Simplicity and Challenge

I’m attempting to organize some of my utterly hyperlinked thoughts (my brain tends to work rather like the Internet, and an orderly line of reasoning comes with great difficulty). As one of the tasks of writing is to organize one’s thinking, here goes. Perhaps some of you will be kind enough to let me know if I’m making progress. First, the anecdote that helped me to frame one particular issue: A couple of nights ago, I was part of another conversation, where the story was told of the [Espicopal] diocese’s Assistant Bishop’s (A.B.) attendance at a vestry meeting. He was questioned rather strongly about his vote in support of the ordination of homosexuals (I presume the vote to confirm V. Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire). The A.B. was quoted as saying something along the lines of “The New Testament changed the Old Testament, and now we change the New Testament.” To which the response was, “You are not God.” It reminds me of Lloyd Bentsen’s remark to Dan Quayle in a vice presidential candidate debate, “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.” Whether I agreed with the A.B.’s vote, I would have been insulted by such a simplistic and, I believe, misleading explanation for what is a difficult, complex process. It sounds downright condescending. If what I’ve related is a fair representation of what he said, he deserved the answer he received. As I know how much my thinking has changed over the past 20 years (going from no thinking to probably too much), I think the A.B. absolutely lost an opportunity for fruitful discussion. He certainly lost any respect or forbearance that the vestry may have retained for him following his vote. Because of numerous interactions like the preceding, I’ve been quite interested of late in the history of the earliest Church. The major spark was Garry Wills’ “Papal Sins: Structures of Deceit,” in which he traces the impact of personalities (I would say personality disorders, based on descriptions of several Popes’ actions) and politics on the doctrine of the Catholic Church over the past couple of centuries. Wills skillfully utilizes incidents from more ancient history to illuminate dubious decisions of the Magisterium. He is an historian who makes the past come alive, and he lays out some startling information, which is too big to do other than mention in this post. In brief: One of his assertions—evidence for which comes from secular Roman historians, not church writings—is that even the earliest Church had a serious split. Some believers were betrayed to Roman authorities by believers with whom the rift occurred, and it’s one plausible explanation for the deaths of Peter and Paul (about which the N.T. is silent). So much for my thoughts on early Church unity. Several other points that have spurred me on to further reading: 1) there were no priests in the New Testament; 2) the earliest priests were not ordained by a central authority, answerable to a hierarchy, but were ordained by the community of believers in which they lived; 3) considerable evidence suggests that women were equal to men in the earliest Church, and held such positions of authority as existed. The last point I’d heard before, but Wills provides convincing argument. I can’t say I’m simply advocating a return to Church as practiced by the earliest Christians, for several reasons. One is that changes that were made had to have been meaningful to the community that made them, and it’s disrespectful and kind of stupid to throw out tradition simply because it’s revealed to be quite different from predecessor tradition. Mostly it’s that I want to understand the dynamics of changes as they occurred. Who, what, when, where, why? Throughout the Church’s history, besides the likelihood of personality-disordered believers sometimes gaining the upper hand (they were human after all!), choices were made based on the information at hand. Thanks to archeological discoveries, scholars today know a lot more about the earliest Church than did anybody in the intervening centuries. That helps us understand the nature of changes that were made, and perhaps we gain a new understanding of and respect for the resulting tradition. Or, we realize that they did the best they could with what they had, and those changes are no longer necessary to uphold. I next turned to John Dominick Crossan’s “The Birth of Christianity.” It’s been sitting on my bookshelf for years, but I no longer find it intimidating (it’s 653 pages including appendices, bibliography, and indices). Though I must confess I’ve been at it for two weeks and am only a third of the way through—all I can absorb of it in a day is about 40 minutes’ worth. If I were marketing this book, I’d call it a Classroom in a Book. Or, a Seminar in a Book. I’m pondering blogging through it after I finish slogging through it. He writes very clearly and methodically, but it’s slow going simply because he provides meticulous definitions of terms and concepts that either have been used sloppily or I simply haven’t known, as he uses a multi-disciplinary approach to the topic. There’s a LOT to ponder. However, I much prefer his respectful, caring, honest approach, as contrasted with the glib sound bite of the Assistant Bishop in the anecdote at the beginning of this post. Crossan provides his definition of history: “History is the past reconstructed interactively by the present through argued evidence in public discourse.” Whew. I take a major risk in trying to distill the 28 pages of Chapter 2: Reconstructing Earliest Christianity, but as my understanding has been deepened tremendously by them and my search fueled further, here I go, mindful of the dangers of oversimplification. Why reconstruct (he prefers that term to “search” or “quest”)? Every generation needs to engage with the historical Jesus as best it can. It is not a task that is done, once and for all (though it would be much easier if that were true).

Historical reconstruction is always interactive of present and past. Even our best theories and methods are still our best ones. They are all dated and doomed not just when they are wrong but even (and especially) when they are right. They need, when anything important is involved, to be done over and over again. That does not make history worthless. We ourselves are also dated and doomed, but that does not make life worthless. It just makes death inevitable.

Crossan, p. 43 I can well imagine that millions of people would respond much like this commenter on a related topic at Blogging through the Bible in this post:

You know what, I don’t think this [blog] is the place for me. It’s my own fault, really. But in all honesty, I don’t want to waste my time debating the authenticity of the Bible. He said it...that settles it. Whether I or anybody else believes it...doesn’t really matter.”

[Ellipses in original] Well, I can relate to that thinking, as it used to be mine as well. What gets people beyond that? An ability to leave one’s comfort zone—a willingness to encounter challenge. If the challenge turns out to be unfounded, one learns from that. If the challenge results in enlightenment and growth—yes, deepened faith—we all benefit.

Liturgy and Preachers and Dreams…

…oh my! I have lots of weird dreams, and most of them don’t mean anything. But as I’ve been trying hard to process where I am in light of recent and current discussions at Dash’s and Dwight’s blogs, I don’t doubt that Tuesday night’s dream was my brain working overtime. I found myself in the Lutheran church where I was confirmed, with Dash and her mother (they’ve never been there), a collection of people I knew then, and the pastor who confirmed me. They were in the middle of a service, with a different pastor presiding. My old pastor was assisting, but when he saw me, he came right over and we had a great big hug. It was so good to see him! I realized that it was disruptive, but I hoped nobody would mind too much. I can’t remember too much of the service itself (how high, how low) but I do remember wondering if Dash would like it. I neither liked nor disliked the service itself—I realized I was focused most on the reunions with people I haven’t seen in more than 20 years. The biggest change in that church (besides having a new pastor) were a curious and creative (and impossible!) solution to sharing worship space. The church had been altered quite a bit, so that the rear of the nave was now a detachable chapel, which is where the service had been held. I think it was on a weekday, not the main Sunday a.m. service. Immediately following the service, preparations were made to detach the chapel and move it several miles away to attach it to a Catholic church. It appeared to be mounted on some sort of track, and we gathered in the chapel for the trip to its other “station.” Once we arrived at the Catholic church, the chapel locked into place (too many science fiction movies, I guess) with some sort of connecting wall to be opened into the church. Those on the other side had not only assembled already, but apparently hadn’t waited for preparations/reorganizing of the chapel’s “furniture,” and their Mass was in progress. So Dash and her mom opened a door in the wall to duck into the Mass, and I could see it was almost completely dark in there. They looked at me to wonder if I was coming as well, but I was rather undecided. Why? I thought. I’m familiar with all this. No reason I couldn’t. But I didn’t. Some of this seems quite obvious, and almost literal. The pieces that are specific to me, however, I find difficult to articulate. As I’m still on sabbatical from organized religion, I know I’m in the middle of some paradigm shift, and I don’t know yet where I’ll land. I know that the issues being aired: who joins with whom, how they join, how those decisions are made and by whom, are precisely why I’m outside the church (any church) right now. This is me, the Bag Lady, standing on the corner, the intersection of a number of viewpoints, watching and wondering, seemingly unable to find my voice to join the conversation. All viewpoints claim to hold to “The Truth,” which more or less preempts anybody outside that viewpoint. This is obviously a much bigger topic than 1) I can organize neatly and 2) would be of an appropriate length for the medium. So I will continue in a future post.

Situation hits home

On my way home from the Loop after work, we all had to get off the el at the Sedgwick stop and catch another train. As the train hadn’t given any appearance of malfunction (doors refusing to close, stopping between stops for no apparent reason, etc.) my brain got going: I thought, there’s been a bomb threat. Yes. The Chicago Tribune reports that the Purple Line was shut down because of a threat. Now, the Purple Line is the lowest-volume line of the CTA (only 14,000 riders a day), but as it serves people going from Evanston to the Loop, it’s more of a symbol. It wouldn’t cause the severe damage and loss of life that a bomb on the Red Line would, but a lot of people who ride the Purple Line live on Chicago’s North Shore, primarily Evanston and Wilmette. Either a crackpot out there has something against the North Shore (which narrows it down to several thousand people) or a crackpot thought that people who are perceived as wealthy and powerful make a worthwhile target. What scares me (immediate danger having passed) is that what I suspected was correct. Man, I’m not in the boondocks anymore (well, haven’t been for 24+ years).

Eureka in my world (and welcome to it)

Friday I made what was, for me, an amazing discovery: My body can, in fact, produce the much-lauded endorphins after physical exercise. To make sure, I tested it out again yesterday, and yup! I’ve got those lovely little brain chemicals. How did this discovery elude me for decades? Running was no help—I never got any “runner’s high,” probably because I never lasted long enough to trigger those little buggers, always simply collapsing. I’ve never displayed much physical prowess—while I do have fast reflexes (and they pay off big time when playing piano) they don’t translate into running speed. Races in “physical education” (I didn’t learn a whole lot there) were a matter of torture, and back then it was all a matter of being the best. As I wasn’t even close to the best, I never experienced any rewards simply for moving. I have understood (intellectually, anyway) that some people enjoy physical activity just for its own sake. That enjoyment probably is a significant motivator for staying in shape, whereas my only motivation was negative—trying to pull on jeans that no longer fit. Well, I had enjoyed riding my bike, though I hadn’t done that for more than three years, as my bike was mishandled by the movers during my last move and I didn’t have any bike maintenance know-how. Without a vehicle to transport it to the nearest bike repair shop, I periodically attempted to put it back in order and gave up in frustration. My bicycle repair manual is very detailed, but it still stymied me somewhat. If I had known how certain parts of my bike assembly looked before they were thrown out of whack, it would have been easier to translate the instructions (and photos) into reality. But Friday was such a perfect day to be outside that I attempted repair once more. This time I succeeded! (At least the brakes appear to be working properly, and nothing else seems to be awry.) So off I went, on one of my favorite rides. There’s a lovely bike and running path through a sculpture park situated (unfortunately) alongside Chicago’s sanitary canal. Getting to the beginning of the path is a challenge, as it requires riding along one of Chicago’s crazy, biker-hostile streets before reaching the water treatment plant near the sanitary canal. Scary and smelly! After that point, all is good. Both days I rode for about an hour, returning to collapse not in agony, but in a quiet, good tiredness. And then I realized my brain’s chemical soup was bubbling happily. Ah, yes! Like the effect of a good beer without the somebody’s-sitting-on-my-head part. Now that I know what it is (and my muscles are telling me that they’ve been worked but they’re not giving me hell about it) I’m looking forward to more. Perhaps I’ll discover a bit more wisdom (and ditch some of the madness). Next plan: eat lotsa fish.