AncienTrails

“No one burns the Quran,” read the headline in Tuesday’s L’Osservatore Romano.

Lughnasa                                     New (Back to School) Moon

OK.  Here’s a head scratcher.  Some punk in Fla., probably a self-proclaimed minister, decides on National Burn a Quran day*.  Turns out this makes Muslims mad.  Well. It’s apparently not safe to just be a nut job anymore.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury was a cri de coeur  against the burning of all books.  The bonfire of the vanities, a second rate movie and good, not great novel by Thomas Wolfe, got its name from a practice made famous by the Florentine Savonarola who, in 1498, called on Florence to “burn all its books, paintings, sculptures, luxuries and fineries — everything, in a word, that drove men away from higher spirituality.”  Book burning is a time-tested way of expressing disgust, displeasure, fear, dictatorial authority and a deep-seated anti-intellectual fervor.  This latter, especially, often brings just folks into the event and makes them feel comfortable with their often incoherent distrust of, as Spiro Agnew said, “the nattering nabobs of negativism.”

I wonder if protected speech extends to protecting speech, which would include, at least in my mind, books.  Burning flags, bibles, qurans, Harry Potter novels, Renaissance paintings and books seems to lend an air of finality to the event.  The cremation sought is the extinction not of the physical article but of the spiritual peril it represents.  Here’s the big news to all you potential book burners.  They are not the problem.  The problem lies with authors, writers and artists of all kinds.  They insist on an unfettered search for various kinds of truth and fiction.  Burning a book has the same impact on authorship as burning a computer does on the internet, it confuses the vessel with the message.

Can it infuriate people?  Inflame them?  Create an emotional conflagration?  Could it spark a real political firestorm?  Yes, as can all acts of ignorance.  If we allow it to do so, however, we only prove the truth of Saul Alinsky, the great organizer in Chicago, when he said:  “The action is in the reaction.”  This pistol toting pentecostal preacher will not be the problem if he goes ahead, and if you read the article like I do, I bet he will.  No, the problem will be in the Muslim reaction, in the liberal reaction.  Is what he is doing despicable?  Yes, because it represents a small victory of dogma over good will, of narrow doctrine over larger virtues.  Is what he doing important? No.  Not at all.

Imagine if the quran burning had already occurred and we had not afforded him a national and an international stage.  Would anyone care outside the members of this congregation and their tiny number of followers?  No.  If you had not heard of it, it would not matter.  Does that make it all right?  Of course not, it merely points out that small minds and head-in-the-sand thinking exist in our century as it has in all centuries.  Should we oppose it?  I suppose so, but I think it comes down hard beside the point, just as book-burning itself does.  Now, if they start coming for authors, artists, movie actors, poets and dancers we had better re-read the 2nd amendment and form up an aesthetic and intellectual militia. We could have a poetry slam, a book fair, a movie festival, a display of great American painters, a contemporary dance event right alongside.  Wouldn’t that get’em?

*”GAINESVILLE, Fla. – A Christian minister vowed Tuesday to go ahead with plans to burn copies of the Quran to protest the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks despite warnings from the White House and the top U.S. general in Afghanistan that doing so would endanger American troops overseas.

Jones, who runs the small, evangelical Christian church with an anti-Islam philosophy, says he has received more than 100 death threats and has started wearing a .40-caliber pistol strapped to his hip.

The threats started not long after the 58-year-old minister proclaimed in July that he would stage “International Burn a Quran Day.” Supporters have been mailing copies of the Islamic holy text to his Dove World Outreach Center to be incinerated in a bonfire that evening.

Fulcrum Books

Lughnasa                                   Waning Grandchildren Moon

Fulcrum books.  An idea I’ve been playing with for the last couple of weeks or so.  A fulcrum book (my definition) changed the course of your life, altered a point of view or opened a new world for you.  I have several that fit that definition, among them:  War and Peace, The Trial, The Glass-Bead Game, Steppenwolf, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Mists of Avalon.  There are more, too, many more I imagine if I go back through my reading history with some care and I intend to do just that.

A fulcrum book has found a place to set that lever that can move a world.  In The Trial, for example, the givenness of bureaucracy began to shift for me.  It was as if the earth had moved.  Not only was bureaucracy inhuman whether at the high school or college, the social security office or the corporate offices of industry, it was also silly.  Absurd.  Poor K, trying forever to get through the doors into the house of justice as fable, Before the Law, suggests.  Then, K, dying, in his own words, “Like a dog.” without a trial or mercy.  Never again would I assume that the force of a bureaucracy was unquestioned and unquestionable.  The Trial also pushed me, along with The Stranger, another fulcrum book for me, to search for my own meaning, make my own path.

More on fulcrum books later.

One Cute Ruth

Summer                                      Waxing Grandchildren Moon

Three out of three grandparents agree.  This is one cute Ruth.  She’s four and smart as a whip.  Athletic, artistic and stubborn, too.  Watch out boys.

I’m still exhausted from the last week and a half.  Spent today getting to 95% in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.  This is an amazing work of art and one I will reread for sure.

Tried Latin but my eyes wouldn’t focus.  Tomorrow.  If I can’t get far enough, I’ll just cancel class.  When you’re paying by the hour–literally, you can do that.

Night’s quiet cloak has fallen over us.  Again.  A time of serenity, of possibility.  Of vulnerability.  It’s allure is so strong, so winsome.  Easy to create in this time.

Still Reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Summer                                              Waning Strawberry Moon

“if your vision is for a year, plant wheat. If your vision is for ten years, plant trees. If your vision is for a lifetime, plant people.”- Chinese Proverb

Ever have days that just happen, disappear with little trace?  The last couple have been like that for me.  The ear, the fuzz from the infection and a slow take on things.  That’s the extent of it.

I’m now in the last quarter of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.  I’ve been at it since sometime early June, late May.  Now, I’ve been a little slow, I admit, but it is 2,340 pages long in print.  I’m reading it on the Kindle.  It carries a slow, but steady course in Chinese logic, especially as related to war and politics, Confucian and Taoist influences on Chinese culture in general and the courts and military in particular and a careful rendering of the demise of one of Empire, the Han.  The Han Empire, the Tang, the Song and the Ming have pride of place as golden ages of the Chinese people.

(this is the entry way to the tomb of Cao Cao, the arch villain of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.  Chinese archaeologists discovered it last year and opened it on Chinese television last month.  this stuff is still very relevant.)

It’s interesting to consider that the Chinese have not one golden age, but four when culture flourished and the nation was at peace.  I don’t know the whole well enough to say for sure, but one of the long lasting appeals of this 14th century (Song dynasty) novel may be the dissolution of the first of those.

My interest in China will never be more than that of a journeyman’s, perhaps no more than an  apprentice, but it fascinates me.  Part of that fascination is imagining what it would be like to live in a culture with that much depth, where a person in Shanghai today could read the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and recognize not only names, but the culture of this ancient past.

In one view those of in the United States can look only as far back as 1776, in another 1602.  If we stretch our gaze back further, we can cross into European history and follow it back into the world of ancient Rome and further back yet, ancient Greece, but there, for the most part, it stops.  Yes, you can argue the history of the Jews and the Egyptians are also our history and they are in terms of influences intellectual and artistic, but I don’t have a personal bond even with the ancient Greeks.

The closest I can get in experience to that of the contemporary Chinese is to follow my Celtic line back into the mists of Celtic myth and legend.

Anyhow, it’s been an interesting read and I’ll be sorry when I’m finished.  Not sorry enough, however, to pick up another Chinese classic for a few months.

Still Reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Summer                                   Waxing Strawberry Moon

Hot today.  At least by our standards.  85.  Plus a dewpoint of 70.  Not outside weather for this gardener.  I did work outside this morning, weeding in the orchard and checking the trees.  I’m going to need a consultation with Ecological Gardens because some of the stuff they planted, I don’t recognize and I don’t want to remove friendlies out of ignorance.

Kate’s off getting a pre-op physical, having dental work done and nails and hair.  A sort of clean up, paint up, fix up day for her.  Her surgery is a week from tomorrow and can’t come a day too soon for her.  The pain in her hip gives her fits during the day when she walks and at night when she sleeps.  She looks forward to having more than two sleeping positions.  So would I.

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms has held me for several weeks now, though I’m not reading in large chunks.  It’s a three-volume work about the end of the Han Dynasty and the emergence of the three kingdoms of Wu, Wei and Shu.  This period only last for about 45 years, but it holds a position of particular importance in Chinese culture, with many of its figures like Liu Bei, Cao Cao, Zhuge Liang and the three brothers:  Guan Yu, Zhang Fei and Liu Bei attaining iconic and archetypal significance.

(Liu Bei, Zhang Fei and Guan Yu)

It’s not an exact analogy at all, but it resembles the mythos of the American West, a time when men were men and some men were very good and others were very bad.

If you enjoy political and military tales or have an interest in the logic of other cultures, then the Three Kingdoms may enthrall you as it has me.  If you’re not sure, I recommend seeing the Red Cliffs, the two disc version.  The movie showcases all the main characters and records a pivotal battle, one that has ongoing importance in Chinese culture.  Not to mention that it’s great fun.  Again, if political and military intrigue fascinate you.

One or Many?

Beltane                           Full Planting Moon

Finally.  A morning with no other responsibilities so I can go out and plant the remaining veggies.  After that, it’s time to get to work on all the things I’ve neglected, the flower beds.  We have more flower beds than we do vegetable garden, so I’m talking a lot of stuff to do.

I’m not yet feeling great, but I feel better.  Sluggish, tired, but not wasted.  The sun will feel good.

Here’s a weird idea.  It may have no basis, but it flitted through my head the other day.  I’ve been reading the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of the most popular books of Chinese classical literature.  The Dream of the Red Chamber and Journey to the West are two others, both on my list and in my house.  This is a long book, really long and its narrative style takes some getting used to, not to mention the Russian like propensity for having way more names than this guy can recall easily.  But. It does show a clear thread of Chinese culture, that is, obedience to the state is the norm, the heroic “side” in a conflict.  If you’re a rebel in the Three Kingdoms, you’re a bad guy.  If you convert from being a rebel to being a loyal follower of the Emperor (the last of the Hans in this case), then you’ve taken a step toward redemption.

I’m reading this literature to get a sense of the Chinese geist, the recurring themes that define and shape their sense of themselves.  Chineseness, I guess you could call it.  This has been a long project, lasting many years for me, and engaged in a very unsystematic way, but I have covered a lot of history, film, art, literature including poetry and even a tiny bit of language.

OK.  Let’s juxtapose this rebel bad, obedient good theme to a consistent thread in American film and literature, that is, rebel good, obedient bad.  Our founding story after all is one of rebellion, foisting off the cloying grip of mother Britain.  Think of Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter where Dimsdale pales morally when compared to Hester Prinn.  An anthropology professor of mine, David Scruton, said Americans are infracaninophiles, lovers of the under dog.  Unions against big business.  Slaves against masters.  Women against men.  Incumbents versus challengers.  Rebel Without a Cause.  Twelve Angry Men.  The American individualist.

This seems to be a fundamental polarity between the Chinese, submit to family and state (a Confucian ideal), and Americans, the rugged Individualist, Self-Reliant, Don’t Tread on Me types.  Right?  I’ve always heard it put something like this.  Admittedly these are sweeping generalizations, but that’s what I’m after here, the broad stroke that has some anchors in culture and history.

Here’s the weird idea.  What if the broad strokes mean exactly the opposite of what we take them to mean?  In other words, the Chinese emphasize in literature, film, Confucian thought and political rhetoric obedience to the state and family because the Chinese are, in fact, a nation of rebels, individualists.  I know this seems like an odd position, but it comes from a surprising encounter I had with MingJen Chen about a year ago.  Jackie Chan had just said that he thought the Chinese people needed to be controlled.  I asked Mingjen about this and she surprised me by agreeing with Jackie Chan.

What if American’s emphasize individualism in literature, art, film, novels and political rhetoric because we are, in fact, a nation of conformists who use the veneer of rugged individualism to cover a submissive spirit, one that will not struggle with what Emerson called the establishment.  Or, at least, won’t struggle so hard with it that it fears its foundations in jeopardy?

A weird idea, I know, but perhaps a useful one nonetheless.

This idea comes in part from the Jungian notion that we often emphasize in our reading, our writing, our attempts to interpret the world those things that are missing in our life, the thing we would like to live towards or into.  It also comes in part from the realization that, like most things, the notions of individualism and collectivity are not unrelated, isolated realities, but ones that bump up against each other in everyday life.

Cry the Beloved Country

Spring                                                      Waxing Flower Moon

The crescent flower moon slung itself just beneath the tree to the west, over Round Lake.  A thin cloud passed across it, perhaps a cloud like the one Muhammad rode through on his way to Jerusalem and the Holy Mount.  These crescent moons have South Carolina and the Arab world in their wake, calling to mind on the one hand a new meaning to hiking the Appalachian trail and on the other lakes and rivers of sand, desert nights with stars so numerous no Caliph could count them all and tents raised near a palm filled caravan serai.

Kate and I watched Cry, the Beloved Country, only about 15 years after it made it to the screen.  I’ve never read this book though it’s one I’ve had on my list a long time.   Richard Harris and James Earl Jones are titans as far as I’m concerned, able to bring gravitas, authenticity and depth to movies in which they appear.  In one of the more memorable scenes in the movies, James Earl Jones and Richard Harris, the father of a murderer and the father of the victim, unknown to each other, yet coming from home ground close to each other, speak about the murder.  If you can watch this scene unmoved, you’ve lost touch with something important.  Four stars.

On a less elevated note I’ve begun watching Spartacus:  Blood and Sand.  It’s on the instant play feature Netflix has available through the wii.  It’s compelling tv, not as good as Cry, the Beloved Country but as a sand and sandal adventure yarn, it’s pretty damn good.

Throwing Out 50 Things

Spring                                                   Awakening Moon

OK, then.  10 things out of 50 are on their way out the door.  An old exercise mat, a coffee table, a chair frame with no seat, a pair of mukluks (anybody want’em) that proved more complicated than my manual dexterity could handle, several plastic dog food buckets saved for, well, what were they saved for, anyhow?  Can’t recall.  A few books, one piece of art so far.  It feels good to get this started.

Several books I moved a while back went up on shelves, two photographs Joseph sent–him with Gabe and him with Ruth, his nephew and niece–are on the wall.  Again putzy stuff, just requires setting aside the time.  This office has a distinctly open feel and I’m not done yet.  There’s that old Dell I’ve been hanging on to because, well, I might rig it in parallel with my new one, which is now old.  Never did it.  Not likely to do it.  So, out it goes.

We’re underway again, still on the  declutter express.

Got some more Latin done, too.  Chapter 11, those pesky personal pronouns: ego, tu, vos.  Is, ea, id.  His, hers, it.  Are you being jerked about by your it?  That’s what id means in Latin.

Been reading a very strange book by Iain Banks, Transition.  It’s told in long passages in the first person, but with several different characters.  It’s good, but I find the style, I don’t know, annoying, distracting, something.

Did a little bit of work out in the garden, too.  Not much, removed some mulch, replaced some rock in the herb spiral, checked on the netaphim I need to repair.  Happily less than I thought.  Easing into it.

Preachers Who Are Not Believers

Spring                                   Waxing Awakening Moon

Gave Liberal II this morning.  Lot of conversation, a little consternation.  Best piece was a conversation with Ian Boswell, the music director.  We discussed the limits of rationality and the integration of reason and soulfulness that great music represents.  He pointed to the late sonatas of Beethoven.  This has given me food for thought for Liberal III:  The Future.

The work I do for Groveland and the transition from Christian to Unitarian got a piece of context I hadn’t had from this very interesting paper:  Preachers Who Are Not Believers.  This is qualitative research done by a social worker with five subjects.  She has done extensive interviewing with each one and her co-researcher, Daniel Dennet, the theophobe philosopher from Tufts University carefully explain that the sample is too small to allow any general conclusions to be drawn.  Each of the clergy self-describe as non-believers though what they mean by that phrase has enormous plasticity.

If the topic interests you, I encourage you to look at the paper, the link above will take you there.  What intrigued me was their guess about why there is such a phenomenon in the first place; that is, how to people end up in the ministry then come to lose their faith.  I think they’re right.

Let me quote:  “The answer seems to lie in the seminary experience shared by all our pastors, liberals and literals alike. Even some conservative seminaries staff their courses on the Bible with professors who are trained in textual criticism, the historical methods of biblical scholarship, and what is taught in those courses is not what the young seminarians learned in Sunday school, even in the more liberal churches. In seminary they were introduced to many of the details that have been gleaned by centuries of painstaking research about how various ancient texts came to be written, copied, translated, and, after considerable jockeying and logrolling, eventually assembled into the Bible we read today. It is hard if not impossible to square these new facts with the idea that the Bible is in all its particulars a true account of actual events, let alone the inerrant word of God.”

They don’t mention the equally corrosive discipline of church history.  In church history the actual stories of doctrinal development give a historically relativistic inflection to them that does serious damage to their confident assertion.  My favorite example is the trinity, a concept which passed by one vote at the Council of Nicaea embedded in the Nicene Creed.   There are many other unsavory moments in church history.  Among them is Martin Luther’s response to a peasant’s rebellion -Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants. Another is the annihilation of the Cathars in France and, in general, the often violent response to those not in agreement with one particular doctrinal nuance or another.

If you put the historical reality of church history in tandem with textual or higher criticism of the Bible, it is impossible not at least consider whether the church and its foundations are things of this world, not another.   It is the frisson of doubt, strengthened by a hundred small instances that leads to faith changes, often of considerable magnitude.

“Biblical criticism is a form of Historical Criticism that seeks to analyze the Bible through asking certain questions of the text, such as: Who wrote it? When was it written? To whom was it written? Why was it written? What was the historical, geographical, and cultural setting of the text? How well preserved is the original text? How unified is the text? What sources were used by the author? How was the text transmitted over time? What is the text’s genre and from what sociologial setting is it derived? When and how did it come to become part of the Bible?”

The biggest problem though, and the Preachers research spells this out, too, is the gulf this creates between clergy and congregation.  The gulf between clergy and congregation only grows over time and it does so for some very straight forward reasons.  First, to teach others a new and especially an unpleasant truth you have to have a clear and profound grasp of it yourself.  Though the training in biblical scholarship in seminary is extensive, the actual field of information is vast.  Old Testament Ph. D.s are among the most difficult in scholarship.  At least five languages have to be mastered:  Ancient Biblical Hebrew, ancient Greek, Latin, Aramaic and Ugaritic or Akkadian.  Then are the techniques of higher criticism themselves:  literary, form-critical, historical, redactive, rhetorical, source, narrative and textual.  Not only do they have to be  learned and applied to a vast body of literature, much more than the Old Testament contains, one also has to learn the history of these disciplines themselves.

Textual criticism alone is a large field.  The Dead Sea Scrolls come into play, for example, in attempting to discern the oldest texts available for certain biblical passages, as do many other documents.  This is all in search of the oldest and therefore closest to the original text, one presumed to be more authentic for that reason.  It also involves comparing available texts against each other.

My point here is that this is a difficult body of scholarship to assimilate, let alone deploy creatively in the development of sermons once a week.  Without substantial command of the disciplines involved it, it is difficult at best to explain this material to laypeople.  This is a task fraught with tension for a clergy because each instance of information that runs contrary to biblical views received in childhood runs the risk of creating real problems in the life of the congregation.

This means that such fundamental clergy tasks as preaching and adult education often proceed from very, very different starting assumptions from that of the laity.  This makes honesty and authenticity in the ministry almost impossible.  The issue here is real and deeper than even this brief explication can suggest.  Just ask your minister.

Turning 63

Imbolc                            New Moon (Wild)

“Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”- Franz Kafka

It’s not an especially significant birthday in the way of things.  63 is a lull between OMG I’m in my 60’s and 65, the all purpose retirement age in former times.  The lack of symbolic significance and its very ordinariness makes me happy to turn 63.  I have no expectations about life at 63.  So far, the 60’s have been kind to me.  I’ve lost no friends, no family.  With the exception of Kate’s back trouble, no one I know has a serious ongoing health problem.  Frank Broderick who at 77 is now in his 15th year after his first heart attack manages his cardio problems, proving that even yesterday’s fatal condition can now fit into a long life.

(Rembrandt self-portrait at 63)

Turning the prism one more  time 63 astonishes me.  Why?  Because of its very ordinariness and because of its lack of symbolic significance.  Not so long ago, say when I was in my teens, folks my age had begun to teeter toward a time of serious old age and disability.  That point in life is still not on the observable horizon for me.  In fact, it’s possible some number of us reaching this age will be relatively healthy and able until our final days.  Quite a change.

On a personal note I have made my peace with the world in terms of success.  What I’ve had, little but some, will do.  I enjoy the love of a good woman and five dogs here at home and the circle  expands to nuclear family and extended family and friends like the Woollies, the docents and the Sierra Club folks.  My days have meaningful labor that changes with the seasons.  I live in a country I love, a state, and a home.

Intellectually and creatively, it seems, I’ve just begun to come into my own, which means there are satisfying frontiers still ahead.

Then there is Kafka.  Kafka.  What an odd and yet appropriate quote from  him.  He knew with fine detail the absurdity of modern life, yet he  found aesthetics central to a life of real engagement.  Me, too.