... than our own. What with The Hobbit's release piquing fresh interest in all things Tolkien at our house, prompting a family movie marathon through the Lord of the Rings and inspiring my daughter to muscle her way through all three books in about two weeks, I've got Middle Earth on the brain these days.
One of the things that struck me forcibly this time through the series, and especially as I unpacked them with our kids, is how different the worldview of the book is from our own. "Worldview" is a way of describing the psychological underpinnings, the cultural values, the epistemological framework, and the philosophical assumptions that unconsciously guide the way we interact with the world.
The worldview of our modern, western world, for instance, tends to seek instant gratification, places a premium on the image, takes a mechanistic approach to nature, has an evolutionary outlook on life and society, values self-expression and individuality, gives epistemological authority to screens, numbers, results and speed, sees the self as ultimate and the latest as best.
Realizing that each one of the above statements is loaded far beyond the ability of a mere blogpost to unpack, let me just suggest that these things-- instant gratification, the image as prime, nature as machine, the individual as ultimate-- these things are different from a biblical worldview. When the writers of the Bible looked at the world, they felt different things were of utmost importance. They made different assumptions about how things worked and what you could reasonable expect out of life. They drew meaning from different source. They concluded things were "true" based on different criteria.
And then, as an experiment in "worldview studies," let me point out some ways the worldview of the inhabitants of Middle Earth is also very different from our own, but curiously (even unexpectedly) very much like the Bible's.
1. Older is better. When Tolkien points out that something is old, it's usually said with reverence, awe, humility and deference; indeed, some of his most poetical passages are devoted simply to describing the age of something. This is because in a Middle Earth worldview, older is proven; older is wiser; older is tested; older is true. Our world tends to see the newest and youngest as best-- fresher, original, more innovative--but this is neither a universal nor especially a biblical assumption. Generally speaking the Bible's worldview, like Tolkien, sees age as venerable (It's not for nothing He's called the Ancient of Days).
2. Nature is deeply alive. One of the brilliant aspects of Tolkien's book, I think, is the way he spiritualizes nature without deifying it. He draws out the deep-down "aliveness" of the natural world without slipping into the ditch of paganism. In our worldview, we tend to view nature as a dead, cause-and-effect machine that is ours to tinker with (witness the latest talk about "bioengineering" or "geoengineering"). Not so in Middle Earth, where trees, rocks, rivers and creatures alike are vibrant with a life that give them intrinsic worth. Though it's sometimes overlooked, this too is a biblical worldview. When Isaiah talks about the trees of the hills clapping their hands and the mountains breaking forth into song, it's a metaphor, but it's no mere metaphor.
3. Song and Story are authoritative. No war council in the modern world would have begun by recounting in full detail the story of the enemy's chief weapon, reviewing all the twists of fate and turns of history that brought the allies to the point they find themselves at. But that is precisely where Elrond starts with the war council of Rivendell, on the assumption that the decisions of the council depend precisely upon their hearing this story. It always struck me that in the book, great emphasis is placed on Aragorn's ability to recite the legends, songs, lore and stories of Middle Earth, as though his claim to the throne rested as much on this as it did on his skills with a sword. That none of Aragorn's songs make it into the modern film adaptation of the book is evidence itself that our world draws "epistemological authority" from other sources.
4. Fellowship, Community and Fealty are profoundly humanizing. When Merry is sworn in as a guard of Gondor, Denethor promises to reward his "fealty with honour." When Theoden musters his cavalry for their glorious charge onto the plains of Minas Tirith, he calls on the men to fulfill "oaths they have taken." In his final rousing speech at the Black Gates of Mordor, Aragorn assures his men that "a day may come when we forsake all bounds of fellowship, but it is not this day." In a world like ours, that so highly values individuality, these appeals to higher commitments that draw us up and out of ourselves may seem like a relic of a bygone time. In Tolkien's world, however, bonds of fellowship, commitment to community, loyalty to causes that transcend the self-- these are things that separate humans from all the other mythical races (it's no coincidence, for instance, that the orcs always end up battling and devouring themselves; nor is it a coincidence that the elves remain so detached from the plight of Middle Earth). This, too, is very much like the biblical worldview, where community is throbbing at the heart of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
4 ways a Middle Earth Worldview is more Biblical
The 2012 Literary Awards
Reading forms a pretty major piece of the spiritual jigsaw puzzle that is my life. I read for work; I read for leisure; I read for spiritual formation; I read for recreation. My habit of recording the books I read each year started sometime back in 1999, when I was teaching High School English and trying to catch up on "the classics." The habit stuck, and 13 years later I still find it satisfying to look over the year's reading list and reflect on what I found and who I met there.
The habit of awarding "literary awards" to the good, the bad and the ugly reads of the year started three years ago, as a bit of an experimental blog post. In the hopes of nurturing this habit into a tradition, I am pleased to present here the third annual terra incognita literary awards. You can check out previous awards ceremonies here and here.
Most Traumatic Read: Dragonslippers, Rosalind B. PenfoldThis was one of the required texts for a course in "the dynamics of abuse" which I audited this spring. Presenting her book as the "illustrated diary" of a woman who has escaped a sexually and emotionally abusive relationship, Rosalind B. Penfold (pseudonym) tells her story in a series of deceptively simple, but haunting cartoon drawings. Although it was indeed a traumatic read, it was also one of the most vivid and compelling illustrations of the dynamics of abuse I have ever encountered.
Most Disappointing Read: Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Wolf.I first read this ground-breaking stream-of-consciousness novel for a University course on the English Novel, back in my undergrad days. Some 20 years later, I remembered little of it, except that the account of Septimus Warren Smith's suicide had deeply moved me back then. I reread it last winter for old times sake, and, while I still found Septimus Warren Smith a sympathetic character, the rest of the book was far more tedious than I ever remembered. Since it's unlikely the novel itself has changed, I can only assume my reading tastes have; that, or the many shots of espresso I consumed before reading the novel the first time, at 3 am the night before the big final exam, gave Mrs. Dalloway's quest for the flowers (which she said she would buy herself) a certain je ne sais pas which I will never recapture.
Another re-read, though this one was satisfying in every way Mrs. Dalloway was not. Graham Greene's story of a failed Catholic priest on the run from the communist government in revolutionary Mexico is one part redemption story, one part spiritual odyssey, one part spy-thriller. I love this book, and the longer I do ministry, the more sense it makes to me. It helps, perhaps, that this time I read it while on vacation in Mexico.
Most Enraptured Read: Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work, Eugene PetersonEugene Peterson uses the megaloth--the five traditional books read on the five feast days of the Jewish Calendar (Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Esther)--as thematic entry-points for the five practices of pastoral work (prayer-directing, story-making, pain-sharing, nay-saying and community-building). This book was food for the head and balm for the heart. I read it as much for Eugene Peterson's whimsical style as for the deep insights he offers into the real nature of pastoral ministry. A must-read for any fledgling pastor.
Most Willing Required Read: From Darkness to Light: How One Became a Christian in the Early Church, Anne FieldsThis one was required reading for a seminar on the "theology of conversion" our ministry network hosted this year. It's essentially an anthology of readings, sermons and liturgy excerpts from the early church's catechism for baptismal candidates, peppered through with a bit of commentary from Ms. Fields herself. It showed, essentially, what a third Century prosylete would undergo if he or she wanted to become a member of the Christian community. The forty-day ordeal of daily sermons, scripture lessons and exorcisms which culminated in a public baptism on Easter Night (a naked, public baptism, mind you), makes the "ask Jesus into your heart" fare of now-a-days look like the TV dinner of conversion experiences.
Most Unexpectedly Interesting Read: Evoking Change, Anna ChristieThe reasons why my expectations were so low when I started this one are complicated, but among other things, let me say that the dust-cover's claim that this book will "put you on a foolproof path that will positively impact all aspects of your life and eventually improve the world" seemed a bit grandiose for my taste. There was much I disagreed with here, both theologically and psychologically, but its overall thesis resonated with me: that leaders can only effect outward change in the systems they are called to lead when they are willing to do the painful work of inward transformation. And, important theological quibbles notwithstanding, Anna Christie offers some very helpful and challenging insights into human psychology and systems theory in her unpacking of this thesis.
Most Edifying Read: The New Testament and the People of God, N. T. Wright.I've blogged before (and effusively) about N. T. Wright. I have been waiting for a while now for the fourth installment in his Christian Origins and the Question of God series, breath bated ever since The Resurrection of the Son of God heralded for me the end of the world as I knew it (but I feel fine). Anyways, rumour has it that part four, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, is due any day now, and to brace myself (or while away the time, as the case may be) I started re-reading the first three books in the series. I finished The New Testament and the People of God this week and found it as edifying as before, and perhaps twice as rich, academically speaking, coming as it did after a couple of years in the ministry trenches. What can I say: I'm a Bible Geek.
Top Ten Reads of 2009
Around this time last year I spent some time reviewing the most interesting, engaging or challenging reads of 2008. What with moving to a new province, starting a new ministry role, uprooting, re-rooting, transplanting and all, there weren't nearly as many titles to choose from this year as last, but I thought I'd spend some time looking back over the best reads of 2009.
10. Straight Talk, Daniel Wackman et. al.
Though I tend to be sceptical of books that claim the power to revolutionize relationships through simple steps, this guide to assertive communication is actually quite helpful. Concepts like "understanding control talk," "using the awareness wheel," "making I statements," and "using active listening," are poignant and effective, and when I take the time to actually employ them in my communication, I often find myself speaking the truth in love.
9. Paradise Lost, John Milton
8. John Wesley: A Biography, Stephen Tomkins 
7. The Way To Heaven: The Gospel According to John Wesley, J. Steven Harper 
6. Confessions of an Amateur Believer, Patty Kirk 
5. Satan and the Problem of Evil, Greg Boyd 
4. Collected Short Stories, Flannery O’Conner
3. In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, Michael Pollan 
2. From the Holy Mountain, William Dalrymple 
1. Violence, Hospitality and the Cross, Hans Boersma Dead Poets, Live Ritual
Last week I watched Dead Poets Society again. With autumn lingering on the edge of winter around here, and with a vague ache for rootedness creeping at the edge of my heart, I figured it was time. A spare two hours to myself is hard to come by these days, but I carved it out and popped in the tape (I still only have it on VHS), and settled down to watch. Somehow, well before Mr. Keating had wandered his classroom whistling the 1812 Overture, before Mr. Nolan's opening speech about the four pillars had echoed still, before even the candle flame of "the light of knowledge" had leaped fully to life in the opening frame, I found myself rooted, grounded, anchored once again.
This actually started sometime about twelve years ago or so, at the start of one of my first semesters teaching English. I'd been teaching a unit called "Carpe Diem," a relatively new teacher, full of my own Keating-esque optimism for the power of the poetic word to awaken the dreams and inspire the imaginations of my students. After a good month of cajoling them to grapple with poems like Whitman's "O Me, O Life," Frost's "The Road Not Taken," Herrick's "To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time," our study culminated with a viewing of Dead Poet's Society.
They mostly hated it, actually. One student sat reverently for a while after the movie was over; "Mr. Harris, that was deep," was all he could manage. But the rest just stared blankly, disdain mingled with detachment.
But this was the start of a sort of routine for me. Every fall for the next few years I started my English course with a "Carpe Diem" unit that culminated with a viewing of Dead Poets Society. About five falls in a row, sometime around October or November, I would sit with a room full of sixteen-year-olds and watch this classic film about life, literature and daring to make one's life extraordinary. And every fall I found myself anchored again, grounded, rooted in a story that was me, but somehow bigger than me.
And later, when I was on sabbatical, watching Dead Poets Society in the fall kept me connected to that story I was no longer living first hand: a story about introducing young lives to the evocative and emotive power of the spoken word; a story about that mystical something in the act of teaching that actually has the power to awaken dreams, challenge worlds, confront the inevitable sting of death.
And later still, when I had left teaching altogether, and had become a student once again, the routine became ritual. Every fall, when autumn started to linger on the edge of winter and that vague ache for rootedness started to linger on the edge of my heart, I'd watch Dead Poets Society and enter once again into that story that was me, but somehow bigger.
I could make this post all about what I love about this film: the subtle layers of meaning, the way it so effortlessly evokes place and time, the poignant cinematography of fall landscapes and neo-gothic architecture, the interplay of its themes and motifs and literary allusions, the way it inspires me to do more, be more. I could share how I started listening to classical music, and read Walden and Leaves of Grass, and learned saxophone, and recited "O Captain, My Captain" to my newborn son as I rocked him to sleep, all because of this film.
But I don't really want to talk about Dead Poets Society.
I want to talk about ritual. Our modern world, I think, has little place left for real ritual. As an adjective, "ritualistic" usually connotes "meaningless," dehumanizing," "inauthentic" ways of doing things. And as a noun, we usually attach adjectives like " dead," "empty," or "mere" to the word "ritual" to get the same semantic job done. In a world ruled by the tyranny of the new, the now, the novel, it's hard to make a case for things that are deeply rooted in age-old ways of doing things that haven't changed. And even many of the rituals we once had-- Christmas celebrations, weddings, funerals-- have become so customized and personally monogrammed now a-days that their actual potency as ritual is all but lost.
This is especially true, I think, in contemporary evangelicalism. I grew up with the notion that ritual rhymed with "unspiritual" for a reason: people who don't know God personally settle for empty ritual instead. It's why we didn't recite the Lord's Prayer together, because prayer should be personal (read: spontaneous) and not "ritualistic." It's why we didn't make a big deal out of communion, and when we did, we used words like "ordinance," and "symbolic" in deliberate ways that kept ritual at bay. (No one ever explained to me how our supposedly ritual-detesting God could have so adamantly insisted that the children of Israel observe the Passover Feast the same way for generations... )
Now my annual viewing of Dead Poets Society is not a genuine ritual, really. Because it's mine: it is not embedded in a larger community, or history, or corporate experience that gives it meaning beyond my own personal experience. But what watching the same movie every fall has taught me is that ritual doesn't have to be "empty," "dehumanizing," "mere." It can also be "grounding," "enlarging," "humanizing."
Far from "dead," ritual invites us to step, if only for a moment, into non-linear time, to embed our personal stories in a meaningful story that is larger than ourselves. Like a kind of spiritual metronome, it can help us keep honest time, insisting that, however freely we improvise around the beat, we'll still land on "one" at the start of each new measure.
The Teacher's Tale (A lost chapter from Chaucer...)
In a comment to my previous post, my friend Jon wondered out loud about how "commedians have such an ability to preach at times. " It reminded me of this little skeleton in my closet: my most woefully failed attempt to use comedy to make a pedagogical point.
A High School English class I was subbing for was studying Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and in his absence, the teacher had left a film production of the Pardoner's Tale for them to view. I dutifully dusted off the two-decades layer of dust from the jacket and popped it into the VCR.
Remember those rickety old English-teacher documentaries they used to make you watch, where some BBC narrator flat-lines his way through a description of "Merry Olde England," while details of stained glass windows and tapestries from the period pan across the screen?
This made those look like Oscar material.
When the film ended and the lights went on, there was more glaze in the eyes of the crowd than there is behind the counter of any Tim Horton's in the country. One student managed a pathetic "Mr. Harris-- that was awful--" otherwise, the apathy was underwhelming.
And the injustice of it all hit me: that these students should go home today thinking that Geoffry Chaucer-- merry olde Chaucer-- Geoffry "father of English poetry" Chaucer-- that Chaucer's boring? If English Lit was religion it would be blasphemy of the worst kind.
My mind raced back to my Chaucer days in university and returned with the one tale from the Canterbury Tales I vaguely remembered. "Chaucer told some better ones than that," I volunteered. "If you want, I'll tell you one you might find funny..."
They accepted my fateful offer, and I started telling them the Miller's Tale.
Now, for those of you who know the Miller's Tale, let me say this in my defense: it had been about 10 years since I'd read it, and I'd truly forgotten how.. err.. risqué... it was (pardon my French). For those who don't know the Miller's Tale, let me say this: part way through the telling, I heard this strange voice explaining to a room full of 16-and-17-year-olds how "hende Nicholas" tricked John the carpenter into spending the night in a barrel on his roof, so that Nicholas could spend the night with John's wife Alison--
And I realized the voice was mine.
Chagrin crept up my spine as I explained how Absolon happened to come to Alison's window that same night to confess his love for her and ask for a kiss-And with it crept this niggling thought: "I should have thought this through before I started..."
Suddenly, to my great relief, the bell rang. But before the chagrin could drain out of me, I realized that no one had bolted for the door and freedom, like they usually do at the bell. They sat where they were. They wanted to know how the story ended.
Nor would they accept my feeble attempts to turn it into a teachable moment: "Oops, there's the bell... guess you'll just have to read it for yourself..." (Which you'll have to do.)
They were prepared to wait as long as I could.
So, swallowing great gulps of mortification, that strange voice told the tale to the end: how "nicholas is scalded in the towte," till the "tale was doon, God save al the rowte!"
There was some laughter, but more astonishment (not least of all mine): did the teacher really just tell that story in school? No one went home that day thinking Chaucer is boring; but I went home wishing with all my heart I could call a mulligan on that attempt to bring English Lit to life.
On Kafka Dreams
Along with George Orwell (who gave us "Orwellian") and Cervantes (who gave us "quixotic"), Franz Kafka is one of those few writers of world literature whose work has become its own adjective. According to my dictionary, to call something "Kafkaesque" is to claim that it is "impenetrably oppressive, nightmarish." Just like a good Kafka story.
If you've never read a good Kafka story, I'd suggest starting with Metamorphosis. A good follow-up would be In the Penal Colony. And for the less-faint-of-heart, The Trial. His stories all deal with these perplexed characters who are haunted by some vague, oppressive guilt that they can never get to the bottom of, and every attempt to expiate it only unravels into more bizarre experiences of guilt. A man wakes up inexplicably transformed into a giant insect; a man opens a closet door and finds himself stepping into a macabre courtroom where he is inexplicably on trial; a man commits suicide in a torture machine that etches his inexplicable crime into his back. And no one will ever say why.
There's a scene in Calvin and Hobbes where Calvin insists that his mom give Hobbes a good night kiss, after which Hobbes claims: "If you don't get a good night kiss, you get Kafka dreams."
I get Kafka dreams once in a while. Even with my good night kiss.
A friend at seminary was doing his thesis on G. K. Chesterton's The Man who was Thursday, and his research led him to Kafka at one point. We had a few good conversations about the existential guilt in Kafka's work. Later I was thinking about this comic strip, and my friend's thesis, and guilt and shame and other Kafkaesque things. Eventually my thoughts stumbled into a piano tune I was working on and I wrote this song, "Kafka Dreams."
I wonder if Christians-- and especially those who grew up comfortably in the Faith-- shouldn't read a bit of Kafka once in a while. That acrid taste of guilt just might sharpen our thirst for the promise of atonement and reconcilliation that God offers us in the person of Jesus Christ.
Top Ten Books of My Childhood
In his autobiography Wordstruck, Robert MacNeil talks with great fondness about the books that permeated his mind and saturated his heart as a child, books that taught him to savor rich, carefully chosen and well placed words as a grown man. C. S. Lewis, too, remembers his childhood as one simply overflowing with books. With them, I'm convinced that the stuff we read as kids sinks deep, anchoring our adult hearts in mysterious and formative ways.
As I've been reflecting a bit lately on the power of words, I thought I'd share my list of the Top Ten Books from My Childhood (from no particular era).
10. The Swiss Family Robinson.
Johann David Wyss.
I went through a phase where I was quite taken with the shipwrecked on a desert island motif. I read a few of these kind of books, but none of them were quite as compelling to my imagination as the Swiss Family Robinson (I also tried Robinson Crusoe, but didn't make it past about chapter 3).
9. The Magician's Nephew.
C. S. Lewis.
A friend of mine recently called C. S. Lewis the "evangelical patron saint of the imagination." Nice. I could probably fill up 70% of my list with the Narnia books alone, but the Magician's Nephew was the first one I read, and easily one of my favorites in the series. There is a certain texture and light to this story that sets it apart from the others, I think. More mythic, more antique, more archetypal. My Dad introduced me to Narnia, and Narnia in turn introduced me to the fascinating worlds of Greek and Norse mythology.
8. The Coral Island.
R. M. Ballantyne.
Another of my Dad's recommendations. I really only remember one scene from the book, but I remember it vividly: some cannibals execute their captives by lying them down along the beach and running their huge dug-out canoes over them. Ballantyne describes in graphic detail the victims eyes bugging out of their heads as the weight crushes them. I was intrigued to discover much later, when teaching high school English, that The Coral Island was the book William Golding was satirizing when he started the novel that would eventual evolve into the masterpiece, The Lord of the Flies.
7. The Hobbit.
J. R. R. Tolkien.
Between the two of them, Tolkien and C. S. Lewis spawned a lot of imaginary countries in my childhood. The floor of my room was often strewn with huge maps of made-up worlds, with mountain ridges that looked suspiciously like the misty mountains, and castles with names only a few phonemes off of "Cair Paravel." I had whole notebooks filled with my own versions of Middle Earth or Narnia. I read The Hobbit to my own kids a while back and I was amazed that as a 10-year-old boy I ever got through those long descriptive passages-- Tolkien spends almost ten pages just describing the desolation of Smaug.
6. I Want to Go Home.
Gordon Korman.
I wasn't a huge Gordon Korman fan, but this is a hilarious book. I loved Rudy Miller. I loved that he hated all sports and excelled nonchalantly at them all. I loved the whole "escape from summer camp" theme. This was the first book I ever read that had me genuinely laughing out loud; it gave me a real taste for funny writing.
5. Who, What, When, Where Book About the Bible.
Published by David C. Cook, the Sunday School curriculum people, this was a book of Bible trivia, word games, "did-you-know" stories and last-minute-Sunday-School-activities. It was my primary reading material whenever I stayed home from school sick, and I have vivid memories sitting in bed with an "emergency pail" at my side and flipping through this book over and over again. Could be where my love for biblical esoterica started.
4. The Everything Book.
I have no idea where this book came from, but it was an anthology of craft, game, and activity ideas for kids. At age five or six, I would pour over it, mind racing with imaginative possibilities. Looking at it today, the ideas are pretty simple-- make a "tent" out of a blanket draped over a table is one-- but the illustrations make them look so exotic and antique. The only activity I remember actually doing in this book was a (rather disappointing) homemade paste recipe.
3. Chatterer the Red Squirrel.
Thornton Burgess.
Thornton Burgess' Green Forest books were probably the first chapter books I read to myself. I had a bunch of them in the series, and spent a fair bit of time keeping lists of all the different animals that lived in Burgess' world, drawing maps of the Green Forest and the Green Meadows, and listing the books in the series I hadn't yet read. Chatterer was the first Green Forest book I got, and, since it is probably one of the best, will have to stand in for all the rest.
2. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Okay, Lewis gets to entries. This is, in my opinion, the best Narnia book, hands down. Everything about it sparkles. I remember finishing it for the first time and just holding it in my hand and staring at the cover for a while. I felt like the dazzling light of the sea at the end of the world was shining in my own eyes.
1. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. The sign-out card in my school library's copy of Howard Pyle's Robin Hood had only my name on it. About fifteen times in a row. There are a number of different versions of the Robin Hood legend, but Howard Pyle's complete, unabridged and illustrated version is by far the classic. Written in "Thee-and-Thou" English, with lots of ballads and poems and fascinating characters, this book absolutely enthralled me as a young boy. It was the first book that I shed genuine, and, in retrospect, grown-up tears over.
Top Ten Reads of 2008
I had a friend in university who prided himself on his Portuguese heritage. He used to quote this Portuguese proverb to me: "A donkey loaded with books is not a philosopher." It's stuck with me, and chastened me, over the years. A donkey loaded with books is no pastor, either; but then a pastor's library is one of his or her richest resources-- for ministry and spiritual formation. So I try to read as much, as broadly and as deeply as I can. In the interest of unloading the donkey, I offer my top ten reads of 2008:
10. Portofino. Frank Schaeffer.
A coming-of-age story about a boy growing up in an evangelical missionary family in Europe. No Catcher in the Rye, but it did have its humorous and touching moments. Frank Schaeffer, son of envangelical icon Francis Schaeffer, has some pretty negative issues with the evangelical tradition that he's put in more explicit terms in other books.
9. Resurrection and Moral Order: An Outline for Evangelical Ethics. Oliver O'Donovan.
A really tough read, but worth it for the way it forces you to wrestle with the implications of the resurrection for the Christian life. O'Donovan is convinced that to be truly evangelical,we must make the resurrection the ground of all ethical action.
8. Fear and Trembling. Soren Kierkegaard.
A theological and philosophical meditation on God's command for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Lots of existential stuff in there about the absurd "leap of faith" typified in Abraham's "teleological suspension of the ethical" when he offered his son.
7. The Koran.
There was lots I didn't follow, but two things I took away from the Koran: 1) I have a new appreciation for Christian convictions about the imminence of Christ through the Spirit; 2) I will probably not talk about Christian revelation as propositional the same way any more, after getting a glimpse of what "propositional" really looks like.
6. The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis. J. Richard Middleton.
An OT biblical scholar's look at what the idea that God created men and women in his image might have meant in its historical context. He argues that the idea is a radical democratization of the ancient Mesopotamian ideology of kingship, where the king alone was the "image of the god" on earth. Lots of healthy food for thought in there.
5. The Everlasting Man. G. K. Chesterton
I have a good friend who is a Chesterton aficionado; this is only my third sip from the deep cup of Chesterton's profound work (after Orthodoxy and Man who was Thursday). In substance, content and theme, it reminded me a lot of Augustine's City of God, looking at all of history in light of the person of Christ.
4. Unmasking the Powers. Walter Wink.
Building on his linguisitic/exegetical work in Naming the Powers, Wink shows how the "invisible structures" that humans create and participate in to control our reality, actually in turn exert control over us. A kind of theological version of Golding's Lord of the Flies.
3. For the Beauty of the Earth: A Christian Vision for Creation Care. Steven Bouma-Prediger.
I read a lot of books on ecology and faith this fall working on my research project for my M.Div. Steven Bouma-Prediger's book was by far the most thoughtful, creative and well-written.
2. Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. Bill McKibben.
Transformed my thinking about economics, food, consumerism and ecology. You can see some of these transformed thoughts here.
1. The Climax of the Covenant. N. T. Wright.
N. T. Wright has had a huge influence on how I think, talk and preach about Jesus. Climax of the Covenant is a pretty technical analysis of Paul's Christology, and shows his considerable gifts for offering exegetically and historically incisive readings of familiar texts.
Give me your hands if we be friends
If it weren't so cliched and over-done, Midsummer Night's Dream would be my favorite Shakespearean play by far. As it is, it still makes it to my top five. I can verify from experience it's one of the few works of the Bard that will really get high school kids laughing together at the right times, and I have an untested theory that your house plants will grow thicker and fuller if you just read some of Titania or Oberon's best lines over them five minutes a day. I once came across a Freudian reading of the play that drew all sorts of evocative parallels between it and the myth of the minotaur, and I've never read it the same way since.
My wife and I saw a Shakespeare in the Park production of it in Barrie Ontario this summer. When our kids asked about it, I gave them a former-English-teacher's synopsis of the plot. They were so intrigued, they asked me about a month later to read Act V to them. We laughed together at the right times.
Then one afternoon my ten-year-old son, whose current hobbies include doing stop-motion animation movies with his Lego sets, asked me if I'd give him a hand with something. He'd started setting up a Lego version of "that play by that guy..." and he was hoping I'd help him with it. You've heard of hockey dads? I guess I'm a bit of a Shakespeare dad: I said yes.
It actually grew into something of a family project-- even our six-year-old got a part (a paraphrased version of the lion's part). And, all biases aside, I'm sure she would have done Mr. Shakespeare proud.
So, hoping it brings a bit of culture and light to terra incognita, I present to you the first all-Lego staging of: Bottom's Dream. (As you view, please bear Theseus's advice in mind: Nothing can be amiss when simpleness and duty attend to it).
Rimbaud and the Resurrection
I’ve been trying to brush up on my French these days, and, as my daughter’s Caillou books were starting to leave me flat, I slugged my way through Arthur Rimbaud’s Une Saison en Enfer (this is partly so I can drop pretentious sounding references to Rimbaud at my next cocktail party; but mostly because my niece and nephew have been blessed with a bilingual home, and as they grow older, I’m seeing that my facile conversations with them about colours and numbers won’t cut it much longer. Maybe by the time they’re old enough to discuss Rimbaud, my French will be sharp enough give it a try…). Anyways, I didn’t take a lot from it, but the last phrase of his extended poetical rant has been haunting me for a while now: il me sera loisible de posseder la verite dans une ame et un corps. “It will now be permitted to me to possess truth in one soul and one body.”
Here’s the thing (I think): Most of us could probably get how we might possess “truth” "in the soul.” Most of us are Platonic dualists at heart—what’s truly true is not the touchable matter out there (in the body)—to find the “truly true” you have to journey inward (in the soul). I used to teach this with great enthusiasm when my English classes studied Heart of Darkness. I read the same thing in Wal-Mart yesterday when I happened to thumb through a popular-level book on eastern meditation in the discount bargain bin. But I think that way lies madness (of sorts)—and I think Rimbaud knew it. And so he denounces all such dualisms, and ends with a vision of truth “in one soul and one body” together.
And I’m left wondering, in what way can truth be possessed in the body. Can this actual flesh… these hands, these senses, this coursing blood… can it somehow be said to be somehow true? For Rimbaud, the journey away from spirit/matter dualism led him through a hell of futile debauches and empty sensuality.
But there is a different path.
It’s an inevitable path that leads down from a skull-shaped hill to a burst-open tomb, gaping wide and empty one Sunday morning. And the resurrected body that steps out of that tomb—the one who claimed before they murdered him that he was the truth incarnate—he reaches out his resurrected hand to us and says: “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” With a sweep of that nail-pierced hand, Jesus brushes aside Plato and Rimbaud together. And he points us outside of ourselves, to the Creator’s world broken and labouring, but now claimed by its maker and promised redemption.
And as we touch his glorified body—our hope and our promise—we can really say, in a way that Rimbaud never could: il me sera loisible de posseder la verite dans une ame et un corps.