∞
Three Words About Writing: Plato, Emerson, Bugbee
Last weekend I was at a small writing conference in Vermont, where I was asked to give a meditation on writing with a love of wisdom. Although I'm a philosophy professor, I'm not sure I have a bead on loving wisdom yet.
(To paraphrase Thoreau, there are nowadays plenty of philosophy professors, but not so many lovers of wisdom.)
Instead, I offered a reflection on three ideas that matter for me as I write. Here are three that I keep coming back to:
First, a word from Plato: "Follow the argument wherever it leads." And try to find good interlocutors. If you surround yourself with people who say "yes" to everything you say, your writing and your thinking will both atrophy. If the trail leads uphill, it's no good to stay on the level path. Plato seems to have used writing as a way of sketching out how one might begin to solve problems. He didn't give answers so much as good questions. His dialogues survive because they are such good invitations for us to try to work out the solutions ourselves.
Second, Emerson: Your journals are your savings accounts. Your life is the way you earn deposits. "If it were only for a vocabulary the scholar would be covetous of action," he wrote. "Life is our dictionary." Without action, there is no experience; and without experience, the writer's vocabulary becomes continually narrower. Emerson wrote in fragments - very short essays, or sentences - in his journals, and when he sat down to write his essays and lectures, he found those fragments to be a rich vein of inspiration and even of finished work.
Finally, Bugbee: "Get it down." Write forward; don't edit too much. Keep writing, and as much as possible, write the way it comes. Attend to experience as it is given, without trying too hard to color it or shape it. Practice seeing, and seeing honestly, and write what you see.
This isn't by any means a whole course in writing, but it is a place to start. And often, that's what writers need: to start.
Then keep writing.
(To paraphrase Thoreau, there are nowadays plenty of philosophy professors, but not so many lovers of wisdom.)
Instead, I offered a reflection on three ideas that matter for me as I write. Here are three that I keep coming back to:
First, a word from Plato: "Follow the argument wherever it leads." And try to find good interlocutors. If you surround yourself with people who say "yes" to everything you say, your writing and your thinking will both atrophy. If the trail leads uphill, it's no good to stay on the level path. Plato seems to have used writing as a way of sketching out how one might begin to solve problems. He didn't give answers so much as good questions. His dialogues survive because they are such good invitations for us to try to work out the solutions ourselves.
Second, Emerson: Your journals are your savings accounts. Your life is the way you earn deposits. "If it were only for a vocabulary the scholar would be covetous of action," he wrote. "Life is our dictionary." Without action, there is no experience; and without experience, the writer's vocabulary becomes continually narrower. Emerson wrote in fragments - very short essays, or sentences - in his journals, and when he sat down to write his essays and lectures, he found those fragments to be a rich vein of inspiration and even of finished work.
Finally, Bugbee: "Get it down." Write forward; don't edit too much. Keep writing, and as much as possible, write the way it comes. Attend to experience as it is given, without trying too hard to color it or shape it. Practice seeing, and seeing honestly, and write what you see.
This isn't by any means a whole course in writing, but it is a place to start. And often, that's what writers need: to start.
Then keep writing.
∞
"Life Is Our Dictionary"
"Authors we have in numbers, who have written out their vein, and who, moved by a commendable prudence, set sail for Greece or Palestine, follow the trapper into the prairie, or ramble round Algiers to replenish their merchantable stock. If it were only for a vocabulary the scholar would be covetous of action. Life is our dictionary."
R.W. Emerson, "The American Scholar"
∞
A Republic Without Education
“In a republic education is indispensable. A republic without education is like
the creature of imagination, a human being without a soul, living and moving
blindly, with no just sense of the present or the future. It is a monster.”
Charles Sumner, Massachusetts Senator, in “Reconstruction Again: The Ballot and Public Schools Open to All,” speeches in the Senate, on the Supplementary Reconstruction Bill, March 15 and 16, 1867. TheWorks of Charles Sumner, Vol XI, (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1875) p. 156
∞
Armed in Anxiety
My article on guns, fear, and virtue ethics, now accessible at The Chronicle of Higher Education:
What do guns do for us? Many opponents of new gun legislation argue that they make us safer. Proponents of gun control hope to promote public safety by keeping guns out of the hands of bent young men who worship projectile power and senseless death. Most of our public-policy debates about guns have focused on safety, but in my opinion, not enough has been said about whether guns make us sound.Read the rest here.
Our word "safe" has roots in the Latin word salvus, which means not just "secure from harm" but "whole, well, and thriving"—that is to say, sound. This is one of philosophy's oldest concerns, to examine and foster this kind of sound, flourishing human life. This question is at the heart of Aristotle's ethics, for example. The opening lines of his Nicomachean Ethics declare that it is possible to regard life as having a kind of excellence, a sense of human flourishing and wholeness to which all of our sciences contribute. As Aristotle puts it, failure to reflect on this will make us like people who shoot without considering their target. (Yes, he really says that.)....
∞
What I Wish Penn State Would Do
Today Penn State, where I did some of my graduate studies, announced that they would begin making settlement offers to the victims of Jerry Sandusky's sexual assaults against children.
Years ago I read a story in one of the Toronto newspapers - I have not been able to track it down again - wherein a catholic diocese in Canada was being sued by First Nations people who had suffered from abusive policies when they were students in diocesan schools.
The newspaper asked the bishop whether he was concerned about the cost of settling the lawsuits. He replied that if the diocese had to sell all of its property to bring healing to the victims, that was not too high a price to pay. He added "the church isn't buildings but people. In the end, all we need is a table, a cup, and some books - and we really don't even need those."
His attitude is the one I wish my alma mater would adopt. The cost of settling lawsuits may seem high, but when you know you are in the wrong and you know your sins have caused great harm to children, is any price too high to pay?
Because a university similarly shouldn't think of itself as buildings but as a college, a group of people who come together to read and study. And for that all we need are some tables, some books, and maybe a few cups. Not much more. Everything else should be things with which we would gladly part if, in so doing, we can bring healing to those we have harmed, and better become the people we ought to be.
Years ago I read a story in one of the Toronto newspapers - I have not been able to track it down again - wherein a catholic diocese in Canada was being sued by First Nations people who had suffered from abusive policies when they were students in diocesan schools.
The newspaper asked the bishop whether he was concerned about the cost of settling the lawsuits. He replied that if the diocese had to sell all of its property to bring healing to the victims, that was not too high a price to pay. He added "the church isn't buildings but people. In the end, all we need is a table, a cup, and some books - and we really don't even need those."
His attitude is the one I wish my alma mater would adopt. The cost of settling lawsuits may seem high, but when you know you are in the wrong and you know your sins have caused great harm to children, is any price too high to pay?
Because a university similarly shouldn't think of itself as buildings but as a college, a group of people who come together to read and study. And for that all we need are some tables, some books, and maybe a few cups. Not much more. Everything else should be things with which we would gladly part if, in so doing, we can bring healing to those we have harmed, and better become the people we ought to be.
∞
Newspapers in 1854
"[The reading and thinking] class has immensely increased. Owing to the
silent revolution which the newspaper has wrought, this class has come
in this country to take in all classes. Look into the morning
trains...with them, enters the car the humble priest of politics,
finance, philosophy, and religion in the shape of the newsboy....Two
pence a head his bread of knowledge costs, and instantly the entire
rectangular assembly, fresh from their breakfast, are bending as one man
to their second breakfast."
R.W. Emerson, 1854.
∞
Co-authorship in the Humanities
My friend and co-author John Kaag has just published this piece in today's New York Times.
I think John is right on the money: there aren't firm rules about this, but many times we've both been warned that co-authorship in the humanities will be regarded as a sign of weakness, of not being able to carry one's own weight.
Maybe it's true. John and I both find that co-authorship make us better writers, so we must have been weak in some ways. But I don't see why we shouldn't therefore do even more writing with others.
I think John is right on the money: there aren't firm rules about this, but many times we've both been warned that co-authorship in the humanities will be regarded as a sign of weakness, of not being able to carry one's own weight.
Maybe it's true. John and I both find that co-authorship make us better writers, so we must have been weak in some ways. But I don't see why we shouldn't therefore do even more writing with others.
∞
Spring Lilacs
∞
Popper On The Gift Of Wonder
“My first thesis is that every philosophy, and especially every philosophical ‘school,’ is liable to degenerate in such a way that its problems become practically indistinguishable from pseudo-problems, and its cant, accordingly, practically indistinguishable from meaningless babble. This, I shall try to show, is a consequence of philosophical inbreeding. The degeneration of philosophical schools in its turn is the consequence of the mistaken belief that one can philosophize without having been compelled to philosophize by problems outside philosophy—in mathematics, for example, or in cosmology, or in politics or in religion, or in social life. In other words my first thesis is this: Genuine philosophical problems are always rooted in urgent problems outside philosophy and they die if these roots decay. In their efforts to solve them, philosophers are liable to pursue what looks like a philosophical method or technique or an unfailing key to philosophical success. But no such methods or techniques exist, in philosophy methods are unimportant, any method is legitimate if it leads to results capable of being rationally discussed. What matters is not methods or techniques but a sensitivity to problems, and a consuming passion for them, or, as the Greeks said, the gift of wonder.”
-- Karl Popper, “The Nature of Philosophical Problems,” in Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. (Routledge, 2002) 95. (Boldface emphasis mine.)
-- Karl Popper, “The Nature of Philosophical Problems,” in Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. (Routledge, 2002) 95. (Boldface emphasis mine.)
∞
Free Stone
One spring after heavy rains had come and gone, my father and I walked the banks of the Sawkill Creek. It was newly scrubbed by floodwaters that had gouged its banks, sweeping away trees, glacial deposit boulders, and even a few buildings as the Catskills shed the rainfall and shot it down to the Hudson.
The memory of that short walk remains one of the strongest from my childhood. The river had cut new banks, and had changed its own course. We walked along the round gravel banks and gazed up at the undercut roots of massive oaks and pines. We saw the bones of the earth laid bare by the river's irresistible blade. The river had cut itself a new bed. Everything in its path was destroyed; everything in its path was made new.
Since then I have walked hundreds of miles along - and often in - deep, clear waters over cobbled riverbeds. The sound of the water is the music of my soul, high sprinkled notes of splashing water and bass tones of massive stones rocking back and forth in the current. Walking in freestone streams makes me forget my worries, forget time itself.
The memory of that short walk remains one of the strongest from my childhood. The river had cut new banks, and had changed its own course. We walked along the round gravel banks and gazed up at the undercut roots of massive oaks and pines. We saw the bones of the earth laid bare by the river's irresistible blade. The river had cut itself a new bed. Everything in its path was destroyed; everything in its path was made new.
 |
| Polished by the river. |
Since then I have walked hundreds of miles along - and often in - deep, clear waters over cobbled riverbeds. The sound of the water is the music of my soul, high sprinkled notes of splashing water and bass tones of massive stones rocking back and forth in the current. Walking in freestone streams makes me forget my worries, forget time itself.
∞
Mersenne, Education, and Intellectual "Property"
French cleric Marin Mersenne was the academic journal of his day. I have heard it said that in the seventeenth century the saying was "If you want to tell Europe, tell Mersenne."
Hobbes mentions Mersenne several times in his verse autobiography - high praise for a Roman Catholic cleric from someone whose antipathy for the Roman church and its philosophy was both deep and wide. But when Hobbes needed friends during his exile in France, Mersenne was glad to be one of those friends. Mersenne was a friend to all who were engaged in research. He was a living example of that idea of Justin Martyr's that Christians need not fear any books at all, since all the truth they contain belongs to the God who made and sustains it.
He was a friend to Galileo, and he passed Galileo's research on the regular oscillation of pendula along to Huygens in Holland, since he knew Huygens was trying to invent a more regular way of keeping time, leading to the invention of the pendulum clock. He corresponded with Pascal, Gassendi, and Descartes, and what he learned from one he shared with others who could use it.
In his Carnage and Culture, Victor Davis Hanson claims that one of the reasons for technological flourishing in the west is that western cultures treat knowledge as property that can be sold in the marketplace. I can't say whether Hanson's causal inference is correct, but his observation about intellectual "property" is acute.
But alongside it we should add another observation, namely that universities have long been places where ideas are exchanged freely. Yes, students pay tuition, but we also give free public lectures, allow free or inexpensive auditing, etc. What is being sold in the university is not the information but the cost of maintaining a place of intentional colloquy and pedagogy. We aren't selling ideas to students; we are allowing them to join us in the maintenance of a vital institution, and as members of that institution they participate in its life and share in its learning.
Mersenne was not a merchant of ideas but their curator, a steward ushering them to the places they were most needed. He was a gardener who made very few original contributions but who shared the best cultivars he could find with others in whose gardens they could flourish. His approach to knowledge was like that of the church in its earliest years, where "no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common" and goods were "distributed to each as they had need."
Mersenne's model is relevant to our contemporary conversations about the meaning and cost of an education, the value of universities, and the publication of scientific journals. Some money will be needed to maintain these institutions, but we should resist reducing them to market-based enterprises, or valuing their contributions in terms of revenues. There is also the shared work of curiosity, and of desiring to see our neighbors, and their ideas, flourish.
Hobbes mentions Mersenne several times in his verse autobiography - high praise for a Roman Catholic cleric from someone whose antipathy for the Roman church and its philosophy was both deep and wide. But when Hobbes needed friends during his exile in France, Mersenne was glad to be one of those friends. Mersenne was a friend to all who were engaged in research. He was a living example of that idea of Justin Martyr's that Christians need not fear any books at all, since all the truth they contain belongs to the God who made and sustains it.
He was a friend to Galileo, and he passed Galileo's research on the regular oscillation of pendula along to Huygens in Holland, since he knew Huygens was trying to invent a more regular way of keeping time, leading to the invention of the pendulum clock. He corresponded with Pascal, Gassendi, and Descartes, and what he learned from one he shared with others who could use it.
In his Carnage and Culture, Victor Davis Hanson claims that one of the reasons for technological flourishing in the west is that western cultures treat knowledge as property that can be sold in the marketplace. I can't say whether Hanson's causal inference is correct, but his observation about intellectual "property" is acute.
But alongside it we should add another observation, namely that universities have long been places where ideas are exchanged freely. Yes, students pay tuition, but we also give free public lectures, allow free or inexpensive auditing, etc. What is being sold in the university is not the information but the cost of maintaining a place of intentional colloquy and pedagogy. We aren't selling ideas to students; we are allowing them to join us in the maintenance of a vital institution, and as members of that institution they participate in its life and share in its learning.
Mersenne was not a merchant of ideas but their curator, a steward ushering them to the places they were most needed. He was a gardener who made very few original contributions but who shared the best cultivars he could find with others in whose gardens they could flourish. His approach to knowledge was like that of the church in its earliest years, where "no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common" and goods were "distributed to each as they had need."
Mersenne's model is relevant to our contemporary conversations about the meaning and cost of an education, the value of universities, and the publication of scientific journals. Some money will be needed to maintain these institutions, but we should resist reducing them to market-based enterprises, or valuing their contributions in terms of revenues. There is also the shared work of curiosity, and of desiring to see our neighbors, and their ideas, flourish.
∞
Light Perpetual
My friend Michael Foster died last night.
We knew it was coming. We saw it a long way off.
It still hurts like hell.
That's what this bereavement feels like: a little piece of hell. Our word "bereave" shares roots with "robbery," "rupture," and "interrupt." Something has been stolen from us, something has been broken, broken off. It should not be this way.
The words of Mark Heard's song "Treasure of the Broken Land" are going through my mind again and again:
The realization that he is gone keeps hitting me in waves. Now, as I write this, I keep having to stop as my throat constricts and my heart pounds, waiting for the tremor to pass through me, waiting for this wave of anguish to roll over me.
Maybe telling some of his story - our story - will help.
I met Mike when I was a grad student at Penn State. He was a professor at Penn State, and a sub-deacon at our church. (This means he helped with bread and wine, and looked good in a dress.) We both attended St Andrew's Episcopal Church in State College, and together we served on the vestry.
Sometime in my last year or two of grad work - I don't remember exactly; odd how the most important things can seem so commonplace - he invited me to go out to breakfast at the Corner Room. Like so many other kind professors I knew, he insisted on paying. (I now do the same with my students; the little things that mark our lives often become the lessons we really teach.)
Mike was trying to live the best life he could, using his scholarly discipline to love his neighbor, and trying to love his God to the best of his ability. He'd begun reading Dallas Willard's book The Divine Conspiracy, a book about becoming an intentional follower of Christ. I knew Willard's work on Husserl, and I guess Mike figured that made me a good conversation partner. We started meeting every week; he'd buy me breakfast and we'd talk about another chapter of Willard's book.
I didn't know what to make of Willard, and I was reading a lot of other books (this is the life of a grad student, after all) so the book didn't sink in much. But Mike's life did. Mostly we let the book lead us to talking about how we were living, and why we did what we did. Mike had studied economics, and recently his work had become really important to him as he discovered how to combine the methods of his discipline and of developmental psychology to advocate for poor children. His field was not mine, but I gathered that this was the upshot: a little money invested in children will pay dividends in their lives forever.
Mike was a restless soul, like Augustine, only finding his rest in God. I've lost count of how many times he and Mary and their four kids moved, but I know we've visited them in North Carolina and Alabama since we all left Pennsylvania. He wasn't afraid to pull up his stakes and move somewhere else if he thought he could do better work there. He has urged me, several times, to do the same, to be willing to regard tenure as a shackle rather than a privilege, and to move where the spirit moves me.
A few years ago Mike was diagnosed with a tumor in his brain. He approached this with the same doggedness he approached everything else. He poured himself into researching treatments, and flew all over the country seeking good medical advice. The tumor was removed at the cost of one of his eyes, and he went through some grueling radiation. (I long for the day when we will look back on our modern cancer treatments the way we now look back on bloodletting.) A little over a year ago he was at Mayo, not too far from me. I drove over to see him and Mary, and they gave me the gift of letting me pray for them. I say this is a gift, because I am at best a fumbling prayer, and they made me feel like a priest. They were suffering, and here they were, giving me this gift of unmerited affirmation.
Last summer a friend from Australia passed through Sioux Falls while enjoying a long service leave. He had rented a car and was driving from Seattle to Birmingham. I took advantage of my sabbatical and hopped in the car with him so I could visit Mike and Mary. They'd just moved to a new home, everything was in boxes, Mike's tumor was growing again, and yet they took me in and made me feel like I was long-lost family recently found again.
I loved talking with Mike, because his offhand observations were like gold. And the way he talked to people, and treated people, were always examples of both wit and grace. He was kind, and that allowed him to talk straight, to say with smiling integrity and southern charm, exactly what he was thinking. He was a true Israelite, in whom there wasn't much guile, and the guile that was there made him fun, and good company. I loved the way he loved his wife, and his kids. He wore that on the outside, not for show, but because his love was too big to keep on the inside. I'm sure it was flawed, as all loves are, but it was also intentional, the centerpiece of his life.
A couple of months ago, Mike asked if we could talk. You never know when the conversation you have will be the last one you ever have; this was ours. He told me the doctor had bad news: he might make it to Christmas, but not likely past that.
Mike asked me if he had lived right, if he had done the right thing. Yes, oh yes, Mike. I don't see as God sees, but I don't see how God could say otherwise. You made my life better. You loved well, in everything you did.
He also asked me if it was okay to ask God for healing. This one was harder to answer, but I decided that after thirteen years of benefiting from his straight talk, from free breakfasts and warm hospitality, I owed him nothing less than that. "It's okay to ask, Mike," I hesitated, not wanting to say it, not wanting to believe what would come next. I could hear in his conversation that he was declining, that his memory was being eaten away by the tumor. "But God's not required to answer those prayers. Miracles happen, but we call them miracles because they're rare. Christ died, and you and I will die too. It's time to start thinking about passing your work on to others."
His work was so good, too. He was at a new hinge-point, a pivot on which his research was ready to swing hard at injustice. He could see how ten more years of work - even two more years of work - would make a big difference. "I've got so much more to do; why is God taking me away now?" he asked. "I don't know, Mike. I just don't know."
Once again, as his last gift to me, he asked me to pray for him. It was hard to find the words, but I tried to talk to God the way Mike talked to me, letting Mike's life be a lesson in prayer. I don't like what you're doing, God. Make it better, make it right.
I suppose it is better for Mike not to be suffering, but Mike's death doesn't seem better, or right to me. I want him back, God. I know I can't have him back, not yet, but I miss him and it hurts.
If I cannot have him back, then give us this: a double portion of his spirit. The world is darker without him. I cannot see for the tears in my eyes; I cannot hear his voice anymore. I don't know how to pray. Give me his courage, and his wisdom, and his love. Let him be enshrined in me. Let all that was good in him live in my life now, and in the lives of his wife, his children, his students. Oh, this is the hard thing to ask: let us continue his work, with his spirit.
Mark Heard's words give me some hope:
Update: If you'd like to attend the memorial service on Wednesday, May 22, you may find details here. Mike asked that we wear bright colors, not black, to celebrate his life and to maintain our hope for the future.
We knew it was coming. We saw it a long way off.
It still hurts like hell.
That's what this bereavement feels like: a little piece of hell. Our word "bereave" shares roots with "robbery," "rupture," and "interrupt." Something has been stolen from us, something has been broken, broken off. It should not be this way.
The words of Mark Heard's song "Treasure of the Broken Land" are going through my mind again and again:
I thought our days were commonplaceI knew our days didn't number in the millions, but that's what my heart longed for, Mike. The loss hurts like hell because the time spent with you felt like heaven, like something that was meant to be eternal.
I thought they numbered in the millions
Now there's only the aftertaste
Of circumstance that can't pass this way again.
The realization that he is gone keeps hitting me in waves. Now, as I write this, I keep having to stop as my throat constricts and my heart pounds, waiting for the tremor to pass through me, waiting for this wave of anguish to roll over me.
Maybe telling some of his story - our story - will help.
I met Mike when I was a grad student at Penn State. He was a professor at Penn State, and a sub-deacon at our church. (This means he helped with bread and wine, and looked good in a dress.) We both attended St Andrew's Episcopal Church in State College, and together we served on the vestry.
Sometime in my last year or two of grad work - I don't remember exactly; odd how the most important things can seem so commonplace - he invited me to go out to breakfast at the Corner Room. Like so many other kind professors I knew, he insisted on paying. (I now do the same with my students; the little things that mark our lives often become the lessons we really teach.)
Mike was trying to live the best life he could, using his scholarly discipline to love his neighbor, and trying to love his God to the best of his ability. He'd begun reading Dallas Willard's book The Divine Conspiracy, a book about becoming an intentional follower of Christ. I knew Willard's work on Husserl, and I guess Mike figured that made me a good conversation partner. We started meeting every week; he'd buy me breakfast and we'd talk about another chapter of Willard's book.
I didn't know what to make of Willard, and I was reading a lot of other books (this is the life of a grad student, after all) so the book didn't sink in much. But Mike's life did. Mostly we let the book lead us to talking about how we were living, and why we did what we did. Mike had studied economics, and recently his work had become really important to him as he discovered how to combine the methods of his discipline and of developmental psychology to advocate for poor children. His field was not mine, but I gathered that this was the upshot: a little money invested in children will pay dividends in their lives forever.
 |
| Mike and I stand together in the Dexter Ave King Memorial Church |
A few years ago Mike was diagnosed with a tumor in his brain. He approached this with the same doggedness he approached everything else. He poured himself into researching treatments, and flew all over the country seeking good medical advice. The tumor was removed at the cost of one of his eyes, and he went through some grueling radiation. (I long for the day when we will look back on our modern cancer treatments the way we now look back on bloodletting.) A little over a year ago he was at Mayo, not too far from me. I drove over to see him and Mary, and they gave me the gift of letting me pray for them. I say this is a gift, because I am at best a fumbling prayer, and they made me feel like a priest. They were suffering, and here they were, giving me this gift of unmerited affirmation.
Last summer a friend from Australia passed through Sioux Falls while enjoying a long service leave. He had rented a car and was driving from Seattle to Birmingham. I took advantage of my sabbatical and hopped in the car with him so I could visit Mike and Mary. They'd just moved to a new home, everything was in boxes, Mike's tumor was growing again, and yet they took me in and made me feel like I was long-lost family recently found again.
I loved talking with Mike, because his offhand observations were like gold. And the way he talked to people, and treated people, were always examples of both wit and grace. He was kind, and that allowed him to talk straight, to say with smiling integrity and southern charm, exactly what he was thinking. He was a true Israelite, in whom there wasn't much guile, and the guile that was there made him fun, and good company. I loved the way he loved his wife, and his kids. He wore that on the outside, not for show, but because his love was too big to keep on the inside. I'm sure it was flawed, as all loves are, but it was also intentional, the centerpiece of his life.
A couple of months ago, Mike asked if we could talk. You never know when the conversation you have will be the last one you ever have; this was ours. He told me the doctor had bad news: he might make it to Christmas, but not likely past that.
Mike asked me if he had lived right, if he had done the right thing. Yes, oh yes, Mike. I don't see as God sees, but I don't see how God could say otherwise. You made my life better. You loved well, in everything you did.
He also asked me if it was okay to ask God for healing. This one was harder to answer, but I decided that after thirteen years of benefiting from his straight talk, from free breakfasts and warm hospitality, I owed him nothing less than that. "It's okay to ask, Mike," I hesitated, not wanting to say it, not wanting to believe what would come next. I could hear in his conversation that he was declining, that his memory was being eaten away by the tumor. "But God's not required to answer those prayers. Miracles happen, but we call them miracles because they're rare. Christ died, and you and I will die too. It's time to start thinking about passing your work on to others."
His work was so good, too. He was at a new hinge-point, a pivot on which his research was ready to swing hard at injustice. He could see how ten more years of work - even two more years of work - would make a big difference. "I've got so much more to do; why is God taking me away now?" he asked. "I don't know, Mike. I just don't know."
Once again, as his last gift to me, he asked me to pray for him. It was hard to find the words, but I tried to talk to God the way Mike talked to me, letting Mike's life be a lesson in prayer. I don't like what you're doing, God. Make it better, make it right.
I suppose it is better for Mike not to be suffering, but Mike's death doesn't seem better, or right to me. I want him back, God. I know I can't have him back, not yet, but I miss him and it hurts.
If I cannot have him back, then give us this: a double portion of his spirit. The world is darker without him. I cannot see for the tears in my eyes; I cannot hear his voice anymore. I don't know how to pray. Give me his courage, and his wisdom, and his love. Let him be enshrined in me. Let all that was good in him live in my life now, and in the lives of his wife, his children, his students. Oh, this is the hard thing to ask: let us continue his work, with his spirit.
Mark Heard's words give me some hope:
I see you now and then in dreamsMay light perpetual shine upon you, Mike. May I see you, and hear you, in my dreams. May the light of Christ that shone in you while you were awake now shine in us while you sleep. And may we all awake to the same dawn, soon.
Your voice sounds like it used to
I believe I will hear it again
God, how I love you!
*****
Update: If you'd like to attend the memorial service on Wednesday, May 22, you may find details here. Mike asked that we wear bright colors, not black, to celebrate his life and to maintain our hope for the future.
∞
I've been saying it to my students for years: more than just about any other group of non-scientists, hunters and fishers know the land we live on. This means that they also are the ones who most notice changes, just as you notice when something in your home is moved to a new place.
This article in Outside makes just this case, with the additional point that we who seek our food in the wild are the people who ought to be advocating for real conservation: not just changes to game laws, but changes in the way we live in relationship to our world.
Hunting, Fishing, and Climate Change
 |
| Trout angling in the Black Hills of South Dakota |
This article in Outside makes just this case, with the additional point that we who seek our food in the wild are the people who ought to be advocating for real conservation: not just changes to game laws, but changes in the way we live in relationship to our world.
∞
Visual Art and the Sacred: On The Importance Of Museums
I just finished writing an essay about the day Picasso made me fall down. I'm sending it off to my favorite editor, and if it's accepted, I'll post a link here.
The event I wrote about took place over two decades ago, when Picasso's Guernica was still housed in the Casón del Buen Retiro at the Prado Museum in Madrid. (It is now in the Reina Sofia, in a larger but - in my opinion - far inferior room. You can learn a bit about that here.)
Meanwhile, here's the upshot of my essay: education that's prepackaged and canned is not enough. Education is not the same as transferring information.
It involves informing students, to be sure, but what we tell students
should not satisfy them; it should provoke them to want more. Professors are not conduits of data; at our best we are like guides and gardeners.
As guides we point students in new directions and help them to see what
we see. Just as gardeners cannot make seeds grow but can prepare the
soil, so our teaching should be about increasing the fertility of minds
and then stepping back to watch what grows. Also, there is occasional
weeding involved.
As an undergraduate I knew very little about art. Part of this was my disposition: I liked representational art that was easy to look at quickly. Part of it was a matter of my worldview, and the suspicion that some modern artists who eschewed representational art were trying to undermine something good, obscurantists clouding clear vision.
Time spent in museums has changed me a good deal, as has making the acquaintance of Scott Parsons and Daniel Siedell, who have helped me quite a lot through their patient conversation and what they have written. (Scott and I wrote a chapter on teaching students about visual culture and the sacred in Ronald Bernier's short but illuminating book Beyond Belief, in which Dan also has a chapter.) Some of Makoto Fujimura's short writings, James Elkins's book On the Strange Place of Religion in Modern Art, and Gregory Wolfe's work at Image have also provided me with clear and helpful education about art that I resisted when I was younger.
Museums are certainly controversial. Curators make decisions that both expand and limit what we see, and this can be exploited to achieve sordid political ends. Some ideas and cultures are given preferential treatment while others are made less known by their omission. They tend to be located in large, wealthy cities, which means that poor people, rural people, and foreigners have limited or no access to them. But if the alternative is no museums, or all of the world's artifacts in private collections, I will take the museums we have, coupled with ever striving to make them better.
Because museums are a tangible way we can commit to remembering our history together. Museums are not safe deposit boxes where we lock away our treasures; they are Wunderkammers and classrooms where we may think and learn together.
I have come to love museums, especially the British Museum and the beautiful New Acropolis Museum in Athens (and I'm aware of the irony of that pairing) but I also love the little museums I find in small towns the world over.
The event I wrote about took place over two decades ago, when Picasso's Guernica was still housed in the Casón del Buen Retiro at the Prado Museum in Madrid. (It is now in the Reina Sofia, in a larger but - in my opinion - far inferior room. You can learn a bit about that here.)
 |
| New Acropolis Museum, Athens |
As an undergraduate I knew very little about art. Part of this was my disposition: I liked representational art that was easy to look at quickly. Part of it was a matter of my worldview, and the suspicion that some modern artists who eschewed representational art were trying to undermine something good, obscurantists clouding clear vision.
Time spent in museums has changed me a good deal, as has making the acquaintance of Scott Parsons and Daniel Siedell, who have helped me quite a lot through their patient conversation and what they have written. (Scott and I wrote a chapter on teaching students about visual culture and the sacred in Ronald Bernier's short but illuminating book Beyond Belief, in which Dan also has a chapter.) Some of Makoto Fujimura's short writings, James Elkins's book On the Strange Place of Religion in Modern Art, and Gregory Wolfe's work at Image have also provided me with clear and helpful education about art that I resisted when I was younger.
Museums are certainly controversial. Curators make decisions that both expand and limit what we see, and this can be exploited to achieve sordid political ends. Some ideas and cultures are given preferential treatment while others are made less known by their omission. They tend to be located in large, wealthy cities, which means that poor people, rural people, and foreigners have limited or no access to them. But if the alternative is no museums, or all of the world's artifacts in private collections, I will take the museums we have, coupled with ever striving to make them better.
Because museums are a tangible way we can commit to remembering our history together. Museums are not safe deposit boxes where we lock away our treasures; they are Wunderkammers and classrooms where we may think and learn together.
I have come to love museums, especially the British Museum and the beautiful New Acropolis Museum in Athens (and I'm aware of the irony of that pairing) but I also love the little museums I find in small towns the world over.
∞
What Jesus Didn't Say
My latest contribution to Sojourners' "God's Politics" blog.
Some reflections on the surprising encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman he meets at the well in the fourth chapter of John's Gospel. Here's a little taste of the post:
Some reflections on the surprising encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman he meets at the well in the fourth chapter of John's Gospel. Here's a little taste of the post:
"We can get a lot of attention in the media by self-righteous grandstanding, but wouldn’t it be better to follow the example Jesus sets here? Rather than telling people caught in desperate sin how far their sin has removed them from God, why not invite them to come to worship?"
∞
Pornography and Prayer
A recent Wall Street Journal article talks about the way online pornography quickly develops new neural pathways that are difficult to undo. As the author puts it,
To put it differently, everyone worships something, and what we worship changes us. This is one of the good reasons to engage in prayer and worship that are intentional. (On a related note, it's a good reason to forgive, too: forgiveness keeps us from internalizing the pain others have caused us, where it can fester and devour us from within.)
(If you read my writing with any regularity you will recognize these as themes I frequently return to. If you're interested, I've written more here and here.)
One of the problems of philosophy of religion has been to try to identify that which certainly deserves our worship. This quest for certainty has often (in my view) distracted us from the more important work of liturgy, wherein we acknowledge our limitations, including our uncertainty. A good liturgy involves worshiping what we believe to be worth worshiping, while acknowledging our own limitations. After all, if worship doesn't include humility on the part of the worshiper, it is probably self-worship.
Another way of putting this is in terms of love. Charles Peirce wrote about this more than a century ago. There are many forms of worship, many kinds of prayer. Without intending to demean the prayer and worship of others, Peirce nevertheless offers what seems to him to be worth our attention: agape love, the love that seeks to nurture others:
I am not trying to moralize about pornography. In fact, I see some good in pornography, just as I recognize goodness in the aromas coming from a kitchen where good cooking happens. Pornography probably speaks to some of our most basic desires and needs, for intimacy, affection, attention, and love, as well as our simple, animal longings.
Still, like aromas from a fine kitchen, porn stimulates us without nourishing us. And by giving it too much attention we may be training ourselves to scorn good nutrition. The WSJ article suggests giving up the stimulation as a means of getting over it. I think this is incomplete without a redirection of the attention to what does in fact nourish us. Prayer and worship that refocus our conscious minds on what really merits our attention can prepare us to receive - and to give - good nutrition. That is, by shifting some of our attention from cherishing need-love to cherishing gift-love - from the love that uses others to the love that seeks their flourishing - we might make ourselves into the kind of great lovers our world most needs.
"Repetitive viewing of pornography resets neural pathways, creating the need for a type and level of stimulation not satiable in real life. The user is thrilled, then doomed."Thankfully, "doomed" may be an overstatement. As William James and so many others remind us, our habits make us who we are, so we may be able to form new habits to supplant or redirect old ones. I'm no psychologist, but it seems obvious to me that what we hold in front of our consciousness will synechistically affect everything else we think about and do. So it is no surprise that the author of this WSJ article reports that viewing porn may lead to viewing women as things rather than as people.
To put it differently, everyone worships something, and what we worship changes us. This is one of the good reasons to engage in prayer and worship that are intentional. (On a related note, it's a good reason to forgive, too: forgiveness keeps us from internalizing the pain others have caused us, where it can fester and devour us from within.)
(If you read my writing with any regularity you will recognize these as themes I frequently return to. If you're interested, I've written more here and here.)
One of the problems of philosophy of religion has been to try to identify that which certainly deserves our worship. This quest for certainty has often (in my view) distracted us from the more important work of liturgy, wherein we acknowledge our limitations, including our uncertainty. A good liturgy involves worshiping what we believe to be worth worshiping, while acknowledging our own limitations. After all, if worship doesn't include humility on the part of the worshiper, it is probably self-worship.
Another way of putting this is in terms of love. Charles Peirce wrote about this more than a century ago. There are many forms of worship, many kinds of prayer. Without intending to demean the prayer and worship of others, Peirce nevertheless offers what seems to him to be worth our attention: agape love, the love that seeks to nurture others:
"Man's highest developments are social; and religion, though it begins in a seminal individual inspiration, only comes to full flower in a great church coextensive with a civilization. This is true of every religion, but supereminently so of the religion of love. Its ideal is that the whole world shall be united in the bond of a common love of God accomplished by each man's loving his neighbour. Without a church, the religion of love can have but a rudimentary existence; and a narrow, little exclusive church is almost worse than none. A great catholic church is wanted." (Peirce, Collected Papers, 6.442-443)Notice that Peirce uses a small "c" in "catholic." He wasn't trying to proselytize for one sect; quite the opposite. He was trying to proclaim the importance of a church - that is, of a community that shares a commitment to communal worship - of nurturing love.
I am not trying to moralize about pornography. In fact, I see some good in pornography, just as I recognize goodness in the aromas coming from a kitchen where good cooking happens. Pornography probably speaks to some of our most basic desires and needs, for intimacy, affection, attention, and love, as well as our simple, animal longings.
Still, like aromas from a fine kitchen, porn stimulates us without nourishing us. And by giving it too much attention we may be training ourselves to scorn good nutrition. The WSJ article suggests giving up the stimulation as a means of getting over it. I think this is incomplete without a redirection of the attention to what does in fact nourish us. Prayer and worship that refocus our conscious minds on what really merits our attention can prepare us to receive - and to give - good nutrition. That is, by shifting some of our attention from cherishing need-love to cherishing gift-love - from the love that uses others to the love that seeks their flourishing - we might make ourselves into the kind of great lovers our world most needs.
∞
Spammer, Think Of Your Soul
I am barraged by spam and robocalls. Most of the email I get is spam, and similarly most of the calls I get are from machines that have been programmed to try to sell me something.
There are several things that bother me about this. One of the simplest is that I am receiving so many calls and emails that I don't want. The emails are a small bother; my spam filter catches some, and I delete the rest. It's tedious but tolerable. The robocalls are a bigger bother, because they've trained me to no longer answer the phone. Everything goes to voicemail unless I recognize the call as coming from a friend or family member.
But what bothers me most is the exclusion of rational conversation. I would love to be able to tell the spammers and robocallers that I, on principle, do not make impulse buys. I do not respond to any emailed ads, and I never buy something offered to me by a stranger over the phone. Nothing you send my way will interest me. In fact, just sending it my way, unsolicited, elicits the opposite response in me.
There is no way to say this, though. There is no conversation to be had. For a while I did answer the phone, and I asked the callers to remove my number from their lists. Until one caller told me, in no uncertain terms, that he would not do so. "But the law requires it," I protested. "No, you motherf***er," he said, "I will not, and there's nothing you can do about it." I protested again, and he again repeated his coarse epithet. There was no conversation to be had with him, unless I was willing to be his cash-provider. To him, I was not even a potential customer. I was a motherf***er, something not to be conversed with, but to be used for income.
One strong appeal of reason is that it is a substitute for violence. If we both want the same thing, we can reason together about whether it is possible to share resources, to take turns, to seek goods elsewhere. If we have a dispute, we do not need to resort to blows; we can seek a resolution in mutually acceptable terms. But we can only do this if our differences can be mediated by reason. When conversation is cut off absolutely, reason's reach is cut short.
Treating other people solely as means to income rather than as ends worthy of their own consideration independent of my interests cuts off conversation by deciding in advance that these mere means can have nothing to say that is worth listening to.
This angers me. In the ten minutes it has taken me to write this, I have received eight emails, seven of them spam. So I must say it here, even if I cannot say it to those who so mistreat me: I will continue to long for your rationality, for your willingness to remain within the bonds of society. But you must know that the habits of your capitalism are not only illegal but unethical and unkind. Which means that you are cutting yourself off from the people around you, one habit at a time. You may be gaining wealth, but what will you do with it? What will it profit you to gain the whole world and to lose the people around you, to lose your very soul? You may think you are gaining, but with each email sent, with each call made, you are spending a sliver of what makes you part of the community of humankind.
There are several things that bother me about this. One of the simplest is that I am receiving so many calls and emails that I don't want. The emails are a small bother; my spam filter catches some, and I delete the rest. It's tedious but tolerable. The robocalls are a bigger bother, because they've trained me to no longer answer the phone. Everything goes to voicemail unless I recognize the call as coming from a friend or family member.
But what bothers me most is the exclusion of rational conversation. I would love to be able to tell the spammers and robocallers that I, on principle, do not make impulse buys. I do not respond to any emailed ads, and I never buy something offered to me by a stranger over the phone. Nothing you send my way will interest me. In fact, just sending it my way, unsolicited, elicits the opposite response in me.
There is no way to say this, though. There is no conversation to be had. For a while I did answer the phone, and I asked the callers to remove my number from their lists. Until one caller told me, in no uncertain terms, that he would not do so. "But the law requires it," I protested. "No, you motherf***er," he said, "I will not, and there's nothing you can do about it." I protested again, and he again repeated his coarse epithet. There was no conversation to be had with him, unless I was willing to be his cash-provider. To him, I was not even a potential customer. I was a motherf***er, something not to be conversed with, but to be used for income.
One strong appeal of reason is that it is a substitute for violence. If we both want the same thing, we can reason together about whether it is possible to share resources, to take turns, to seek goods elsewhere. If we have a dispute, we do not need to resort to blows; we can seek a resolution in mutually acceptable terms. But we can only do this if our differences can be mediated by reason. When conversation is cut off absolutely, reason's reach is cut short.
Treating other people solely as means to income rather than as ends worthy of their own consideration independent of my interests cuts off conversation by deciding in advance that these mere means can have nothing to say that is worth listening to.
This angers me. In the ten minutes it has taken me to write this, I have received eight emails, seven of them spam. So I must say it here, even if I cannot say it to those who so mistreat me: I will continue to long for your rationality, for your willingness to remain within the bonds of society. But you must know that the habits of your capitalism are not only illegal but unethical and unkind. Which means that you are cutting yourself off from the people around you, one habit at a time. You may be gaining wealth, but what will you do with it? What will it profit you to gain the whole world and to lose the people around you, to lose your very soul? You may think you are gaining, but with each email sent, with each call made, you are spending a sliver of what makes you part of the community of humankind.
∞
Unwritten
Some of my favorite passages in any texts are about texts
that cannot be read.
Take the story of a man writing on the ground with his finger thousands of years ago. We do not know what he wrote, we only know that he wrote.
The story is in John’s Gospel, and the scene was this: some men brought Jesus a woman whom, they said, they had caught in adultery.
The passage does not occur in the oldest manuscripts, but it appears in some that are old enough that this pericope has been included in the canonical text.
And it is a delicious passage.
For one thing, it reminds us that even if we have the whole of the Scriptures, we still do not know everything Jesus said or wrote. Or thought.
It is one of the blank spaces in which commentary has not yet been written. Which makes it an invitation to imagine – not to devise religious rules on the basis of conjecture, but to engage in the work of strenuous wonder: what might he have written?
I came up with an answer once, and Merold Westphal put it even better in his book Suspicion and Faith. I won’t spoil it for you by telling you now.
In his writing on Aristotle, Charles Peirce sometimes invokes “that scamp, Apellicon,” the ancient editor of Aristotle's texts. Peirce charges him with altering Aristotle’s texts so that we now must guess at what Aristotle really wrote. (And by "guess" I mean a long and difficult reasoning process involving imagination and testing of hypotheses, not just wild conjectures.)
As I have read Peirce’s manuscripts, occasionally I’ve wanted to curse some unknown scamp who mishandled Peirce’s papers (perhaps Peirce himself) as when he will say “see my note on page 18 of this manuscript” and then I discover that the manuscript is incomplete, ending on page 17.
So I have to guess. What might Peirce have written?
Take the story of a man writing on the ground with his finger thousands of years ago. We do not know what he wrote, we only know that he wrote.
The story is in John’s Gospel, and the scene was this: some men brought Jesus a woman whom, they said, they had caught in adultery.
The passage does not occur in the oldest manuscripts, but it appears in some that are old enough that this pericope has been included in the canonical text.
And it is a delicious passage.
For one thing, it reminds us that even if we have the whole of the Scriptures, we still do not know everything Jesus said or wrote. Or thought.
It is one of the blank spaces in which commentary has not yet been written. Which makes it an invitation to imagine – not to devise religious rules on the basis of conjecture, but to engage in the work of strenuous wonder: what might he have written?
I came up with an answer once, and Merold Westphal put it even better in his book Suspicion and Faith. I won’t spoil it for you by telling you now.
In his writing on Aristotle, Charles Peirce sometimes invokes “that scamp, Apellicon,” the ancient editor of Aristotle's texts. Peirce charges him with altering Aristotle’s texts so that we now must guess at what Aristotle really wrote. (And by "guess" I mean a long and difficult reasoning process involving imagination and testing of hypotheses, not just wild conjectures.)
As I have read Peirce’s manuscripts, occasionally I’ve wanted to curse some unknown scamp who mishandled Peirce’s papers (perhaps Peirce himself) as when he will say “see my note on page 18 of this manuscript” and then I discover that the manuscript is incomplete, ending on page 17.
So I have to guess. What might Peirce have written?
Aldo Leopold wrote about this in his essay “The River of the Mother of God,” which was named for a river on an old map of South America. Some explorer had come upon the river in
the wilderness but did not know where it began or ended, so he drew a short
section of river without beginning or end, leaving it to future cartographers
to fill in the unknown sections.
It’s good to have some mysteries, some lacunae in our
knowledge.
Or rather, it’s good to be aware of some of the gaps in what we know.
As Socrates knew, this awareness of our own limitations is
one of the beginnings of the love of wisdom.
From there, curiosity draws us further on.