EPISODE 248: A NEW YEAR'S MOLT
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
There’s something intrinsically satisfying about end of the year top ten lists. On the one hand, there’s the satisfaction of having someone point to something you’ve already discovered and name it worthy. Handmaid's Tale? Ah yeah, I've watched that.
Just a few paragraphs can also provide a gateway back to the pleasure of your own original experience of the thing in question. The kind of thing Willy Wonka might have created, but in words, rather than sweets.
A good top ten list also holds calls to adventure, new worlds to explore. They don't always pan out, but every once in a while a suggestion resounds within us with a voice we didn’t know how much we longed to hear. And that’s all it takes to keep us coming back.
In a way a newsletter is an ongoing top ten list, ideas, articles, clips the writer has happened upon that seem worthy of your attention.
For this end-of-the-year newsletter I was thinking I might offer a slightly different kind of focus – not best show or movie or video, but ten quotes I've stumbled upon this year that have been meaningful to me. Ten little pieces of lembas strangers put in my pack at various times over the course of the last twelve months that have helped me on the journey. I share them hoping a few might do the same for you.
I'm going on retreat next week, followed by a little R&R and some big projects to get done. So probably no newsletter until January 26th. Hope you have a great New Year's. And thanks for taking this journey with me.
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From the comic book Iron Fists
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I have learned to prize holy ignorance more highly than religious certainty and to seek companions who have arrived at the same place. We are a motley crew, distinguished not only by our inability to explain ourselves to those who are more certain of their beliefs than we are but in many cases by our distance from the centers of our faith communities as well. Like campers who have bonded over cook fires far from home, we remain grateful for the provisions that we have brought with us from those cupboards, but we also find them more delicious when we share them with one another under the stars.
– Barbara Brown Taylor
++ From the comic book Ms. Marvel
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THE CROWN, SEASON 2, EPISODE 6, “VERGANGENHEIT”
It seems like forever ago now, but one of the big questions of 2017 was whether or not it was acceptable to punch Nazis. The crisis in Charlottesville rippled across American culture broadly. Particularly in the realm of comic books, where Captain America kind of made a career of punching Nazis, the debate was heated, and grew moreso when Marvel Comics put out a mini-series in which Captain America was revealed to have been, through a crazy reset of reality, a secret agent for Hydra, an organization originally formed by the Nazis.
Netflix series THE CROWN, about the life and times of Queen Elizabeth II, would seem about as far from such nuttiness as you could possibly get. Much like the creators of Captain America, Great Britain in the 1950s knew all there was to know about the Nazis and what needed to be done about them. The Royal Family had also faced its own issues around such questions, including the revelation in 1957 that former king Edward VIII had visited Adolf Hitler after his abdication, and was sympathetic to a compromise with the Nazis (which was a polite way of saying letting them have Europe), including encouraging the Nazis to keep up the bombing of London, saying English resolve was weakening.
In episode six of the newest season (released earlier this month), creator Peter Morgan considers the story from the vantage point of the Queen’s position as religious leader of the Anglican Church. Does she not, she wonders, have a responsibility to forgive?
It’s a remarkable hour of television, which rather than providing some one answer represents the struggle amongst different legitimate responses.
Maybe my favorite section comes from a conversation with Billy Graham, whom Elizabeth goes to for advice:
Queen Elizabeth: Reverend Graham, I asked you here today because there’s something I’d very much like to hear your views on.
Graham: Ma’am.
E: Forgiveness. Are there any circumstances do you feel where one can be a good Christian and yet not forgive?
G: Christian teaching is very clear on this. No one is beneath forgiveness. Dying on the cross Jesus himself asked the Lord otot forgive those who killed him.
E: Yes... But we must remember his words: “They know not what they do.” That forgiveness, it was conditional.
G: True. But he still forgave. God himself forgives us all. Who are we to reject the example of God?
E: Mere mortals.
G: We are all mortals, that is our fate, but we need not be unchristian ones.
Elizabeth leans back in her chair, struggling with this.
G: The solution for being unable to forgive: One asks for forgiveness oneself, humbly and sincerely, and one prays for those that one cannot forgive.
Elizabeth sits with that, in silence.
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From The Last Jedi
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"Wisdom is not the gathering of more facts and information, as if that would eventually coalesce into truth. Wisdom is a way of seeing and knowing the same old ten thousand things but in a new way. As my colleague Cynthia Bourgeault often says, it’s not about knowing more, but knowing with more of you. I suggest that wise people are those who are free to be truly present to what is right in front of them. It has little to do with formal education. Presence is pretty much the same as wisdom!
Presence is the one thing necessary to attain wisdom, and in many ways, it is the hardest thing of all. Just try to keep your heart open and soft, your mind receptive without division or resistance, and your body aware of where it is and its deepest level of feeling. Presence is when all three centers are awake at the same time! Most religions decided it was easier to believe doctrines—and obey often arbitrary laws—than undertake the truly converting work of being present.
The Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh teaches this wisdom through the ceremony and meditation of tea (a Buddhist parallel to the Christian Eucharist):
You must be completely awake in the present to enjoy the tea.
Only in the awareness of the present, can your hands feel the pleasant warmth of the cup.
Only in the present, can you savor the aroma, taste the sweetness, appreciate the delicacy.
If you are ruminating about the past, or worrying about the future, you will completely miss the experience of enjoying the cup of tea.
You will look down at the cup, and the tea will be gone.
Life is like that.
If you are not fully present, you will look around and it will be gone.
You will have missed the feel, the aroma, the delicacy and beauty of life.
It will seem to be speeding past you. The past is finished.
Learn from it and let it go.
The future is not even here yet. Plan for it, but do not waste your time worrying about it.
Worrying is worthless.
When you stop ruminating about what has already happened, when you stop worrying about what might never happen, then you will be in the present moment.
Then you will begin to experience joy in life."
-- Richard Rohr, November 23rd, 2017
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From the comic book America
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About ten years ago Stephen King put out two novels at the same time, Desperation and The Regulators, that involved many of the same characters and some similar events, but occurring in parallel universes.
Desperation, as it so happens, is in part a Messiah story. Eleven year old David Carver reaches out to God to save the life of his best friend, and as a result of that experience ends up becoming the means God has to stop something much worse from happening.
It’s a fascinating book with all kinds of interesting ideas about God and destiny and the harrowing nature of faith. But it’s David’s first experience of God that I want to share.
He’s just had this strange feeling to go to a treehouse where he and his friend Brian liked to play. The scene proceeds from him following the instinct and showing up there.
A breeze soughed through the trees, cooling his hot skin. Any other day and Brian would have been sharing that breeze with him. They would have been dangling their feet, talking, laughing. David started to cry again.
Why am I here?
No answer.
Why did I come? Did something make me come?
No answer.
If anyone’s there, please answer!
No answer for a long time ... and then one did come, and he didn’t think he was just talking to himself inside his own head, then fooling himself about what he was doing in order to gain a little comfort. As when he had stood over Brian, the thought which came seemed in no way his own.
Yes, this voice had said. I’m here.
Who are you?
Who I am, the voice said, and then fell silent, as if that actually explained something.
David crossed his legs, sitting tailor-fashion in the middle of the platform, and closed his eyes. He cupped his knees in his palms and opened his mind as best he could. He had no idea what else to do. In this fashion he waited for an unknown length of time, hearing the distant voices of the home-going children, aware of shifting red and black shapes on the insides of his eyelids as the breeze moved the branches above him and dapples of sunlight slipped back and forth on his face.
Tell me what you want, he asked the voice.
No answer. The voice didn’t seem to want anything.
Tell me what to do, then.
No answer from the voice.
Distant, distant, he heard the sound of the firehouse whistle over on Columbus Broad. It was five o’clock. He had been sitting up on the platform with his eyes closed for at least an hour, probably more like two. His mom and dad would have noticed he was no longer in the driveway, would have seen the ball lying in the grass, would be worried. He loved them and didn’t want to worry them-on some level he understood that Brian’s impending death had struck at them as hard as it had struck at him—but he couldn’t go home yet. Because he wasn’t done yet.
Do you want me to pray? he asked the voice. I’ll try if you want me to, but I don’t know how-we don’t go to church, and—
The voice overrode his, not angry, not amused, not impatient, not anything he could read. You’re praying already, it said.
What should I pray for?
Oh shit, the mummy’s after us, the voice said. Let’s all walk a little faster.
I don’t know what that means.
Yes you do.
No I don’t!
“Yes I do,” he said, almost moaned. “Yes I do, it means ask for what none of them dare to ask for, pray for what none of them dare to pray for. Is that it?”
No answer from the voice.
David opened his eyes and the afternoon bombed him with late light, the red-gold glow of November. His legs were numb from the knees down, and he felt as if he had just awakened from a deep sleep. The day’s simple unzipped loveliness stunned him, and for a moment he was very aware of himself as a part of something whole—a cell on the living skin of the world. He lifted his hands from his knees, turned them over, and held them out.
“Make him better,” he said. “God, make him better. If you do, I’ll do something for you. I’ll listen for what you want, and then I’ll do it. I promise.”++
From America