Taylor uses a couple of interrelated phrases that speak powerfully of our pre-modern/post-modern selves; his terms are the pre-modern “porous self” and the modern “buffered self.”

The porous self describes the common pre-modern worldview of being open to the good and evil forces of the world.  This meant that there were demons to be placated and protected against, storms to be drained of their strength by devotions to various deities, and saints to be blessed by. In short, the experience was an outer experience, one in which the person laboured to position herself in the most beneficial posture possible in reference to the powerful world around her.  The modern buffered self is completely the opposite.

We can see this sin in things like the preparation for the 2010 winter Olympic games in Vancouver, where the homeless are carted, out of sight-out of mind, to the outskirts of the city, and where the import of sufficient quantities of prostitution is allowed as long as it isn’t seen (of course that is their problem now, it has become visible).  It seems to me that the buffered self merely stuffs human desire and “irrationality” into marked boxes to be opened only in private.

Taylor marks the departure from the porous self as synonymous with the rejection of carnival (I will return to the idea of carnival later) and with the acceptance of the reformation’s dictum that all must be 100% christian; all must read the bible for themselves (interpreting perfectly through the pure lense of a childlike faith), all, not just clergy, must live up to the virtues of a syncretistic, synchronized leap of ecclesial and governmental force, diving into the shallows of the buffered, protected, reasonable self.

It seems that Taylor explicates the problem well, but feigns to consider the the issue as problematic as I do.  When he says “buffered self,” I say “death.”  Granted it cannot be as simple as this, but it is interesting that Taylor comes so close to the edge of the abyss which his own explanations open up, but seems unperturbed by such depth and darkness; he is perhaps more caught up in the grand vista that he claims to see on the other side.  The question remains whether what he sees is another city (le cite de dieu) or a pile of clouds, lit for the moment with sun and sky.

Continuing from my previous post on Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, I want to reflect on a point that Taylor makes regarding the public sphere.  He makes an interesting distinction between the public sphere of our modern age and the public sphere of the ancient republic or polis.  Both historical scenarios include discussion outside the decision making body.  The difference, he says, is that, in the ancient polis, “the discussions outside….prepare for the action ultimately taken by the same people within it.  The ‘unofficial’ discussions are not separated off, given a status of their own” (189).  The experienced reality of “discussions” in our modern era, on the other hand, operate very differently.  “It is a space of discussion which is self-consciously seen as being outside power.  It is supposed to be listened to by power, but it is not itself an exercise of power.” (190)

I find this very interesting.  We, as citizens of North American style democracy, are taught to view our views, opinons, and discussions as important.  At the same time, I think most people are left wondering how these things actually contribute to the decisions made in the end.  If Taylor is right, our voices don’t figure in unless those in power decide that they should.  Our much touted public sphere of free voices is actually “extra-political,.. a discourse of reason on and to power, rather than by power.” (190)

Now there are good reasons that Taylor cites for the implementation of such spaces as extra-political.  If our discussions on the street are apolitical, then they are less likely to be as charged with violent partisanship.  This unfortunately doubles back on us, creating a modern arena of “political discourse” which seems completely centred around entertainment.  Watching Fox news, imagining it to be a stand-up routine, is an example of how important we view our discussions to be.

How can our discussions become poweful?  How do we side step (or can we?) such a circus of “political discussions” devoid of actual power?  I’m not sure how invested Taylor is in an answer to these questions, but he has done a good job of laying an interesting stage that I had not noticed before.

I don’t think that we have the “right” to be heard.  If we lean on ideas of rights in order to be heard, we only play into the system which has labled our discussions apolitical in the first place.  Instead, if we want to be heard, if we want our discussions to have power, then perhaps a more communally centred approach is the ticket.  In our society, a good measure of whether or not we are truly discussing with political power would be if those “in power” consider our discussions dangerous.  We wouldn’t have to be discussing radical issues, I don’t think; it would instead depend on the strategic place and persistence of our speech.

I have spent the summer reading Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, a large work in which he endeavors to explain how, in 1500, it was inconceivable not to believe in God while in 2000 it is quite easy, if not inescapable.  He is determined not to weigh-in with his own opinion while admitting that this is impossible; thus he simply omits the end of every paragraph where you would expect an essayist to declare, “and so I agree/disagree with this.”  It has been a good read (800 some pages) and I have enjoyed beginning to think through some of his points.

On page 360, Taylor speaks about modern gatherings around music as an example of the uncertain response of many westerners to the various tides of agnosticism, atheism, and anti-deism.  He says,

“I am thinking of the way in which publicly performed music, in concert hall and opera house, becomes an especially important and serious activity in nineteenth century bourgeois Europe and America.  People begin to listen to concerts with an almost religious intensity.  The analogy is not out of place.  The performance has taken on something of a rite, and has kept it to this day.  There is a sense that something great is being said in this music.  This too has helped create a kind of middle space, neither explicitly believing, but not atheistic either, a kind of undefined spirituality.”

Most of us have heard the likening of U2 concerts to church services, and Arcade Fire holding its concerts in cathedrals offers another example.  But it is not the lyrics (U2) or the setting (Arcade Fire) which Taylor alludes to, but rather the sense of profundity that one can experience at a concert.  I think the “undefined” and “middle space” are crucial thoughts here.  While most feel vaguely or strongly uncomfortable with the idea of everyone going to church, they are not ready to abandon the “feel” of sacred gatherings either.  Music, with its poetry and sonic unsayables, offers a gracious canvas on which to place the mixed paint of (1) nostalgia for the common point of celebration and depth that was the Mass, (2) assumed discomfort with “doctrine” or “dogma,” and (3) a palpable “not-going-away” desire to gather around some agreed-upon depth.  All this is experienced in a kind of demilitarized zone of the arts.

I’m both glad and uncomfortable with this.  I’m glad that the longing for sacred gathering is still very much alive.  I see it as a sign of hope that our communal memories are not completely shot.  My discomfort comes with our lack of historical and sociological awareness about the reasons for our musical gatherings.

This is a feeling that I’ve been having all through the book.  Its a feeling akin to someone telling you how ridiculous you’ve been acting around your ex-girlfriend, and you having no idea that you were acting so strange.  Christianity is our society’s ex-girlfriend.  We’re still wanting a little something-something (nostalgia), while at the same time recoiling, remembering truthfully (somewhat) her various infidelities.  I say this not to mean that we should just “turn back time,” I recoil at that; but I am disturbed by our lack of aquaintance with the history of our own desires.  Are we following a path that will lead us into greater light or are we are rats in a causal cage, outfitted with Bose speakers?

Hello all,

It has been a good while since I’ve written on this blog but I’m beginning again as Kate and I move to Vancouver to do Master’s studies.  I’ll be reflecting and working through various ideas and thinkers that I encounter at Trinity Western (where I’ll be doing a Masters of Arts in Interdisciplinary Humanities).  I know many of you reading this have signed up by email for the Lent and Advent readings I’ve done here; you are welcome to stay on and join in on the conversation!

To give you a taste of where my thought will be going, here is a list of my classes this Fall

Engendered History

Texts & Interpretation (reading Charles taylor’s A Secular Age and Gadamer’s Truth and Method)

The Philosophy of Language

Greetings to you and yours on this, the beginning of the Season of the Resurrection of Jesus! It is here, for now, that our little reflections will cease (here where everything begins).  For continued readings and resources of this sort, feel free to wander over to St. Stephen’s Publishing.  Catch you in Advent!

Joel Mason

Scripture for Reflection:

“But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb bringing the spices which they had prepared.  And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.  While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men suddenly stood near them in dazzling clothing; and as the women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living One among the dead?”

“He is not here, but He has risen.”
Luke 24:1-6
Easter Sunday Reflection

I remember going out one Easter morning with a few friends for an early sunrise service; we decided on Todd’s Point, a slab of rock overlooking the water.  We had prepared in our minds vistas of sun and sea salt ricocheting off each other in dazzling displays of beauty and in reverent devotion to the occasion.  But even as we plunked through the dark with our flashlights, guitars, and armfuls of firewood, we could tell that it would be a grey and misty beginning to the day.  We lit the fire and huddled around its unimpressive flame, waiting for any sign that night had turned to light, that Jesus was anywhere close to exiting His tomb.  I remember vividly the wall of fog that slowly revealed itself as the sun was dragged up over the hills, sitting invisible behind grey and white; we couldn’t even see the water.  All we were left with was grey fog upon grey stone, our faces quickly following suit as the cold continued.  We tried to play some songs of worship to raise our spirits but our fingers grew numb within seconds; We were speechless as the poetics of our time surrounded us: did God really raise Jesus from the dead?  Perhaps we are fooling ourselves; we should’ve stayed in bed.
There is no part to this story where the sun comes out; no finale where our spirits are lifted by nature’s kind intervention, proving all our doubts to be counterfeit.  The fog stayed with us for the whole day.  And this is how the resurrection is to many; we know that it is supposed to be important but we often live with the sense that we are cut off from its depth, truncated from God in the hour when we should be most connected.  The crucifixion is easier, at least in the sense that people are tortured and killed everyday.  But the resurrection can seem to stand aloof from the grasping hands of our minds and hearts.
That morning, something else did happen.  For me, it happened without drama and without organized fanfare.  I looked up from the fire to see my friend walking down the rock to the place where the impenetrable wall of fog shot up from the water.  In his right hand he held a conch, a shell that you can blow like a horn.  He stopped in front of the grey and blew the conch; the sound reverberated around us and beyond us into the formless mass.  It peeled like bells in the wilderness.  It was a distress call and a song of praise all in one.  It was mystery colliding with history colliding with our small brains, bodies, hearts.  It was protest and lament, thanksgiving and stubborn hope.  Soon after, we packed up and trod the muddy trail back to our cars and, in our cars, back to our beds.
I want to put my hand in the scarred side of the risen Jesus.  But sometimes all there is is my feeble song of faith sounding into a formless void.  Somehow, on that day, it was enough.  My friends and I had a certain idea of how our celebration of the resurrection of Jesus should be; and it was thwarted quite completely.  But perhaps what really needed deconstructing was our idea of the resurrection itself.  Perhaps the strange mix of disappointment and joy that sat in my belly as our car jangled and bumped its way home was the realization that we had indeed celebrated the risen Jesus.  Can a celebration be akin to a cry against a void?  Can something be so mysterious and so explosive that its sound waves escape you completely?
One day the fog will lift and I will scatter song in the full assembly of the sun and sky; but until that day, my heart does not stop singing.  It is fired by a sun which shines as well in darkness as it does in light.  My song does not have to be a certain melody of clarity and picturesque moments; it can exist, can thrive, can still utter the only refrain I believe when I believe nothing else: He is Risen.

A reflection on Holy Saturday: The Death of God

By Ry Siggelkow

It is all too common for us to skip over Holy Saturday. Perhaps it is because we don’t want to accept the reality of death, much less the death of God. We celebrate Good Friday for what “Christ did for us” on the cross, but even while we do this we tend to ignore the utter Godlessness of the suffering and death of Jesus. If on Good Friday God suffered, on Holy Saturday God died.  The question about whether God suffered or not in Jesus is an old one. In the early church some denied that Jesus suffered at all, saying that he only seemed to suffer, precisely because it was believed that God couldn’t suffer much less die. Against such a view, we must affirm that Jesus’ suffering and death was very real and that he suffered and died as God.

Alan Lewis’ brilliant Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday is truly a remarkable work that I highly recommend. Lewis notes that Holy Saturday “appears to be a no-man’s-land, an anonymous, counterfeit moment in the gospel story, which can boast no identity for itself, claim no meaning, and reflect only what light it can borrow from its predecessor and its sequel” (3). However, this Saturday could be a “significant zero, a pregnant emptiness, a silent nothing which says everything” (3).

Building on the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar, Lewis stresses the supreme importance that when we listen to the Easter story we listen with expectancy. In other words, we must meditate on the cross and burial of Jesus without anticipating the end of the story. Lewis encourages us to reflect on the death of Christ without knowledge of the resurrection. He writes, “As the events of that climactic weekend occurred, and as the gospel story recounts them, this did not begin as a three-day happening, destined to end as a story of victory and life. Far from being the first day, the day of the cross is, in the logic of the narrative itself, actually the last day, the end of the story of Jesus” (31). Holy Saturday is not simply an “in-between day that waits for the morrow,” the resurrection is not in sight. Instead, this Saturday is “an empty void, a nothing, shapeless, meaningless, and anticlimactic: simply the day after the end” (31). So, today, we remember the savior of humanity lying in the grave, dead, a dead rotting corpse- utter hopelessness and Godlessness.

All quotes taken from Alan Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003).

A Good Friday Reflection:

This famous prayer by Thomas Merton is about confusion, danger, depression, and the darkness that so often characterizes the spiritual life.  In it, we can hear the voice of Jesus on this, Good Friday.  Perhaps we can hear him whispering these words as he rose in the morning after a long night in prison, hoping still for another end than that which seemed so horrible.  The darkness of the cross is that horrible, we should not try to protect ourselves or others from this; Jesus was blind with fear, exhaustion, and pain.  It was in this context that he chose to trust in the Father.

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You.  And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.  I hope that I wil never do anything apart from that desire.  And I know that, if I do this, You will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.  Therefore I will trust You always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.  I will not fear, for You are ever with me, and You will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

Scripture for Reflection: Jesus before Pilate

“Then the whole body of them got up and brought Him before Pilate.  And they began to accuse Him, saying, “We found this man misleading our nation and forbidding to pay taxes to Caesar, and saying that He Himself is Christ, a King.”  So Pilate asked Him, saying, “Are You the King of the Jews?” And He answered him and said,
“It is as you say.”

Luke 23:1-3

The crucifixion

“When they came to the place called The Skull, there they crucified Him and the criminals, one on the right and the other on the left.  But Jesus was saying, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing ” And they cast lots, dividing up His garments among themselves.

And the people stood by, looking on. And even the rulers were sneering at Him, saying, “He saved others; let Him save Himself if this is the Christ of God, His Chosen One.”  The soldiers also mocked Him, coming up to Him, offering Him sour wine, and saying, “If You are the King of the Jews, save Yourself!” Now there was also an inscription above Him,
“This is the king of the Jews.”
Luke 23:33-38

A Holy Thursday Reflection:

While Holy Thursday holds many points of important reflection, (the last supper and the garden of Gethsemane for instance) this meditation turns to Judas.  It is important that as we read Judas’ betrayal we do not make the mistake of thinking ourselves very different from him, we are not.  Judas may have been a greedy man, but he was Jesus’ friend nonetheless.  Images of Satan possessing the body of Judas do harm to the deep lesson that we can learn from the life of Judas: our choices matter.

“Then one of the twelve, named Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, “What are you willing to give me to betray Him to you?” And they weighed out thirty pieces of silver to him.

Now when evening came, Jesus was reclining at the table with the twelve disciples.  As they were eating, He said, “Truly I say to you that one of you will betray Me.”  Being deeply grieved, they each one began to say to Him, “Surely not I, Lord?”

“The Son of Man is to go, just as it is written of Him; but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed!  It would have been good for that man if he had not been born.”  And Judas, who was betraying Him, said, “Surely it is not I, Rabbi?” Jesus said to him, “You have said it yourself.’”

We can learn from the life of Judas.  We learn that we must decide who our God is, no one will decide for us.  It is not our parents, not our pastors, not our governments, not our corporations, not our spouses or favorite authors who can choose for us, no one but us.  We have many other options than Jesus on the cross, there is no point in denying it, and some of them seem pretty good some times.  From the daily grind to the danger implicit in following Jesus, we have a choice to make, just as Judas did, and there is much to lose.  This prayer from Henri Nouwen sounds eerily like what I imagine Judas’ thought process would have been like.

“Dear Lord Jesus, I remain so torn and divided. I truly want to follow you, but I also want to follow my own desires and lend an ear to the voices that speak about prestige, success, human respect, pleasure, power, and influence. Help me be attentive instead to your voice, the voice which calls me to choose the narrow road to life. The choice for your way has to be made every moment in my life. I have to choose thoughts that are your thoughts, words that are your words, and actions that are your actions. There are no times or places without choices. And I know how deeply I resist choosing you. Be with me every moment and in every place so that I may recognize your way and choose to walk it. Amen.”

Scripture for Reflection: The Garden of Gethsemane

He came out and proceeded as was His custom to the Mount of Olives; and the disciples also followed Him.  When He arrived at the place, He said to them, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.”  He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and began to pray,m saying,

“Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.”

Now an angel from heaven appeared to Him, strengthening Him.  And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground.  When He rose from prayer, He came to the disciples and found them sleeping from sorrow, and said to them, “Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not enter into temptation.”

Luke 22:39-46

The cross reveals that each of us reject God; we reject love daily, this is what is meant by original sin. This rejection is built into the very structures of the society we have constructed. As McCabe states, “So the cross shows up our world for what it really is, what we have made of it. It is a world in which it is dangerous, even fatal, to be human; a world structured by violence and fear. The cross shows that whatever else may be wrong with this or that society, whatever may be remedied by this or that political or economic change, there is a basic wrong, persistent through history and through progress: the rejection of the love that casts out fear, the fear of the love that casts out fear, the fear that without the backing of terror, at least in the last resort, human society and thus human life cannot exist” (97).

It is important to note that Jesus refuses to take up arms, to resort to violence in the building of his new society, the church, which is to be defined by self-giving love, forgiveness, and the sharing of life together. Instead, he trusts in the work of the Holy Spirit. Yet, he was killed. Jesus on the cross represents the failure of human life. The cross shows us the reality that all of our efforts to love, to struggle against the oppressors of this world, finally end in failure, in death. We continue to struggle just as Jesus did out of obedience and love, but even despite some gains we will continue to fall short. It is important to remember that whatever the political significance of Jesus’ death may be it did not transform the world. Killers continue to kill. Torturers continue to torture. The establishment continues to oppress the weak and marginalize the poor.

McCabe notes that Jesus’ prayer to the Father is “to work through his failure” (100). “Before his death Jesus had tried, but in the end failed, to bring the Spirit of love to a small group of disciples; now through him the Father pours the Spirit through the world; by this the world is to be transformed into a community of love, the Kingdom of God” (100). Thus, the Father’s response to the prayer of Jesus is the resurrection.

Ry Siggelkow

www.rainandtherhinoceros.wordpress.com

Jesus was killed not because God wanted him to be killed but because we wanted him to be killed. He posed a challenge to the ruling powers, to the establishment and to each individual and he continues to do so -and we continue to respond by crucifying him. The cross signifies humanity’s rejection of God and, indeed, of all humanness. It reveals the depth of our sin. Jesus pours his heart out and quite literally his blood for the sake of humanity. This is an invitation to love, to enter into a relationship with a person who is love.

Ry Siggelkow

www.rainandtherhinoceros.wordpress.com