I believe in big foot. I mean I really believe. However, I am not a big foot enthusiast. I don’t collect souvenirs or chart the latest sightings of big foot on a huge map I have tacked to the wall of my man room. I won’t bug you about some late night PBS shows I saw documenting the history of big foot, and if you ask me about big foot, I probably won’t show much enthusiasm.
Still, I am a big foot believer. I also believe in aliens, the Loch Ness monster, secret societies, and the Holy Grail. All in all I pretty much believe in any far-fetched, imaginary, or straight out kooky half crock thing that comes down the pipe. Why? Because believing in these things costs me nothing, and having a world that is filled with these mythical, even imaginary creatures, is so much more interesting than the alternative that I will gladly give my belief over to these phantasms.
I like to think of this as Patrick’s wager. A little play on the classical wager of Blaise Pascal who thought that it was safer to believe in God than not, because the payoff for believing and being vindicated in that belief were higher than any alternative.
I remember one time I was asked by a friend, Raven, if I would like to accompany him to the midnight premier of the newest incarnation of the Star Wars saga. While we were standing in line waiting for the doors to open I casually said to him that I was “a huge Star Wars fanatic from way back,” and that I could remember going to the first Star Wars movie with my brother and his friend Jim in 1976 who sat next to me reading the opening paragraphs with tremendous excitement, and that the experience had forever hooked me on the franchise.
Raven looked at me dumbstruck. For weeks he had been talking about going to this premier. It was clearly a big deal to him. “Why”, he asked, “had I not said anything about my excitement sooner.” I looked at him quixotically. “Why would I?” I thought.
The truth is I have never really understood people who are impassioned by their beliefs. I mean, I wanted to go to that premier badly, but I wouldn’t have been crushed if I hadn’t, and certainly I would never have entertained the idea of dressing up as a Storm trooper or Han Solo for the occasion, any more than I could imagine myself wandering out into the woods of the pacific northwest hunting for big foot. Nor will I ever want to vacation in Loch Ness on the off chance that I might accidentally spy Nessie while relaxing in a rowboat.
That being said, going to the premier was awesome; largely because I was going with someone who had looked forward to this moment for months. It was awesome the way sitting next to my brothers friend had been awesome. There is something about being around impassioned people that is contagious. I don’t know if I ever thanked either of these men properly for that experience. But their enthusiasm had shaped my way of thinking and helped my world become a larger and more interesting place
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
you got a demon on you
About sixteen years ago I was sitting on the back porch of my parent’s house with a friend who, as it happens, was about half my age. We were talking about random stuff when the subject of Nostradamus came up and she admitted to me that she was scared, really scared, about prophecies that foretold the end of days. I looked at her with calm and a reassurance that one can only give another when two people are in completely different places on a topic like this and said something like, “The end may come at any time, all we can do is live the life we have today. The future will take care of itself.”
I know, straight out of a Hallmark card. But it did the job. She later confessed to me that she found the conversation so comforting that she never looked back. For myself, I never really though about it either until this morning when I was catching up on my friend Stuart’s blog and read the following: "Oh yeah. I was horrified of all that end of the world stuff as a kid. The devil. Hell. I thought I was going to hell because I cussed. Because we didn't go to church." It reminded me that there was a time when I was scared of the devil, scared of the end, scared of all the unseen things that go bump in the night, and that what was more, I have no recollection of the time in which that shifted for me. I didn’t have that sudden realization, or comforting talk like I had with my friend all those years ago. I suppose I just grew out of it, which may explain why, sometimes, for no apparent reason, I still slip into crazy little phobias like being afraid of the unseen.
The other day I picked up a book that I read years ago called The Origin of Satan, by Elaine Pagels. I thought it would be a fun topic to offer to my Adult Sunday School class so I began rereading the book. It starts out talking about the Jewish wars of the late first century, and the persecution that early Christians felt both from the Romans as well as from other Jews who saw these followers of Jesus as radicals and a splinter group that threatened the orthodoxy of the Jewish Church. It talks about the us/them dynamic and how people used language about evil and Satan to characterize the actions of others, to demonize them in order to justify your own cause and to place that cause in the context of a greater cosmological battle that give greater credence to your own spiritual views.
Pagels talks about the original context in which the name Satan was used. Satan, an angel of God, it sent to oppose those that go against the will of God, literally Satan is the angle that is supposed to go stand in your way when you are walking away from God. The Greek word diabolos, from which we get the word devil, literally means “one who stands in your way. “ I read this and I felt like I finally understood Satan. Satan was just this misunderstood angel that was trying to help us. Far from being demonized, it was our own short sightedness that prevented us from understanding the motives of the "Lord of Darkness" and more, God’s will for us.
Recently, I shared these thoughts with a Facebook friend, an evangelist pastor in New York State. As you might expect he listened to me patiently, told me he understood my point of view and then went on to say that he had seen real demonic possession, that it was terrifying and real his exact words were “I have seen demonic possession before ... Christianity can be very cooky (sic.) because of the supernatural that flows at its core, and people can get strange when they talk about it, really flaky. Many times they forget biblical fact. Pat[rick] I pray you never have too [see anything like that], its scary and sad.”
I have to admit I dismissed my friend as superstitious and a little…well… backwards. I am ashamed to say that my thinking was something like “you poor ignorant bastard.” And I retreated back into the safety of my scholarly novel about Satan, assured that I would find in its lofty pages arguments that would further cement my intellectual authority.
Pagels’ own words on the subject took me by surprise. “ Many liberal-minded Christians have preferred to ignore the presence of angels and demons in the gospels. Yet Mark intends their presence to address the anguished question that the events of the previous decades had aroused: How could God allow such death and destruction?... The gospel writers want to locate and identify the specific ways in which the forces of evil act through certain people to effect violent destruction… The figure of Satan becomes, among other things, a way of characterizing one’s actual enemies as the embodiment of transcendent forces.”
Catch that? There are a couple of ways that one can read that last sentence by Pagels. But the end all of the matter is that, regardless of Satan’s role specifically, there are demonic forces as described in the Bible, and that as some point Satan becomes the character which personifies them. So, even if Satan is just a scapegoat for all of these other demonic forces, contending with the presence of these other forces is not as easy as saying they are simply misunderstood.
In the conclusion of her book, Pagels states that it is precisely in the demonization of others that evil is wrought, and that Jesus message was one of tolerance and acceptance. She points to such Christians as St Francis of Assisi or Martin Luther King Jr. who “stood on God’s side without demonizing their opponents” and states quite plainly that ”otherness” is the true root of evil and that, in the words of Jesus, that reconciliation is divine.
As a teenager I read a lot of my father’s science fiction hand-me-downs. One series, in particular, comes to mind, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by Stephen Donaldson. The story takes place in an alternate world of magic known as “the Land”. In the first Chronicles, Thomas is magically transported to “the Land” and struggles with his acceptance of this new reality even as he must face an ancient evil that threatens to destroy “the Land.” In the second Chronicles, Thomas is again transported to this magical place, only to discover that it is two or three millennia later, that all of the good he had performed had been erased, that evil had infiltrated every aspect of life in “the Land”, and that his task is made all the more difficult be Thomas’ own his bottomless well of self-loathing, confusion, cynicism and rage.
Sitting here writing this, I am reminded of this series, though I have not read it in more than twenty years. I marvel at the parallels. Here I sit, two millennia after the death of Jesus, looking that the words of my friends and calling him a simple ignorant fool. I say these words to myself and to him, not out of some sense of malice, but because, in my own self righteous sense of superiority I think that calling him these names will somehow make him a better person. The truth is that whether or not I believe in demons, I perpetuate demonizing and “otherness.”
I suppose this is why, though I have never had that turn around moment where I realized the superstitious thoughts of my childhood are just the stuff of fancy, I still get those insecure moments where I believe in things that go bump in the night. I have those moments because I, and not some supernatural entity, perpetuate them and give them strength. I create these demons, and I allow them to roam freely in my life, and until I look unflinchingly at that behavior they will remain.
I know, straight out of a Hallmark card. But it did the job. She later confessed to me that she found the conversation so comforting that she never looked back. For myself, I never really though about it either until this morning when I was catching up on my friend Stuart’s blog and read the following: "Oh yeah. I was horrified of all that end of the world stuff as a kid. The devil. Hell. I thought I was going to hell because I cussed. Because we didn't go to church." It reminded me that there was a time when I was scared of the devil, scared of the end, scared of all the unseen things that go bump in the night, and that what was more, I have no recollection of the time in which that shifted for me. I didn’t have that sudden realization, or comforting talk like I had with my friend all those years ago. I suppose I just grew out of it, which may explain why, sometimes, for no apparent reason, I still slip into crazy little phobias like being afraid of the unseen.
The other day I picked up a book that I read years ago called The Origin of Satan, by Elaine Pagels. I thought it would be a fun topic to offer to my Adult Sunday School class so I began rereading the book. It starts out talking about the Jewish wars of the late first century, and the persecution that early Christians felt both from the Romans as well as from other Jews who saw these followers of Jesus as radicals and a splinter group that threatened the orthodoxy of the Jewish Church. It talks about the us/them dynamic and how people used language about evil and Satan to characterize the actions of others, to demonize them in order to justify your own cause and to place that cause in the context of a greater cosmological battle that give greater credence to your own spiritual views.
Pagels talks about the original context in which the name Satan was used. Satan, an angel of God, it sent to oppose those that go against the will of God, literally Satan is the angle that is supposed to go stand in your way when you are walking away from God. The Greek word diabolos, from which we get the word devil, literally means “one who stands in your way. “ I read this and I felt like I finally understood Satan. Satan was just this misunderstood angel that was trying to help us. Far from being demonized, it was our own short sightedness that prevented us from understanding the motives of the "Lord of Darkness" and more, God’s will for us.
Recently, I shared these thoughts with a Facebook friend, an evangelist pastor in New York State. As you might expect he listened to me patiently, told me he understood my point of view and then went on to say that he had seen real demonic possession, that it was terrifying and real his exact words were “I have seen demonic possession before ... Christianity can be very cooky (sic.) because of the supernatural that flows at its core, and people can get strange when they talk about it, really flaky. Many times they forget biblical fact. Pat[rick] I pray you never have too [see anything like that], its scary and sad.”
I have to admit I dismissed my friend as superstitious and a little…well… backwards. I am ashamed to say that my thinking was something like “you poor ignorant bastard.” And I retreated back into the safety of my scholarly novel about Satan, assured that I would find in its lofty pages arguments that would further cement my intellectual authority.
Pagels’ own words on the subject took me by surprise. “ Many liberal-minded Christians have preferred to ignore the presence of angels and demons in the gospels. Yet Mark intends their presence to address the anguished question that the events of the previous decades had aroused: How could God allow such death and destruction?... The gospel writers want to locate and identify the specific ways in which the forces of evil act through certain people to effect violent destruction… The figure of Satan becomes, among other things, a way of characterizing one’s actual enemies as the embodiment of transcendent forces.”
Catch that? There are a couple of ways that one can read that last sentence by Pagels. But the end all of the matter is that, regardless of Satan’s role specifically, there are demonic forces as described in the Bible, and that as some point Satan becomes the character which personifies them. So, even if Satan is just a scapegoat for all of these other demonic forces, contending with the presence of these other forces is not as easy as saying they are simply misunderstood.
In the conclusion of her book, Pagels states that it is precisely in the demonization of others that evil is wrought, and that Jesus message was one of tolerance and acceptance. She points to such Christians as St Francis of Assisi or Martin Luther King Jr. who “stood on God’s side without demonizing their opponents” and states quite plainly that ”otherness” is the true root of evil and that, in the words of Jesus, that reconciliation is divine.
As a teenager I read a lot of my father’s science fiction hand-me-downs. One series, in particular, comes to mind, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by Stephen Donaldson. The story takes place in an alternate world of magic known as “the Land”. In the first Chronicles, Thomas is magically transported to “the Land” and struggles with his acceptance of this new reality even as he must face an ancient evil that threatens to destroy “the Land.” In the second Chronicles, Thomas is again transported to this magical place, only to discover that it is two or three millennia later, that all of the good he had performed had been erased, that evil had infiltrated every aspect of life in “the Land”, and that his task is made all the more difficult be Thomas’ own his bottomless well of self-loathing, confusion, cynicism and rage.
Sitting here writing this, I am reminded of this series, though I have not read it in more than twenty years. I marvel at the parallels. Here I sit, two millennia after the death of Jesus, looking that the words of my friends and calling him a simple ignorant fool. I say these words to myself and to him, not out of some sense of malice, but because, in my own self righteous sense of superiority I think that calling him these names will somehow make him a better person. The truth is that whether or not I believe in demons, I perpetuate demonizing and “otherness.”
I suppose this is why, though I have never had that turn around moment where I realized the superstitious thoughts of my childhood are just the stuff of fancy, I still get those insecure moments where I believe in things that go bump in the night. I have those moments because I, and not some supernatural entity, perpetuate them and give them strength. I create these demons, and I allow them to roam freely in my life, and until I look unflinchingly at that behavior they will remain.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
A season in Hell
Words are the wellspring of all treachery.
Through this language of form is forged a world of
sensuous wonders combining real and unreal
in visionary and hallucinatory projections,
Like a child in all knowing wonder, who is
at once whole and perfect, shattering this reality
with the first utterance of a single syllable.
So all worlds are created, described and destroyed,
A deluge of metamorphoses, theater, magic and fairyland
Fantastic voyages, suffering and flood like clarion bell, forged on
the anvil of the first primordial word that gave existence its birth
And plunged it headlong into its own destruction.
Long before the great towers of men soared into the skies,
Poets made poignant confessions and dramatic narrative
to adapt this reality to another beginning, from darkness into light.
Oh the painful conceit of this! The desperate clinging
of the soul to its mother tongue; Would that the wordsmiths had
fashioned an ark that traveled not forward,
but back, back from the light and into darkness.
Deep in the wells of echoing timelessness
the universes were fashioned here,
Not by their words, but in silence.
Through this language of form is forged a world of
sensuous wonders combining real and unreal
in visionary and hallucinatory projections,
Like a child in all knowing wonder, who is
at once whole and perfect, shattering this reality
with the first utterance of a single syllable.
So all worlds are created, described and destroyed,
A deluge of metamorphoses, theater, magic and fairyland
Fantastic voyages, suffering and flood like clarion bell, forged on
the anvil of the first primordial word that gave existence its birth
And plunged it headlong into its own destruction.
Long before the great towers of men soared into the skies,
Poets made poignant confessions and dramatic narrative
to adapt this reality to another beginning, from darkness into light.
Oh the painful conceit of this! The desperate clinging
of the soul to its mother tongue; Would that the wordsmiths had
fashioned an ark that traveled not forward,
but back, back from the light and into darkness.
Deep in the wells of echoing timelessness
the universes were fashioned here,
Not by their words, but in silence.
Monday, October 10, 2011
America
I saw this image in a magazine, or part of it. The ad in the magazine had a room full of couches, throw pillows, lamps and end tables, and behind it all was this wall. I saw the flag in it immediately. I reminded me of the encaustic white flags of Jasper Johns. I knew I wanted to paint it. I love the texture of the brick, the warmth of the ocher and sienna leaking out behind the white paint. I love how the paint attempts to "sanitize" the brick, to make it look new or renewed. But really the texture is louder than the paint. I love the wall and the window that looks out into nothing behind the wall, as if all the substance is in the wall and everything else is just window dressing. I want to paint this painting again and again, trying to recapture the different textures of each individual brick, or maybe a new painting of nothing but brick and more brick, or brick and wood panel. I want to do this partly because painting is a lot like building a brick wall, one piece at a time, slowly building up layers, layers that both reveal and conceal. I like the idea of this painting hanging on a wall somewhere, hiding the space behind it like a wall, while revealing the textures, the materials the substance of the wall that it hides, brick, mortar, paint. I call this painting America, mostly because it reminds me of how this country is built, putting up walls and tearing them down, layer after layer, century after century, one brick at a time.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
The Dead
I think most of my “great thoughts” occur to me in the car. I don’t know if this is because I spend more time in the car than anywhere else, or if it is because I am usually alone in the car, or if my car, by virtue of being a piece of shit, rattles and jiggles me into an hypnotic state wherein I am one with the universe. Regardless, when I am in me car, the idea factory is open.
A great example of this happened to me the other day. It was morning, that much I can tell you. Most likely I was on my way home after having dropped the kids off at school. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful morning, when all of a sudden the idea hit me. I was dead.
Now before I go any further, I want to make sure you understand me. I don’t mean the “I am dying, we are all dying” I am dead. It reminds me of the line from the movie Fight Club. "Narrator: In the Tibetan philosophy, Sylvia Plath sense of the word. I know we're all dying. But you're not dying the way Chloe back there is dying." Also, I don’t mean the “what is the point, I am better off not having lived” kind of dead. What I in fact mean is that I am I dead, literally dead, not dead, walking on the earth like a zombie dead, but that I am dead, “walking around in the afterlife and I just became aware of it” kind of dead.
Now, like most ideas that I have in the car, this one is kind of far fetched. Probably due to road hypnosis and the like. But I have to admit that the idea was not an unpleasant one, and that having had my so-called “realization” I felt quite comfortable. In fact, I felt at peace.
If I am dead, and this is the afterlife, then really the afterlife isn’t all that bad. I mean, apart from the occasional ups and downs, the mood swings, the minor tantrums, the drama and such, for the most part, life, er... death, is good.
Aside from feeling liberated, it is a funny thing to think of yourself as dead, that life as we know it is really the afterlife. Clichés abound about how life is what you make it and the kingdom of heaven is now. It reminds me of movies like Jacob’s Ladder, where the main character is haunted throughout the movie, only to realize in the end that he is actually dead. By way of explanation of the plot, the movie quotes the German mystic Meister Eckhart "The only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of life, your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away. But they're not punishing you; they're freeing your soul. So, if you're frightened of dying and. you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth."
I think that this is a profound way of talking about pain that has echoes in Buddhism, namely that suffering is not caused from without, but by our attachments. The big difference of course being that Eckhart is talking about the soul’s journey after death, and the Buddha is talking about the individual’s journey through life. Though truth be told, I personally see very little difference between the two. What does it matter if we think of ourselves as alive or dead? It reminds me of the exchange between Gandalf and Pippin in the Movie the Return of the King:
Pippin: I didn't think it would end this way.
Gandalf: End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path... One that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass... And then you see it.
Pippin: What? Gandalf?... See what?
Gandalf: White shores... and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.
Pippin: [smiling] Well, that isn't so bad.
Gandalf: [softly] No... No it isn't.
I have to admit, as I was typing my blog post on the Book of Jonah, I flinched when I admitted that I sometimes despair to the point of contemplating death as an escape, but it is equally true that I harbor a fear of death and the unknown and that those two feeling are very much at odds with one another.
I was listening to a Radiolab episode on the radio the other day as the described the action of a man who made the decision to jump off a bridge; I think it was the Golden Gate Bridge, to end his own life. Mid jump, he said, he realized he had made a terrible mistake. The announced later commented that of the twenty-four or so people out of one thousand that actually survived the same fall, almost all unanimously confirmed the same experience, namely that the desire to live was rekindled in the act of falling. I wonder, of the nine hundred and seventy-six that died, how many had the same experience but we not as lucky?
Anyway, back on point. I don’t think that I obsess about death, or that my musings on it are unnatural. Quite the contrary, the more I think about it, the less power it has over me. If I imagine myself as already dead, that I am strolling though the afterlife, death no longer seems like an option, as an escape from my suffering, nor as a thing to be afraid of. As Pippin said, “that isn’t so bad.” The torments I face are really the ones of my own making, and not the unknown that looms in the future.
I kind of like this thought, as odd as it is, a kind of Egyptian "the afterlife is a parallel of this life" kind of thing. Though without Pharaohs and Sphinxes and such. I don't believe I could walk around pretending I was dead all the time, but when I think about it, and stare out my window in to the wide world beyond, it puts a little quirky smile on my face and I chuckle to myself, and then I go on about my day.
A great example of this happened to me the other day. It was morning, that much I can tell you. Most likely I was on my way home after having dropped the kids off at school. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful morning, when all of a sudden the idea hit me. I was dead.
Now before I go any further, I want to make sure you understand me. I don’t mean the “I am dying, we are all dying” I am dead. It reminds me of the line from the movie Fight Club. "Narrator: In the Tibetan philosophy, Sylvia Plath sense of the word. I know we're all dying. But you're not dying the way Chloe back there is dying." Also, I don’t mean the “what is the point, I am better off not having lived” kind of dead. What I in fact mean is that I am I dead, literally dead, not dead, walking on the earth like a zombie dead, but that I am dead, “walking around in the afterlife and I just became aware of it” kind of dead.
Now, like most ideas that I have in the car, this one is kind of far fetched. Probably due to road hypnosis and the like. But I have to admit that the idea was not an unpleasant one, and that having had my so-called “realization” I felt quite comfortable. In fact, I felt at peace.
If I am dead, and this is the afterlife, then really the afterlife isn’t all that bad. I mean, apart from the occasional ups and downs, the mood swings, the minor tantrums, the drama and such, for the most part, life, er... death, is good.
Aside from feeling liberated, it is a funny thing to think of yourself as dead, that life as we know it is really the afterlife. Clichés abound about how life is what you make it and the kingdom of heaven is now. It reminds me of movies like Jacob’s Ladder, where the main character is haunted throughout the movie, only to realize in the end that he is actually dead. By way of explanation of the plot, the movie quotes the German mystic Meister Eckhart "The only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of life, your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away. But they're not punishing you; they're freeing your soul. So, if you're frightened of dying and. you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth."
I think that this is a profound way of talking about pain that has echoes in Buddhism, namely that suffering is not caused from without, but by our attachments. The big difference of course being that Eckhart is talking about the soul’s journey after death, and the Buddha is talking about the individual’s journey through life. Though truth be told, I personally see very little difference between the two. What does it matter if we think of ourselves as alive or dead? It reminds me of the exchange between Gandalf and Pippin in the Movie the Return of the King:
Pippin: I didn't think it would end this way.
Gandalf: End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path... One that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass... And then you see it.
Pippin: What? Gandalf?... See what?
Gandalf: White shores... and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.
Pippin: [smiling] Well, that isn't so bad.
Gandalf: [softly] No... No it isn't.
I have to admit, as I was typing my blog post on the Book of Jonah, I flinched when I admitted that I sometimes despair to the point of contemplating death as an escape, but it is equally true that I harbor a fear of death and the unknown and that those two feeling are very much at odds with one another.
I was listening to a Radiolab episode on the radio the other day as the described the action of a man who made the decision to jump off a bridge; I think it was the Golden Gate Bridge, to end his own life. Mid jump, he said, he realized he had made a terrible mistake. The announced later commented that of the twenty-four or so people out of one thousand that actually survived the same fall, almost all unanimously confirmed the same experience, namely that the desire to live was rekindled in the act of falling. I wonder, of the nine hundred and seventy-six that died, how many had the same experience but we not as lucky?
Anyway, back on point. I don’t think that I obsess about death, or that my musings on it are unnatural. Quite the contrary, the more I think about it, the less power it has over me. If I imagine myself as already dead, that I am strolling though the afterlife, death no longer seems like an option, as an escape from my suffering, nor as a thing to be afraid of. As Pippin said, “that isn’t so bad.” The torments I face are really the ones of my own making, and not the unknown that looms in the future.
I kind of like this thought, as odd as it is, a kind of Egyptian "the afterlife is a parallel of this life" kind of thing. Though without Pharaohs and Sphinxes and such. I don't believe I could walk around pretending I was dead all the time, but when I think about it, and stare out my window in to the wide world beyond, it puts a little quirky smile on my face and I chuckle to myself, and then I go on about my day.
Monday, October 3, 2011
What is this thing to you?
Is there anyone that doesn’t know the story if Jonah, particularly that part in which Jonah is swallowed by a great fish? I thought that I did. I have read the story several times in the last thirty years, and yet as we talked about the story in my adult Sunday school class last week, I found myself marveling over passages that seemed entirely new to me.
At the end of the story of Jonah, the Assyrian people repent, and turn to God, who in turn forgives them. Jonah’s response? He throws a fit. “I knew you were going to do that” he says, “ I knew you were going to forgive them. What was the point of my coming here if all you were going to do was forgive them?” He sits down outside the city and fumes.
Some people might me mystified by Jonah’s behavior. I think it is interesting that I never really took great notice of it. Probably because it was too close to home as this is where many of my conversations with God begin. “What was the point of that?” Just like Jonah I become incalcitrant. I can see myself in Jonah’s shoes. Frustrated, he is so overwhelmed with emotion that he is no longer able to talk with God. JoHe goes and sits outside the city wall in the burning desert sun and prays for death.
I am no stranger to this response. It is not uncommon for me, faced with some difficulty, or having felt some offence, to shut down the rational part of my mind. I become fixated on the swelling tide of emotions that churn within my body and I am incapable of offering defense on my own behalf. Furious at my own impotence as much as any perceived offence I may find myself acting out or saying something inappropriate that only worsens my situation. I am not above praying for release, even death, in these moments.
God’s response to Jonah is equally interesting. He causes a plant to sprout and grow overnight until it is large enough to shade Jonah. I imagine this plant like one of the trees you see in a Dr. Seuss book, long and gangly and multicolored. Jonah, the passage says, likes the plant, and enjoys the shade.
In yet another twist, God kills the plant, and here is where the story ends, or almost. Jonah becomes incensed, and God, seeing Jonah’s anger says to him “what was this plant to you? You did not plant it, you did not raise it, it was not yours, and yet when it dies you are angry. How much more are the people of this city, lost and confused, than this plant to which you owe nothing?”
The book ends on the question, and does not offer an answer. It appears as though it is the reader, and not Jonah, who is asked the question and expected to make an answer. Why are you angry? What is this thing to you?
The author is silent.
At the end of the story of Jonah, the Assyrian people repent, and turn to God, who in turn forgives them. Jonah’s response? He throws a fit. “I knew you were going to do that” he says, “ I knew you were going to forgive them. What was the point of my coming here if all you were going to do was forgive them?” He sits down outside the city and fumes.
Some people might me mystified by Jonah’s behavior. I think it is interesting that I never really took great notice of it. Probably because it was too close to home as this is where many of my conversations with God begin. “What was the point of that?” Just like Jonah I become incalcitrant. I can see myself in Jonah’s shoes. Frustrated, he is so overwhelmed with emotion that he is no longer able to talk with God. JoHe goes and sits outside the city wall in the burning desert sun and prays for death.
I am no stranger to this response. It is not uncommon for me, faced with some difficulty, or having felt some offence, to shut down the rational part of my mind. I become fixated on the swelling tide of emotions that churn within my body and I am incapable of offering defense on my own behalf. Furious at my own impotence as much as any perceived offence I may find myself acting out or saying something inappropriate that only worsens my situation. I am not above praying for release, even death, in these moments.
God’s response to Jonah is equally interesting. He causes a plant to sprout and grow overnight until it is large enough to shade Jonah. I imagine this plant like one of the trees you see in a Dr. Seuss book, long and gangly and multicolored. Jonah, the passage says, likes the plant, and enjoys the shade.
In yet another twist, God kills the plant, and here is where the story ends, or almost. Jonah becomes incensed, and God, seeing Jonah’s anger says to him “what was this plant to you? You did not plant it, you did not raise it, it was not yours, and yet when it dies you are angry. How much more are the people of this city, lost and confused, than this plant to which you owe nothing?”
The book ends on the question, and does not offer an answer. It appears as though it is the reader, and not Jonah, who is asked the question and expected to make an answer. Why are you angry? What is this thing to you?
The author is silent.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Take my class
This year the adjunct faculty had an assignment, write a short email answering the question "What do I want my students to walk away with?" In the absence of anything else to blog about, I thought I would share my thoughts with you...
Over the years I have had the random former student email me telling me they saw this or that painting, and that they were able to identify it because of my class. However I really sincerely doubt that the majority of my students, even the best, would be able to do this within weeks of taking my class. I don't want to sound mean, thought I know it sounds jaded, but simply put, if it isn’t in their interest they are going to forget it, quickly.
This begs the question, why teach if they aren’t going to remember? To answer this question I want to share an anecdote that happened to me some years ago. As I was standing beside the copier, I was engaged in small talk with another professor from a different department. When I told him I taught Art he looked at me rather smugly and said, “So, what is Art?”
“Take my class.” I said.
The answer to this question, a question, incidentally, that opens the first paragraph of our textbook, is no small matter. Is it the work of art, the process the artist uses to create a piece, or the skill and craft of the artist themselves? Over the years I have come to believe that Art is a language, a language of the culture and the time in which it was created. To tell you what art is, I must first teach you to speak that language, understand its nuances and syntax, and then, versed in this language we can begin a cover the meaning of the question, “What is art?”
That being said, here are some of the things that I want my students to gain from my class:
1. That art is a lens though which we view culture.
2. That there is a specific language used to communicate how this lens functions.
3. That this lens will vary with time and place, and is unique to its own particular set of circumstances
4. That to use this lens we must first take of the lens of our own culture, or, as it were, peek around it as much as is possible.
5. That to learn this language, one must not only study images, but also ideas, history, other languages, and in short, other cultures.
In the end what I want to teach my students is how to approach art, I want to teach my students how to think about art, so that with this mindset, they can look at any work of art, and not just "Las Menias" or the "Arnofini Wedding Portrait", and walk away with a new found appreciation and understanding of the work that is in front of them.
Over the years I have had the random former student email me telling me they saw this or that painting, and that they were able to identify it because of my class. However I really sincerely doubt that the majority of my students, even the best, would be able to do this within weeks of taking my class. I don't want to sound mean, thought I know it sounds jaded, but simply put, if it isn’t in their interest they are going to forget it, quickly.
This begs the question, why teach if they aren’t going to remember? To answer this question I want to share an anecdote that happened to me some years ago. As I was standing beside the copier, I was engaged in small talk with another professor from a different department. When I told him I taught Art he looked at me rather smugly and said, “So, what is Art?”
“Take my class.” I said.
The answer to this question, a question, incidentally, that opens the first paragraph of our textbook, is no small matter. Is it the work of art, the process the artist uses to create a piece, or the skill and craft of the artist themselves? Over the years I have come to believe that Art is a language, a language of the culture and the time in which it was created. To tell you what art is, I must first teach you to speak that language, understand its nuances and syntax, and then, versed in this language we can begin a cover the meaning of the question, “What is art?”
That being said, here are some of the things that I want my students to gain from my class:
1. That art is a lens though which we view culture.
2. That there is a specific language used to communicate how this lens functions.
3. That this lens will vary with time and place, and is unique to its own particular set of circumstances
4. That to use this lens we must first take of the lens of our own culture, or, as it were, peek around it as much as is possible.
5. That to learn this language, one must not only study images, but also ideas, history, other languages, and in short, other cultures.
In the end what I want to teach my students is how to approach art, I want to teach my students how to think about art, so that with this mindset, they can look at any work of art, and not just "Las Menias" or the "Arnofini Wedding Portrait", and walk away with a new found appreciation and understanding of the work that is in front of them.
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