Up in the air

I've never been very good at juggling more than one thing at a time, and now it's worse than usual. Some people can blog on the run -- I can't. It just makes my thoughts more disjointed than ever and the whole point, for me at least, is to try to make sense, even when I fall short.

Anyway, right now I'm in the midst of the latest health crisis with my mother, who is 84, and who lives alone in the Midwest in the house I grew up in. My brother and his family are in Seattle; I and my family are here in New York. We have been struggling with the difficulty of taking care of her long distance for a long time, worrying much about her and, at the same time, trying to respect her wishes, which have always been founded in a fierce determination to stay in the house, the only place she has lived since leaving her own parents' home when she married, something like 56 years ago. There is no family locally anymore and most of her friends are dead, too feeble to visit much or help at all, or moved away. She has a woman she pays to clean, take her to the doctor's, etc., and last year she managed to pass her driver's license road test to keep her license, and back then managed to drive herself to the bank and drugstore drive up windows from time to time (not a good idea, but no one could stop her). She hasn't even done that for a long time, however, and she will not take Meals on Wheels, so she forgets to eat or take her medications on time, gets mentally fuzzy and weak, and only goes out to see her doctor, who keeps saying there's nothing wrong with her but being old, as she struggles with incontinence and other issues, no longer able to work her computer and barely able to manage the telephone, unwilling to subscribe to cable t.v., so not doing much but read books when she can and talk to us on the phone.

A few weeks ago she passed out or nearly passed out or something and called the paramedics with her Lifeline. They came and found her with very low blood sugar. She revived enough that she refused to go to the hospital (fearing ending up in nursing home care), and then tried to make sure she got someone to bring her meals regularly and take her medications as prescribed. She sounded much better within a couple days, but a week or so ago she started having trouble keeping any food down and became dehydrated and mentally very confused. My brother and I called her several times, talked to some friends and neighbors who had seen her, talked to the doctor who kept insisting nothing was wrong or different, and finally, when one of her friends called me and reported that she still was not keeping any food down, even soup, I made some calls and got her taken to the hospital. They put her on i.v. feeding, drastically cut back on her medications, and she was sounding 5 years younger and sharper and overall much better with 24 hours, but they could not find out why she was not keeping food down. They finally concluded it was "gastritis" (o.k. stomach was irritated, but why?) and were about to discharge her, although she was still physically much weaker than she had been.

To make a very long story short, she is now in rehab at a local nursing home, and once again we've got to decide what happens next, with none of the realistic options being what she wants, some tension and life-long difficulty communicating between me and my brother, the problems of dealing with any of this long distance, and our own normally busy lives with our family, jobs, etc. There have been days like last Friday when I was finishing work articles and trying to keep in touch with my daughter, who was taking her big European History AP exam in the afternoon, going off to track meet far away from here, and my supposedly picking her up and taking her nearly 3 hours in the opposite direction for a weekend college showcase soccer tournament, while my brother had important business meetings and presentations to attend to, and I needed to be the one making the calls to the doctor, hospital, and nursing home. Then, just when I thought things were getting difficult for me, in the midst of a beautiful, sunny spring afternoon on the soccer fields, I heard the story of Mary Frances and her family ("When words fail" below), which made both heartsick for her, her husband, and their surviving daughter, and thankful that my own problems were pretty mundane in comparison.

Well, I never give the "short" version of anything, do I? Anyway, this is my way of saying that blogging is not on the top of the list of my priorities anytime soon. Just got home at 2:30 a.m. this morning after picking up my son from college last night, have much work to do, contemplating various travel plans to the Midwest, and have one more big soccer tournament gig out of state for Memorial Day weekend, not to mention more track meets and yes, there is church in the midst of it all.

So, I guess my long unfinished essay on "What does science have to do with it?" will remain in pieces for now. And I will not be able to figure out a way to talk about the most peculiar thing in Steven Pinker's article, "The Stupidity of Dignity," which I read earlier in The New Republic (now featured at The Lead). It was kind of snarky quote on his part, but it suggests to me some of the underlying pathology among some of the neo-Puritans (although in this case it was a neo-con Roman Catholic). Just in case someone misses it, it was this quote by Pinker from Leon Kass:

Worst of all from this point of view are those more uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice cream cone -- a catlike activity that has been made acceptable in informal America but that still offends those who know eating in public is offensive. ... Eating on the street -- even when undertaken, say, because one is between appointments and has no other time to eat -- displays [a] lack of self-control: It beckons enslavement to the belly. ... Lacking utensils for cutting and lifting to mouth, he will often be seen using his teeth for tearing off chewable portions, just like any animal. ... This doglike feeding, if one must engage in it, ought to be kept from public view, where, even if we feel no shame, others are compelled to witness our shameful behavior.

(Pinker, "The Stupidity of Dignity").

Always the worry that people will somehow enjoy themselves too much, never mind that health, life, and love are always on the brink of being lost. I'll never get what all the fuss is about.

Anyway, there will be little or no blog activity for awhile, while I get back to the muddle of my life and try to find some order if not peace in it. Prayers continuing for everyone else, my friends and acquaintances online and in RL, especially those struggling with the horrific losses and mounting challenges due to the tragic events in China and Myanmar.

What does science have to do with it? (Part 1)

[Originally written 5/04/08]

A week or so ago, discussion at Fr. Jake's produced the following question and response (among others). First, the question from Peter:

The issue ... is whether homosexuality is biologically or genetically determined or not. That's not a question to do with one's moral attitude towards those who have a homosexual orientation or who behave homosexually (not always the same people) but simply a question of scientific fact. . . . A large part of the TEC argument in their presentation to the 2005 AAC was that since homosexuality is a natural biological variation in humanity, it was a justice issue that a normal variation in humanity shouldn't be condemned. If however, the science shows this not to be the case, then what we have is in fact a deep-seated human behaviour, perhaps with genetic or biological predisposers but ultimately an environmentally produced phenomena, similar to other forms of human emotional response. This would then put it on the same category as things like kindness, anger, paedophilia, liking soft cheese, all human behaviours for which we recognise complicated patterns of formation. Without the clear scientific evidence of biological/genetic causation the justice argument falls apart

One response came from a scientist, IT:

...As a professional geneticist (although not one who studies homosexuality; my gig is cancer research), and a professor who teaches the subject, may I point out YET AGAIN that someone does not understand genetics.

Almost no complex traits can be traced to a single gene. Okay? NONE. Not even blue eyes/brown eyes, although they are pretty close. Certainly nothing as complex as behavior.

Even in fruitflies.

Nothing complex is solely nature or nurture, but both. You may have the genes to be 7 feet tall but if you aren 't eating a good diet you won't get there.

There are plenty of studies showing that human sexuality exists on a continuum, not a binary. It's extremely complex.

However, there are also plenty of studies showing a very strong genetic component to homosexuality; it may not be the single gene absolute concordance that the conservatives want (see preceding) but it is vastly, vastly higher than chance.

Go read Pubmed if you want the citations...The VAST majority of medical and psychiatric opinion is clear on the subject...

Jake reposted part of the question and response here as well as some resources on the "Nature and/or Nurture" debate. The discussion that followed was enlightening in many respects. However, it did not quite pin down what science has to do with the moral issues that raise these questions in the first place, although one person (Scott) commented:

The temptation presented to the Christian tradition by the scientific study of the genetics of human sexuality is either to use that study to "prove" that variations away from thorough heterosexuality are sinful, or that they are not. Such direct application of scientific analysis (in either direction) wholly ignores the theological richness of the questions of "relatedness" (love) and "separation" (sin).

I think most would agree that the scientific answers to the question of the nature and origins of human sexual orientation cannot resolve the moral issues. Yet people on both sides seem to think the science is relevant, even though at some point those who condemn homosexual behavior say they do not care how "good" or "natural" or biologically determined it may be because God has (supposedly) given the last word on the subject in the Bible.

When words fail

words fail
standing on the sidelines
hearing a friend
tell of a friend
whose mom died
and two weeks later
her daughter
killed herself at home
violently
turtleneck up to her chin
in the casket
prayers?
yes, I will write the words
but what comfort
can they give?
she, her husband
and their younger daughter,
the one we knew,
have survived and must go on
in such pain and grief
I cannot imagine
they say bad things
do happen
to good people,
but this should not be
not to them
not Mary Frances, especially,
whose warmth and smiles
have always cheered me so
when I was tired or distant.
I know - children are dying
mothers are mourning
everywhere,
but these I knew
words
fail

Perry Miller and the Puritans

Random thoughts sparked by The Lead and my long buried memories of reading Perry Miller:

Jim Naughton has pointed to the excellent article by Tim Townsend, "Love Thy Neighbor," in the recent edition of the Columbia Journalism Review. The closing section, detailing Townsend's run-in with the dark forces of the blogosphere is sobering, to say the least.

I noticed the following passage in the opening about New England Puritans, as described by Perry Miller, the famous historian of American intellectual history:

What Winthrop had in mind was a political system whose top priority would be, as the historian Perry Miller wrote, “the duty of suppressing heresy, of subduing or somehow getting rid of dissenters—of being, in short, deliberately, vigorously, and consistently intolerant.” The Puritans believed they, like the Israelites of the Hebrew scriptures, had a covenant with God. And they believed that fellow colonists like Roger Williams, who preached religious tolerance, could go straight to hell. Or barring that, Rhode Island.

("Love Thy Neighbor" p. 1).

Anyone who studied Perry Miller and the Puritans know that while this was, indeed, a part of the history, the New England Puritans were a complex and fascinating lot, with some brilliant minds and positive contributions to American culture along with the negative. The dark side, however, comes through even in this excerpt from a summary of Perry Miller's work:

By the late 1650s, the Puritan experiment in New England experienced significant challenges. Of the great founders only Richard Mather (father of Increase) remained. New England Puritans were increasingly an isolated Protestant sect, particularly in light of the relative religious toleration adopted in England. "New England had become, by remaining faithful to its radical dedication, a stronghold of reaction" (p. 9) Moreover, "New England was no longer a reformation, it was an administration. It was no longer battling that most of the populace should be left out of church-fellowship, but was striving to keep church-fellowship alive" (p. 11). .... During the second half of the seventeenth century, other factors emerged to further erode the original vision of the city upon a hill. Trade emerged as an end unto itself, not to serve God; younger generations in increasing numbers failed to meet the tests for church membership; old social hierarchies and orders were upset; social vices such as drunkenness and extramarital fornication became more prevalent, and the colonial status within the empire changed. Ministers responded to the perceived erosion of religious values and mission with the jeremiad, a new literary form that took aim at all the sin and strove to make sense of the changes in society. The jeremiad was a way of "making intelligible order out of the transition from European to American experience" (p. 31); it was, according to Miller, "purgation by incantation" (p. 34).

Ministers were increasingly on the defensive. Largely at their behest, the Half-Way Covenant was adopted as a means of assuring the perpetuation of church membership. They found, however, that the measures, though enacted, were bitterly divisive....

Donald A. Duhadaway, Jr, "Perry Miller and the Puritans."

Covenants formulated by the Puritans seem to have never been a good idea.

I smell a rat

The Lead tells us that The Telegraph is reporting:

The Vatican said last night that the time has come for the Anglican Church to choose between Protestantism and the ancient sacramental Churches of Rome and Orthodoxy. Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, told the Catholic Herald that the Anglican Communion must “clarify its identity” and stop hovering between the Catholic and Protestant traditions. He said: “Ultimately, it is a question of the identity of the Anglican Church. Where does it belong? Does it belong more to the Churches of the first millennium – Catholic and Orthodox – or does it belong more to the Protestant churches of the 16th century?

Add this bit of news to the following perspective from Alasdair MacIntyre. As you may recall, McIntyre was the author whose premise Archbishop Rowan Willliams addressed in his recent lecture on "Religious Faith and Human Rights" (excerpt here at "You can't make this stuff up"). McIntyre is a British philosopher, former Marxist, now Roman Catholic, who has taught at U.S. universities since 1969.

I recently picked up McIntyre's book Whose Justice, Which Rationality?, which addresses some of the questions that Archbishop Williams talks about in his lecture. Basically, both men agree that some kind of academic (well, they would call it "rational") formulation of morality and justice is necessary and that religion and philosophy should endeavor to do this. Rowan, however, speculates how some basic universal human rights might be formulated across cultures based on his notion of human "embodiment."

I am not interested now in the substance of their philosophy but rather the posture from which they begin to speculate. Take this from McIntyre, for example:

Private citizens are thus for the most part left to their own devices in these matters. Those of them who do not, very understandably, abandon any attempt to think through such issues systematically are generally able to discover only two major types of resource: those provided by the enquiries and discussions of modern academic philosophy and those provided by more or less organized communities of shared belief, such as churches or sects, religious and nonreligious, or certain kinds of political association.

* * * *
We thus inhabit a culture in which an inability to arrive at agreed rationally justifiable conclusions on the nature of justice and practical rationality coexists with appeals by contending social groups to sets of rival and conflicting convictions unsupported by rational justification. Neither the voices of academic philosophy, nor for that matter, any other academic discipline, nor those of the partisan subcultures, have been able to provide for ordinary citizens a way of uniting conviction on such matters with rational justification. Disputed questions concerning justice and practical rationality are thus treated in the public realm, not as a matter for rational enquiry, but rather for the assertion and counterassertion of alternative and incompatible sets of premises.

Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (U. Of Notre Dame Press: 2003) at p. 3 and p. 5-6.

Now I'm all for looking for ways people can better understand themselves and each other and to guide public policymaking and the law. Reason certainly has a role to play (and the absence of it is often a lamentable fact of public life -- as anyone in the U.S. surely knows after watching CNN and Fox News last night). But these gentlemen seem to really believe that top-down thinking is what is needed, and if they could only somehow reassemble and/or rework the historical (mostly religious, notwithstanding Rowan's foray into "embodied" states) bases of Western ethics and morality AND (this is key) have the results handed down and imposed by the ruling elites (church and/or state, both apparently informed by the academicians), to us poor "private" citizens who do not have the time and the talent to work it all out for ourselves, then, well, things would be much better. The suggestion from the Vatican that what is needed is an alliance and maybe someday a single hierarchy of the "orthodox" to fully articulate and impose such rules only adds further insult, but seems to be along the same line of thinking as that of McIntyre and Williams.

Aside from the high-on-the-distant-academic-hill posture both seem to take, there is something fundamentally at odds with what contemporary science (neuroscience, development psychology, anthropology, evolutionary psychology, etc. ) tells us about how most healthy human beings develop a sense of morality and act upon it. There is great controversy within and across these fields, but I suspect that today most everyone scientifically informed would agree that humans do not simply "learn" morality from a set of rules expressly given to them (at least not in terms of conventional moral instruction in the classroom or similar settings). In other words, the notion of a "tabla rasa" mind on which any rules can be written by those who choose to teach them is inaccurate, at best. However it is that we acquire some sense of morality, it seems to come very early in life, and is only later developed and expanded upon by experience and the social environment. Even then, what we learn as social conventions can be overridden by our deeper, perhaps unconscious notions and feelings about what is moral, what is right or wrong, which we have even when there are no specific rules to follow or some authority to strictly enforce them. Writing or rewriting social rules does not necessarily change our behavior, nor does making them more logical or consistent necessarily make them more attractive or persuasive.

While it still may be useful to rationally sort out and better articulate what we think we know is right and to consider, to the extent we can, altering our belief systems when our ideas, communications , or behaviors are illogical, it is doubtful that most people think or act based on the kind of reasoning supposed by McIntyre -- even those, like himself, who have the time and grey matter to ponder various questions. What I find particularly interesting are those studies among children that suggest that healthy children can distinguish between morality and social conventions (i.e. notions of what is right and wrong without any authority to back them up or enforce them as distinct from those that are authority-dependent), but children with psychopathic tendencies have great difficulty drawing the distinction. In other words,

[Psychopaths] identify both kinds of transgressions as transgressions, as infringements of the rules, but they are unable to say which are wrong only because of the rules. Because they cannot make this distinction, they seem to be missing the ability to make moral judgments at all. Hence their emotional deficit explains and underlies a deficit at moral cognition, and not merely moral action.

[From Moral Minds" by Neil Levy at Neuroethics]. Some have speculated that it has something to do with the lack of empathy among the latter group, and that empathy has something to do with the development of moral faculties. [All this from various sources, inspired by Dan's read of Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong by Marc Hauser, including the post " the article "Do the Right Thing" by Rebecca Saxe at the Boston Review, and an interview with Hauser, "Is Morality Innate and Universal?" at Discover magazine.]

All this makes me wonder at those who truly believe that a well-articulated and detailed set of moral rules -- especially those supposedly immutably set in scripture, or even those crafted by a Magisterium and/or academic philosophers and theologicans -- is necessary for the purpose of teaching people so that they will simply follow what they are told (as if we were all psychopaths and had no internal sense of right or wrong and thus needed the rules laid out in front of us at all times). I can understand why reflection, consideration, and discussion of moral issues, the history and rationale behind our rules and principles, may be both good and helpful for some purposes, but the implication that "private citizens" will not and cannot ever be "moral" in any but incoherent (and, therefore, presumably undesirable) ways by simply living in and growing up in human society, rather than "learning" morality from a closed, entirely logically consistent philosophical system, seems rather astonishing to me.

It at least gives me pause reading about Marc Hauser's research. which suggests that one's religious beliefs (different religions or lack of any) make no difference in how one makes moral judgments. While these results are not unassailable, one wonders if some kind of innate moral sense (or at least one developed very early in life) works together with what parents and others in the social environment model in their behaviors to make us "moral." While the rules of social convention and later the rationalization of both one's moral sense and the rules may enforce certain moral values, I wonder if they are not more after-the-fact understandings of what we already think we know and feel. That does not mean that they are immutable for a lifetime, but the notion that if everyone only understood and agreed to abide by and strictly enforce certain rules (even assuming God's grace is factored in for the Christians), and that if we had REALLY smart and wise people articulating the rules (whether from their own systems of thought and/or based on how they interpret holy texts), we'd all be better off seems to lose sight of the complexity of human thought, emotions, and behaviors, and the physical bodies in which they originate and act.

At a later date, I want to work through some of this and consider what I think, as a layperson, that science can tell us about the contexts in which we both act and try to rationalize moral sensibility, ethical principles, and the laws and social conventions that may be formulated based, at least in part, on reason. The whole "Nature and/or Nurture Debate" at Jake's the other week has got me thinking about these matters a great deal. But for now all I can suggest is that the McIntyre/Williams approach from academic philosophy needs to be compared to various ideas from both social and physical sciences (and all the cross-disciplinary thinking going on in and beyond the margins), and all of it needs considerable scrutiny in the light of commonsense and experience.

[P.S. I apologize for my repetition, dense language, and tortured sentences. This did not help my blog-readability score -- or attract readers -- I'm sure. But it's the best I can do for now. ]

The private drama of salvation

Thanks to a recommendation from Mystical Seeker and link from Adrian Worsfield (Pluralist Speaks), I've been reading Bruce Sanguin's, Darwin, Divinity, and the Dance of the Cosmos: An Ecological Christianity. This part leaped off the page at me:

Take salvation. The word itself means to make whole, or to heal. For at least the last 300 years, the church has regarded the planet as a kind of background stage upon which the drama of private salvation has been played out. Most of Christianity continues to be involved in what Thomas Berry calls a "redemption mystique." We are obsessed with our sinfulness and whether we're "saved." The purpose of Jesus' death, according to this fall/redemption model, was to redeem us from our innate depravity, thus saving our souls for eternal life, in a heavenly realm, somewhere beyond this universe. The vast majority of Christians are so focused on their own "salvation," or on saving others, that they are blind the deterioration of the very ecosystems that sustain their private dramas. Even in those denominations, like my own, that have moved beyond thinking that God is primarily concerned with the salvation of private souls, we still focus almost exclusively on the human realm of creation. It's time we place the salvation (healing) of the planet in the foreground of our mission concerns.

Darwin, Divinity, and the Dance of the Cosmos (Wood Lakes Publishing, 2007) at pp.29-30.

The ecological crisis is something that has increasingly drawn the attention of some Christian evangelicals, as reported in the press here in the U.S. for the last year or so. But the point is still a valid one, that a great many people who profess to be Christians are almost exclusively focused on the "private drama" of their own salvation. Even Martin Luther might be surprised at the extent to which people today preach, talk, and blog about our individual relationships with God.

It's something we might all keep in mind, but quite frankly, this struck me most in terms of where, I think, the neo-Calvinists get off track with their focus on sin and damnation. It should go without saying that we all sin, individually and collectively, and that we dare not be complacent when we fall short. But it seems bizarrely self-centered and anthrocentric to act as if the fate of all Creation turns on our individual struggles and efforts to "save" ourselves and other individual human beings. Yes, God loves each and every one of us and each is as valuable as the next, as well as our companion creatures, elements, and energy in Creation. But our private dramas are not the be and end all, and what good we can do, with God's grace, is not for us, not for getting us into heaven (what or wherever), but for the whole shebang.

Remembering Aslan

Screenshot of Aslan from the movie The Chronicles of Narnia:
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe © Walden Media

The movie, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005 Walt Disney version), was shown on network television last night. I happened to catch the end, which never fails to move me deeply on account of the memories it stirs of my first reading. Although this version has some weaknesses in other areas, including the final ending, it does a magnificent job of portraying the events immediately preceding and following the sacrifice of Aslan.

As many will recall, (*spoiler alert for those who do not know the story), Edmund, the boy who was tempted by the White Witch and betrayed his brother and sisters and all the good creatures of Narnia, is rescued and finally apologizes for his conduct. The White Witch, however, reappears and demands that Edmund be presented to her, citing the law that anyone who commits treachery in Narnia must be punished by her by death. Edmund's brothers and sisters and all the other good Narnia creatures, who had just been rejoicing at his return, look on despairing, not knowing what will become of Edmund. Aslan, the wise and powerful Great Lion, speaks. He acknowledges that the White Witch has correctly stated the law but he asks her to step aside to confer with him privately. They go off together and then return to the throngs of creatures on both sides who await their decision. Aslan looks sad and resigned. The White Witch looks elated but wary. Aslan then announces that the White Witch has renounced her claim on Edmund. The children and the creatures devoted to Aslan are happy and relieved. The White Witch then asks how can she be sure Aslan will keep his promise. Aslan roars loudly, causing her to retreat in haste.

Aslan and his followers return to their camp and prepare for the great battle. Aslan seems dejected and the others worry. Later that night, Lucy and Susan cannot sleep and discover that Aslan has left the pavilion and run and find him. He agrees to take them with him as long as they agree to go back when he asks them to. They travel on, the girls riding on his back, their hands deep in his fur and mane. He welcomes their comfort but remains sad and gloomy. Finally they all reach the Stone Table, the point where he must part with them. The girls turn back but instead of leaving, hide in the bushes.

The White Witch and her monstrous followers arrive. The Witch orders Aslan bound. He lies down and does not resist. His eyes show his pain and humiliation. The Witch, who appears to be about to kill him, stops suddenly, and thinks to order that Aslan be shaved. Her followers relish this task, holding up chunks of the great mane, and kicking and jeering at the supposedly all powerful Aslan. The Witch then has Aslan placed on the Stone Table. She raises her knife above him but pauses to tell him that while his death will appease the Deep Magic, and satisfy the need to punish Edmund as traitor, once Aslan is gone there will be nothing to prevent her from killing Edmund anyway. Aslan looks up in pain. Lucy and Susan, who are watching, turn their eyes away as the knife comes down, and look up to see him dead.

The Witch and her followers leave, Aslan's body remaining on the table. When all are gone, Lucy and Susan go to Aslan and embrace him once again. Tearfully they try to remove the ties that had bound him. They spend the rest of the night with him, crying with their arms and hands around him. Then morning comes. The girls notice mice running over Aslan's body. Susan tries to shoo them but Lucy stops her when she sees that they are nibbling the remaining cords that bound Aslan. Suddenly there is a loud, deafening noise, and the Stone Table cracks in two. Aslan's body vanishes. Then the girls look up and see Aslan standing, alive again. They rush to him and wonder if they have seen a ghost. But he reassures them he is real, as they feel his warm breath on them again. Aslan explains that if the White Witch had read further in the Deep Magic, she would have known that when a willing, innocent victim is killed by a traitor, the Stone Table will crack and death will be reversed.

This is not quite the end of the story because the great battle remains to be fought and the White Witch killed, but it is the apex. What surprised me when I first read it was that I knew it was coming, in part because I had heard something about the scene somewhere and knew of C.S. Lewis's reputation as a Christian writer, and in part because of all the Christian imagery and ideas planted in the story all along. Yet, when reading the book and even seeing the movie scene for the umpteenth time, I still felt suspense, tremendous dread, anguish and concern about what might happen and how it would all turn out.

Maybe I'm just one of those deeply affected by a story well told (or dramatized). Yet these scenes move me in ways that even I cannot explain. When I first read the book, I was already well into middle age, back in church, drawn to the Eucharist, accepting of the creeds, first received as a Lutheran, and later confirmed as an Episcopalian. The Lutheran pastor who had brought me back had given me copies of The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity (which I gratefully skimmed but put aside in favor of Luther's Large Catechism), and later I tried to read Narnia off and on, in the spirit of my newly found Anglicanism. But it took ordering the complete set a few years later, thinking my son might want to read them, that finally got me from The Magician's Nephew through to those scenes in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. And once I got there, I cried and cried. And something changed, something that had begun when I took my first Eucharist, later observed Lent and Holy Week, the Stations of the Cross, Good Friday, and Easter Vigil, but had not yet been completed. It was as if something was still held back, though I did not know it, something that broke through some otherwise unmemorable weekend afternoon, book in hand, as Aslan came to life, died, and was resurrected.

Watching the movie again last night it struck me, what I think I realized at the time, that here at last was a Jesus I could really know, touch, and hold, like Lucy and Susan. Somehow, after many years of finding the figure of Jesus off-putting -- only finally being able to separate him from his fundagelical image by abstracting him, even as suffering and dying on the Cross, and taking him whole in the bread and the wine as a faceless, formless Trinitarian One -- that big, warm-blooded, furry, wild and powerful but compassionate Aslan finally made me feel what it is like to really know Jesus, to see and know what he did for us, and what it meant for him to give and for us to receive his sacrifice, just as if I had been there and witnessed it myself. Somehow this took me from a desperately wanting to not just believe but to see and feel something that was not just out of books or even creeds. Faith became flesh.

I suppose this all seems hopelessly sentimental. Responding to Narnia this way at all takes a certain kind of cultural mindset about animals and fantasy literature. I noticed in this morning's Epistle there was a reference to lions, the kind who devour people and other animals. And for those, like me, who may think of Aslan in part due to our relations with pets (cats and dogs), such feelings no doubt would not be shared by people in places like Rwanda where dogs scavenge and eat dead humans killed by war or genocide.

But I know a great many bloggers out there who have not only enjoyed but learned from their relationships with their pets. These relationships are especially important to humans who have struggled with betrayal and hurt from fellow humans, who can appreciate the faithfulness of their pets (yes, I know, cats and dogs differ in how they express and act on it), and can know something of God's love through them, as part of Creation. I'm not saying pets are human, and certainly not that Aslan is the equivalent or perfect representative of Jesus, but there is something marvelous about the simple, direct way Lucy and Susan reach out and touch Aslan, and he allows them to touch and embrace him, follow, weep over him, and finally be the first to see his return from the dead. It is that simple and direct relationship that many of us jeopardize when we get too bound up in doctrine or theology. And it is one I am thankfully reminded of whenever I see this story.

You can't make this stuff up

Sorry, I cannot resist.

.... If the state legislates against sexual violence and abuse, as it must, it is because of the recognition that this is an area in which the liberty to make sense of or with one's own body is most often put at risk by predatory behaviour on the part of others.

So: equal liberty is at root inseparable from the equality of being embodied. Rights belong not to the person who can demonstrate capacity or rationality but to any organism that can be recognised as a human body, at any stage of its organic development. If the body cannot be property, it will always be carrying meanings or messages that are inalienably its own. And this opens up the second area in which aspects of Christian theology offer a foundation for a discourse of universal rights. Thus far, the emphasis has been upon the view from within, as it were – the body as carrier of the soul's meaning, the body as 'formed', given intelligible shape, by the continuing self called into being by God. But the process by which the body realises its communicative nature, by which it becomes concretely and actively a locus of meaning is a process in which the body receives and digests communication. The individual communicates meaningfully when s/he is decoding and responding to the meanings that are present to him or her; the full development of the particular body's freedom to communicate is realised in the process of understanding and managing and responding to the communications that are being received.

The human other is thus essential to my own growth as a communicative being, a bearer of meaningful messages that cannot be silenced; my own liberty not to be silenced, not to have my body reduced to someone else's instrument, is nourished by the equal liberty of the other not to be silenced. And, in the framework we have been using, this is identified as the central feature of the community created by the Christian gospel. Slave and owner are not merely bound to a common divine Master, they are bound in a relation of mutuality according to which each becomes the bearer of necessary gifts to the other. The relation of each to the Master is such that each is given some unique contribution to the common life, so that no one member of the community is able fully to realise their calling and their possibilities without every other. Not killing or not abusing the slave is for the slaveowner the necessary implication of recognising that the slave is going to be his or her benefactor in ways that may never be visible or obvious but are nonetheless vital.

The dignity accorded to the human other is not, then, a recognition that they may be better than they seem, but simply a recognition that what they have to say (welcome or unwelcome, intelligible or unintelligible, convergent or divergent) could in certain circumstances be the gift of God. Not every human other is a fellow-member of the Body of Christ in the biblical sense; but the universal command to preach the gospel to all prohibits any conclusion that this or that person is incapable of ever hearing and answering God's invitation, and therefore mandates an attitude of receptivity towards them. Not silencing the other or forcing their communication into your own agenda is part of remaining open to the communication of God – which may come even through the human other who is most repellent or opaque to sympathy. The recognition of a dignity that grounds the right to be heard is the recognition of my own need to receive as fully as I can what is being communicated to me by another being made by God. It compels that stepping back from control or manipulation of the other which we so often seek for our security, so as to hear what we cannot generate for ourselves. And it should be clear, incidentally. . . .

Archibishop Rowan Willams"Religious Faith and Human Rights" lecture.

So gang rape, beatings, torture, and smashing or slashing or exploding people to bits is all about silencing their communicative facilities, their liberty to make sense with their bodies, to code and decode, to speak and communicate with others? Am I missing something here? I'm a lawyer and a literature major and a great lover of words of all kinds, but golly, gee, isn't there more to life, not to mention eternity, than Saussure and semiotics?

I honestly do respect the desire and the effort to struggle to find what the Archbishop calls "robust language" for universal human rights, and I do not pretend I could do any better myself, but... It's not just the squirrely language, it's the impression that bodies and people and human suffering are abstractions, not real, bloody, messy, smelly, hurtful and hurting things, that disturbs me.

Why Bother?

One of the chief hazards of blog reading, not to mention writing, is the speed at which ideas and emotions are encountered and the speed at which one reacts. I am a rather reactive sort to begin with, so I try to make myself slow down, but the difficulty I have focusing makes it hard to resist the temptation to jot things down as they hit me. Then new information floods in, I turn in my tracks, and wonder if I should just say "oops, sorry I missed that!" or carry on and let others figure out that I'm simply off in another direction and let them decide whether it's worth their while to try to follow my current path.

After reading here and there this morning (prompted by Rowan Williams latest foray into philosophizing ("Religious Faith and Human Rights" lecture, aptly summarized in different ways by Mad Priest in "Grand Tufti argues that gay people are not recognizably human" and by Fr. Tobias in "Embodied Fel(in)icty"), I have discovered that Jonathan's earlier inquiry "Why bother?" (from "Is there Moral Atheism?") regarding the search for a reason for universal moral principles with or without a concept of God is at the heart of what Rowan Williams was trying to address -- the questions posed in particular by the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre in his books After Virtue and Whose Justice, Which Rationality? and other writings (see also article links here). Now, let me quickly say that the fact that some ex-British Marxist now Thomist philosopher and the Archbishop of Canterbury have addressed Jonathan's question does not suddenly make it more credible or worthy (on the contrary). However, seen in the context of what I've been able to glean briefly from MacIntyre's writings (as summarized by others), I now think I understand it a lot better.

The basic premise of Whose Justice, Which Rationality? is that the Enlightenment ideal of universal philosophy is unachievable, that no moral philosophy can stand outside its particular sociological and historical context. As Matthew Ray described it:

... Whose Justice, Which Rationality? argues that certain social traditions - such as the Christian religious tradition - embody conceptions of rational enquiry within them, so that what makes for a rational reason to act, for example, can only be answered by accepting the philosophical commitments of a given tradition in the first place. On this view, what justifies a theory is 'the rational superiority of that particular structure to all previous attempts within that particular tradition to formulate such theories and principles', Whose Justice, Which Rationality? There is thus no conception of rationality to be found over and above any tradition, no possibility of an objective rationality outside - and therefore able to adjudicate between - all traditions.

(From "Philosopher of the Month") October 2002, The Philosopher's Magazine). This work builds on earlier work, including After Virtue, which draws upon Nietzsche and Thomas Kuhn, and the notion that contemporary Western moral philosophy is mutually and sometimes internally incoherent.

In this context, I can better appreciate the thrust of Jonathan's question. I would still maintain my skepticism, at least about what can be gained through such inquiries other than the satisfaction of intellectual play, while meanwhile culture and politics grind on, with little or no regard for what the philosophers or theologians may say. But dropping names like Nietzsche and Kuhn is enough to whet my intellectual appetite, even though I suspect that I might do better listening to the likes of Augusta Victoria and Clumber++. While "moral relativism" is often a red herring, I am intrigued with anyone's efforts at exploring how one can or should work with traditional notions of ethics and morality in the context of one's own culture and dare to seek to impose them (preferably with more persuasion than force) on others. I also ponder something of the reverse of Jonathan's question (insofar as it asks how can it be done without reference to God), in terms of whether the church, as an institution, inevitably must fail (see Theo Hobson's "Oh thou great irredeemable") -- never mind MacIntyre's apparent great faith in St. Thomas Acquinas as the beacon for us all.

I will have to read further to see if I can discern what Williams and MacIntyre are talking about, or at least whether I want to inquire further. However, one summary of MacIntyre that gave me pause was the following:

MacIntyre wants to overthrow the liberal capitalist ideology that currently dominates the world both in the realm of ideas and in its manifestations in political and social institutions and actions. He seeks to achieve this not through the use of force but by changing how people think about, understand, and act in the world. To show that the changes he wants are possible and desirable, he returns to an older conception of morality, derived from the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas and ultimately, through Aquinas, the philosophy of Aristotle and the way of life of the Athenian polis. He portrays this older conception of morality as both superior to and fundamentally hostile to the modern order, and his philosophical arguments are meant to help restore it to the world. On the other hand, he understands that liberal capitalism has tremendous power and appeal both in the world of ideas and in the power it has over people in the social, political, and economic spheres. Ultimately his recommendation is that the particular conditions of the modern world require that those who agree with his arguments should, to the greatest possible degree, withdraw from the world into communities where the old morality can be kept alive until the time is right for it to re-emerge.

(from Introduction, "The Political Philosophy of Alsadair MacIntyre" by Ted Clayton, Central Michigan University, for the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

Personally, I could care less what boxes of Left or Right, Liberal or Conservative, in which anyone's thoughts might fall. There are both silly and thoughtful comments about MacIntyre's books over at Amazon.com speculating as to whether MacIntyre is reactionary, left or right. But there does seem to be an alarming trend among the radical left turned whatever. I wrote earlier about Phillip Bobbitt in "Rowan and his shadow" -- another former British Marxist gone to U.S. academia, taking an odd turn far left to what might be viewed as far right (or simply off the map). I find it intriguing, though not surprising, that these fellows hold such fascination for Rowan Williams. While I can empathize with those on the left (as well as the right) who yearn for certainty, stability, and hope, I wonder whether all of us who have been plagued at various times with a burning sense of righteousness (especially but not only us Baby Boomers), really expect too much of both ideas and the people who hold them. Instead of retreating into the relative safety of communities where the "old morality" reigns (as did those renegade Mormons in Texas?), maybe we should set aside our fears and our arguably petty need for fixing everyone's world view and instead work on feeding the hungry, spend some time in the local soup kitchen and see whether the demons that plague us all are not sprung from modernism, relativism, or philosophic incoherency, but rather the same old, same old problems that have plagued humanity from at least the dawn of history, which no religion, ideology, or science has yet figured out how to "fix" (at least without creating a whole new set and, in the meantime, ignoring how we may be destroying our physical environment in which we continue to muddle and experiment, and the new ways we find to treat both human and non-human creation with disrespect). Why does not Original Sin humble us and lead us to the practical good we know we can do if we put aside our hate, intolerance, and arrogance in thinking we can preach our way out of it, if only we can find the right words, or books, or leaders to guide us?

But who am I to say, sitting here on a Saturday morning in front of the computer with my hyperlinks, open web windows, and stacks of books and papers on the side? Time to shove it all aside for awhile until maybe someday some sense may emerge (or at least until the household chores get done). But here's to Mad Priest for keeping track of the Big Questions and speaking bluntly to all.

If you love me you will keep my commandments

Today's Gospel reading was as follows:

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more, but you will see me, because I live, you will live also. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me; and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love and manifest to him.

John 14:15-21

This struck me as speaking directly to some of the issues raised by Mad Priest about morality (see below). It also reminded me of an exchange Mimi and I had awhile back about reading St. John as a poetic expression of deep and profound spiritual truths rather than a theological tract.

I think that people look for meaning or purpose in their lives based on what they've already internalized as to what is right and wrong, good and bad, purposeful and frivolous. What religion gives is not simply morality and ethics (though indeed religion may be the means by which a society or culture collects, records, and teaches some of its most important values), but rather hope and courage to persevere.

The sermon I heard this morning spoke about motives for seeking and doing God's will. It spoke of the mix of obedience and love, recognizing that limiting and restricting our behavior out of obedience to those rules and commandments that are for our own good is part of what is involved, but what is essential is love, love which brings us opportunities to serve God and others. The fullness of life lived in love is what God truly wills for us all.

When I read these words of John, I know the love Jesus has for me and for all people. I know if I love him, devote my life to him and the good that is with him and is him, it will bear fruit, as it is his love and mercy and grace that will help me keep his commandments and love others, the best I can in light of not only his example but the light he shines into my heart and soul.

That's all. I honestly don't think John is about the business of sorting out what happens to the atheists and those of other faiths. He is urgently speaking to what Jesus can give us, the embrace of his love and the love that may infuse us if we only let it. It's not about giving us some kind of sorting hat. It's about the love of Jesus and how that love can transform lives, despite death and suffering. Jesus will not leave us desolate. He will sustain and hold us up, help us to keep seeking and doing the Father's will, even when we feel weak, discouraged, and despairing. That may sound like nonsense to some, but it's not meant to offer a reasonable philosophy of life or the means for persuading those who want logic or arguments. If only we can let Jesus enter our lives, to know his love, then maybe others will see something in us that resonates with the Good News, and they will hear and understand as well.

None of this precludes teaching and modeling moral behavior in the secular world, studying science, enacting and enforcing civil and criminal laws, and working across religions and cultures to advance fundamental human rights. I think all that is vitally important with or without any particular sectarian religious context. I'm also not sure in today's world whether secular notions of morality and justice are not heads above what most religions offer, or at least the majority of their practitioners. That's why as I endeavor to work and live in a much wider world than that inhabited by my fellow Christians and those of similar social and economic backgrounds, I try to think in terms that can contribute to all different kinds of people working together to accomplish things that may not ever happen if we try to first come to some kind of consensus about religion or philosophy down to minute details. While being part of a local and extended faith community is important as well, it cannot be all simply because even within my city, state, and country, such communities are too fragmented to be all that there is in terms of social and political life.

But in the end, there's just me, the only person I can begin to control, doing my best to love Jesus and hoping that, with God's grace, I can indeed keep his commandments. It is hope that I have in Christ and the warmth and assurance of his love that keep me going. And it is keeping going, picking up when I stumble and starting over, persisting in trying to do what is right, that is the toughest part of all.