monastic living
in a city dwelling
The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and get on with their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.
—Billy Graham
I’m not talking about unbelief. I don’t even think that statement is true anymore (the greatest single cause of atheism now is the dry, yeastless factuality of rational science; it upholds absolute demands on proof that preclude the astounding joy of faith. see yann martel for more.) I’m talking about the greatest single cause of belief.
The greatest single cause of cynicism today is anyone who acknowledges this or that with their lips and walks out the door and gets on with their lifestyle. That is what an evidence-demanding world simply finds unconvincing.
I suspect that, if you were to poll the world, the vast majority would acknowledge a higher power. That the people would say, “Yes! I do believe,” but that some of those same people, looking out, would say, “No! I don’t see it.” Because what is there to see?
I see an America where 9 of 10 believes in God and an America where 4 in 10 regularly attend church. And in that, I see an America where 5 in 10 acknowledge a higher power but do nothing about it. And in that, I see why God is only a word in the pledge of allegiance, a few letters on our dollars, a name more commonly cussed than invoked. I see a majority who say God but who do not mean it, who do not act it.
The greatest single cause of unbelief today is “believers” who acknowledge God with their lips and walk out the door and do nothing on their belief. “Believers” who say but do not do. “Believers” who claim faith but show no works.
I often deride politics. I say bureaucracy is a road to perdition, or at best a road to nothingness. But the political ones, I admit, do something. See the Obama signs still proudly propped in yards, in windows, on pins. See the crowds dancing in the streets. See them ready to act.
So you say you believe. That is good! But even the demons believe. (Not my words.) Will you separate yourself from the demons? Will you work on your belief? Will you walk out the door and re-create your lifestyle?
The greatest single cause of belief in the world today must be Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their hands and walk out the door having shown their beliefs through their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world will find almost unbelievable.
Speak, 1 other has.
Thanks for understanding the latest grad school-induced hiatus. Now that I’m acclimated to a city with real public transportation, real crime, and a real hyperobsession with politics, I decided to reflect upon what I no longer have.
I shall miss some things about Cincinnati:
- The excitement for under-.500 sports teams. Here, people want to be happy and excited. We seize the smallest glimmer of hope, but don’t whine (though we do weep) when it gets crushed by low payroll, a strike, or Kimo von Oelhoffen.
- Private kindness. No one will accost you or hug you on the street, but if you ask for pretty much anything except cash, you’ll get at least an earnest effort toward help and a sincere apology if no assistance can be lent. And if you don’t ask, you won’t get condescending offers of help just because you might look a little lost.
- The skyline.
- The greatest single-city triumvirate of independent ice cream makers: Graeter’s, Aglemesis’s, and Madison’s.
- Being able to count on people to “come home” for holidays, for your landmark occasion, or for good.
- Unflinching loyalty, but not without a willingness to give criticism when you (read: a person, a school, a sports team) behave in a way undeserving of loyalty (read: 2008 Bengals.)
- Markets. They have them here, but they are overpriced and underqualified. I’ve already started my list for Herbs and Spice and Everything Nice, I have a craving for some of Madison’s mushrooms, and why can’t I find a Mediterranean Imported Foods anywhere? DC is as behind the times for culinary indulgence as Cincinnati is for, well, everything according to Mark Twain.
- Humility. Everyone (real people, not students) seems/tries to be consciously important here. I miss persons whose first concern was raising a family. I miss family, too, for that matter.
Next post will either have images or address what I won’t miss about Cincinnati. Or I’ll just say it here: racism, provinciality, and Elder (which is well-characterized by the first two.)
Speak, no others have.
Introducing myself in my first MFA workshop, I was prompted to say my genre of writing. I stumbled and self-effaced, then spat out that e-mail is my genre. Stretching the definition of genre, this seems correct. I’ve disseminated some good stuff via the send button. This one is a response to someone struggling with faith in the face of science’s ever-expanding realm of explanations, crowding out the space of supernatural, boxing God smaller and smaller until it seems he can’t possibly be. As usual, I fight fire with something else…
Being a writer, I’m going to talk with literature. A man, Yann Martel, wrote a novel, Life of Pi. It’s really good, and not just because it approaches religion wisely and slowly. You should read it, but you won’t, and so I’ll summarize: boy gets shipwrecked, boy finds lifeboat with a few wild, carnivorous animals, boy manages to tame tiger and catch fish so as to survive, boy winds up on coast of Mexico, boy tells his story to investigators, investigators don’t believe his tale of taming tiger and catching fish, boy offers more reasonable story without tigers, hyenas, or meerkats.
In the end, the investigators hear nothing worthwhile to them — they only wanted a reason for the ship’s sinking, and the boy has no clue about that. So, he asks them, about his different narratives for his many-month survival:
Boy: Which is the better story?
Investigator 1: That’s an interesting question.
Investigator 2: The story with the animals.
Investigator 1: Yes. The story with animals is the better story.
Boy: Thank you. And so it goes with God.
His point: a purely rational, scientific life misses the spiritual/mystical vivacity of religion.
Now, initially I reacted against this stance. I mean, it’s saying I should believe in God just because believing in God is more fun? That’s no better than saying I should get drunk just because inebriation is more fun than sobriety. What happened to wisdom? What happened to reality? What happened to truth?
I thought about it more later. The point isn’t that believing in God is a fun game; the point is that being willing to believe is a better attitude — a better story — than demanding proof. We are frail, limited creatures, and we cannot know everything. Look at the nuclear physicist; he knows nothing about literature. Look at the brain surgeon; he can’t tell you about the economy. Look at this website writer; he knows nothing at all. Who are any of us to know whether God is or isn’t?
When you’re willing to admit that there is something greater, you open yourself to a superior realm of possibility. But if you demand absolute proof of everything, you’ll doubt your ability to throw the deep out, you’ll question whether your girl is faithful, and you’ll never be sure you’re worthwhile.
To quote the novel again, here is the aftermath of the boy’s “realistic” story (which the author calls “dry, yeastless factuality”):
Boy: Is that better? Are there any you find hard to believe? Anything you’d like me to change?
Investigator 1: What a horrible story.
[Long silence]
A summary of what I mean:
- Proof is good…at times. But demanding it from everything will leave you neurotic and suicidal.
- Contrarily, the opportunity for a beautiful life comes from an attitude of faith and
- God is all about faith and hope.
If you want, I can talk about my more personal experiences with God. The short version is that He always guides me and his path is always greater than my plan. All I have to do is listen, and before I know it I’m on the verge of graduate school in something I love. He works.
Speak, no others have.
Amidst the many archaic events in the Olympics, one name claims to remain current: the Modern Pentathlon. Originally modeled after necessary skills for an elite 19th century soldier, it involves pistol shooting, equestrian jumping, fencing, mid-distance swimming, and cross country running. Back then, this was all well and good. But times have changed, and so now we need a current replacement. In a spirit of contemporization, I propose the Post-Modern Pentathlon.
1) Shooting at Absolutes. Any good post-modern man knows that there is not just one truth, but many — or perhaps everything is truth. Mmmmm, that’s deep, brah. The Po-Mo Pentathlete will ably refute various doctrines and dogmas with an assortment of appealing, inclusive, permissive faux-truths that are easy to swallow, light to carry, and welcomed widely. Training for this segment is often done in coffeeshops, suburban yoga gyms, and religion departments.
Record holder: Michel Foucault
Blacklisted: Martin Luther
2) Riding a High Horse. The Po-Mo Pentathletes here get a chance to flaunt their erudition and wisdom by trotting around a dense course of jargon and rhetoric, displaying linguistic mastery by successfully using — and, even better, coining — obscure or new terminology. Name dropping is another basic skill in this event which is fully baffling to the uninitiated. Indeed, only the elite can comprehend and celebrate the pseudo-masturbatory promenade which is as close to holiness, ritual, or tradition as there is in this sport.
Record holder: Jacques Derrida
Blacklisted: Ernest Hemingway
3) Cutting Out Dichotomies. This skill bears similarity to Shooting at Absolutes, what with its attack on definition and clarity, but is actually constructive at its core rather than destructive. The skilled competitor will be able not only to demonstrate why a certain line in the sand really has many more branches but also to make the entire distinction seem pointless in the first place. This neutralization by expansion is especially well demonstrated in the arts, which shiver off labels and shun traditional discriminations between “high” and “low” or “folk.” The concept of cultural context is an essential tool for the pentathlete but must be supported by other strategems to achieve anything but a modest score.
Record holder: Andy Warhol
Blacklisted: Rembrandt van Rijn
4) Swimming through Simulacra. Any good Po-Mo Pentathlete will be able to recognize and navigate the morass of simulations and reproductions to demonstrate the utter transience of “truth” in language, morality, and art. All such communications and values are mere representations and thus must be swum through to escape drowning in a false reality by clinging to opiatic truths that have no solidity. Semiotics and moral relativism are essential skills, and the highest scorer in this section receives a replica bust (tee hee hee irony) of the legendary Jean Baudrillard.
Record Holder: Baudrillard
Blacklisted: GK Chesterton
5) Running from Definition. While other events require a direct confrontation, this one demands fleeing, lest the Po-Mo Pentathletes find themselves encumbered by a label, a category, or anything else that would brand them with some sort of defining mark requiring loyalty to something singular. The course, naturally, is winding and convoluted so as to traverse all possible schools of thought. The runners enjoy the respective truths along the route without tarrying too long in any single one, lest depth and a foundation be achieved, which would slow them down and box them in.
Record Holder: Baha’u'llah
Blacklisted: CS Lewis
ps: despite what you may be inferring, i don’t entirely reject postmodern attitudes.
Speak, no others have.
In any new city, it’s a personal imperative to explore. Through internet browsing, daylight runs, and nighttime wanderings, I work to find the places. Internal loci as well: the monastic rhythm during my retreat at Gethsemani, artistic inspiration in a trip to NYC, or the full pursuit of a new passion while returning to Cincinnati. The people, however, are less planned. Through random comments and actions, even this introverted pilgrim has met some folks on excursions here (mostly the nocturnal variety,) but the realest local so far just plopped himself on my front steps while I sat and pondered.
He spoke in a heavy inner city drawl, asking for a cigarette, saluting my pipe, and offering to show me where to buy crack (right around the corner, to my dismay.) He wanted money, food, something to inhale, and also someone to listen, so I sat down and chatted.
We made a divergent pair of stepmates. His eyes were thin and his hairline frail; mine blaze deep and my locks are voluminous. He sought $17 — he’d get me back on Thursday, honest — to buy groceries: vienna sausages, peanut butter, a loaf of bread — and some cigarettes, knowh’imeen? — whereas I had come out to ponder the literary heavens I envy and grasp at. He coughed every other sentence; my lungs are clean (though I was adamantly polluting them as though I were competing in Beijing.)
Of course we could bring race into these disparities, but it has nothing to do with them. I sat where I sat and he sat where he sat because of economics and age. I am rich in youth if not dollars (though I am always provided for); he has weathered more than his 48 years and now relies on disability payments after being discharged from the army after being turned down while pursuing medicine. Now he’s stuck sitting on other’s steps because his complex has no open space, bumming a bent cigarette from a passerby, and asking for less than $20 from a kid full of idealistic questions about thriving not surviving and a vague benediction about getting where he’s going.
I, clutching my bag of cancer and a cup of liver cirrhosis, had stepped onto the porch with an intent to lasso what courage was to Hemingway, what freaks were to Flannery, what socialites were to Fitzgerald, and what disease was to Dostoevsky — that minor niche through which I could speak universally. I was looking up and out for what would move me to the point of shouting and then he sat down on my steps.
Speak, no others have.
In The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton recalls a ballistic inquisition from his friend Robert Lax:
What do you want to be, anyway?
Merton fumbles and murmurs some humble triviality unworthy of being remembered or cited. Lax, in a retort as brief and violent as his name, challenges:
What you should say is that you want to become a saint.
Vaulting ambition? A personal Tower of Babel? Merton never thought so; he later wrote, “The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.” Of course, this has the danger of self-centeredness, but it also has merit. World records never get surpassed without one daring to run faster than anyone has ever tried. But how to be a saint? Start working miracles? Start a religious order? Start working on your martyrdom?
I say this: aim not for the canon of Rome but for the canon of your calling (perhaps a physical version for you clowns, colonel, and cameramen.) If you’re a writer, what you should is that you want to become a saint among writers, like Shakespeare, Hemingway, or Rumi. If you’re a doctor, what you should say is that you want to become a saint among doctors, like Galen, Hippocrates, or Michael DeBakey. If you’re a corporate lobbyist, well, you’re damned and there are no positive examples, but what you should say is that at least you didn’t become an MTV (lack of) personality.
Speak, no others have.
In my itchy roots fashion, I am again transplanted. But rather than a modest shift between Ohio gardens, I am now trying to grow on the concrete grid of our capital, the heart of darkness in politics and crime (but I repeat myself!) Minimally acquainted with the city, I already see how little I understand the word urban, but I think it fits this site’s titular aims even more than I had conceived.
© Josh Jones
Contrarily but kindred, I spent the past week at the Trappist monastery Gethsemani, silent in Kentucky hills and bluegrass. The only similarities to the city were the heat and my struggle to sleep (highly related); all else was new. Submitting to the rigors of the liturgy of the hours, I learned a new pace of life ruled by the Word.
The intended fusion now confronts a new challenge: transposing that reflective, patient rhythm onto the pell mell staccatos of city commutes, work shifts, and gunshots. (Oh, another similarity: Kentucky hunters and DC thugs - but different targets.) Maintaining the traditional tranquility and sanctuary within the Daily Office will confound, elude, and challenge me, but that is the nature of the quest of the Urban Trappist.
That and not flunking out of grad school or going broke. Writing here more regularly, too (sorry for the unintended/unannounced hiatus; life happened.)
Speak, no others have.
When the heavy-jowled judge slams his gavel after issuing a sentence of decades, we might hear something about how now the miscreant will “pay for his crimes.” True, he will “pay” in the sense that he must surrender something, but to whom is this payment being made? Apart from a modestly increased safety level for the public, no one benefits. More importantly, there is no actual reparation made for whatever heinous act he performed, be it murder, rape, theft, or criminal trespassing.
I don’t mean directly to the victim; that’s a civil suit. Besides, creating an equal compensation for any non-monetary crime is all but impossible, to say nothing of the criminal’s likely financial insolvency (not that I’m speaking from experience). I mean a utilitarian benefit to society-at-large, some general good to balance out their evil. So, rather than an eye for an eye, doing Lasik for eyes that have been poked (not necessarily by the convicted poker).
Which is to say, put them to work fighting their own crime - rapists have to make fundraising calls about rape awareness, murderers have to do busywork for murder investigations, thieves have to mend broken windows, criminal trespassers have to straighten the fences through which they skulked. Unconstitutional? It does not sound cruel, though I admit it is currently, regrettably unusual. Just an idea, or at least a way to make a commonly used phrase actual true, to say nothing of making use of a large, unutilized workforce.
Then again, as an unemployed man, I probably shouldn’t be looking to increase competition, especially with workers who won’t have to be paid, since they’re the ones doing the paying.
UPDATE: That’s what I’m talking about!
Speak, no others have.
Football (the real version, not the misnamed American version) and I have a long (albeit sporadic), bitter history similar to the protracted struggle between orange juice and coffee for breakfast beverage supremacy. (You can guess what I prefer.) From the preschool days of getting scored on by disoriented teammates to the hilariously unskilled 8th grade game plan of trying to outsprint the defense to an ambitious downfield clear to the virulent hatred of high school to (and because of) the broken ankle to the post-graduation World Cup addiction…well, consistency has not marked my feelings toward the so-called beautiful game.
The current chapter has been brewed from my unemployment, my mid-afternoon lethargy, and ESPN’s HD coverage of Euro 2008. Four years ago, I stood in a London pub with a pint of Bass as England took a one goal lead over loathsome France - only to have France nail the equalizer and the winner in stoppage time. Certain fingers were waved at the screen, abhorrent words were uttered toward/about France, and I learned a new level of athletic rancor.
This year, with my days in desperate need of drama, I turn to ESPN2 daily where I can watch nations engage in a war that is somewhat civilized and only semi-violent (though you’d think it barbaric by the remarkably agonistic theatrics displayed after any level of collision). Those thespians are not, however, the source of the narrative (though they are excellent for comic relief.)
Unlike the incessant back/forth of basketball or the alternating plodding marches of fake football (seriously, can we rename that? it doesn’t even make sense. let’s just call it hypeball, because that’s what it has become here.), real football features rising action, conflict, plot shifts, and (usually) a climax or three. You watch say, Spain, march down the field with intricate passes, searching for seams in the middle, running to spaces, moving deftly, and swelling the tension as the ball crosses midfield, approaches the penalty area, but gets hammered past the goal.
Then the counterattack. Spain, now, feels the pressure, but perhaps they diffuse it. Perhaps they are dominating, constantly threatening. The outcome seems imminent. This is a beautiful game, a story unfolding where you think you know what will happen. And it might. Spain might finally create an elegant service across the goal where it gets sprung into the net by a flying midfielder. But it might not. Perhaps they’re playing the Netherlands, whose flying Dutchmen reverse Spain’s botched opportunity like a jujitsu master, flinging the momentum toward Spain’s goal where three or four quick passes suddenly find Ruud van Nistelrooy’s head spiking the ball just inside the far post.
There are, of course, duds. Sometimes this pinnacle fails to arrive and we suffer through the drudgery of a draw (note that some ties, especially the sudden comebacks, can sport thrills.) The disappointment in this result (or, rather, lack thereof) stems from the tension that is created by the threat of each team’s offense. If this tension is not relieved by the scoring of a goal, we can only sigh in the disappointment of squandered potential and dream of a better ending, just as when we gripe about the poor denouement of that supposed thriller. You’ll have to find your climax elsewhere.
ps: the title uses italian because it’s a beautiful language. ezra agrees.
pps: thanks to ingmar bergman for all of this post’s images, and props to you if you noticed the trend. this was meant to be meaningful, as i think the pace and mood shifts of bergman’s films are not far from the pace and swings of a football match. duration is pretty similar, too, as is the amount of dialogue if you mute the broadcasters.
Speak, no others have.
Heckuva week at the UT monastery:
- Finished the work at Yelp, whence you can find bushels of reviews and teaspoons of value.
- Submitted a new film review for Pulse. Don’t wait to read it next Wednesday; skip the middle men and go see Starting Out in the Evening now.
- Got to do some of my writing, which you may hear/drink in the City.
- Met salmonella and we took immediate dislike to each other. I would say that I won, considering he is now gone, but I can’t deny that he got his thing done. Either way, I learned why restaurants don’t let you order chicken medium-rare.
Hmm, which one of these is not like the others? Probably the illness. It did beget an awful lot of reading (mandated: A Room of One’s Own; recommended: Raymond Carver’s short stories; strongly suggested: Wislawa Szymborska’s poetry), but other than that and my education on poultry preparation, it was nonproductive.
The other three, however, have taught me that I surely love judgment. Even the work for Yelp, which was trivial at best, spawned something creative and diligent in me. As such, you are likely to be subject to more critique here (i.e. the Counting Crows assessment a couple of posts down), but hopefully in ways as clever as the aforementioned Brewsicians page.
Until then, who knows?
Speak, no others have.
