AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Beauty, truth, excellence are hard; they cut through encrusted bullshit. And if you open your heart to beauty, truth, and excellence, they will not let you off the hook. They will haunt, afflict, beset you.

One of the pernicious dimensions of the da Vinci Code phenomenon derives from the extent to which both its conspiratorial advocates and its horrified detractors occlude the truth in the interest of upholding something they want to be true; the element of wish-fulfillment prevails over critical questions relative to the narrative’s beauty (despite the frequent concessions that “it’s a good thriller,” I found the book tediously flat and predictable), its truth (despite the proud assertion on the front page, there is hardly a shred of truth to it), and its excellence.

They like it, or they can’t stand it, but questions of truth get derailed by the strength of people’s desire to believe one thing or another.

“Liking” is easy, though, and “opinion” is cheap; anyone can like something, everybody’s got an opinion. Though one would like to like what is beautiful, and to hold true opinion, one’s preferences and opinions don’t depend on truth or beauty.

“Liking” doesn’t exclude loving, knowing, appreciating — but if one always only likes, one forgoes the opportunity to gaze into the truth, to work into love.

If I understand theology correctly, we have the opportunity to endeavor one of the hardest things people can venture, to witness the beauty of the gospel, to share the truth of the gospel, to participate in the excellence of the gospel — but these require something more than liking Christian faith.

I don’now if I’d have predicted it, but Jennifer is the next one in the family (after Si and me) to put pixels to blog, with a guest blog column in Guernica, calling attention to the case of Ehren K. Watada, whose conscience will not permit him to participate in an illegal war. Welcome to Blogaria, Jennifer!

Margaret and Pippa took off this morning for their summer vacation with east-coast family, from which Margaret will fly directly south to begin her next academic year at Duke. Si will be home with me for a few more weeks, but (especially since Si spends so much time at work and away with Laura) the house feels pretty empty. I have tons of tasks to do: my presentation on education for the Christianity and Anarchism conference, the Catholic Biblical Association meeting, and now the panel discussion on “Discovery Tools: Replanting the Tree of Knowledge” at the Society for Scholarly Publishing’s Top Management Roundtable.

Oh, and a book, course prep, and so on.

It’s awfully quiet around here.

As Margaret and I batted ideas around this past weekend, we noted again that so many people show a proclivity to accept claims on the basis of a speaker’s authority, without qualification. We were thinking of a scholar we know of, whom people quote as though his words settled an issue once and for all.

(This called to my mind the phrase ipse dixit, Latin for “he himself said it,” a locution associated with Pythagoreans’ invocations of their founder’s authoritative pronouncements. Then I wondered what the Greek for ipse dixit was, since Pythagoras presumably dixited in Greek, and in my grandfather’s Dictionary of Foreign Phrases and Classical Quotations tracked down the phrase autos epha, αὐτὸς ἔφα. But that’s all a digression.)

We batted the problem around for a while. It’s more complicated than it appears, since we know a little about so many fields in which we’re dependent on the words of experts for even what little we know. If I say something about macroeconomics, it’s usually not on the basis of my having thought through the disciplinary logic of an assertion, but on the basis of my taking someone’s word for it. All the more so for, for instance, neurology; radically less so for, say, philosophy (an area in which I’m not a specialist, but am moderately well-read).

I’ve encountered numerous people who seem to think, though, that citing what Derrida, or Karl Barth, or Dom Crossan, or Walter Brueggemann, or Chris Seitz said, settles an argument. Ipse dixit! While each of these constitutes a formidable authority, I’m troubled by the notion that their words might carry a point solely by virtue of the fact that they spoke (or “wrote”) them; only a shade more justified is the assumption that the argument a scholar advances should carry decisive weight just because he advances it. The fact that Crossan thinks something is a powerful argument impresses me (because I know him to be a thoughtful, reflective intellect) — but I can still call his argument into question. He’s a scholar, not an oracle.

Still, I’m accepting somebody’s ipse dixit much of the time; I’m not immune to the problem I note in others. If there’s a difference, I suspect it may play out in this kind of way: First, in my area of greatest special interest, I believe hardly anything on the basis of who said it. My closest friends and allies, or my most persistent discursive adversaries, in all cases I expect that an argument win me over, not collegial sympathy or partisan alliance (when I hear people soft-pedal the shoddiness of an argument because it’s from someone on their side of an issue )—whether a “prophetic” reappraiser or an “orthodox” reasserter — I wince with disappointment. Second, since we will always rely on the guidance of people more expert than we, we ought also try always to stay humble about the claims we reject out of hand: “— as though Schüssler Fiorenza hadn’t settled that years ago!” Well, maybe she did, and maybe she didn’t, but let’s look at the arguments.— Third, I suspect we should be extra cautious about ipse dixits where we have a pro or con investment, since it’s so devilishly easy simply to treat our hero as the one who solved all vexing problems with his brilliance, or to derogate our adversary as the one whose ludicrous misstatement (often misquoted or taken out of context) reveals the vacuity of everyone who agrees with her. We are rarely so very right, and our adversaries never so very wrong, as overblown rhetoric suggests (except when I criticize Dan Brown or some ecclesiastical counterpart of his).* Fourth, we should watch out for ipsedixitism in more of our discussions; when someone says, “Well, Roger Ebert liked it,” or “Well, President Bush says this is necessary,” or “Jon Stewart called her ridiculous,” not just to rest content with our hero’s vindication or our foe’s discountenance, but to press for reasons.

It won’t work in any far-reaching way. Most of us want to accommodate our intellectual convictions to our likes and dislikes, rather than acknowledging that some things and people we like are not intellectual heavy hitters, or that those we dislike might be even more profound than our allies. And since so many people really are quite clever, our appeals to their personal authority aren’t groundless; they know more about X, Y, or Z than we do. On the other hand, it won’t kill anyone for more of us to make an effort.

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*This is deliberate self-mockery. Of course, I’m liable to overstatement even when I’m criticizing the empty-headed, leaden-prosed charlatanry of Dan Brown, or What’s-his-name, or Tut-tut-tut, or even You-know-who (but the task of filling up the blanks I’d rather leave to you).

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[Later: I wrote this before I read the latest JOHO Newsletter, though I probably was half-thinking about what David wrote about knowledge the other day.

Somehow, I have lost about a week of work on my James manuscript. I can’t find the relevant file anywhere on my main drive, on my backup drive, in any way, shape, or form. My best guess is that Microsoft Word crashed sometime in the background, and I didn’t notice, and hadn’t saved for a few days; that would be highly atypical of me, but “atypical” doesn’t mean “impossible,” and when we eliminate alternatives that appear to be counterfactual, then that which remains — no matter how uncharacteristic — must presumably be the case.

Sighs deeply. Back to the writing board.

Margaret and I had one of our insta-vacations this past weekend (only one day, sadly, but a change is almost as good as a rest, or something) — so I have all sorts of ideas percolating behind my glasses. Rather than rush one to expression, though, I’d like to put in a word for the musical participants in this year’s Ekklesia Project gathering, the Psalters. The Psalters travel from location to location, living in their renovated, biodiesel-powered converted school bus, playing intriguing music that doesn’t sound just like anything I’ve ever heard. I’m looking forward to seeing them again at the Anarchism and Christianity conference week after next.

They offer a number of downloadable selections (click “Media” then “audio,” cursed frames!) and have produced at least one CD. I’m intrigued by the music, impressed by the example of consistent commitment, and appreciative of their expression of what “being disciples” can mean.

About six years ago, give or take a few days, Beatrice was born. Nine or eleven weeks later, Margaret brought her home.

Yesterday was something vaguely like her sixth birthday. She has aged a little, but has not lost her puppy-cuteness.

Now, on her most recent trip, the vet noticed that someone has been giving her more food for breakfast and dinner since Margaret moved to Durham (AKMA looks innocently away); she’s up to twelve pounds from her ideal weight of nine pounds. So she’s on a diet, even on her kinda birthday. But she still has fluff for brains, a sweet disposition, and is harmless as a butter knife. Happy birthday, Bea!

David Knight: friend, Seabury alum, Katrina survivor, and deputy to General Convention reflects on the Episcopal General Convention 2006 in two posts.

Thomas Knoll writes to ask, “How many students would you need to make it worth your time to develop a course on Beautiful Evidence? In other words, if I found 5, 10, 15, 20, more people, could we take a go at a Disseminary course?”
I don’t have a predetermined answer. If I were to cook up an online discussion group, it would involve a number of books that people might not want to bother tracking down and reading, and I would probably incline toward drawing on Visual Explanations rather than Beautiful Evidence. If the course were a formal academic course, I’d use that and Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, perhaps Robert Bringhurst’s Elements of Typographic Style (with a connection, then, to this interesting article on liturgical printing), perhaps my book coming out from Fortress, maybe some others I’m not recollecting (help, Laura?). If people were wanted to talk through these books, I’m sure I’d be delighted to discuss them on a Disseminary sub-site. Leave a comment if you’re interested, OK? (And yes, I know the comment function is clunky. I’m sorry.)

And now I have a USB cable for my Motorola V265 phone, and can peer into its file system, but I can’t find the photo files in the directory structure.

I’m a dreadful old curmudgeon about “top music” lists; I (naturally) prefer music I know well to music that I haven’t heard often enough to appreciate, and I don’t listen to very much brand-new music these days (and never quite caught the hip-hop bug). So my sense that most “top” lists favor very recent selections has both a legitimate empirical basis (we can run the statistics to prove this, but even a cursory look at many lists reveals that they favor releases within the past five or ten years) with an entirely arbitrary, unjustifiable, old-codger preference for older material that I like more.

That being said, I’m watching the Stylus “top 100 music videos” list (they’re unveiling the list progressively, so as of this morning they’ve only named the bottom 60) with some interest. So far, the list does seem biased toward recent material, but that could be because I just haven’t seen most of the recent choices, and also because the craft of music video direction has improved over the last couple of decades. I’ll wait and see how the list shapes up.

Wonderful as it is to have these videos available for watching (thank you, YouTube), it would be even better if the videos appeared in a shade better quality.

This morning ends the Ekklesia Project gathering for the year, with Joel Shuman speaking with us about the benefit of reading Dante’s Divine Comedy for imagining the Kingdom of God. By reading the poem in its entirety, Joel learned to face some challenges he had previously overlooked. The poem constitutes a very long parable to the effect that, “The Kingdom of God is like. . . .”

Joel argues that Dante understands that all the things of this world belong to and are redeemed into the Kingdom of God. He cites five features of particular importance: first, Dante’s effect on the imagination. Dante creates a landscape of the imagination, and invites his readers to join him there. He, like Jesus, treated the imagination as among the most important of the moral faculties. Faithfulness demands imagination, the capacity to discern God’s work in the world even when the appearances seems to contradict that possibility. Second, Shuman cites Dante as an exemplar of “wakefulness.” Dante stirs us to rouse from a sleepiness that blinds us to the reality of grace. Most people prefer sleepwalking, in seeking gods of our own making; Dante narrates for us a waking at the grace of God’s beauty. Third, Joel notes the power of desire. Dante encounters threatening beasts that emblematize the desires that drive us away from God (as Jesus notes in Matthew 13:22 the seed that gets off to a good start, but that succumbs to the cares and desires of this world). Fourth, Joel notes the effect of habit on our lives. Purgatorio concerns our learning to live well (whether in a post mortem interval, or in daily terrestrial life). Dante encounters encouragement and scolding as he passes through the Purgatorio, illustrating that salvation requires not individual effort, but the shared diligence of lives bound together. Dante’s goal can only be accomplished in communion. And I must have missed the transition to the fifth point, because Joel just wound up the talk.

The morning plenary at the Ekklesia Project involves Debra Dean Murphy, Brenna Cussen, Fred Bahnson, and Grace Hackney; they’re talking about “Kingdom Practices.” By this, they refer to the deliberate inhabitation of particular places, in ways congruent with the specificity of the place and of their vocation as Christians. Fred and Grace live at Anathoth Community Garden in North Carolina, and Brenna at a Catholic Worker house in South Bend.

Brenna begins the presentation with a discussion of “making a home” as a way for Christians to live together. She cites Matthew 25:31-46 as a charter for Catholic Workers’ social activism. The works of mercy, according to the Catholic Worker movement, lie at the heart of the gospel, to be enacted in person. She points to visiting Al, a prisoner; caring for Anna, with a disabling illness; to feeding refugees in Darfur. She understands the significance of her work as the parabolic mustard seed: a small movement, which she trusts that God will ultimately bring to fruition. The House where she lives anticipates the culmination of their labor with the daily joyful dinner at 6:30, seven days a week.

Grace describes her experience in Cedar Grove United Methodist Church, where she has borne witness to a life consistently grounded in peace. Cedar Grove Church had burned down , and as part of the congregation’s recuperation from that trauma, and in the aftermath of a brutal murder in the rural community, Grace began a discussion of land and faith, about poverty and abundance. In the course of a Bible study on Jeremiah, Grace’s community found the opportunity to found a community garden, where those who commit to participate in the work of raising food share in the produce and donate from the abundance of their garden to feed their hungry neighbors.

The first workshop I’m attending is Debra Dean Murphy’s session on Christian Formation — the room is crowded, and everyone is introducing him- or herself, which will take up a considerable part of the morning’s time slot. Debra begins the formal part of the session with the Parable of the Mustard Seed. She characterizes the parable as a subversive narrative, which all too readily the church has flattened out into reinforcing (rather than deconstructing) the powers of domination and exploitation.

She wants to strengthen the integration of the project of Christian formation with the liturgical, ethical, social practice of discipleship. She rejects the terminology of “Christian [or, less acceptably still ‘religious’] education,” and insists on speaking about catechesis. Worship should be the matrix and milieu for other modes of catechesis, which in turn should reflect the ideal of doxological growth toward full, grounded, deep discipleship (over against nationalist idolatry, consumer ideology, or the acquisition of abstracted facts and propositions about God). On her account, teaching in this way defies the traditional model of content-transmission, and turns us toward transforming the disciples’ imaginations.

After lunch, Allyne Smith, Brian Volck, and old friend Trevor have a panel discussion on “the Kingdom in Pictures and Poems.” Brian starts the discussion with a paper on “The Catholic Imagination as an Antidote to Gnosticism.” The catholic imagination entails a strong element of bodily experience: scents, sounds, sights, gestures. He cites Bernini’s “Ecstasy of St. Teresa” as an example of the carnality of catholic spirituality; it’s not (shhhh) secretly a Freudian subtext, but vigorously, explicitly a demonstration of the bodily experience of spiritual ecstasy. Brian reads several poems, displays a series of paintings, and argues that his positive illustrations exemplify a sacramental co-inherence of matter and spirit.

Allyne Smith begins from his Platonic conviction that beauty, truth, and goodness converge, and regrets the Western theological tradition’s relative silence on theological aesthetics. He cites a description of the Divine Liturgy, to the effect that God dwells in the liturgy of the Hagia Sophia, so great is the beauty of the worship. He turns the lecture to the topic of icons, a fundamental element of Orthodox identity and worship. Supporters of icons understand icons to represent an integral aspect of sound incarnational theology — but from the Orthodox perspective, iconoclasm entails all the previous heresies rolled into one.

Trevor has very little time left — the first presentation went long — but he’s using his time to narrate a Mennonite transition from hostility to visual and auditory art, to accommodation of the beautiful in contemporary Anabaptist life. He argues that the key concepts of “patience” and “simplicity” explain the transition. “Simplicity” was a watchword of modernism (manifest in the architecture of Mies van der Rohe, for instance). He cites a description of congregational four-part harmony as “the Mennonite Eucharist”; he does not believe Christ to be physically present in the bread and wine, but he suspects that Mennonites feel the presence of God in their mouths, in song.

I skipped the second workshop — Margaret and I needed to get our blood flowing, so we went for a walk around the DePaul neighborhood. After the break, we joined the plenary presentation from Englewood Christian Church, a congregation from Indianapolis. They seem a fascinating bunch, with lovely admirable qualities.

Today I’m blogging notes from the annual Ekklesia Project Gathering — or, more precisely, I’m noting some impressions and ideas that I hear from others, or that others’ notions provoke in me. That’s one of the things Ekklesia does so well, to bring us together with people who feed our imaginations. So it’s great to see Phil Kenneson, Stan Hauerwas, Barry Harvey, Beth Newman, Trevor Bechtel, Michael and Mary Cartwright and their children, James Lewis, Trecy Lysaught, and bunches of other provocative friends.

The Gathering began with worship, at which Stanley preached a sermon on Matthew 13:24-35; I love Stan, but I’d want to argue with him about many, many features of the sermon.

Improvisation, on Sam Wells’s account, teaches discipleship about four things: First, about forming habits (developing a sense of relaxed awareness), “The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton“ — formation in specific practices and habits makes possible a freedom and responsiveness learned therein. Improvisation is about learning patterns and expectation so that you do what seems obvious (though it be mysterious to someone who hasn’t shared that preparation). Second, reading status relationships: He cites the example of encountering another in a hallway, and trying to figure who will yield which space to the other. High-status roles command attention, occupy space and do not yield; low-status roles operate in the margins. Third, over-accepting: Again, he invokes the theatrical categories of accepting, blocking, and over-accepting. In “accepting,” one simply cooperates with another’s offered [narrative] sequence (one offers a handshake, another accepts it); in blocking, one refuses the other’s offer (declines the handshake); in over-accepting, one accepts in such a way as to change the terms of the narrative one is enacting. Fourth, Wells cites “reincorporation.” He explains that reincorporating involves gathering the loose ends of the performed narrative and re-associating them with the posited main narrative. Reincorporation effects a satisfactory closure to a narrative. Sam connects these four features of improvisational discipleship with the Parable of the Unjust Steward in Luke 16:1-9. Sam’s take on improvisation impresses me, but I’m disappointed that he blocks three consecutive questions from women relative to ways that his theory might better deal with gender and racial difference.

After a break, the Gathering, ummm, gathered to talk about fasting. The Project involves a pledge to observe a daytime fast on Fridays, a fast that I observe generally (not unvaryingly). The discussion sounded very Protestant — “What should we do about fasting? Why do we fast?” I fast because it’s what we do, not because it’s predictably effectual toward a particular end. Thus I also have a hard time thinking about what we could do to make fasting better, or more effective. . . .