Second thoughts on the coroner’s report

In my last post, I wondered about the single image as a summation of a relationship – and I have two further thoughts. More than two, really, but at least two.

Does the image have to be negative? Maybe not, maybe focusing on the negative is part of my problem. What if I simply declare that the abiding image isn’t the abrupt departure, but instead: hiking at dusk around the lake, listening to the whippoorwills? I’d never heard a whippoorwill before, but it was immediately obvious what it was. That’s a nice image, one that obliquely reveals what was good about that relationship (at some point I may have to write out that story, but not now).

What about flying a kite on the beach – not just any kite, but the box kite I had made by hand for you? That starts to get at the paradox of this exercise: the images of hope are filled with more sadness – because it’s ultimately hope unfulfilled – than the actual disappointments I wrote about before. I still have the pictures of that first day, the kite getting smaller and smaller as you let out the line, eventually fully extended, that kite soaring above all the others, holding up in the stiff breeze off the ocean. Why are so many of my later memories, in the different cities in which we lived, individual rather than shared: things I did by myself, or with friends of ours, but almost never with you? Of course there are shared experiences - you telling me about your catered lunch, in detail, because you know I like Chinese food, but me absentmindedly singing over the top of your description because I had stopped listening and really couldn’t care less? Do you remember what song I was singing? But the burden here shifted, something that was my fault; or maybe even simply revealing of the space that had grown between us. In any case, I’m back to a negative summation. The positive images all seem to be early in the relationship, not late.

Other images offer different problems: repeated across relationships, perhaps as an attempt to regain what was appealing about that first one. The uniqueness fades, and little is left of that first image. Or maybe they’re elusive, hidden in a haze of alcohol. How is it that I remember so little of the specifics of the relationship to which all others are compared?

Maybe they’re embarrassing - “NSFW”- and yet in that fact reveal the essential nature of the relationship: but I’m not writing erotica, after all. That I can’t write anything I’d want my kids to read shows why it was doomed, based on something ephemeral, not really the basis for a relationship at all.

Does the positive image come from the uniqueness, or from the repetition? Maybe it depends on the person. Playing gin rummy every night – seriously, we wore out a pack of “uncoated” cards – served as a kind of anchor in an otherwise chaotic relationship. But standing in the parking lot of the Japanese Gardens, one August afternoon (and that’s a story I will tell again, one day) - really does capture a lot of what I like about you. And the paradox reemerges: that makes me profoundly sad, in a way that so-called “sad” images don’t.

That question, repetition or uniqueness, leads to a second question: does the relationship need to be over in order to provide an image, or can there be an abiding image that serves as a lived ideal? And if so, does it come from a single moment that captures, not the attraction, but the bonding? Or the patterns that emerge out of time spent together, forging a common experience? In either case, I would suggest that the image, whether of a pattern or an ideal, needs to be something shared if the relationship is ongoing. That is, if the relationship is over, I can shape my own narrative to fit my needs. You profoundly misunderstood me, I never trusted you, you never trusted me, I realized that I didn’t really like you that much. But if it’s ongoing, those images are part of the narrative that two people are (maybe not consciously) building together. You and I tell the same story: this is who we are.

On a different – but not unrelated – issue: I’ve been accused of not seeing people as they present themselves, but instead constructing theories in my head. Well, yes. I live in my head, and have trouble translating that to action, and sometimes am so caught up in my own theory that I miss really obvious things in my environment. (I remember a friend – way back when I was still an undergraduate – saying, “Your students will worry about you as you get older, profoundly absentminded, oh, poor professor is really losing it – and I’ll know, nope, he’s always been like that.”) But my theories allow me to see things that others miss: I ask, “when did your dad’s mother die?” And your answer revealed the solution to the long-standing enigma: he’s a jerk because emotionally he’s stuck right there, never got past being an abandoned teenager. And that’s a powerful insight that no one else ever seemed to recognize. My theories aren’t always wrong.

So here’s my question for you: where am I stuck, and why am I stuck there? My brain, the size of a planet, doesn’t seem to be able to turn that telescope around in this instance.

Sorry, no cartoon today!

Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow

It’s not fair, summing up a relationship in a single image. A year, six years, ten years – reduced to one interaction that can’t possibly capture the complexity and nuance, the reasons you liked the person and the reasons you you’re not together any more.

But it functions as sort of shorthand. Can I really tell the story of a slowly developing friendship, going to prom, spending all my free time with you, when what I really remember is being told that you couldn’t be yoked to a non-Christian? I know it’s not fair, and that one sentence can’t by itself capture why it defines that relationship. But there you have it.

Sometimes I tell the story to see how someone will react: she told me that I didn’t like jazz.  I can tell a lot about a person in their response to that single statement.

Other times I’m giving a warning of sorts: she threw herself headlong onto the couch and started bawling, because the pie crust had crumbled. That’s not fair as a summation – truly fails to capture the bulk of that relationship and what it was really about – but, for me, clearly shows why I couldn’t stay, and what my expectations for mature behavior are.

Sometimes I’m giving myself an out: I really tried, I worked at this relationship! But the anger, the rage she showed while driving down the highway after I mumbled, “there’s the Oscar Meyer Weiner-mobile” shows the pervasive levels of mistrust and paranoia. The manic laughter that followed my belated, clear restatement, “we just passed the Oscar Meyer Weiner-mobile,” was just icing on the cake. There are many, many other stories I could tell, but this woman was just nuts.

What does it mean when someone disappears for a week after I discovered her secret? It was a dark secret –although not as dark as some of the other things she had already shared – but once again, there was no way of establishing a level of trust. I was dating a wild animal whose instincts would always be in control.

I can’t seem to write the story that’s on my heart this week; and there are other stories I’ve left out, maybe the most important ones. But today I’m struck by the vividness of the idea of the single image, how it captures something important and broken at the heart of each relationship, even as it leaves out so much.

And I wonder, what will be the next image? How will the next relationship be summed up? For once, can’t it be something good, something positive? Or is it only possible to find that image after the fact, a coroner’s report – in which case, I don’t want the next relationship to be summed up.

Social Animals

One of the things I talk about occasionally on this blog is our essentially social nature: we need other people in order to be fully human. 

What I don't typically talk about - maybe because it's obvious - is the problems we have with that. So, Aristotle recognizes that "honor" isn't a proper goal of life, because people's opinions are fickle: we can't allow ourselves to be dependent on the value-judgments of others. At the same time, Aristotle is also one of the few philosophers who talks at length about the necessity of friendship. We really do need other people in order to be fully human.

Why is this? Simone de Beauvoir writes, “If I were really everything there would be nothing beside me; the world would be empty.” There's a  paradox there, that one's self-importance taken too far can lead to a vacuum: we need not just to have other people recognize our worth (and I won't get into Hegel's Master/Slave dialectic today), but also recognize the worth of others. But not just that, either: both people have to recognize that they contribute to what is necessarily an asymmetrical relationship. What do I bring, what do you bring? Those two things are unique, never equal, but both vital to the relationship. 

When this goes well, the combination of support and receptivity we give one another expands our capacity to support and receive: in feeling supported, I am able to better support, in receiving from another I am better able to receive. I focus here on receiving rather than giving, because giving is often problematic: our motives are mixed. Sometimes I give you what I have, not what you want; or I give you what I think you need, ignoring your stated desires. Or I give you something that I value - a lesson in philosophy! - but I give it in order to show my mastery of a subject, maybe even my superiority (in a particular realm), rather than giving it as a gift. 

And so I focus on our receptivity: can we really listen to others? What are they trying to convey? That can be the bigger challenge: I've seen people come together, each say their piece without listening to the other, and part feeling unvalued by the other, because they were more interested in talking than listening. I've done that; I sometimes worry that's all blogging is. A lot of times, I've found that what people really need is just someone to listen, without judging, without trying to fix, just listening. Why do we have so much problem with that? As I've said in a different context - correcting John Lennon - it's not easy, but it is simple. But I think we don't listen because we're worried that, in taking a receptive position, providing support for someone else, we won't get our own needs met. If I'm worried that my needs won't get met, I can't be fully present to your needs. To state it slightly differently, if I'm operating out of an economy of scarcity, rather than an economy of abundance, scarcity becomes the norm and becomes self-reinforcing. 

So we have to step out in faith. One of the things I've found myself saying, in different contexts, is that we're all broken, and we all need each other in our brokenness. We all fail, we can feel like failures and blame others for being failures, but in the end we come back together in acceptance of the limitations, because that's the only way forward. Our hearts have the potential to grow larger as we find the ability to let more people in, and in those connections we find the beginnings of healing. Because we're social animals. 

No cartoon today, sorry.

Now with 40% Less Vagueness!

I would post my Holy Saturday sermon (such as it was) but mostly it was me talking about why we shouldn't be having one at all, shouldn't be singing songs - not yet. Holy Saturday is when we contemplate the absence of God. Yes, we have the promised Light of the resurrection, but it's not there yet. I think we have a desire to skip the tomb, go straight to Easter, and avoid thinking about the absence of God. Anyhow, that's it in a nutshell, and it's not particularly timely on the Tuesday after Easter anyhow. 

So let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time there was a man - scratch that, there was a boy - who didn't contemplate failure. He applied to college with no sense that he wouldn't get in, no sense that there wouldn't be money to pay. And lo, he got in, and lo, there was money. Then came struggle - relationships, academics - but he triumphed over adversity. So far, so good.

This story would be tedious if I kept going like this (and maybe you already find it tedious - but I've included a cartoon). So I'll skip the details of the setbacks, because what I want to emphasize is the background is optimism, if not outright idealism (in the non-philosophical sense). So what happens when a basically optimistic person hits a wall?

That could just be a rhetorical question, but it's not. I've told bits and pieces of my story on this blog, but I suspect that most of my regular readers know there was a hope for an academic career, among other things, that never materialized. I worked as a house painter, I worked as a law librarian, I tried to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up. (For those of you who doubt that I actually want to grow up, I will refer you to my autobiographical song, "Hey Blue Fairy.") At one point, further back than most people know, I had this idea that I could be a pastoral counselor or something like that; several years (and a significant shift in religious understanding) later, I was in seminary, and hoped that my life was getting back on track. (I started this blog in seminary, and even if many of my posts were really vague, I've written extensively about what was happening in my life at that time: I'm not going to cover that ground again today.)

At that point - five years ago! - everything seemed to be heading in the right direction: my book was coming out, I was in what seemed like a really healthy relationship, I was getting actual job interviews for jobs that I was excited about! Finally, finally, finally, things were falling into place. 

Except of course they didn't. And as in a story by Kafka (he did write things other than the Metamorphosis, but of course that's the one I mean) - things went from bad to worse, and while I traveled out to Portland in search of a job, the entire economy collapsed. So, what happens when a basically optimistic person hits a wall?

Have I been a happy, optimistic person, full of energy and able to bring my attention to those around me who deserve it (including but not limited to my children - or my friend, Jack Good)? Nope. I've felt stuck, unable to get any traction anywhere, for years - YEARS! It's really sucked, and I've (I almost wrote "probably," but strike that) been a drag on the people around me. That's what happens when a basically optimistic person hits a wall. 

What's my story now? Well, I'm still not quite where I'd like to be; but I'm finally doing the work I started thinking about twelve years ago. I can see a path forward; a huge part of that is seeing employment opportunities around the corner, if not yet in-hand. I'm sleeping better; I have more energy than I did. I still feel bad about not being fully present to Jack, and to others around me in the past few years. But lately I've been able to actually pay attention to people around me - Steve and Jeffrey, and Paul, and others. And that's been nice. I feel like I'm starting to get back to who I was.

It's still cold outside, but the sun is shining and it seems like spring is finally on its way.

Frustrations

I don't know if it's more awkward to write for a "generic" audience - I don't know who you are, whoever is googling me in Russia! - or to write for a discrete number of individuals who I think visit this blog.

This morning's frustrations are, as with most mornings, with myself: things I said, things I didn't say, things I get worked up about that I wish wouldn't provoke that kind of reaction. More particularly: things I quoted sufficiently out of context that they probably either made no sense, at best. Questions put to me by various people that I evaded without grace. Terse answers to legitimate questions, when even a tiny bit of etiquette would have gone a long way.

One of the things I like about painting is to focus on color, on shape, and let the thoughts float around as they will. Sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes not so much. It's always a bit of a jumble in there, and trying to straighten things out usually makes more of a mess. Anyhow, I'd rather be painting right now than preparing to teach (oops - I'm obviously posting on my blog rather than preparing to teach). And with that....

Easter cartoon

...but only in the sense that I'm posting it on Easter, not because it's a cartoon about Easter. But you've already noticed that.

Again, I'll apologize for the oddness of the picture. But it seems to work, with the rain theme and all.

A jumble fills my head, most of which is not really suitable for the blog. I've been wrestling with a song that came into my head last week when I had a fever and was on NyQuil, but the pieces won't quite fall into place. Also, I'm worried that I've stolen the melody (such as it is) from another song, and I'm not sure it's a song from which I want to steal the melody. 

But there's also pictures and such, things that don't quite fit together and I'm not sure how much I should try to make them go (which is to say, I'm still painting, but my latest painting hasn't quite clicked into place, either - even as I am pondering the one after that).

Sick!

Today, I am sick. I will not write much, but I was thinking earlier that I needed to post something - this oddity came to mind, part of a larger project of imaginary book-covers that I don't think I'll be coming back to.

I need to be getting actual work done, but I can't seem to focus sufficiently. I need to be making phone calls, but the only time I stop coughing is when I have a cough-drop in my mouth, which means the calls need to wait, too.

It is an odd thing to be heading (soon) over to a hospital and wondering if I can get some medical treatment. We'll see.

P.S. - apparently I did find something useful I can do while sick: delete drafts of unpublished blog-posts!

Kübler-Ross

I may have mentioned that I'm a hospice chaplain before, but I wouldn't hold it against you if you've forgot: it's not something I talk about a lot here. And I'm not going to talk about it now, exactly.

In recent posts, I've been mopey and sad, but a funny thing happened after I finished the second window painting (it's called "I have no words," but I think I forgot to label it). I felt calm.

My other hospice chaplain friends kept telling me, this is what grief is - you've had a serious loss, just let it happen. And so I did, as much as I could (and I've written about some of that here, including crying in church). I was reading some of the material I had on grief, and as you might guess it sounds very different when you're in the middle of it rather than reading it in a detached way, as something that applies to someone else. But the one thing I hadn't done was go back to Elizabeth Kübler-Ross. (For some reason, she wasn't mentioned in the hospice materials I had, but I have a lot of other pastoral care material from seminary.)

The one thing I remember is that the "stages" of grief isn't quite right: they come in a jumble. And, feeling this calm, I looked at the list. I recollected the early jumble - the denial ("we may get back together!") and the bargaining ("I have a better sense of what you need now!"). And of course the depression. For me that mostly showed up as not sleeping very much, and of course crying and crying.

It took me a couple weeks to find any anger there, but when I found it, it very clear and pushed the other pieces away. And I made myself stay with it, rather than hiding from it, pretending that it wasn't there; and I didn't go try to argue with her, because - you can already see this, right? - that would just be more "bargaining," a step backwards rather than a step forwards. Was I really going to win that argument? What would a "win" even look like?

A big part of this was the twelve hours I spent in the car by myself, driving back and forth to Virginia. A lot of remorse, slowly chewing on things, thinking them through, trying to digest them. By the last part of the drive, my thoughts were starting to take other paths - there are other things to think about, after all.

One thing that surprised me in Virginia: I saw an old F/friend, and she asked how I was doing. I gave her a hug and said I was hanging in there, that I'd been dumped. Very matter-of-factly she replied, "We didn't think you were really going to get married anyway." Huh.

I told this story to a friend back in the midWest, and he basically said, "yeah." And I realized that I had also known it for a long time, too, even though I hadn't wanted to admit it to myself. So I threw myself into the painting, talked to some F/friends around town, and just went into the anger. Then the anger went (mostly) away.

It feels odd to say, "I'm all better now," because it hasn't been that long; but I don't think I've ever really just got down and faced my emotions like this before. The anger in particular seemed to burn hot and clean. And then the acceptance just seemed to roll in of it's own accord.

There's more to the story - there's always more to the story! Even I'm sometimes embarrassed when I say, "let me give you the short version" and somehow it starts back in 1991. But for a blog post that is completely on "how I'm doing," I think it's long enough.

Just a cartoon

Of course I could write a lot. Just not tonight. I've been promising new cartoons for a while now: here you go.

Take It Easy

Yesterday was a day of awkwardness.

On a normal day, I think the most awkward part of my day would have been sitting at the movies with a group of friends in the middle of the afternoon, crying and crying. The movie was “Life of Pi,” and I thought it was very good – it matched, more or less, my (admittedly dim) memory of the book (which I also liked). I was particularly struck with the relatively early scene where the ocean turns to glass; that matched the book of my memory, and was really powerful for me. I may have cried then. But I know I cried through the violence, I cried through the panic. I cried whenever they showed the moon. Mostly I cried at that sense of utter abandonment by God that is so central to the movie.

So how was that not the most awkward part of my day? (Awkward, by the way, is different from being bad; it’s part of being vulnerable, allowing ourselves to be seen. We are all broken people, and we need each other in our brokenness.)

Memory is a funny thing. My memory of reading Life of Pi puts me in Roanoke, Virginia, up in the attic that I had completely remodeled by myself (complete with built-in bookshelves and a nice little reading nook). I had made a place, put down some roots, felt at home for the first time in a long time. That seems like a lifetime ago.

Anyhow, “don’t let the sound of your own wheels make you crazy” sounds like good advice right now.

Saturday Night Preview

Here's a bad photo of my latest painting, as promised. I'm pretty happy with it (the painting that is). There may be one more painting in this series, although of course the moon will continue to show up regardless.

Spring is just around the corner

Sorry about the bizarre-ness of the picture of the cartoon - it seemed like a good picture on my cell phone, and it's clearly not. (Just to be clear, it was drawn on canary yellow paper, so that's not part of the problem I'm thinking about). But when was the last time you got a cartoon?

It seems that the sun only shines when I'm away from my apartment, or don't have the time to take any good photos. It's been cold and gloomy lately, and not just in my head - but spring is around the corner I think. I still haven't been drawing too many cartoons lately - this is an old one, from when I was still at Lowe's (in case you hadn't already guessed). This still seems relevant, since conversations at the hospital don't always go much better than this, sometimes, but we're typically not talking about paint.

Today I need to be working on a sermon. I have a topic, but am having problems trying to frame it properly. And I should be able to focus today, since I'm basically done with my painting (although of course as I finish one, the next painting pops into my head). I'll try to post some kind of picture of this new painting ("I have no words") sometime this coming week, although you'll probably have to wait until August for a really good picture of it.

I have other cartoons, of course, and a lot of screen prints that I could post as well, but as I said, I need some decent light, and that's probably not going to happen today.
Now, back to work!

Why these fish make me sad

I don't mean to be particularly mopey, and I know I said that I would post a sermon here - and cartoons! I promise, both are coming. But today I'm thinking about fish. Why in the world would these fish make me sad? Well, it's a long story.

Back a couple years ago, I bought these fishbowls as a present for my fiancee. She loved them. It took a while - I don't remember quite how long - before they were finally hung up in the apartment back in Syracuse. Weeks; maybe months. But, I finally hung them, and we got fish.

Now, we don't know anything about fish, including good places to buy them, so we bought a lot of fish - little 13 cent feeder fish, but they kept dying. It wasn't the cost so much as the feeling that we were needlessly killing off a lot of innocent animals. But when they were alive, they were fun to watch. The last batch (in Syracuse) was purchased in the summer of 2011, right around the time my fiancee was applying for the job here. Those fish lasted a while; one lived until this past September, over a year. But not in these fishbowls: he migrated to a standard fishbowl, and lived where I was living (and after Syracuse I moved several times before settling into my current apartment - there's more to that story, too, but maybe for another time).

The fish bowls were in a box here for a long time. I knew she wanted them hung, but I was ambivalent - not about the fishbowls, but I kept thinking we were going to get married. Maybe "hoping" is a better way to phrase that; in any case, we couldn't live together in her apartment (too small), so we would be moving into a new place once we got married. And it didn't seem to make sense to really settle in if we were going to move (soon?). At least so I thought. But I want to be agreeable, I want to help; and she wanted the fishbowls hung again. It felt, to me, like giving up: this was her way of saying that she was staying in her own place. But I drilled the holes and made sure they were level and secure, and went to the pet store for her and bought fish. And she was happy, and I like it when she's happy; I like making her happy.

She wanted a shelf, and sent me designs for the shelf; but she didn't want me to simply make it. So together we worked on the shelf: I showed her how to use the different power tools, and we cut and drilled and made a little shelf. (I did some of the work, including cutting the big circular hole where the jar is - more on that in a moment.) Then I showed her how to paint it, and how to put the poly on. Then it was dry and ready to hang: a new shelf, that we made together! That felt really good, a shared project. More than that, we started talking about other places to put shelves, and what might go on them. It felt really positive, even though - and this was always in the back of my head - it continued to feel like she was settling into her own place, rather than planning on moving into our place after our wedding.

(This doesn't quite fit into this story, but days before she broke up with me, she was also telling me about new eye surgery techniques that I should look into - that also felt like "making plans for the future.")

So, fish, the shelf, and then hanging the prayer flags and the bells - both of which she bought on our trips together out of town. It's a neat little wall, full of happy things. And I like seeing her happy, I like helping to make her happy.

This little wall, with all its decorations, ought to make me happy. Now it just serves to confirm the worries I had: she was settling in for a life without me.

PS: I forgot to come back to the jar when I first posted this. She needed a wide mouth jar for this project (so that it wouldn't fall through the hole we were drilling) and I had one in my apartment. What had it been holding? Mustard seeds (I cook a lot of Indian food, so I always have mustard seeds around). If that doesn't ring a bell, then come back: the mustard seed features prominently in the sermon I plan on posting tomorrow.

She left me before the Mango was Ripe

Just a picture for today, and not a particularly good picture at that (of the photo, not the painting - I think the painting turned out really well). People keep asking me to tell them about the painting, but it seems to me that an artist rarely understands what they've done (that is, if I could explain I would have written about it rather than painted it). So instead, you tell me: what do you see?

What Wondrous Love

I will post something like my sermon later - but for now, just a note that it went well, with no text (or notes or anything). I broke down and cried several times during the service, but it was okay - as I told them at one point, it is more difficult to speak (i.e., without crying) with individuals or groups that I trust. They were fabulously supportive.

I wish I had the UU version of the words to the hymn referenced in the title of this post (as one might imagine, they've been changed from the original). But I couldn't sing them, even though this was the closing hymn I selected, because I was feeling that wondrous love this morning from the congregation.

For now, I'll give you this: one of the times I broke down and couldn't speak for crying was during this morning's reading, a poem by Mary Oliver (below) - but someone from the congregation came up and read it for me, then gave me a hug.

The Winter Wood Arrives

by Mary Oliver

I think
     I could have
          built a little house
               to live in


with the single cord—
     half seasoned, half not—
          trucked into the
               driveway and


tumbled down. But, instead,
     friends came
          and together we stacked it
               for the long, cold days


that are—
     maybe the only sure thing in the world—
          coming soon.
               How to keep warm


is always a problem,
     isn't it?
          Of course, there's love.
               And there's prayer.


I don't belittle them,
     and they have warmed me,
          but differently,
               from the heart outwards.


Imagine
     what swirls of frost will cling
          to the windows, what white lawns
               I will look out on


as I rise from morning prayers,
     as I remember love, that leaves yet never leaves,
          as I go out into the yard
               and bring the wood in


with struggling steps,
     with struggling thoughts,
          bundle by bundle,
               to be burned.

"The Winter Wood Arrives" by Mary Oliver, from Thirst. © Beacon Press, 2006. 

Can't Sleep

About twelve years ago, I went through a bad break up. I wasn't sleeping much - often less than six hours a night - but I didn't feel tired, I had a lot of nervous energy. It wasn't very focused, though, and mostly I just ran in circles. Some of that running was literal - I kept moving, walking and hiking, and lost about twenty pounds over that summer. It didn't seem healthy - although in a sense I probably was, since it was the most active time of my life.

One of the things I remember about that period of time was seeing deer. I would come up on them unexpectedly, and they would run off. I think I saw deer every time I went out during that time period, more than normal. Maybe I was just paying attention more. Anyhow, I'm seeing deer again lately. Not every time I go out, but I'll quietly come up on them, and they'll watch me, and I watch them and keep going. Unlike last time, they're not just running off.

Yesterday I kept trying to write a new blog post, but everything I wrote either sounded angry or bitter, or pathetic and whiny. (Maybe this one does too; and I won't deny that those posts accurately reflected my mood.) I kept trying to tell a particular story, which is essentially the story of why this (current) break up shouldn't be happening - from my perspective, at least. And I keep realizing that it really only has an intended audience of one.

Twelve years ago, I eventually pulled myself out of my spiral because I realized - in the clear light of day - that the woman who had broken up with me was so clearly unsuitable - a bad match all around, not least of which because she identifies as a lesbian (she initiated our relationship, which I started off thinking was a bad idea, but she eventually talked me into thinking it might work, before breaking up with me).

One of the things that's so difficult about the current break up is that this (current) woman has been my best friend for the past six years. I won't say we've talked every day over that time - I'm guessing there have been a few short gaps, when we've been apart for one reason or other. We've spent a significant part of that time in different states, maybe totaling a year and a half out of the six. But the other four and half years, we've not only talked every day, we've spent most of our free time together, and that's been a very difficult adjustment to make. I miss just talking to her. I still have things I want to tell her, some that seem very important at the moment, and might - just might! - change her mind, see that we really should get married (she was the one who proposed, after all, and we've been through a lot of preparations for marriage) - but a lot of it is just mundane. I enjoyed the smoked gouda she bought me; I've started reading the book my mom got me for my birthday (it's okay). And of course lots of other things.

I am trying to work on my cartoons, and on screen prints and paintings, so I hope to start posting pictures again soon. This was never meant to be a blog primarily about the written posts - it was always supposed to be about the cartoons. So, more coming, I promise!

Another Thursday

I said I would start posting more often, but I can't seem to get anything together this week. The pieces are all in the wrong places - if I need some notes I took back in October, they're in my apartment while I'm trying to work in my office. If I'm at home, I don't have internet access - but then forget to grab my notes. I have the camera, so I can start posting cartoons and screen prints again, but I don't seem to remember to take the pictures when the light is decent. (And I'm sure that if I would have taken pictures yesterday, I would have left the memory card in the camera anyhow, so I wouldn't be able to post them.)
None of this is new for me, it's just worse this week. And I didn't want anyone - does anyone even read this? - to think that I'd so quickly forgotten about my dusty blog.

A Crowd of Sorrows

I don't know how many people regularly check into this blog, particularly since my posting has dramatically dropped off during the past few months (and it had decline quite a bit prior to that, since I graduated from seminary).

Anyhow: this isn't a good place to make personal announcements, but in addition to being pretty busy, there are some major life changes in the works. It all seems bad at the moment, so please hold me in the Light (if you are so inclined) - but I also know that things have a way of working out in unexpected ways.

Which reminds me of a poem by Rumi (here translated by Coleman Barks) that someone showed me just about eleven years ago:

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

I'm still drawing cartoons, but don't have a scanner (and I need to get my camera back). I'll try to start posting more often.

A cartoon from last summer

 At some point I may start posting the cartoons from CPE.

Nietzsche's question

I've been busy, working multiple jobs, and thinking I ought to post more. I finished up one of those jobs on Monday, and start CPE (clinical pastoral education, a sort of chaplain internship) next Monday; in between I'm continuing my work at the local hospice.
Yesterday at the hospice I was talking to one of the other chaplains, and we were trading stories about our first careers and our call to ESR (including that sense, "I don't know why I'm here, but I know I'm in the right place"). I briefly described my book to him without going, I think, into too much detail.
Afterwards I was reading the chapter in the text for CPE on caring for the terminally ill (since that's what I do in hospice), and the interconnection between my work on Nietzsche and hospice chaplaincy really struck me.
The problem Nietzsche faces is this: a rigid belief in God that places blame on people for what happens (in a manner reminiscent of the response of Job's friends) or a rejection of any framework of meaning, e.g., nihilism.
What do I see at hospice? Either their suffering has meaning as part of God's plan, or else it's just something that randomly happens to people. And those aren't very comforting alternatives: either God is making me suffering (because of the bad things I've done / because it's part of a greater good that I can't understand) or else it's just pointless suffering. This is really the question of theodicy writ small, the question of meaning inscribed on the individual's life. "Why me?"
Nietzsche is looking at a world in which belief in God is no longer tenable; you can disagree with him, of course. However, I suspect that anyone reading my blog would agree that the sort of belief that Nietzsche rejected is no longer a serious option, unless you simply reject a lot we now know about the world. Therefore, our religious beliefs need to be modified, at the very least. Nietzsche chose Dionysus as a placeholder for this new belief (I say that to contrast him with neo-Pagan and the so-called Druids, since Nietzsche doesn't actually think he's reviving an ancient tradition). Most of the people I know wouldn't go that far, but they're also not fundamentalists, i.e., they have a more flexible understanding of a Higher Power.

I don't teach people about Nietzsche, but I do see that same question rising up in people. Where is that alternative that suggests a constructive meaning?

Bad argument

I am surprised that people still say, "what if everyone did that?" It's a dumbed-down version of Kant's categorical imperative, and gains a bit of validity through that association even as it loses its force with the lack of nuance. Because the most reasonable answer usually is, "well, not everyone does (or will)."
Leaving aside the tragedy of the commons for the moment, I want to look at the one place where it's just a dumb argument: pacifism. As in, "I know Quakers don't fight, but what if everyone did that?"
Um, there would be an end to all wars?

Fists of ham

I've recently been reading Paul Krugman's The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 - fun stuff! - and the chapter on Japan in the 1990s reminded me of something that happened about ten years ago, which I think is worth mentioning in the abstract even though it was relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

So: a friend of mine read a book which took place in Japan (it's murder mystery, maybe you've seen the movie), and afterwards voiced "we're losing to Japan because they cheat!" sentiments, and he lent the book to another friend, and afterwards she said more or less the same thing. In the context of Japan's economic troubles at the time they were expressing these opinions, it was ridiculous; however, I borrowed the book.

Here's what struck me the most: the anti-Japanese business tirade in this book (which had been echoed by two friends after reading the book) takes place in the office of an American business which is undergoing a lavish and completely unnecessary renovation. Which is to say, the circumstances of the complaint about Japanese business practices undercut the message. Or at least, should have undercut the message, but my friends seemed to have missed the implicit commentary.

Not terribly important in itself, but it makes me wonder how much many - most? all? - people miss in the things that are going on around them.

Torah Torah Torah

I've been thinking about a lot of stuff, but mostly stuff I've posted here before - how Ron Paul's foreign policy plan doesn't amount to "peace," about the exploitation of workers in education, and of course, what does the Bible say about these things? (Hint: not necessarily what people think.)
In any case, here are some cartoons I drew while in seminary that don't have much to do with the stuff about which I've been thinking.

Is there a dial tone?

So, you say you have a calling...
let's stop there for a minute: what happened to discernment in community? Have people forgotten the extent to which one of the people we Quakers look up to - John Woolman - listened to his community, was persistent in his faith, and let ideas season? Sometimes for years?
Having a calling doesn't mean we let our community know what we're doing as we're heading out the door. For instance: do you know what you're talking about? Can you accept that other people might know what they're talking about - and that they might know more than you? And if you're going off to school - I don't know, maybe a Quaker seminary in Indiana - can you accept that you're there to learn, that it might challenge your ideas and change you in the process? That you're not there simply to gain a credential?

Usually, I'm not the one who knows more, despite my arrogance and broad range of interests. Socrates and Hume are always there with me: the wisdom of knowing the limits of my own knowledge, and the genuine skepticism that comes with that, asking questions, providing tentative conclusions that can be revised as necessary. But if there's a medical question, you're better off asking a doctor or a nurse. If you're concerned about environmental problems - which may or may not have to do with the safety of nuclear power and the relative trade-offs with, say, coal - I know people you can talk to. The same is true if you have a concern about the rights of indigenous people, or race relations in America. (Of course, I do have my areas of expertise.)

None of this is to say that you shouldn't pursue your calling; but you need to be able to listen to other people in the community, to let it season, to gather information. Just as important - and in my experience just as lacking - the people in your community need to be able to be tender with your concerns while being honest. Sometimes the most compassionate thing to say is, maybe not, or at least not yet. John Woolman was able to find humility and patience: laying the proper groundwork is essential.

And if that information is over your head - hey, nuclear power is complicated! - then maybe you need to keep listening.

Happy Sixth Anniversary (to me)!

I hadn't realized that I'd been posting for six years now; I'm surprised to see that the first post did not have a cartoon, and the second one featured a photograph I took of snow falling at night. Hopefully I am less obscurely self-referential these days. This also happens to be my 500th post. In honor of this occasion, I give you an old cartoon about a minor prophet.

Politics

"The Israelites again did what was offensive to the Lord."
I have mentioned to a couple people that, in rereading Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment, I've been struck by how much their discussion of anti-Semites and Fascists (remember, written by two Jewish refugees during the forties) reminds me of the Tea Party and other elements of the far right that seem to have taken over the Republican Party.

That's potentially inflammatory I realize, especially since one of the people I mean is himself Jewish. But whatever: I'm not saying the GOP has become anti-Semitic (although don't let their support for Israel fool you), or even that they are literally Nazis (well, maybe some of Ron Paul's supporters). What I mean is that their style of discourse sounds like what Adorno and Horkheimer describe, starting with "Paranoia is the symptom of the half-educated man." (195)

That's not intended to be specific of post-Weimar era Germany; it's a general observation. But note where it goes:

The paranoiac forms of consciousness tend towards the formation of alliances, parties, and rackets. Their members are afraid of believing in their delusions on their own. Projecting their madness, they see conspiracy and proselytism everywhere. (197)

That's something that I've written about before: if the Republicans are secretly fantasizing about rounding people up and putting them in camps, they accuse the Democrats of plotting to do this. Again, this isn't solely the domain of the Right: people on the progressive end of the spectrum do it as well.
It seems to me, though, that it's moved into more-or-less mainstream Republican thought these days (and the Republicans who disagree are increasingly alienated from the party - I know a few of those, too).


One of the passages that really stood out from the Dialectic of Enlightenment was the following:

“It is not possible to have a conversation with a Fascist. If anyone else speaks, the Fascist considers his intervention a brazen interruption. He is not accessible to reason, because for him reason lies in the other person’s agreement with his own ideas.” (210)

That seems to capture the attempts at discussion with people such as Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, and Tea Partiers in general. Even, I would say, my attempts at conversation with an old friend who would either lecture me - sometimes using "facts" that were demonstrably wrong (and also comparing Paul Krugman's policy suggestions to the Nazi's, which is problematic for many reasons) - and then stop talking whenever I pointed out the problems. (I haven't heard from him in a long time.)

There was one more passage that struck me that I won't quote in full, but the gist was that Chamberlain was acting reasonably when negotiating with the Nazis (209ff). I haven't heard the neo-con cries of "appeasement!" lately, but probably because I'm not listening any more - but Churchill was a favorite of theirs, and Chamberlain was their whipping boy, their go-to guy when they wanted to show that negotiations were a bad idea. But please note: two Jews in the forties wrote that Chamberlain was acting reasonably; they recognize that he failed, but push more deeply into the question: why? Because he was trying to deal reasonably with people who are fundamentally unreasonable.

So, here's the thing (and some of you will have seen this coming): for me, the most obvious contemporary parallel, the person trying to negotiate reasonably in good faith with people whom he (wrongly) takes to be reasonable and failing repeatedly, is President Obama. And the Republicans had declared their intentions at the outset! How could President Obama ignored that? What were the costs?

The thing to recognize about this is that I'm not saying that we should't reëlect President Obama: I think we should. I'm saying that the GOP is behaving like Nazis, and we should treat them as such.

One last note: this is my 499th post, and next Tuesday will mark the 6th anniversary of this blog. Be sure to tune in for special festivities (by which I mean, I hope to post some time next week)!

Just a Tuesday cartoon

That's all for today.

Evil: yes or no?

Lately I've been thinking about corporations and evil.

A person with whom I've been having sporadic corporations wants to write about, if I understand correctly, a business ethic, perhaps modeled on Quaker beliefs. Fair enough (or not, this is far enough outside my area of interest that I'm not sure if anything worthwhile has been written, and if not, why not). She has been running into the problem that most of the people that she's talked to so far balk at the idea: corporations are evil! (I'm not sure if people are actually saying this or simply implying it, but the message seems to be clear regardless.)

Are corporations evil? Maybe not. I'm not an utilitarian, and scoff at consequentialist ethics in general. (My scoffing was once laughed at by Eva Dadlez, after which we argued about the proper interpretation of Homer Simpson hiding a gun in the vegetable crisper.) This is relevant because, on utilitarian grounds, many corporation are evil right on their face: do they create, on the whole, more pain or more pleasure? (I can appreciate the practical aspect of this kind of thinking on Buddhist grounds, but there the question is about individual conduct.)

In my applied ethics classes, I like to go through various approaches one at a time; having sort of dealt with utilitarianism, what might Aristotle say? Funny thing with that (and I'm sure some people would argue with this statement, but that would lead to a more technical argument than I want to present here) is that Aristotle doesn't really have a concept of "evil" per se. Also, insofar as his ethics aims at eudaimonia, it doesn't apply to entities such as corporations at all.

The same is true using Kant's approach: corporations aren't people, therefore can't be evil. The people who run or manage them might be evil, but that is (if I understand my interlocutors concern correctly) a different question. Just to be clear: Kant understands "evil" as knowing the right actions - knowing the appropriate maxim that one could apply as a universal law - and then ignoring it. (I'll come back to Kant though, since that doesn't exhaust the possibilities.)

I would usually proceed to a feminist ethic of care, but there are two problems. First, I don't know how someone, working in the care tradition, would define evil in a way that didn't simply sound Kantian (knowing the right action, doing something else). Second, I wouldn't at all be surprised if someone had made a fairly explicitly anti-corporate argument using the ethics of care. (Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe I should go look that up, but I'm not going to tonight.)

The important thing to note here is that, looking at the question using three of the four dominant approaches in western ethics, corporations aren't evil for the simple reason that they aren't persons, and therefore can't be evil. It's a category error, but not an exoneration of corporations; there are other ways of looking at the problem.

How do corporations look at people? Primarily as employees and customers. There are too many secondary ways to develop a comprehensive list, but in general I'm interested in people affected by corporations in ways that aren't primarily economic (even if they have economic impact). This would include people harmed by the pollution, or, positively, beneficiaries of corporately funded public works, such as parks. Setting the secondary relations aside (even though these are really important!) and noting that a single person can fall into many categories at once (as employee, customer, and community member), I start with Milton Friedman's assertion that purpose of business - it's sole purpose - is to make a profit.

Where does the profit come from? Two sources: employees and customers, specifically, the difference between the value of the labor and how much the worker gets paid, or the difference between the cost of something and what the customers pays. (The particular analysis is irrelevant to my larger point: part of the money changing hands stays in someone's hand: that's the profit. I can provide more explicit examples of what I'm talking about later if anyone wants them, but I'm purposefully keeping the analysis generic and abstract here.) Either way - and here I'm returning to Kantian analysis - people are mere objects, interchangeable, expendable, because the only point is to make a profit.

Just to connect the dots, it is fundamental to Kant's ethics that we treat people as having dignity, not merely as objects; using this formulation, corporations can only be evil. I would still argue that, since they're not people, they can't form intentions. If that absolves them of the possibility of being individually evil (i.e., evil in the way that persons are evil), I would say that corporations are structurally evil. They cannot be good without operating as something other than corporations: they become mutual aid societies, or churches, or something else (there are a lot of organizations like that, and they don't always fall into clear categories).

A different (and possibly more direct) approach to this question might be to note that capitalism as a system operates because of coveting: you want something that someone else has (not necessarily the very thing, but one like it, bigger, better). The point of advertising is to create desires we didn't have before: e.g., when my dad first told me about "cell phones" in the eighties, I wondered why anyone would possibly want one. (Perhaps I'm underestimating the desire that existed at the time for such a thing.)

To summarize: corporations are evil, but not in the way that people are evil. They are evil because they are an essential part of a fundamentally flawed system. A description of an alternative system can be found in that radical book, the Bible: Acts 4:34-35:

"There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need."

But you already knew I was a dirty hippy.

Clarification

In my previous post, I think the basic point I wanted to make may have gotten lost. Simply put, Appiah seems to be assuming that people with whom he might disagree in the particular interpretation of American History are acting in good faith. I contend that they are not, and use Beliles and McDowells book as an example. The student involvement underscores that it isn't merely a difference in interpretation: I was accused of rewriting history.

Over breakfast this morning I had a conversation about splinter churches and the problems of purity, which was the inspiration for this cartoon. That, I think, is relevant partly because (I will say with no citation) that liberals are largely unaware of the fragmentation on the right, combined with a need to have the facts line up with their story. I've written about this before in reference to Jefferson - Thomas, not George. I am aware that everyone perceives the world in such a way as to confirm our own understanding of it, but I continue to be amazed that the extent to which there are what I will gently call "diverging realities" rather than a shared one with differences interpretation.

Photo Credit: Icelandic and Faroese Photographs of Frederick W.W. Howell, Cornell University Library, Bessastaðir Church.--Interior, ca. 1900. Collodion print. Bessastaðir (Iceland) Fiske Icelandic Collection, Rare & Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library

Thinking

In my last post, I mentioned that Appiah "underestimates the willful ignorance of homeschoolers!" Let me clarify.
First, the book in question is The Ethics of Identity. The author is Kwame Anthony Appiah, professor of philosophy at Princeton and, among many other things, one of my former professors.
The quote in question is from the chapter called "Soul Making," and part of the question is the significance of public education (that is, preparing children to be good future citizens). He writes:

In recent year, some critics have objected to a history curriculum that has too much of Harriet Tubman and not enough of Thomas Jefferson; and they have also objected to a curriculum whose discussion of Thomas Jefferson focuses too much on his betrayal of liberty - in his persistent failure to emancipate his slaves - and no enough on his place as the author of the Declaration of Independence, as liberty's champion. No doubt a focus too lopsided shades off into simply untruth: the real debates here, though, are not about what happened but about what narratives we will embed them in; they are about which of the many true stories we will tell.

That seems reasonable, but that's the problem: some people aren't reasonable. And by that I don't simply mean that they want to emphasize a different set of facts, but that they want to fabricate a new set of facts to support their beliefs. (Hopefully it is clear that I'm not condemning all homeschoolers: if that's not clear, I'm about to get very specific.)
Additional background: several years ago I taught a course, "Religion in American Culture" (the course as since been renamed) at a distant campus of a large public university. The primary text I used was The Old Religion in a New World, by Mark Noll.
Some time after the course was over, a student sent me a number of email forwards, including one that challenged President Obama's statement, "We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values." The student was offended by this statement, but I pointed out that, even in the preambles to the state constitutions she had sent along, the phrasing was not explicitly Christian but open to other faiths (with phrases such as Almight God, Divine Providence, etc) - and that the US constitution did not have any such phrases. (We had spent a bit of time in class talking about Rhodes Island and Pennsylvania, as well as New York and Maryland, all of which had some religious liberties from the beginning).
Now, Mark Noll is an evangelical, and in the book we used is telling the story much as Appiah would expect, emphasizing some facts over others, bringing pieces together to present a coherent narrative that emphasizes Christianity. Therefore I was surprised to get this response from her (which I'm posting in its entirety):

Perhaps you should read America's Providential History by Mark A. Beliles and Stephen K. McDowell before you start spouting off mistaken information about our country's origins. Consider this my final email to a narrow-minded liberal professor who embraces the rewriting of our history. No need to reply, and may God have mercy on your soul.

(You see now why I want to emphasize Noll here: whatever you may think of me, it seems unlikely that Noll could be called a narrow-minded liberal who is rewriting history.)
And this, at long last, brings me to America's Provedential History. (Please note that I refuse to link this book, although this lengthy review - from a Quaker! - will give you an idea of what I'm concerned about.) At least some people are not interested in questions of emphasis: for them, Jefferson really was against slavery, Ben Franklin really did support Christianity (presumably in the form endorsed by Belile and McDowell), and omits vast amounts of basic history (mostly focusing on the colonial and revolutionary period, and apparently not getting much of that right). I have said many times - possibly on this blog - but one of the characteristics of the conservative moment is the increasing projection of their shadow on progressives (maybe I'll unpack that in a later blog post). This seems to be an instance of that: where is the rewriting happening?

To summarize: I think Appiah misunderestimates (yes, that's what I wrote - I'm surprised spellcheck still flags it) the mendacity of certain segments in the population. This is problematic precisely for the reasons he's concerned about in the book: how do we, as a nation, navigate between the requirements of particular communities and the larger polity? That question becomes fraught when some communities insist on teaching their children lies.

Happy New Year... oh wait

So, it's been a while since I posted, and I have lots to say. Unfortunately, I spent all my time monkeying around with the scanner (after spending about two minutes drawing a cartoon, the first in months). And now I have run myself out of time: I'm hungry, there is dinner to be made.

For now, just enjoy the cartoon. If you're going to be in Richmond on the 17th of February, I will be playing at the West Richmond Coffee House.

Next time: Appiah underestimates the willful ignorance of homeschoolers!