"We Live in a Semantic Universe" - Random Thoughts 11/10/2016

We Christians sometimes talk about “obedience”.  If “obedience” is viewed in the abstract and as independent of or superior to faith, hope and love rather than as their manifestation, then “obedience” is a sham, a millstone tied around your neck, a bringer of death and division.

----------

“Every prayer is an expression of hope.  If you expect nothing from the future, you cannot pray.  Hope is based on the premise that the other gives only what is good.”  (Nouwen)  For what do we hope?  Or rather, to whom do we hope?  Is the “God” that we see one that calls our hearts and minds to that mode of existence that we call “hope”?

----------

Be aware of “the immense difference that exists between hope and wishfullness.” (Nouwen)

----------

The fact that the word “great” appears in “Make America Great Again” does not itself make self-evident what the term means.  Be assured that it doesn’t mean to Donald Trump what it means to you.  To understand what Donald Trump means by “great” we need only look at his words, actions, policies, pursuits, and (perhaps most importantly) who or what is sacrificed in the pursuit of “greatness”.

----------

To those evangelical and fundamentalist Christians who piously hold forth that God “intervened” to give the presidency to Donald Trump I simply ask “Did God’s intervention on behalf of Trump begin before or after the Republican primary?”  If before, you cannot absolve yourself of the ramifications of your support due to him being “the lesser of two evils” or “having no other choice.”

----------

When I look into the face

Of my enemy

I see my brother

I see my brother

(“Brother” – The Brilliance)

This prayer of faith is pious nonsense unless that which binds and gives life to humanity is eternal; deeper and stronger than those things that separate.  A true vision of our beginning and our end may yet bring a healing and reconciling word to our present, a word that renders the construct of “the enemy” as illusory.  As vapor.

My Top 10 Favorite Albums

Around the beginning of the year I started seeing lists of the “best of 2016”.  Music, movies, books, etc.

Since I have a full time job, a marriage, and a 2 year old, I don’t have the time to focus on the “new releases” of any particular year.  A lot of what is “new” to me is not really new at all.

But I digress.

I thought it’d be fun to put together a few top 10’s of my own.  Here’s my Top 10 Albums of all time (and I won’t cheat by listing Greatest Hits albums).  This was surprisingly difficult to do.  My criteria isn’t so much what has the most number of songs that I like, so much as it is what album could I put on “shuffle” and happily listen to any song.  So this isn’t a 10 “best” albums of all time from a “critics” or artistic perspective.  I actually have no idea if most of these are “critically acclaimed” or not.  These are just albums that I like and/or are associated with a particular time in my life.

Here goes:

The Brilliance – Brothers   -  The only “Christian” album on this list.  Moving, real, and hopeful.  It’s brought me to tears on several different occasions.

The Black Keys – Brothers   -  It was neck and neck between this and El Camino.

Coldplay – A Rush of Blood to the Head   -   Coldplay at their best.  I’m not much of a fan of their newer stuff, but this is a great album.

Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds – Live at Luther College   -  I really got into Dave Matthews Band in the first few years of college, and I’ve probably listened to this album more than any other.  It’s amazing what these guys can do with just two acoustic guitars.  An inspiring album for an aspiring acoustic guitarist.

David Bazan – Curse Your Branches   -  If you want to know what it’s like to lose your faith, listen to this album.  Honest and poignant.  The degree to which I can relate to this album is actually a little scary.

John Mayer – Continuum   -  It’s more “pop” than what I typically listen to, but Mayer has a bluesy guitar style and tone that I love.

Led Zeppelin – IV   -   My first ever CD (a fact of which I’m proud).  The whole thing rocks.

Norah Jones – Come Away With Me   -  A soothing and beautiful album.  Brings me back to when my wife and I were dating.

Pearl Jam – Ten   -  Just a classic.  It’s got it all.  Brings me back to high school….in a good way.  Those first few years of driving, being out with my friends, windows down.

Radiohead – In Rainbows   -  Other than a few radio hits, I knew very little about these guys until I saw them live.  Quite a few of the songs that caught my attention are on this album.

A few honorable mentions:

Coldplay – Parachutes

Dave Matthews Band – Before These Crowded Streets

Dave Matthews Band – Crash

David Gray – White Ladder

Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon

Pink Floyd – The Division Bell

Sleeping At Last – Atlas: Year One

The Black Keys – El Camino

The War on Drugs – Lost in the Dream

U2 – The Joshua Tree

Bono, Eugene Peterson, and the Psalms

Fuller Seminary just released a great video of Bono and Eugene Peterson talking about the Psalms.

It’s fantastic.  The two of them are so different in some ways, and yet display a very real friendship.  It’s made me consider about the role of the Psalms in my own life (or the lack thereof).  I confess to not knowing what to do with many of them, and to being positively revolted by some of them (like Psalm 137).  They defy categorization.  Frameworks like “biblical inerrancy” positively miss the point (at best) IMO.  Having come to that conclusion, I’m quite ready to give them another chance.

And honestly, who gets to bake cookies for Bono?!

What Is "Useful" Knowledge?

"If the skill could not be practiced by anyone, anywhere, then it was useless knowledge."

I read that last week in Walking With Grandfather.

The quote is made in the context of survival skills.  It goes on to say:

"So, for example, there are over twenty ways to make fire depending on the terrain and weather.  Yet if you know two basic ways you can make fire in almost any circumstance."

So here, what qualifies something as true knowledge (contrasted with useless knowledge) is the applicability and perfection of a skill in such a way that it can be learned and effectively put to use by almost anybody (again, keeping in the mind the context of survival skills).  So knowledge is not necessarily "I learned 20 ways to make fire."

**********

I think Hardin would characterize the journey described in his book as one of knowledge. So it got me thinking more generally, what is knowledge?  What is "useless" knowledge?

Is knowledge synonymous with ideas?  The more ideas that one has - the more facts one knows, the more points of view that one can effectively understand, the more up to date a person is with current events - is that "knowledge"?

I don't think that the answers to these question are without ambiguity.  It can be yes or no, which tells me that there is something deeper and more fundamental to consider.

**********

Perhaps the more fundamental thing is the role that "knowledge" plays in a persons life.  "Knowledge" is in service to what?  What is it's end?  Is it it's own end?  That is, what does this knowledge imply about what it means to be, and in what way does it impact my being?  Does it draw me into reality, or away from it?  To what or to whom does it point?  Questions not easily answered.

More thoughts from Hardin:

"Later I would learn still other fears.  My entire existence was one lived in fear, except for books.  The world of ideas was not a fearful one.  Until I became a born again Fundamentalist, then fear came back with a vengeance."

"I had to keep my heart closed; it was the way I learned to survive.  Later in life I would use alcohol and drugs to mask my feelings; and when they weren't available I had "my books and my poetry to protect me" (Paul Simon, I Am a Rock).

"I liked living in my head.  Ideas were much better than feelings.  Ideas could change the world; feelings were just subjective states to which I had never been."

I hear echoes of myself in this quest for certainty and objectivity and the driving force of fear.  Questions about "useless" knowledge isn't about "mere" ideas (as if there is such a thing), or how practical something might be, or books, or extroversion/introversion, or being friendlier or nicer, or avoiding solitude as if it's a waste of time at best.  Far from it.

Rather, it's about the degree to which knowledge cuts us off, perhaps leading us to believe that we are neutral observers.  It's about the way that the pursuit can snuff out the flame of wonder, mystery, and gratitude, closing us within an intellectual box observing a life that we aren't really living, observing a world that we aren't living in.

Interestingly, the subatomic world calls into question this idea of objective observation, arguing for the connectivity of all of life.  Sounds new-agey and dangerous?  Perhaps I'll explore that in a future post.

**********

There are a multitude of ways of speaking of knowledge within the scriptures:

We know that "We all possess knowledge." But knowledge puffs up while love builds up.
--1 Cor 8:1 NIV

But there is also:

In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
--Colossians 2:3 KJV

**********

Dust We Are And Shall Return (The Brilliance)

I need to be reminded.

It isn't just me that wears the ashes.  

I think I could live with that.  

It's the ashes on my wife.  

On my little girl.  

On all the rest.

May Ash Wednesday yet be sweet as this song?

Be still my soul.  

From dust we’ve come and dust we are and shall return
Be still my soul and let it go, just let it go

Glory to God
Glory to God in the highest
Glory to God
Glory to God in the highest

Naked we came and shall return into the grave
Be still my soul and let it go, just let it go

Glory to God
Glory to God in the highest
Glory to God
Glory to God in the highest

Be still my soul, Lord make me whole, Lord make me whole
Be still my soul, Lord make me whole, Lord make me whole, Lord make me whole 
Be still my soul, Lord make me whole, Lord make me whole

Glory to God 



Song: Dust We Are And Shall Return by The Brillance (On either Lent or Brothers Albums)