John under the hand of Christ

Some pictures are like emotional cluster bombs. The one I'm thinking of is a wood sculpture of the Last Supper in a German cloister. The entire piece is unexceptional, but Christ and the apostle John are the most moving characters ever. John is asleep on what appears to be the hand of Christ. Well, his eyes are closed anyway, and you don't really know if he's asleep of just wailing. The second hand of Christ is resting on his back in the most tender gesture.

I was shopping for art postcards when I came across it and I had trouble keeping my countenance. Suddenly it hit home that Jesus knew that his crucifixion was going to break his friends' hearts and that they would never recover. There is so much love in this sculpture, it drives one nuts. The love of John, the love of Christ for John and for all his disciples. I practically never look at it these days, because it throws me off balance each time. That is to say, it throws me back into a different type of balance: Oh fuck I love you so much. And all those attempts to love Christ in his brothers, all this "getting good at it", that's what it boils down to.

So one of my friends is leaving Durham and, recently, he had expressed some concern at not being especially moved when he went to Jerusalem and visited all the places. Usually, there's always a couple of orthodox nuns just crying their eyes out at the site of the Last Supper. And he said that he thought that was appropriate, but that somehow he could not cry. He's an older, British prof who teaches at a big US divinity school. "Ah whatever", I said, "don't you know that it takes one to know one"?

I wanted him to have this postcard, but giving it to him was pretty surreal. For that is not your average greeting card. And one problem is that I really did not want him to associate it with me either. I did not want it to convey just how deep my thoughts are, and just what a sensitive person I am, I did not want to be part of the picture at all. I don't mind a bit of self-promotion and name-dropping on occasions, but an emotional bomb like this piece of art is between each Christian and their Lord, methinks. But I did want him to have it.

I asked if he had a pigeon-hole I could leave a card in before he left. He did not have one. So I said okay, I'll have to give it to you in person. "It's very moving" he said, and immediately retired to his room. As for me I'd rarely been so exposed in my life. "I thought you might like to have it" I somehow uttered in a phony voice and then retired to my own room. Fuck I hate being this exposed.

An informed guess at why the structures don’t work.

So I guess that sleeping was not so bad, as I woke up with a clearer mind, and an inner injunction not to give up on my critical ability: "Dany, you know better than this". Um, let's see...

There, I had been doing volunteering in a drop in centre as an undergrad. I have also chatted with quite a few homeless people who were not interested in ever coming close to a drop in centre. Those who would rather stay out on the street were not ready to be labeled as "homeless". They were not "bums". They hated it at the drop in: the unsavoury characters, the condescending staff, they just loathed it. Not infrequently they loathed me too. And I thanked God for their pride.

So yes, Edinburgh has got lots of structures that attend to the homeless poor, but once someone starts using those structures they can become assimilated as "charity cases" in a way that will end up destroying their self esteem. Instead of rehabilitating them, it entrenches them further as "failures". It's very similar to an argument that Poserorprohet was making about criminals being forever entrenched as criminals as soon as you hand them over to a system that supposedly works towards rehabilitating them.

On Saturday night, the kid told me just that: "I'm not this down, I hate it at the drop in, it’s just horrible". Clearly, this kid had not been homeless for long: there was so much passion in his eyes, so much readiness to engage in conversation. "I hate it there, it’s full of bums, they steal from you, I’m just trying to raise enough money so I can sleep at a normal hostel".

I’d asked if he had a phone number, or an e-mail address. He had neither. And I did not even think to ask about the hostel he usually stayed at. I just walked away to see my play.

And right now I’m just sad. Sad that I always seem to think too late and sad at the missed opportunity. Furthermore, I'm convinced that it’s missed opportunities of this type that entrench people further into despair: it’s the near misses that do most of the harm! And this was an opportunity that this kid was giving me, he offered me his trust, he engaged with me, and I just ended up walking away.

Please God, I’m sorry I was so stupid. Please be there for this kid. Please don’t let him bear the consequences of my "near miss". Please forgive me. Please teach us better.

(Sometimes I think I really should journey on the receiving side -and sooner rather than later-. I’m useless at "giving" unless I have been on the receiving end. Maybe I should make myself vulnerable on purpose. Maybe that would rid me of my skewed subject positions.)

Edinburgh

As we get out of the theater, rain is pouring down. The streets of Edinburgh are beautiful, the play was nice and I’m staying with a good friend. We don’t really mind the torrential rain: right now, my friend and I are just blown away by the surreal atmosphere of the city’s cobbled streets. I’m also quite pleased because I booked a homeless kid into a hotel just before we went to see the play. So it might be pouring cats and dogs but for now, it’s just beautiful…

We’re heading back to my friend’s. The task is to get a taxi, engage in some friendly conversation with the driver, then get some Chinese food delivered when we get home and open a bottle of wine. Right where the kid had been sitting before there’s another homeless person. In fact, on our way to get a taxi we walk past four or five homeless men getting soaked by the rain. We’re lucky to grab a cab fairly quickly. I can’t look my friend in the eyes. She notices and puts her arm on my shoulder. I start crying for utter shame.

Out of defensiveness, I step in intellectual mode: but what’s wrong? The government pours tons of money into homelessness. The other day I even looked it up on Google: a city like Edinburgh has got lots and lots of initiatives. I want to understand. I’ve been in post-secondary education for nearly a decade for Fuck’s sake. What went wrong?

We make it home. I order ha-kao dumplings (possibly my favourite food ever). The wine is perfect. We cuddle up with blankets and have a girly chat until late into the night. My friend goes to bed while I struggle with the Rubik cube for a little longer. I can’t pray. I sort of toy with the idea of not sleeping either. But I just hide my head into my pillow, still feeling the shame, and, surely enough, I sleep like a baby.

Quote of the day

"So while I am not opposed to our trying to harness the resources of state power to alleviate the needs of people, I think it is unfortunate when we think only in those terms".

Stanley Hauerwas, Will the Real Sectarians Please Stand Up?

Closed for Rewiring

There is nothing to say. I am very very confused. My universe is collapsing under a ton of new concepts. Yet I push it further, I read more, I eat less: this is mildly insane! As usual, I somehow manage to step out of it when I'm around people and there's always this unquenchable little joy, this funky playful streak. This is weird.

Book Review 5: A Corner Of The Veil by Laurence Cosse

In this odd little thriller, a Jesuit monk receives a handwritten document which irrefutably demonstrates the existence of God. Anyone who reads "the proof" dissolves in tears and has their lives totally changed by it.

When they first learn about it, the genuine seekers are desperate to read it. Some not-particularly-saintly punters end up reading it out of curiosity and "the proof" instantly messes up with their priorities in a big way. Others don't want to read it because they suspect that it will force them to change their lives, which they don't want to change. And there are those who haven't read it and who try to ensure that it doesn't get out because, if it did, they sense that the present social and economic order would just collapse.

Reviewers on Amazon seems to agree that the end chapter is a bit disappointing as Laurence Cosse comes up with her own crackpot theory about God: that section is just a load of nonsensical ramble! Still, A Corner of the Veil remains a well-written, funky novel full of beautiful descriptions of people and situations. What would it look like if regular people in Paris suddenly came to think that a loving God was an irrefutable reality?

Here's a link to the rather good New York Times Review and another to the Amazon Reviews. (P.S. If the NYT link does not work, here is the same in cache).

The atmosphere of the Kingdom of God

"The social affections," says the economist, "are accidental and disturbing elements in human nature; but avarice and the desire of progress are constant elements. Let us eliminate the inconstants, and, considering the human being merely as a covetous machine, examine by what laws of labour, purchase, and sale, the greatest accumulative result in wealth [and wellbeing] is obtainable". Out of an essay by John Ruskin, The Roots of Honour.

I read this quote and yup, I thought, these are the assumptions I work with on a daily basis. "Keeping the bastards honest" is my job. Keeping the system tolerably humane is my political ambition.

Still, while I'm not ready to let go of my cynicism about human nature, I clearly need a new set of assumptions to balance these out! C.S. Lewis refused to write a sequel to The Screwtape Letters because he did not want to inhabit the hellish atmosphere of selfish calculation that he had investigated in order to write that book. He wanted to dwell in another set of assumptions and he thought that writing a sequel to Screwtape would be counterproductive. He wanted to try to share the ambience of the Kingdom with his readers, not the ambience of hell. And he also recognised that this was a lot more difficult to do.

So let's not dismiss those among us who try to dwell in Christ's vision. We need more, not less, people who are "turning away from mammonism and letting [their] hearts be moved by the atmosphere of the kingdom of God" (J. Heinrich Arnold). For Arnold, tuning in to this atmosphere, not "feeling bad", is the the true essence of repentance.

Please God, let us tune in to the atmosphere of your Kingdom more often. Please!