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April 11, 2004
Easter
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One thing is certain: the theme of Easter is rebirth. Whether this is a proprietarily Christian matter is no sot clear, and my posts have argued that it is not. Still, all our affairs in this nation, and this nation’s affairs in the world, are marked by the West’s religious heritage. Today we need to ask not so much whether we can be reborn, but whither we may grow.
In 2000 I looked forward into a new millennium that seemed to hold endless promise: time and space for us to work on our own spiritual growth. Events since then have forced the issue, and I can’t say I’ve been happy with the results insofar as they relate to the condition of Christian America. Still, I will not despair, for despair is founded in certainty, and rebirth is always full of the unknown. Last year I lamented America’s imperial impulse, but that now seems to be the least of our problems. No doubt I was infected by our leaders’ self-delusions; their vision of swift victory in Iraq and a preemptive march into a glorious future of international capitalist democracy: a world reborn on our terms. Instead, another Easter finds us still fighting the same war, with little vision of an ultimate destination, and our resources stretched too thin to manage a single theater effectively, let alone an empire.
Maybe this morass was foreseeable. Indeed, I never really believed the “cakewalk” crowd’s prognostications, but I feared their single-minded belligerence and the sheer power at their command. But martial superiority is too blunt an instrument for our present purposes, and if the administration has other tools, it has yet to show them to any great advantage. They might have learned a lesson from those who once sought (with similar success) to suppress a nascent Christianity. But that would put the sandal on the other foot, a position I don’t suppose our god-fearing leaders could even imagine.
The President’s Christian faith is a matter of some interest here. While at least a nominal religiosity remains a prerequisite for any realistic presidential candidate in this country, the current officeholder is more forward in his devotion than has been the norm for one who must lead a diverse populace while respecting the separation of church and state. Making a public show of piety plays to a broad demographic swath, and few politicians are above cynical pandering, but in Bush’s case it’s his apparent sincerity that alarms some observers.
The President’s religion is portrayed as a more or less mainstream Methodism, but in his public rhetoric he certainly seems to engage what is thought of as the “Christian right”, which sometimes extends to the nether regions of the evangelical community, where strange notions about America’s special destiny in God’s “plan” are held with disquieting certitude. The fear is that this is the same certitude that led to the administration’s misjudgments about our ongoing adventure in Iraq. One hopes God’s plan is better than theirs. Whether the affair has taught our leaders any of the humility that befits the Christian remains open to doubt.
Doubt is eclipsed only at the moment of rebirth, when understanding overflows in the form of genuine belief. I’ve repeatedly argued that this inherently ecstatic state must be continually achieved and re-achieved; that it is to be constantly worked towards, but never clung to. The memory of this experience is what we call faith: another blunt instrument, but often the best we have to work with.
The evangelicals, and the President, I believe, represent what is referred to as “born-again” Christianity. For them it is not enough to be raised in a tradition, or baptized in infancy; they require that a person be subject to the ecstasy of the rebirth experience, and thereby transformed. I would like to think that I share common ground with this position, but I often get the idea that they do indeed cling to the visionary moment of certainty, at the expense of the doubt (and concomitant self-examination) necessary to navigate the “real world” in which we are bound to live our lives. The revelations of rebirth can inform this World, and imbue it with a vision worth working towards, but ecstasy for us is by nature brief. When we pretend that we can live our whole lives within its bounds our faith is apt to become not so much blind as self-delusional.
So it is that I fear our leaders have not merely lied to us (habitual in politicians) but to themselves, which is far worse, and more dangerous for us all. In 2000 I preceded my Easter meditation with a look into the darkness of the day before: the necessity of the Underworld journey as embodied in the tradition of the Harrowing of Hell. For our President, rebirth seems to have rescued him from nothing worse than the dissipate pleasures of a privileged but aimless youth. Soul-stifling such activities may be, and it is my faith that one person’s suffering is as legitimate as the next one’s, regardless of degree, but as I pointed out in 2002, rebirth is ultimately attained only through some manner of death, which tends to put our lesser sufferings in perspective, as well as explaining why Jesus had to descend before he could ascend.
We are caught somewhere between the heights and the depths, trying to sort truth from lies in matters about which we have no certain knowledge. Sadly, we are subject to rulers with too much certainty, and the power to send others into the unknown of death. Christians are advised to imitate Christ, but these people issue orders in the manner of those the scriptures say condemned Him.
In the end, we are left less with the surety of scripture than with the contingency of poetry, such as I offered in 2001. And we have the Spring, which, long before the growth of Christianity, was recognized as the season of rebirth. Easter remains the Christian holiday par excellence, but it does not close The Book on life, death, or rebirth. Nor did it begin this eternal tale. In 2000 I wound up the season with an observation of Pentecost, or White Sunday, a day of glossolalia, confirming the Lord’s divine bequest to his Apostles. But even the “gift of tongues” serves only to put new words to an old tune.
April 1, 2004
April Fools’ Day
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I barely consider April first a bona fide holiday, although I’ve marked it each year. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for humor, and there ought to be a day devoted to laughter. Laughing is one of my favorite things to do; a genuine ecstasy: an involuntary spasmodic ripple of the body that we find mysteriously enjoyable, issuing forth in a guttural meta-language which is universally understood. It’s sort of like sex, but easier to come by.
So my post from 2000 was a joke, albeit a lame one. The thing I don’t care for is that the day is often given over to practical jokes, which are not my favorite form of humor. They come down to playing a trick on someone, and then having a laugh at their expense. I don’t want to fool people, and I can rarely remember a typical story-type joke. I prefer what I would call wit: humor extracted out of normal, everyday converse by means of unexpected twists and turns of thought and word. I guess this can amount to tricking up someone else’s mind or tongue, but the hope is that everyone is in on the joke, leading us all on a little mental flight which, at best, winds up with everybody getting one of those weird gut-spasms.
The picture essay from 2002 is more along those lines, though I don’t mean to suggest that I’m any great wit. Which, I suppose, means I’m witless. Well, we all are, from time to time. That was my subject in 2001, when I focused on how birdwatching can make a fool of the observer, and even lead one to fool oneself. That’s the most dangerous kind of fool; the one we really need to look out for.
Fittingly, no one is even sure where the April Fool tradition comes from. One story is that it relates to that Gregorian calendar reform I keep coming back to, and the original fools were the people who didn’t make the date change but kept on celebrating the New Year in the Spring. I don’t think it’s always foolish to be out of step with the masses, and being on the wrong schedule provides a useful excuse for missing unpleasant appointments and such. I’ve been a bit out of step my whole life, and I’ve spent much of it among people who are proud to be so: the bohemians of your so-called counter culture. We like to think our foolishness is a form of superiority, but that’s a real joke; most likely on us.
Actually, I was always a compromised bohemian (as if there’s any other kind.) Too timid to truly detach myself, I hung on to the “security” of a “real world” job. Now that’s gone, and I’ve only my own foolishness to blame. But life is like that: sometimes we laugh ourselves to tears, and sometimes we laugh to keep from crying. Either way, we’re just another body that can’t do more with its thoughts and feelings than to trigger some uncontrollable rolling gush of sound or fluid. If that makes us feel better, then I guess we live in a fools’ paradise.
Paradise; paradox: a pair of dice: each year rolls them all together. Last year’s poem was about what really happens at April’s advent: we get that first whiff of Spring. Just a little at first; a nice day, then a nasty one, but enough to remind us that life is worth living, or that it will be lived, whether we will or nil, and we’d be fools, or nihilists, to turn our backs on it. We will have an eternity to “get” the joke of nothingness, but April is our chance to let laughter reign, doused though we be by showers of rain or showers of tears.