Latent Possibilities

Friday, July 29, 2005

The Chaos of God

One central feature of all encounters with God is chaos; his presence sends us into disarray. This is a thoroughly scriptural idea, supported by such narratives as that of the burning bush, Abraham's mandate to leave his homeland, Paul's blinding light, and so on. The psalms point to it again and again. Perhaps the greatest service we can offer the world, therefore, is to be witnesses to the reality that walking to the brink of chaos by the grace of God is something that can be done—even if we leave with a limp.

Lessons from The Incredibles

The DVD version of The Incredibles includes a special feature in which director Brad Bird (who also did a great animated film called The Iron Giant, starring none other than Harry Connick Jr.!) talks about how in the creation of The Incredibles there were certain parts that he had pretty well in mind, other parts for which he knew some but not all of what he wanted, and then other parts that were so complex he had only an idea of the process by which he wanted to create the sequence. This strikes me as a great metaphor for how we should go about church life. The modern tendency is to program everything to the hilt. Many times we program the life out of church, and I think this comes largely from a will to control. Having been involved in various programs at various churches, I know all too well the temptation to control how programs develop and are executed. Some parts needs to be controlled, to be sure. But other parts need breathing room to develop and grow in their own organic way. We need not fear the movement of the Spirit. Well, then again perhaps we do, but that is a fear appropriate to creatures of God, a fear worth embracing.

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

The Book I Am




You're Alice's Adventures in Wonderland!

by Lewis Carroll

After stumbling down the wrong turn in life, you've had your mind
opened to a number of strange and curious things. As life grows curiouser and curiouser,
you have to ask yourself what's real and what's the picture of illusion. Little is coming
to your aid in discerning fantasy from fact, but the line between them is so blurry that
it's starting not to matter. Be careful around rabbit holes and those who smile to much,
and just avoid hat shops altogether.



Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Summertime Missions Work

Every once in a while Alyssa and I go to one of those family fun centers where you buy tokens, play games, and earn tickets you can redeem for prizes. Our little twist on this bit of frivolity is that we give our tickets away. Kids' eyes get as big as fried eggs when they thank us. I don't know which we enjoy more--playing games or giving the tickets away.

Anyway, it's a thing we do.

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Trying to Do What’s Right and Failing

This morning on my way to work I went to my favorite coffee joint, Common Ground, which is three blocks from my home. As I pulled into the parking area behind the place, I saw an unkempt black man with a cigarette hanging unlit from his mouth. He was not moving in any particular direction. He seemed to be waiting, waiting for me, as it turns out, because I was apparently the first person to pull in and talk to him.

“Good morning, sir.”

“Good morning,” I said.

“Excuse me, sir?”

“Yes?”

“Could you help me out with a couple quarters to buy a cup of coffee?” and he held out his hand to display about sixty cents.

“Sure,” I said. “Come on in, and I’ll buy you a cup.”

We went in, and the barista gave him sidelong glances while I ordered for both of us. “I’ll take the African Roast.”

I leaned to him and asked what flavor he wanted, and he said he wanted a cappuccino. That’s when things went sour. I ordered the cappuccino for him, thinking here we go again, another bum taking me for a ride. A few months ago, I drove a man to a gas station, where supposedly the clerk would give him a good deal on cold cuts for him and his family who recently moved from Chicago. The man was still looking for work, he said. Somehow he talked me out of $30, and as I let him off at the gas station, I just knew he wasn’t there to buy food. I don’t know what he was there for, but the place had the aura of secrets and adrenaline.

So when this guy, the guy at Common Ground, asked for a cappuccino, and I ordered it for him, I began kicking myself. I felt like a neon sign started blinking over my head: “Sucker!” Then he asked if the barista would add some sugar, which led to our showing him where the sugar pourer was (it was in plain sight) and him fiddling with it (he did not know how to pour sugar!). And during this segment of the episode I realized this guy was either drunk, though he did not smell of alcohol, or just not all there, probably because he'd damaged his brain beyond repair with one chemical or another.

He told me he had a long way to go to get to work and motioned in the opposite direction of where I work, a point not lost on me, and I told him I’m sorry I couldn’t help. I was angry.

I paid for my coffee and his cappuccino and got out of there. As I was leaving, he was asking the barista if he could spare a book of matches, which is fine if you’re in a bar, but a coffee shop?

I drove away wondering how I could have done things differently because the whole experience was uncomfortable, embarrassing, offensive, and annoying. I wondered what possibly could have happened in this man’s life to make him so mentally vacant. Should I have refused to buy him a cappuccino and told him to pick a coffee blend instead? Should I have driven him to work?

The main thing that bugs me about this experience, and the many others I have had like it, is that I start out trying to do the right thing—the Jesus thing—and I walk away feeling like a schmuck, like I’ve been had, and like all my efforts to love the person are just a facade.

One thing I will do in the future is introduce myself and, if it's not offered, ask what the person's name is. My hope is that this will encourage both of us to treat each other as humans. This morning I was not treated as a human, but neither did I treat that man as a human. Common ground.

Thursday, July 14, 2005

It’s My Aeroplane . . . Spiked with Pain

Henri Nouwen said good writing is not the recording of preconceived thought, but a journey all its own. “How do I know what to write until I see what I say?” Can’t remember who said that, but I love it.

I’ve been on airplanes lately for work, and today, just two hours ago, I noticed that I often have thoughts of mortality as the plane taxis to the runway. I say a quick prayer for safety as if putting on a talisman. I guess all this is natural, even though many more people die of car accidents. My consideration of my mortality usually involves questions to myself like, “Well, so what if I died? Have I done enough in life? Could I die in peace?” My own answer to these ridiculous questions usually goes something like, “No. Not really. I can’t believe how much time I’ve wasted the past couple of days.”

Then I imagine God showing me a picture that represents my life. The picture should be colored in, but the black-and-white parts represent time I wasted, and only 30 percent of the picture is in color. It’s a picture of what was versus what should have been. I don’t know what to make of such thoughts and images, except that they are undoubtedly born of a neurotic mix of arrogance and self-disparagement.

The fact is we will never have done enough to die in peace, and perhaps this is a hint that we are not finally mortal after all. Life goes on and on, and each satisfying conclusion opens a new door. If we look forward to cessation, we are looking forward to the wrong thing. New beginnings are what lie ahead. That's my hope, anyway.

A woman just walked by with a tight black shirt with a statement in big white letters that read “That’s HOT!” Paris Hilton’s moronic maxim. It’s hard to believe there are people in the world who are shallow enough to wear that in public. That’s my first thought. My second is, how is it that she finds meaning in wearing this? Surely she does, which is why she’s wearing it, but how? I don’t get it. Maybe it’s a mask, a defense, a deliberate offense against her parents or authority in general. Maybe it’s her way of yelling at the world. All conjecture, of course, but at least I’ve managed to make a little sense of it for myself.

Monday, July 11, 2005

ND Wrap Up

My oral final went well, I think, and I went to vespers at the basilica one last time. I’ll miss that place. The main thing I have learned or rather the main thing that has challenged me during this class has been the idea that the liturgy (worship) is the self-expression, the self-revelation, of the church—the point at which the church is most fully the church. The implication of this idea is quite simple: no liturgy, no church. Back in the early centuries of the church this idea made sense (and I see value in allowing it to inform our experience of church today). Back then, liturgy lasted 5 to 8 hours and was comprised of a series of interlocking services that proceeded throughout a city from morning until evening. (Christians were not expected to be present for the whole day, and few were.) One one can imagine such an all-day, urban event as giving the church an opportunity to be the church, even liberating her to be such. Thus it made sense to say the liturgy constituted the church.

But things are different now. Worship, as most people experience it today, is isolated to a 45-minute service on Sunday morning in a building that most people drive to for at least ten minutes. It is isolated in time, duration, and location. We go; we do our thing; we leave. If this is the church’s self-revelation, God help us. Worship today is less liberation into our true identity than it is an obligation to meet some sort of internal church-attendance quota.

To my mind, the answer is not a reversion to the way it was. Rather, liturgy must spill over into the rest of life. The church must be constituted by worship, yes, but more importantly by lived-out faith.

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Chicago

This past weekend I took advantage of having finished my second paper and took a train to Chicago. With the exception of tickets to the events I wanted to attend, I figure I did the whole trip for less than a hundred bucks. The roundtrip train fare was $18, hostel was $34, unlimited public transit was $9, and I ate cheap.

I got in around noon, and after checking into my hostel I went to Taste of Chicago, which is this annual event where over 60 Chicago restaurants set up tents and feed people. Hundreds of thousands of people go.

That afternoon I caught my first major league baseball game--the Cubs against the Nationals at Wrigley Field. I'll be the first to admit I'm not a big follower of professional baseball. But I've always been intrigued with the mystique of Wrigley Field. It is an enchanting place, what with the ivy that covers the outfield wall, the edgy fans, and the general excitement of the place. I loved it.

That night I went to a little hole-in-the-wall blues joint called Rosa's Lounge, which was established by first-generation Italian immigrants. I listened to Lil' Ed and the Blues Imperials, a local group who have been playing for something like twenty years, and they tore it up. Lil' Ed becam bigger than life! The lounge is on the west side of Chicago, which isn't exactly the safest place for a Midwestern white boy at 1:00 in the morning. After some tense moments of waiting for a northbound bus, another guy and I grabbed the first one to come, a southbound bus, and I punted. I asked the busdriver a bunch of questions to figure out how to transfer to a train that would take me into the loop (downtown). As we went into south Chicago, I couldn't help but notice I was the only white guy around, which made feel like I had a huge target on my chest with a message that read, "Look here, look here! Honky-ass mofo lookin' for a muggin'!" But a very nice young African-American lady must have seen my trepidation because she walked with me to the train and talked with me until her train showed up. We talked about the weird monitors on the platform, where I was from, how long it took to do her hair (she was coming back from the salon), and so on. Getting onto the train, she looked back and smiled, "You have a nice visit here in Chicago, okay?"

The next morning I slept in and went to All Saints Church of Starbucks and then headed over to the Pentecostal Flavah of Dunkin' Donuts. Talk about heaven. Mm-mmmm. I caught a matinee of Red Light Winter at Steppenwolf, the theater John Malkovich and Gary Sinese made famous. Wonderful show. Depressing, but still wonderful. In fact, I wrote this to the company after I got back here to Notre Dame: "Dear Steppenwolf, Just wanted to pass on my appreciation for this past Sunday's matinee of Red Light Winter. Somebody said, 'Writing is simple. All you do is sit down and open a vein,' which is to say it's not simple at all. Watching the show, I felt like the artists opened a vein. There was something vulnerable in their performance that invited the world in, something welcoming, and even though this was an invitation to an experience of pain, I was thankful for it. I was especially intrigued with the end, which seemed more of a breakthrough into new possibilities than a closure. Fascinating. The dialogue was as well executed as I've ever seen and kept me in wrapt attention the whole way through. Needless to say, I dug it. Thank you, all of you, for your work."

A two-hour train trip home in the evening after a great apple walnut salad at this cafeteria-style joint on Michigan Ave across from Millennium Park, and I was back at the U. A great trip all around. I feel very fortunate to be able to do this sort of thing.

Monday, July 04, 2005

Second paper done!

Turned in my second paper, on the Passion/Palm Sunday entrance rite, last Friday. I'll include just the conclusion here.

The nature of this liturgy as it has evolved over time is poignantly summarized in the symbolic tension of palms and passion. It brings the congregation on a literal and figurative journey through a cascade of polyvalent images and gestures. Its theology is not only multifaceted but also polarized in some places between the disjunctive juxtapositions of celebration and suffering, a victory march and a death march. In many ways this ritual presents a theology that is as foreign to intellectual systemization as it is indigenous to the narrative experience of liturgy, a lex credendi (rule of belief) that is established and animated by a lex orandi (rule of prayer).

Sunday, July 03, 2005

2AM Prayer

A couple of people asked why the monks mentioned in a previous post prayed in the middle of the night. It goes back to an old interpretation of the verse in psalm 119 that goes something like, "Seven times a day do I praise you." Benedict determined the first of these, for his community, would be at 2AM or thereabouts, called matins (morning). The second was at 6AM, called prime (first hour of prayer); the next was 9AM, called terce (third hour...), and so on. Phyllis Tickle has a wonderful brief history of fixed hour prayer here. Among other things you'll find out why it was because of fixed hour prayer that the first apostolic miracle happened where and when it did. Steve asked how they knew it was 2AM. I'm not sure we can take this as a literal 2AM (the point being to wake up in the dead of night). I'm not sure when the clock was invented, but I recall that the reason it was invented, ironically, was to facilitate the process of calling monks to pray. Can you believe that? The CLOCK as spiritual tool? We've wandered so far.

Incidentally, I've heard Tickle refer to 2AM prayer as an "excess of religion." I love that phrase.