Reason Breeds Insanity

Interesting perspective by Keith Haring. I am about to go do something that really scares me. I am going to have my students grade my teaching so far in the semester. I have given them a questionairre and asked them to tell what I am doing well, what I am not doing well, and what they think I could do better. I am interested to see their responses because we are getting to the point in the semester when I could use some feedback. I am scared but excited as well.

All said and done, I am apparently not a bad teacher. I love it that my students were honest and actually gave me some things to work on for the rest of the semester. One student did say I was disorganized, which may be that student picking up on my weird idiosyncracies. I am usually hyper organized for class, but maybe I need to appear moreso. I think I just didn’t want to appear like a neo-nazi English instructor. For the most part, their criticisms were very well founded. I need to explain more thoroughly, give better directions, and shockingly, be more structured? Really? I would have died to have an instructor in college that was as flexible as I am. Of course, you can be structured and flexible, which is what I will strive for.

I was talking with my friend, Sarah, the other day. Actually, we weren’t really talking. She blogged, I called and left a voicemail, she called and left a voicemail, then I texted. So to make matters more simple: I was talking with my friend Sarah, and she said that she wasn’t fond of the gospel of Mark, but she loved Matthew because of his amazing story telling and tangential logic. Basically, Mark is my favorite gospel by leaps and bounds, because he tells the stories and lets them speak for themselves. I mean Jesus is the Messiah in Mark’s eyes, but his text says: this is so true and so real, I don’t need to explain any of it, just by reporting it to you, you will get it! There is also this sense of immediacy in Mark. The plot, the storyline, is conflated and collapsed so there is no real sense of time. Everything happens immediately after the story right before it. I get this sense that Mark wants you to keep reading so that you don’t miss a thing.

Matthew, on the other hand, tells a story and then spends just as long telling you why said story indicates that Jesus is the Messiah. He is the Messiah because of x, y, and z. As if you couldn’t put x, y, and z together for yourself. Here is Matthew’s storyline: story, exegesis of that story, story, exegesis of that story, repeat ad nauseam. I do like Matthew, though, right after Mark and Luke, and way before John. But John is another rant for another day, and maybe I am not enough of an ancient to understand him, or I am too postmodern or not modern enough, or something.

So I asked Sarah to guess my favorite Old Testament (Jewish Scriptures) book. Of course she chose the logical two: Ruth or Esther. Good guesses, but as some of you know, my favorite OT book is decidedly perceived as the most depressing of all of them, but I think Lamentation is beautiful. Or as I told Sarah, beautifully tragic or tragically beautiful, I am not sure which. The whole book is about how frustrated the writer is that God has turned his back on the Israelites. We actually get to see the writer work out his frustration with not understanding why God won’t listen to him and why it seems that God is brutally punishing the Israelites. What is glorious about this book is we see in a more real way than Job, I think, theodicy worked out through one writer’s soul wrenching agony. The writer wants to be angry with God for the injustice of the punishment, but the writer is unable to relenquish the facet of God’s grace and compassion. I love how the whole book hinges on part of chapter 3, which in the NIV reads:

I remember my affliction and my wandering,
the bitterness and the gall.
I well remember them,
my soul is downcast within me.
Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is you faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.”
The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord.
It is good for a man to bear the yoke
while he is young.
Let him sit in silence,
for the Lord has laid it on him.
Let him bury his face in the dust—
there may yet be hope.
Let him offer his cheek to one who would strike him,
and let him be filled with disgrace.

Basically, I love how this text of death, destruction, and carnage rests around this middle chapter of hope, and questioning of God. Why, God, do you let those of us who love you suffer?

I really think that Lamentations gets at the community aspect of faith as well. This poem highlights the way the entire community or society is sick, and how God’s love and God’s anger rests on the entire community. There is also this embrace of the dichotomy of cursing and blessing: “Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come? Why should any living man complain when punished for his sins?” The writer then switches the number of the speaker: “Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord. Let us lift up our hands to God in heaven and say: “We have sinned and rebelled and you have not forgiven.” I love this compact struggle. Is it I or we? Is it that God has not forgiven or is it that the consequences of sin are still present culturally? Is it grace and mercy or anger and condemnation? I love the honest contemplation of this writer. Amazing stuff. Beauty, tragedy, and who doesn’t love a story where people eat their own children? Sorry, but I was getting a little too serious for a second. So all that because of a not-conversation.

I also have to add that I am loving my life right now. I am not saying it isn’t stressful, but I am loving my life…today.

1. inequality between white men and children having sex/black man havign sex with prostitute, white
2. slave conditions on pages 104, 105
3. Christianity and the ethical treatment of slaves is a huge issue for Equiano
4. torture devises used for treatment of slaves
5. miscegenation
6. liberation theology (Moses and moving away from Pharoah)
7. how can we separate the black movement from the church, or at least spirituality: slave narratives, WEB Dubois, Booker T., Malcolm X, Martin Luther King: all of them had a spiritual quality to their writing/speaking; chapter construction like a sermon, with questions and a “song” at the end (see ch. 5)

Rust

• Water as passing: butler’s passing, between origin and enactment, but for Butler there is no origin, or no pre-existing self
• subalternity: one who cannot speak is a subaltern (or one whose voice is taken over by others)
• learner not a teacher, never mentions teaching anyone else the things he has learned
• track of ideology viewed from teh position of oppressor and subaltern simultaneously

Within the past twenty-four hours, I have had the best and worst session of meditation so far. The one last evening was amazing. I settled right into it and felt this warmth subside around my body as if I was being cradled in warm ocean water. I was able to focus on my breathing while letting an entire movie of thoughts unfold without interruption on the screen of my breath. I wonder if I have worked through most of my stress by evening, so I am more able to calm my thoughts and focus on my breathing.

This morning was an entirely different story. I was unable to still my mind at all. There was no silence coming forward until a couple of minutes before the tones interrupted my mediation. I was bogged down in all the chaos that I hadn’t processed the night before, so I couldn’t relax. When I did, though, it was very deep and intense and I saw bright lights at the edges of my periphery and I wanted to follow them. I centered on my breathing and the lights danced around in a calming rhythm. I am not sure if any of this is supposed to happen when you meditate, but it happens to me. And I love it.

Last night I attended the Muncie Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Celebration at Christ Temple. Talk about having church! I had forgotten how much I love that style of Christian celebration, and I think I may have been inspired to write my paper for African-American literature on the use of sermon in the slave narrative. Basically, this qualifies with one of the best worship experiences I have had in a while. Don’t get me wrong, I love my church and its worship team, but there is a certain lack of restraint when it comes to praising Jesus that is present in the Black community that isn’t present in our lily-white one. I think I mean that once a people group has been persecuted, there is more to live for, more to praise for, and less to hold back from. There is an unabashed love of Jesus that is unique to the Black community. Like one of the choir directors said: “The devil nearly took my life, he tried to take my mind, he came for my husband and my kids!” And the choir answered: “Take back!” I think I want to say that even when the devil comes to steal, we can take it back and not have our joy stolen from us in the process.

I worry about the stuff with my grandma, but I am not about to have my joy stolen by worry. I know that as a family, and with God’s help, we will make it through! God didn’t bring us this far in order to drop us off by the side of the road. Take back!

I guess I should clarify my statement yesterday about not believing in hell, since I wrote a lot about the devil today. I don’t believe that hell is a place that immortal souls are cast in order to make them suffer for eternity for sins they committed on earth. I think of it more as Sheol, where we go to rest until Christ returns. I do believe there is an adversary, Satan, who is real and present throughout Scripture, but I don’t think his job is to torture us with hellfire and damnation for all of eternity. I believe in grace. As a colleague of mine said the other night: It doesn’t even make sense. Why would the guy who hates Jesus torture you for eternity for also turning away from Jesus? So essentially, we are to believe that the Devil tortures the people who are on his side? Seems a little like nonsense.

I think he has a very excellent point. I think of the Devil as more of real-live presence who is our adversary in daily life, who pursues us in order to cloud our correct judgment. This Adversary is what makes us do things like bomb innocent people, keep money that we could give to the poor, make decisions that screw little old ladies who worked hard all their lives. The Adversary is the impetus behind our ill treatment of each other and our constant desire to outdo each other. So, while I don’t believe in hell in the sense that I am afraid I might one day go there for eternity, I do believe that Satan is real and scary and at work. Think of it as the feeling you get when you say you have the willies or the heeby-jeebies or something. You know that slimy, cold feeling you can’t shake.