making beauty

making beauty

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(Originally published Saturday, December 31, 2005)

I have been doing a bit of ranting lately … about the horrors of the death penalty, about the scandal of an administration that is reluctant to expressly disavow torture, about the shortsighted greed that would rather despoil an untouched wilderness than spend the time and money to develop alternative energy sources or to find ways to use our present energy resources more efficiently.

But I want to end the year on a positive note! Because in spite of all its ills and all our failings, the world in which we live is filled with much that is beautiful, most of it brought into being by the God who brought the universe into being, but some of it brought into being by us, creatures made to be like God. We are very much like God when we are making beauty. In just these last few days I have had the privilege of enjoying great beauty …

… the beauty of a sanctuary lighted by a hundred handheld candles and filled with the sound of a hundred voices singing of the dawn of redeeming grace.

… the beauty of the aroma of poached pears, a dish new to me prepared by our eldest son.

… the beauty of language, powerful and intimate, words describing feelings, words describing grief, words crafted by Joan Didion to document and make sense of a year of grieving the sudden death of her husband, beautiful because even words of grief reveal the wonder and mystery and majesty of human love.

… the beauty of giving gifts and receiving gifts when the one giving and the one receiving both know, and know each other know, that it isn’t about the gift!

We are at our best when we are making beauty. When we praise beauty and preserve beauty and especially when we make beauty, we show ourselves to be true children of the God who delights in beauty …

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the year of magical thinking

the year of magical thinking

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(Originally published Monday, January 2, 2006)

The opening paragraph from chapter 17 of The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion:

Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return and need his shoes. In the version of grief we imagine, the model will be “healing.” A certain forward movement will prevail. The worst days will be the earliest days. We imagine that the moment to most severely test us will be the funeral, after which this hypothetical healing will take place. When we anticipate the funeral we wonder about failing to “get through it,” rise to the occasion, exhibit the “strength” that invariably gets mentioned as the correct response to death. We anticipate needing to steel ourselves for the moment: will I be able to greet people, will I be able to leave the scene, will I be able even to get dressed that day? We have no way of knowing that this will not be the issue. We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself.

In the The Year of Magical Thinking Joan Didion offers a most personal and particular account of the year following the sudden death of her husband. But because she is so honest, because she does not hold back any detail of her thoughts and feelings, her story provides a touchstone by which we may better understand our own grief and the grief of those we love. I recommend this book!

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face the facts

face the facts

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(Originally published Wednesday, December 28, 2005)

Let Them Eat Guns?, Sojourners Magazine/January 2006

World military expenditure exceeded $1 trillion in 2004. The United States accounted for 47 percent of this spending.

$238 billion. Appropriations for the “war on terror” for 2003–05, which exceeded the combined military spending of the entire developing world in 2004 ($214 billion).

$236 billion. The combined arms sales of the top 100 companies in 2003. The top five companies accounted for 44 percent of this total.

$2.5 billion per year: The external funding required by 47 countries with the lowest primary school completion rates in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education.

$2.4 billion per year: The cost to halve the number of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.

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The facts are disturbing, but I pray we will have the good sense and courage to face them and to revise our priorities!

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why i won’t see the chronicles of narnia

why i won’t see the chronicles of narnia

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I will not be seeing the new movie, The Chronicles of Narnia. I love the books too much …

Film is a wonderfully creative medium, capable of conveying meaning and conjuring beauty in ways unmatched by any other art form. I do love a good movie! But film by its nature limits imagination, while literature by its nature (if it is good writing!) stimulates imagination. The powerful images that have inhabited my mind and soul from childhood, Aslan and Lucy and Caspian and Shasta and Puddleglum and Reepicheep — I will not permit these beloved and edifying images to be reshaped by someone else’s imagination!

I have been told that the movie is faithful to Lewis’ book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. That may well be true. But I am certain that too much will be made of “action scenes,” which play a very small role in the book, and not enough of the subtleties of character, of character being forged in the face of doubt and temptation and fear. It would be difficult indeed for any movie to capture the keen and simple beauty of Narnia, a place that is as much spiritual landscape, as it is an imagined world.

And I know they will not get the lion right. Aslan is not a tame lion. He is terrible and tender, aweful and awesome. He is a lion, but not a lion, something larger, something Other. Only imagination can perceive him as he is, just as only faith can perceive Jesus as he is.

Go see the movie if you will. But do read the book. Read the books! May Narnia be a place where you encounter and learn to love better the One who in our world is called by a different name …

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a sick and perverted spectacle

a sick and perverted spectacle

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A sick and perverted spectacle …

Those are the words Stanley Tookie Williams used to characterize his impending execution. Williams was executed early this morning, after appeals for a stay of execution were denied by the California Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court, and after a plea for clemency was rejected by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It was a sick and perverted spectacle …

… not because an innocent man was put to death. It is entirely possible that Williams did not commit the murders for which he was convicted; he always maintained his innocence. Or, as is likely and most believe, he really did do the crimes. Either way, it doesn’t matter.

… not because a changed man, a redeemed man, a man doing society much good was put to death. He may well have become a transformed man, a good man; those nominating him for Nobel Prizes for peace and literature certainly thought so. Or maybe it was all a fraud or a too convenient way to earn pity and support. Either way, it doesn’t matter.

… not because the courts or the governor failed to step in and acknowledge his transformation and show him mercy. They were simply doing their job, interpreting and enforcing the law as it stands. It doesn’t matter.

No, what matters is the law itself, the law of the land that permits this most cruel and unusual punishment. That law is sick and perverted and must be changed. That law accomplishes no useful purpose other than retribution — society exacting its revenge and satisfying its blood lust against those who have done it injury, whether real or perceived. That law diminishes our humanity, devalues human life, and damages the integrity of our advocacy of human rights.

Our need for revenge (a need that can never be satisfied) is a sickness, a sickness that eats away at the soul of our society and only proliferates a culture of violence. Our demand for the forfeiture of a life is a perversion, a perversion of the values and principles for which we claim to stand — justice, mercy, freedom, generosity, the precedence of right over might, and inalienable human dignity.

It was a sick and perverted spectacle …

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common ground

common ground

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An article worth sharing …

Looking for an argument (In December 13, 2005 issue of The Christian Century)

Will the debate over homosexuality split the church of Jesus Christ? It already has. But the split itself is a sign of our unfaithfulness and our failure to be the church Jesus calls us to be. Until we do follow Jesus, until we care more about loving each other than about winning the debate, our Christian witness will be severely compromised … because it will be hardly Christian!

What do we have to lose in listening to each other, really listening to each other? What do we have to lose in admitting that sincere folks on both sides of the issue are doing their best to be faithful to the gospel? If we are truly saved by grace, by God’s righteousness and not our own, then we have nothing to lose and everything to gain. We might even find some common ground — namely that we are alike loved and healed and made whole by Jesus alone! — and realize we can live with our differences as we seek to follow Jesus together.

We may not agree on which way to go, but if we agree that Jesus is the way, then we are at least on the same path! And that path leads to where we all want to go …

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