Image of God ...... or when people become "Strawmen"

We should always avoid making "Straw Men" arguments.  We should work hard not to reduce our opponent's arguments to absurdities;  I will go one step further-- whenever possible we should imagine the best version of our opponent's argument and contend with this version instead of what the person has actually said.  That said:  sometimes people make absurdly stupid arguments.  For instance, GOP Ohio state lawmaker Nino Vitale has publicly insisted he won't where a face mask.  The reason?  He does not want to hide the image of God present in his own countenance.  No one should deny that Vitale bears the mark of his Maker, but his comment displays a woeful lack of understanding about Christian teachings around the image of God.  In the age of social media such absurdly stupid arguments can function as profound distractions. I am blogging about it aren't I and why?  Well, in part because his comments provide an emotionally powerful verification for me.  How stupid! All my opponents are kind of stupid. ...

I am trying my best to stop feeding off such vindication.  If I was Vitale's teacher then I think I would start by saying:  indeed the image of God can be a basis of thinking about our own inherent worth (although all theologians don't see it this way).  For thinkers who focus on the image of God as an affirmation of the inherent worth of every human-beings it is natural to talk about this image in connection with human rights.  Yet, it is important to remember that the focus of Christian teachings on the image of God is not individualized--every person is fully, truly, and wholly made in the image of God.  The question you should be asking is does your right to "be seen" trump your neighbors right to be safe (particularly your weakest neighbors).  

Yet, we all know what kind of response I would likely get if I posted this in the comment sections of his article. 

A few years back I decided that I would try my best to not argue with people on Facebook.  I boldly told Doug that the people on Twitter and in the comment sections of articles do not really exist. ( I meant by this that the mostly anonymous opinions that people screech out in the middle of the night probably don't represent that person's worldview.)  

Yet, the comment section seemed to be a considerable voting bloc in the last election. 

 Is it wise to let all of these misguided opinions to remain unchecked? 

I don't know.   I do know that I am not that great of a debater.  I realized a few years ago that I have a tendency to simplify arguments. I am a pontificator and preacher by nature and inclination.  I believe firmly with Mr. Rogers that too much in our world is shallow and complex, but that the point of existence is to find truths that are simple and deep.  

I am trying my best to keep saying over and over again the things that I find to be simple, but deep.  I also will try my best to take every opportunity afforded me to say them. 

If I had any response to Nino Vitale it would simply--your neighbor's life is as precious as your life! Where a mask.    

If he refused to understand that basic point it wouldn't be because he is stupid.... 

It would be because he doesn't want to understand.... and the solution for that is not more argument.... 

it is conversion. 

Nature

The Robin is steadily flitting back and forth from its nest. Perhaps, there are babies? I saw my first gosling on Sunday speeding down the overflowing stream between two aggressive parents. Sam and I explore along Laurel Creek somewhat regularly, but on Sunday it was annoying/fun/hopeful to see the teen boy in the video game shirt rather in-adroitly playing in the creek (as if for the first time.) He may or may not have fallen in... Sam and I may or may not have laughed. 

This world is delightful: “Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don't have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see.” 

A polar vortex this weekend! We might get snow in May! This denizen of the great Northwoods has only experienced snow in May one other time and that was flakes dancing on the wind--there was no accumulation. Oh boy! What about all the people sleeping in tents? 

It is ALL a bit too much. 

This virus that ravages through some bodies ...laying absolute destruction ….and others it lilts through unnoticed. 

Wherever you turn your eyes the world can burn like a transmorgification. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. 

Nature is not enough. Nature is too much. 

I need the stories that begin with Jesus reading from a scroll announcing good news for the poor. I still need the theological poetry of Paul wherein he names that all creation is groaning awaiting a redemption that can only come when that scroll-reading Jesus becomes all-in-all: Behold a new heavens and a new earth! 

And yet, it is still all so beautiful or as Marilyn Robinson writes:

And I can’t believe that, when we have all been changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us. In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. Because I don’t imagine any reality putting this one in the shade entirely, and I think piety forbids me to try.” 

Out to sea

I watched a video of an Extreme Surfer about five years ago.  He caught waves on sandbars in the middle of the ocean and rode them for an exceptionally long-time.  He was talking about what he does when he falls in to a wave.  In short: nothing.  No flailing or struggling.  The only thing to do is to relax and let the wave drag him towards the shore.  This image has returned to me when I have faced difficult times--my Dad's cancer diagnosis, our previous job search and move to Canada.
Sometimes the situation is so overwhelming that there is nothing one can do but hold one's breath and wait to hit the shore.  That takes faith.

The difficulty though...we aren't necessarily sure we are oriented towards the shore.  When people say this time is unprecedented they are saying we might be heading out to sea in ways that we aren't quite able to imagine.


When I feel "out to sea"  I try to control things.  I crave decisive action, and yet I have found that at these times decisive action might not necessarily be particularly helpful (too often it is just flailing against the waves and taking in water).

Another image that comes to my mind is the bank run scene in "It's a Wonderful Life."  The people are panicking and seeking out certain action and immediate cash payments.  Old Man Potter is poised and ready to snap everything up.  George Bailey has the clarity to see that "the people are panicking but Potter isn't" and to implore people to think out of their values and not from their fear.

What is necessary now was also necessary before covid-19.  Our values and morals were made to serve us at precisely such a time as this.  This is a time to live deeply into our commitment to the value of each life, to the dignity of working people, to the realization that the economy serves humanity and not vice-versa.

The Old Man Potters are not losing their heads.  Jeff Bezos and other are chopping up every inch of this world that they can get their hands on right now.

The Bible continually reminds us "Don't be Afraid."  This message spoken by Angels, or God, or weary prophets is one of the most significant and persistent divine words.  Easier said than done.  And yet, thankfully Scripture also reminds us again and again that the opposite of fear is love.  Fear drives us to forget what we truly and most deeply value.  Fear can lead us to destroy what we are trying so desperately to protect.  What does relaxing into the wave look like today?  Well, it is not doing nothing.  It is doing what is essential.  Breathing in the surfer example.  Staying open one more day in the case of George Bailey.  And for me?

Remembering what I love.

What do you love?   Love that today.  Love it deeply.  Love it for itself.  Find in that love the courage necessary for today.  Just today.

A Mothering God

And I praise you for crows calling from treetops
The speech of my first village,
And for the sparrow’s flash of song
Flinging me in an instant
The joy of a child who woke
Each morning to the freedom
Of her mother’s unclouded love
And lived in it like a country.

-Anne Porter

If by chance I should find myself at risk
A-falling from this jagged cliff
I look below, and I look above
I'm surrounded by your boundless love

-John Prine

When I was in high school my Mom and I read the Bridge Over San Luis Rey together. It was when I began to learn again (after a period of Middle School overconfidence) that my Mom was indeed smarter than me. [a much better grammarian as well :)] It was also when I began to realize something that my Mom seemed blind to—that, in the words of Toni Morrison’s Beloved—love can be too thick. Or, to put the idea into theological terms not all sin is privation. That we can do harm to others when we love them idolatrously. And yet, I also began to understand even that error can be undone by the application of more love. Oh, the ironies! If we push deeply into this overabundance and excess and over-acceptance we creep into the territory that Christians call grace--a whole continent that unnerving to explore and yet, also, so easily domesticated.

My imagination is defiantly governed by a male deity which is mostly okay—I loved and was loved by my Father ...though he had his faults. I suspect that if I allowed myself to deeply imagine a mothering God that it would unsettle most everything. I got a bit of glimpse at what that deity might look like from Amy Laura Hall’s book on Julian of Norwich.

What would it mean for me to live fully into

The joy of a child who woke/Each morning to the freedom/Of her mother’s unclouded love/ And lived in it like a country.

I think this might be a fruitful spiritual discipline for me.

This quarantine reminds me most of being a very young child home through the long days of winter with my Mom, stuck in the house with no car, the wild winds howling outside, the fire in the wood stove, drawing pictures at the coffee tables, keeping busy.

On a more personal note, I have been in a difficult time in my life where Wendell Berry’s line in his poem Do Not be Ashamed is very resonant: Though you have done nothing shameful,/they will want you to be ashamed.

It was my mother who continually called me to attend to the herons beginning their evening flights, the vacant lots raising up blue chicory flowers, and tenacity of the dandelions.

It was my mother’s love that embarrassed me: made me wonder when we read The Bridge over San Luis Rey if her love wasn’t too much, too overwhelming. And yet, in this season of life I need to be confounded and surrounded, above and below, by God’s boundless love. It is the only antidote or as Thorton Wilder wrote the only meaning and the only survival.

And so I will rest hard into love and I will ask the mothering God to

bring us ... life
Out of every sort of death

And teach us mercy.

i thank You God for most this amazing

Good morning! I have a riot of orange blooms out front interspersed with the daffodils. The dog has felt the vigor in the air and has been anticipating a walk with more fervor than normal (or maybe he really needs to go pee). The past few years I have had a special place in my heart for the peacefulness of early winter and the settling of the earth into the season of Advent. Yet, one of the unexpected gifts that this quarantine has granted is the time necessary to really notice the glories of Spring. Over the past few years, the collection of Spring bulbs in the front planter has been a thing to notice as I backed the car out of the driveway or comment on briefly to my office mates. I didn’t necessarily need the crocuses to bloom or the ducklings to appear. This year--I do. 

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

-e.e. cummings.

We need to stop running

The news is getting to me.  Yesterday,  I saw a study from the WHO that stated there is no conclusive evidence that people are immune after an initial infection with covid-19.  My Facebook feed is filled with gallows humor about the latest monstrous lie coming out of the White House (that we can use disinfectant on sick people's blood).  I have read many long-form articles about the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1919 and, in particular, the virulent resurgence the following Fall and Winter.  Then there are the individual posts carping on State governments couched in familiar narratives of government overreach and "fake news."

I am also noting a thinning of posts about sour bread starters, inventive homeschool strategies, or poems about how the birds are singing again and nature is resting.

There are lots more people admitting that their kids are restless and unruly, that it is actually impossible to work and homeschool at the same time, and that people miss their grandchildren or grandparents.

Here in Ontario and in Michigan (where my attention habitually returns) there are indications that some of the social distancing rules will be lifted at the end of May.  That is still quite a ways off and we will still be encountering a near future where the summer festivals have been cancelled, where the baseball stadiums are silent, summer camps are offering online offerings, and it is even unclear whether we will be even able to enjoy the beaches or parks.

What should we do?

It reminds me a bit of a misadventure I had once when I was in living in London-- I went out for a jog and just as I thought that I was almost finished... I discovered that I was actually incredibly lost.  Right away I knew that I needed to stop running-- and it was a good thing that I did because I ended up being lost for three hours in the byzantine maze of post war suburban houses (too early in the morning to ask for directions).

I don't know what needs to be done right now, but I do know that we all need to stop running ...

... and maybe be a bit more creative than I was all those years ago in actually finding our collective bearings.

Saving what we love: reflections on Star Wars and Pete Seeger

I, like a goodly percentage of human beings on this planet, love Star Wars. We were living in Chicago when The Force Awakens opened and somehow I—with very little foresight — scored tickets for the first showing on opening night. I tricked Simeon into thinking we were going Christmas shopping. I remember his forlorn face as we passed our usual movie theatre and as he watched the costumed twenty-somethings boarding the bus. What fun it was to show him the tickets. 

I cried actual tears when it was revealed that the hero of the story was a young woman. As they say, representation matters, and that is true even for middle-aged women! I had witnessed many women being brave in films—especially a  resilient bravery in gritty places: depression era farms, coal mines, concentration camps, diners, beauty salons. Yet I confess I enjoyed seeing one empowered by the FORCE, in charge of saving the universe, wielding a light saber.

The second film in the new trilogy, The Last Jedi, was even more an homage to women, and not surprisingly this angered some male super-fans. The one character that attracted the most ire was Rose—how dare an Asian woman be a brave and sturdy mechanic and not a willowy and exotic, scantily clad oracle of esoteric wisdom.

This didn’t mean Rose wasn’t wise. Indeed, I believe she was given the most important line in the new trilogy. In a climatic moment she stops Finn from making a desperate kamikaze run against the First Order. When she gets to him she says: “We win not by destroying what we hate, but by saving what we love.” I don’t have any desire to trade in gender essentialism, and yet, this is a lesson I have learned in so many different ways from women that I love. The great and profound social pressure on men in our world is to make themselves into cannon fodder for some great cause and to be willing to throw their bodies onto pikes to destroy what they hate. This instinct persists even when the tools are not militaristic. I think of Woody Guthrie’s guitar that famously was inscribed with the words “this machine kills fascists.” Yes, that is a complicated message—how and in what way does folk music “kill fascists?” There is a lot to consider there.

And yet the images, the metaphors, the imagination of death and killing is still there. I prefer Pete Seeger’s inscription on his banjo “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.” 

How do we save what we love instead of destroying what we hate? How do we never forget the sacred glimmers of what we love found even in our enemies?

So, my spiritual discipline today is to write a short list of the things I love. Maybe this is something that you would like to do as well.

Johanna, Simeon, Samuel, Doug, Jesus, Truth, Friendship, Community, Vulnerable Love, Daffodils, Spring, Easter, Advent, Reconciliation, Robins, Old Karl Barth, Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians, Ikiru, Curry, a Trip to Bountiful, my in-laws, 10 acres in Buckley Michigan, Church, Dogs that swim, Pussy Willows, Tomato Plants, Spotting a deer in the corner of the field, Words, breakfast, beers, coffee, ducklings, Preaching, Our Lady of Guadalupe, the opening paragraph of Cannery Row, the way it feels to turn a corner and see something new. 

As much as possible I will work to protect and save these things.