This Is a Hymn

Here is a poem by Lorna Goodison entitled "This Is a Hymn" that I thought fitting for this space after Adunare's recent posts on the question, "Can God be trusted?" and on Gregory Wolfe's lecture. I think it also goes well with the poem posted by e.go recently.

"This Is a Hymn"

For all who ride the trains
all night
sleep on sidewalks and park benches
beneath basements
and abandoned buildings
this is a hymn.

For those whose homes
are the great outdoors
the streets their one big room
for live men asleep in tombs
this is a hymn.

This is a hymn for bag women
pushing rubbish babies
in ridiculous prams
dividing open lots
into elaborate architects' plans.

Mansions of the dispossessed
Magnificence of desperate rooms
Kings and queens of homelessness
Die with empty bottles
Rising from their tombs.

This is a hymn
for all recommending
a bootstrap as a way
to rise with effort
on your part.
This is a hymn
may it renew
what passes for your heart.

This hymn
is for the must-be-blessed
the victims of the world
who know salt best
the world tribe
of the dispossessed

outside the halls of plenty
looking in
this is a benediction
this is a hymn.

What to Call your Professor

This is a very handy diagram for people who have ever been caught in an awkward situation. Btw, undergrad profs among us - what do you have your students call you? I've heard more than a few "first name" proponents but I'm going to agree with the bottom right bubble: it's just wierd.

On being a better listener (the 2009 E.J. Pratt Lecture)

The E.J. Pratt Lecture is the most prestigious literary event of the year at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Past speakers have included Northrup Frye, David Lodge, Terry Eagleton, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Stan Dragland. This year's lecture was given by J. Edward Chamberlin or "Ted", as a small group of grad students came to know him at in an informal question-and-answer period the day after he delivered his lecture entitled "The Snarl Around Our Dory: The Long Line of Island Traditions" (http://today.mun.ca/news.php?news_id=4463).

In sitting through his lecture that ranged from Native North American lore to Australian Aborigines' oral storytelling to constitutions and treaties as narratives of identity to Israeli and Palestinian relations, I realized that Dr. Chamberlin's chief skill was not as an orator, writer or storyteller (though he is quite good at all of these). His chief skill is as a listener.

As an intent and careful listener, Dr. Chamberlin has spent a lifetime inclining his ear to people's stories: to many people's stories, recognizing conflict and seeing the need for common ground but being refreshingly reticent to promote "simple" pluralism. Dr. Chamberlin has worked with aboriginal land claims in the Mackenzie River Valley, Alaska, and Australia, advocating the primacy of people's stories of themselves, whatever disparate forms those stories take. And these stories, according to Dr. Chamberlin, are not just coming from one side of any conflict; the unique and compelling strength of his argument is that distinct (and often violently conflicting) worldviews or stories cannot be taken seriously if they are homegenized into "nice liberal pruralism."

"Pluralism is a danger not because it creates conflicts... but because it masks them" (from If this is your land, where are your stories?).

In listening to Dr. Chamberlin and in having him listen to me and to my colleagues and friends, I felt that even though we may not all share the same worldview or faith-perspective (though he is a fascinating person to speak to about "belief"), he actively listened to us and tried to understand us on our own terms. This could have been aided by the food on the table in the side conference room in the English Department and the Red Stripe Lager we were drinking, or it could be in part that he introduced himself as Ted rather than Dr. Chamberlin and that he remembered my name though I only offered it once.

I came away from that lecture and that informal meeting not only refreshed that someone was as enamoured with stories and belief as I am, but challenged to be a better listener, and by extension (since I am an English student), a better reader. In pursuit of this I'm working my way through Dr. Chamberlin's book If this is your land, where are your stories? which I highly recommend to all but perhaps specifically to Adunare and e.go.

Beauty and Imagination

Gregory Wolfe does the most recent Think podcast at Cardus on "The Wound of Beauty". I love this piece.

Greg talks about the nature of knowledge, as it was understood in the early medieval period, resting on three pillars: beauty, faith and reason. The traditional corresponding fields of inquiry are: imagination, goodness and truth. But - unlike in my thinking - one does not prefigure the next, until ultimately we are left with reason. Allow me to explain: linear thinkers such as myself suffer from a tendency to over simplify processes. Thus, we think of faith as preceding reason (reason within the bounds of religion) - if faith is properly grounded, reason is oriented correctly and can thus function as needed. Faith is a pre-requisite in this picture, but not necessarily continuously in need of attention. Like building a house, I've thought of faith as a foundation that once in place, can be somewhat taken for granted (I am caricaturing my own thinking here for the point of emphasis).

This concept of faith does not even work in the postie cannon. Faith in this setting becomes a leap of faith - an act of human imagination - which we must continuously sustain, on which we predicate all subsequent reasonable inquiry. Thus my own religious conception of faith falls short of what is offered by more cosmopolitan philosophy. But the real critical difference is not merely between my rediscovery of faith as being continuously sustained (surely the Ignatian practices I cherish emphasize this daily), but that in the postie philosophy the root of faith is the human imagination - the self. In the Christian picture imagination, faith and reason are all rooted in the person of God, who - I was reminded Sunday at an excellent Canadian Reformed service - alone, by His Holy Spirit, is capable of rendering faith in the hearts of human kind.

Yet how important imagination is in this rendering! Surely the Spirit does not cultivate faith within in dull, abstract statements of belief - as though all of life were a philosophers contest. No, instead the Spirit uses both faith and reason (yes!), but ultimately also imagination with which to capture our hearts and minds.

The academic and policy process, I worry, anchors itself too much on mere statements of faith and practices of reason. How can beauty and imagination reenter the process of cultivating knowledge and wisdom within and without?

I came on this poem in a book of Mary Oliver's poetry--a book that has mysteriously appeared on my bookshelf with a Brian Prince bookmark in it. Thought I'd share it to give Adunare a break from his lonesome posting.

"The Summer Day"

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Oratory

I laughed, I cried, I forwarded it on. So here I also post it.

To You from Failing Hands, We Throw the Torch

The latest Books & Culture is a treasure trove. At least one gem is a short piece by Richard Mouw on, "Remember the Antithesis!". Here he argues that Kuyperians typically struggle with holding common grace and the antithesis in a healthy tension: some come down more on the side of common grace while others have majored in the antithesis.

Van Til, writes Mouw, was clearly on the latter. I am quite firmly in the former. How important, then, for publicly engaged folk such as myself to be reading Van Til and thinking strongly through what the antithesis means for public life. Mouw recalls an exchange between William Harry Jellema and Van Til, when Jellema was close to death. Van Til thanked Jellema for all he had learned from him, but Jellema responded: "Yes, but Kees, it was you who at times kept us from going too far." Jellema is not the only one with that kind of indebtedness to Van Til.

Who in this generation will carry that torch? Who will keep those of us - myself included - who are tempted to follow commonness in a murky direction, honest and rooted?

Can God be Trusted?

A new book by John Stackhouse, Can God be Trusted?, asks some of the questions I've been thinking through the last few years. The intellectual challenge of evil can be answered in the abstract, that God can indeed be trusted to fulfill all things to the end that He has ordained. But along the way we can't pretend a great deal is not broken - not always to be repaired in the here and now.

Thus the challenge of evil I've been thinking about is not: can I trust that the world will reach its final consummation? - but, can I trust that this is going to work out for the better personally? Pardon the narcissism. The answer to that question - it seems to me - is no. I find this deeply troubling. What does trust in God mean, if I am rather unconvinced that God will indeed not keep "my foot from striking against a stone"? I am not so pious and not so pure as to be wholly indifferent to my stake in this life, and instead yearn only for the coming glory of the LORD. Perhaps I do yearn - if imperfectly - but much of my time is obsessed with the here and now, with the proximate and the piecemeal. How should a person experience a personal trust in God, in the wake of this challenge?

The Globalization of Cheating

Who knew? Apparently I can entirely outsource my PhD!

Needed: A Fiscal Framework

Jeffrey Sach's writes a compelling piece in April's Scientific American, a magazine I recently ordered and have been quite enjoying. He suggests that rather than arguing over what kinds of short-term stimulus - tax cuts or spending - produce more real stimulus dollars, we need to take a more systematic long view of our economics.

Infrastructure, for example, shouldn't be invested in because of its ability to produce short-term stimulus. It should be invested in because our infrastructure is crumbling, and has been in hard need of attention for decades. Tax cuts - of course - don't necessarily shore up economic stability in the short term. And, the problem with cuts long term, is that - at least in America - those cuts will need to do a strong about-face in order to compensate for a massive national debt and the forthcoming demographic crisis.

Sachs recommends what he calls a "medium-term fiscal framework" as a way beyond the spending/tax cutting dichotomy: a systematic trade-off of taxation and spending backed up by formal budget projections for at least 5-10 years, if not nearly 50. An example of this, cited by Sachs, is Norway's hydrocarbon wealth program.

Is it time for a new paradigm? Sachs is no fiscal slouch, and his ideas have resonance with me on a few different levels.

Tithing in an age of convinience

The National Post's blog has a short post entitled "Praise the Lord and swipe the plastic", talking about modern churches installing donation kiosks and offertory point-of-(purchase?) equipment.

The topic of tithing and generosity as a whole has arisen in conversation several times over the last twelve months. It is quite interesting to see how a culture of convenience shapes people's giving habits. In some ways, there's increased pressure in churches to begin tapping into the underlying psychology of buying (tactics like "if you see it, you'll purchase it", as the grocery store checkouts suggest). More and more church is trying to make a sale.

Two questions come to me from this. Does it undermine the practice of tithing if you can do it with minimal effort? What is the value of this effort? If something takes more work, is it a better show of generosity? 

Second, should churches respond to flagging donations on account of less people carrying cash by making it easier to give, or should they be dealing with a convenience and experience-oriented congregation who expect to be catered to if they are to give? Rather than "selling" church and God's work, should we see tithing promoted as an appropriate response of thankfulness to Christ and His grace?

For the record, I seldom use collection plates. Over the course of the year my tithes accumulate in a high interest account before being given, lump sum, to my church. So far, I wouldn't say it undermines my intentionality at all.

Thoughts?

Round trip

Round Trip Missions - Trailer from Round Trip on Vimeo.

I'd be interested to hear what the hive makes of this. It's taken from Culture Making which states:

I don’t think anyone has done this before: document not just an North American team going to Kenya, but a Kenyan short-term team coming to America. We got some of the best thinkers and teachers on the planet to give us deep insights into the best way to build lasting partnerships in short trips

On shit (part II)

I really apologize for following e.go's post up with something so base, but this is really an update on an earlier post in which I wondered if sometimes we get so caught up with the 'big ideas' about globalization and development that we forget about base, human things which, while overlooked, are fundamental to human lives. This will tie into e.go's latest post, I promise.

Anywho, I want to alert you all to something which might help resolve some of the issues surrounding basic sanitation, a key issue in many developing countries, and indeed, a key issue in public health.

Click here and here. Isn't that, like, totally awesomecoolamazing?

I read in the Economist once of a Nigerian (I think he was Nigerian, I can't find the article online) who started a business in which all he did was a. manufacture port-o-potties and b. deliver them and manage them in shanty towns. What is most fascinating is that this simple bit of entreprenuership did a few things: a. it made him wealthy. b. it created jobs for upwards of 100 people making good wages c. it increased sanitation and thereby the health in the shanty towns in which his business operated

This, to me, seems to be an example of healthy entreprenuership and globalization. It meets basic human needs (I think this is key; I'm not sure if the infusion of capital into an area by setting up plants in shanty towns to exploit cheap labour is as good, though I'm open to the idea), and creates wealth in doing so. The business owner above, was able to start his business through micro-credit and grew it, all the while addressing basic needs.

A belated hello...a busy life has kept me from fully participating in this forum so far, but happily I expect that to change.

"The Future of Globalization," an article by Christian ethicist Rebecca Todd Peters, presents a scathing critique of two ideological approaches to globalization: neo-liberalism and the development community and offers earthism and postcolonialism as two alternative approaches.

She's got my blood running faster than it has in a while, describing the ways in which "the current path of globalization can only succeed on the backs of a substantial constituency of low-skill, low-wage workers" (129). The paragraph that spoke most deeply to my desire to think and live faithfully follows; its assumption that justice is to be pursued by church communities reminds me of conversations I've had with people whose church communities expressly do not believe that:

The sins of overconsumption, indifference, and greed are so subtly woven into the fabric of our culture, and even our religion, that we often overlook or ignore them. These sins are manifested in both our individual and our communal behavior as families, communities, and nations. To the extent that our faith encourages us to focus on our intentional and overt sinful behavior at the expense of a deeper probing of the meaning of sin, we are encouraged to ignore what I believe to be the most egregious expression of sin for the globalized elite of our world. That sin is our unexamined participation in globalized systems of oppression that are killing life and destroying God's creation. Within the Christian context, it is important to name our complicity in economic globalization 'sin' because this naming holds a powerful force in our tradition. In calling Christian communities of faith to accountability, it is essential that church communities and their individual members begin to see themselves as morally responsible for participating in the transformation of globalization" (127, emphasis mine).

CNBC Smackdown

Jon Stewart has been regularly sticking it to CNBC business coverage this week, in episodes that I've seen only snippets of, but look forward to catching up on this weekend. Stewart's campaign against not merely CNBC but "business TV" generally has actually been picked up by mainstream Canadian media, in the Globe and Mail. I quote from that article,

What's truly strange, however, is that it has taken until now for somebody to notice that, while most television coverage is built around a moral framework, business television has no sense of good or evil. That's what makes it starkly abnormal and, these days, vaguely repulsive. First came the vilification of corporate America. It took a long time for the vilification of corporate America's cheerleaders to begin.

The function of business television is simpleminded and austere. The genre sells the reporting of buying and selling and, to make viewers stay with it, the genre sells the joy of greed. This applies not just to CNBC, but to every all-finance channel and to all the segments about business that appear on every all-news channel.

This sort of visceral take on American business television is probably well-earned from the bits of it that I've seen. Business TV seems to cultivate its viewership in large part by constructing a fantasy world, in which attractive people, in expensive suits are always capable of making more and more money, with no consequences. Sometimes people lose, but that's the thrill of the game - it's high stakes and high rolls - a real man's world. And - of course - consequence free bubble money is a myth just like the world these networks fabricate. I, for one, am enjoying the ribbing Stewart is giving these nonsense pundits.

PFFFFTTT goes the Fun

Says Jennifer Gardy, of (I admit it) my next to favourite blog. Over the years as undergraduate counts soar, degrees become more competitive, and employment becomes less sure the "fun" has slowly been leaking out of Canada's campuses. While her measurement of fun is fairly narrow - consisting of mostly beer and the opposite sex - it is undoubtedly a proud tradition of fun that Canadian Uni's have been well known for. What happens when students stop pranking? When they stop hitting the sauce, debating and creating things that sharp thinking mature adults never would? Is this a critical step in adolescent creativity, discovery and exploration that has gone missing, and is our education more impoverished for it?

The Way, the Truth and Philip Jenkins

A generous h/t to Oli'O who, in this space, made the very same criticism of Jenkin's last Boston Globe piece as Alan Jacobs in the March issue of First Things. This latest issue is very good, btw, and Jean Bethke Elshtain's piece on "While Europe Slept" deserves plenty of attention I hope to give it.

Rethinking Sabbath

It was almost a month ago that I was struck - with an almost physical trauma - about how profoundly impoverished my practice of "Sabbath" is. Listening to Lauren Winner about a month ago I re-encountered some of her reflections on Jewish Sabbath. She tells a story of staying in the home of an Orthodox Jewish couple in New York. Finally, after succumbing to frustration Lis Harris, the woman of the story, asks over dinner "why God cares whether or not she microwaves a frozen dinner on Friday night." The response:

What happens when we stop working and controlling nature? When we don't operate machines, or pick flowers, or pluck fish from the sea?... When we cease interfering in the world we are acknowledging that it is God's world.

This Lent I am rethinking Sabbath, and as a first, small step I am "ceasing to create" vocationally in its space: not writing, not reading, not debating or meeting about policy, politics, philosophy, theology and more. A very small step. I wonder what other practices of Sabbath exist here that I could learn from, in this Lenten period of reflection?

Financial Wars

I think that apocalyptic concerns about the relationship between wars and economic downturns are slightly exagerrated, but I want to take the relationship between war and economics in a slightly different direction.

There have been a lot of comparisons and critiques thereof of our current economic situation and the great depression of the 1930's. Likewise, there have been a lot of comparisons and critiques thereof of the way out of the economic doldrums, with some suggesting that it was government spending in the shape of the new deal that lead the way out of the dirty thirties, while others suggest that it was in fact the industrializing and expenditures associated with the second world war which were responsible (these are, admittedly, very general statements).

I wonder if the debate on whether it was social spending or war that brought us out of the doldrums is really the most important one to be having, or whether more attention should be paid to the increase in bottom line government budgets which took place in the 1930-40's and what seems to be the next step forward in increasing the size of government budgets. I'd like to see some more discussion in Canadian dialogue as to whether or not we are comfortable increasing the amount of money (and it's our money after all) being spent by the state as an institution. And, let me be clear, I am not necessarily making a libertarian argument, nor a partisan one. After all, the Conservative government in Canada has proven to be the biggest spender in Canadian history.

For explicit discussion: do we feel comfortable with what seems to be a giant step up in state expenditures? What does that mean for us as citizens, for our communities that are not the state? Does it strengthen them, or weaken them? Is it just? Winston Churchill was uncomfortable with it as war loomed, and then progressed. Then it became normal. Is the discomfort many of us are feeling about such massive government expenditures about to become the new normal?