Last night I pretended to be a much younger adult and snuck out to see Cracklin Moth at the Hideout. The Hideout is a notorious bastion of alt.country in Chicago. My friend and I walked west on Armitage and crossed the river bridge by that old steel factory and then walked south on elston to wabansia. What a cool neighborhood! Walking it really adds to the vibe. Toward wabansia all along this old warehouse someone screwed nsync photo frames up with black and white xeroxes of their face. How odd. Anyway once we got to the Hideout I found that it really is that---a tiny hideout. There's barely room to move around in there. The concert started at 10:15 instead of 9:30 and I kept asking "Is there another room here where the show is playing?" Nope. And they have all day concert tributes in this place!
Cracklin' moth was really great. The crowd was groovin and dancing and seemed to really enjoy themselves. The band is tight and Matt's voice really works. Maybe they're the funnest little Chicago alt. country band you'll have heard in a while. Give 'em a listen. cracklinmoth.com There's free songs to download on their site.
Well we got home at midnight and I showered up and discarded my second-hand-smoke wreaked clothes. I was scared Martha would wake up and say "You smell." But she never noticed.
Michael and I would like to sneek out to the Hideout again some night. All right I'm not fooling anybody. I don't sneek anywhere anymore. Anyway, it was fun.
7/22/2005
waiting
Limbo. Expecting messages back from more people than I can remember. By
email. The Inbox bolds up. Maybe just maybe this is important. Spam.
#%*@!!!! Its lonely here that's the bottom line. Wilco makes it all better.
7/20/2005
be watching
I heard today that all the plenaries and sermons from this year's
Ekklesia Project gathering will be posted in audio for download to the
website soon. Be watching: ekklesiaproject.org
7/19/2005
Yesterday and this morning I've been attending the Ekklesia project's conference at Depaul University here in Chicago. The theme this year is "No Other Gods." I've caught two lectures so far on the Decalogue and Empire and sat in on a group discussion in the late morning. I was so nervous yesterday about this thing because I don't have a post-graduate education. Many folks speaking and in attendance are quite notable in their fields and so I had reason to be nervous in their presence. But the whole spirit of the meeting has been so welcoming and open, so down-to-earth and accessible. Let me recommend Ekklesiaproject.org. I'm finding many new friends for the journey and many older brothers and sisters in the struggle who are much more well read and experienced than I!
Bill Cavanaugh gave an Amazing plenary on "The Empire of the Empty Shrine." Here are my notes from his lecture:
William Cavanaugh
The Empire of the Empty Shrine
The first commandment is a flight from the Empire of Egypt. Israel/Babylon. Early Christians/Rome. Correct past mistakes by offering no gods to worship. Novak: respect for the freedom of human conscience. Empty shrine. Democratic capitalism should sweep the shrine clean. Founding fathers would agree with this. Empty openness at heart of DC lends itself to expansion and empire.
Emptiness and openness leads to idolatry. Liberalism in US has been wed with perfect consistency to consumerism.
In order for the US to have an empire we must deny we have one. Central organizing myth is that "we had greatness thrust upon us."
"American Empire" Andrew Basavich
After WWII all we wanted to do was come home. Bush: rid world of evil typical of that myth. Our preferred way of telling the story. Preserves our sense of virtue. Our modesty is preserved in our reluctance to use our awesome power. We didn't choose it it just happened. There must be a strong element of providence (which we can't second guess) to maintain this. Our modesty and reluctance prove our greatness. Main problem with this is that it's false.
Not historically true to believe we've taken stage in response. Teddy Roosevelt "our whole national history has been one of expansion." Under Clinton mantra was openness. This policy is not new.
2 ironies
1. universalism is flag waving nationalism. Because we understand history we are the exception to history. Nation/state becomes the one agreed upon end. That system alone unites all nations. Patriotism lets us ignore class divisions.
2. oscillates between idealism and selfishness. We expect no limits to our conumptive way of life. Jimmy Carter "respond to the crisis with lower expectations."
Ideology of openness. Capitalism is about growth and expansion. The only thing uniting us is our freedom to disagree. Votaire: I may not agree with what you say but I'll defend with the death your right to say it. "Of course that's not my death someone elses."
Our way has a missionary impulse. Give up the idea of the end of history for capitalism. We are on the right side of history. Madeleine Albright, "We have our duty to write history."
With openness comes peace. Now openness brings lack of security. National defense dropped for national security. Now openness itself is a threat to peace from those who would keep us from writing history.
Full spectrum dominance. By some estimates our military spending rivals all other nation's combined. "Those ambiguous situations residing between peace and war."
Technology lets us see through the fog of war. Omniscience and omnipotence are within our grasp. Infinite reach. Infinite justice.
The kind of olympian perspective Homer had given his gods.--Gen. Tommy Franks.
Ascend beyond the particularities of humans. Empty all particular creeds to keep from claiming any particular God.
Fill shrine with National God who sees resistence to Openness.
Part II
Theological critique of Empire.
Ex. 19:5-6 "But you shall be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." Chooses to save world through particular history of one people.
Shrine is never truly empty. God is not generic he is of a particular people.
Influential exceptionalism: US is new Israel. Providential fulfillment through one nation. New Testament Israel is the church. Rom. 9-11
1 Peter 2:9, The church is a holy nation. Ekklesia is the parculiar political stance of the church. The Day of the Assembly--Dueteronomic. The idea refers to the whole. Saw themselves as the eschatological fulfillment of Israel. The church is not polis and yet it used the language of citizenship. Christians are questionable citizens of any empire. Loyalty to church is primary.
In America there is no single visible idol. Openness is not a good candidate for idolatry. Its the ineffability of the national god that makes it so powerful. By denying its power we give it more power. That god may not be refused when sacrifice is required. US acts as substitute for church and God. All religion is civil religion to Durkheim. Empty shrine threatens to make a deity not out of God but our freedom to worship God. Worship becomes worship of our collective self. Freedom becomes the one thing we will die and kill for.
You shall not kill.
Godlikeness comes in where State alone can kill. Confess any God you want provided you're willing to kill for America. Kill is in subject not verb. Divide between God and humans. God alone decides. [You] is the command. God is particular so that his work can spread. All have chance to behold and test this new thing. They are not forced. Lofink "Does God need the church?" Ex. 14:14 The Lord will fight for you you have only to keep still. Their victory is through the intervention of the Lord.
Every army thinks it has divine favor. In OT emphasis is on lack of military strength. "Two little flocks of goats." Huge army of Arimeans. Contrast is in the strength of other nation's militaries. OT served as paradigm for early church. Martyrdom becomes the way of victory for early church. Discern God's activity in persecution and weakness. Church imitates Christ by absorbing the violence of the world. If Jesus is the point of history then Christians read history from the point of his life, death, and ress. Find true life by refusing to fear death.
The church is our primary political community. Not triumph of church but repentence. American empire has taken over many of the functions of the church. Missions, catholicity, universalism, all coopted by US empire.
Obedience as liberation.
Liberation as absorbing violence.
Questions:
What about church as leaven in the world?
Reservation: if the church is leaven and something else is bread. Nation is a given, church helps to make it a bit better. Avoid that.
Bread must be the body of Christ. Proclaim the different kind of community with is a political reality.
Economics of church vs. empire.
Part of our task is to create difference economic spaces. Not necessarily withdrawal or seperation. But structures have to be transformed. Create a different economic space not determined by profit but by whats best for all in community.
Church's role: Its not as if the stage is the nation. The tragedy is the nation and the comedy is the church. We work together for a good solution. The church-sect dichotomy is not the only option (Join the Amish or write your congressman.)
Andrew Basavich "American Empire"
There's nothing about divine sanction that can't be used for violence. Yes Xianity has produced violence but the greater problem is in secular ideologies that do violence for the empty shrine. Our secular violence is rational, secular, muniative. "Regrettably, we need to bomb them into the higher rationality."
The nation is the truly sectarian body that divides the world's body. The church unites members or potential members of Christ's body.
--------------------------
Much of this is no doubt cryptic but maybe you'll like it.
Bill Cavanaugh gave an Amazing plenary on "The Empire of the Empty Shrine." Here are my notes from his lecture:
William Cavanaugh
The Empire of the Empty Shrine
The first commandment is a flight from the Empire of Egypt. Israel/Babylon. Early Christians/Rome. Correct past mistakes by offering no gods to worship. Novak: respect for the freedom of human conscience. Empty shrine. Democratic capitalism should sweep the shrine clean. Founding fathers would agree with this. Empty openness at heart of DC lends itself to expansion and empire.
Emptiness and openness leads to idolatry. Liberalism in US has been wed with perfect consistency to consumerism.
In order for the US to have an empire we must deny we have one. Central organizing myth is that "we had greatness thrust upon us."
"American Empire" Andrew Basavich
After WWII all we wanted to do was come home. Bush: rid world of evil typical of that myth. Our preferred way of telling the story. Preserves our sense of virtue. Our modesty is preserved in our reluctance to use our awesome power. We didn't choose it it just happened. There must be a strong element of providence (which we can't second guess) to maintain this. Our modesty and reluctance prove our greatness. Main problem with this is that it's false.
Not historically true to believe we've taken stage in response. Teddy Roosevelt "our whole national history has been one of expansion." Under Clinton mantra was openness. This policy is not new.
2 ironies
1. universalism is flag waving nationalism. Because we understand history we are the exception to history. Nation/state becomes the one agreed upon end. That system alone unites all nations. Patriotism lets us ignore class divisions.
2. oscillates between idealism and selfishness. We expect no limits to our conumptive way of life. Jimmy Carter "respond to the crisis with lower expectations."
Ideology of openness. Capitalism is about growth and expansion. The only thing uniting us is our freedom to disagree. Votaire: I may not agree with what you say but I'll defend with the death your right to say it. "Of course that's not my death someone elses."
Our way has a missionary impulse. Give up the idea of the end of history for capitalism. We are on the right side of history. Madeleine Albright, "We have our duty to write history."
With openness comes peace. Now openness brings lack of security. National defense dropped for national security. Now openness itself is a threat to peace from those who would keep us from writing history.
Full spectrum dominance. By some estimates our military spending rivals all other nation's combined. "Those ambiguous situations residing between peace and war."
Technology lets us see through the fog of war. Omniscience and omnipotence are within our grasp. Infinite reach. Infinite justice.
The kind of olympian perspective Homer had given his gods.--Gen. Tommy Franks.
Ascend beyond the particularities of humans. Empty all particular creeds to keep from claiming any particular God.
Fill shrine with National God who sees resistence to Openness.
Part II
Theological critique of Empire.
Ex. 19:5-6 "But you shall be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." Chooses to save world through particular history of one people.
Shrine is never truly empty. God is not generic he is of a particular people.
Influential exceptionalism: US is new Israel. Providential fulfillment through one nation. New Testament Israel is the church. Rom. 9-11
1 Peter 2:9, The church is a holy nation. Ekklesia is the parculiar political stance of the church. The Day of the Assembly--Dueteronomic. The idea refers to the whole. Saw themselves as the eschatological fulfillment of Israel. The church is not polis and yet it used the language of citizenship. Christians are questionable citizens of any empire. Loyalty to church is primary.
In America there is no single visible idol. Openness is not a good candidate for idolatry. Its the ineffability of the national god that makes it so powerful. By denying its power we give it more power. That god may not be refused when sacrifice is required. US acts as substitute for church and God. All religion is civil religion to Durkheim. Empty shrine threatens to make a deity not out of God but our freedom to worship God. Worship becomes worship of our collective self. Freedom becomes the one thing we will die and kill for.
You shall not kill.
Godlikeness comes in where State alone can kill. Confess any God you want provided you're willing to kill for America. Kill is in subject not verb. Divide between God and humans. God alone decides. [You] is the command. God is particular so that his work can spread. All have chance to behold and test this new thing. They are not forced. Lofink "Does God need the church?" Ex. 14:14 The Lord will fight for you you have only to keep still. Their victory is through the intervention of the Lord.
Every army thinks it has divine favor. In OT emphasis is on lack of military strength. "Two little flocks of goats." Huge army of Arimeans. Contrast is in the strength of other nation's militaries. OT served as paradigm for early church. Martyrdom becomes the way of victory for early church. Discern God's activity in persecution and weakness. Church imitates Christ by absorbing the violence of the world. If Jesus is the point of history then Christians read history from the point of his life, death, and ress. Find true life by refusing to fear death.
The church is our primary political community. Not triumph of church but repentence. American empire has taken over many of the functions of the church. Missions, catholicity, universalism, all coopted by US empire.
Obedience as liberation.
Liberation as absorbing violence.
Questions:
What about church as leaven in the world?
Reservation: if the church is leaven and something else is bread. Nation is a given, church helps to make it a bit better. Avoid that.
Bread must be the body of Christ. Proclaim the different kind of community with is a political reality.
Economics of church vs. empire.
Part of our task is to create difference economic spaces. Not necessarily withdrawal or seperation. But structures have to be transformed. Create a different economic space not determined by profit but by whats best for all in community.
Church's role: Its not as if the stage is the nation. The tragedy is the nation and the comedy is the church. We work together for a good solution. The church-sect dichotomy is not the only option (Join the Amish or write your congressman.)
Andrew Basavich "American Empire"
There's nothing about divine sanction that can't be used for violence. Yes Xianity has produced violence but the greater problem is in secular ideologies that do violence for the empty shrine. Our secular violence is rational, secular, muniative. "Regrettably, we need to bomb them into the higher rationality."
The nation is the truly sectarian body that divides the world's body. The church unites members or potential members of Christ's body.
--------------------------
Much of this is no doubt cryptic but maybe you'll like it.
7/12/2005
some things i just can't blog about
Some things are too personal to blog about. When mom gets cancer. Mom and Dad separating and reuniting. A kid in therapy. Addiction and recovery. More has been happening in my life lately than I can possibly cipher for the future. Just know that life in your thirties makes you more adult than you really want to be. And older friends assure me it only gets thicker over time. One friend told me I'd probably reinvent myself (I guess that means vocations) three times before I'm fifty. Inside I still feel in many ways like that kid I was coming of age at sixteen. I'd spend hours upon hours in this recliner writing down all my feelings and listening to music. That was the only way I knew to cope. That should say something to me about the way I feel people perceive me. The ones I know love me I don't worry about. The ones I feel I piss off I just try to ignore and hope they don't come around. Either way I'll just be about my business. How the last three sentences fit with the one prior I don't know. I just write what I feel.
I finished Flannery O'Connor's "The Violent Bear It Away" recently. What a weird ending! I can't quite decide what's happening. Is Tarwater a ghost? Is it all a vision? I looked it up in Jill Baumgaertner's book but see nothing about the ending. She mentions Tarwater being raped though. When did that happen?
I finished Flannery O'Connor's "The Violent Bear It Away" recently. What a weird ending! I can't quite decide what's happening. Is Tarwater a ghost? Is it all a vision? I looked it up in Jill Baumgaertner's book but see nothing about the ending. She mentions Tarwater being raped though. When did that happen?
7/11/2005
7/09/2005
7/08/2005
With God On Our Side
"Barbaric" screamed the headline of the Chicago Sun Times this morning.
A mimic I suppose of the Governor's words of comfort after the subway
killings in London yesterday. Condi signed a condolence book. Blair and
Bush said our resolve is strong. We all feel better. Buddy Miller is
singing "With God On Our Side" on my Itunes. A few lines struck me a
different way just now. WWI: the singer doesn't know why we're fighting.
After WWII the Germans are forgiven, though six million Jews are dead,
but yes, they now have God on their side. Then its the Russians. The
question is where does it stop? Yesterday innocent die from "Barbaric"
acts and our leaders offer comfort by saying "This is what we're
fighting for." And as long as we're fighting we have God on our side.
This tangled weave of violence, assurance, war, and now more terrorism
beg the questions: Why Me, Why Us? Why Death? Who will protect us from
ourselves? Its easiest not to think about it at all. Personally I'm
irritated by our leaders. They offer assurances because that's their job
but do any of us really feel safer? I hate the spectacle of the news
after such acts. I hate the helpless passive gaze forced upon me. Christ
be between me and all this news. Christ be with all the victims and yes
with the perpetrators. Christ give me strength to feel. Christ give us
hands and feet to do something. Give me just one thing to do today to
counter that abhorrent act. And every recent abhorrent act between
humans that is far less than human be it in conscious warring or
otherwise. One simple thing please.
my fest experience
Its the last day of the week in which I retreated to Chicago from a week and a half of tent living in Bushnell Illinois. I suppose I am that much richer, more patient, and more eager for Parousia because of the experience. I'm glad I will not be loading and unloading trucks and minivans for another year. Trucks bearing all the wares of my trade and that of everyone else who works in this building. All the writers and artists I see year round in passing on their ways to the delapidated bathrooms here on second floor. Some emerge from their windowless offices from hours of staring into their 15" monitors just to stand where there are windows and remember that they still speak with human voices and see daylight. [If they ever read this we'll have more to talk about. Or maybe they won't want to talk anymore at all for fear you'll hear about it!]
Its a wonder that I and these pretend to be outside dwellers for over a week once a year. Its a wonder that we inhale the dust of Illinois cornfields and burn our skin with the sun and then freeze ourselves upon nightfall inside temporary dwellings of vinyl and barely metal zippers. Maybe we do it because it makes us feel like anything is possible with a truckload of ice and water and per diem enough to make us smile. Some of us spend the entire year in preparation for that one week (or four days for others). This year I fell into the week with 1000 and 1 other things pressing.
On the other hand, the Fest is about conversations otherwise not had with folks from all over the world. This year I'll mark in my memory one lengthy conversation with a young man about Existence, Evil, Spiritual Encounter, and the Effect faith has on a person. His questions and my poke at answers changed me. Bolstered my faith. The reality of an all powerful God who loves me and desires a relationship with me never ceases to be a tender and moving subject. The fact that I grew up a believer and that faith has always been my life theme has not kept me from utter failure, addiction, and betrayal of all I love. That part of my narrative makes my testimony a tricky delivery, but a bittersweet joy nonetheless.
I mark this fest as a victory in the resistance of temptation. I kept the personal conversation going, did not withdraw and isolate from my fellows, and I am stronger for it. Lust, despair, anger, and discouragement plagued me as usual but I can honestly say I reached out to God and my brothers and with their help stayed faithful. Yeh, desperately faithful.
We brought our house rabbit down with us. She (Peanut Butter) managed to stay cool and get exercise and be lots of fun. Martha and I took the kids to the beach at the man-made lake down the hill. I got in at least twice and splashed around. Back at the campsite for at least two days I got some quality reading in. I read "I Knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer" which I got on inter-library loan, and "Karl Barth's Theological Exegesis" by Richard E. Burnett which I still hope to review later this year. Later I purchased from my own store "3 by Flannery O'Connor" and began "The Violent Bear It Away." Somebody tell me if that's OK to read first. Though I don't really care. The byline about devoted prophets killing folks out of love for God was enough to make me pick it up. Though that must happen at the end. Anyway. . . .
Martha is amazing in her tenacity and patience for camping. Everything was carefully packed in bins and she managed to remember everything our family of five needed and pull off providing tents for the rest of JPUSA as well. We couldn't have managed without my good friend Michael. He was a real trooper in the back seat with the kids on the way home. My three year old was so much trouble! I often asked how could something so cute and tiny be such a royal pain!?! Darling--rascal--darling--rascal. I was stopping the van so much to deal with her on the way home that it felt as if we'd never arrive.
Well there it is. And I've relived it all just for you. Feel special.
Its a wonder that I and these pretend to be outside dwellers for over a week once a year. Its a wonder that we inhale the dust of Illinois cornfields and burn our skin with the sun and then freeze ourselves upon nightfall inside temporary dwellings of vinyl and barely metal zippers. Maybe we do it because it makes us feel like anything is possible with a truckload of ice and water and per diem enough to make us smile. Some of us spend the entire year in preparation for that one week (or four days for others). This year I fell into the week with 1000 and 1 other things pressing.
On the other hand, the Fest is about conversations otherwise not had with folks from all over the world. This year I'll mark in my memory one lengthy conversation with a young man about Existence, Evil, Spiritual Encounter, and the Effect faith has on a person. His questions and my poke at answers changed me. Bolstered my faith. The reality of an all powerful God who loves me and desires a relationship with me never ceases to be a tender and moving subject. The fact that I grew up a believer and that faith has always been my life theme has not kept me from utter failure, addiction, and betrayal of all I love. That part of my narrative makes my testimony a tricky delivery, but a bittersweet joy nonetheless.
I mark this fest as a victory in the resistance of temptation. I kept the personal conversation going, did not withdraw and isolate from my fellows, and I am stronger for it. Lust, despair, anger, and discouragement plagued me as usual but I can honestly say I reached out to God and my brothers and with their help stayed faithful. Yeh, desperately faithful.
We brought our house rabbit down with us. She (Peanut Butter) managed to stay cool and get exercise and be lots of fun. Martha and I took the kids to the beach at the man-made lake down the hill. I got in at least twice and splashed around. Back at the campsite for at least two days I got some quality reading in. I read "I Knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer" which I got on inter-library loan, and "Karl Barth's Theological Exegesis" by Richard E. Burnett which I still hope to review later this year. Later I purchased from my own store "3 by Flannery O'Connor" and began "The Violent Bear It Away." Somebody tell me if that's OK to read first. Though I don't really care. The byline about devoted prophets killing folks out of love for God was enough to make me pick it up. Though that must happen at the end. Anyway. . . .
Martha is amazing in her tenacity and patience for camping. Everything was carefully packed in bins and she managed to remember everything our family of five needed and pull off providing tents for the rest of JPUSA as well. We couldn't have managed without my good friend Michael. He was a real trooper in the back seat with the kids on the way home. My three year old was so much trouble! I often asked how could something so cute and tiny be such a royal pain!?! Darling--rascal--darling--rascal. I was stopping the van so much to deal with her on the way home that it felt as if we'd never arrive.
Well there it is. And I've relived it all just for you. Feel special.
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