No Cartoon, Chapel Edition

I have temporarily lost the ability to post even poor pictures of my cartoons - which is unfortunate because I've been drawing more cartoons lately. Look for them in the New Year!

What Are You Waiting For?

I finally got a decent scan of a cartoon, and that's all you're getting today.

Short Update

I've been busy, but the real hold-up lately has been the cartoons: not that I haven't been drawing any, but I can't get a decent picture of any of them (and you're probably thinking, when has that stopped me before?). Anyhow, I've got cartoons and sermons (and other observations) that I will post at some point.

They Might be Cannibals

I work with Seventh Day Adventists (I think I've mentioned this before). And, as individuals, they're very nice. But many of them also strike me as naive. 

So, I asked one the other day about the SDA dietary restrictions - among other things, they don't eat pork or shellfish. (That should ring a bell for you.) I asked about Peter's vision, in Acts, and she replied, "Well if you read it in context, it's about people, not food." Which is her polite way of saying, you're reading it wrong, and pretty much every Christian since Paul has been reading it wrong. Oops. 

I see two ways to approach this. One would simply be to reply, "you're the one who's not really reading it in context, you're just focusing on Acts 10:28, 'God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.'" I'm not sure what her reply would be, and I really don't care if she eats pork or not: I'm a vegetarian myself. 

But the other approach is more intriguing: what if we do take the larger context into account, but read it as being about people, not food? What exactly does the voice say in Peter's vision in Acts 10:13? "Get up, Peter; kill and eat." 

I think I'll stay away from their food at the next potluck.

Literal and Metaphorical

So many of the things we learn in school, we forget, because we have no context for them...

I'm rereading some things I first read eight years ago, and have largely forgotten, but which are relevant to my current context. It's interesting to read about them (I may talk more specifically about this in a future post) when I'm in the middle of things, rather than seeing it as something abstract, far-in-the-future.

But the other thing I have recently come across was a passage from Ezekiel 28, in a Seventh Day Adventist booklet, about the King of Tyre. (I realize that the Seventh Day Adventists aren't the only ones who look to this passage in particular, but this is how I came across it.) I'm sure I've run across the passage before, and might even have some notes from my Old Testament class, but it doesn't ring a bell (which is to say, it's not what I remember about Ezekiel).

This passage cannot be read literally. Just for starters, it's addressed to the King of Tyre, a mortal, and it says, "you were in the garden of Eden." I know that the literalists want to read the Bible straight through, literally understanding all the passages literally - well, it just can't be done. But even they acknowledge that some passages have to be understood metaphorically. How might we read this? That's where things get strange. They say that this is really - really - about Satan. Well, why in the world would you think such a thing?

Because that means taking the description literally, rather than metaphorically, but taking the identity of the king as (at least partly) metaphorical. And why would you do such a thing? There are various reasons why you might make references to someone metaphorically. The primary one, in this context, is if you're talking about someone who really could just send out troops to kill you, without any trial or anything, maybe while you sleep, and maybe your whole village too, just because he can. And if you're writing about that dude, you might think, "hm, if I refer to this guy as a giant bear with five horns, or a dragon, people will know who I'm talking about - wink wink - but I'll have some deniability." That really makes sense if you're living under foreign occupation. I can almost imagine someone making the counter-argument, "but we are living under occupation - from Satan!" Must our references to Satan be veiled, or coded, somehow? Or are you really a Zoroastrian who wants the Christian Bible to support your viewpoint (and I realize that the actual Zoroastrians don't do this).

It doesn't make sense to be oblique about identity if you're directly calling someone out, though: you want that person's attention. "Hey, you! Knock it off!" But how do you get this guy's attention, without just making yourself into a target? "Well, Mr. Putin, in addition to being handsome, you're a powerful man, someone to be reckoned with. However..." And that's really how I read this passage: Ezekiel has a prophecy against the King of Tyre, wants him to actually hear it, and not get squished himself. But the description is metaphorical, a hyperbolic flattery to get this guy's attention. How is that difficult to see?

The alternative - taken by Ellen White and the Seventh Day Adventists, among others - is to see this as only metaphorically referring to the King of Tyre, but actually referring to Satan - because the descriptions aren't metaphorical, but literal. What? Why in the world would Ezekiel bury condemnation of Satan in the middle of all this other stuff? It's not as though the "King of Tyre" is a made-up designation, either.

Ockham's razor, paraphrased, says that we should prefer the simpler of two explanations, if they otherwise do an equally good job. Satan gets the boot. And I should probably stop reading Ellen White.

Cartoon Saturday

Kinda like a Drive-In Saturday, but with less Bowie and more cartoon.

Mostly thinking about the end of the world today. At some point, I may post an edited version of this sermon with the previous two. But first I gotta write it.

Electric Pacifist

This seems more like a preliminary sketch rather than a finished piece - however, given the size of the audience, it seems unlikely that I'll really come back to this and put a lot more time into it. So, this is what you get: if you think it deserves a more "professional" treatment, let me know.

"Just" cartoons

I will probably write more about being a "bad chaplain" at some point - but for now, let me just offer these cartoons, one of which was actually written during someone's sermon in chapel at the hospital.

Bad Chaplain

I've been thinking lately of Graham Greene's novel, The Power and the Glory. For those of you who haven't read it, it's set in Mexico in the 1930's, a time of persecution of Catholics. The anti-hero is a priest who is a drunk and a coward, who has a child that he doesn't quite acknowledge (but he won't give up the priesthood to marry the mother of this child, even though that's one options the redshirts are offering, albeit accompanied by much ridicule). If I were to summarize - keeping in mind that many people think this is Greene's best novel (not me, I still prefer Travels with My Aunt) - I'd say it's about God's ability to work through us despite our flaws.

I don't think I'm a bad chaplain in the sense of not doing my job well. I'm sometimes surprised at how well I seem to be doing - bringing comfort to people in distress, offering the hope, or even just the attentive ear that they need. I think I'm a pretty good chaplain, and working to be a better one.

But I worry about the rest of my life, outside the hospital. I don't quite feel the same sort of pressure that a pastor of a church does, since I don't have a "community" in that sense, looking over my shoulder and (potentially) whispering about what I'm doing. I do recognize, though, that many of the patients I see have an image of the clergy that I know I don't live up to: at the very least, they probably think I sing hymns, or listen to K-Love rather than cranking up Black Sabbath and Grand Funk. I'm not really worried about the music of course - it's the other things.

Even after I've made a mess of my personal life, though, it continues to surprise me that I can walk into a patient's room and make such a big difference in their day. And once in a while, being a "bad chaplain" - breaking the rules in order to meet the needs of a patient - makes me a really good chaplain.

(That's not really where I thought this post was going to end, certainly not where I thought it was going when I started it, but... here we are. And it's probably time to go to bed now.)

Second post

Well, the second post for September, and at this rate the last one as well.

My biggest news is that my supervisor asked me if I had considered being a supervisor - something I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have asked if he didn't think I could do it. So, that's a strong vote of confidence. But other than that I've just been busy, and the cartoons are few and far between (except when they're really dark - this one isn't so bad, but based on a true story).

At some point I need to revisit the "self-care for trauma helpers" guide. Probably not tonight, though.

Falling behind

So it's already mid-September, and I haven't been posting as much as I had hoped. Part of the problem is a lousy internet connection at my apartment (there's supposed to be a wireless network throughout the building, but I have to go sit in the basement to actually get a signal) - but honestly, most of it is just being tired. I haven't even drawn a cartoon in a while, even though I've had several ideas (most of which are admittedly pretty dark - not that I won't draw and post them at some point).

I have been painting, although obviously not working too hard on my photography - I need to take that more seriously if I want to reopen my etsy shop. And I think that's all I'm going to say for now.

End of the Week

This past week wasn't as busy as I feared (I didn't have to be on-call on consecutive nights!) - and I'm painting again (and I'll post pictures when it feels finished). I have this odd persistent cough that is aggravating; I keep thinking it's going away, but it doesn't. Next week will be busy again, but after that it should get better for a while.

I feel as though I should have some sort of profound thoughts this evening, but I don't. And if I did, I should probably write them down for tomorrow's worship service rather than posting them here.

Yet Another Thursday

I missed my entire first week of work - that is, post-orientation - due to illness. Not that I was particularly sick, just that I was contagious and really couldn't go visit hospital patients. I'm still coughing a bit, which is odd since that wasn't part of the problem last week, but I'm back on the floors seeing patients.

At the moment, I don't have anything particularly insightful to add, but I thought you might like to see this fox I drew over the weekend.

True Story!

I stopped by a local sub shop on the way home the other day, because I was really hungry, and had the following exchange:

"I'd like a ten-inch artichoke sub, with mushrooms."

"Will that be six, eight, ten or twelve-inch?"

"Ten-inch, please."

"And would you like mushrooms on that?"

"Yes, mushrooms."

I suspect he had no idea why I was so irritated, although he might have been if he'd read this cartoon.

Frustrating Day

I may at some point find the Skinner study that talks about intermittent reward... but more of today has been spent thinking I might have internet, and then losing it, and then maybe connecting again... and so on... anyhow, the best parts of my day were those I spent intentionally off-line, walking, reading, drawing, and napping. 

I guess that would probably also have been true if I'd had more reliable internet. But I wouldn't have spent nearly so much of my day waiting, waiting, waiting...

Hello, Pawnee!

I was on live television this afternoon, for a local cable news show. Which was kind of exciting. No, very exciting. Even if I didn't think anyone was watching. (The interview was about the upcoming exhibit of my work, fyi - I've been posting bad pics of the different works to be exhibited, but I'm hoping to have some much better ones of the exhibition itself.)

So, last time I wrote, I was pondering whether or not I was Peter Pan. Yesterday a friend reminded me of the song I wrote back in seminary - Hey Blue Fairy - and the unrecorded bridge that addressed this directly. For the sake of clarity I'm posting the video I made (years after the fact - I barely even try to lip-synch) - but also the lyrics, including the lyrics of the bridge (which as I've already said, isn't in the recorded version of the song but were written soon afterwards, so don't leave me snide comments about the omission).
 I've traveled 'round the world, though I never really meant to
I fell in with some villains and I gladly went along
I learned a lot of lessons, though most of them the hard way
I did a lot of stupid things to show that I was strong

Chorus: I've been turned into a donkey
             I've been swallowed by a whale
             Put down these childish toys to make way for better things
             I'm tired of other people always pullin' on my strings
             Hey, Blue Fairy, when will you make me real?

They say my nose grows longer, but you know it really doesn't
Though I'm told I do blush deeply when I try to tell a lie
My conscious tries to stop me though I very seldom listen
In my heart I know that I'm not such a bad guy

 (Omitted verse) Now I'm getting older and my paint it chipped and fading
My joints are getting rusty and I'm moving kinda slow
I'd really like to dance now but I'm feeling rather wooden,
I've come so far, but there just so far to go

Chorus 

(Omitted bridge) But I've never lost my shadow
                          And I've never learned to fly
                          I'm no puer aeternus
                          I'm no Catcher in the Rye

 I left home kind of early 'cause I thought that it was Boring,
Given what I've seen since, I can't say that I was wrong
Now I need some shelter and I really miss my father
I've lost my way, the road home seems much too long

Chorus

Now I understand that, just because I wrote a song six years ago in which I declare myself Pinocchio and distance myself from Peter Pan doesn't mean that I'm not Peter Pan... but I do think it speaks to wanting to be settled somewhere, and I recorded the video at a time when I was about to leave a place I had hoped to settle (I actually hadn't quite put that together for myself until just now - why that song then?).

Anyhow -

Peter Pan

I was just called Peter Pan.

Or rather, last night, a friend was talking about her initial love of the story when she was a child, and then her disappointment when she later understood the implications of Peter refusing to leave Neverland.

And then I asked if she thought I was Peter, and I could tell by her reaction that she hadn't thought it before I said anything, and then it all clicked.

So that's what I'm pondering at the moment.

Based on a True Story!

...the hearing of the so-called joke, not the subject of said joke.

This morning I kept thinking of the meme, "I have no idea what I'm doing." You know why? Because I have no idea what I'm doing. 

That's all for today.

Monday Morning

Sometimes I write out lengthy posts - seriously, I've been writing and editing for over an hour now - and then realize that I can't really publish them. Oh well: maybe I'll draw some cartoons and post them later today.

Jazz

"I like jazz"
"No, you don't."
I respond with something like, you can't say that.
And she replies, in the last five years, I haven't heard you listening to any jazz, or going to any jazz concerts. Therefore, you don't like jazz.

I don't normally mention this conversation to give her credit, but this morning I will: in that moment I thought, yeah, I do like jazz but I haven't listened to anything in a long time. My stated preferences didn't match my what I was actually doing.

In high school I really enjoyed our jazz band - many of my friends were members, so I heard many of their rehearsals and performances. One of my favorite tapes in college was the soundtrack to the movie 'Round Midnight, and perhaps the highlight of my freshman year was seeing Branford Marsalis in concert. My junior year, one of my favorite tapes was John Scofield's Still Warm. Michelle and I listened to that one a lot, and if I didn't have the tape  anymore it was because I gave it to her after we broke up (and if I did have the tape, I probably didn't listen to it because it reminded me so much of Michelle). Which is to say, there was a point in my life when jazz was important. But it was pointed out to me that my actions hadn't matched my self-understanding. That, I think, was really important, and it made me change my actions (in this case, I started reading about jazz and slowly accumulating a fairly large collections of CDs). Perhaps a trivial example, but I hope illustrative of something more significant.

What's the flip side of that - what do I actually do? Well, every day I read a variety of news sources - national politics from the Washington Post, global news from Foreign Policy, headlines from Slate, analysis and culture from The New Yorker, and of course Paul Krugman's blog and editorials. I care about being informed, and my actions reflect that. (I also like discussing news and politics, but that takes someone who is also relatively well-informed.)

What else do my actions reflect? I care about what I eat, both in terms of health and impact on the environment. I don't always articulate it like that - I'm not proselytizing for vegetarianism all the time - but I try to make sure my choices are consistent with that (also remembering the virtue of being a gracious guest - I like to phrase it in terms of Luke 10:7 - emphasis on "whatever they provide"). Oh yeah, I read the Bible, as well as other spiritual literature - and the poetry of Mary Oliver, Rainer Maria Rilke, and various Chinese poets - not every day, but more than once a week. I think that accurately reflects my need for a spiritual connection, even as I'd like to make it more central to my life.

I buy organic and/or fair trade foods when I can; that's been difficult economically recently, and I worry that's it's gotten too easy for me to just go cheap. I understand that my commitment to organic and fair trade foods isn't enough. I try to shop at local stores, probably not as much as I should, but I never shop at Wal*Mart if there's any other option (and I can say a lot more about that, but not today).

And I wonder, what else do my actions reflect - what do people see when they see me? Not just looking at a picture, or even across the table, but acting the in world? My values may or may not be revealed in the stories I tells about myself - because stories can be a good way of concealing, as well as revealing - but my actions reflect my true values, whether or not they match what I say.

I'm talking about integrity here, and I want to be clear that it's something I'm working on; I think that's a work-in-progress for everyone, all the time (except maybe for people who've reached Kohlberg's Stage 6 of moral development). But not just integrity: it's also about identity, who I am. I can tell you I like Indian food and jazz, I can tell you stories (eating a tablespoon full of wasabi in Boston!) but that doesn't necessarily tell you who I really am.

All of which is a lengthy preamble to the question, who are you?