of the Bible that caused me to glaze over, such as the genealogies, but I tried to find ways to stay engaged even in those ... and my stratgies didn't always work. It took me 20 rather than 12 months because my attention would flag --or there was too much to absorb-- or I would become too horrified-- so I would put down a reading in the middle and pick it up the next day. And even with all my attempts to stay attentive, there were days when my eyes would scan the words and nothing would penetrate, and so I'd go back and reread the same section the next day.
What does this have to do with peace in the Old Testament? I'll have to save that for another entry, as this blog is getting too long.
Controlling the Bible, however, is like trying to hold a living, hopping frog in my hand: The only way I can control it is to kill it. We often do kill frogs--this is in science class-- and pin them down and cut them open and catalogue their insides. This can be interesting, once we get over that we've killed a sentient being. But the key thing is that once the frog is dead, you can catalogue it's parts, but whatever made it a living being is gone. It's lost its essential frogness.
Thus, you can dissect the Bible, but once you do that, whatever makes it alive goes away. And you are left, I think, with a lot of pieces that can never really be put back together again. Somewhere, the spirit is lost or distorted.
When I understood that the Bible was alive and that to try to control it was to kill it, that changed my relationship to it. I suddenly didn't need to control it. I didn't need to force it into my pattern. I could just let it hop around (well, sometimes I could do this). I also understood that the term "living Bible," which I had often heard and thought was some sort of evangelical weirdness, was actually descriptive.
When I embarked on my one year (actually 20 month) Bible read, I decided to approach the bible with as open a mind as possible. For me, this meant an old-fashioned New Critical reading: What do I learn from what's "in" the text? (Yes, I know, I know, there is no "in," that's a metaphor, etc, etc). Nevertheless, I have found the old-fashioned New Critical approach to be fruitful. Without much scholarship (and I know I am reacting to people who over-rely on the flavor du jour book "on" the Bible), I can glean an amazing amount of information and wisdom, as long as I read attentively. I also find that the Bible teaches me how to read it. I don't need an external guide. So, while, of course, I have a little background in secondary sources, history, etc,, as almost everybody does who hasn't grown up in a complete vacuum, I chose to read the Bible straight through primarily as a standalone document. I found this a Quakerly and useful approach.
Now, naturally, there were parts of the Bible that caused me to glaze over, such as the genealogies, but I tried to find ways to stay engaged even in those ... and my stratgies didn't always work. It took me 20 rather than 12 months because my attention would flag --or there was too much to absorb-- or I would become too horrified-- so I would put down a reading in the middle and pick it up the next day. And even with all my attempts to stay attentive, there were days when my eyes would scan the words and nothing would penetrate, and so I'd go back and reread the same section the next day.
What does this have to do with peace in the Old Testament? I'll have to save that for another entry, as this blog is getting too long.
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