Noticing the signs

Continuing with comments and reflections on part of a paper by Vatican Observatory astrophysicist Fr. Bill Stoeger SJ, one gets to the question implied at the end of the previous post: if we have to understand the dynamic nature of creation, including evolution, to better understand ourselves and God, then just what can we learn? Fr. Stoeger points us to our need to learn to look at nature as Christians:

Secondly, evolution forces us, therefore, to take the immanence of God in Nature, in creation, in our lives very seriously. God is present and active – in many different and wonderful ways – in all that is going on. Sometimes we tend to think of God’s creative action only in special events of intervention – miracles. But this is a very distorted and constricted view of God’s action. St. Ignatius Loyola, in his “Contemplation for Obtaining Divine Love,” at the end of his Spiritual Exercises, asks us to consider how all the wonderful things around us – including ourselves – the gifts of creation and the gifts of redemption – are expressions of God’s great love for us. After asking us to express our love for God in return in complete commitment, Ignatius goes on to ask us to consider that God is present in all his gifts – not only does God give us gifts as signs of God’s care and love, but God give us God’s self in the gifts. Next, Ignatius goes even further, asking us to reflect on the fact that God is not only present in all that God has created and bestowed but that God is working and struggling for us out of love in all things. It is clear that the first stage of the “Contemplatio” refers to creation, the second stage reflects the profound impact of the Incarnation on all reality, and the third stage sees the immanence of God in terms of vulnerability, struggle and suffering of Christ – of God – in creation. This is the deeply Christian perspective the natural sciences and all the processes they reveal to us reinforce.

My rather beat up copy of God in the Dock is not handy -- I had it at work and it got packed up with all my professional books -- but I remember one essay by C. S. Lewis from that collection on the nature of miracles. He pointed out that God has a particular style, that most of what we term miracles are God doing quickly and obviously in one place, as a sign, just what he is doing less obviously throughout His creation. When at Cana, Jesus turned water into wine, He was only doing in an instant what grape vines and yeast will do over months if given the chance. It was a sign pointing to just who was behind the natural process of growth and fermentation, and that it was a gift from God to us.

The point is that signs are for following -- what is important is what they lead us to. We cannot remain enamored of the little miracles, because they are flashy and catch our eyes, to the detriment of the greater reality that they point to. Let us use our senses fully in learning from the created world, so that we are better prepared to understand those things beyond our senses, beyond that which is created.

In the next paragraph, Fr. Stoeger moves from immanence in nature to the transcendence of God.

Quote: Eric Hoffer

The Paleolithic hunters who painted the unsurpassed animal murals on the ceiling of the cave at Altamira had only rudimentary tools. Art is older than production for use, and play older than work. Man was shaped less by what he had to do than by what he did in playful moments. It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities.

Major complaint

I have developed a major dislike of one feature of the new version of Blogger, one that may force me to edit offline, which is simply not all that convenient. This morning was the third time in a week that I got an error message involving a security token issue when trying to save or publish a post, each time losing some hard work. When I tried to return to the previous screen, which before would often take me right back to the work I was editing, it now goes back to an earlier draft, losing any later work. Some people find it easy to write -- I do not. It is often a fight and having to fight the software as well makes it worse.

I'm a software person, and this is a serious usability bitch on my part. Google now owns Blogger, and one part of this change was to move to Google's servers. Google's own AJAX based applications have easier save and autosave features that work much better than this. While they were doing everything else, why not include some of those features. Text editing is text editing -- I have a hard time believing that this is something that Gmail can handle neatly while Blogger cannot.

Details, Details

Well, I managed to set up the format while dropping the Creative Commons license, which has now been fixed. I managed to briefly meet Larry Lessig a couple of years ago at Bloggercon, and think that the CC scheme one of the most useful and innovative efforts in the past decade and a key part of keeping the web open and accessible. It is good stuff indeed.

God and Nature

I've been reflecting a lot lately on how our understanding of the natural world as Christians affects how we see many things, including issues such as global climate change. I recently ran across the text of a talk given in Australia in 2005, Our Intimate Links with the Universe and Nature: The View from Cosmology and Astrobiology by Fr. Bill Stoeger SJ of the Vatican Observatory. I would like to post some substantial chunks of section 6: "Key Features of the Universe – Connections with Christ and with Us" with some surrounding comments and own reflections on this.

The bulk of Fr. Stoeger's talk reviewed the history of Creation, from the big bang, through the evolution of the physical universe, to chemical and biological evolution on Earth. Starting with a discussion of the close links between science, ethics, faith and praxis, he then tells the long story of creation, pointing out not only the deep interconnectedness of all created things, but also the characteristics of nature and the cosmos that reflect God's own priorities for his creation.

In reflecting on the connections between God, his creation and us, Fr. Stoeger starts off by looking at just how God meant nature to operate:

First, and perhaps foremost, theological reflection on the details and intricacies of cosmic and biological evolution drives us to a much more profound appreciation for what Howard Van Till refers to as the functional and formational integrity of creation, and for God’s reverent, pervasive but subtle relationship with God’s creatures and with the universe itself. God has gifted Nature and the universe with inner dynamisms and capacities which enable it not only to function with relative autonomy but also to develop and give birth to new or more complex entities and organisms as time passes, and as the universe cools and expands. There is evidently no need for God to step in and effect key transitions directly. Nature itself has been given the capabilities of doing that! This, of course, does not mean that God is uninvolved, or distant from what happens. God is present and active through all the regularities, processes and relationships which function. God is their source and origin and holds them in existence, continuing to create through them. God did not create the universe with deficiencies, or with impairments, which would necessitate God’s special direct intervention in the creative process.

This is pretty straightforward theologically -- see paragraphs 299-302 of the Catechism.

Three thoughts:

• God's creation is good and ordered -- it constantly reflects His purpose and providence.


• Change and evolution are built into design -- we have to understand evolution to understand the dynamism of that design.


• Science is not only useful, but knowledge that can be good in itself, helping us better know nature, ourselves, and God.

In the next paragraph, Fr. Stoeger invites us to a deeper examination of evolution as a sign of God's immanence in nature.

Quote: Andy Goodliff

. . . I'm not interested in reading the bible as if it were a text book or an instruction manual. Let's stop pretending we all know how to read the bible. The bible is not a book to be studied. The bible is not a book that can be mastered. The great tragedy of the bible study is it has made the bible dull and boring. The great worry of the bible study is we've turned the bible into a weapon against those who interpret it differently. The bible study has created as many infallible popes as there are Christians, all who believe that they are right because their bible says this or that. The bible is a book to be wrestled with. The bible is a dangerous, world-changing, life-altering text that is out to transform the reader. The bible wants to shape our imagination to the tune of Christ. We might set out to read the bible but it ends up reading us. We need to create regular space for the bible to breathe, for it to live among us, before us, within us. The bible story is not a story to study but to indwell. When reading the bible we need to open ears and close mouths. The bible is always fresh and never stale. The bible does not put God or truth into neat statements. The bible is not God's prison. The bible is God's Word always breaking into our world. The bible is God's gift to the church; not to the individual Christian.

from Baptist youth pastor Andy Goodliff's blog post on bible study and scripture reading

Work in Progress

Well, as all two of my regular readers may notice, the appearance of the blog here has changed. I just managed to convert this site to the new Blogger version, with a modified template that fully supports all the new features.

Things that did not make the move included the blockquote formatting and the special print formatting. Both are on my primary list to fix here along with generall formatting changes. Also, look for the blogroll on the right to change a bit -- perhaps even largely disappear. I will also change the widgets for site history and site links a bit.

Just a bit more gardening to do.

Update: Blockquote formatting done.

Quote: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Optimism

It is wiser to be pessimistic; it is a way of avoiding dissappointment and ridicule, and so wise people condemn optimism. The essence of optimism is not its view of the present, but the fact that it is the inspiration of life, and hope when others give in; it enables a man to hold his head high when everything seems to be going wrong; it gives him strength to sustain reverses and yet to claim the future for himself instead of abandoning it to his opponent. It is true that there is a silly, cowardly kind of optimism, which we must condemn. But the optimism that is will for the future should never be despised, even if it is proved wrong a hundred times; it is health and vitality, and the sick man has no business to impugn it. There are people who regard it as frivolous, and some Christians think it impious for anyone to hope and prepare for a better earthly future. they think that the meaning of present events is chaos, disorder, and catastrophe; and in resignation or pious escapism they surrender all responsibility for reconstruction and for future generations. It may be that the day of judgement will dawn tomorrow; and in that case, though not before, we shall gladly stop working for a better future.

Letters and Papers from Prison

Sacrament of love

Various people are reacting to the release today of Sacramentum Caritatis but I have noted a little love note to those of us who hang out around prisons and jails.

Care for prisoners

59. The Church's spiritual tradition, basing itself on Christ's own words (cf. Mt 25:36), has designated the visiting of prisoners as one of the corporal works of mercy. Prisoners have a particular need to be visited personally by the Lord in the sacrament of the Eucharist. Experiencing the closeness of the ecclesial community, sharing in the Eucharist and receiving holy communion at this difficult and painful time can surely contribute to the quality of a prisoner's faith journey and to full social rehabilitation. Taking up the recommendation of the Synod, I ask Dioceses to do whatever is possible to ensure that sufficient pastoral resources are invested in the spiritual care of prisoners.

There are some basics to detention ministry -- the foundation being simple presence. But once you have managed to establish regular access, the priority is always to insure that prisoners can have as normal a sacramental life as practical under the circumstances. Security concerns can mandate all sorts of limitations and modifications, but just about any Cathlolic prisoner should have access to the Sacrament. You don't have to persuade prisoners of the importance of the Eucharist in their lives, they will tell you how important it is.

Still interpreting after all these years

Well, as promised, I will be posting summaries of some of the sessions I attended at the RE Congress this year, with some reflections of my own. I will be taking them in no particular order, and it may take some days to get through them all.

My Saturday morning session was Reading Them Again for the First Time: The Documents of Vatican II Today with Dr. Edward Hahnenberg from Xavier University in Cincinnati. He got a laugh from the hundred or so people there by pointing out that the title of the session might be more accurate if you left one word out -- again. Our task is to reclaim these documents for ourselves, documents that are largely unread by many Catholics, including people in ministry. We all tend to have read some particular passages, usually because they support some position we already hold. These are the most important texts produced by the Catholic Church in the past four centuries or so, and we need to know them as they really are.

Hahnenberg's basic point is "the spirit is in the letter", meaning that we have to learn how to read and understand the documents fully -- we need what is known as a hermeneutic -- a systematic approach to interpreting and understanding the work of the Council through these texts.

In constructing a hermeneutic of the Vatican II documents, Hahnenberg cited a favorite book of mine, Ormond Rush's Still Interpreting Vatican II: Some Hermeneutical Principles, defining three complementary approaches for interpretation:

• of the readers (or "that was then, this is now"
• of the writers (or "what were they thinking?")
• and of the texts (or "how they say what they say").

There is no way in this space to do full justice either to everything either Hahnenberg or Rush is saying on this, but there are a few points I want to touch on.

Concerning readers, an important factor to remember in this is that many people not only have little if any memory of the Church before Vatican II, they have little memory of the Council itself or its immediate aftermath -- the post Vatican II church is the Catholic Church they know. Instead of comparing the Church before and after the Council, a comparison that may not be that relevant to some readers today, we might better compare the changes between the Council and our own time. For example, one important issue to examine is the nature of Catholic identity in a postmodern world, something we seem to have trouble with.

A hermeneutic of the writers involves trying to understand just what the council fathers were intending, based on the text, their own writings about the texts, and the history of the Council. Hahnenberg asserts that, just like any other historical text, these texts have to be examined from historical-critical point of view. He is concerned that specific texts are used ahistorically. (One of the better examples he gave concerned the famous chapter 31 of Lumen Gentium defining the laity, and how it should be interpreted. This post got delayed days as I worked that part up, so I split it off into a separate post which will go up in a couple of days.) Part of that is examining the "theological trajectory" of the Council, how certain topics became more important as the Council progressed, with a development of how the issues were handled from one document to another. (Most of the apparent differences between some of the documents, often referred to as the "tensions" between the documents, can be ascribed to this kind of trajectory.) The role of bishops is a good example of such development over the four years; the relationship with the world set out in the constitution Gaudium et Spes is another.

Examining the texts means we have to look at how something was said as well as what was said. A common complaint about these documents is that they are long and boring. The style of these documents is different from that of earlier councils -- a briefer and more legalistic style was more common. Hahnenberg said that a better way is to look at the style is to see that it is not so much long as it is invitational (his term) and not so much boring as intended to seek and support consensus. They are invitational in that they are constructed to, in a sense, start from the beginning and lead the reader step by step through the issues, ideas, and conclusions made by the council fathers. This is a style that has been continued in most papal documents since the Council, in particular, those of John Paul II. The Council fathers were also trying to seek consensus in drafting these works, which means that they often try to include some treatment of differing perspectives in some way, adding to the length and complexity. However, this effort succeeded -- most of the documents received nearly unanimous approval from the Council fathers.

Possibly the most notable occurrence at this session occurred after I left. I skipped the audience questions session to cut out for the vendor area. I picked up a copy of Hahneman's new book A Concise Guide to the Documents of Vatican II in time to meet him in the author's signing area. At the line for Hahnenberg, someone was already waiting for him to arrive for book signings; we talked about how much we liked the session, and this other person said that (apparently) right after I left a Canadian bishop came up to the audience mike and praised Hahnenberg's approach. The bishop stated that he had attended the Council, and that Hahnenberg was presenting the Council as he remembered it. (I am not sure who this was, but I suspect it might have been this bishop.) To say the least, Hahnenberg was glowing when he arrived for the signings.

More on this, with some discussion of the book, in a future post.

Pushing tunes

I've fallen into a new habit lately -- searching through YouTube for music. Like everyone else, I've followed links to watch people putting Mentos into Diet Coke. It has just been over the past couple of weeks, though, that I have been creating my own favorites and playlists of music, that is often running in the background as I work online. There are some unique clips of both sacred and secular music out there and I just got the urge to start sharing some. Here's video of the Pat Metheny Group playing Last Train Home:

I may have more profound comments on future posts, besides simply that I like just about everything Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays record.

Last day at Congress

I did get back to my room much earlier last night -- I came back after Mass around 7 and just kicked back with a movie then got to bed relatively early (at least compared to the night before). I'm heading home up I-5 later today, and with any luck across LA I should be able to beat the 7 hours it took to get down here Thursday.

I have lots to post about, but little time at this point. Good sessions on the Vatican II documents and adult faith formation, both of which will get their own posts. One note now on the Mass last night. As has become my custom, I attended the contemplative Mass at the Hilton last night, with Fr. Liam Lawton celebrating and Fr. Cyprian Consiglio leading the music. It was sublime, one of the better worship experiences I have ever had. The best sign of that (that can be posted) is simple: There were easily 2,500 there (maybe more) and not one person left early.

To give you perspective, Congress is so large that it can be difficult to find a place to have dinner after Mass, especially on Saturday night. If you have a reservation, you make sure you get there on time, or go hungry. At that Mass last night, nobody cared about dinner or their schedules. This included the ten minutes of silent meditation after communion -- a room that large with that many people holding complete silence has its own sound.

Friday

Sorry about this brief post, but it was a late night last night, and I need to get to Congress early this morning. Good sessions yesterday, especially from Juan Melendez, who spent 17 years on Florida's death row before being exonerated, and an excellent presentation on the US Catholic Catechism for Adults from Dr. Tom Beaudoin of Santa Clara. I'll be posting some links and a summary of the session on the USCCA later. The African-American Mass last night was excellent, as usual, with Fr. J-Glenn Murray celbrating. The Taize prayer session was OK, but I really could have used the extra sleep. I may skip the night prayer session tonight.

Otherwise, no big happenings or news so far -- the bankruptcy filing for the Diocese of San Diego is still the big story around here. Today the schedule includes a review of the documents of Vatican II, adult spirituality, and praying the hours. More later.

On the scene

Well, I made it.

It was not the worst drive ever, but it had its moments. The last couple of times I made it to Congress it was via New Camaldoli. This was the first time in years that I drove to Anaheim straight from Merced and making it across LA on I-5 has not improved at all.

After checking in I kicked back for an hour or so to recover from the ride, then went over to the Convention Center to pick up my program book and save time tomorrow morning. I'm going to need that time as most of my sessions this year are all over the place, usually all the way over by the intersection of Harbor and Convention Way. Tomorrow morning may be the best shot I get to check out some of the vendors.

My first session tomorrow is about the National Directory of Catechesis and adult education, followed by sessions on capital punishment and the new Adult Catechism. After that is Mass (I am not sure which one) followed by meeting someone for dinner, then a Taize prayer session late tomorrow evening. Busy day, which is normal at Congress. I'll report back tomorrow evening, unless I get a chance to post tomorrow.

So, where are things now?

I will be surfacing over the next few days to do my annual posts from and about the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress (generally known as LA RE Congress, or just Anaheim). I didn't make it last year due to work conflicts, but I'm back this time.

Which brings up an interesting point. The reason for my availablility is that I am between jobs at the moment, to put it simply. Up until last October I was the database administrator for a large food processor -- we decided to part ways amicably by mutual agreement. (They are a good bunch and treated me rather well on the way out.) I have done some limited job hunting since then, and gotten a lot of rest, which I needed. Once again, I burned out. Lots of healing going on around here, which involves sleeping regularly and doing a lot of the cooking.

I have been rather busy though. The moment I realized that my last gig was ending, it was clear that just sitting about would not work. My work with adult education in our parish had already led to my taking a leadership role there, and I had proposed an interesting project at the detention facility that I volunteer at. (Maybe more about that at another time, but maybe not. Security and privacy issues combine in interesting ways.) Also, we have been rather blessed with a good financial situation currently, so panic has not set in yet. There have been nibbles from recruiters but no offers as yet.

Which brings me to the interesting part of heading to RE Congress. I have not been in much doubt for the past year or two that God is pulling me into more and more substantial ministry. Things are now becoming a bit clearer as to what that work might be. It appears that I have completed the diocesan requirements for Master Catechist and am working on the documentation for that. I don't do kids -- I have no talent for working with children. It appears from some recent experience that adult catechesis is part of the picture, as well as detention ministry work. What we are praying about now is whether this is the time to move in that direction full time. It will put a rather different spin on Congress this time.

More later.

Quote: Oscar Romero

No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor. The self-sufficient, the proud, those who, because they have everything, look down on others, those who have no need even of God – for them there will be no Christmas. Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone. That someone is God, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Without poverty of spirit there can be no abundance of God.

Odds 'n ends

I was googling around looking for information on oblates for a post on another site when I ran across Shared Solitude by Deborah Smith Douglas, a fellow Camaldolese oblate. It includes both a discussion of oblature, as well as this wonderful description of New Camaldoli:

This respect for solitude and silence permeates the hermitage in California's remote Santa Lucia Mountains. Even the architecture reflects it. The monastic enclosure contains not a traditional cloister, but a collection of tiny round houses in which individual monks live: they are alone, together. The guest accommodations (nine private rooms and five more distant hermitage-trailers) are designed to honor the solitude of those on retreat. Consequently, the silence and the invitation to contemplation are extra-ordinarily deep.

This commitment to shared solitude is also evident in the daily practice of silent meditation after Vespers. When the final office of the day has ended, those who wish to remain file in silence from the chapel into the vaulted rotunda beyond, which is empty except for a central altar holding the consecrated host. Monks and guests take small rugs from a stack and arrange themselves among cushions, Zen fashion, on the stone floor. After a moment of settling in, with the sound of prayer beads being taken out and shoes shuffled off, the lights are extinguished, except for a single candle. People sit and pray in total silence. At the end of 30 minutes, the prior strikes a single bell-like note on a singing bowl. People stand, bow toward the altar, put on their shoes and leave, still in silence.

That half hour of wordless adoration is my favorite part of the beloved hermitage day. I love the sense of time-out-of-time, and the space it-self--round and empty as a bowl, resonant as a bell. It is an inhabited emptiness, a living silence. A shining darkness, as St. John of the Cross might say. The rotunda reminds me of the hold of a ship, a large enclosed darkness beneath a turbulent surface. Sitting there reminds me that we are pilgrims, fellow travelers, holding still but heading home, moving purposefully through deep darkness. Alone, together. Immersed in God (as St. Catherine of Siena put it) "as a fish is in the sea and the sea is in the fish."

A perfect description. I was googling around for a post at Making Light: What is it with fruitcake? Of course the Official Fruitcake around here is the Hermitage Fruitcake.

What's going on here?

The lessons for the First Sunday in Advent are:

• Jeremiah 33:14-16
• Psalm 25:4-5, 8-9, 10+14
• 1 Thessalonians 3:12-4:2
• Luke 21:25-28, 34-36

If what you are looking for is nostalgia, Christmas is your season. Christmas cards featuring medieval paintings or Currier and Ives engravings are the norm. Advertisers devise various riffs on "tradition" to induce us to buy. It is supposedly a feel-good season, bringing families back together. (Which means that it can be an emotionally devastating season for some.)

So, what is it with these lessons? We get to learn, once again, that Advent may be the most counter-cultural season in the Church calendar. (A close second to Lent, perhaps.) These lessons aren't warm and fuzzy, they are frightening, particularly the Gospel lesson. This is the season for looking forward, not backward, and looking with open eyes. It is the time to look at the world realistically, and ask whether we are prepared to deal with it.

This Gospel passage, just prior to the passion narrative in Luke, is often called the "small apocalypse", paralleling similar passages in Matthew and Mark. And along with other similar passages and books, such as Daniel, Ezekiel and Revelation, is often misunderstood and misinterpreted by modern readers, causing a great deal of mischief. An apocalypse is a revealing or unveiling of something hidden, bringing new knowledge or perspective. Apocalyptic literature in scripture uses vivid symbolic language to reveal the relationship between events on Earth with the eternal truths of heaven. Such literature is prophetic, but not because it is always intended to be a literal prediction of future events. A prophet speaks truth to power -- Jeremiah told Israel of the coming destruction and exile, not as a parlor trick, but as the direct consequence of the people's separation from God. The purpose of a prophet is not to condemn, but to call God's people back to a loving relationship with Him. When it became clear that Jeremiah's warnings were correct and disaster was imminent, Jeremiah completed his message with the promise of God's love and the redemption of his people, as set forth in today's first lesson:

The days are coming, says the LORD,
when I will fulfill the promise
I made to the house of Israel and Judah.
In those days, in that time,
I will raise up for David a just shoot;
he shall do what is right and just in the land.
In those days Judah shall be safe
and Jerusalem shall dwell secure;
this is what they shall call her:
"The LORD our justice."

As Jeremiah had warned, Solomon's Temple was thrown down, and many of the inhabitants carried off to exile in Babylon. But also as Jeremiah had foretold, the exiles did return to Jerusalem, and a new, Second Temple dedicated. The apocalypse in Luke has the same purpose, to reveal the eternal plan of redemption even in a time of threat and conflict.

This "small apocalypse" comes at the end of Jesus' ministry in Jerusalem and the Temple itself. In Luke, Jesus arrives in town in the manner of the foretold king and redeemer of Israel. The first thing he does is to clear the temple of moneychangers -- in effect taking charge of the Temple and setting it to rights. He then proceeds to teach in the Temple complex with an authority and success that the established Temple officials find very threatening. This, the Second Temple (subsequently rebuilt by Herod), was the physical sign of God's presence with his people. But Jesus seems to be teaching that with the coming of the Kingdom of God this has changed. At the beginning of the longer passage that the lesson is part of, Jesus responds to admiring comments about the Temple with this shocking statement:

While some people were speaking about how the temple was adorned with costly stones and votive offerings, he said, "All that you see here--the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down." Then they asked him, "Teacher, when will this happen? And what sign will there be when all these things are about to happen?" (Luke 21:5-7)

The destruction of Solomon's temple is one of the great dividing points of Jewish history -- to lose it again would be comparable to the end of the world, which is what many people think of when they these words of Jesus.

As said above, an apocalypse is strongly symbolic -- it is intended to work on more than one level. There is the immediate context of Jesus speaking in that time. He speaks both of the coming destruction of the Temple (by the Romans, in 70 AD) and also about his own death and resurrection. The Gospel writer, some 20 years after that destruction, may have included this to reassure the persecuted church of that time. In our own time, we learn about how we are to live as Christians in uncertain times.

In this passage Jesus makes three points.

• The challenges are not going to stop. When asked when the Temple would be destroyed:

  He answers, "See that you not be deceived, for many will come in my name, saying, 'I am he,' and 'The time has come.' Do not follow them! When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for such things must happen first, but it will not immediately be the end." Then he said to them, "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be powerful earthquakes, famines, and plagues from place to place; and awesome sights and mighty signs will come from the sky.

  Sound like the evening news? Jesus warns us that we have to live out our faith in a chaotic and threatening world, no matter who we are. No coasting allowed.
  
  
• Jesus will not abandon us.For us as Christians, Jesus is the "temple built not by hands" told of by Ezekiel -- our resurrected Lord is now our sign of God's presence. We have to look to our own experience of grace and redemption in our lives, and our knowledge of Jesus' current living presence as our anchor in these times.
  
  
• We have to be prepared.We have to keep reminding ourselves which way is north, and to keep our face in that direction. Jesus warns us about letting either the pleasures or the anxieties of this world distract us from doing what we already know we should be doing. Problems are always with us --the only way we can have perspective on them is to turn to God for help in building lives of prayer, study, and service.

Over the next three Sundays in Advent we will continue to look at the challenges ahead for us, and what it will take to be prepared for them. Then we will be ready to unsentimentally understand just what the coming of Jesus in the flesh really means to our own lives today.

Quote: Thomas Merton

Learn how to meditate on paper. Drawing and writing are forms of meditation. Learn how to contemplate works of art. Learn how to pray in the streets or in the country. Know how to meditate not only when you have a book in your hand but when you are waiting for a bus or riding in a train. Above all, enter into the Church's liturgy and make the liturgical cycle part of your life -- let its rhythm work its way into your body and soul.

from New Seeds of Contemplation

Toll Lab Cookies

I ran across this while looking for TexMex recipies.

A & M Chocolate Chip Cookies

INGREDIENTS:

1. 532.35 cm³ gluten


2. 4.9 cm³ NaHCO₃


3. 4.9 cm³ refined halite


4. 236.6 cm³ partially hydrogenated tallowtriglyceride


5. 177.45 cm³ crystalline C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁


6. 177.45 cm³ unrefined C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁


7. 4.9 cm³ methyl ether of protocatechuic aldehyde


8. Two calcium carbonate-encapsulated avianalbumen-coated protein


9. 473.2 cm³ theobroma cacao


10. 236.6 cm³ de-encapsulated legume meats (sieve size#10)

DIRECTIONS:
To a 2-L jacketed round reactor vessel (reactor #1) with an overall heat transfer coefficient of about 100 Btu/F-ft2-hr, add ingredients one, two and three with constant agitation. In a second 2-L reactor vessel with a radial flow impeller operating at 100 rpm, add ingredients four, five, six, and seven until the mixture is homogenous.

To reactor #2, add ingredient eight, followed by three equal volumes of the homogenous mixture in reactor #1. Additionally, add ingredient nine and ten slowly, with constant agitation. Care must be taken at this point in the reaction to control any temperature rise that may be the result of anexothermic reaction.

Using a screw extrude attached to a #4 nodulizer, place the mixture piece-meal on a 316SS sheet (300 x 600 mm). Heat in a 460K oven for a period of time that is in agreement with Frank Johnston's first order rate expression (see JACOS, 21, 55), or until golden brown. Once the reaction is complete, place the sheet on a 25C heat-transfer table, allowing the product to come to equilibrium.

For all you non chemical engineers, you have now made Chocolate Chip Cookies. This is why engineers should never write a cookbook.

I think I'll stick to the recipie on the back of the chocolate chip package.

Construction zone -- double fines for speeding

I just get back to blogging, and things change. So it goes . . .

Well, I decided to take the medicine early, a switch to the new beta of Blogger. So far, so good -- my custom template still works. However, the Del.icio.us hack for categories appears to be broken by this change, so I will be switching to the new labels features, and in fact will me modifying the template to handle them more appropriately.

As to the long hiatus, it was a combination of a tough schedule, job stress, and a lot else. More on that as I put things together in my own head.

As kingfishers catch fire

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is—
Christ—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.

Gerald Manley Hopkins SJ

The best, and most painful, thing that could happen (updated)

Updates below.

Well, the biggest news on the political-religious front this weekend is the Ted Haggard story. There are aspects of both the familiar and the surreal to this. There is nothing new to finding out once again that the clergy most in the public eye are just as hypocritical and sinful as the rest of us. How thoroughly biblical. Of course the word that Haggard had made a carefully parsed confession came out almost simultaneously with news that his accuser had failed a very public polygraph test. We seem to be skipping tragedy and moving straight to farce.

I have little taste for the kind of politically connected megachurch that Haggard has developed, and there is little doubt that he and I would find little to agree about politically. It would be easy to (in John Scalzi's words) bake up and enjoy a big schadenfreude pie over this. But my reaction is this has to be the most painful time in Ted Haggard's life (not to speak of the devastating effect this must be having on his family) but it could be the best thing that could happen to him.

I love few books more than Thomas Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation. It is not an easy book to describe -- a series of meditations on "the ordinary fulfillment of the Christian life of grace" concentrating on the internal life of the person who genuinely seeks God in contemplation. Considering "Things in their Identity", Merton says that each created thing gives glory to God by being fully itself in its unique identity -- the more something is truly itself, the more it is like God and the more it gives Him glory. This is particularly true for us:

For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.

Trees and animals have no problem. God makes them what they are without consulting them, and they are perfectly satisfied.

With us it is different. God leaves us free to be whatever we like. We can be ourselves or not, as we please. We are at liberty to be real, or to be unreal. We may be true or false, the choice is ours. We may wear now one mask and now another, and never, if we so desire, appear with our own true face. But we cannot make these choices with impunity. Causes have effects, and if we lie to ourselves and to others, then we cannot expect to find truth and reality whenever we happen to want them. If we have chosen the way of falsity we must not be surprised that truth eludes us when we finally come to need it.

We are born wearing a mask, according to Merton, a false self that is the person that we want ourselves to be. This is the mask we want others to see, built up out of our own desires, which will become a mask that prevents us from seeing ourself as we really are. Breaking through this mask

is a labor that requires sacrifice and anguish, risk and many tears. It demands close attention to reality at every moment, and great fidelity to God as He reveals Himself, obscurely, in the mystery of each new situation. We do not know clearly beforehand what the result of this work will be.

Jeff Sharlet at The Revealer has reposted his 2005 Harper's article on Haggard and New Life Church, with some comments on this story. What stands out to me this evening is the tale of how New Life was built up from a small group meeting in a basement with lawn chairs to an epitome of the "seeker driven" megachurch. This was a time of relentless promotion, with Ted Haggard leading the charge. This kind of consumer Christianity revolves around giving people what they think they need, to salve their fears, using the techniques of modern marketing and customer service: uberpastor as brand. With themselves as their own product, having a carefully crafted public image that must always be in good repair, the danger of confusing that image with one's true and imperfect self is tremendous.

Well, ready or not, Ted Haggard's public image is now in pieces around his feet like an expensive vase dropped onto concrete. He now has a completely free choice -- he can embrace his "false self", to retreat even further from reality and try to find some way to patch over the damage he has done to himself. Or he can, perhaps for the first time, seek that mystery of his own identity hidden in the love and mercy of God. Seizing that opportunity could the best thing that ever happened to him.

Update: A clarification.

Reading over what I wrote above, I managed to leave something important unclear. In saying that it is Ted Haggard's choice now to seek his own true self, as opposed to his public image, I am not primarily taling about his sexuality, or how he expresses it. Whether he should or should not "come out" as a gay or bisexual person may not be the issue -- merely adjusting one's public or private sexual self-description could be irrelevant here. Moving quickly from one stereotyped public image to another, be it tearfully penitent or sexually liberated, is simply a way of avoiding the issue. All you are doing is switching masks, with the hope that you are not visible during the process, especially to yourself. It isn't a matter of finding a better mask that is a better fit for what the world knows about you -- it is trying to get past using a mask at all.

Quote: Brian Wicker

We may say that the characters in fairytales are ‘good to think with’…[and that] the job of the fairytale is to show that Why? questions cannot be answered except in one way: by telling the stories. The story does not contain the answer, it is the answer.

From A Story-Shaped World, via squeetus

The Jedi at the salad bar

I guess it was Saturday evening, sitting in the Hilton coffee shop. (Is that name still valid or useful with a Starbucks just down the hall? I wonder.) I looked up from my book, and saw a Jedi pushing a tray along the salad bar, peering intently at the choices for his dinner. He costume was perfect, nothing amateurish about it, but at the same time he had on glasses and a yellow plastic tag hanging around his neck.

That's one image I remember now from LACon IV, one of many. The formal close was yesterday afternoon, but I left before that, but I am sure that the parties would be continuing all night without me. I got back here at a reasonable hour, and I'm taking today off to catch up on laundry and sleep. As I get a little more distance from the con, I am feeling better and better about attending -- I was simply too tired some times and had to learn to take more time off.

I'm processing a lot of memories and images:

• a silver robot carrying two coffees from the Hilton Starbucks to the Convention Center;
• Anne McCaffrey and Karen Black in a reader's theater presentation of an old L. Ron Hubbard short story;
• a theremin playing in the background while discussing natural disasters, the collapse of the Internet, and nuclear war at the General Technics party after midnight;
• kilts, lots of kilts;
• trying to find a particular room on the fifth floor of the Hilton, and getting lost;
• being treated to Merlot and conversation by Joe and Gay Haldeman -- kaffeeklatches don't necessarily involve coffee;
• costumes that ranged from the typical Star Trek recreation to some of the most detailed and beautiful pieces of work I have even seen up close;
• corsets, lots of corsets -- but generally not in combination with a kilt;
• watching the fireworks from the end of an Angels game (a bit better than the Disneyland show earlier) from the lanai at the Tor party;
• electric scooters everywhere -- every session had at least one in the aisle;
• the glow of cell phone screens in the audience, held up at Masquerade to catch pictures of the costumes;
• being "recognized" as a Worldcon attendee in my (non-convention) hotel by another attendee before I had a chance to register -- "didn't I meet you last year at Westercon?"
• Watching Frank Wu bound up to the stage to accept a Hugo for best fan artist -- then worshiping with him at the Mass the next morning;
• John Scalzi proving how classy he is accepting the Campbell award;
• and much, much more.

Prior to this, the closest I had ever come to a SF author was their dust jacket pictures. Well, that has definitely changed -- along with those mentioned above, I saw (and in a few cases talked with) Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin, Cory Doctorow, Harlan Ellison, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Tim Powers (just finishing Last Call), Mike Resnick, Kim Stanley Robinson, Robert Silverberg, Connie Willis, and Robert Charles Wilson. I'm also sure I have left somebody out and I wasn't even trying hard.

I didn't plan on kaffeeklatches and attending Masquerade, but these were some of the best moments at Worldcon. And on Sunday morning, when the designated location proved to be much too noisy, Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden guided those of us who had gathered for the kaffeeklatch up to the green room where we stole most of the available chairs for the session. The Hugos could not have gone better for them, and they were simply glowing, proud of the honors paid to their friends and co-workers. Teresa sliced up some dinosaur egg plums for us, and we found out that what looked like a leaf pendant had a better use.

Will I go to another one? I just don't know -- let's see what happens with BayCon next year.

Getting started

Well, I made it here, and made it through the rest of the day.

I made it into Anaheim before noon, and made it over to the convention center to register. The volunteer staff seems to be doing a very good job and things are running smoothly. Two things are making this a rather interesting experience:

• This is my first SF convention of any kind, and
• I am very familiar with this facility after years of the RE Congress.

In fact, some of my strangest moments so far was entering Hall A, which is usually crammed full as the vendor area at Congress. Here at Worldcon, all the organizational booths, the various art and artifact exhibitions (very impressive), along with the vendors are all there, with very generous aisles and room to spare. We'll see how crowded they get this weekend.

The opening ceremonies were packed and fun, with guest of honor Connie Willis pleasing the crowd, along with a kinescope of Tom Corbett, Space Cadet with Kellogg's Corn Flakes ads intact. I made it to Blogs & E-Fanzines and Nuclear Weapons Strategies (I'm an Air Force brat, so?) then grabbed some Chinese food and kicked back at my hotel. (I am not staying at the convention hotels, saving a little money and getting some welcome distance.) I did make it to the Babel Conference Ambassadorial Reception, a homage to the original series Star Trek episode Journey to Babel. It was great if you wanted to show off your Star Trek costume, or knew someone who did. Otherwise it was a fair size party with cake (too much sugar for me) and drinks you had to pay for. I quickly moved on.

The parties are all held on the same level at the Hilton, and the rooms all open onto one of the three lanai courtyards, which has the advantages of isolating all the noise from the rest of the hotel, providing expansion space for each party, and allowing a second door (which helps a lot). And you can wander around the lanai instead of the hallways. I made it to the bid parties for Chicago, Columbus, Kansas City, Las Vegas, and Denver as well as for my real favorite, Casa de Worldcon. Google also had a party to troll for geeks who could be future employees, but I don't think think they got too far with that. All the parties appear to have followed the various outlines for con parties, but I think they should consider the drink proportions posted recently by Teresa at Making Light, with some additional attention to diet drinks -- water and diet stuff seemed to disappear the fastest. Maybe it's the first night crowd that's older. I had fun, did't stay too late, and managed to pick up ribbons and stickers, but missed the Google flashing light stickon.

Talked with a lot of people, and met some people I was looking for, including the Nielsen Haydens (gracious as always) as well as Fr. John Blaker, the celebrant for the Mass here on Sunday. Things seem to be well organized and run, which seems to be partly due to the large amount of tribal lore about running cons, with lots or experience all around to draw from. The winner on this count is the Space Cadet Operations Manual, the pocket guide. It's a 4" x 5", 140+ page ring bound book with simply everything in it you need to know -- with the exception of party plans and daily changes. This beats the RE Congress guide all hollow, and does fit nicely in a pocket. Don't leave your home planet without it.

Today (Thursday)? I'm still not sure what at 10, but at 1 it will be Kevin Drum's presentation, and at 2:30 there is Post-Apocalyptic SF and Mars imaging from orbit. There is also a discussion about agriculture in California I may go to lob a few grenades in. I'm still working on the 4pm and 5:30pm sessions. The Chronicles of Narnia film is being shown at 6 and I haven't seen that yet. We'll see.

We interrupt this hiatus -- for Worldcon

Things have been rather busy this summer -- lots of time at work, and teaching two sessions of basic catechist formation for the Diocese. But I'm taking this week off to attend LACon IV, this year's World Science Fiction Convention. It starts tomorrow the 23'rd and runs to Sunday afternoon. I'm going to stay at least through Mass Sunday morning (yep, Mass at a con -- this should be fun).

If I get a chance, I'll post some reactions each evening. My schedule for tomorrow (as far as I know):

• arrive some time before noon, check in, and register
• 2:30 pm - either Blogs & E-Fanzines, The Worst Future that You Can Imagine, or Okay, You've Got the Moon, What're You Going to Do With It?
• 4:00 pm - Nuclear Weapon Strategies, My Life in a Time Machine, or The Future of Journalism
• 5:00 pm (if nothing else from 4 works -- Reading by Joe Haldeman
• 5:30 pm -- not sure yet, maybe listen to filksongs or hit the movies
• 8:00 pm -- Babel Conference reception for Star Trek's 40th anniversary

And there are parties, besides.

The interesting part of this for me is that this is being held at the Anaheim Convention Center, which is quite familiar to me from attending the LA Religious Education Congress for a number of years. I already know my way around.

Quote: Thomas Merton

If what most people take for granted were really true—if all you needed to be happy was to grab everything and see everything and investigate every experience and then talk about it, I should have been a very happy person, a spiritual millionaire, from the cradle even until now…What a strange thing! In filling myself, I had emptied myself. In grasping things, I had lost everything. In devouring pleasures and joys, I had found distress and anguish and fear.

So, who are you anyway?

The lessons for the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time:

• 2 Kings 4:42-44
• Psalm 145:10-11, 15-16, 17-18
• Ephesians 4:1-6
• John 6:1-15

Nobody is ever that eager to go to the DMV -- online reservations and such have only reduced the wait to an hour or so for your new driver's license. The other day I heard that it was only going to get worse here in California, once we implement the new Federal rules and make everybody come in and prove who they are every few years.

But that brought up the whole idea of credentials, how you prove who you are. This is something I am rather used to -- I grew up as an Air Force brat and had a DoD ID card long before I had a driver's license. My collection these days includes a passport (you need it to get back in the country from anywhere these days, including Canada), my state prison volunteer ID, and the passcard from work that gets me through most doors at work. Each marks who I am in reference to a specific organization or situation.

The gospel reading today from John involves credentials -- in fact much of the Gospel of John could be described as Jesus presenting his credentials to the world. One can say that the other three Gospels concentrate on what Jesus does, from different points of view, and presented for different audiences. In this Gospel, however, John concentrates on who Jesus is. The other Gospels are arranged in roughly chronological order. The first half of John's Gospel, which this story is from, is a series of stories, including stories of miracles. These miracles or signs are the credentials that Jesus presents to us so we know just who He is. There are always two sides, or two purposes to a miracle -- the first is the immediate good that is done. Hungry people are fed, sight is restored to the blind, the dead raised back to life. These things are all good in themselves, God reacting to our need.

But each is also a sign, pointing back to the source of all that is good. In each miracle God does something in an immediate, visible and concrete way that He already is doing in a less noticeable way all around us. St. Augustine of Hippo pointed this out:

Governing the entire universe is a greater miracle than feeding five thousand people with five loaves of bread, yet no one marvels at it. People marvel at the feeding of the five thousand not because this miracle is greater, but because it is out of the ordinary.

Who is even now providing nourishment for the whole world if not the God who creates a field of wheat from a few seeds? Christ did what God does.

Just as God multiplies a few seeds into a whole field of wheat, so Christ multiplied the five loaves in his hands. For there was power in the hands of Christ.

Those five loaves were like seeds, not because they were cast on the earth but because they were multiplied by the one who made the earth.

This miracle was presented to our senses in order to stimulate our minds; it was put before our eyes in order to engage our understanding, and so make us marvel at the God we do not see because of his works which we do see.

One thing that we can see is the nature of God's extravagance with us. Not only was everyone fed, but there were basketfulls left over. But look at what was multiplied: barley loaves and (based on the text) dried or preserved fish. Barley ripens faster, takes less water, and will grow in poorer soil than wheat. Barley was the grain of the poor in those times, and dried fish was a common but humble storable food. Jesus shows his identification with the poor and extravagant concern for their needs.

We also can see in this story that you can see this sign, but be able to understand it.

When the people saw the sign he had done, they said,
"This is truly the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world."
Since Jesus knew that they were going to come and carry him off
to make him king,
he withdrew again to the mountain alone.

Some commentors on this passage have presented a more naturalistic explanation, that thee real miracle was getting the people to their food with each other. But that is now how the people reacted in this passage -- Jesus is recognized as not just a nice teacher but the prophet foretold by God, the successor of Moses and Elijah. The reaction of the people is rational, but mistaken. We cannot understand who Jesus truly is without knowing of the Cross and His rising again.

The gospel writers found this an important story -- it is the only miracle recorded in all four books. Its importantce is echoed by the bishop's choice of this selection as the beginning of several weeks concentrating on the Eucharist. Jesus is presenting his credentials showing not only who He was in the first century, but who He is now, present among us today.

Quote: Pope John XXIII

Differences of opinion in the application of principles can sometimes arise even among sincere Catholics. When this happens, they should be careful not to lose their respect and esteem for each other. Instead, they should strive to find points of agreement for effective and suitable action, and not wear themselves out in interminable arguments, and, under pretext of the better or the best, omit to do the good that is possible and therefore obligatory.

Mater et Magistra (1961)

Quote: Albert Camus

Life's work is nothing but the slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence one's heart first opened.

Emotional consequences

A phenomena termed "waning of affect" or emotional "depthlessness" (notably in the arts) has been described by authors such as the philosopher Frederick Jameson. This is one of those areas of cultural criticism by postmodernists where one can find a combination of intriguing concepts and impenetrable terminology. My interpretation is that this refers to an apparent superficiality of emotional expression or affect, coupled with an attraction to intense experiences of sensation or emotion. The types of deeper emotional expression that a century ago would have been routine in literature, or for that matter religion, are difficult to find today. We have a preference for the cool or ironic in expression, while at the same time, having a taste for forms of entertainment such as increasingly graphic horror movies and intense video games. A wide array of traditional religious literature simply will not communicate adequately in this environment, and attempts to follow current trends will have interesting but unpredictable consequences - consider Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, which had tremendous sales and apparent social impact. As it turns out, that impact was rather limited, based on the research of several different organizations. Consider this report from the Barna group, which was very sympathetic to the religious goals of the movie:

Among the most startling outcomes drawn from the research is the apparent absence of a direct evangelistic impact by the movie. Despite marketing campaigns labeling the movie the “greatest evangelistic tool” of our era, less than one-tenth of one percent of those who saw the film stated that they made a profession of faith or accepted Jesus Christ as their savior in reaction to the film’s content.

Equally surprising was the lack of impact on people’s determination to engage in evangelism. Less than one-half of one percent of the audience said they were motivated to be more active in sharing their faith in Christ with others as a result of having seen the movie.

The anaysis of the shallowness of the consequences of this film refer to the same new world of communications cited before in examining social consequences:

George Barna, the director of the research, commented that many people would probably be surprised that there was not a more lasting and intense impact from the movie. "Immediate reaction to the movie seemed to be quite intense," he noted, "but people’s memories are short and are easily redirected in a media-saturated, fast-paced culture like ours. The typical adult had already watched another six movies at the time of the survey interview, not including dozens of hours of television programs they had also watched."

You can't counteract the emotional consequences of postmodernity simply by being more ironic, or cooler, or more intense. Just going further and faster does not help you when you are having problems with finding directions -- the proper treatment of ADHD may not include a new Gameboy.

These intellectual, social and emotional consequences of postmodernity have spiritual consequences as well.

Social Consequences

As I pointed out earier in this series of posts, telecommunications has been a key part of the modern transformation. Industrial telecommunications complemented the rest of the Industrial Revolution by promoting a kind of mass communication paralleling mass production and consumption. As this network of mass media has grown global, it is often easier to know what is going on thousands of miles away rather than down the block. There is less personal risk in turning on the TV or even signing on to an online conversation than in talking to your next-door neighbor.
Sociologist and political scientist Robert Putnam has written about the seemingly invisible changes to social participation over the past few decades, including religious participation:

In sum, over the last three of four decades, Americans have become almost 10 percent less likely to claim church membership, while our actual attendance and involvement in religious activities has fallen by roughly 25 to 50 percent. Virtually all of the postwar boom in religious participation – and perhaps more – has been erased. This broad historical pattern in religious participation – up from the first third of the century to the 1960’s and down from the 1960’s to the 1990’s – is very much the same pattern we have noted earlier for secular community-based organizations as well as for political organization.

What is more, in all three cases, the more demanding the form of involvement – actual involvement as opposed to formal membership, for example – the greater the decline. In effect the great institutions of American civic life, both religious and secular, have been “hollowed out.” Seen from without, the institutional edifice appears virtually intact – little decline in professions of faith, formal membership down just a bit, and so on. When examined more closely, however, it seems clear that decay has consumed the load bearing structures of our civic infrastructure.

From Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000)

One important point, that Putnam stresses, is that these trends can be seen across almost all religious groups, as well as most voluntary membership organizations in North America and Europe. He found that most groups have tried to understand these trends in terms of the recent history and actions of each specific group. Each group wondered what had caused their drop off in membership, and each group formulated their own individual response (which often could be very different than the response by some other organization). According to Putnam's reseach, it made little difference. Most organizations' pattern of membership and involvment over the past half century look the same. It's not what each organization is doing, it is a change to the society that all these organizations are in.

This particulary applies to the Catholic Church. If we look only at recent Church history, it might make sense to put the blame for this hollowing out of participation on Vatican II in general or a vernacular liturgy or reaction to Humanae Vitae. But how would these events cause nearly identical changes in other religious groups (including non-Christians) and non-religious groups? Many of the explanations as to why the Church "has gone wrong" lately may be largely irrelevant, as would be many of the solutions proposed. Powerful anti-cancer chemotherapy may not be a good idea if the patient does not have cancer -- you get all the side effects of the treatment, but are no closer to a cure. In addtion, you probably will not be any closer to a diagnosis.

The next post in this series will look at the emotional consequences of postmodernity.

Why ministry is more than a job

Over the years I have been involved in youth ministry on and off, in more than one denomination. If you do youth work it's hard to avoid Youth Specialites and one of its founders, the late Mike Yaconelli. As part of an article: What I Wish I Knew When I Started Youth Ministry, Mike made a major distinction between ministry as a job, and ministry as a call:

• Youth Ministry The Job is about wider. Youth Ministry The Call is about deeper.
• Youth Ministry The Job is about more. Youth Ministry The Call is about one.
• Youth Ministry The Job is about program. Youth Ministry The Call is about relationship.
• Youth Ministry The Job is about being in your office. Youth Ministry The Call is being wherever young people hang out.
• Youth Ministry The Job is about young peoples' souls. Youth Ministry The Call is about your soul.

I could easily paraphrase that to fit any other sort of ministry that I have been involved with, such as detention ministry.

Treating ministry as a job is a way of getting some distance, of lowering the risk, of trying to fit ministry into the rest of your life. Mike's point is that making ministry a job does just the opposite -- it will deaden your own spiritual life and make you ineffective as a minister. He has a lot of good points to make here, two in particular are: don't impersonate yourself, and the closer you get to Jesus, the less you know. Read the whole thing.

Intellectual consequences

Returning to the topic of ministry and postmodernity . . .

The consequences of the collapse of the modern and the reaction to that has intellectual, social and emotional aspects, and there are significant spiritual consequences as well.

The central feature of the intellectual reaction was expressed by Lyotard: "Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity towards metanarratives" A metanarrative (sometimes master- or grand narrative) “. . . is a global or totalizing cultural narrative schema which orders and explains knowledge and experience." When looking at the history of science, such ideas have been called paradigms and the change from one major paradigm to another in one field a scientific revolution. Such a shift follows the increasing difficulty of explaining physical phenomena using the older paradigm. This is true for metanarratives in general – when a particular great story seems to stop working, people tend to find others.

Our perception is never completely naive -- we always bring some baggage with us when we examine and evaluate the world we look at. For example, I have a friend who teaches biology at a local college, who has spent years studying the plant and animal life of this area. I can look some water in a pasture in the hills to the east of here, and see a large puddle that will dry up to a mud flat as summer approaches. My friend sees a vernal pool, ringed with wildflowers, the water containing tiny animals that may exist nowhere else in the world. We have different experiences and expectations of what we will see, therefore we really see different things in the same place. How we perceiveve the world is affected not only by experience, but by expectations and desires. The old saying is more accurate when stood on it's head: "believing is seeing." And the most powerful way to affect all these things that we bring to perception is by stories -- narratives that tie together our experience and desire with meaning, embedding it into our memories and emotions. Change the metanarrative, and in a way you change the world.

One relevant example of a metanarrative is the idea of progress. After almost unlimited trust in secular progress starting in the 18th century and extending into the 20th, experiences over the past century seem to have destroyed the faith of many that we are on the way to anywhere we really want to be.

This distrust of metanarratives is reinforced by the observation that social elites often have used the promotion and manipulation of such grand stories as a form of masked social power. Reaction has led to the attempt to replace grand narratives with smaller, local, more individual narratives. The personal is preferred to the universal.

This presents challenges to Christians, Catholic Christians in particular. Over the past two millenniaia, the Gospel has been the source of foundational metanarratives, first within Europeanan cultures, then globally. If one mistrusts metanarratives in general, one can specifically mistrust Christianity, often without really encountering its message and claims. Part of these ruling stories from the Gospel (and the Old Testament before that) is the idea that God is not on the side of the powerful, but on the side of the poor. The Christian message is not intended to protect the powerful but to subvert unjust power -- which makes it a "sign of contradiction" when compared to all the metanarratives that serve to keep things as they are and the powerless in their place.

That is why historical episodes such as the Spanish Inquisition continue to cause Catholicism trouble in this current situation. The proper apologies of the Church (which were overdue) and the revision of scholarly opinion on the Inquisition (which now appears to be that it was a much more limited and secular institution than often thought) do not seem to be relevant to the world in general. The problem comes from the perception that the Church, the bearer of the Gospel message, lent its approval to what, to 21st century eyes, was a program of ethnic cleansing. Arguing over who did what, when, does not address this problem: the identification with the Spanish Inquisition paints the Church as just another institution, and the Gospel message as just another metanarrative serving power, not to be trusted.

It is useful to consider just how this affects how both Catholics and non-Catholics see such issues as liberation theology (and the Vatican's reaction to it), clergy sexual abuse and misconduct, and neo-Gnosticism in works like The DaVinci Code.

All Flame

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, 'Abba as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?' then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, 'If you will, you can become all flame.'

from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers

I couldn't resist

I could not resist taking this test -- the results are published here as fair warning.

The Reaction

Back to the issue of postmodernity.

In saying that we are in a postmodern predicament we are discussing both reaction against as well as development from the modern. It is not a return to the medieval or a rejection of all things modern. Too often we use the analogy of a pendulum, implying that over time, things swing back to where they were before. Basic social changes such as the ones we are living through work differently – we react against some aspects of our lives while clinging to others, in particular economically driven changes. For example, some (inaccurately in my opinion) from time to time will assert that there is or will be a reaction against, and rollback of, the changes that came out of the feminist movement of the 1960’s-70’s. Various social phenomena are pointed to in support of that – but the percentage of women who work full time does not change, and is not expected to change. We are reacting against some parts of the modern world while clinging to others. If one is waiting for the return of the medieval world or the rise once again of the classical philosophers, one should either join the Society for Creative Anachronism or a university classics department, and get it out of one’s system safely.

Next: the consequences of the collapse of the modern.

Reveals to the nations his saving power

The lessons for the sixth Sunday of Easter:

• Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48 (diff)
• Psalm 98:1, 2-3, 3-4
• 1 John 4:7-10
• John 15:9-17

Why in the world should someone believe in God these days? We do not see the our world as "god-haunted" -- we have no problems explaining everything we experience in scientific terms, even those things we don't understand well. The things we can see and touch, these things we are sure of. God is a matter of personal opinion, at best.

When you look at the ancestry of the verb to believe you discover it does not mean to have an opinion about something. At its root it means to set one's heart on something. If we are to believe in God, we are to set our hearts on him, to turn our lives around to center on Him. But why would we do this? Is there an experience in this seemingly godless world that would make us thing that God is real?

There is -- the experience of being loved. The second lesson today is from the first letter of John:

Beloved, let us love one another,
because love is of God;
everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.
Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.
In this way the love of God was revealed to us:
God sent his only Son into the world
so that we might have life through him.
In this is love:
not that we have loved God, but that he loved us
and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.

When we say we have faith, that we will set our hearts on God, we are saying that the ultimate ground of reality, behind everything we see or feel or hear or touch, is love. If we do not know love, we cannot know God. And love is not something abstract, it is concrete, it is personal. We can believe that God exists, because somebody, somewhere, sometime, loved us in such a way that we could see that God could exist, that love really does make sense. Each one of us must have at some time, known that someone else valued us just for our own self.

Today's readings teach us three important lessons about God's love for us.

• We can love, because God loved us first -- We were created out of love, and we were created to love. All of scripture tells the big story of God's love for His people, no matter what his people do.
• Love makes us all equal before God -- In the first lesson, we hear Peter tell Cornelius, a Roman, that God accepts him just a fully as God accepts Peter himself. We are all equally dependent on God.
• Our response to God's love is to do what He asks -- Jesus tells his disciples that if we love Him, to do what he commands and love one another. We are not to be passive receptacles of God's love and care. Our call is to lavish that same love and care on each other.

What can we expect if we answer this call to share the love that we first received? Loving as God loves is very inconvenient indeed, as it involves putting the needs of someone else ahead of our own wants. It necessarily involves sacrifice, and often the risk of loss and pain. Love is free, but it is not without a tremendous cost. But by giving others the knowledge that they are truly loved, we are making it possible for them to have faith in God. They can only see God if we make him visible in our own lives.

In his very first encyclical Deus Caritas Est (God is Love), Pope Benedict XVI teaches about this:

We have come to believe in God's love: in these words the Christian can express the fundamental decision of his life. Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.

God has loved us from the beginning, that is how we know who He is. We must decide whether we will do our part to make that love real for the whole world.

Quote: Henri Nouwen

. . Every human being has a great, yet often unknown, gift to care, to be compassionate, to become present to the other, to listen, to hear and to receive. If that gift would be set free and made available, miracles could take place. Those who really care can receive bread from a stranger and smile in gratitude, can feed many without even realizing it. Those who can sit in silence with their fellowman not knowing what to say but knowing that they should be there, can bring new life in a dying heart. Those who are not afraid to hold a hand in gratitude, to shed tears in grief, and to let a sigh of distress arise straight from the heart, can break through paralyzing boundaries and witness the birth of a new fellowship, the fellowship of the broken. . . .

To care means first of all to empty our own cup and to allow the other to come close to us. It means to take away the many barriers which prevent us from entering into communion with the other. When we dare to care, then we discover that nothing human is foreign to us, but that all the hatred and love, cruelty and compassion, fear and joy can be found in our own hearts. When we dare to care, we have to confess that when others kill, I could have killed too. When others torture, I could have done the same. . . .

By the honest recognition and confession of our human sameness we can participate in the care of God who came, not to the powerful but powerless, not to be different but the same, not to take our pain away but to share it. Through this participation we can open our hearts to each other and form a new community.

from Out of Solitude.

The march of the modern

In previoius posts, we reviewed briefly the nature and sources of the dominant modern Western culture. The positive achievements of this modern world, the world of science and the idea of progress, are easy to see. There are technical achievements in medicine, manufacturing and communications, and social achievements in establishing a new ideal of liberty and individual rights that is, at least in part, approached in a number of places around the world. But there are negative achievements as well in this modern world. Starting with the French Revolution and stretching on to global climate change, we have learned of the social and environmental cost of the “modern” world.

One particularly interesting area of modern change is communications. Two hundred years ago, printing still used human power to run the press, and messages could only move as fast as you could move a piece of paper. Over the intervening time, our ability to communicate expanded drastically in both speed and capacity. This process resulted in the creation, in the 20th century, of mass communications, where one person, in the right place with the right resources, could speak to an entire nation at once. This had effects throughout human societies around the world, changing the way we create and maintain organizations, including religious organizations and activities. Protestant churches, the mainline denominations in particular, are very modern in character, and often model their organizations almost exclusively on corporate models. (In fact, after some historical examination, it could be argued that many Protestant bodies are products much more of the Enlightenment and industrial revolution than of the Reformation.)

The Enlightenment and the modern paradigm was an outgrowth of European philosophy and culture – European culture (which includes American culture) developed along with these ideas and structures. Other, non-Western cultures encountered them through colonialism, or 20th century mass culture. These non-Western cultures have adapted to the impact of the modern in various ways, often involving rapid change and social upheaval. The apparent successful adaptation to some Western ideas in much of Asia in the 20th century follows tremendous dislocation and conflict during the 19th century. Islamic cultures have generally not been as successful, even though there have been numerous top-down attempts to force such adaptation over the past century and a half. These failures are partly responsible for the apparent conflict between western and Islamic states at the beginning of the 21st century.

The Catholic Church struggled with these changes throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The French Revolution (the ultimate example of both the bright and dark sides of the Enlightenment), combined with Napoleon, caused damage that the Church in Europe has not yet fully recovered from. For example, the 1,500-year history of monastic life in much of Europe almost came to an end at that time. The attempts to wrestle with the intellectual challenges of the era led in many ways to the “Modernist“ conflicts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The centralization of control that started with Pius IX can, in many ways, be seen as a reaction to these political and intellectual stresses, as well as to the introduction of early forms global communications. Word now could and did get to the faithful by other means than the local bishop, which meant that the Church needed to find new ways to try to keep Christian teaching and ministry “on message”, beyond simply the control of the local bishop. (It is interesting to look at the First Vatican Council in this light.) By the end of the 19th century, the Church started its sophisticated reaction to the social and economic changes of the era , as shown by Rerum Novarum (1891) and the subsequent development of Catholic social teachings. In general, the Catholic Church has adapted to the modern era, with varying levels of success, but is less tied to these “modern” ideas than other Christian bodies. At times in the past, this sometimes seemed to be a problem — but in our new predicament this may be a significant advantage, along with the increasingly global nature of the governance of the Church.

Next -- after the modern, what?

Quote: Luke Timothy Johnson

The basic decision, after all, is to let God be God, to say 'yes' to the work of the Lord, which goes before the church's ability to understand or even perceive it.

from Scripture and Discernment

Links: 5/11/2006

Enough with the heavy culture -- on with some links:

• Simply the coolest garage and it's full of Volkswagens
• What, you mean that's not my ringtone?
• You can't make this stuff up -- this really was the headline: Flying Cow Leaves Two Police Cars in Flames
• Your tax dollars at work, US Pat. Off. department: Patent 6982161: Process for the Utilization of Ruminant Animal Methane Emissions

So, what does "modern" mean anyway

There are few words that have been more popular in use over the last century than “modern”. (The main rivals, I think, have been “new”, “improved”, and “scientific” -- perhaps I have watched too many soap ads lately.) For the past couple of centuries, those of us in the West have been living in what is usually called the modern world, a system of ideas and social structures that has transformed the world, or at least the part of it we live in. In trying to analyze the current challenges to Christian belief, the Rt. Rev. N.T. Wright, Anglican Bishop of Durham, England, outlined what “modern” means:

But, in case some feel left behind by all this jargon, what do we mean by 'modernity' and 'postmodernity', anyway? A quick thumbnail sketch is all we have time for. By the 'modern' world I mean, broadly, the western world from the eighteenth century to the present. The European Enlightenment at the intellectual level, and the Industrial Revolution at the social level, produced enormous changes both in how society worked, literally and metaphorically, and in how people thought. The large-scale shift from agrarian economies to factory economies had, of course, profound social consequences, of which some parts of New Zealand at least are, I am sure, very much aware. Those who learnt to think for themselves in the Enlightenment without fear of tradition, and then in the Industrial Revolution, those who learnt to make things for themselves rather than having to grow them, acquired a new confidence: they could take on the world.

Thus there grew up the modernist trinity: first, the confident individual who says, 'I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.' Secondly, there was certainty about the world and about our objective knowledge of it. We can look at the world and know things, and that is objective knowledge. (Someone said facts, like telescopes and wigs for gentlemen, were an 18th century invention.) Thirdly, and perhaps above all, there grew up a new mythology of progress; the belief that the world was actually going somewhere, was progressing, and was about to reach its goal. Reality was then conveniently divided up into facts and values; facts were objective, values were subjective. Or, in another of the great Enlightenment ways of carving up the world, there were the truths of reason 'out there' which the mind might be able to grasp, and the truths of the empirical world, the things that you could actually do business with. There was an ugly ditch, said the German philosopher Lessing, between the two of them. Split level reality, is what the modernist trinity purchased at considerable cost, and we have been paying that cost ever since.

The negative corollaries of all this are quite clear: the European world said we are no longer bound to traditional religions or ethics. We live in the real world, people said, and religion and ethics are a matter of private opinion. Part of the avowed aim of modernity was to get away from endless European wars of religion, by showing that religions were simply about what people did with their solitude, and that it was therefore absurd to fight one another about such beliefs. We have learnt to think for ourselves, and can use this ability to show up barbarity and superstition, to free ourselves from the tyranny of tradition.

This is from a 1999 lecture by Wright, and the whole thing is worth reading. More on modernity and the Church in the next post.

Our Predicament

I began my interest in this topic a couple of years ago, when I became interested in the phenomenon of Burning Man. I wrote a series of posts about it, including the perspective of one Evangelical pastor that has been to that festival several times. The final post in the series was to be my own reactions to BM in light of my own understaning of Chrsitianity. Well, I started following ideas about modern culture, postmodernity, the emerging church, and well, here we are. In many ways, the whole direction of this blog is a follow on to those posts -- an attempt to understand the current predicament we are in when trying to minister to others.

In my opinion, one of the realities that a minister must face is that we continue to live in a time of fundamental change and uncertainty. During much of the 20th Century, we experienced the consequences of the gradual collapse of “modernity” – the ideas and structures born of the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution that are the foundation of the way we have all lived, at least here in the Western or European cultural world. Our “postmodern” predicament is that we seem to have no general replacements or successors for these ideas, with the result that we seem to be in a kind of “waiting room” between eras. We aren’t sure we know where we are going, but we do know we are going there faster and faster – and we do not trust those who offer directions.

Vocabulary is one problem when assessing this situation. The word “postmodern” has taken on many meanings, ranging from literary criticism to architecture to philosophy. The reaction of some to our current predicament, our uncertainty, is to say that there is not and has never been any certainty, only opinion and the attempt to impose these opinions on others by various means. The proper subject of philosophy or artistic criticism is no longer an examination of ultimate truth or beauty, but only of how we use language, and reuse images and symbols. This is an overly simplistic, but not entirely inaccurate way of describing the ideas of some of the best known “postmodern” theorists, such as Lyotard , Derrida and Foucault . We need to carefully distinguish between:

• their assessment of the current state of our society, which can be uniquely insightful, and
• their prescriptions for dealing with the challenges that our changing society presents us, which are often completely inconsistent with Christian experience and belief.

To use a medical analogy, while their diagnosis may be correct, we may not trust the treatment they prescribe. What we should concentrate on is not postmodernism, whether in music, art, or critical theory, but postmodernity, the predicament of living in a modern world in the middle of becoming something else.

Servants of the Word

As I mentioned before, one reason that I have not been posting as much is work on a long final paper for New Wine. Well, that paper is just about done, and a couple weeks late, but there you are. The requirement was 10 pages double-spaced, and I am probably going to hit 15+ pages, single-spaced.

The topic is the transition to a post-modern culture and its effect on ministry, with a particular look at the New Evangelism. The actual paper has a sizeable chunk of discussion of my own experience in ministry and New Wine, stuff I may pull from in the future for posts. But for now, the core material on what is happening culturally worldwide and the predicament we are in is what I will be putting up, in appropriately sized pieces. The title page of the paper includes the quote that gives the paper it's name: Servants of the Word

To nourish ourselves with the word in order to be servants of the word in the work of evangelization: this is surely a priority for the Church at the dawn of the new millennium. Even in countries evangelized many centuries ago, the reality of a "Christian society" which, amid all the frailties which have always marked human life, measured itself explicitly on Gospel values, is now gone. Today we must courageously face a situation which is becoming increasingly diversified and demanding, in the context of "globalization" and of the consequent new and uncertain mingling of peoples and cultures. Over the years, I have often repeated the summons to the new evangelization. I do so again now, especially in order to insist that we must rekindle in ourselves the impetus of the beginnings and allow ourselves to be filled with the ardour of the apostolic preaching which followed Pentecost. We must revive in ourselves the burning conviction of Paul, who cried out: "Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel" (1 Cor 9:16).

Pope John Paul II, Novo Millennio Ineunte, chap 40

The plan? First off, to look at just what "modern" means culturally, and to examine the signs that we are moving somewhere else. In particular, review the intellectual, social, and emotional effects of this transition, concentrating on the spiritual consequences of all this. There are some specific challenges and opportunities on the way, and some indications on the directions ministry may take as a result.

Basically, these are the topics I said that interested me at the beginning of the year when I moved to this space -- so there is no surprise here. Stay tuned.

Links:5/4/06

On with the links:

• That's a strange looking taxi
• I can still smell this stuff
• Stop, or be teddied
• One day it's a jet powered VW, the next it's a real MIG-21 -- on eBay, naturally
• Jesus on film, it's not just for Lent anymore

Quote: Walter Burghardt, SJ

Our parishes and congregations often present a wide range of experience, income and education. You have to be able to use a vocabulary that everybody understands. This doesn’t mean that you are always using monosyllables. But most people will understand if you speak the language of ordinary conversation. Apart from the technical language, just talk to them so they feel that you are really talking with them. Somebody said to me that people don’t want to listen to homilies. My answer to that is that people don’t want to listen to bad homilies.

Links: 5/2/2006

How can you tell I'm back? Links!

• The final cure for tailgating.
• When good people get caught up in bad fads
• Ever have that great idea in the shower?
• I don't want to think about how much I would pay for this ride