Balance

I never promised that I wouldn't talk about things which were a little off the beaten path, although in this case I promise that there is an applicable point to the discussion and not just esoterica about fictional things.

Let's talk about Star Wars. I'm not ashamed any more; Star Wars is a touchstone of culture, and even if you don't like it, you probably know it.  Geeks are out of the closet. N.B. Geeks, I'm going to talk about the prequels, but I'm not doing a movie review, I'm just using it to illustrate a point.

In case you don't know, or in case you weren't paying attention, or in case you need to know what I'm doing with it, the Jedi are basically a combination of kung fu and Zen monks with a bit of the X-Men thrown in there for good measure, because unfortunately, not everyone can become a Jedi.  The reasons why don't matter.  And because they've got the whole "Eastern mysticism" thing going on, they deal in emotions.  But because they're not Zen monks, they don't want you to give up all emotions.  Just "fear, anger, agression," and a bunch of other ones as circumstances permit.  Never mind that you can beat the ever-living fuck out of someone with a sword made of lasers; as long as you do it with sweetness and light in your heart, you're okay.

But if you stub your toe and make a table explode with your mind because you're sick and tired of your damn roommate moving his furniture into places it shouldn't belong and then you take all the splinters and drive them, one by one, into your roommate's face until he looks like a poster for Hellraiser... apparently that's not the good stuff.  The "Force" gives you phenominal cosmic power, but the second you start using it for evil, you're in the Dark Side of the Force, and you'll end up creating a machine which destroys your enemies and is powered by the sadness of kittens.

The real bitch of it is that if you see a mugger robbing an old lady and you think to yourself, "Mace H. Windu, I've had it with all this fucking crime.  You know what?  I'm going to blow that motherfucking mugger up!"  And you cackle with glee as you create an arcing blast of energy which causes the mugger to explode in a fine mist of blood and gristle, which you then cause to spell out your name on the pavement... turns out that, even though stopping an old lady from being mugged isn't evil, and you're still on the Dark Side because you were angry and aggressive.

Now I'll agree in the last example that the Jedi are probably right and making a mugger explode, no matter what the motivation, is probably not good.  But if you get just as angry, but you use the power of your mind to make the mugger give the purse back, then drop his pants and demand a spanking, while no one would think that that was unjust punishment (well, maybe the mugger) the Jedi would still mark you down for a black facemask and James Earl Jones voice because you were doing it with anger and aggression.

But I'm not really interested in arguing their relative morality in this case.  Fine, so they consider why you do something before judging it good or bad; I think that's perfectly valid.  That I don't agree with their judgments doesn't make their methods wrong.  No, what I want to discuss is the fact that, as a religion, the Jedi are seriously out of whack when it comes to this Dark/Light Side business, and I think it bleeds over into real life, as well as being a pretty good reasony why they failed as a religion/temple/organization/School For The Gifted.

Jedi are either Light Side or Dark Side.  And as Yoda says, "Once you start down the Dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny."  Which means that, as a young Jedi, you get mad at your roommate and, rather than making his head explode, you make him punch himself in the nuts repeatedly.  Oops, sorry, that's Dark Side nut-punching, and now you're screwed and should start picking out a nifty Darth name.

I'm not a fan of the prequels, which is hardly a radical statement to make.  But I think the redeeming factor, the reason that the prequels can exist for me, is the prophecy of which Anakin is supposed to be the fulfillment.  I say that with a degree of self-deprecation because the prophecy is, under any scrutiny, simply something George Lucas threw in to justify anyone giving a good Goddamn about Anakin in the first place.  Sure, he's got lots of Force, but big deal.  But if he's going to be the prophecy messiah One, then there's some reason for him to be involved in big things.  It's crap.  So it's in spite of, rather than because of, George Lucas' reasons (I'd give him the benefit of the doubt, but why?) that I have this belief.

Most people probably either dismiss the "prophecy" as I did above (it's certainly not mentioned as much after the first one) or believe that the Jedi Council got it wrong and that Luke is Jesus instead (which is rather like the wise men screwing up and giving Joseph the frankincense).  There's a case to be made for that, I suppose, if one cares to make it.  If one regards the prequels as a bad dream and sticks to the legitimate movies, it's clearly Luke's story, and he clearly gets to be the Jesus figure.  The problem with this interpretation is that it ignores the prequels, which, bad as they are, do exist, and if you're going to deal with the prophecy you have to deal with the prequel from whence it cometh.  Also, if you look at Luke, he does sweet fuck all to be Jesus after the first movie.  Which is why people are so confused by Return of the Jedi (that and the Ewoks).  They want Luke to be the savior, but he gets his ass handed to him and has next to nothing to do with the Rebellion's victory in the battle with the second Death Star.  Sure, he's tangentially involved with the death of the Emperor, but the Empire was losing before the Emperor died.  He would have been blown to stellar dust along with everyone else had Luke not been there.  Yes, there is value in distraction, but Luke didn't go there be a diversion.  He went to try to convince Darth Vader to turn away from the Dark Side...

Hand on; we'll come back to that because it's important.

The other issue, aside from the fact that the prophecy thing is weak tea at best, is that "balance" is a pretty loaded term here.  If you've got a system of dichotomy, where good and evil, light and dark, or whatever opposites you use, are at the ends of the scale, fantasy epics seem enamored with the idea that there needs to be "balance," like good needs evil in order to exist.  I'm not sure why all fantasy religions are dualist almost to the point of Manichaeism in this way, but whatever the reason, it's usually an incredibly unsophisticated dualism.  I'm not going to debate moral dualism in religion, but if your religion requires Hitler in order to have Gandhi, there's something wonky.  So to think that "balance" between Light and Dark is a good thing smacks of the same thinking, one which would say that in order for the Jedi Light to shine, it needs to have Darkness in which to do so.  Which means that, deep down, the Jedi need Darths or they can't be good, and that by eliminating (or at least driving underground) the Sith, they have opened themselves up to the rot that destroys them.

Bullshit.

The rot that brings down the Jedi isn't corruption or a lack of evil for them to be good against.  It's not possible to be "too good."  If you're "too good" then what you're calling "good" isn't good.  Good is the thing of which you can never have enough. Note that I'm not talking about piety or lawfulness or any of that.  Hell, even things which would be hard to argue aren't good can be, if they result in bad things happening.  There's always room for more good; there's always a way you can take what you're doing and make it better.

No, the Jedi's problem of balance is that they won't let you be anything less than perfectly good.  A little introspection is a healthy thing, but to be a Jedi you either have to live in constant fear that everything you're doing is just one more link in some kind of Jacob-Marley-esque chain, if Jacob Marley had wound up as a Force ghost trying to keep Darth Scrooge from winding up in a black mask.  And even that doesn't work because in order for Marley-wan Jacobi to prevent Scrooge from turning to the Dark Side, he'd have to go back in time to a time before Marley was dead because by the time Marley was able to intercede, Scrooge would have been well and truly Darthed.  Not to mention that Darth Scrooge is not a name that any self-respecting Darth would take.  He'd probably be Darth Moneygrubber or something like that.

In short, to bring this discussion to a place where it's more than an esoteric discussion from the nerdery, the Jedi have a problem with redemption.  They're clearly not Calvinists because they don't believe in predestination ("Always in motion is the future.").  But they clearly haven't been thinking their own theology through, because if what they say is right, ain't a single Jedi getting into Jedi Heaven, or Nivana, or whatever.  If they were Buddhists, they would definitely be of the Theravadan pursuasion, hard-core, because not only are no non-Jedi getting into Jedi Paradise but most Jedi aren't either.

Which rather goes contrary to the whole philosophy of the Force being everything.  Sure, the Jedi are good at making the Force do things for them, but that shouldn't make them any more or less "Force-beings" than anyone else.  And there's no Karmic wheel of rebirth to speak of, so it's not like they're going through lives to perfect themselves.  Yoda doesn't say anything like, "Luke, dying am I; back to the Force Wheel am I going where hopefully in my next life, less Dark Side will I be.  If lucky you are, born as less of a dumbass will you be the next time reborn are you."  Plus, rather gives the edge to Jedi who happen to come from races that don't live 900 years.

So the Jedi are getting it wrong, and not because they need more evil, but because they don't want you to ever fuck up.  Get pissed off at your roommate and restrain yourself to making him give himself only one sharp punch to the sack?  Too bad; we're not Catholics up in here.  Confession is something you shouldn't do because then we'll probably throw you out and/or do unpleasant things to ensure that when you inevitably become Darth Nadbreaker, you'll have a hard time doing anything bad from inside a black hole (that, at any rate, is how I'd solve the problem).

It's fascinating that Evil usually has a much better performance policy.  If you're good and you lose it and punch a few nuts, you get to spend a lot of time thinking about how sorry you are for what you've done, in the best case.  If you're evil and one day you feel like letting a cute bunny live, your supervisor rarely writes you up and makes you say 10 Kill Marys* and 20 Our Dark Lords.  Evil usually wants you to be Evil when they want you to be Evil, but in your spare time, you can do whatever, as long as you're not actively hurting Evil.  Good generally doesn't want you to do anything not Good, even when no one's watching and you haven't had sex in decades.  Not a good recruiting strategy: "Be a Jedi! Come be trained to have all kinds of cool powers except the really cool ones, then never use any of your powers or think naughty thoughts."  Versus the Sith: "Join the Sith! Whatever the fuck you want! Yeah, we're allowed to swear, use force lightning, and have sexual encounters the likes of which you wouldn't believe even if you'd seen them, but you'll have them if you just get on board with the whole 'anger' thing."

Plus, there's no retention policy: "Be a Jedi! Unless you screw up at all, in which case your two options are death or Darth, though we recommend death." "Sith! Where all Jedi eventually wind up unless they live a lie, and who really wants to do that?"

Anyway, back to the point of discussion.  The Force doesn't need balance.  The Jedi need redemption, and not that the organization needs to be redeemed, but that they need to have a concept of forgiveness, atonement, redemption, what have you.  And I would argue that, if you watch the movies the way Lucas wants you to watch them, the inescapable fact is that Anakin Skywalker is the fulfillment of that prophecy, even if it's a bit late for most of the Jedi.  Because who else brings balance to the Force?

It's not Yoda.  Yoda goes down believing the same crap he always did.  It's just possible that maybe he should have gone into the Cave of Unpleasant Personal Knowledge himself, because I imagine it would have shown him rejecting Jedi after Jedi, all of whom turned to the Dark Side.  And the sad thing is, he'd probably see that and think, "Gee, why is it showing me this?  They turned, I rejected them, they went full-on Sith.  QED." (Yoda talks normally in his own head).  But maybe the cave would have made him see that the Jedi he was rejecting was himself, over and over, for things he'd actually done.  Maybe he would have seen that taking responsibility is important, and that maybe, hiding in a swamp waiting for Jesus to show up isn't what makes you John the Motherfucking Baptist (a 1976 Blacksploitation film starring Rosie Greer as Salome and Cleavon Little as JTMF Baptist).

Nor is it Obi Wan, who may be a Force ghose but should probably be accompanied by several lawyers indicating that the statements of Mr. Kenobi do not reflect his opinion or that of anyone else.  He spends the entire first movie being the worst teacher ever (one wonders how Vader got to be any good at all, but let's be generous and assume that Kenobi's just a little Rusti-Wan) and lying to Luke about almost everything.  Sure, Luke is a snotty little shit and he's acting like every single spoiled kid ever who winds up in a karate class where the teacher actually cares about more than just kicking through boards, but if you're training David, when it turns out that you're going to hit the Goliath stage of things a little ahead of schedule and that Goliath is actually a giant ball of death, maybe now is not that time to continue with your "Philosophy of Slingshots 101" course.

Be that as it may, Obi Wan has a chance to realize his mistake.  He betrayed his friend, his brother, his student, and quite possibly the only person he ever cared about, in service of an ideal which is short-sighted and flawed. If there was ever a time when you say, "Hmmmm, maybe I need to get writing on 65 or so theses to nail to the door of a Jedi temple somewhere," I'd say it would be right about when the Jedi tell you to betray your friend for nothing more than being young.  Because, let's face it, while the Jedi want to get 'em young so they can properly indoctrinate them while they don't have enough cognitive development to question the intelligence of the rules, they also then release onto the world what are essentially teenagers with raging erections and abstinence-only sexual educations.  If your training in how to be good consists of "Don't be bad," then you need to update the manual a bit.

So Obi Wan gets his chance, and it looks like he's going to learn something, but instead of apologizing (yes, I know, at this point George Lucas didn't have the whole back story figured out and Vader was just supposed to be the Big Bad) and saying that he deserves whatever Vader wants to do to him, Obi Wan makes with the cryptic and vanishes into a puff of smoke so he can go on giving Luke bad advice and lying to him.  "So what I told you was true, from a certain point of view."  No.  No it wasn't.  It made you seem like less of a dick, and since you never actually told Luke the whole truth even when you finally owned up to your lie, he still had to figure out the whole "maybe I can bring my father back" thing for himself.

The paralells between Jedi training and abstinence-only sex-ed are getting more and more staggering.  "Oh, I'll lie and tell my [child/padawan] that [sex/the Dark Side] with [anyone but your spouse/your not-really-dead father] will give you [hyper-electro-AIDS and also ruin your life/either dying or winding up ruining everything], and there's no way my [child/padawan] will learn the truth [on the street from kids only slightly more knowledgable/his not-really-dead father] and wind up [having sex/trying to take on the Emperor] without [protection or any idea of how to have a good experience/knowing that maybe there's a reason why I didn't want him to learn to fly by jumping off the Empire State Building].  That's the only way to keep my [child/padawan] [pure/from breaking a rule which actually sort of needs to be broken]."  What happens?  Luke hears about sex from Vader, winds up knocking up his sister and scarring both of them for life, and Obi Wan doesn't get to be a Force ghost voyeur when Luke has all the crazy Jedi sexy times that he otherwise might have had.  Something like that.

I'd like to think that Obi Wan and Yoda both learn the error of their ways when Anakin shows up at the end.  They don't seem surprised to see him, so maybe he showed up to them first and let them know.  Maybe he let all the dead Jedi know, because the dead Jedi, right or wrong, surely didn't bring balance to the force.  They didn't do bad things, any more than Yoda and Obi Wan can be blamed for their complicity in the Jedi system to a point.  But the rest of the Jedi Council and the Jedi of the galaxy who were snuffed out by the Dark Side certainly didn't do good.  They died in the fight against a monster they created, and while that's fitting, it's merely fitting.

And lastly, Luke didn't bring balance to the Force.  He helped, sure, but if he had died and then Vader and the Emperor had gone up with the Death Star, no Force balance would have happened.  He turned away from the Dark Side, but in his case that was a bit like looking down the path and deciding that, tempting or not, the other path was a better one.  He might have taken a step or two, and that he was able to turn back is commendable and certainly not something the Jedi of old would have been able to countenance, but he still was only affirming that it takes more than just not being evil to be good, and that he wanted to be good.

Here's where people have a problem with Return of the Jedi (aside from Ewoks).  Many people think that Luke is a failed messiah because he doesn't get to sacrifice himself for his friends.  He does very little, in the grand scheme of things; he finally sees himself, recognizes his past failings, and renounces them, but then he gets his ass handed to him by the Emperor.  Lesson?  Don't jump off the Empire State Building?  He should have, in letting go of hatred, tossing aside his weapon and renouncing the Dark Side, somehow defeated evil by his very sacrifice.

But the secret (perhaps even to George Lucas himself, because chances are extremely good that this interpretation is only possible because Lucas steals from good sources) is that the story isn't about him, and never has been.  He just has to be there to see Jesus.  He goes through Hell and comes out the other side, but he's not the one the story needs to sacrifice.  If he dies, he can't take the balance and bring it to everyone else.  He can't take this new reconcilliation and spread it if he explodes or is incinerated by evil for no good reason.  He must be there at Golgotha (yes, I am full-on going there) and then he has to survive, even if it means he doesn't share in the glory.  He has to see the resurrection on the moon of Endor as he burns his father's armor.

Because Anakin is the Messiah, the One, the fulfillment of the prophecy, the one who brings redemption.  He is so far down the Dark Path that not only is it dominating his destiny, it's probably somehow leeching back into the past and dominating that as well.  No, he's not the Emperor (can Satan be redeemed, or is irredeemability part of what makes one Satan?) but he's as close as it gets.  And rather than sticking to what he knows is true and realizing that there's no hope for him, that he made a mistake and can never come back from it, he says "Fuck it," and turns around anyway.  Maybe he doesn't know he's turning.  Maybe he just thinks he's going to save his son and then die trapped in the Dark Side forever.  But he still turns.

In the end, that's what's important.  People think that, if you've done bad things, you have to feel bad and sorry and apologize sincerely and only then can you be forgiven.  But it's what you do that matters.  Even if you don't make amends because of a desire to do so, to be forgiven, making amends is the important thing.  Do the right thing first and figure out why later.  Save your son first and realize that it wasn't you saving him after all, but the other way around.  That's why that moment between Luke and his father at the end of Return of the Jedi are so important (and why RotJ is the best film, Ewoks notwithstanding, but I'm being much more controversial when I say that than when I said the prequels were bad).

Whatever you believe, you can learn something from the Jedi.  Humans are imperfect.  If you expect perfection and remove the imperfect from your religion, either you're lying to yourself or you'll soon be out of your religion as well.  Inclusion and redemption rather than exclusion and retribution.  Think about it.

* "Kill Mary, full of knives, darkness is with thee. Now she is among dead women and if Jesus were alive we'd kill him too.  Holey** Mary, pray for mercy as we jam even more dull knives into you, now is the hour of your death, Zmen."  I'm going to Hell anyway so I thought I'd have plenty of reasons.

** See what I did there? It's a great joke.

Armistice Day

November 11, 1918. It doesn't mean a lot to many people, particularly in the US. World War I wasn't our war, not really; we became involved but we barely had a horse in the race. We weren't there for the worst of it, and we didn't learn much of anything, and now no one really remembers why November 11 should be anything other than thanking veterans and possibly a parade. Hell, we don't even celebrate the day in sync with the British commonwealth; they commemorate the day as Remembrance Day now, and it is much more like our Memorial Day (only probably fewer barbecues and drunken fights).

But November 11, almost 100 years ago, the War To End All Wars ended. When WWII ended, we had VE Day and VJ Day. Victory! Victory in Europe, victory in Japan! It's impossible to know whether it was relief, satisfaction, or true exaltation that made everyone celebrate Victory, but it was a celebration of Victory, winged and proud, presenting the laurels and saying that we had won and that they had lost.

November 11, 1918, wasn't like that. There was elation, certainly; one can't fault anyone who had been affected by the war for feeling joy now that it was over. But the day was Armistice Day. That should stick with us, because though the Allied Powers staunchly refused to acknowledge it, and though at the time perhaps it seemed that the day was a day of victory, November 11, 1918 was merely a day of armistice. Of cessation of hostilities. The dictionary defines "armistice" as a cease-fire, a truce. An end, however temporary, to war, to the violence, bloodshed, death, horror, and inhumanity.

Of course, if you know your history at all (and you should) you know that it truly was just an armistice, albeit one which lasted decades. There was a peace treaty signed which laid punitive damages on the "losing" side that could never be repaid or even tolerated, and as such it was not so much a peace treaty as it was both a punishment and an incitement. It was almost as if the Allies felt cheated of their victory through armistice and desired the Central Powers to reject the terms and go back to fighting. Perhaps there is some truth in this, because all the powers that be had to have known that the public were tired of the war, even if they were winning.  And the Allies had to have known that their citizens would approve of harsh measures against Germany, but not the arbitrary continuation of war.

There are plenty of arguments both for and against the idea that the Treaty of Versailles caused WWII, and there are arguments that WWI and WWII were really the same war, just with an intermission for everyone to get better at it.  That's not the point.  If I wanted to argue those points (and I do, sometimes) I wouldn't be writing this in a blog supposedly dedicated to homilies.

November 11, 1918 is in my mind because it should commemorate a cessation of violence. It should not be a paean to victory or a useless trotting out of veterans to be thanked one by one, many of whom were never in a war and are being thanked by people whose closest experience of combat was when they played Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.  It should not even be a remembrance of those who have died while serving in the armed forces, unless that were to be used as a stepping stone.

The day commemorates armistice. A cease-fire. The day is buried in baggage, but at the bottom, there is a core. "These men died to end all wars," it says.  "They fought and died in places they may never have heard of, for causes that even now can't be completely understood.  And today, 95 years ago, the war stopped.

So I'm not thanking veterans today, and I'm not celebrating. Today is a sacred day, a day to remember that war is not the natural state of things and that no one wins a war, they just lose less than the other side. I will keep holding Armistice Day sacred until it's no longer necessary, when All Wars truly have been ended, when Cease-Fire becomes Peace.

When All Else Fails

I disapprove of crises of faith. Not having them, but referring to them with that nomenclature. It makes it seem like some sort of intellectual exercise, and I suppose that sometimes it is, in which case, call it an intellectual conflict of faith. But your real "crises" of faith aren't intellectual.

Two days ago, I said that the main reason I was sure I would live to be 150 was because God wouldn't kill me until He'd had all the fun He could have with me. I genuinely didn't want to believe in God because I'd rather live in a universe with no cruel deity who derives pleasure from my suffering. Now that's a fucking kick in the balls of faith.

What do you tell someone in a situation like that? If I were ministering to myself, what the hell do I do? It reminds me of a piece by Gordon Atkinson which no longer appears to be on the Internet (but the miracle of the Wayback Machine brings it to your eager eyes) and you should read the whole thing because it's about as good an expression of I don't know what as there is. To excerpt:

… people facing death don’t give a fuck about your interpretation of II Timothy. Some take the “bloodied, but unbowed” road, but most dying people want to pray with the chaplain. And they don’t want weak-ass prayers either. They don’t want you to pray that God’s will be done. …

Actually the post from which I learned of this powerful work has a thing or two to say on the subject as well. But that's neither here nor there.

I don't pray. Or rather, I don't believe in prayer. Yes, sometimes when the chips are down, I beg whomever might be listening to grant some basically selfish request, but I know that it won't work. I don't even believe in the weak, watery sort of prayer where you just ask God to be present in your life and let you be worthy of God's love. God doesn't work that way. Every time we ask God for something, even the basic, general-purpose love stuff, we either get it or we don't, and saying the right magic words or thinking the right magic thoughts won't make it any more or less likely to happen.

So I don't "pray" because prayer is just another way of asking for something. I talk. I argue. I spit venom and bile. Sometimes I whimper. Yes, I know, that's "prayer" but this is all about semantics, ain't it? If I don't do "crises" then I don't do "prayer" even if both are accurate descriptors.

I get where dying people are coming from. I'm addicted to life, and it and I have an unhealthy relationship right now. So even as it's pulled from me, I'll be raging, grasping, wheedling, cajoling. I know they say that there are 5 stages of grief, but how many people actually make it to acceptance?  I probably won't. So yes, when the pastor shows up, I will want some deep hoodoo. Hell, I'll probably call in witch doctors and shamans to cover my bases. And like the man says, I will die anyway, because we're all going to eventually. So even though I will rage, right now I can tell Future Me that he is being a jackass.

But to return to my original question, what the Hell do I tell myself? I'm not going to pray, even if I believed in prayer; that's almost like letting slip more chinks in my armor. You don't tell the bully where it hurts the most. You act like the things you care about the most are the least valuable.

I could try to reassure myself that there's no reason to believe that God operates this way. But why should I believe myself?  I'm not Job; I don't deal well with God proving a point to Satan by fucking my life up royal. So I talk to God. I'm never certain that God doesn't find my conversation amusing too, but what else can I do? I give God my point of view.

And when all else fails... well, I cry a lot. It's piteous and ridiculous and helps no one. I laugh sometimes. They're cousins, you know: laughing and crying.  I've cried so hard I started laughing and laughed so hard that it swung back around to crying again.

All of this called to mind a hymn which I knew as a child. There are so many different versions out there, and if your taste runs more to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, they've got a version.  But my childhood is this one.

Pete Seeger - How Can I Keep From Singing

It's a happy, glorious song which just revels in the wonders of the world, but take that and turn it upside down. Strip out all the joy, take away the hope, and the song still holds.  When all else fails, sing.  When. Not if. Everything else will fail. Your faith will falter, your hope will turn to despair, your love will be lost to you. You'll be walking in the dark and there will be monsters all around you. You won't have the strength to cry out, to call for help, no matter how futilely. It will happen. And if in that moment you have a song, you won't be crying, you'll be singing, and that's better than nothing, isn't it?

It's not much better. And it's harder than simply sinking, letting go, letting it happen. And you're going to die anyway, whether you sing or not. And if there is a God, God is cruel and malicious and there is no love in the world for you. Sing out. Maybe someone's listening.

I'm not a motivational speaker, obviously.  And I still have my doubts about life and my place in it. But I'm a contrary son of a bitch, so you'll probably hear me bitching and moaning about it to a God with whom I might rather not talk. And you might hear me singing a little too, softly, just for me and God. I'm still here. I'm still not broken. All has not failed.

Scriptural History

I am absolutely in love with this:

Victory to the People

The title doesn't at all convey what you're getting. It's the story of the Bible, not the Bible story. The history of the text.  With a tone that I can't get over. Any time anyone can say, "Eusebius of Nicomedia got all butthurt over this, and remained pissed off for the rest of his life," that's worth celebrating.

I spoke with Eusebius of Nicomedia briefly, and he said, "I'm still not over it."  So there you have it.  I won't quote; you should read the whole thing

Okay, I will guote:

(When Constantine heard this he said, “Can’t you guys just get along? Why not agree to disagree like every other friggin’ philosopher since Plato was a pup, and get on with your lives?” to which both sides answered “No!!!!eleventy!!!” and thus Nicea.

Come on. How can you not like that.

Some time after that, Constantine went to Eusebius of Caesarea and said, “Yo, Pamphili!” (Eusebius’ friends called him “Pamphili”), “You’ve got the biggest collection of fanzines in the world. How about you put together the teaching anthology?”

Yeah.  That's good stuff.  Go. Read it.

Metaphor

It's a classic defense to claim that you were employing a metaphor, just as it is a classic defense to claim that your listeners were employing one incorrectly. Metaphor is dangerous, because you never have to say what you mean, and people don't like that.

It's not like a simile, where you say, "Hey, racists are like pigs because they eat slop, their shit smells awful, and they're only good dead."  People expect an explanation to a simile. "Okay, so you're saying that this thing is like this other thing. How so?" they ask.  And the answer satisfies them that yes, while you can describe the first thing by evoking the second, the first thing is distinct and different and it's merely a way of describing and not a literal equivalence.

But metaphor doesn't work that way.  "Racists are pigs, stewing in their own offal, declining to contribute anything of benefit to society except their deaths."  Yes, you might see that I am indeed saying the same thing about racists as I did before: they eat, and smell like, shit, and we enjoy them more dead than alive.  But note: I am not explaining; I am elaborating on the metaphor, thickening it, but I'm not saying anything about racists, I'm saying it about pigs and then saying that a subclass of the pig is the racist.  Racists are pigs.

That's confusing.  I mean, do I really think racists are pigs?  Of course I don't; that's an insult to pigs, which are wonderful, loving, intelligent creatures which just happen to possess certain attributes which can be used to amplify how I feel about racists.  And it's convenient, so I start simply saying, "Racist pigs," when I mean to say, "Racists who embody these traits which can be metaphorically illustrated by a comparison to a pig."  And then I just say, "pigs," because the rest is implied. The metaphor has legs.

Surely not.  Surely it doesn't work that way.  Why would I remove the racist part?  That's the part that's important.  Because language is literal and never figurative, and what I say is exactly what I mean, and I won't die and have my words passed down and translated and misheard.  If I preserve the exact condition of my original statement of metaphor, people can tell that I mean it metaphorically.

But let's look closer: sure, people might know that I meant, "Racists are pigs," metaphorically, but what about "stewing in their own offal?" Do pigs literally (using the term which has come to mean the exact opposite of its literal meaning, which is irony of the highest order, another term that doesn't mean what it literally means) stew in shit?  They cook themselves in a pot filled with shit?  I think not.  Stewing is a metaphor so far removed that it has become simply figurative language.  And do I think that, describing racists as pigs, I am saying that they wallow around in their own fecal matter?  Dear God, there are layers here, and I'm terrified, so instead of following the trail and discovering that maybe there might be turtles all the way down... well, it's hard to be entirely literal because the sentence I'm currently finishing had at least two easily-identifiable turns of metaphorical phrase, and if you keep digging, pretty much everything we say and do that isn't a concrete noun or verb is a metaphor at the bottom.  Language is symbolism. Language isn't literal.

That's terrifying to people who want a straight answer.  Absolutely baffling and terrifying.  You know (or may be, in which case I'm sorry but you should get your head out of your ass, though not literally) one of these people: they were the kids in school who, when the teacher was reviewing what would be on the test, would always want to know what the answer should be, even to the essay questions; they're the folks who don't like long passages when a short summary could do; who don't like nuance; who don't read "hard" books or, if they do, think Moby Dick is about the whale and Dante's Inferno is a tour guide to Hell.  They're not bad people, but they can't deal with uncertainty.

The world is an uncertain place. That's scary. But believing that something is literal, or can be literal, just because it's hard to understand any other way isn't helping. It's sticking your fingers in your ears and humming loudly while the doctor tells you that the cancer isn't responding to treatment, then going home and having a "Cancer Free!" party, then wondering why everyone is surprised when you get sicker.  It's... well, it's a metaphor, because that's the only thing I can do to continue to talk about it without just saying exactly what it is again, which is, "believing that something is literal, or can be literal, just because it's hard to understand."

A lot of time is spent on "literalist" readers of the Bible (to pick something totally at random) and how they don't get that even though they claim that there's only one literal meaning to the text, they're applying their own interpretation.  There are some very good pieces being written on the subject; I link to this one because, well, it's apropos.

But I think a deeper issue exists than people being unable to understand that there's no way to read something without interpreting it.  It's recognizing that, regardless of "interpretation" you might be missing the fact that the whole thing is a metaphor.  When it says, "Samson slew the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass," maybe we have to take that in context and realize that The Bible isn't sanctioning the slaughter of Palestinians with a very small bone in that verse, but more than that, maybe we have to consider that, "slaying the Philistines," and, "jawbone of an ass," might very well not mean anything like what they "literally" mean to anyone, even if we were able to divine exactly what literal meaning they should have somehow.

I'm not a Biblical scholar. I don't pretend to be. So my example is necessarily wrongheaded and stupid because I don't know what the metaphors were and thus I'm as at sea as anyone trying to read the Bible as a literal text with literal intentions.  But suppose we take "Philistines" for a moment.  In our wonderfully figurative language, "Philistine" has become "philistine" and is used to refer to those who... well, let's let Miriam Webster take a crack at it.

a :  a person who is guided by materialism and is usually disdainful of intellectual or artistic values

b :  one uninformed in a special area of knowledge

Because at some point, someone said, "Boy, that materialistic person who has no knowledge and is disdainful of intellectual or artistic values sure is a Philistine, an enemy of God's Word (that's what it means, so let that be a lesson to anyone)."  Metaphor. Give it long enough, it takes off and everyone forgets everything but the object being metaphorically used for comparison.

So there's a legend about slaying enemies of God's Word that didn't make it into the Bible, probably because it wasn't actually about slaying enemies of God's Word and in fact may have predated the whole idea of God's Word(shocking, I know).  And in it, the hero slays his enemies, who happened to be people who could be described as Philistines at the time the Bible was written down, but who may have been Canaanites or Syrians or whoever was the enemy of this particular Semite hero. Now, the audience (never forget that it wasn't written down at first) for the Samson story would have known this other legend, and they would have known that the anonymous Semite hero of that legend was vain and had slain these enemies because he was showing off for a woman, and the audience would have said, "Aha, so Samson is John Q. Semite as he slays his foes, so what does that tell us about Samson?  It's an object lesson in humility, even in the service of one's cause. We must not be proud before Jhvh, nor should we be proud in His service, for He is the one to be exalted and we are merely his instruments."

Eventually, it became, "Oh, so Samson is a slayer of enemies, so we must be humble before God."  Then, when it was written down, the Israelites weren't fond of the Philistines, so "enemies" became "Philistines," and "we must be humble before God," became implied.  And then other people took the story but didn't look at the book of commentary where it explains, "So, you see here that Samson was killing the Philistines because he was proud of his strength, plus he's going to have girl troubles later on, so maybe, you know, make with the less showing off, nu?"  And those other people didn't have a clue what the metaphors were, and Samson himself became a metaphor, and pretty soon you've got folks from the South saying that literally the Bible wants us to kill everyone in Palestine and give it to Israel.

None of the above is true.  I have no idea whether "slaying the Philistines" was a metaphor for something.  And that's the point; I don't know, and neither do most of you, including pretty much every joker who claims to be reading the Bible "literally."  The "jawbone of an ass" might be a reference to a popular folk song of the time where Avram makes a marital aide out of a donkey's jawbone so he can please his wife since he can't get it up any more, and this is all a smutty joke about how Samson was gay, since he was "slaying Philistines with 'the jawbone of an ass' if you know what I mean, wink wink, nudge nudge."  As far as I know, that's not true either, but you don't know.

And the scariest metaphors I haven't even covered yet.  Those are the kind where you don't even make a comparison.  Where you say, "Boy howdy, pigs sure do like to wallow in shit.  I wonder if we should buy them some white hoods."  Whoa, too fast for me buddy, slow down.  You're alluding to your subject without mentioning it because you're assuming that the audience has the context to be able to pick up what you're putting down.  And you can be satirical on top of that; my racist pigs don't really support an example because they're too simplistic, but suppose we take Gulliver's Travels and say that not only is Swift using metaphor without telling you what the subject is, but he's deliberately exaggerating the metaphor's characteristics so as to satirize the original, unstated subject.  No, Gulliver's Travels is not a fantasy about visiting different strange lands filled with different strange people.  A literal reading might let you interpret, which is why movies made from the same book aren't the same, but unless you get that it's all a metaphor (in several layers, with satire) you don't get it and you don't even know you don't.

It's like the Bible is a satire that nails its subject too well, and so people don't think it's satire.  It's a metaphor so convincing and complex that people are fooled into believing that it's literal.  Except that's not true; people aren't fooled, they're duped, or they willfully believe against proof, or they know and are lying.

This was all an excuse to link to the post to which I linked in the text, plus this:

Destroying the ballet in the name of artistic freedom

Unless you know the context, it looks like the Federal Theatre Project is about to make a resurgence, and that, while it might seem like a good thing, would not be.  Keep government hands off of artistic expression, I say. Unless you know the context.

A Fine Sermon

I really couldn't say it better, so just read it for yourself.

You Cannot Be Replaced

Depression and sin – not one and the same, but in this alike – tell us that we are replaceable. That those who love us do not really know us, that our failings and our brokenness are the only memorable things about us. That they are all we will be remembered for.

But those are lies. Depression, sin, self-loathing: they lie to us. For we are all, each of us, beloved by God. The Lord God remembers, not the mistakes and fears on which we ruminate and base our self-loathing, but the steadfast love from which we are created and which is ever extended toward us.

I Shall Not Be Moved

I have a dim recollection from my childhood of going to a church service at a church unfamiliar to me, one of a denomination different from that of my family. The town in which I grew up was, and still is, small, and many people we knew were there, all of them coming to this place of meeting, all with a purpose.  I should say also that my home town was (and still is, I hope) fairly liberal and activist, so we weren't getting together to protest Obamacare or demand that the rich take our money (that's what they want, right?).

We were gathering to protest something.  I believe it was Nicaragua, or if not that, some other injustice in Central or South America, land where there have been so many injustices that it's hard to determine which one was happening when.  But we were there to protest, mostly middle-class white people gathered in a church in the middle of a small, liberal town, to say that such things were unacceptable, that atrocity and injustice are never acceptable.  And that's the first time I remember hearing, and singing, "We Shall Overcome."

I sang pretty well as a child, and I didn't then have the baggage that I have now, the fears and neuroses which make me unwilling to simply give up my voice in song whenever asked. So I sang, not really understanding, but knowing that this whole thing was about something important, and that I was singing on the right side, because why else would my parents and all the people I knew be here?  I'm sure I'd heard the song before; one of my favorite childhood artists was Pete Seeger, whom I had the opportunity to see live, but I don't remember that. I do remember singing in the church.

"We Shall Overcome" isn't really a song that the privileged should sing. Yes, if you're on the right side of a cause, you might be justified in joining with others and singing, but even then, you're not really the one who is overcoming.  If a middle-class white man joined in the Civil Rights struggle, he should be viewed as being on the right side, and maybe he could have sung "We Shall Overcome" with his brothers and sisters, lending his voice to theirs as he lent his support to their cause. But he wasn't the one who was going to overcome someday. He wasn't oppressed.

So we were singing a song, all of us lucky not to be in Nicaragua and being killed by death squads or raped or burned or mutilated, and we were doing it in private, essentially, not out where someone who might have been able to help might have seen us and been persuaded to do so.  We weren't going to overcome shit. As Dave Barry puts it:

[W]e held hands, black and white together, and sang "We Shall Overcome," and we were absolutely positive that we would. I got into a friendly argument with a bystander, a black man not much older than I, who laughed and assured me that nobody was going to overcome anything.

 It was that, minus the black people and anyone arguing that we wouldn't overcome anything.

You know the end of the story: we didn't. I'm pretty sure Nicaraguans continued to be killed, raped, mutilated, and generally treated like shit for a while after, prayer and song notwithstanding. I'm not trying to be flip about that either; I wish that it weren't so.  But, like most prayers, our Nicaraguan-oriented, non-denominational ones didn't produce instant gratification.

I'm not encouraging cynicism, far from it.  If all you can do is stand and sing in solidarity, even if it does nothing and you're thousands of miles from those who really need to overcome, even if you do it alone, even if it costs you nothing, standing is a start. It's not sufficient, but it's better than not standing and singing.

We also, I dimly recall, sang "The People United Will Never Be Defeated," (which I went on to hear as a piano work performed by the composer, Frederic Rzewski, in another church, which is another story entirely, but it's an amazing work).  Good song.  Perhaps too Marxist for most people, but still stirring, and since I believe at least one, possibly both, sides of the conflict in Nicaragua were Marxists and Spanish, an apropos choice.

But we didn't sing my favorite protest song. You can probably guess from the title which one I'm talking about.  I prefer it as "We Shall Not Be Moved" because there is strength in numbers, but a great many versions have been done in the singular, and one could make the case that by singing, "I shall not be moved," one is affirming a group promise not to be moved, since the only person one can promise shall not move is oneself.

It's a simple song; most good protest songs are.

I shall not, I shall not be moved
I shall not, I shall not be moved
Just like a tree that's planted by the water.
I shall not be moved.

You can vary the lyrics, but those are the ones with which you can sing along.

Why is it my favorite? Why did I tell you this long, rambling story about an ineffective protest? I'll admit, "We Shall Overcome" makes me cry like a baby in the right circumstances, and it lends itself to Gospel much more. And I'll admit that, unless you're on the line, as it were, singing it is a bit strange because who's trying to move you, really?

But it is the most resolute song. We shall overcome some day, but I shall not be moved ever.  You can sing it on the picket line, when forming a barricade against the onrushing aggressor, when standing up and being counted and saying, "No, I won't go away.  I shall not be moved."

It makes no promises of dominion, because there are none that can be made. Maybe all the singing in the world isn't going to stop them. Maybe they'll never stop, and the world will end in injustice and terror, the soul of man forever crushed beneath the heel of a boot. Not a pleasant thought if you're looking to win, but being right doesn't mean winning.

The Christian tradition from which the song comes has a prime example of this: Jesus was about as right as you can get, and yet he lost. Badly. But he didn't see it coming and turn around, run in the opposite direction, decide that hey, maybe the Pharisees were right all along, even though I for one could completely understand it if he had. Crucifixion is ugly, slow, painful, and just generally terrible in all senses of the word.

So the boot may go on stamping the face forever, and it might be that no amount of singing (or indeed, any other, more "practical" action) will change that. We can say we'll win eventually, or we can say we can never be finally defeated, but what point is there? There's no hope. Everything goes down to dust and all the the efforts of good cannot change that.

But Jesus didn't run. He let the heel squash him flat because he knew that standing was more important than winning. He knew that the only thing that he could guarantee was that he would not waver, that he would stand firm, that he would not move. And in doing so, in dying without giving up, he did win after all.

I shall not be moved. That doesn't say, "I will fight back." That doesn't say, "I will win," or, "I will be where you are some day and then you'll see." It just says, "I am right, and I shall be moved. My roots are deep. Go tell your boss, all the way up to the top, that I shall not be moved."  It's the sit-in rather than the riot. It's the passive resistance of peace rather than the active resistance of war. It's a stand, a line back from which one will not be pushed.

It's faith. "I shall not be moved," is a faith that winning isn't everything. It's a faith that, despite there being nothing else to do but stand and sing, some day that will change. It's a faith that boots may crush, that hope may die, that all may come down to dust, but I still believe and I am still standing and singing, wherever I am.

So why do I remember the useless protest of my childhood fondly, and why do I wish that we'd sung "I Shall Not Be Moved?" Because useless though it may have been, it mattered. Any time someone stands up and sings in solidarity, it matters, even if it doesn't make a difference.

And if we stop standing up and singing, vowing to stay standing and singing, then we aren't going to do anything else. It's the song that gives you courage to go and do more than singing. It's the song that you hear from all corners telling you that you aren't alone after all. Could we be heard in Nicaragua? Of course not. But we could hear ourselves. And though not going backward is a start, the song doesn't say, "I shall not move." Once you stand and sing, then go and do right with a song in your heart. You shall not be moved, you shall not be turned, you shall not be halted.

After the service, I'm sure my family went home. The details swim in my mind; was the fire and brimstone preacher there to whom I enjoyed listening because he was entertaining? Which church in my town was it? Who else was there?  I just remember the songs. They're still with me, long after memory has faded..