Dave | unobtrusive lucidity

Yeah, Yeah, Deck the Freakin’ Halls

Tonight Karen and I planned to put up our Christmas tree and decorations and so forth. Except, by the time I got home for the evening, we were rushing to get dinner down before she had to leave for her obligations for the evening (ultimately she didn’t even manage to eat a wonderful dinner she had prepared), and we hopefully talked of getting it done tomorrow. Except that tomorrow I’m tied up putting the finishing touches on the set for a Christmas drama I’m directing this weekend. Which I’m also rehearsing for Thursday, and…well, no tree until the weekend. If we’re lucky.

After she leaves, I realize that Thursday evening is my last chance to get Christmas cards to my drama friends at my faith community. So, I scrambled to run out and buy cards and sign them and then panicked when I realized that I haven’t sent cards to my family on the West Coast, and God only knows what time they’ll get there now.

So, in the interest of being productive, I took the opportunity to pull Karen’s gift out of hiding and wrap it while she’s gone. I can’t wrap worth anything, so I searched for a gift bag and tissue paper, my usual tactic. We didn’t have anything big enough to come close to fitting the box (why are things packaged in such big freakin’ boxes????). So, grumbling through the apartment using foul language, I went in search of wrapping paper, knowing the bleak future I had attempting to wrap the gift.

No wrapping paper. None. A scrap here and there, but nothing in the apartment with enough paper to wrap the gift.

So, it got stuffed back into hiding until the weekend, when I won’t get any of the other stuff I have to get done done because I’ll be dealing with all of the Christmas stuff that I didn’t get done tonight.

Then I had to talk to my less-than-techno-savvy parents about accessing my wish list on Amazon.

Then I had a small panic attack thinking about how we’re going to afford all of the people we have yet to buy for.

Why can’t we just celebrate the Christmas season without all of this? Why the materialism? Why all the stuff and the headaches? I just want to go be with family and enjoy the company of loved ones and forget all of this stress.

No wonder people hate the holidays. Sheesh.

Connecting the Dots

In my last post, I mentioned that I wasn’t overly fond of using this space for political commentary, but that it sometimes falls under the “culture” part of my “faith, art, and culture” focus. Perhaps this connects the dots from my previous post to a cultural commentary.

We let things go on because we’re exhausted.

Wait. Re-read it. I think it’s an epiphany (I’ve been using that word a lot lately). Actually, it was Karen’s epiphany yesterday morning while we were driving to Starbucks way too early because I woke up with no coffee in the house…anyway, I digress. She made the point that we let things go on in our government that are contrary to what we ethically understand to be “okay” (or morally understand, depending on your view), because we have so much stuff going on (and, honestly, we just have so much stuff), that our brains are full and we’re just too exhausted to take a stand. It’s not that the American public doesn’t care, it’s just that we don’t have any energy left to say anything except, “okay, Bush, whatever you think is best. That’s why we pay you the big bucks.”

Perhaps we should stop rolling over and have the energy to insist that our government is, in fact, by us and for us? Perhaps we should challenge the garbage going on in our governmental machine while we still legally can, before there is a secret police that will drag us out of our homes in the middle of the night if we do. Perhaps we should trim some responsibilities and re-prioritize? At least be aware of the problems and have a voice?

Perhaps we should.

Our future may just depend on it.

You’re Kidding, Right???

I really dislike using this space for political commentary, but I suppose it does fall under the “culture” part of “faith, art, and culture.”

So, anyone think I’m crazy for saying that I’m afraid of our government? Read this little treat: Virginia just legalized a request by the Republican Party that voters who vote in Virginia’s Republican Primary in February must sign an oath vowing that they will vote for the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in the fall.

At this point it is unenforceable, because Virginia voters don’t register according to party. Give it time, though. After whatever it was that happened in Florida a few years ago to put the current train wreck in office, I have no doubt that Virginia will find a way to enforce it…or be forced to do so. I’ve never really liked Virginia, but now I’m ashamed to live here.

Yet one more way in which we must bow and pay homage to Emperor Bush. Don’t you just love our carefully disguised monarchy?

I can only hope and pray for two things: that someone with some sense of honor and without an antisocial personality ends up in office next fall (in a Utopian existence we could impeach Bush, but I suppose that’s too much to ask for), and that, when this person takes office, the damage done by this evil president will not be irreparable.

Interplay

My wife loves trees. Not surprisingly, I’ve found a new appreciation for that part of nature. I’m a beach person myself, but I’ve learned to appreciate the beauty in what’s outside my window in the morning. I feel sort of like my friend Carly, who loves Autumn so much (and has some beautiful photography to prove it), as I become fascinated by the colors. Earlier this week, I was looking out my living room window, and I noticed this tree that sits just off to the left of my view. The tree was completely and vibrantly yellow, and was backlit by the morning sun, causing the yellow leaves to glow. It occurs to me how carefully that tree was crafted, how gently it was sculpted. Recently I read Coffin’s poem, The Dead Bittern, where he states that “tremendous pains had been expended” on a single animal. I’ve been learning to see the beauty in what God has made.

So, I had an epiphany this week. Just as carefully as he painted and sculpted what surrounds us, even more carefully has He crafted us. I’ve been trying to be intentional about seeing the individuals that I come into contact with in my day to day as the works of art that they are. The epiphany comes into play, though, as I’m continuously trying to reconcile the fact that I’m a counselor in my day job, and that this is so counter intuitive to my creative impulse at first blush. It occurred to me that, if all of these people are the dynamic and living works of art that I’ve discovered them to be (because life is art), with all of their frustrating tendencies and idiosyncratic quirks as signatures, then relating to them is not scientific (as in the way I view counseling), but, in fact, creative and artistic. So, as I relate to people through the day; as I choose the words with which to interact and dialogue with them, or the way I look at them (or whether or not I even look at them) as they pass, I’m engaging in artistic expression. Perhaps that’s the key to this over commercialized concept of community that Believers love to talk about these days.

Bonhoffer said that community just happens, and that its our job as Believers to accept it and work with it as it happens, not to be going around intentionally trying to force it and make it happen. If that’s the case, then I encounter this community every day, and how I engage it is a form of creativity, not scientific inquiry.

And that makes me want to get up in the morning.

Missing the Point

Earlier this week, I listened to a discussion on The Kindlings Muse about C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, and the concept of ecumenism. One of the panelists, Dr. Bryan Burton, disturbed me in his discussion a bit.

Mind you that, after three years of failed attempts to program me during my seminary career, I have an inherent distrust for any theologian that attempts to interpret literature. Although Burton, to my knowledge, has never claimed to be a theologian, he certainly did his share of bashing orthopraxy in the name of orthodoxy, emphasizing that a correct theology is the key to the unity of Believers, because that theology must be acted out if it is true.

Any time anyone says that the key to anything is a good theology, I find them immediately suspect. Most theologians have the audacity to attempt to explain everything about God, casting aside the beautiful quality of His mystery. Perhaps I find myself aligned more with the Emergent Church (though I detest labeling myself), but I see the key to existence in Scripture to be simple faith acted out, not a bunch of religious mishmash. Certainly, the Scriptures speak of religion (the Book of James, for example), but what we define as religion today leaves me with a vacuous and wholly unspiritual (and unscriptural) feeling.

While I’m certainly a deep thinker and value intellectually pursuing God, analyzing literature and picking away at the semantics cheapens the entire experience, in much the same manner that exegesis, when taken to the extent that it normally is, cheapens Scripture (which was written by God as literature, and should be read as such, not semantically analyzed at every turn). Burton compared (he’s not the first to do so) Lewis with Karl Barth, which thoroughly leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Somehow, that seems so derogatory.

A great quote by Packer was tossed out during this segment, though: “American Christianity is a thousand miles wide and an inch deep.” I think that a huge part of the reason American faith is so damaged is the lack of unity caused by the hatred of denominational divides and doctrinal differences, which in turn have come from scholarly over-analysis that couldn’t see the forest for the proverbial trees. The argument becomes circular very quickly to me: Believers need more unity, and they need to study the Scriptures more analytically, which leads them to different orthodoxies, which leads them to divide and forsake unity. Theology is so horribly narrow: it approaches God only analytically, when He wants to be approached relationally. He wants us to understand things about Him, certainly: but He also wants us to be awestruck in His mystery.

I think the late Madeliene L’Engle said this best: “If my religion is true, it will stand up to all my questioning…But if it is not true, if it is man imposing strictures on God…then I want to be open to God, not to what man says about God.” I’m not saying that scholarly study and teaching is worthless, but, at the end of the day, it is only one human’s opinion, and I’m much more interested in the original than an an overly-traditional interpretation.