Weeks 29-30: Plot Summaries

The Practice of the Presence of God - Brother Lawrence

   Last week we had a "Brother Lawrence" retreat at Richmond Hill, so I figured I better read up! Twenty or so friends stayed over for a few days - cleaning, praying, and cleaning some more..."having resolved to make the love of God the end of all [their] actions..."

The Earth is the Lord's; The Inner World of the Jew in Eastern Europe - Abraham Joshua Heschel

   Wow, not what I expected! I supposed it to be a history book, and it does include lots of great cultural history. It is a testament of devotion, a witness to the love of God, through thick and thin. This would be a great book to read aloud in a prayer group.

Christ is the Question - Wayne Meeks

   Meeks starts by placing historical Jesus research in the context of general western intellectual history (subject-object dilemmas, scientific method, historical science-envy). Kinda cool. After that he dives into his main arguement: Jesus' life and identity are social phenomena, just like everyone else's - in time and relationship and language. The historical Jesus narrative that goes something like -- Jesus' original message-identity was x, the apostles understood it as x+1, then all kinds of variations developed x+/-/*/etc, then the church honed in on a particular x+something -- this narrative helps but misses the interpersonal nature of identity. "Who is Jesus" is a constant dialogue or discussion, during Jesus' life and beyond.

How to Become Ridiculously Well-Read in One Evening - ed E.O. Parrott

   A funny book of plot summaries, mostly in verse. They are funniest when you've actually read the book before, so the book doesn't quite live up to its titular purpose! Oh well.

notes

The Practice of the Presence of God
-That there needed fidelity in those drynessess or insensibilities and irksomnesses in prayer by which God tries our love to Him...
-having resolved to make the love of God the end of all his actions...
-referring all we do to Him
-I cannot do this unless Thou enablest me...
-That we ought to act with God in the greatest simplicity
-that we may beg assistance for knowing His will in things doubtful, and for rightly performing those which we plainly see He requires of us
-that we ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God
-by rising after my falls, and by frequently renewed acts of faith and love
-without troubling or disquieting myself when my mind had wandered involuntarily
-set Him always before us
-a simple attention, and a general fond regard for God
-holy inactivity
-Hope in Him more than ever
-A little lifting up of the heart suffices. A little remembrance of God
-small but holy exercise
-fund and center of his soul
-Let us make way for grace; let us redeem the lost time, for perhaps we have but little left
-At first one often thinks it lost time, but you must go on
-Lift up you heart to Him...the least little remembrance will always be acceptable to him
-Let us begin then
-Let us live and die with God
-Let us think often that our only business in this life is to please God, and that all besides is but folly and vanity
-Let us begin in earnest
-a holy habit
-He is always near you and with you; leave him not alone
-offer Him your pains incessantly
-Let all our employment be to know God
-faith...one simple act

The Earth is the Lord's
-The stone is broken, but the words are alive...They still knock at our gates as if begging to be engraved "on the Tablets of every heart."
-In this language [Yiddish], you say "beauty" and mean "spirituality"; you say "kindness" and mean "holiness."
-maggidim
-all were partners in the Torah
-Rashi democratized Jewish education, he brought the Bible, the Talmud, and the Midrash to the people.
-shtibl
-Sog mir a shtickl Torah - tell me a little Torah
-knowledge was not a means for achieving power, but a way of clinging to the source of all reality
-feel heaven in a passage of Talmud
-pipul
-The soul is sustained by the regard for that which transcends all immediate purposes.
-Heaven the tangent at the circle of all experience
-one might fulfill his destiny by the way
-the world could not exist without the Torah
-The Divine sings in noble deeds. Man's effort is but the counterpoint to the music of His will.
-all pervading mystery
-I have gone through the whole of the Talmud three times...Yes, but how much of the Talmud has gone through you?
-thirty-six zaddikim
-a Torah within the heart
-somewhat of the Sabbath was infused into every day
-Jews did not build magnificent synagogues; they built bridges leading from the heart to God
-Our energies are too abundant for living indifferently

Christ is the Question
-more study, more questions
-history trying to emulate objectivity of science
-try to use model of personal identity as a social and transactional process
-"When someone says, 'The Bible clearly teaches...' we an usually be sure that an attempt is being made to co-opt the Bible's authority in order to foreclose argument on a topic on which good persons, including good Christians, reasonably disagree."
-modernist-fundamentalist battle "eclipsed" narrative depth
-poetry can make history
-the more broadly we cast our nets, the more interpretive fish we bring up
-the web of narratives; the intersection of narratives
-Jesus' identity discovered and invented
-Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection: "the generative center"
-Harmony, homonoia, as the central value of ancient Greek city life
-The motive that drove Greek and Roman society was philotimia, "ambition," literally "love of honor."
-the plain sense vs the literal sense vs the historical sense
-Thus the same Protestant tradition that gave to this country much of its zeal for education and many of its pioneering educational institutions also contributed to that pervasive anti-intellectualism that infects every part of our national life.
-The Bible as rule book, very much needs Mishnah and Talmuds and Responsa, or some hard-to-imagine Protestant equivalent.
-master narrative
-"indispensable resource" rather than "binding authority"
-Hans Frei: "Let us assume that the notion of a right interpretation of the Bible is itself not meaningless, but it is eschatological."
-surely we have not seen the last surprise in God's plan...

Weeks 26-28: Doorway

Cold Mountain: The Legend of Han Shan and Shih Te, The Original Dharma Bums - Sean Michael Wilson, illustrated by Akiko Shimojima

The Islamic Jesus: How the King of the Jews Became a Prophet of the Muslims - Mustafa Akyol

   Here comes the ice cream truck again! As small as our neighborhood is, you'd think we wouldn't get the ice cream truck three times a day. Lots of kids around, though, makes for good business I suppose.
   Jesus the rabbi, Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the prophet, Jesus the bodhisattva, Jesus the logos, Jesus the avatar, Jesus the guru. Am I getting out of hand? How can Jesus be the door, gate, way into the love and appreciation of non-Christian religion and practice? Cold Mountain indirectly and Islamic Jesus directly provide examples...

notes
Cold Mountain
-The most glorious warhorse ever sat/ can't match a crippled kitty/ in a race to catch a rat.
-I just clap time for the flowers/as they dance,
-I can remember the taste of that dirt.
-In the summer it's light as winds;/ in the winter it's my quilt./ Winter or summer, of use in both/ year upon year, just this.
-The Tao's a road/ that runs straight through.
-You could try to make it/ to cold moutain
-Sunrise, and the mist would blind a/ hidden dragon
-cloud roads are in empty space

Islamic Jesus
-fearful rumors about secret decision in the West to Christianize and conquer Turkey and other Muslim countries (history of church-politics-military overlap in Christian missions)
 -"the only evidence we possess in the Gospels would suggest that his contemporaries found it impossible to make sense of him..." A.N. Wilson
-"the steep ascent...It is freeing a slave, or feeding on a day of hunger an orphaned relative, or a poor man in the dust. Then to be one of those who have faith, and urge each other to steadfastness and urge each other to compassion" Qur'an
-Qn - believers are "those who have faith and do right actions"
-Jewish Christians and potential influence on early Islam
-parallels between stories in Qur'an and apocryphal Gospels
-Tawrat - Torah, Zabur - Psalms, Injil - Gospel
-are "nasara" the Nazoreans?
-Mary - major character in Qur'an
-rock inscription in Negev, 7th c., "Amen, the Lord of Worlds, the Lord of Moses and Jesus"
-rasul - one who is sent; nabi - news giver
-prophecy of messenger to come - "Ahmad" - person Ahmad, Muhammah, or as adjective "praised"
-Jesus - son of Mary, Word, Spirit, Messiah
-parallels - Kingdom of God/ Caliphate, Halahka/ Sharia, Jesus for Jewish renewal/ Jesus for Islamic renewal

Weeks 22-25 - To Queer

The Fruits of the Spirit - Evelyn Underhill

Jesus and Mary: Finding Our Sacred Center - Henri Nouwen

Alone With God - Dom Jean Leclercq

Queer Theory: A Graphic History - Meg-John Barker and Julia Scheele

   So we moved into that house where I spotted Lloyd the groundhog. Turns out he has lots of friends! ...one of which likes to hide under our back porch. I call him Germaine. By the way I don't know male from female woodchucks, so why do I name them as males? 
   We also have plenty of rabbits, squirrels, robins, mocking birds, and starlings. I'm trying to learn the basic backyard bird names. Those house finches must have found a better summer home. Some kind of wren likes to chase insects under the awning, however. I think I saw a woodpecker - a hairy woodpecker? - about the size of a jay, black and white with the little red tuft. A cardinal stopped in the other day, but the robins weren't happy about it. No crows or bigger birds so far. No blue jays like at Richmond Hill.
   About these books...I had no idea "queer" could be a verb! To queer something, according to Barker and Scheele, is to destabilize it, to challenge or test it, to play with it, to send it up, or to tease out its fundamental binaries, so on and so forth, much like "deconstruction" with less French. For real, Jesus did a lot of queering, right? Keep Jesus Weird. Is that a t-shirt already?
   Underhill and Nouwen really know how to keep the reverent tone going, without being too heavy. How do they do that? Rather than take notes I nearly copied word for word these two little books, especially Underhill's. I hope I can read her big book soon.
    Alone with God is a strange book about strange people, hermits. I really enjoyed it. Leclercq summarizes and interprets the writings of Paul Giustiniani, a monk at the hermitage of Camaldoli and founder of a slightly more hermetic association of hermits. Blessed Paul's basic call was to be alone with God in order to "love God in God," which he was convinced would benefit not only himself but the Church, those outside the Church, and all creation. I believe him.



notes - Underhill

• Thou when thou prayest, enter into thy closet - and shut the door...Nearly every one pulls it to and leaves it slightly ajar
• coming downstairs
• that constant struggle with distracting thoughts, that humiliating sense of deadness and incapacity, which always accompany spiritual growth and teach us humility...
• Joy is a fruit of the Spirit, not of our gratified emotions.
• Just because of the vastness of the journey and mighty surrounding forces, there is no hurry, no fuss...
• ...you do not know where those born of the spirit have come from and you do not know where they are going. The path on which they are moving to an appointed end, like the wind's path, is unseen by you...
• patience with ourselves is a duty for Christians and the only real humility
• the fruits of the Spirit get less and less showy as we go on
• Do not entertain the notion that you ought to advance in prayer
• Spirit of truth present in all places and filling all things
• that loving and absolute trust in God which is the heart of religion
• "dexterity in casting all thy care on Him" K
• But religion at its full span transcends all these parochial and self-interested ideas, and admits us to a 'world that is unwalled.'
• ...men and women who seem to have no special gift, but the one great gift of the love of God 
• There should always be more waiting than striving in a Christian's prayer - an absolute dependence on the self-giving charity of God. "As dew shall our God descend on us."
• humble, eager, expectant attitude toward God

Nouwen

• School of Mary
• Behold your mother (to us)
• the false adulthood of our age
• Spirit speaks to Spirit
• Jesus the door to the mystical life which is the life in communion with God
• Stabat Mater
• taken, blessed, broken, given
• who is innocent in front of the innocent one?
• "Jesus makes us descend with him in the tomb, in the weakness, in the darkness, in everything that seems dead in our heart, but always to rectify us, to purify us, to liberate us."
• But here before the rolled away stone, a simple center from which hope radiates, all is very simple.
• Before I am sinful, I am innocent...I have to claim that innocence in me...the place where Jesus chose to live...fashioned in secret and molded in the depths of the earth
• I remember Mother Teresa's words to me twelve years ago: "Write simply," she said, "very simply. People need simple words."

Where'd they go?

   We had a couple of these little house finches building a nest inside a U-shaped metal joist for our back porch awning. Actually only the female worked, gathering and arranging twigs and such. The male just sat there and sang! Seems like as soon as they filled in the whole space they disappeared.

Weeks 19-21 - What's so funny about Jesus?

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal - Christopher Moore

   You know that foggy, where-am-I feeling you get after driving on the interstate for way too long, or after cramming all night for an exam? I've felt like that constantly for the past couple months! Very frustrating. At the end of the day, I'm never quite sure what I've done, how I've done it, or how I feel about it. How long have I been driving? Did I miss the exit? Get me to a Waffle House quick. I mean I'm kinda busy but I'm not that busy.

   Lamb is charming and overdone, in that order. The first third, by far the best part, covers Joshua (Jesus) and Biff's childhood escapades. In the second part Josh and Biff travel east to find and learn from the wise men. The final section retells the Gospels - Joshua's public ministry as the Messiah.
   My overall impression was that Moore had the most fun with the first two sections, but he felt obligated to tell the whole story, so he just muscled it out. I wish he'd done like Anne Rice and focused on a short boyhood time frame, one to three years - some kind of Huckleberry Finn adventure, with plenty of foreshadowing. I think that would have better served his comedic gifts. In any case, this is the funniest book about Jesus ever written!

Week 18 - Holy Extended Family

Christ The Lord: Out of Egypt - Anne Rice


It's hard to read or think or write! I'm in a slump.

   My favorite part of this book is the portrait of an "ordinary" 1st century Jewish extended family (when I read "household" in the NT, should I think of this type of family life?). Of course this holy family receives a difficult and mysterious calling, which they all, including Jesus, struggle to understand and respond to.

   The two major plot devices: travel - from Egypt to Judea, then Galilee, then to and from Jerusalem again - and secrets - Jesus' family has kept the full story of his miraculous birth from him and others.

   This book isn't as piercing as The Last Temptation or as potent as Jesus Christ Son of Man, but it is as earnest as those other two. It bears up under the weight of Rice's love.

   All three Jesus novels have highlighted the landscape, or Jesus' interaction with the landscape. How important is the landscape in the Gospels as compared with other ancient biographies?

Week 17 - 2-D or 3-D Jesus?

The Last Temptation of Christ - Nikos Kazantzakis

  I've been in a complaining mood lately, so don't take my whining too seriously. 

  This book and the one I paired it with in my head - Gibran's Jesus The Son of Man - are beautiful, inventive, devotional. For both Gibran and Kazantzakis Jesus is the great Romantic Hero: striving, yearning, strong and sympathetic, a misunderstood poet, working outside institutions, overcoming worldly cares, a lover of nature and beauty, tragic yet triumphant. At the least, Jesus is our best self. Jesus fully integrates heaven and earth, in his existence and/or through his words and deeds. 
   Gibran's Jesus leans more towards the sage and mystic, and Kazantzakis' Jesus more towards the fear and trembling, existentialist kind of hero. I hope they got to read each other's work. Two wonderful writers, spiritually devoted to Jesus, sailing into his life with paper sails and a pen as rudder. 
   So...why are their Jesus's such dead characters? Maybe dead isn't the right word. Forced. We could chalk it up as another instance of the uninteresting-hero-in-an-interesting-cast-or-story problem, which I think is one of the great unsolved problems in the history of the universe. 
   You can tell as you read that Gibran and Kazantzakis both love Jesus very much, so perhaps they were trying too hard to get it right. It's as if they took a beloved icon, in all its two dimensional profundity, and tried to add perspective, make it 3-D, while still keeping the basic style of the icon. Jesus looks like a cartoon character on a live set. Who framed Roger Rabbit? Kazantzakis' Jesus is more human, Gibran's more divine, but they're stuck in a similar contortion - a mix-up of 2-D and 3-D conventions.
   Another complaint - they both pin Paul as a power hungry fanatic. Also their female characters hang on the male characters, not just socially (mother, potential mother, wife, potential wife, servant) but spiritually: women's spirituality is portrayed mostly as sensuality - in relationship to a husband or child. One more gripe: Gibran paints a bleak picture of Jewish religion; Kazantzakis's is more lively, thankfully.