Disappointed with His Face

    Nadim looked in the mirror and sighed. It was his face. It was his face and he was tired of it. Somewhere in the years he’d grown disappointed with his face.

    He’d never thought of himself as ugly. But neither had he considered himself handsome. His wife, Amina, disagreed with him, but he knew she was biased. He loved her, and appreciated her. But he knew she was wrong.

    His face was… too familiar. Was that it? Too familiar? It looked so much like his father’s face. Not that his father was ugly. And people had told him often over the years that he was the spitting image of his father. It wasn’t resentment; it was inheritance. His father was a good man and Nadim loved him.

    And his face was … too changed. Was that it? When he looked at himself in the mirror he saw both his face as it was now and as it was when he was thirty years younger. He saw the lines and scars and the weathering effects of the sun.

    ‘Maybe I could shave,’ he thought. ‘Or change my hair?’ He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘If I can’t be perfect, could I, at least, be devoted?’ he asked himself. And he wondered what that meant.

    Every difficult moral decision was there, reflected in the lines at the corners of his eyes, the crevice below his lower lip, the scar that jutted across his left cheek. Every long day at work. Every mortgage payment. Every parent teacher conference. He wiped the condensation from the glass and the tears from his eyes.

    He could hear Amina calling him to breakfast. He could smell the coffee.

What I’m Reading: Crime and Punishment

If, at the end of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s last work The Brothers Karamazov, the reader remains in doubt about the identity of Fyodor Karamazov’s murderer, in Crime and Punishment the murderer - Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov- is identified almost immediately.  Most of the story is told from his viewpoint[i]; so much so that the reader begins to feel the suffocating weight of the crime.

“The old woman was bareheaded, as always. Her scantly, light-coloured, greying hair, smeared thickly all over with oil as it always was, had been plaited into a rat’s tail and gathered together under the remains of horn comb which jutted out at the nape of her neck.  The blow landed smack on the crown of her head, something made easy by her smallness.  She cried out, but very faintly, and suddenly sank in a heap to the floor, though even then she managed to raise both arms to her head.  In one hand she was still holding the ‘pledge’.  At that point, with all his might, he landed her another blow, and another, each time with the butt [of the axe] and each time on the crown of the head.  The blood gushed out as from an upturned glass, and her body collapsed backwards.  He stepped back, allowed her to fall and at once bend down over her face: she was dead.  Her eyes were goggling out of her head as though they might burst from it, while her forehead and all the rest of her features were crumpled and distorted in a convulsive spasm.” [ii]

The title Crime and Punishment (Преступлéние и наказáние )– doesn’t fully reflect the contents of the novel.  The “crime” of the novel is described in graphic detail, but only briefly, and the “punishment” –the official sentence for the crime - comes only in the novel’s short epilogue.  Instead the novel dwells on the nature of morality – both personal and corporate, individual as well as communal.  It also dwells quite a bit on pride and shame.  Crime and Punishment also analyses the Nietzchean idea of Übermensch and the “will to power.”

I haven’t read enough Nietzsche to write about it with any authority, but  Raskolnikov believed that he was one of these Übermensch –able to commit atrocious acts of violence and criminality because of his intellectual and emotional fortitude.  He believed himself to be above and beyond the rules that bound the rest of the “ant-heap” of humanity.

In an example of art imitating life – Dostoyevsky based the details of  Raskolnikov’s crime on the real life crimes of the French criminal Pierre Francois Lacenaire.  And in life imitating art, Leopold and Loeb killed Robert Franks in 1924 in order to commit the perfect crime, believing themselves to be Nitzchean supermen.

In this, my second reading of Crime and Punishment, I was struck by the way that Dostoyevsky used the characters around  Raskolnikov as mirrors.  They invert and reflect his character back to him and these reflections of himself are what haunt and shame him – they punish him more effectively than any sentence from the courts.

On the one side of Raskolnikov is the predatory sensualist Svidrigailov.   Raskolnikov despises Svidrigailov because of the way that he treated  Raskolnikov's sister, but even more, as the story progresses, because of what he begins to see of himself in this amoral character.   He is a mirror to  Raskolnikov’s despair and nihilism, and ends his life in suicide.   Raskolnikov comes close to following in his example.

On the other side of the novel’s protagonist (one can hardly call him a “hero”) is Sofia Semyonovna Marmeladova – often called Sonya. Sonya is something of the “hooker with a heart of gold,” without the jaded and cynical aspects of that literary archetype.  Unlike  Raskolnikov, she is a small and diminutive young woman, meek and fearful.  But she is a mirror to  Raskolnikov’s hope and spirituality –however darkened they might be within the story’s atheistic protagonist.

On either side of  Raskolnikov are these characters acting as mirrors – showing him aspects of himself that he is unable to see or unwilling to face.  And right behind him all through the novel is the detective Porfiry Petrovich, another mirror, pursuing him like one of the hounds of heaven.

Raskolnikov believes himself to be another “Napoleon,” one of those “extraordinary people” for whom the laws and morality of ordinary people do not apply.   He believes himself to be above or beyond the laws of society.  Porfiry, as  Raskolnikov’s mirror is an agent of that law and, ironically, also interested in Napoleon.

“I can see, dear Rodion Romanovich, that you’re laughing at me: here I am, a civilian state employee, picking all my examples from military history.  But what am I to do, it’s a weakness of mine, I’m fond of military matters, and I’m inordinately fond of reading all those military reports…I suppose I’m in the wrong career, really. I ought to have served in the military, sir, really I ought.  I might not have become a Napoleon, but I’d have made the rank of major…”[iii]

The book is also about the redemptive power of suffering. When  Raskolnikov finally confesses his crime to Soyna and asks her what he should do she replies that he should:

“Go immediately, this very moment, go and stand at the crossroads, bow down, first kiss the ground that you’ve desecrated, and then bow to the whole world, to all four points of the compass and tell everyone, out loud ‘I have killed!’ Then God will send you life again.  … You must accept suffering and redeem yourself by it, that’s what.”[iv]

It’s not that suffering will eliminate  Raskolnikov’s punishment.  He is being punished internally long before he confesses and turns himself in for his crimes.  But through his suffering, he can be redeemed, he can find in himself the sin that he committed against the earth, against the world, and against the divine image within himself and he can begin to be changed.

He can begin to be changed. I say that rather than “he can  change.”  Even as we finish Crime and Punishment  Raskolnikov is not “changed,” not fully, but he is being changed.  He will complete his sentence of eight years of labor in Siberia – he will suffer – and he will be changed, he will be redeemed.

---

[i] Dostoyevsky did frequently change vantage points within the narrative – a “modern” literary technique which, at the time, earned him the accusation of being unfocused and scattered.

[ii] Crime and Punishment Trans. David McDuff, page 114.

[iii] Page 402

[iv] Page 489

What I’m Reading: The Sacred Journey

I am not what I want to be.

I am not (yet) what I want to be.

The insertion of that three letter word changes everything. That simple three letter word changes the static to the dynamic.  That three letter word transforms the statement from despair into hope.

As I read Charles Foster’s book The Sacred Journey [i] I realized both meanings. 

I want to be holy.  I know that our Father in Heaven has clothed me with the holiness of his beloved and unique son, Jesus, but I am not worthy to wear those clothes. I want to be close to God.  I know that I could do nothing to get to him and that he has, nonetheless, drawn close to me, but I am not always – not often aware of his presence.

I am not what I want to be.

And this may be the existential quandary that has driven innumerable pilgrims of every faith tradition around the world and through the millennia of human history to begin a journey.

I am not (yet) what I want to be.

The implication of that inserted three letter word is that I can – at some point – arrive. If I begin I can move; I can travel. I can be transformed. And at the end of my travels I will arrive. 

We’ll sing in the morning the songs of salvation,
we’ll sing in the noontime the songs of his love,
and when we arrive at the end of our journey
we’ll sing the songs of Zion in the courts above. [ii]

Foster leads the reader through the stories of the Christian Scripture deftly illustrating that not all who wander are lost.[iii]  From Cain and Able through Jesus and the Apostles the bible is filled with travelers.  

A few weeks ago I asked the question “Why is Jesus always leaving?”  I asked it again a few days later in music.   Foster has an answer for that question. Why is Jesus always leaving? It’s because Jesus is the "God who walks."  He walks among us and with us and sometimes he leads us out into the wilderness, sometimes he leads us up to Jerusalem.  He began his teaching by inviting people to follow him as he walked.

And so I want to make a pilgrimage.  I want to wander.

And as I say that I immediately list all the reasons why that is altogether unfeasible:

            I have responsibilities here.
            I don’t have any vacation time left.
            What about my family?

            Where would I go?  It’s not as if there are any “holy places” or shrines in southern
                        Minnesota.

I know… I know… if it’s really important to me I’ll find a way and everything else is just an excuse. But the questions and the doubt (and the fear) remain.

Foster’s book has got me all stirred up, and I’m not exactly happy about that. If I allow myself to rest in my comfortable sedentary life-as-I-now-know-it I will not know the mystery and wonder of the journey. I will stay, pretty much, as I am.  But having read the book I am compelled to do something with it.  Now that I have heard the word I must heed what it says or I will be one of those double minded fools… I will begin to forget the reflection of myself that I have seen in this book.

I will have to think about this for a while.  A pilgrimage is not just a walk down the road on a sunny afternoon.  And it is not at all a tourist’s vacation.  I will continue to ponder the challenge of this book.  The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.  And, if I am to avoid the curse of Gnosticism[iv], I must incarnate this desire and put my flesh on the road. I cannot think about it for too long. I must get up and go.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” 

---

[i] Foster, Charles, The Sacred Journey, Thomas Nelson Inc, Nashville TN, 2010.

This book is part of the Ancient Practices Series edited by Phyllis Tickle.

[ii] Salvation Army Composer – William Gordon “Salvation’s Song” 

[iii]  J.R.R. Tolkien

[iv] “Physical pilgrimage involves bodies, blisters, hunger and diarrhea.  …It is accordingly one of the best prophylactics against, and cures for, one of the deadliest and most prevalent disease crippling the church: Gnosticism.”  page xvi 

What I’m Reading: The Brothers Karamazov

“It was he, not my brother, killed our father.  He murdered him and I incited him to do it… who doesn’t desire his father’s death?”

“Are you in your right mind?” broke involuntarily from the President.

“I should think I am in my right mind…in the same nasty mind as all of you…as all these…ugly faces.”  He turned suddenly to the audience.  “My father has been murdered and they pretend that they are horrified,” he snarled with furious contempt. “They keep up the sham with one another. Liars!  They all desire the death of their fathers.  One reptile devours another…If there hadn’t been a murder, they’d have been angry and gone home ill-humored.  It’s a spectacle they want!”[i]

The Brothers Karamazov is a daunting work – over 700 pages of dense Russian literature, populated with hundreds of characters, each deeply drawn, and filled with complex thoughts about God, justice, morality, free-will, faith, and doubt, and reason.  It is a challenging book, but it is a work that I have enjoyed reading, twice (so far...)

The story center’s upon the murder of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov – an old, licentious buffoon, and father of the four brothers of the title.  Each of them had reasons to despise the old man.  Each of them is tainted by their desire to murder him.

Though the story is told by an unnamed narrator, who at times has a clear and almost omniscient understanding of the inner thoughts and feelings of the various characters, he is not all knowing and is not a completely reliable narrator.  He frequently admits his ignorance.  Several sections of the book are told by voices other than the narrator’s.  This shifting and subjective vantage is both a help and a hindrance in knowing the truth. Though the voice of the narrator and the voices of other testimony that he includes frequently overlap there are gaps.  We see much, but not everything.

And in the end, it is impossible to know who killed the old man.

Was it Alyosha, the young, sanguine “cherub”?  Was it Ivan, with his melancholic and wild intellect?  Was it the impulsive Dimitri?  Or was it the “stinking” illegitimate son, Smerdyakov?[ii]  We do not know, but everyone who reads the novel is drawn to one or another of the brothers.  Dostoevsky has invested each of them with intense and personal details, often drawn from his own life and character.  Smerdyakov, for instance, suffers from epilepsy just as the author did.

And the old buffoon himself, Fyodor Karamazov is invested with many characteristics of the author – his erratic personal life, his gambling, his debts – and even his very name: Fyodor.

The Karamazov brothers form a tragic dysfunctional family – a fractured family.  It is only as the novel opens that the brothers come together for the first time in their lives.  Taken broadly, they represent various aspects of all humanity – in their noble and praiseworthy attributes as well as in their depravity and ignorance.  They, like all of humanity, marvelous and terrible, horrible and lovely. 

It is a novel about guilt – both individual and collective – for who hasn’t, as some point, desired his or her father’s death?  But it is also a novel about desiring one’s own death – at least in a spiritual sense.  The desire to see our father dead is the desire to undo ourselves. 

The book’s epigraph helps to make this clear:

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” – John 12:24

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[i] Fyodor Dostoevsky – The Brothers Karamazov  translated by Constance Garnett, page 646

[ii] His name literally means “son of the reeking one.”

The Introvert and the Leper - Mark 1: 40 - 45

I am, by nature and temperament, an introvert.  When I tell people this they very often react with surprise, or by saying, “no you’re not.”  But it’s true.

I am not one that enjoys being with crowds of people.  After a few hours of interaction with others I’m ready to spend some time by myself.  I’ll go into my “man-cave” and close the door.  Don’t let me see you or hear you for a while and I’ll be okay.  Some are charged up by interaction with people. After a couple of hours of chatting with people about the weather and their grandkids and what happened last night on that-show-that-everybody’s-watching they are full of energy and ready to go right on talking for another several hours.  Not me. I am energized in my thoughts and in my thinking.  I like to be alone sometimes.  Sometimes I need to be alone.

And, based on reading the first chapter of Mark’s gospel, I’d be willing to be that Jesus was a bit of an introvert.  Look at how often he’s trying to get away by himself, trying to leave the crowds.  He sneaks out of the house in the still dark hours of the morning; he leaves the metropolis of Capernaum for the smaller backwater villages.  He’s trying to get away from the crowds.  He’s trying to limit his interaction to small, manageable sized groups.

But it isn’t that introverts want to be alone all the time.  As God said, “it’s not good for the man to be alone.”  Introverts need alone, quiet time to recharge and to think and to be whole – but we introverts need people too.  There’s a challenge in finding the balance.  Too much interaction and activity and noise ruins the introvert’s creativity and joy and ability to function.  Too little interaction and he becomes a recluse, a hermit. 
Jesus went to the smaller towns because he needed to speak to the people there as well.  It seems to me that he was balancing his personal needs with those of his mission.

After leaving the crowds of Capernaum for the outlaying villages, Jesus encountered a man with leprosy who came to him, pleading on his knees, “if you are willing you can make me clean.”

Leprosy, we should point out, was a diagnostic catch all for various skin diseases – and not what we commonly understand as leprosy today.  The disease that causes body parts to rot and fall off (not really) is more accurately Hanson’s Disease and is actually a disease that affects the human nervous system.  Biblical “leprosy” is an affliction of the skin (and sometimes clothing and the walls of houses).  It could include excessive dry and scaly skin or fungal growth or other ailment of the skin.[i]

People with leprosy were to be separated from the rest of the community.  They were to be quarantined.  And this was to limit the spread of the infection.  If you limit the exposure you can control the outbreak.  Lepers were to separate themselves until they could prove to an inspector (one of the priests) that the infection had fully and completely gone away.

But while Beauty may only be skin deep, Leperous contamination went all the way to the core.  People diagnosed with leprosy were generally thought to have been cursed or punished by God.  Moses’ sister, Miriam, was afflicted with leprosy after she challenged her brother.  King Hezikiah was given leprosy when he overstepped his privileges as king and tried to act as a priest in the temple.  The military general Namaan was only cured of his leprosy after he humbled himself.  The scheming servant Gehazi cused with it when he tried to set aside a little something extra for himself…

Leprosy showed itself on the surface – in red patches and inflammation and dry, scaly skin and white lesions – but the uncleanliness was thought to go all the way to the soul.  Lepers were kept apart, not only because they might spread the skin disease, but because they might also spread God’s disfavor and God’s curse.  The Leper, with his dry ashy skin not only looked like death, he was thought to have been afflicted with a sort of “living death” and was in all ways unclean. 

They were to rend their clothes, and to leave their hair unkempt.  They were to cover the lower half of their face and if approached by others were to shout out “Unclean! Unclean!”  They would remain unclean as long as they had the disease and were forced to remain alone outside the camp.[i]

This enforced isolation is very different than the introvert’s need for alone time. This was a complete removal from human contact and interaction.  It was, as the rabbis of that time called it, a “living death.”  It was lonely. 

In his novel, The Plague, Albert Camus described the emotional state of those forced to endure a lengthy quarantine from the rest of the world.  They came to know the “incorrigible sorrow of all prisoners and exiles, which is to live in company with a memory that serves no purpose.”  They could remember the good and pleasant things that had happened, but they could no longer enjoy them and so they became “hostile to the past, impatient of the present, and cheated of the future.”  Each one had to be content to “live only for the day, alone under the vast indifference of the sky.”[ii]

We don’t know how long this man with leprosy had endured this enforced isolation, but we can certainly sense his desperation.  How long had it been since he had sat with his family for a meal, or hugged his wife, wrestled with his children?  How long had it been since he’d joined his brothers at the synagogue for prayer?  How long had it been since he had walked through the streets of town, waving hello to those that he met?  How long had he been forced to endure that vast indifference?   He fell on his knees at Jesus’ feet and begged him, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”  [iii]

And Jesus, moved with compassion[iv] stretched out his hand and touched the man and said, “I am willing.  Be clean.” 

He actually touched the man.  Rabbinic law demanded that no less than six feet be kept from a leper.  “Rabbi Meir would not eat an egg purchased in a street where had been a leper. Another rabbi boasted that he always threw stones at them to keep them far off.”[v] But Jesus reaches out his hand and touches the man.  Purposefully.  He touched him. 

The contamination of the leper was such that if he even stood at the door of your house you were defiled by his uncleanliness.  But Jesus touched the man.  Jesus broke through that vast indifference under the sky and touched the man who had been isolated by disease.

And what was communicated in this exchange wasn’t the disease but the purity.  Jesus wasn’t contaminated by the man’s disease.  Jesus wasn’t cursed with the man’s defilement. The man was made clean.  Jesus sent the man away[vi] and warned him to keep quiet about it.  The man was to show himself to the priest for inspection, and to make the necessary sacrifices to reenter society, but he was not to tell anyone what Jesus had done.  

But the man went away and began to spread the news freely, telling everyone what Jesus had done – and how can we blame him? After being released from his exile, after being restored to his community – after being brought back to life, as it were, how could he not share this great story? 

But look what happens as the result.  Jesus could no longer openly enter a town but was forced, by the crowds and their fervor and their crazed excitement, to remain out in the countryside and lonely places.  Jesus, as the result of curing the leper, becomes almost a leper – unable to enter into public places -though not quite for the same reasons. 

This introverted Jesus, who has been seeking a bit of quite alone time and an escape from the crowds, cures a man who has been forcibly isolated from community the crowds, and as a result the crowds are even more drawn to him.  They came to him from every quarter with their clamor and their noise, and their questions, and their demands and needs. 

And Jesus moved with compassion[vii] reached out to them.

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[i] Leviticus 13 - 14

[ii] Leviticus 13: 45-46

[iii] Camus, Albert - The Plague

[iv] Mark 1: 40

[v]  Some of the earliest copies of Mark’s gospel say Jesus was moved with “Indignation.”  This is strange and difficult to understand.  But it might fit.  After healing the man, Jesus gives him a “stern” warning to keep silent about it.  And throughout Mark’s gospel we find a Jesus who is tired and angry.  Perhaps Jesus was moved with “indignation” as well as “compassion.”

[vi] Edersheim, Alfred The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, vol 1, page 495

[vii] More accurately, he “cast” the man away – perhaps another indicator that he was moved with “indignation”

[viii] Or “Indignation” or both

The Existential Life and Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill

What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know, except in so far as a certain knowledge must precede every action. The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do: the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. ... I certainly do not deny that I still recognize an imperative of knowledge and that through it one can work upon men, but it must be taken up into my life, and that is what I now recognize as the most important thing.

—Søren Kierkegaard, Letter to Peter Wilhelm Lund dated August 31, 1835,

Creepshow (1982) is more than just another horror movie.  When director George Romero and writer Stephen King came together to produce this now classic movie, they made something more profound than most creature-features.   It is, of course, a horror movie, (more accurately, an anthology of five short films tied together with the comic book motif). How could it be otherwise with Romero and King at the wheel?  And fans of the horror genre will appreciate the blood and gore and zombies and other various horror tropes.  But the second of the collected stories, The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill, filmed with a blend of comedy and horror, is something more than the sum of its horror cliché parts.  The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill is almost philosophical.

Based on a previously published short story by Stephen King[i], The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill tells the tale of a dimwitted yokel living alone on his farm in rural Main. When he discovers a meteorite that has crashed on his property he sees this as his opportunity to become rich by selling the space rock to the “department of meteors” at the local community college.  He dreams of receiving the extravagant sum of Two Hundred Dollars for his extraordinary find.

But his dreams of wealth are dashed when the meteorite breaks in half and spills out a phosphorescent blue goo over the ground and over Jordy’s hands.  The “department of meteors” wouldn’t be interested in a broken space rock.  He chides himself for being a “lunk-head.” 

“Still,” he says in spite of his disappointment, “I got to try.” He struggles on with his limited abilities and his limited imagination, trying to find that one thing me must do - the one true thing which will give his life meaning and purpose. 

This is the existentialist’s quest: to find something that will give meaning to this life.  And Jordy Verrill is the quintessential existential man – disoriented and confused in the face of a meaningless and absurd world.   

And it is absurd.  The meteorite that Jordy Verrill discovered is contaminated with some sort of extraterrestrial life that begins immediately to grow everywhere.  Even on Jordy himself (“No!” he screams in an off-camera scene, “Not there!)  This green growth spreads across his body, his house, and his farm.  By morning everything is covered and Jordy has become a monstrous plant-man.  As he gropes for a shotgun to put an end to his misery he pleads “Please God, let my luck be in just this once, please God, just this once…” 

Jordy’s television and radio play in the background of several scenes. If you give careful attention you can see that even in these background sounds and images, the horror and absurdity existential life is described.

A wrestling match between Bob Backlund and Samoan No. 1 (is anything in life more absurd than professional wrestling?)

A Star is Born (1937)

…everyone in this world who has ever dreamed about better things has been laughed at, don't you know that? But there's a difference between dreaming and doing. The dreamers just sit around and moon about how wonderful it would be if only things were different.

Christian homily
Look up. Lift up your head. You will succeed.  Be confident of this one thing: that God who has begun a good thing in you will complete it   The hope in this inspirational message, delivered by a smiling priest, is cut by the ironic voice-over announcement that follows. “Pre-recorded.”  It wasn’t a message for Jordy.  It was just a senseless voice carried through the airwaves.

Farm and Weather Report

And in today’s weather…well not much for the outdoor types but you farmers are going to love this. The current 30 day forecast released by the U.S. Meteorological station in Portland calls for moderating temperatures and lots of rain.  Castle County is going to turn green so fast in the next month that it’s going to be almost miraculous.   

And that’s the lonesome death of Jordy Verrill, absurd and meaningless. He lived and died alone in a strange and incomprehensible universe. The world itself is meaningless and amoral (not immoral. They are different).  The universe doesn’t care one way or another about Jordy Verrill.  The meteorite that crashed on his farm was neither a gift nor a curse. It was just absurd. 

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[i]  Weeds by Stephen King – which in turn is loosely based on the story The Color out of Space by H.P. Lovecraft.  The title is based on the song The Lonesome Death of Hattie Caroll by Bob Dylan.

No Change

No Change from jeff carter on Vimeo.


This is the way it is.
This is the way it will be.
No change.

(I'm not always this gloomy. It just feels that way sometimes.)

From the Freesound Project I used:
Sad 

Drone  

Collision Display Data 

Noisy Mellowness C5 

Noisy Mellowness C4 

Noisy Mellowness G#3 

Digital Puking 

Alien 12 

Record Deal 

The movie clips came from:

The Pyx  (1973)

Monstroid – It Came from the Lake (1980)

A Fire Burning in My Bones - Not A Good Sermon

"It won't be a good sermon," I warned them before I began.  "A good sermon, preachers are sometimes taught, will have a memorable formula - an alliterated three point outline that will be easily remembered, for example: the Power, the Purpose and the Plan....

Or a good sermon will follow a narrative arc.  People like stories and a good sermon is like a good story.  We have a beginning wherein we meet a compelling character, a middle wherein the protagonist's life is complicated by struggle and then we have a glorious ending that swoops upwards toward victory and confidence and joy.

But what I had to preach today wasn't a "good" sermon. Jeremiah chapter 20 doesn't lend itself to good sermons.

The prophet Jeremiah lived in precarious times.  The once great and powerful Assyrian empire (the constant and foreboding threat found in the prophet Isaiah's writing) had waned and was crumbling.  And with that, the little nation of Judah began to flex its aspirations for independence.  But there was another force on the rise.  The Babylonian empire was becoming more and more powerful.  Some within the nation of Judah recommended that they should ally themselves with the nation of Egypt as a hedge against the waning Assyrians and the waxing Babylonians.  Some said they should keep as they were with their heads down.

But the prophet Jeremiah crossed them all with his message.  It doesn't matter.  None of that will be of any use, because Yahweh God has already decided to bring judgement on this nation for it's idolatry and violence.  The only way out of our predicament, Jeremiah said, is repentance... but I know and God knows that you won't so your doom is imminent.

This was not a message that won him many friends.
But it was the message that he was called to deliver.

Even before he was born, while he was still being knitted together in his mother's womb, before he had any sense of self or identity, God had marked Jeremiah for this role.  And when Jeremiah tried to object, "I'm only a boy, I can't do that."  God refused to hear Jeremiah's demure.  "Don't say, 'I'm only a boy' !"  You'll go where I send you and you'll say what I have for you to say, and I'll be with you. (Jeremiah chapter 1)

He would speak God's message to the people.  He would tell them of the coming wrath of God.  And he did.  And for this he was despised and arrested and beaten and thrown in jail and put in stocks and mocked and abandoned....

Chapter 20 verse 7  - 18 is part of what is sometimes called "the confessions of Jeremiah." These are passages within the book that are not part of God's message to the people, but rather Jeremiah's very personal and very intimate responses to God.  And they are not easy.  They don't make for "good" sermons.

You seduced me, Yahweh, and I was seduced.

Seduced, tricked, persuaded... the many translations use various words to try and capture the slippery meaning of this phrase in Hebrew.  It contains all of those ideas.  But what can we say - that God tricked him, fooled him, duped, - or what may be worse, God seduced him?  And then to put that against the next phrase - You overpowered me, you were the stronger.

Dare we say it?  God raped the prophet's will? 

Jeremiah's bitter complaint is that God not been fair.  God came to him when he was a young and naive and inexperienced boy and -forced- him into this life.  "You came to me when I knew nothing and you told me to be your prophet, but you didn't tell me what it would be like.  You didn't prepare me for this.  You didn't give me a choice..."

And now my life is a joke.  I speak your words and everyone hates me.  My enemies plot against me and those who were my friends avoid me or turn against me. And it's your fault, God.

Jeremiah says that he would, if he could, just quit.  I would leave it all behind. I would not mention your name and I would not speak in your name ever again ...

... except that when I tried to quit it was like a fire in my bones, burning me from the inside.  I could not stay silent.  I was damned by the people if I spoke and I was damned by God if  I was silent.

Then there is a turning point.  And here is where the text follows a nice narrative arc.  We've followed the prophet down into dark despair and now we're ready to hear a word of comfort - a word of the gospel, the good news.  And the prophet says, "But Yahweh is with me like a mighty hero." 

Jeremiah celebrates the presence of God in his life, and the protection and vindication that God brings to his faithful servant.  His enemies will be judged and Jeremiah will be rewarded.  "Sing to Yahweh.  Praise Yahweh.  for he has rescued this needy one from the hand of the oppressor."

And if this were a "good" sermon, this is where it would end.  I could deliver a nice and tidy word from God: when you're facing trouble and dark times, be confident because God will rescue and God will reward the faithful....

But the prophet won't let me end there.  I really wish that he would have stopped there. I could feel comfortable with that sermon.  We go through tough times, despair and loneliness come... but have faith, rescue is around the corner, blah, blah, blah...  But Jeremiah didn't conclude the matter like that.

Instead he turns again sends the whole thing crashing back down into the dark depths of despair - sinking even lower than before. He curses his entire existence from the day he was born to the present moment. And though he doesn't curse his mother or his father or God (for that would have been a capital offense) he comes awfully close. And this, I think, is some of the darkest language in the bible. 

Cursed be the day on which I was born
the day my mother bore me, let it not be blessed.
Cursed be the man who brought the 'good news' to my father...
let him be like the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah
forced to listen to the screams and cries of the people

why couldn't I have just died in the womb
why couldn't my mother's womb have been my grave?

From the womb on my life has been sorrow and shame.

How do make a "good" sermon from that?  Maybe there is no good sermon here.
But I am glad that this passage - as ugly and as dark as it is - I'm glad,  grateful even, that this passage is included in our scriptures.

I remember being 13 or 14 and we had just moved - again.  I was in a new town with few friends and I felt alone and abandoned.  My parents were busy with the things of the church - and I knew that we were there because they were answering God's call for their lives - but that was no comfort to me. 

I remember being out one autumn afternoon, delivering the papers on my paper route. It was a bright and sunny afternoon.  The sky was bright blue and the air was crisp.  And I stopped in the sidewalk and looked up into the sky and I said, out loud, "God, I believe you're there, but stay the hell out of my life."

I don't know what I expected to happen.  Maybe I thought there would be a flash of lighting or an earthquake or something. But no.  I went on and finished my route and went home and nothing changed.

And that's what comforts me.  Nothing changed. 

God didn't hear that blasphemous boy and deliver a lightning bolt from the sky to smite him.  God didn't throw me out.  He didn't cut me off.  No.  He allowed me to be angry - even allowed me to be angry with God, and he still loved me.

God heard Jeremiah's confession - heard the prophet's bitter complaint, that borderline blasphemy and did not count it as a sin. We can be angry with God and it can be okay.

The other comfort (small comfort) I find in this difficult passage is that the life of faith isn't going to be all wine and roses; the word of God isn't going to always be honey on our lips. 

I know.  That doesn't really sound like comfort, does it?  But it is.  At least to me.   

Because to hear some preachers, you'd think that the life of faith is going to be nothing but sweetness and light.  That if we have been saved and if we have faith then we're going to have long and happy and healthy lives and we're going to be loved and respected and our children will be wonderful. We'll have great jobs and plenty of money, and we'll live our lives in sunshine and bliss.

but you and I know that that's a fairy tale.  It's just not true.  We're not promised a life of easy comfort.  In fact, it seems that most of the biblical examples demonstrate that the life of faith is a life of pressure and danger and struggle.  But there is reward in the struggle and there is victory.

Again, I know that doesn't sound like comfort.  And maybe it's not.
I told you this wasn't a good sermon.

Who Am I, Really?

I've been wondering about this recently.  Who am I?  Really?   

One might expect that I'd have some sort of answer to that after 34 years, but I must confess that sometimes I'm not really sure.

I could tell you what I think of myself  - and knowing myself as I do, I should warn you that this would probably be inaccurate.  On some days I am filled with confidence bordering on arrogance.  I am smarter, quicker, sharper, and measurably more clever than those around me.  And handsome too.  Other days I am convinced that I am a sham.  A phoney. A hypocrite fearfully wating to be exposed in my lies and depravity.

Obviously, I am not a reliable witness.  So to answer this question 'who am I, really?' I could turn to the perception of others.  But this, too,  is complicated.

Depending on who you ask, I am either a trouble making rabble-rouser intent on bucking anyone in a position of authority and should not be entrusted with any responsibilities or I am a warm and compassionate leader with exemplary qualities that make me a fine Christian role model.  Of those divergent opinions, I am much more conditioned to hearing the former.  One person with a measure of influence on my position and status described me as a 'psychopathic deviant' (his very words). 

I recently had a performace review with my Divisional Commander.  As the day of the review approached I became increasingly nervous and apprehensive.  I was used to these reveiews being confrontational and acrimonious.  I was used to attacks and condemnation disguised as a performance review.  But this one was surprisingly and refreshingly different.  My DC said very kind things, gave me higher scores than I anticipated and shared encouraging comments.  I was shocked. 

I don't think that I've changed all that much between these reviews, yet the gulf between them was immense.  I was told that I am percieved as a good teacher, an efficient officer and as being a kind and patient father to my two children.  Where did this come from?  Why am I now percieved so differently?

In addition to this surprising review, another unexpected comment left me stunned. 

Before dating and marrying my wife, I, for a short time, dated her college rooomate.  Funny story there, but now's not the time for that one.  Anyway.  She has for the past several years been a missionary in central Asia. Currently she is back here in the states for while and so she took the opportunity to spend an afternoon with my wife to reconnect and share experiences and memories and whatever it is that women do when revisiting old friends.  During that visit she shared with my wife that she measures potential suitors by how they compare to me.   Yikes.  I don't know what to do with that. I know the mistakes I've made as a husband and as a father.  I can't imagine anyone using me as a yardstick.

I don't know how to be as good as people think I am.  And I don't know why some people think I am as awful as they do.  I don't trust my opinions of myself - they're overinflated in either direction. So...

Who am I, really? 

I'm still working on that one.  Ask me again in another 34 years.



This essay, by the way, should not be construed as a sort of passive-aggressive attempt to fish out compliments and encouragements from freinds and family.  It is what it is and nothing more.