Last night, my teenage daughter proclaimed that I have a "butt chin nose". I had heard the unfortunate phrase "butt chin" before, used to refer to chins with dimples in the center, formed by a bifurcated jaw tip. My daughter meant that my nose was similarly formed of flesh over bifurcated cartilege, thus producing a visible cleft between the two approximately spherical surfaces at the point of my nose. After feeling my nose and admitting that she was right, my first statement was,
"Why 'butt chin nose'? Why not cut out the middleman and just call it a butt nose?"
But that didn't make it sound a whole lot better. I began thinking about that kind of shape, and it wasn't long before I realized that it is quite common. In fact, right now this very minute, you, dear reader, are breathing butt oxygen!
Exhibit A:
I thought some more. I thought of other shapes I had seen that consist in essence of two overlapping spheres, or else two spheres in close proximity. I made a mental list. The creation of such a mental list is left as an exercise to the reader.
However I will say, from over fifty years of observing God's creation, that our Creator has a certain fondness for the idea of two spheres in close proximity.
About ten years ago, a speaker came to talk at an "All Hands" meeting at my company. She was an expert in the psychology of consumers, and she made a statement that I still remember. The context of the quote was about the strange habits of her father (I forget now whether they were buying habits or driving habits or what). She said:
"What you have to remember is that everyone's actions make sense to them."
It may not be 100% true all of the time, but it is close enough to true to be extremely useful. I have often used it to re-calibrate my thoughts about my enemies, whether political, religious, or some other kind of enemy. I meditate first on the fact that my enemy's words and actions make sense to himself, based on his worldview and assumptions. I then try to reverse engineer (unless I already know explicitly) what those assumptions are, and how they led to the (to me) nonsensical words or actions.
It is a quite useful technique. One effect it has is to make me realize that my enemies are not as "evil" as I may first assume. They are often saying and doing the only things that make sense from their worldview. And often, if they say, want, or do the wrong (from my point-of-view) things, it is with the best of intentions.
So, a few examples. Let's say that I am arguing on the internet (as if that would ever happen) with someone who wants more government entitlements for poor people (I don't; I want to get rid of the ones we have). It makes a huge difference to my view of this political rival whether he wants this out of a desire for huge, intrusive government, or out of a kindhearted disposition toward the poor. Likewise, it should make a huge difference to him whether I want to cut out the government entitlement programs because I am a hateful, old, white, privileged, Republican hater ... or because I don't feel that these entitlements are actually a good thing, even for the poor. In my personal experience, it seems rarely to make a difference.
Another example: I had a friend who was incensed that I engaged in civil disobedience and got arrested at an abortion clinic protest. She could not fathom anyone doing something so intrusive, and so proclaimed me to be "evil". I asked her to imagine being inside my heart and mind, where the ruling assumption is that abortion is the murder of a baby. I asked her whether my actions would then make sense to her. She refused to contemplate it, believing that to even imagine my (to her, wrong) presuppositions would involve her in evil. But she missed a great opportunity to understand me, because she was not willing to contemplate the fact that my actions sprung naturally from my beliefs.
Another example is non-believers who rail against me and other Christians for proselytizing. They feel that it is rude, obnoxious, and presumptuous. And, based on their faith that there is no God, or their faith that all religions are valid, it is those things. But, based on my belief that they will spend eternity in the fires of hell without knowing Jesus Christ as Savior, my actions make perfect sense. How dare I not try to warn them?
Yet another example. I had an extremely negative reaction to this "cute" little song:
In it, the songwriter threatens to "kick Jesus' ass". But his crime in saying this is not as great as it appears at first blush. Because he is not saying (I'm pretty certain) that he intends to kick the butt of the 3rd Person of the Trinity, because I'm pretty certain that he doesn't believe Jesus to be God. He views Jesus as a mere man, who has made his girlfriend less amorous towards him. And, thus, his crime is proportionately less.
As our Lord Himself said:
Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.
I would urge each of you to consider the words and actions of your enemies with their kindest possible interpretation, based on your best knowledge of their underlying motives and assumptions.
I hope that I get around to writing further installments in this series of blog entries on the advantages of loving one's enemies ... because there are a lot of them. I hope to speak about the obvioius disadvantages, too, at some point.
One of the most shocking edicts in all of religion is Christ's command to his followers (see Matthew 5 and Luke 6) to love their enemies:
But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,
Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.
It just seems so counterintuitive. To some, it seems impossible.
But it has a great many advantages. The one I'd like to discuss today is a simple one of efficiency. Loving one's enemies completely cuts out of the decision-making process a rather time-consuming and difficult multi-step process: the separation of friends from enemies.
Oh, it's complicated. You need to collect a lot of data about past behavior of the person. You have to predict motives from the behavioral data, which anyone will tell you is quite tricky. Often, a person will be your ally in one area and your enemy in another. What to do? You have to categorize them one way or the other. And then, finally, once you have sorted the person with whom you've come in contact, you can finally decide an appropriate action: loving or unloving.
I believe in ma-a-gic ... Why? Because it is so quick. So sang the 1960s pop group LOVE (with Arthur Lee). Loving one's enemies means you can treat friends and enemies the same (remember, you're allowed to love your friends, too!), which really simplifies things!
So, under the new Love-Everyone-Regardless protocol, the process is shortened down to discerning what is the loving thing to do in any given situation.
There is not so much to remember, either. No longer do you have to keep those meticulous grudge records, which leaves more storage space in your brain for other things!
There is hardly anything that makes me as happy as the discovery of a hot new (to me!) musician or band.
Red Molly is such a discovery, and I'm in love with their haunting, achingly beautiful music. They describe themselves as an "Americana/Roots Female Trio", based in New York.
This entire song by Ray Wylie Hubbard is shot through with Flannery-esque images and languages. In fact, it would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that this song constitute a sort of Cliff Notes to Flannery O'Connor's two novels (Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away). But there are images here that are very like ones in O'Connor's short stories as well. Let's look at the evidence:
1. The very opening line of This River Runs Red is:
My mama run off with a Bible salesman.
This is remeniscent of Flannery's story Good Country People, in which the ugly but intellectual proto-feminist farmgirl Hulga is courted by a traveling Bible salesman.
2. Hubbard continues,
My mama's mama took me in to save me from sin, the kind she said sweet Jesus died for.
This is remeniscent of the teenage years of Enoch Emery, Hazel Motes' foil in the novel Wise Blood. Enoch was raised by a foster mother with hair so thin that it "looked like ham gravy trickling over her skull". He eventually prays to Jesus for a way of escape from this woman.
3. Hubbard's grandmother wants to get him baptized, which is the main story line in the song, as well as in O'Connor's The Violet Bear It Away, which has at its center a sort of Fundamentialist-style ex opere operato view of Baptism, which results in the simultaneous drowning and baptism of a retarded child, Bishop. Hubbard's first reference to Baptism is:
Before the next sunrise, gonna get you Baptized.
4. But just as Hazel Motes (Wise Blood) runs away from his fiery religious upbringing, Hubbard's character is not able to keep on the straight-and-narrow way:
Now I got baptized that Sunday morning. I guess it didn't take, as I look back. 'Cause when I turned fifteen, I just seemed to get mean, And I stole my mama's mama's Pontiac.
5. The "just seemed to get mean" line is very remeniscent of Onnie Jay Holy's sermon in Wise Blood, regarding how a child's sweetness doesn't show so much as he reaches his teenage years.
6. The car is significant, too. For although Hazel Motes did not steal his rat-colored Essex automobile, the theft of the grandmother's Pontiac in Ray Wylie Hubbard's song is completely consistent with Hazel's philosophy: "Nobody with a good car needs to be justified."
7. When Hazel runs away to "the city", he takes up with a prostitute named Leora. Hubbards character moves to Tulsa and takes up with a woman named Lorraine.
8. But run as they will, both Hazel Motes and Hubbard's character are perpetually haunted by their childhood religious upbringings in general, and by their Baptisms in particular. The blind preacher Asa Hawks notes of Hazel that some preacher has left a mark (the mark of Baptism) on him. He is haunted, but cannot erase the mark. In a similar way, Hubbard's character cannot forget his Baptism:
Now it happens every night when they turn out the lights,I can't stop the voices in my head:
'This river runs red, this river runs red, This river runs red like Jesus' blood.'
I spent the past weekend at a Reunion for the St. Michael's Midwest Conference for Youth. It was the second such event at which I have helped out and stayed overnight. This time, I stayed over both Friday night and Saturday night.
I experienced an interesting change in attitude over the weekend. On the way to the Reunion, which was held at St. Bartholomew's Anglican Church, I was thinking to myself, "What did I do to deserve this?" On the way home, I was also thinking, "What did I do to deserve that?" But I meant the opposite thing by it. On the way, I had in mind the things I would be giving up by going. Chiefly I was giving up an evening and a full day of working on my oil paintings. But by the end of the retreat, my attitude had completely reversed. Now what I meant by the question was: "Because of what meritorious act on my part did God count me worthy to have spent my weekend in that way?"
If you have never been involved with the St. Michael's Conference(s), it is hard to explain this radical reversal. But let me attempt it. The group of kids was very diverse. There were over 20 teens, geographically and racially diverse. We had folks from as far north as Ontario, Canada, and as far south as southern Kentucky. The differences in the accents of their speech did not go unnoticed among the youth at the retreat. But all the teasing about this was in a very good-natured way.
The "reunion" aspect of this weekend retreat must not be underestimated. For most if not all of these kids, the week of the St. Michael's Conference in July is the highlight of the entire year, eclipsing even such noteworthy contenders as Christmas and Spring Break. There is a rich and shared history among these teens from having spent (in most cases) multiple weeks together at the actual Conferences. And it colors everything they do in a positive way. Joking comments among the Michaelites seem never to be a cause for offense, because they rest on the presupposition of a mutual and unconditional love, as well as an earnest sense of common purpose.
There was, as with any group this size, a large diversity in physical appearance among the kids, and probably an even larger diversity of personality types. But they got along better than most similarly sized groups of adults would. What can explain this? Is it that they are having so much fun that they don't bother with arguing and wrangling and petty jealousies? Well, maybe, but not such "fun" as you may have come to expect from a church youth event. The "fun" involved six hour-long educational sessions, all around a common theme, and multiple worship services throughout the weekend. Perhaps more than anything else I witnessed throughout the weekend, the single glaring, shining, written-in-large-and-startling-figures lesson for me was: The church does not have to dumb down worship nor replace it with entertainment to engage today's young people! (Seeker sensitive churches, take note!) Beautiful worship (and here I will show my prejudice by saying "beautiful Anglican worship") is more than enough to engage the minds and hearts of these kids in a full and holistic way.
I noted something else about the Michaelites, and that was how quickly they volunteered to do non-fun jobs such as mopping floors, emptying garbage, etc. It is simply the accepted norm, and I failed to notice any one of them veering from it. Frankly, it was like two days of heaven, or two days of the world turned upside down: teenagers acting in a completely civilized manner, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. There are so many examples. After Compline each evening, the Great Silence begins, which means that there is to be no talking among those at the retreat. This was kept without the slightest breach in the boys' "dormitory" where I slept. Not a single whisper, giggle, word, joke, or sound effect among two rooms full of teenage boys, all night long. How many of you have ever witnessed such a thing?
It was my privilege to teach (or rather, "moderate") a few of the class sessions. My favorite part of these sessions was the questions and comments from the Michaelites, which indicated that they had been listening throughout the hour, and were now struggling with how to integrate the imparted knowledge into their daily lives.
I guess the last thing I will mention is that I benefited by (essentially) becoming a Michaelite and folllowing their schedule for the weekend. It forced me, much against my natural inclination, to be silent, be still, and turn my thoughts to God. There was nothing "to do" ... so a lot of important work got done in my soul.
I left the retreat full of more hope for the world our children will shape than I have had in a very long time.
At the intersection of bodybuilding and dance, at the exact point of confluence of form and function, lies NPC and IFBB Fitness Competition. No one does it more beautifully than Oksana Grishina! I've seen her perform on stage three times, and each time was in awe of her artistry! I would love to do a painting of her someday.
