Seven Sacred Seasons: Incarnation Season

Despite our modern impression that Christmas starts as soon as Halloween (Canada) or Thanksgiving (United States) is over, traditionally, Christmas doesn't start until Christmas day. Everything leading up to December 25 is the celebration of Advent. I think Advent is a wonderful approach to Christmas, for both secular and spiritual adherents of the holiday. While the rituals for a Christian advent are readily available, with some tweaking, people who don't subscribe to any religion or who are of another faith living in a country where Christmas is celebrated, could find a way to light those four candles in the four weeks leading up to the holiday. 

We always celebrated Advent at the Gathering, and encouraged our community to spend Christmas eve and Christmas day at home with family. We held no services from the last Sunday of Advent until the closest Sunday to January 6, the Feast of Epiphany, when we would re-gather. In later years, when we switched to the liturgical rhythms of the Sacred Seasons, we encompassed Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany under the heading of Incarnation Season.

Just as my band was often tapped for All Saints because of our suitability to Halloween, Incarnation Season was almost always handled by a talented musical couple, Craig and Deborah Brososky, whose inspirations included Natalie Merchant, Tori Amos, Sarah MacLachlan, and Loreena McKennitt. Though the other musicians they included switched from year to year, the sounds they created were always well-suited to Christmas hymns and carols. They always practiced a surprise song, which ranged from obvious choices like "Linus and Lucy" from A Charlie Brown Christmas, to less obvious ones (but no less dear in our community!), such as "May it Be" from the Lord of the Rings films as part of their Christmas offerings. 

One of my favorite band slides - a little Queen influence.

I've included some slides I created for Incarnation Season at the Gathering. Feel free to use them in your seasonal worship. As a gift to make up for my lax posting over Advent, I'll be posting a script I was preparing for a Christmas production at the Gathering. Due to casting difficulties, I never finished it, but I was proud of it, and want to share it with my Gotthammer readers as a seasonal reflection of sorts.

The Risk of Birth, Christmas 1973

There is no time for a child to be born

With the earth betrayed by war and hate

And a comet slashing the sky to warn

That time runs out and the sun burns late

That was no time for a child to be born

In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;

Honour and truth were trampled by scorn --

Yet here did the Saviour make his home.

When is the time for love to be born?

The inn is full on the planet earth,

And by a comet the sky is torn--

Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.

- Madeleine L'Engle

Have I Run Too Far to Get Home?

Snapshot, 1992: Filling an overnight bag, getting ready to go to an in-city youth retreat sponsored by the church I grew up in, Temple Baptist Church. I am quickly recording "Would?" by Alice in Chains onto a cassette to listen to in the car. The lyric "Am I Wrong? / Have I Run Too Far to Get Home?" resonates in my head with ideas of sin and redemption, and the parable of the Prodigal Son. I view pop culture through the lens of my faith: I cannot see a film, hear a song, or read a book without attempting to relate it to my faith theopoetically. 

That lyric has been haunting me lately. Lane Staley's passionate vocals plaintively asking if a line has been crossed, a line which forbids a return trip, the clichéd point-of-no-return. The story of the Prodigal Son suggests that there the possibility of return to the Father's arms always exists, and yet I find myself in an ongoing "dark night of the soul" unlike any I've ever experienced.

When I was a younger man, my dark nights of the soul were self-induced, brought on by a combination of a restrictive moral code and lapses into transgressive behaviour: in hindsight, they were mostly the natural outcome of trying to live under spiritual disciplines in my '20s. They were not moments of doubt in the nature of God, but rather doubt in my ability to live in the way I believed God wanted me to. What I experience now is far more difficult.

It's difficult because now it is about the nature of God. I'm pushing forty--I don't have the same opportunities for those transgressive lapses I once did. I'm not so hot-tempered, nor given to passionate whims.These doubts are not melancholic episodes. They are part of this season of life.

I did not come by these doubts suddenly. I did not have a bad experience and then turn away from the Church. I have a grocery list of train wrecks from my years in the Church. When people tell me why they've left faith or abandoned a particular church, I have to stifle a grimace, censor my own desire to say, "Pussy. I've got at least five stories like that one." But they are not the only reason I sit in the desert. I am in the desert because I slowly rejected aspects of the Evangelical-Christian subculture, becoming more and more honest with myself, until one day I realized I'd dropped nearly everything that used to define Christian to me. I don't believe in the complete inerrancy of the Bible, or a literal seven-day-Creation, and I think people who believe in either are stupid. I don't believe homosexuals are some uber-class of sinner. I support gay marriage. I refuse to hide that I read fantasy and horror and love it. I only recently began attending church regularly after a two-hiatus. I find it challenging to read my Bible devotionally. Real prayer is rare and sporadic.

I was like the frog in the boiling kettle, not sensing the problem until it became a crisis. But that's the other difficulty. I'm not terribly alarmed. After all, I'm not physically boiling - I don't feel pain, just a sense of loss and regret. I would like to believe the way I once did, but I don't. Worse yet, I don't know if that's because I've stopped believing, or if it's because I need to find a new way to believe.

I speak at a camp this upcoming weekend. The old me would have called them up and canceled, believing that my doubts render me a poor candidate for speaking about faith. I won't cancel: first and foremost because it's unprofessional; second, because while I have all these doubts, I haven't given up. So long as the prodigal wonders about going home, the possibility remains that he can return home.

Not Ashamed

The title of this post is the same as that of Evangelical supergroup Newsboys' first big hit. It was the first of many slogan-styled lyrics the group would pen and broker into a lucrative career. Many of the subsequent tunes would return to the theme of "Not Ashamed," championing the outspoken proselytizing characteristic of North American evangelicalism. It is a Christianity born of perceived persecution, one that assumes a bold demeanor must be adopted to 'win' converts to the faith. This was the Christianity I grew up with, and the one I served as a professional minister under.

As I pass into the final year of my '30s, I am convinced of neither of these propositions. I do not see Christians persecuted in North America unless they choose to be; nor do I think a bold approach the best for presenting the ostensible message of Christianity.

To the first point: I see Christians persecuted when they're being obnoxious, or advocating for political positions that advantage our faith or beliefs over others', or committing acts of public protest that do more to fuel oppositional invective than to "win souls." I have never been personally persecuted in North America. At the worst, NA Christians are inconvenienced. We have to travel to other countries to understand the meaning of the word persecution. The local school board banning public prayer is not persecution, it's an inconvenience. In my last year of high school, I formed a prayer group: our school permitted us to do so. Even if they hadn't, we would have been free to sit and pray together in out cafeteria or on the front lawn. None of us would have been beaten, tasered, or shot. Losing sanctioned time to pray in schools is not persecution: being caned for praying on school property is.

Getting in hot water for getting in people's grill doesn't count either: if you go out of your way to be an obnoxious bugger and someone reacts poorly, that's not persecution. I had an elderly couple 'witness' to me on a flight once--witnessing in this case having something to do with telling me how Obama was a communist and this last election was likely going to be the last. All this was delivered at a volume better suited to a Rugby field than the cabin of an airplane. Had I responded to the elderly man's tirade against the Democrat party with colorful colloquialisms, it would not have been persecution, though if he were anything like some other believers I know, he'd have seen it that way.

In some ways, I've already covered the aggressive approach to 'outreach,' or what I like to refer to as evangelical mugging. My first post-professional ministry social event was my first steampunk convention, and I found myself filled with the realization that I was free to just talk to people, without feeling guilty if I didn't crowbar Christianity into the conversation.

I can already hear some of the responses to this: "but if we deny Christ before men, he'll deny us before the Father." I'm not denying my faith, as I'll explain shortly. Refusing to verbally assault strangers with my opinion on life, the universe, and everything is not the same as denying Christian affiliation, despite how I often feel that much of organized Christianity is like that uncle who does all the really ridiculous shit at weddings: you know he's family, but you wish he weren't.

Despite all this, I am genuinely not ashamed of the gospel. I am still a believer, just not the one I was ten years ago. I am unashamed of what I still think of as, to quote Rob Bell, the best way to live. I am aware of the role my faith has played in some of history's ugly moments, but as I have said before, Christianity does not have the monopoly on sheep or shitheads; those are as well-represented among the atheists as they are among believers.

So on this Easter day, 2010, I'm ending my unsuccessful attempt at regular Lenten blogposts with the confession that I still believe. It's just a very different animal than it used to be.

Is he risen? I'm no longer as certain of that as I once was, but I'm okay with the uncertainty. If God really needed me to prove His existence, the enterprise entire would be screwed. I have become like the father who asked Jesus to help his "poor faith." My faith might be poor, but it's my faith, and I'm proud of it.

Lent 04: Four of Swords

I got into studying the meanings of Tarot cards back in the late nineties as the result of reading a lot of books on Jung and symbolism, as well as Charles Williams' The Greater Trumps. I use them as devices of meditation and contemplation, a fact I would never have been able to reveal when I first started doing it. It was bad enough I played roleplaying games. To admit I not only avidly studied the Tarot, but also owned several decks would have been career suicide. For the record, I have four decks: The New Palladini Tarot was my first, based upon the classic Rider-Waite deck, and also remains my favorite; The Lord of the Rings Tarot, which I bought more out of Tolkien fandom than anything else; The Merlin Tarot, which has some gorgeous art for the Major Arcana, but the most boring Minor Arcana I've ever seen outside a regular playing card deck; and the Master Tarot, which utilizes both canonical and apocryphal scriptures of Jesus' words and actions in a doubly iconoclastic manner: it's not based on classic Tarot, and let's face it, a Tarot deck about Jesus might be the worst thing a practicing Christian could own in some people's minds.

I'm not interested in getting into an apologetic for why I own these. In fact, at this stage of my life, I don't see the point in apologizing for things I own or do that I've thought about carefully over a long period of time. One of the character flaws I fostered during my tenure as a paid minister was second-guessing. Since I had to defend nearly everything I did (roleplaying, rock music, wearing black), I often doubted my ability to make good decisions. I still did things that were counter-cultural in evangelical Christian circles, but those actions were framed by terms like "loose cannon", "rebel", or "shit disturber". While I'm no stranger to controversy, never lacking the courage of my convictions, my courage was undermined by several factors: I was a youth pastor, I looked young, and I had an unconventional appearance. Youth pastors are often conflated in congregations' minds as being youth themselves. When we advocate for our youthful parishoners, our advocacy is seen as a vested interest (which it is, but so is the senior pastor's interests: whenever I got in trouble with my senior pastors, it was because their older parishoners wanted the pastor to advocate on their behalf). When people think you're younger than you are, you're perceived as lacking maturity. When you have long hair, you get pulled over by the cops for no good reason, so why should anyone trust you in a church?

I digress. This was supposed to be about tarot, specifically the Four of Swords.

The Four of Swords is one of my favorite Tarot Cards. I think it might be the one meant for pastors, or people involved in caregiving. It signifies the idea of retreating, of rest and recovery, of taking time out. As Jana Riley puts it in her excellent Tarot Dictionary and Compendium, it can mean illness in order to recuperate (131). The three swords above the sleeping individual are aiming down, and will cut him if he sits up. The fourth sword is almost saying, "we're not quite at the point where you'll totally burn out, but if you don't keep resting, that last sword is going to join the other three."

That's been my March. I got sick right after that last Lenten post, mainly due to unhealthy stress created from a deadline for an article I should never have taken on. I stayed sick because I tried to keep teaching, as well as working on final edits for another article, as catching up on the marking I didn't do while I was writing the article I shouldn't have taken on. I'm feeling much better now: this past weekend my wife and I went to San Francisco on a research trip, and the humid air did me a lot of good. Being back on the dry prairies has been somewhat detrimental, but I'm not flat on my back with swords pointing down at me anymore.

Lent is a season of retreat and rest. We're driven into the desert to engage in Four of Swords work. As Sharman-Burke's entry on the Four of Swords in the Tarot Dictionary puts it, "A time of rest or retreat after a struggle: a quiet period for thinking things through, a slackening of tension and a relaxation of anxiety."

We could call it sabbatical time. The sort of time I rarely got when I was engaged in paid ministry, save for my last appointment at Holyrood Mennonite, where they let me have the month of December off the year Gunnar was born. That's incredible when you consider what that means: they gave me time off at one of the busiest, most high-profile times of the church year. More churches should take a cue from that. But then again, more pastors should too. It's not just that churches don't give their pastors time off, it's that pastors think they can't. Despite second-guessing our actions in paid ministry, we also end up with God-complexes. Eugene Peterson explains the importance of Four of Swords thinking in the chapter titled "Prayer Time" in Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity. He defines Sabbath as "Uncluttered time and space to distance ourselves from the frenzy of our own activities so we can see what God has been and is doing. If we do not regularly quit work for one day a week we take ourselves far too seriously." He goes on to say that Sabbath is time to "detach ourselves from the people around us so that they have a chance to deal with God without our poking around...They need to be free from depending on us" (73). I like this idea, which I break down simply to saying, take a break - the universe will continue to turn without your help.

I need to be reminded of this, as my recent turn in health clearly demonstrates. I often think of the Four of Swords as the card that says, "lay down now, or you'll be doing it for quite a while anyhow." In the wake of the article I took on that I shouldn't have, I've vowed to tone things down: no more than one active article at a time, since I'll likely be doing edits to several simultaneously in a month or two. There's a Lenten practice if there ever was one.

Lent 02: Alone in the wilderness

I'm mostly alone in the wilderness, and I like it that way.

I have never been naturally gregarious. I was a shy child who hid behind his mother or father's leg at social gatherings. I was afraid to ask for ketchup at fast food restaurants. I spoke out in environments I deemed safe: classrooms, the company of close friends or family, the comfort of my own home. By contrast, I never feared being onstage. I remember playing "Jesus Loves Me" on a toy guitar in front of the church when I was 4 or 5. Couple this with often being the teacher's pet, and school became a safe zone for me - in my desk, or at the front of the class. So while I'm naturally introverted, I'm extroverted on a stage of any kind.

To put it bluntly, I like people when I'm standing in front of them, talking at them. I'm less comfortable being close, and talking with them. I became professionally gregarious and agreeable to work in paid ministry. When that ended, I realized how much I dislike getting to know people. How much I don't want to meet any new people. I used to try hard to meet people. Now I just avoid new relationships. I still prefer the safety of a small circle of friends and my family.

Along with our kids, we recently attended a community league celebration: families standing around, people being friendly. When I was a minister, I felt the need to meet and greet at these events. It was my Christian duty. Growing up Baptist exacerbated this. As a branch of evangelical Christianity, Baptists are expected to "be a witness, shine the light, share their faith, etc." So when I attended social functions, I saw being sociable as part of my religious identity. Problem was, I didn't always like the people I was talking to. I smiled and laughed and got to know them anyhow, which was exhausting.

There were days as a pastor that I felt like a spiritual hooker. I was paid to go for coffee or lunch or whatever and listen to people's problems. I didn't like all of these people. Some of them drove me nuts. And yet I smiled, and nodded, and was everyone's good friend. Some of it was genuine, but mostly it was a professional persona I adopted. That might offend some of you, but it's the truth. It's true for a lot of ministers. I know this from late nights at conferences and camps, speaking with other people in ministry.

In the years since leaving paid ministry, I've reverted to introversion. I'm still professionally outgoing with my students, but that's a different thing. They don't expect me to love them, or pray for them, or be a spiritual exemplar for them. I just teach them how to use commas, and read Dracula, and think critically. There's less of a burden on me (I'll try and remember to talk about what my friend George calls the "God burden" in an upcoming post), because we have a professional, not necessarily emotional or spiritual relationship. Sometimes I become friends with students after they're done being my students. But I don't feel any pressure to do that. It just happens naturally. Like friendships should.

I don't want to proselytize. I don't think it helps, really. I think the biggest impact of people on my life were people who were just being genuine friends with me.

For the time being, whatever the reasons might be, I'm focusing on my family first, and a few close friends second. I don't have time to be the friend to everyone I used to have to be. It's one of the reasons I left ministry. I was great onstage, but terrible once I stepped down. I could fake it, but that's not right, and I knew it. This is where the church has it wrong. They hire great speakers, great facemen, when they should be hiring great shepherds, people who really, genuinely care.

I know at one time I really did care, but I lost most of that somewhere along the way. And I'm not terribly sad about that right now. And maybe that's another post, for another day. The fact that I'm really not ignoring you, I'm just trying to pay better attention to the circle I'm in.

Lent 01: Into the Wild

Lent is about wilderness journeys: Israel wandering, David fleeing, Jesus tempted. Friend and colleague Penny Nelson preached her first sermon this week, and was kind enough to let me share a portion of it redefining the wilderness experience:

So often, we think of the wilderness as that dark, empty space—the void, the tundra, the desert. The wilderness is frightening because it’s viewed as being empty. But it isn’t empty—it’s almost always full of possibility. The wilderness is a transitional space—a place that is great for change because it allows the emotional and mental space for new ways of thinking and being to develop. The wilderness is full of choices—which way do I go? Which path do I trust? Where do I want to come out? I think this is what Jesus saw as he entered into the wilderness—this vast space was full of possibility for learning, and renewal, and growth.

I like this idea. I'm pretty comfortable with wildernesses, seeing as grew up in one. The topography of my hometown is the same as a desert. I did a lot of meditating while walking through the coulees in and around Medicine Hat, though I probably wouldn't have called it meditation at the time. Prairie winters are a hell of a wilderness, beautiful and deadly. That's the wilderness - pretty, but stay in it for too long or without the right gear, and you're dead. So I like going into the wilderness as a place of possibility, a place of beauty, but we can never forget that the wilderness is also a place where we can die.

Penny and I met while she was taking courses in religious studies and I was a T.A. for those classes. I was the former minister moving through religious studies on his way to an academic career. She was the student moving through religious studies on her way to a career as a minister. As I learned early on, religious studies and theology are not the same thing. Theology trains people to be epistemologically rigorous believers, while religious studies seems to breed atheists who read the Bible a lot. As a result, theologians who enter religious studies tend to take a spiritual shit-kicking, especially if they want to do more than defend their faith to the ostensible heathens who teach these classes. Both Penny and I wanted to really learn the material. To absorb the viewpoint of the religious studies department at the University is to risk standing at the precipice that overlooks the chasm of disbelief.

I've always been an advocate for the hermeneutic of suspicion. Blind faith is still blindness. Some of my best friends are atheists, or people of other faith persuasions. I've told people, if your faith can't take a walk with a Buddhist in a Hindu temple, then it's not much of a faith. That is to say, if you live your Christianity in a Christian bubble, then you'll never know how strong it really is. It's like a Jesus exo-skeleton against the Kung-Fu of the world - it keeps you safe, but it isn't really you. I have always needed to know if I really believed what I said I did. So I dragged my faith into the wilderness regularly.

Religious studies was one of those wildernesses. And in many ways, I'm still getting beyond the hangover it gave me. I'm very thankful for the academic rigor men like Willi Braun, Jon Kitchen, and Wayne Litke submitted me to. I'm indebted to them for helping me think about religion in ways I never had before. I no longer consider 'spirituality' to be some better form of religion. It's just another form, whatever the adherents of spirituality may say to salve their conscience.

Many of the posts yet to come this Lent will likely return to this confession. It's not really fully explained yet, but in short, it's that I think it's both healthy and dangerous to enter the desert, to enter the wild. It's the place of refining faith. You might grow stronger, or you might lose it entire. That's the risk you have to take, to know
how deep your roots go. I no longer remember who originally said it, but you only live as deeply as you believe.

Lent 2010: Confession

So I've been agonizing over what to do for Lent.

People often ask me why I practice Lent at all, being a Baptist by my upbringing. The main reason I do it is I like the structure the liturgical church year gives to my life. This has been especially important, since the Gathering, the church I was involved with for its ten-year life span, folded in the fall of 2008. Since then, my family and I haven't really attended church much. You might say we've been taking a break, recovering from over-involvement in church work between the Gathering and my last five years as a paid pastor, which ended in 2007. At any rate, without a church home, I've felt listless, like a wanderer. Perfect for the Lenten theme of Israel in the desert. I'm definitely in a desert period.

But I struggled this year with what I would "do" for Lent. I haven't always given things up, although the years I did without video games, coarse language, and especially the year I gave up giving unrequested advice were positive experiences. Other years, I practiced reticence, listening only to music with uplifting lyrics, doing a spiritual discipline. Really, it's only a matter of focus, because often doing something positive results in the jettisoning of something negative.

This year I asked friends on Facebook to give me their opinion on what I should do, and while many were very helpful, none felt like they were building me on my journey. I mean, Lent is criticized for being an empty ritual, and it can be if all you're doing is giving up coffee because "you're supposed to." I adopted Lent as a practice, and have the option of not practicing it. Last year I didn't give up anything, as I was too damn busy with my full time school work and full time teaching to afford giving anything up. I really didn't have the wiggle room. So I guess I gave up Lent for Lent last year.

Today it hit me. I don't journal anymore. So I'm journaling. But I'm journaling here at Gotthammer, blogging about where I'm at spiritually. A season of confession, with the blog as the booth, me as confessor, and the priesthood of believers and everyone else listening.

To be clear, I have no intention of airing my dirty laundry. My past is past. But I thought I'd air my current desert thoughts. I found it comforting when Real Live Preacher aired his so many years back, and I thought that, given this point of flux in my life (moving into a full-time paid teaching position at Grant MacEwan University in July), it was a good time to reflect on how I'm living my faith in the wake of leaving paid ministry.

Fifteen minutes a day is all I'll give myself. I've only got three minutes left today. Concise confessions. Maybe I'll miss a day or two, but I'll be here for most of Lent, reflecting on what it means to be a Christian when you're no longer paid to be one.

Poems, on Remembrance Day

Today, the front page of the Edmonton Journal featured an account of one of Canada's "deadliest battles" in the war in Afghanistan. It reminded the readers of how Canadians have not only fought in numerous wars, but continue to be involved in conflicts overseas. Before putting the paper down, I flipped it over, and paused for a moment to read In Flanders' Fields. One must pause to read poetry. We can read journalism quickly, without thought, but poetry, if one stops to read it at all, forces us to slow down through its structure of lines and stanzas. I thought it an interesting commentary on our culture, that the immediate conflict rates the front page, but this piece of poetry is saved for the back. I suppose I ought to be pleased that it warrants a full page, and not simply a side-bar, but I find myself considering the end of William Carlos Williams' Asphodel, where he writes:

My heart rouses
thinking to bring you news
of something
that concerns you
and concerns many men.  Look at
what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
despised poems.
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

What do I get from the news? I get the latest H1N1 information, or lack thereof. I get misleading headlines and celebrity gossip. I get mostly bad news: murder, gangs, war, a failed economy. Letters to the editor are a revelation of how miserably men die every day for the "lack of what is found there", in the news.

I was more heartened by my reading of In Flanders' Fields than by the article of war in Afghanistan. Perhaps that's only because I teach English. English professors and poets are the only ones who give a damn about poetry any more. It's "despised," as William Carlos Williams says. But "my heart rouses, thinking to bring you news of something that concerns you, and concerns many men." I think it is important to pause for reflection on Remembrance Day: we are encouraged to take two minutes of reflective silence to do so. What will we reflect upon? Some will reflect upon the loss of loved ones, some on the glory of fighting for one's country, others will reflect upon the hope of peace.

This is the purpose of poetry. To allow us to pause, and to reflect. It cannot be quickly digested. It must be mulled, not glossed over.  Specifically today, we are encouraged to reflect on the poetry of In Flanders' Fields, which I have copied here for your reflection:

In Flanders Fields
John McCrae

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Years working with people who seek peace as a first resort has troubled my reflection of the last stanza, both by their devotion to Peace, and by the words of other poets, such as Wilfred Owen. Like John McCrae, Owen also fought in the first world war, but wrote a rather different piece of poetry concerning it. Here is the text, along with the slide I made for teaching this poem in my introductory English classes:

Dulce Et Decorum Est
Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori .

While the Latin of this poem was well-known at the time of the Great War, few today are likely to see the ironic twist of Owen's final line, which means, "It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country." The title of this poem, translated from Latin, would simply read, "It is Sweet and Fitting," which contrasts immediately with the opening lines detailing the horror of battle. Perhaps, as a variant reflection this Remembrance Day, you would consider reflecting on Wilfred Owen's thoughts as an alternative to the pastoral poppies. Save the slide and make it your desktop today, and pause for reflection, not once, but several times.

Perhaps you find this suggestion to depart from Flanders Fields misguided, but if you wish to continue to reflect upon the words of John McCrae, I would ask that you leave your poppy pictures behind, and consider this one for your reflection instead, and image of Canadian soldiers at Flander's Fields.

After all, John McCrae might well have been thinking about Longfellow's Aftermath when he penned his words about poppies. In Aftermath, Longfellow presents the reader with what initially seems a nature poem:

Aftermath
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

When the summer fields are mown, 
When the birds are fledged and flown, 
And the dry leaves strew the path; 
With the falling of the snow, 
With the cawing of the crow, 
Once again the fields we mow 
And gather in the aftermath. 
Not the sweet, new grass with flowers 
Is this harvesting of ours; 
Not the upland clover bloom; 
But the rowen mixed with weeds, 
Tangled tufts from marsh and meads, 
Where the poppy drops its seeds 
In the silence and the gloom.

Longfellow utilizes carefully chosen words which all convey images of death, of the passing of life. While we consider "aftermath" immediately as a word associated with calamity or death, it was also understood in Longfellow's day as the second cutting after the initial harvest. The image of cut wheat is a powerful one, of new life cut down before it has time to fully grow, a potential metaphor for youths sent to the fields of battle. Students will often cite McCrae's poem to explain why they see the poppy dropping its seeds as an image of death, not recognizing that Longfellow wrote his poem in the nineteenth century, years before In Flanders' Fields. But one has to wonder if McCrae wasn't pondering Longfellow's words, which are simultaneously about a field of harvest, and a field of death. 

What is certain, is that McCrae was not picturing a verdant landscape filled with red flowers, but a once-pastoral scene now turned to horror, the image of the Canadian soldiers standing in Flander's Fields. The poppies McCrae suggests are likely the ones which drop their seeds "in the silence and the gloom." We need the poetry of all these writers to properly reflect upon the nature of war. One perspective will not do, or we fail in our remembrance. If we remember only the glory of war, we fail the memory of Wilfred Owen. If we are dismissive of those who fought for the freedom to "wage peace," then we fail the memory of John McCrae, who asked us to "take up our quarrel with the foe." I suppose so long as we see the foe as another human being, we are doomed to honor this day with front pages devoted to the immediate conflict. My hope is that we might some day only have the past to reflect upon, to remember.

Book Reflection: Save Me From Myself by Brian "Head" Welch

I heard about Brian "Head" Welch's conversion back in 2005 when I was visiting my parents in Medicine Hat. There was an article in the Medicine Hat news titled something to the effect of Guitarist for Metal Band finds Jesus or something equally accessible to the largely senior citizen population of my home town. My mom asked if I knew "this band," and I recall being a mix of emotions. I was shocked because I couldn't have guessed the "Metal Band" would end up being Korn, a group I was marginally into: I loved their music, and hated Jonathan Davis' lyrics, with the exception of Falling Away from Me and Make me Bad. What I had most appreciated about their music was the haunting, spooky guitar lines and the big fat sound of layered low-tuned 7 string guitars, both Korn guitar trademarks. I couldn't tell you if that was due to Head's influence (although his solo release single "Flush" would lead one to conclude thusly), but my reaction at the time was the result of years of listening to Christian rock when I was a teenager and praying bands like Metallica would get saved. I was excited Head might work on a solo project which would have elements of the Korn sound without Jonathan Davis' lyrics. I would have been excited about his conversion if I'd known all the reasons, but the article didn't go that far. Head's autobiography, Save Me From Myself: How I Found God, Quit Korn, Kicked Drugs, and Lived to Tell My Story, goes that far, and beyond.

I'm not a big fan of autobiographies. I like to read about people's experiences, such as Bruce Feiler's Walking the Bible, or Touching the Void by Joe Simpson, or in the vein of life-changing spiritual experiences, Bruce Marciano's In the Footsteps of Jesus. I'm interested in the moment of crisis, not necessarily the life that leads to it, at least not told in excruciating detail. I like Christian autobiographies even less because they often seem to fall into the same trap the popular evangelistic testimonies did in the 80's: "I used to do drugs/drink too much/have wild sex and then I found Jesus and it was all good." Or the equally popular "I could have been a millionaire/a rock star/a famous actor but I gave it up for Jesus so I could be here speaking to you." So why would I be interested in Welch's book? One, because as I've already stated, I liked Korn's sound and was genuinely interested in finding out what had happened to Welch. Second, because Brian Welch wasn't saying he could have been somebody. From a success perspective, he was somebody, which is why his conversion was so shocking. I wanted to know why a person would leave the fame and money behind. And third, I was badly in need of a good testimony. It's been too long since I've warmed my hands at the flame of a new Christian's fervor and zeal. I was looking for a little inspiration I guess.

It takes a long time to get to the inspiration in Save Me From Myself, but I found myself engaged in Welch's journey for the simple fact that he's roughly my age, and had similar goals. I wanted to be a rock star as well, though obviously not nearly as bad. Nevertheless, I had no trouble picturing his youthful years, the hairstyles and guitar bodies, the sound of the music and the reasons Korn was different in their sound. The first portion of the book is mainly concerned with Welch's addiction to drugs and alchohol and the cyclical nature of his attempts to come clean. It serves well as a memoir of his days of rock and roll debauchery, but gets redundant at times with a near grocery-list accounting of the types of drugs Welch was using. It also deals largely with the fractured relationship he had with his daughter's mother, and the difficulties they faced. And it deals with these events in all their awful glory, not edited for television. This book is not for those who like their Christian autobiographies stripped of sex, substance abuse, and the seven words you can't say on television. I can speed-read, and did so for this portion of the book, simply due to the spiralling repetition of the events, the 'Groundhog Day' nature of Welch's lifestyle. I wanted to get to the moment of crisis, when the change occurred.

I'm glad to say that while the press has framed Welch's conversion as sudden, and media for the book purports his religious experience as leaving him clean from substance abuse without any repurcussions, Welch's journey is much like everyone else's: one step at a time. I have never personally known anyone whose conversion experience was a complete 180 moral turn, even if it seems that way initially. I'm also glad that Welch had no such expectations, or he'd likely have given up early on. He speaks of regressions into drug use, old patterns of behaving, and how Christ is making him into something new. There is no sense of complete arrival. We can tell he's in process, a work in progress, not finished yet. But this is clearly a man whose life has been changed.

I was uncomfortable that it was a seemingly Charismatic group who brought Welch to Christ, since I myself am uncomfortable with Charismatic churches. Not Charismatics mind you. I have some good friends who are Charismatic or Pentecostal. I just don't like it when they get together in large groups. However, I'm thankful for the mental stretch this required of me. If Head had gotten saved by a bunch of Baptists, I wouldn't have a growing edge off the book. I need to be reminded that God works through all his children, not just the ones I'm theologically comfortable with. All that said, I like Welch's take on denominationalism, in that he's "not into it." I'm not really sure we can ever truly not be into denominationalism; our Christianity bears the imprint of the groups we worship with, but I'm a fan of what Lewis called Mere Christianity and what Dinesh D'Souza calls traditional Christianty, and it seems that Brian Welch is too.

I wouldn't say I finished the book and felt inspired. Not in the way I'd hoped. But I did feel challenged in a few areas, primarily to get back to reading my Bible more often. That's what I mean about warming my hands at the flame of new zeal. New Christians often devour the Bible. I nibble and pick at it these days, and it's nice to have a reminder that spiritual health is directly related to our mental diet. On that note, the statement which most impacted me concerned Welch's choice of music in the wake of his conversion. He effectively said that he wasn't precluding the option to listen to mainstream music, but that he wanted to fill his head with things which pointed him toward Christ.

I can relate to that statement. I've had many conversations with people about why I don't listen to Tool an awful lot, despite my love for their sound. I just can't bring myself to listen to Maynard's lyrics repeatedly. As the man himself said, when he sang "fuck your God" in "Judith" (a Perfect Circle song, but indicative of most of Maynard's lyrical propensity), he wasn't referring to some made-up God. So for me, listening to Tool is the faith analogue of hanging around with someone who constantly and vehemently bad-mouths my wife, to the extent of making overt statements that I should never have married her. That's why I love Chevelle, especially when they sound most like a Tool knock-off. I get the sound without the invective.

I realize that some of my past posts might lead someone to assume I don't like "Christian music" but that's not necessarily true. I don't like subculture music. I love music that encourages and uplifts, which teaches and instructs, which acts as prophecy and prayer. When I was in my teens I was a huge fan of pre-John-Schlitt Petra, Rez Band, Undercover, Daniel Amos, The Choir and Michael W. Smith, just to name a few. I still try my best to stay informed as to the latest and hottest acts in the Christian or "Christian by association" scene. My current faves are P.O.D., Skillet, Flyleaf, Mute Math, and Project 86. Sometimes I force myself to take a break from the likes of Rammstein and Nine Inch Nails, just to make sure I'm getting intake of music that lifts my soul up to Christ. Its not that I find the other music drags me down into hell mind you, just that the intention of the lyrics in bands which are unabashedly Christian is less ambiguous, and in my experience, lends me a better footing in my faith when I need it.

But I like quality as much as I like content. I want the music to have integrity on its own. Good lyrics with bad music doesn't strike me as a serious sacrifice of praise. So I'm glad that someone with Head's musical chops will soon be adding his stamp to the category of sacred music. Admittedly, from what I've heard so far, his lyrics will leave something to be desired in terms of maturity and growth, but I'm cool to listen to a baby Christian find his way in the world, given that he'll be playing music with a 30-something ability. In a way, it seems to me like this will be the sequel to Make Me Bad, which admitted the Christian view of the human condition without the Christian view of a Cosmos with a Savior who could give you a hand up. Having read Save Me From Myself, I'm clear that Head has a firm grasp of that Savior-filled Cosmos, and it's a good place to be living, loving and playing music that will eat through concrete. After all, why should the devil have all the good music?

Reflection - Shanna She-Devil

Getting gift certificates for your birthday is a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because it's always fun to go on a shopping spree on someone else's dime. A curse, because I always feel I need to live up to the gift-giver's generosity by picking the absolutely most perfect thing. It can't be junk. It's gotta be great. I can buy crap with my own money, but effectively, gift certificates are still someone else's money. So when I went to Happy Harbor Comics, the best comic book store on earth, to spend two rounds of gift certificates (Christmas and birthday), I was feeling a little overwhelmed.

A good comic shop is one of my favorite places to be. And Happy Harbor isn't just a good comic shop, it's a great one. The guy who owns the place understands the hobby and the people who indulge in it. He'll watch you to make sure you aren't stealing any of the merchandise, but otherwise, he lets you browse for lengthy periods of time, a practice which is essential to the hobby. We comic geeks just like soaking up the ambience of a comic shop, looking at the covers, flipping through the pages. If a comic shop has a sign about not flipping through the comics, it's owned by some paranoid wanker who doesn't understand that if I like a comic, I'll still buy it AFTER I've looked inside. But I need to look inside to make sure that the artist who painted the amazing cover is the same guy who illustrates the whole book. Because I'm not buying comics for how much they're going to be worth someday. I'm busying them because I like reading them.

That's why I only get trade paperbacks anymore. I don't buy single issues, save on rare occasions, like when I order the collected Atland books. I want to support the artist in that situation, and he might not ever get the chance to release a trade paperback (TPB) if I don't support him in the single issue stage. Never mind that taking a TPB off the shelf and reading it is a hell of a lot easier than taking the single issue out of the collector's bag I have it hidden away in.

But deciding on the right TPB is a difficult thing, especially at Happy Harbor, because the selection is phenomenal. However, I'd been eyeing one book in particular since I first started scouting out my possible choices for spending my gift certificates shortly after Christmas. I was Shanna, She-Devil by Frank Cho.

Artists like Frank Cho are why teenage boys start reading comics. Frank Cho draws the best women in comic books, with anatomy which, however buxom his women become, still obeys gravity. And they all look a bit like Linda Carter, which isn't a bad thing. He also draws great dinosaurs. And he does both in Shanna, She-Devil.

If you ask me why I picked up a trade paperback of a scantily clad jungle girl who kicks the ever living shit out of dinosaurs with birthday gift certificates for my favorite comic shop, I'll tell you "I like to read the articles...I mean story!" In all honesty, you can look down your nose at me all you like.So maybe this is my mid-life crisis...the scantily clad jungle babe for my inner adolescent, and the dinosaurs for my inner child. It takes me back to being 12 years old reading my first Conan comics.

The plot is simple. A military unit crash lands on a mysterious island filled with dinosaurs. There they discover a secret Nazi research facility. Inside said facility, clones of hot blonde Aryan women who were going to be super soldiers! How proto-feminist of the Nazis to choose women as their super soldiers! Only one is still alive, and when she is freed from her stasis tank, she joins with our group of soldiers in trying to survive on the island...until a deadly virus is unleashed! Only a serum back at the Nazi research facility can save them, but there are a lot of dinosaurs between Shanna and the serum, and then even more between her and the camp!

Yep. Plot is dumb as hell. But Cho rises to the occasion, both as visual artist and writer, to make Shanna, She-Devil not only fun, but somewhat engaging as a character as well.

Say what you will. It's got dinosaurs and a hot blonde heroine. I've been studying high-falootin' literatooor for the past 5 years. I needed some junk in my reading diet.

One of the best reasons to not update your blog

Fighting for Freedom

At the prayer walk I mentioned in my post on Canada Day, we had a time of sharing and discussion. When I commented on the part about being thankful for living in a land that is free, my mother-in-law related how she'd seen a bumper sticker in the United States that said something to the effect of "Live free or die". I've likely misquoted that...but the essential idea was that the people of that state would rather die than live under someone else's boot.

We discussed how many people globally live under someone else's boot, do not live free. So I challenged the group assembled there that day to fight for someone else's freedom, seeing as we are currently lacking in freedoms to fight for in Canada (oh, I know, there's likely some marginalized group who wants more freedom, but let's get real - if you get fliers delivered to your home advertising food, you're in a wealthy nation). This challenge was to be done over the Gathering's sabbatical month, so when we reconvene in August it will be interesting to see what has been accomplished.

I thought I'd report on the ways I've been seeking to fight for others' freedoms; first, I started riding my bike to work (there's a delay on that due to a bent bike frame requiring a replacement bike) which is a way of fighting for better use of fossil fuels, which is linked to injustice in the world. Second, Jenica and I started sponsoring a child through Compassion International. His name is Ridel William Samuel Sampouw and he's from East Indonesia. He was born in 1997, so he's already 9 years old, which is a helluva long time to be without a sponsor. I was going to go the route of picking someone little and cute, but then I saw you can choose to have Compassion pick the person for you, which ultimately results in you getting someone on a waiting list.

There are a multitude of ways to fight for another person's freedom. I recommend you try one. Nearly every organization that seeks to make the world a better place can take your money online. So it's all just a click away. Here's a link to Compassion Canada or Compassion US to get you started. Then you can be just like Superman, and help save the world.

Batman Begins: Fear and the Five Year Old

Roger Ebert’s “Answer Man” column recently featured a question regarding the new Batman film, “Batman Begins”. The inquiry concerned children attending the film, and stated that “I felt sort for them because the movie contained nothing that might appeal to 8 years and younger” and went on to ask “Aren’t comic books at heart really meant for children?”

I believe that one of the key misunderstandings of raising children in North America is the idea that children must be shielded from experiences or stories which might frighten or disturb them. It is my opinion, which presently remains supported only by anecdotal evidence, that facing fear and pain is a rite of passage all children must undergo in order to become well adjusted adults.

We understand the concept well enough as it relates to everyday pains and fears; a bullying two year old transforms quickly enough into caterwauling victim if their blows are returned, the family cat communicates that it is not a squeeze toy effectively with its claws, we grasp the gravity of looking both ways before crossing the road when we see the devastation an automobile can do to a porcupine pulped on the highway.
When it comes to the fears and pains of the psyche and imagination, we are not so tolerant of letting experience act as the teacher. I experienced this in the life of a young man I babysat as a boy. Around age five and six, he longed for stories and films about dinosaurs, or great disasters, but was prohibited from partaking in this subject matter save in the safest of fashions. An academic approach to these topics was suitable, while watching “Jurassic Park” was not. As an adolescent, he struggled with stuttering and was fearful of new experiences. I wondered if it wasn’t because he’d never had the chance to conquer the fears inside through the stories that frighten.

I’ve noted that many boys in the early elementary grades gravitate toward this subject matter almost independent of their upbringing. It’s why Godzilla captures the imaginations of this age group so well – it’s the perfect combination of the dinosaur/mass destruction idea.

I’m not sure why this is, but I suspect it has to do with the first inklings of mortality. It will be a long time until the child will fully understand that they are indeed, mortal, as the driving habits of most teens will attest, but at the same time as my grandfather passed away, I became infatuated with the sinking of the Titanic, the Hindenburg explosion and other sundry disasters described in a hardcover book I was given for my birthday titled “Disasters of the 20th century.” I was under the impression this was a preoccupation unique to me until I worked as a teacher’s assistant in a grade one classroom.

Books about disasters, volcanoes, and other apocalyptically styled events fascinate the age group. It may even be linked to the desire for dinosaurs, apart from the obvious love for things scaly and slimy at this age. “Look Mike,” one student said, pointing to a picture of a fiery comet hurtling out of a bright blue sky toward unsuspecting stegosauri, “this is how the dinosaurs all died.”

Children also love monsters; the classics are always the best. The Frankenstein monster, Dracula, werewolves and ghosts remain a source of terrible wonder for children. I owned a book of Frankenstein as a child that scared me so bad I was afraid to take it off the shelf. One of my favorite comic books as a kid was a single issue I traded other comics for; the “hero” was “The Tarantula” a spider-creature who preyed upon the criminal element.

As we pass from childhood into adolescence, our fears change and mature. The classic monsters will no longer do; more subtle or shocking fare is required. Teens show their bravado in huddled clusters in darkened theaters or living rooms, challenging themselves to endure films such as “The Exorcist” or “The Ring” or any number of slasher films. No other group is as interested in thrillers and horror as the teenager. The informal ritual of renting a scary movie when parents are away seems to be a rite of passage, wherein young people define themselves.

When I was still in junior high, I read Stephen King’s “Pet Semetary” which so effectively frightened me that I found myself sleeping at the foot of my parents’ bed. Despite the deep fear brought on by the novel, I continued to read King’s works, returning to the source of my terror as it were. Like most teens, I still harbored the vestiges of childhood fears such as the dark, or of being alone in the woods.

Children and young people enjoy being scared. It’s why they ride rollercoasters. It’s a way of testing their limits, metaphorically seeing how far beyond the campfire they can walk on a night when there’s no moon to light the way. When a child or teen is not given the option to test these limits of fear within a safe environment, I believe their growth to maturity is impeded.

Films and books are safe ways for children and young people to test these limits. Too often parents are quick to remove material they believe will frighten their children. I am thankful my parents were brave enough to let me test these boundaries, and caring enough to let me do it while I was still under their roof; they gave me the ability to scare the living hell out of myself, and also the forum in which to discuss it afterwards.

The new Batman film has a lot to offer an eight year old. I wonder if the person who wrote to Ebert actually polled the children they’d see in the theater. While I can’t speak for all children, I know that, while it likely would have frightened me at points, in the same way that seeing the Nazi's dying horrible deaths at the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" did, I'd have loved every minute of the overall story.

We all have an innate curiosity to see what lies in the shadows. The irrational fears of childhood are the soul’s nightmare playground to prepare us for the shocks and tremors of adult life.

Counter culturalism and the Reckoning

The concept of being counter culture has been on my mind a lot this past week. I’d have to say there’s always a thread of it weaving through everything I work on, but sometimes the thread becomes something greater and larger. The creek floods to a torrent, and it preoccupies me.

It started on Monday morning when I took my mother-in-law to the airport. The night before, she lead a discussion at the Gathering, the creative church community we belong to, from a video series we’re going through. Being counter-cultural stood at the center of the discussion, and given that she’d had time to process, she had come to a conclusion concerning what makes the Gathering counter cultural.

“We’re counter-cultural as it relates to the church,” she told me. “But we’re not really counter culture to the world around us.”

I’m not sure I’ve ever heard her speak a truth so clear. The reality of that statement became galvanized in an instant, all the little suspicions and ponderings that I do about the group of people at the Gathering, wondering what sort of Christianity we’re producing there. The statement rang so true I contemplated it all the way home from the airport. And I’ve been contemplating it ever since.

Last night Jenica and I watched a little known film called “The Reckoning”, which dealt with both the concept of being simply counter-church-culture and being genuinely counter-culture in a broader sense.

The story of the Reckoning is set in medieval England, and concerns a priest running from his past played by Paul Bettany, who joins a troupe of actors lead by Martin, played by Willem Dafoe. When the actors cannot travel to their appointed destination due to a washed out bridge, they are forced to detour, and sojourn at a small outpost in the English countryside. There, they witness the trial of a woman wrongly accused of murder.
Martin uses the opportunity of being stuck at the outpost as a means to finally put on a play that isn’t Biblical in origin. He wants to make a play about the same issues the medieval miracle plays were concerned with, but using everyday events to convey these truths. He believes that one day all plays will be done in this fashion. Some of the actors are dubious about this approach, stating that the pope has not sanctioned the use of such plays.

When the group performs the play, it brings out the dark truth beneath the false accusation which has condemned a woman to death. The sheriff of the outpost orders the actors out by sunrise or their lives are forfeit. The actors leave, but the priest remains. Along the road, the rest of the troupe are faced with the question the Gathering and many ‘culturally relevant’ Christians like myself need to ask; are you just counter-cultural to the church, or are you counter cultural where it actually matters?

To put on a play that breaks the tradition of the medieval miracle plays is simply counter to the prevalent church culture of the day. Many Emergent church movements excel in this area. They’re made up of people who blend in well with the culture around them, which offends the sensibilities of the Evangelical sub-culture. In my own case, I blend in so well people are surprised to find out I’m a Christian. They’re expecting something more clean-cut and less crass.

At the Gathering we pride ourselves in not being like other churches. We’re like postmodern reformers looking for our Wittenberg door. We revel in the freedom of the apostles, and the radical grace of Christ.
But I ask myself…now that we’ve separated ourselves from what we didn’t like about Church, when are we going to get around to being as diligently antagonistic about the things that ought to offend us in the world around us? We’re not involved in any social justice activity, and none of us are advocates for much besides our favorite music, movie or brand of beer.

This isn’t to say I want us to turn into sign-waving fanatics. I don’t think that helps much. But in watching the film last night, I wondered, what’s the truth the Gathering is ready to die for? You see, when the counter-church-culture play prompts genuine counter cultural action, a sacrifice becomes necessary. A sacrifice of life, or money, or reputation. We can spit in the face of the church and be pleased when what we deem as Christian poster children are offended by us, but we seem to pander to the rest of the world, not wanting to offend any of them.

All we seem to be good at taking a stand for is the use of pop culture in sermons, loud music in worship, and drinking in social gatherings. I’m wondering if I really take a stand for anything important anymore. How am I transforming the society around me?

I know that I’ve been able to redeem a lot of popular culture by incorporating it into the liturgical elements of what I do both at the Gathering and when I’m speaking on the road. But what about being transformative in my relationships, or transformational in changing the world, piece by piece by getting involved with some kind of social justice action?

Don’t get me wrong; I think it’s valuable to question what we’re doing in church, and reassess. I’m not advocating for people giving up on Emergent models. But in the case of the Gathering, we need to go beyond being counter-church-culture, and find out what it means for the Emergent church in Canada to be counter-Canadian-culture.

I’m pretty sure it has a lot to do with consumerism, and how we treat the environment. And I think for all Christians, it has to do with how we treat fellow students, or co-workers, or the lady counting pennies in the lineup in front of us at the grocery store. For me, the question plaguing me is, “how is a Christian to be set apart from the world while still living in it and being part of it?”

I don’t want to reduce this to some pat formulaic set of rules, but I have set out to grab hold of counter-cultural endeavors in the spirit of Christ, one item at a time. I’ve noticed that there’s nothing counter-cultural about the way I spend my money, and so I’ll be thinking through how I can go about changing that.

What’s your counter-culture move?

Sahara

I had my first encounter with Dirk Pitt when I was in grade one. My teacher, Mr. Compton, was seated at his desk with his feet up, chair tilted back, reading a paperback novel while we were hard at work. I had finished the assignment and wandered over to ask him what to do next. I approached his desk, perplexed by the image on the paperback of something shooting up amidst a fantastic spray of water. I read the title.

“Something” the Titanic. Rise the Titanic? No, Raise the Titanic!

I knew what the Titanic was, hence why I could recognize that word before “raise”, which is really beyond a grade one vocabulary unless you’re me and had tried tackling the novelization of Star Wars earlier that year. The Titanic was a sticker in my book on ships; a ship that had sunk when struck by an iceberg. My burgeoning male psyche reveled in disaster; from the destruction of Japan in Godzilla movies to the explosion that consumed the Hindenburg, I was interested. So I was very interested in what Mr. Compton was reading.
Sadly, my attempt at reading Star Wars was a big enough failure to inform me I likely wouldn’t be reading Raise the Titanic any time soon. It would be another three years before I owned my own copy. It wasn’t hard to find, seeing as the movie adaptation was released that year. It featured the same cover art that Mr. Compton’s had, though I really liked my sister’s copy better, a dark blue monochrome of submersibles playing their lights across the surface of the ruined ship. I liked any picture of the titanic. My copy only had the stern rocketing up out of the water.

We each had our own copy because we were voracious readers, although my sister had two years on me in reading comprehension. As a result, she got to the part where the Russians threaten to cut off the femme fatale’s breast first. Deanna was always a more sensitive soul than I was in this regard. Gore never bothered me much. She quailed at the story of Solomon ordering the bifurcation of the baby claimed by two different mothers. I used to sit and look at the picture of Goliath getting a rock sunk in his frontal lobe with awe and wonder.

It would be another five years or so until I’d get to read that part. In addition to the threatened mastectomy, the book featured more coarse language than I’d ever laid eyes upon. Someone always seemed to be saying the “f-word” as we called it in those days. Raise the Titanic! went on the banned reading list in our house.
A note about that movie adaptation before I continue. I remember that Obi-Wan Kenobi was in it. And I remembered that the Titanic did indeed, get raised. Nothing else about the film was memorable. I don’t think the Russians threatened any mutilation. And above all, when I got around to reading Raise the Titanic! as a teenager and realized that Dirk Pitt was the hero, I couldn’t remember for the life of me who played him in the film.

It turns out it was Richard Jordan, who looks and acts nothing like Dirk Pitt. Clive Cussler, the author of Raise the Titanic! was so disappointed with the film adaptation that he vowed to never again allow one of his books to be made into a movie.

Somewhere along the way to 2005 he caved, but only with the proviso that nothing got done without his permission. Hollywood got tired of waiting for Clive to approve the perfect script, and went ahead and made Sahara, another novel that Dirk Pitt is the hero of.

Because Dirk is the hero of the lion’s share of Clive Cussler novels. After I read Raise the Titanic!, I read the rest of the books about Dirk Pitt that were available back then. Dirk joined the long list of my fictional heroes; Conan, Doc Savage, Superman, Mack Bolan, Wolverine…the list goes on, but unlike Conan or Superman, I kind of thought “I could be like Dirk.” He was an attainable hero goal (or at least I was naieve enough to think so at the time), especially since I usually read those novels in the heat of summer and could go swimming (All of Dirk's adventures are related to being under or on the water).

I had though the same thing about Doc Savage, and as a result was doing an exercise program about the same time my parents made Dirk verboten. Doc was a great hero for a kid or a young teen, but Dirk was the hero for a guy looking to become a man.

Dirk is a "man’s man," as the opening lines from What Women Want describe one. He smokes cigars, drinks hard liquor, has a great tan, wavy hair, chicks dig him and he’s tough as nails. He’s cavalier and yet compassionate. He’s intelligent but not a pedant. And most importantly, he lives a life of adventure.
And adventure is what Sahara is all about. It’s the sort of adventure that was in vogue in the mid to late 80’s, with treasures to be found and villains without any real political affiliation to be fought. In Dirk’s universe, bad guys are bad and good guys are good (but not too good) and Dirk takes it all in with a sly grin.

I’ve read some of the reviews for Sahara by Cussler purists. They likely think the old man has a leg to stand on in holding a grudge against the filmmakers. It goes without saying that Steve Zahn looks nothing like the Al Giordano of the books, but he sure makes a great comedic counterpart to Matthew McConaughey as Dirk. And while some people don’t like Matthew's portrayal, I think he’s perfect. He’s got the build and the tan and the wry smile, and above all…he’s got the wavy hair. Dirk has wavy hair. Something a guy with natural curl likes in a hero. After years of trying to get my naturally curly hair to look like Tintin’s, Dirk was a godsend. Furthermore, for those who don't like Matthew as Dirk, I have two words for you. Richard. Jordan.

I'm really hoping Sahara opens the door for a Clive Cussler film franchise, because I'm sick to death of James Bond, and Jack Ryan can often be a bit of a bore, and I'm not into Jason Bourne's grim universe where no one ever smiles and the hero never gets to drop a one-liner. I like the universe Dirk Pitt inhabits. It just looks like everyone is having a good time. Someone needs to go tell Clive that's the whole point, is to have a good time. Mr. Cussler, I had a great time reading your books, but I really liked the movie too. Now get over it. I have three words for you. Raise. The. Titanic.

If I haven't been plain enough, let me give you another example. For everyone who whined about Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings, I have a VHS copy of an old Ralph Bakshi flick I can lend you.
If you’re looking for mindless adventure that’s just a good time with no real pretense at being anything more than those things…go see Sahara. Or read any of Cussler’s novels. They won’t change your life, but they’re excellent page turning thrillers, so long as you don’t mind a whole lot of convenient coincidences, the proliferate use of the “f-word” and the occasional damsel in distress.

Just don’t tell my mom I told you to. I don't think she knows I got that second copy of Raise the Titanic!

Sin City as Secondary World

I can’t imagine that any of the Christian movie parable sites are using Sin City this month. I can’t imagine any of them ever will, except for maybe those radicals over at Hollywood Jesus. Anyone who can get spiritual content from American Pie has a radar that sees Jesus everywhere.
For the average Evangelical Christian viewer, Sin City is just way too violent, smutty and dark. It’s the first film where I could say I say more than one castration. It’s the first film I’ve seen in ages that featured as much skin as bold a fashion. So for the majority of Christians, I think you should just stop reading this review at this point, and hear me say loud and clear, “You people should not see this movie.” Oh. And my mom too. My mom should NOT see Sin City.
With that out of the way, let me tell you why I rated it a ten and would not only see it again, but plan on owning it.
I can digress to a number of reviewers across the web to disseminate the information concerning the artistic merit of the film. Much has already been said about artistic vision, Rodriguez’ integrity to the source material and its creator, the high caliber of actors and their performances and all the other things that make this a great movie; I would only be restating what’s already been overstated.
But I know what people will be wondering. How can I justify enjoying the viewing of a movie such as this?
I’m not sure my agenda would ever be to justify it. I don’t know why we have to constantly go around justifying everything. Especially in a world where Christians support the NFL without justification. So I won’t justify it.
I will attempt to explain it a little.
It has to do with that Secondary Worlds concept I explored in an article a while back. Seeing Sin City crystallized a new Cinemaprophecy concept for me; it’s all about the secondary world.
Secondary worlds aren’t exclusive to the fantasy genre. I would propose that every work of fiction creates a secondary world of sorts. Morality becomes defined within the context of the story being told. The morality of Sin City is not our everyday morality, at least not our ideal morality, and thank God for that. However, it may in fact be an amplification of the way we are. When I first started thinking through the extension of the secondary world concept to all fiction, I realized that in and of itself, the secondary world premise does not guarantee a morality cogent with our own. But it must have an inner coherence in order to be successful.
The work of Cinemaprophecy becomes then the task of an anthropologist, a linguist, and a sociologist to each and every secondary world the viewer comes into contact with. It is useless to talk about the violence of Sin City as though it is directly related to the violence of the world we live in, because there is no North American city where prostitutes rule the inner city. In real life these relationships and dynamics are more complex. In film they become grossly simplified.
Some stories are very close to being the world of the reader. These, most would argue, are ‘realistic’ stories. But at best, all the fictional world can gain is verisimilitude. To replicate reality would result in a book the length of War and Peace where nothing ever really happens. Stories are always an enterprise of secondary worlds, even when they’re based on fact. Catch Me if you Can, while biographical, moves into the mystical from time to time through the onscreen relationship of Frank Abagnale Jr. and his father, since in real life Frank Sr. was dead shortly after Abagnale ran away. Or take any ‘period’ piece. Even if the replication of that time period is immaculate, it is not the world we presently live in, and as such becomes a secondary world. Fiction can never truly be about the primary world. One might be able to argue that a good deal of non-fiction is involved in the construction of an idealized secondary world that the primary aspires to. Self help books, books about faith practice, the environment, relationships, even travel books with their glossy perfect scenario presentations offer a secondary world to us.
In fiction though, these worlds are more purely distilled. The idea of story is to take us on a journey through this secondary world, not to see that world bleed into our own, although this may be an outcome of cinemaprophecy.
So in the secondary universe of Sin City, where all the priests and nearly all the police are corrupt, Marv is our Don Quixote, tilting at the windmills of his psychotic temper, Gail is King Arthur watching benevolently over her queendom of street walkers, and Hardigan is Christ, taking the blame for a crime he never committed, and sacrificing himself to insure the angelic Nancy Callahan goes free.
It may not be a secondary universe you’re interested in visiting, and as such, you have my blessing to stay out. Just don’t look down your nose at me if I borrow a quote from AC/DC and head down to Sin City.