Kindled

A long time ago, in a world different than our own, there arose a reading tablet called Kindle. You might remember those times - Blackberry was the hottest smart phone, Tony Soprano was the hottest antihero, Apple computers were white and plastic and came with tiny, colorful iPods. Back then, though a Kindle was an expensive luxury that I, a late-adapter from the lower-rungs of the nonprofit world, could not afford, I was under no illusion about the future of reading - electric readers would take over for the same reasons MP3s took over - mobility, access, frugality, and choice would move the masses from the page to the screen. But I lamented my affection for the book in book form, and worried about further isolation and individualism that these devices promote.

Well, I finally joined the last decade when my in-laws gave me a Kindle Fire for Christmas. There's a bespectacled book bore in me that doesn't want to admit the device's advantages, first of which are a healthier back for not lugging around three hardbacks when I go to the supermarket. The sheer volume available is breathtaking - a book-lover is the proverbial kid in the candy store. I started to consume: The entire Sherlock Holmes for €2.99! Hey, I haven't read The Three Musketeers yet! (still haven't, but the pixely plot awaits my time and inclination, and hey, it was free.) Oooo, a journalist I like just tweeted a Kindle book deal - click, click, BUY! Ohhhh... an internet connection.... I won't be too long....

Choice is also the problem, you know. The opportunity cost of sitting and enjoying a good book is not just any work I could be doing or any relationship I could be building, but the thousands upon thousands of books plus the World Wide Web at my fingers. Not only do I not need to get up to distract myself - I don't even need to move my head. That nagging voice of "would you rather..." or, "you could always begin this again...", not to mention, "has anybody liked my clever Facebook post yet?" is now inseparable from the book I'm actually reading. They share the same page. With an electronic reading device, suppressing this voice requires an extra and unwelcome force of will to reach the patient pleasure of good literature.

Good literature is a patient pleasure, and that is why it's so rewarding. Like marriage, friendship, art, worship, or a good meal, it's a pleasure that can start slow, requiring a thousand tiny steps of faith, faith that our world's most urgent noises can be ignored at this one moment and the moment after that in order to get there. Oh, but once you get there! It is a deep, abiding, and enriching experience, and there is nothing else like it. For this, I am thankful for authors. Aside from those who were willing to have a real relationship with me, it's hard to think of anyone who has done me more of a kindness than to write something well for me to read. I've experienced this on my Kindle, of course, and the best prose finally quiets my distracted mind and gets me to stop thinking about how pixels are less personal than paper. The distance, however, is greater.

There's another problem. I own a Kindle Fire, which is useful for me as a grad student because it can process academic documents for research. However, the Fire also means Amazon advertising. We're used to the intrusion of adverts in magazines, radio, and television, but a good book is sacred ground. Sure, I supposed you can advertise after some bubble-gum mystery thriller, and I love reading those. But after I finished Home by Marilynne Robinson, I wanted my heart and mind to be left undisturbed. My finishing the last precious, perfect sentence was the worst, I mean the worst moment to flood my screen with, "if you liked this book, you'll love...." type ads. I wanted to sit on my couch and continue to feel. I didn't want to consume.

I'm writing these words as someone who will still continue to kindle. (I'm using the word as a verb completely divorced from its original meaning. You're welcome, Amazon.) The physical experience of reading is comfortable - better than the competitors I've seen and better than the Amazon app on the iPad. As much as I poke fun at the tyranny of choice, it has given me access to books that would be otherwise more difficult to reach, particularly here in Germany. Moreover, it's become part of my regular devotional ritual. I hope it's not sacrilegious to say that I find the digital Book of Common Prayer more navigable than the paper form, and it's also handy when I'm reading devotional literature, which can be bulky in paper form. Ironically, the discipline of simply setting aside time to read Scripture diminishes the problems I have with distractions and advertising that I have with novels. I may, of course, use the classic print and page form the next time I buy the kind of fiction that I expect to be a great read. And yes, I do worry about the company's competitive practice and treatment of workers (some good discussion here on the NYTimes Editorial page during Amazon's dispute with Hachette and it's not an infrequent conversation topic during my studies - may collect my thoughts for a later post).

It's part of our humanity to be surprised by rapid change - printing presses, trains, steam ships, automobiles, all sorts of horrible machines of war, and it tangles our minds to drift with the times, all the while wondering what's happening to our souls. I could be trying to have my cake and eat it, but I have hope that the irreversible digitisation of reading won't take its soul.

Parenting and Entangling Love

Part of having a child, a wife, bills, and interesting things to look at is that I don't write as often as I would like. By way of saying, I wanted to respond from my little corner of the web to an interesting online writing kerfluffle about the challenges and joys of parenting, but I'm a little late thanks to the challenges and joys of parenting (I'm writing these words with one of those Disney sing-a-long films running in the background). Here in Germany, a couple of journalists complained that modern demands of parenting and career simply can't work, but shrug and say they might as well try to make it work anyway. Then, Ruth Graham's protest against all the negative, "honest" parent-complaining drew a lot of attention (at least in my social networking sphere), including Rachel Lu's beautiful, thoughtful response. Lu wrote one of those "I-wish-I-had-written-that" essays clarifying my jumble of thoughts and feelings about parenting-angst with a lovely description of joy and love in parenting. The whole thing's worth a slow read, and I wanted to highlight a couple points she makes towards the end:

Finally, I should address the most critical question: Is it worth it? If so, why? Certainly, there are cultural changes that could make the plunge into parenthood less daunting. It would be possible, too, for parents to feel less stressed and more affirmed. Still, child-rearing will always be miserable and magical, for more or less the same reasons. It’s a “happy pig or unhappy Socrates” sort of conundrum. Parenthood makes life harder, but also richer. It’s less pleasant but more meaningful. That’s because love fundamentally changes us as human beings. Like the dissatisfied Socrates, we can look on the unburdened (including our own former selves) with a certain amount of wistful envy, but it isn’t in our nature to want to stuff love back into its Pandora’s box.

She ends with: 

An employer could never get away with drawing up a contract like the one you implicitly have with your kids. So yes, it’s reasonable to be a little bit terrified. It’s no small thing to let another person become the main star of your life. It’s even harder when you realize that one day they’ll just walk right out the door again, leaving you twenty years older but no longer able to sleep in on a Saturday morning.

Still, if the opportunity beckons, you should do it. Because if you don’t, you’ll be the person who chose the happy pig over Socrates. You don’t want to go to your grave knowing that one of your most important life decisions was to run away from love.

These thoughts are seconded by Jennifer Senior, author of All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood. In her interview on Fresh Air, she documents the "no fun" part then gets to the joy, and like Lu, she knows what we all know, that the joy is worth it, even if it can't be numerically verified:

And, you know, the studies don't focus on (the joy) so much. I have to sort of go to philosophy and novels in order to discuss the joy. The problem with these studies is that if you're feeling good about something, you know, you rank it a five. So that moment that I was describing with my baby looking at me and cooing at me - which was, like, just like this transcendent moment in my life - would rate the same if I'm doing everything on a scale of one to five, as, like, a dinner with a friend, if I had a really great time at that dinner. In the same way that, like, you know, on Amazon, you know, a John Grisham novel and, you know, and Charles Dickens like kind of get fives, you know, but they're not necessarily the same experience, you know. 

And also, I can't remember who said this to me - I think it was George Vaillant, a psychiatrist who is kind of a poet-philosopher, too - he pointed out that, like, it's kind of like using a number to describe a taste. You know, how do you do that? So I think that social science misses a lot of the joy.

And, you know, one of the remarkable things about joy is that it is sort of predicated on this idea of being very connected to somebody. I think Christopher Hitchens described, you know, having kids as, you know, your heart running around in somebody else's body. And that feeling is so powerful, it's almost scary, because there's almost, like, an implied sense of loss about it.

It's, like, you love somebody so much, that you are almost automatically afraid of losing them, like, that this connection is so deep, that you can't think of that connection without thinking of that connection being broken. So joy, in some ways, is almost a harder feeling to tolerate than sadness, in some ways, because it's so powerful and makes us so vulnerable. But it's why it is also so profoundly special and what makes parenting, to so many of us, so huge and incomparable.

So, a hearty amen to both from this papa across the pond. Both women (with an assist from Maria Popova) reminded me of C.S. Lewis' famous reflection in The Four Loves: "To love is to be vulnerable. To love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it in tact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it up carefully with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of heaven outside of heaven where you can be perfectly safe from the dangers and perturbations of love is hell."

Choosing lasting, difficult joy over immediate happiness is an ancient problem, and the fact that children are more of an economic burden than necessity thrusts today's (Western) family into the center of this choice. I've no special insight into this, but I'm encouraged: the fact that we're talking about it means this joy is not dead, and I wonder if paradoxically, we comfortable westerners are taking the joys of entangled love more seriously. This reminded me of something I noticed in that other great love entanglement: marriage. When I first came to Germany, I was told that Germans, consistent with the trends of most of Western Europe, were marrying later than Americans. I assumed that this meant they no longer took marriage seriously, that in a post-religious age they had deconstructed a ritual of religion and state enough to render it meaningless, or at least with much less meaning. Maybe at some point they'll muddle through the ritual and smile for the camera like distracted teenagers in a confirmation class, but more important is a fuzzy concept of love independent of the things our ancients had passed down.

It didn't take long to realize my assumption was wrong, at least among the students, young academics, and young professionals I interacted with. Sure, I'd hear people deconstruct marriage to justify premarital sex, but at the end of the day, marriage was a damn serious thing for most people, particularly for those in relationships. I found those living together didn't see their lifestyles as an alternative to marriage, but they saw marital commitment as something they couldn't lightly go into without a lot of practice and growth together. They were avoiding a complete entanglement, taking tentative steps into the rosebush, keeping the exit available, because they weren't about to make a commitment they didn't think they could keep. From this position, marriage was wonderful but overwhelming. They wanted it as much as the Bible-belt American standing before them, but with a deliberate slowness. I can imagine approaching child-rearing the same way, and it looks like more and more westerners are following in this path. The general seriousness about the topic impressed me, and it still does.

I sympathize. I had always wanted to be married, and yet the act of getting married cost me more courage than I could carry myself. Then our daughter came along, and she flooded our lives with love and joy but also with so many worldly worries that without the help of some god-fearing friends and family members, well, who knows how far we would have sunk. And still, both steps are the steps in my life where I can most clearly look at them and pronounce them good. I say this from a position of privilege - both my wife and I come from great families where martial promises were honored and children were viewed as gifts from the Lord. Not everyone grew up in such luxury, and I can understand how those without it might find the promises of love and joy of children much less believable, and all the "honest" parenting blogs could be a stumbling block for anybody. Entangling yourself in love is more and more a heroic, deeply serious step, the risks are no longer hidden behind smiles, closed doors, and rigorous cultural standards. It's serious stuff, and it's good we're all still talking about it.

Honest talking and writing doesn't hide the mess, the failures, or the heartbreak, but neither does it stay there, and I'm glad Lu and Senior reminded us how to write about the sort of things that don't fit on clever charts or Buzzfeed lists, but fit into philosophy, novels, poetry, and prose. The seriousness with which we're taking the commitments that irreversibly entangle our hearts to others mean that there's a hunger for it. And those of us who are presumptuous enough to tape our thoughts to the Internet should remember that writing about love and joy are worth the effort.

Nothing New Under the Sun

Oh look, my blog! I found it between the couch cushions, next to a bottle cap and a couple of pennies. I had to dust off the cookie crumbs, not to mention two, no, three impermeable gummy bears, plus hair that could be human or teddy bear. I tell you, one day, you put it down, and the next day it falls through the cracks and coats itself sticky with sugar. Well, I rinsed it off in the kitchen sink, because I found something familiar and needed to write about it. This is from Marilynne Robinson's Gilead. It describes the protagonist's mother, mothering in the late 1800s but still familiar today: 

"In many ways, she was a remarkably careful mother, poor woman. I was in a sense her only child. Before I was born she had brought herself a new home health care book. It was large and expensive, and it was a good deal more particular than Leviticus. On its authority she tried to keep us from making any use of our brains for an hour after supper, or from reading at all when our feet were cold. The idea was to prevent conflicting demands on the circulation of the blood. My grandfather told her once that if you couldn't read with cold feet there wouldn't be a literate soul in the state of Maine, but she was very serious about these things and he only irritated her. She said 'Nobody in Maine gets much of anything to eat, so it all comes out even.' When I got home she scrubbed me down and put me to bed and fed me six or seven times a day and forbade me the use of my brain after every single meal. The tedium was considerable."

If she lived today, she'd have a blog. I say this as someone deep in the careful parenting camp. And I'm sure the Internet makes her "health care book" look less like Leviticus and more like a book of nursery rhymes. I know I wield it like a weapon against any potential malady or sign of ill-health that could approach my daughter. And I'm sure a good portion of it is really healthy! Perhaps in a generation or two my daughter will laugh at this area and say "the tedium was considerable." But I hope she'll also remember herself as well-loved.

Speaking of which, you should read (or re-read) Gilead. I've just finished, and I haven't felt this way about prose since I read Breakfast and Tiffany's a couple years ago. I know Robinson is read and loved by plenty of literary connoisseurs, but for the rest of us, well, this book is a feast and there's no shame in being late for it. I won't say too much about it, because it's one of those books that's best left to speak for itself. I'll only mention a couple things. It's the letters of an aging pastor who knows he's dying to his young son. It's beautiful - more like a hike in the country than any sort of action film - with the most nourishing food for thought gently weaved into the narrative. And there's this quote: 

"For me writing has always felt like praying, even when I wasn't writing prayers, as I was often enough. You feel that you are with someone. I feel I am with you now, whatever that can mean, considering that you're only a little fellow now and when you're a man you might find these letters of no interest. Or they might never reach you, for any number of reasons. Well, but how deeply I regret any sadness you have suffered and how grateful I am in anticipation of any good you have enjoyed. That is to say, I pray for you. And there's an intimacy in it. That's the truth."

With this in mind, I intend to write more. 

The 2012 Holiday Movies: A Nostalgic Look Back

I saw five films this Yuletide season, and to my surprise, I liked them all. This could mean that getting older, living in Germany, wanting to impress people, or writing a blog have not yet managed to make me a proper critical curmudgeon, though I'm reeeeally trying (see below). Still, no one wants pay for a movie they don't like, and I'm almost afraid to see another one lest I break the streak. Here are a few thoughts on the movies, in the order in which I saw them.

Skyfall - At this point, it shouldn't be a spoiler that the latest 007 is setting up a reboot - reintroducing old characters, killing off another old one. I don't mind. The only part I minded so much was the "getting-shot-off-a-moving-train-into-a-river-but-still-surviving" part that was pushing it, even by Bond standards. But a big part of the fun is always watching how they re-brand this product of the Cold War to fit into the modern era and still maintain the spirit of 007. I'm curious how the next installments will handle the resurrected Moneypenny (Mark Steyn has an interesting essay on the old one and the actress who played her). Like every Bond film, there was plenty of booze, women, travel, chases, fights and villains - Javier Bardem combined the slimy, the ruthless and the genius archetypes into one - so much so that he doesn't need a memorable sidekick like Oddjob. Action and food for thought.

Cloud Atlas - I hate saying how much fun I had at this movie. I hate admitting that I was giddy as a hyena juggling the plots, actors, times, directors and gobs of race-bending makeup. I hate it. I hate it because all the cool people, by which I mean the critics at intellectual, left-leaning websites and radio stations hated the film. And I want to fit in with the cool kids. It's probably because I haven't read David Mitchell's book just yet (I got it for Christmas, though it's an edition with a movie poster for a cover, which also embarrasses me). I came in with a blank slate and remained engrossed  from start to finish. I was warned I'd get lost the first time, but even watching it dubbed in German, I had no problem following. There was fun aplenty just watching where the characters show up (Hugh Grant as a tribal chieftain in a post-apocalyptic future!), and I thought the plots, past and future, weaved together nicely. My favorite plot is the adventure of Somni 451 in Neo Seoul - Doona Bae is excellent. Maybe I'll hate the film after I've read the book. But I'll probably still hate the fact that I love the film so much.

Lincoln - I love Lincoln the more I think about it. I was still fighting off holiday jetlag when I saw it back in the USA, and between then and now, I read my father's copy of Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, the film's principle source. There's a cynicism, brewed in anyone who reads too much Internet or lives in Germany, about any hero type, especially a historical hero type, that nobody can be so good, that there's some clever person out there to deconstruct our hero so we might as well prepare ourselves for disappointment. Yet Lincoln, freely willing to deconstruct himself, still stands as a real American hero. Not a military man, no formal education, and not even the most progressive of his day on the issues of race and slavery, yet he was the one who had the fortitude to preserve the union, free the slaves and, according to Goodwin's accounts, managed to treat those around him with dignity. I wish I had these honest Abe traits - a real genius who managed to like and respect those around him, even those you'd forgive him for hating. Thus, Spielberg's saintly portrayal is not Hollywood sentimentality but something good and right, and I can't wait to see the film a second time. The New Yorker's review makes this point: "The movie itself feels alive with disquiet, torn between its duty to tell an earthly, complex tale and - as so often with Spielberg - the urge to break free and rise to the realm of myth." The more I think about Lincoln the man, the more I can relate. A few more scattered thoughts - add my thanks to all of those thanking Spielberg and his writer, Tony Kushner, for focusing on a small sliver of Lincoln's life rather than shooting another bloody biopic. Nonetheless, the film doesn't forget to deftly include Lincoln's family dynamics, and I thought Sally Field was great as Mary Todd. Some of the best scenes were from their stormy, loving marriage. Oh, and, you got to love anyone who can tell a funny story in the middle of a crisis. By the way, should anyone other than Daniel Day Lewis be nominated for best actor? ... Nah, I don't think so either.

Argo - My second dose of American history and a small, exciting, redemptive story out of the 1970 Iran hostage crisis. Credit to director Affleck for not white-washing America's role in the mess that Iran became (the opening history lesson makes this very clear) while still nurturing our natural sympathies for the hostages whose lives were in real danger. A small thing - it was fun to see John Goodman as Hollywood make-up artist John Chambers. John Goodman always makes his films better.

The Hobbit - Unlike Cloud Atlas, I have no trouble admitting how much I loved the film. I am a JRR Tolkien lover, but I'm not enough of a nerd to have ready all of the notes and encyclopedias and extra stuff (though I did get the painting Calendars through college). So for the most part, I know where Peter Jackson varied from the original text in his expanded and stretched out film, and the only thing that really bothered me was the (spoiler, but honestly...) a forced redemption scene at the end where Bilbo, in classic Peter Jackson slow motion, saves Thorin Oakenshield's life. A big part of the story is Bilbo finally earning Thorin's respect, but did they really need to create a forced, magic moment out of nowhere? But other than that, good times all around. I particularly loved how he made Thorin so compelling. And of course, it's great watching Jackson's imagination come to life and comparing it with your own. Whatever the real fans pick at, Peter Jackson knows how to speak to that little boy in me playing with dinosaurs and action figures on the kitchen counter twenty some years ago. When Peter Jackson remade King Kong, I remember hearing a commentator complaining about how he left out the social and racial commentary of the first film. I'm sure a better movie wouldn't have done so. But he did produce a scene where King Kong fights a Tyrannosaurus Rex - a scene I had acted out in my little imagination so many times. My adult, pseudo-critic wasn't satisfied, but the little boy thought, "now THAT was cool."

So, my holiday movies. I haven't seen the other notables, such as Anna Karenina, Django Unchained, Life of Pi, Zero Dark Thirty, or a certain musical based on my favorite novel, and no promises on those for various reasons. But Tinseltown had a nice Christmas, didn't it? What were your favorite movies?

The New Saturdays Mornings

Waiting in line at the post office a few years ago brought about this reflection on Saturday mornings. I, content and well-rested after sleeping in, reading unbothered and eating my wife's apple-cinnamon pancakes stood in front of a beautiful and exhausted young mother. Married and waiting for children, I knew my idyllic Saturday mornings were numbered. Now, a father of an almost-three year old, Saturdays are no longer us time. My wife and I can no longer enjoy the executive breakfast or the lazy reading and comfort coffee and all the other Saturday pleasures afforded to young married couples. Parenting is a great job; it's the best job I've ever had, but you don't get to take a day off for a well-deserved sabbath.

My new Saturday mornings run like this. My daughter's noises wake my wife up. The noises could be singing, crying, talking, laughing, grunting, coughing or any combination thereof, but my wife wakes up. My wife sleeps like a soldier - any small noise and she is up and ready for action. I'm glad she's not the kind to keep a gun under her pillow, or else I'd get shot in the ribs every time I needed to use the toilet at night. The noises can come at any point between 7 and 8:30 AM, the later the more merciful. My wife rouses me with an elbow and a whisper of "Schatz," which in this context is German for "darling." I wake up, fumble with whatever clothes I can find and exit the bedroom stage right. I let my wife go back to sleep. Saturday morning is her turn.

I go to my daughter. She's usually happy to see me, though sometimes she protests, "Mama! NOT Papa!" "Sorry kid, you're stuck with me." is my response. I pick her up.

***

What follows is a philosophical discussion about the potty. My more progressive argument is that big girls, including all the cool kids in her future kindergarten, go pee pee on the potty. The potty is the future, and even though I'll still love her if she's wearing diapers during her drivers' test, it is good and just and right to take the porcelain splash. It's well worth pointing out, I continue, that those who use the potty are often rewarded with gummy bears. My daughter's arguments are more agrarian, a kind of curmudgeonly conservationism suspicious of change and newfangled technology. While she has successfully tried and used the potty, she doesn't think the evidence for permanent change is very compelling. The diaper has served her well for almost three years, keeping leaks at a minimum and promoting a lifestyle where nothing need be interrupted just because nature calls. Indeed, if more adults wore diapers, then economic productivity would increase as toilet breaks decrease. And isn't the toilet break just one more staple of the lazy, anti-capitalist worker? In the same way, my daughter can continue coloring, playing with her dolls or watching "Baby Praise" without that unproductive walk down the hall. In any case, the toilet is cruelly cold, especially in morning.

***

After setting a livid toddler on the toilet with a 50% chance of achieving the desired result, we move to our living/dining room. She scampers to her toys and I take a dreary walk to the kitchen. Any walk I take in the morning is dreary until I have my coffee. I make coffee. While the coffee drips, I put my daughter's oat meal in the microwave, grate an apple to put over the oatmeal, pour her milk, take out two pieces of bread, put it on a plate, spread some delicious German spreadable over it (either creamy honey or creamy meat), put a mandarin orange next to the bread. The coffee is finished. I pour my coffee, pour some more milk over her oatmeal and voela! breakfast for two is served. Restaurant quality multitasking.

After putting the appropriate plates in the appropriate places, I pick me daughter up to bring her to her seat. She then erupts in a declaration of independence. After all, she can climb into her chair by herself. I let her do so. While we eat, I pop open the laptop. Now I know some of you are judging. The laptop at the table is against all conventional parenting wisdom. Screens distract from loving attention, and technology is harmful to child development. Technology should be kept away from the child until it is able to grow its own cucumbers and spear its own fish in the river. And besides, I'm a terrible example. Let me respond. First, I still engage my daughter. I really do. Second, we always eat a computer free family lunch in traditional German fashion, as well as an evening bread. And third, who doesn't read the newspaper at breakfast? I just don't have a paper version.

Breakfast is finished. I push my daughter's stool back so she can get down by herself. Any of the following could happen: reading a children's book, listening to a children's CD, drawing on the doodle board or putting a farm-based puzzle together. Personally, I'd rather keep reading the screen, like in the old days. At the couch, or at the table or (in nice weather) out on the balcony. Often, she plays, and I get to read. But then, I feel a little hand tap my knee. Time to close the laptop or the the book. Her turn. Whichever book is on. "Curious George?" "Mickey Mouse?" "Little People?" "ABC?" "Jesus?" She usually asks regarding on her mood - usually a particular book stays her favorite for about three weeks or so, and comes back again after a few months. But I read. I reluctantly put aside my selfish pleasure of a morning built around me. Not that there's anything wrong with that, when no one else is there. But love is a less-accessible pleasure. Close the macbook, the newspaper or the book. Put the child on the lap, read the book for the thousands time. The annoyance gives way to a certain joy that's stronger in memory, but always there. I give the characters voices, she tells me what's in the pictures. Love and love. Coffee helps.

Two Kinds of Sin in "Perfume"

It's hard to want to read anything else after reading a superb novel. I sit, outside on the balcony, inside a train on the way to work, knowing another world awaits if I could just move on start reading the first book on the pile. And I do, and I'm always happy I did. But that great novel leaves behind a little mist that leaves everything else hard to see. I just keep thinking of them.

Patrick Süskind's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, gruesome as it is, was the most recent "great novel" on my list. It's the first great novel I've read entirely in the German language. I read translations of Kafka and others in college and I've practice my language with the German versions of fun Swedish thrillers, but I haven't read anything that you could call great literature auf Deutsch, and the fact that I read and understood  Perfume was an encouragement of my own language ability. It's beautifully written - even to my second-language ears - still dark and disturbing yet strangely human. If you haven't read it, let me say that it's well worth it (though, again, gruesome). Oh, and if you haven't read it, then maybe you shouldn't read the following paragraphs. One of the novels pleasures is its unpredictability, and there are spoilers ahead.

In a book about brutal serial killer with an extraordinary sense of smell, it's a credit to Süskind's writing that I came away feeling more philosophical than disturbed. There's a lot in the text I could talk about, but I want to mention how Jean-Baptiste Grenouille's villainy reminds me of something C.S. Lewis points out in Mere Christianity.

Grenouille's first victim is a girl who's smell he simply wants to possess. Her exquisite smell conquers him and he kills her. The scene reminds me of a pit bull attacking a two-week old kitten. It turns him into an animal. But later in the book he becomes something worse. As he realizes what kind of power scent has over a person, he decides to combine the best human smells, which are evidently only possessed by pretty girls. Then, methodical and sinister, he murders 25 of them and steals their scent. Why does he want this master perfume? He wants to be loved and adored by all, and he knows the perfect smell could manipulate this adoration. His animal desire leads to a heinous act; his pride leads to 25 more. Here's what Lewis writes:

You may remember, when I was talking about sexual morality, I warned you that the centre of Christian morals did not lie there. Well, now, we have come to the centre. According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

Later in the same chapter:

It is a terrible thing that the worst of all the vices can smuggle itself into the very centre of our religious life. But you can see why. The other, and less bad, vices come from the devil working on us through our animal nature. But this does not come through our animal nature at all. It comes direct from Hell. It is purely spiritual: consequently it is far more subtle and deadly. For the same reason, Pride can often be used to beat down the simpler vices. Teachers, in fact, often appeal to a boy's Pride, or, as they call it, his self-respect, to make him behave decently: many a man has overcome cowardice, or lust, or ill-temper, by learning to think that they are beneath his dignity - that is, by Pride. The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride - just as he would be quite content to see your chilblains cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer. For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.

You can read the whole chapter here. I'm quoting this out of order, but here is one more point Lewis makes:

In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that - and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison - you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

I have no idea if Süskind considered such religious language when creating his antihero, but it's interesting to note how Grenouille always looks inward and never up.

The Train to Stuttgart

One of the best parts of my weekly routine adventure is Wednesdays, when I take the train from Plochingen to Stuttgart. It starts with a brisk, 10-minute run to the train station (hey - I'm a parent and I happen to enjoy breakfast) where I'm usually just in time to catch the Regional Express. The Regional Express only stops three times along the Neckar river before we hit the Swabian metropolis. Sometimes I hit the Jackpot and land an Interregional Express, which is a nonstop trip to the mighty Hauptbahnhof (main train station).

I love speeding through past the Neckar hills as they wake up to the gentle glow of the Eastern sun. The hills and the buildings and the trees get thicker as we approach Stuttgart, a testament to Germany's lively effort to weave nature and civilization. I love that I'm not driving so I can watch them. I love that I can read the enormous book that I got at the library and that I'll regret bringing later as I lug my backpack down Koenigstrasse (hmmm... Kindle?..nahhh). I love that I can go through my prayer cards, which help me better love all of those who I think about and who are not on the train. I love that I can see the people.

People on the train are the best. Students buried in their iPods. Hippie punks with dread locks, patches and tattoos. Businessmen with ties and glasses and important newspapers. A bouncy Japanese woman with bouncy hair who bounces her son on her lap while singing a bouncy Japanese song. It's a strange thing about public transportation. During the commute everyone is equal, united in a sense of purpose and destination. Everyone is close. Sure, we try to be far away, choosing the seat furthest from any possible contact with strangers, especially if we have strategies for when we arrive and which car we take. But eventually, the train fills up and people from every tongue, tribe and nation are packed together like a game of human Tetris. It's awkward, funny, uncomfortable and humanizing. And it sure as heck beats vehicle Tetris on your local highway.

Of course, the camaraderie ends at the train station. That's the moment we stop, well, ok, many moments before, we race to the door like it's a fire drill, everyone aware of the trouble each day has and how everyone else should learn patience.

But before that, there's the serene moment of speeding with a book, a prayer and so many flavors of human to look at. The train speeds ahead like a mechanical wild horse. We run parallel with another train, this one carrying cargo cargo instead of human cargo. It's hard to tell which train is faster, but they both seem to be enjoying the chase. I imagine that they greet one another with a sunrise smile, glowing that they're doing what they were created to do.

Nones and Lovers

I've been wanting to write about Eric Weiner's New York Times column on Americans and God since it came out in December, but I've been busy doing other things, like trying to work for a living and thinking up warm-weather holiday songs. And the truth is, I wanted to give it some thought, because I think it's worth responding to as a Christian. Weiner represents a form of non-belief that is probably more prevalent than the faith of convinced atheism. He's undecided, a self-described "None." What's a None? Well, here:

We Nones may not believe in God, but we hope to one day. We have a dog in this hunt. Nones don’t get hung up on whether a religion is “true” or not, and instead subscribe to William James’s maxim that “truth is what works.” If a certain spiritual practice makes us better people — more loving, less angry — then it is necessarily good, and by extension “true.” (We believe that G. K. Chesterton got it right when he said: “It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.”) 

I suspect that Nones number even more than the increasing number of people who check "none" on the surveys. I bet that many who cross "Catholic" or "Protestant" or "Muslim" or whatever belief are practical Nones, the cultural inheritors of a religious faith without significant bearing on their thoughts, decisions or prayers.

Weiner's "Noneness" is more nuanced than the None who just hasn't thought much about the afterlife between work and family and recreation. After a "health scare", this "rationalist" began to explore faith. In doing so, he went on a literal spiritual journey, traveling the world to sample the varieties of religious experience, which he chronicled in his book Man Seeks God: My Flirtation with the Divine. At this point, I should make clear that I haven't read Weiner's book, and answers to the questions and criticisms  I'm about to write may be found there. Nevertheless, his Times column has made a statement about the Nones' view of religion in America, and it's worth addressing.

For starters, let me say "amen" to the None's strong discomfort with the cross-pollination of piety and politics. While there have been times when the church should have done much more (I don't think Weiner would argue with Dr. King here), and I've wrote here before how unimpressed I was by large Christian gatherings using lots of (self-serving?) superlatives in their marketing. It's the sort of thing that would have made me want to clutch Noneness like a life-preserver had I not already been spoken for.

Weiner himself thinks humor is important, and I agree with him (note my heading). He thinks that "precious few of our religious leaders laugh. They shout." Yes, I hear them shouting too. I hear them shouting every time CNN talks to the latest loudmouth to draw a crowd or some doomsday prophet gets much more media attention than they deserve. But I can testify that while every church will have its sour-faced mice, much laughter can be heard between the pews. I grew up in a laughing family, surrounding by laughing people, and all of them thought you could know the Lord personally and would be happy to talk about it. We Christians run the whole gamut of emotions if you take the time to get to know us. In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and disagree with Weiner's Chesterton quote: "It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it." Well, every religion can be joked about, and the best jokes come from within the ranks. Rather, it is the individual's jokes that are the test of his own character. Are they capable of joking? And when they do, is it in the right time and place for the best effect? Or are their jokes there for reasons of poison, to prey on the innocent and to build themselves up at others' expense? As some religious guy wrote somewhere, for everything there is a season. If you're a None genuinely seeking God and you visit a church that seems incapable of humor (and I've been there), give it one more week to make sure that your perceptions aren't clouded by a bias against the kind of people who show up there every Sunday (I have to watch myself there too). But once it's proven that the jokes are either unavailable or inappropriate, run (don't walk) to the exit. Bad humor's a good reason to find another church, but it's be a poor reason to try and put distance between yourself and God.

If Weiner has distance between himself and God, humorless blowhards have contributed to it. He needs a new kind of religious leader. He writes:

The answer, I think, lies in the sort of entrepreneurial spirit that has long defined America, including religious America. 

We need a Steve Jobs of religion. Someone (or ones) who can invent not a new religion but, rather, a new way of being religious. Like Mr. Jobs’s creations, this new way would be straightforward and unencumbered and absolutely intuitive. Most important, it would be highly interactive. I imagine a religious space that celebrates doubt, encourages experimentation and allows one to utter the word God without embarrassment. A religious operating system for the Nones among us. And for all of us.

A Steve Jobs' of religion... sounds nice doesn't it? It sounded nice to me until I began to unpack the analogy. I'm a fan of Apple products, and I am using one to write this blog post. But as sleek, hip and user-friendly as they are, they aren't for everyone, as Microsoft's "I'm a PC" commercial slyly picked up on. Weiner's religious space wouldn't be something for all of us. It would be one more niche in a crowded market. Furthermore, high-technology is effective to the point that it is individualized, that I can sit alone in my computer which is my own electronic kingdom, filled with my apps and my favorites and my bookmarks and social networking sites where I can pay attention and ignore people at my own leisure without fear of boredom, pain or small talk. It's straightforward, unencumbered, intuitive and interactive because it's mine, made in my image and serving my purposes and, for the small price of targeted advertisement, I can be as spiritual and unspiritual as I want, I can experiment, celebrate my doubt or my faith with no book or leader to tell me that I might be in any way off base (and if they do, I can simply delete their comment). I can utter whatever the hell I want, because as far as I'm concerned, I'm alone.

Christianity, to my daily dismay and glory, has a different user experience. It involves other people. I go into a church and I sing songs and say prayers and listen to words with all sorts of people. People with the wrong politics, the wrong interpretations, the wrong family traditions, the wrong styles, the wrong jokes. Their flawed behavior is rarely intuitive and often encumbers me. It's interactive, alright, but the interaction involves me putting aside my desires and agendas to meet other people where they are. It can be very tedious and often takes years to fully feel like part of a Fellowship (and having recently moved, I'm feeling these bruises once again), but it is well worth it. To sing and pray together with someone else in the presence of Almighty God... to have actually done that makes it worth it to come back and drink from the fountain, again and again. Weiner contrasts the private and public nature of religion, but his conclusions are too individualistic. Spirituality is private and public, yes, but knowing God is a communal experience - it's community with Him and with everyone else who has taken the plunge. It's there that we "become more loving" and experience "human grace."

I sympathize with the Nones' desire to remain outside all of this. I sympathize, because I detect something in them that I know in myself: a fear of commitment. Let me explain by way of politics. I confess that I find it difficult to commit to a particular political viewpoint. While living in Washington, I knew people who delighted in this commitment. They had strong politics, and they could argue them so well that I would be convinced until I talked with my next friend who had a different view. Everyone was right, and they could prove it. Moreover, the incivility and ill-humor of our political leaders and the media's appetite for scandal and provocation makes me feel about politics the same way Weiner feels about religion. But at the end of the day, I have to vote. I have to check the box next to the candidate I think is best and which statue or bill sounds the most reasonable. If I don't participate, my voice is completely marginalized and I miss out on the privileges of representative democracy.

Much like politics, religions have their loud blowhards and people who take what I feel is an uncomfortable delight in having strong opinions. But the responsibility for my participation does not rest on them - it rests on me. Commitment to God is less like buying an iPad and more like getting married. It's all encompassing, and we don't get to sever our ties when confronted with suffering, discomfort, other people or the fact that it's often us that needs changing. But the reward, and Christianity's key selling point, if you will, is love. Indeed, the Bible says that God himself is love and that all of God's law is summed up in loving God and loving each other. We're invited into this love through an act of love. Jesus died on a cross 2000 years ago that we may experience God's love through communion and fellowship with him, even when we're humorless blowhards with bad politics. The question then, is not whether we have the right operating system. It's whether we embrace Love or none.

One Reason I'm Not a Naturlist

A little over a week ago, Alex Rosenberg made a case for naturalism in the New York Times. It's a strong case, and there's a lot I could write in process or in response. But then he writes this:

"That doesn’t mean anyone should stop doing literary criticism any more than forgoing fiction. Naturalism treats both as fun, but neither as knowledge."

Fiction is fun; if it were not fun, I would not read it (and I often stop reading a novel when it ceases to be fun for me). But if fun is the only thing Professor Rosenberg gleans from fiction, then I wonder if he is reading the wrong books.

Did a Big Idea Make Big Ideas Elusive?

This weekend, some friends sent me Neal Gabler's interesting New York Times commentary, "The Elusive Big Idea." In it, Gabler bemoans the lack of influence compelling intellectual ideas have on modern Society. We make icons of those who, in the past, not only thought of something new, but also captured the attention and commanded the respect of the rest of the Western world, to the point where their ideas not only transformed their own field but impacted society as a whole. Freud's study in psychology brought about a paradigm shift in his own profession and influenced literature, theology and much else. The same could be said of Einstein with physics, Niebuhr with theology or Keynes with economics. Not only that, Gabler argues, but the ideas, and the intellectuals who argued for and about them, held more respect in popular culture. He writes:

"A big idea could capture the cover of Time — “Is God Dead?” — and intellectuals like Norman Mailer, William F. Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal would even occasionally be invited to the couches of late-night talk shows. How long ago that was.

If our ideas seem smaller nowadays, it’s not because we are dumber than our forebears but because we just don’t care as much about ideas as they did. In effect, we are living in an increasingly post-idea world — a world in which big, thought-provoking ideas that can’t instantly be monetized are of so little intrinsic value that fewer people are generating them and fewer outlets are disseminating them, the Internet notwithstanding. Bold ideas are almost passé."

Now, you might be thinking, isn't the screen I'm staring at now a pretty big, transformative idea? Couldn't we add the likes of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg to our pantheon of people with good, world-changing ideas? No, writes Gabler.

"Entrepreneurs have plenty of ideas, and some, like Steven P. Jobs of Apple, have come up with some brilliant ideas in the “inventional” sense of the word.

Still, while these ideas may change the way we live, they rarely transform the way we think. They are material, not ideational."

In fact, all this information technology is part of the problem.

"Where are you going? What are you doing? Whom are you seeing? These are today’s big questions. It is certainly no accident that the post-idea world has sprung up alongside the social networking world. Even though there are sites and blogs dedicated to ideas, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, etc., the most popular sites on the Web, are basically information exchanges, designed to feed the insatiable information hunger, though this is hardly the kind of information that generates ideas. It is largely useless except insofar as it makes the possessor of the information feel, well, informed."

I understand these this intense need to be informed, and the makers of social media, not to mention search engines, were smart to capitalize on this. A few minutes ago, I had to close the tabs with my Facebook and Twitter feeds just so I could stay focused on this blog. Gabler goes on to write how traditional media, the disbursers of big ideas, is suffering in an instant information society. Print is shrinking in market share, and popular television talk shows no longer invite intellectuals to sit on their couches. Instead of pausing to think, we now have the means to gorge ourselves with information, and we use it.

We're a narcissistic society, it's true, though I'm sure other professors had said that about their students a generation ago. Also, I don't think profit and intellectual thought are as antithetical as Gabler says it is. He admits that there are indeed thinkers with ideas to give and mentions a few examples, but they just don't have the same impact or attention of the idea generators of the past. But I largely agree that today, with our glut quick, instantaneous information and fewer ideas that manage to influence everyone.

Here's the thing, though. Isn't the death of a big idea, in part, the result of ideas themselves? Gabler laments the fall of enlightenment thinking, which he says is related to the death of the big idea, but he never mentions a big idea that critiqued the enlightenment itself: postmodernism. Postmodernism's flagship tenet is the deconstruction of meta-narratives, which is another way of saying big ideas, is it not? Postmodernism became popular, because some big ideas, full of influence, impact, debate, scholarship and much else, were devastating. Consider this neat summary from an Economist article five years ago (about which I wrote here):

"The founding post-modern text (as books are called in pomo) is by two Germans, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. Published in 1944, “Dialectic of Enlightenment” examined the culture that had given birth to Auschwitz. It declared that “enlightenment is totalitarian”—that the 18th-century attempt to replace religion with rationalism had supplanted one form of mental slavery with another. God had been elbowed out by fascism, communism, Marxism, Freudianism, Darwinism, socialism and capitalism. The post-modernists thought their job was to “deconstruct” these grand theories, which they called the “meta-narratives”. The pomos would free people from them by exposing their sinister nature."

What hath big ideas wrought? Yes, Freud and Einstein had big ideas, but so did Hitler and Stalin. Perverse as they were, they were birthed in an enlightened culture where ideas, to use Gabler's words, were not "intellectual playthings," but had "practical effects." Indeed, it was fear of Hitler that caused Einstein to apply his big ideas towards the creation of the atomic bomb. If big ideas are less important to many of us, it is, in part, because they managed to destroy themselves in the process.

What is the result of the postmodernist critique of big ideas? Well, one is mass individualism, which Gabler laments without naming. As the Economist article points out, Capitalism has taken advantage of this with niche marketing, which is perhaps why Mark Zuckerberg has probably had more of an impact on most of us than Steven Pinker (to use one of Gabler's examples). Aided with technology, we all get to pick and choose what we read, what feed we follow or whose pictures to tag. But it doesn't necessarily mean we cease to think; our thoughts rarely rest in conformity with our preferred ueber-thinker, and when they do, that thinker has less impact on society as a whole. I primarily use Facebook to share links and read the links my friends have posted, and much of it is good, substantial stuff. Ideas are not extinct, but there's a lot more of them, and, for better or for worse, it's less likely that the big few will dominate.

Yes, this leaves all of us wide open for narcissism. Furthermore, I share Gabler's dislike of celebrity gossip and the computer-like gestation of information without thought, not to mention a preference for long, thoughtful essays over the verbal volleyball of cable punditry. I wish Letterman would feature a prominent professor for every actor he hosts. But I would rather live with our frantic, electronic marketplace of ideas and distractions then go back to a time when an evil idea could become so dominate.

Will Wilkinson, in reply to Gabler, believes (and "would bet his immortal soul") that "more big ideas... were studied, discussed and produced in 2010 than in 1950." He goes on to put a sunnier face on modern intellectual discourse:

"A TED talk or a book-talk spot on "The Daily Show" may not have the audience or cultural centrality of a half-hour with Dick Cavett on ABC in 1970, but more people are consuming and discussing big ideas, old and new, than ever before. The difference is that the audience and the discussion has become fragmented and decentralised.

The fun part is that I, as a lay thinker, can join the discussion right here on the information super highway. For those of us who prefer a cooler, more intellectual environment, the answer is to remain relentlessly thoughtful, reading and considering the ideas we come across. Before, of course, we post them on Facebook.

The Goody Bag Strategy

A surprising thing for a parent, at least for this one, is all the little plans and contingencies you have to make and consider when going about normal human life. Even more surprising, particularly as one who takes little joy in having things planned out, is that I often make these plans instinctively.

A few weeks before going on vacation, my daughter started to walk. Immediately, her world expanded. She was a late bloomer, as I’ve said before, and I think what really got her going is that she finally realized crawling would only get her so far. On feet, she could explore the world, or at least her grandparents’ backyard. And their house. And our apartment. And try to sneak off and run down the street like a freed hamster when we’re not looking. Whenever she gets bored, she comes to me, grabs at my hand, and, in a voice so precious that you don’t quite realize it’s a command, says, “walk.” It’s what I get for repeating the word over and over again when actually teaching her the deed. We walk, hand in hand, down the street or to the raspberry bushes (she’s going to be disappointed when we get back to see how they’re out of season) or to visit the goats that live behind the retirement home. It happens often, which means my daughter gets bored often. She gets bored, now that she knows there is a vast world to explore on two legs.

So, when packing, the thought struck my wife and I that we need to ease boredom in our Ferienwohnung, which, with one bedroom, is smaller than our apartment and much smaller than Oma and Opa’s house. That’s where I came up with the goody bag strategy.

The goody bag strategy is to fill up a small duffle bag with (based on my observation) her favorite toys and books. I won’t allow her to know that the bag contains all of the treasures. Rather, on each day throughout our vacation, I reintroduce her to one of her prized possessions. It’s worked fairly well. She squeals with recognition when it’s a toy she particularly likes. For example, she has a teddy bear with a tag that says “Charly” but whom she simply refers to as “Bear” (note to toymaker: please don’t name your toys. It’s more satisfying when children come up with their own names, even at 18 months). Showing her Bear, after a few days’ absence, was a delight for both of us. “Bear!” she cried and embraced her old friend. Now, my wife and I can steal a few moments of vacation reading (or writing) while she puts Bear “night night” (by stuffing him through the bars of the crib) or has Bear eat “nyum nyums” (by seating him in her high chair).

Books are effective too, though not always for buying us a break. I’m trying to raise my daughter to love books, and I’ve made a point to read to her well before comprehension (which is what all the parenting books say to do, anyway). It worked, but now she’s old enough to try to dictate when she gets read to, which cuts into those wonderful moments I refer to as "me time." I will be there, sitting on the sofa, in view of the Alps out my window, newspaper or one of my three vacation books before me. My daughter will pick one of her own books and, with an expression of sweet expectation, look at me and say, “book.” Once again, it’s a command, not a request. To break it would risk tears, tantrums and a pitiful look of unadulterated heartbreak that could melt granite. Hey, what are vacations for, other than catching up on my Dr. Seuss or Richard Scarry?

How To Spot a Christian Buzzword

If Christian marketing uses the word twice in the same sentence, chances are, you've got a buzzword. Consider this, from the back cover of The Wisdom of Stability by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove:

"A work of startling authenticy, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove's new book speaks to each of us who seek an authentic path of Christian transformation."

I'm not sure I can handle that much authenticity. Is this one of those places where "keepin' it real" goes to far?

No to knock the book, of course. The Wisdom of Stability was recommended by a friend. My wife has read about a third of it, and I've read the first chapter. Wilson-Hartgrove might overstate the scriptural case for his points (though I should reflect more here), but I'm thankful that he wrote a book about staying rooted. As someone who's trying to settle after wandering for the better part of a decade, I resonate with the theme. After all, it's a book of startling resonance for everyone who wants to resonate with authentic Christian transformation.

The Old Yellow Booklet

One of my roommates commended to me an Austin Farrer sermon called "The Old Rosewood Desk." In thinking about his old desk full of youthful treasures, the Oxford pastor, theologian and friend of famous Christians like C.S. Lewis, he reflects on childhood statements of faith, such as a confirmation certificate. Through this, he reminds those of us who have turned to Christ, however, long ago, that a constant factor in our ever-changing lives is fidelity: Our own fidelity to God and God's fidelity to us. The former only being possible through the ladder.

In sum, preaches Farrer:

"Man, knowing that without faithfulness he cannot be anything, looks for a loyalty to which his whole existence, and not part of it only, can be pledged. And who deserves this measureless, this all-embracing faithfulness, except the faithful God? Those childish undertakings, those writings on cards, confirmation professions, have grown dim and somewhat unreal. It is now that we must make up our minds, and pledge our obedience to the faithfulness of God. If we do so, we shall bring our former resolves to life by our new decisions. We shall, indeed, bring to life something older than our youthful resolutions - that is, the grace of our baptism, when the resolution was not yet ours, but our parents'; and we shall bring to life something older even than our baptism - Christ's will for our salvation when he died on the cross; and older than that, the everlating faithfulness of god on which the world was built.

Religion is not self-improvement, or decent conduct or emotional worship. Religion is fidelity. 'Promise unto the Lord your God and keep it,' says the psalm. But the fidelity which is the soul of religion is not our fidelity, it is God's. We give ourselves to him in no reliance on our own trustworthiness. Experience has taught us what we are. Our Confidence is that god's faithfulness will prevail over our faithlessness, that he will recall us, that he will not let us go."

It is appropriate that I quote and write on my mother's birthday. I believe I was five years old when I made a childish promise of my own. When I write "childish", I don't mean in a negative or demeaning sense, but I use the word because I was a child when I made the promise. We lived in a Richmond, Virginia townhouse that had a counter that separated the small kitchen from a carpeted dining room. I sat on one of the three comfortably-padded bar stools on the dining room side, and my mother stood in the kitchen, leaning on the counter with her elbows.

It was there that she shared the Gospel with me. Her tool was the Four Spiritual Laws booklet, designed and used by CCCI, the large para-church organization my parents worked for (and for which I would later work in Germany and New Orleans). If memory serves me, it was the classic mustard-yellow booklet that probably looked cool in the mid-eighties. The color, judging by a pair of pants my middle sister owns, seems to be making a comeback.

It's a simple Gospel presentation - God's love, plan and purpose; our sin and separation; Jesus, the cross, the Resurrection, the way; our repentance. And a few thoughts on what to do next, including further reflection and finding a church. My little mind, in some way, understood enough of this to claim commitment to Jesus Christ as the only hope of my salvation, conduced by a loving mother and a Little Yellow booklet.

I echo Farrer. However much I change, however much I seek to define myself, however much changes of countries, cities, technologies, jobs, churches and friends will alter my malleable body, mind and soul, fidelity remains something constant. This is not because I am good and being faithful. Whenever I stand in my church and confess the Creeds, I am not touting my ability to be true to the three-personal God it affirms. Rather, I am trusting in his fidelity, patient through the eons and the minutes.

It has not made my life easier or more successful. Indeed, I often wonder if I should have chosen more ambition instead of a sort of faithfulness. But to be the beneficiary of a love deep and divine beyond our understanding, to have a hope in a grand and renewed creation, to have genuine intimacy with creator and sustainer of all things, is worth more than anything else I've been offered.

In this post-modern world, fidelity to anything is viewed as suspect. This is for two reasons. From marriage to country to religion, human beings are historically bad at fidelity. I know a man who refuses to marry, because he does not have an example of a faithful marriage in his own family. Second, many who are good at fidelity are faithful to the wrong thing. A suicide-bomber is a hideous example of someone faithful to the end.

Fidelity to Jesus, as Farrer points out, relies on His fidelity, not ours, and in that we can have great comfort. Even better, we are faithful to Love and Justice, Grace and Holiness, God incarnate. We are right to suspect worldly fidelity, but God's fidelity leads to human flourishing. For these two reasons, if you have read this far and have not committed your life to Jesus, why not start now? My mother and the yellow booklet put me on this path. Join me.

Do We Need God to Stand Fast?

Add me to the list of those who recommend Eric Metaxas' excellent biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I'm embarrassed to say that I've personally read very little of Bonhoeffer's works. I have Life Together in German and have been stubbornly trying to read it in its original text. It's possible for me, but it requires an amount of mental energy to keep up, and it sits on our shelf, a reminder of how far my German needs to go. I've recently read some of Wilhelm Busch's (Germany's answer to Billy Graham) straightforward Gospel sermons with more success.

Whether we have read him or not, we Christians are familiar with Bonhoeffer, even if his books are a thick jungle of theology, scholarship and challenge. He stood out among the Christians who stood up to the Nazis. He was theologically sound, truly spiritual and unusually courageous. He helped start the Confessing Church (in response to the nazification of the German church), trained pastors, rescued Jews and conspired to kill Hitler. For his efforts (particularly that last part), he was martyred, executed two weeks before the liberation of his concentration camp. We remember him, because unlike many (and unlike many of us would have, we fear), he did the right thing. He recognized an evil for what it was, recognized it has no place in Christianity, and stood fast to the end.

Who stands fast? Who will do good in the face of such evil? Bonhoeffer himself asked this question (we'll get to that later), and, in his reflection after reading Metaxas' biography (published in The New Republic), Alan Wolfe asks the same question. Take some time to read Wolfe's essay; his reflections are good and provide some additional background. As a Christian, I always wonder how such a work as Metaxas' Bonhoeffer, where a devout Christian honors the life of a considerably great devout Christian, will be accepted. There's a certain comfort to know that Wolfe thinks it a "fine biography," and even more so, it challenges the liberalism in which, to use Wolfe's words, he puts his own faith. It challenged him enough so that he writes a defense in that same TNR article:

"Throughout his book, but especially toward the end, Metaxas turns this erudite and at times abstruse theologian into a living and tragic human being. I would be less than honest if I did not admit that bringing this man—and his intransigence on all the important questions of our time—so vividly to life raises awkward questions for the liberalism in which I put my own faith. How, precisely, would a Rawlsian have acted in those dark times? Must we not move beyond this-worldly conceptions of politics as a struggle for power to other-worldly concerns with repentance and days of judgment, if we are to grasp how the Nazis were able to combine their own rational plans to kill millions with satanically inspired ideas about a Thousand Year Reich, and also how some people were able to resist those plans? Is it possible to face death with courage without knowing that a better life awaits? Can one be loyal to one’s collaborators in the resistance without being loyal to some higher power? Can faith help overcome torture? Lurking behind all such questions is the major one: if the problem of evil is not one that humans can solve, have we no choice but to rely on God for help? Does Bonhoeffer’s greatness prove his rightness?

Yet when I put this book down, I realized that its author, no doubt inadvertently, had helped me to answer these questions. Bonhoeffer may have been convinced that God was telling him what to do, but I am not convinced. Ironically, Metaxas’s passion, the intensity of his engagement with his subject, wound up persuading me of the importance of the very autonomy that Bonhoeffer believed that we do not possess. Even if God told Bonhoeffer what to do, it was Bonhoeffer who chose God in the first place. It was not a humble servant of the Lord who involved himself in the resistance, but a singular human being who, for whatever reason, was able to know what to do when faced with the problem of evil.

It is important to note in this context that there is no simple relationship between faith and courage. The German Christians who collaborated with Hitler may have abused religion, but they considered themselves religious. At the same time, many—if not most—of the resisters to Hitler were not Christian believers and did not take orders from God. They included Prussian generals, and left-wingers (including even a few communists), and the student movement known as the White Rose. Their bravery had nothing to do with religion. One should come away from the Bonhoeffer story impressed by religion, but not in awe of it. The human picture is more complicated."

The human picture is indeed complicated. I wonder, though, if it works both ways. He addresses part of this in his essay, but Bonhoeffer was not proud of whatever human freedom he possessed. In his essay, "Who Stands Fast?", Bonhoeffer writes:

"As to the man who asserts his complete freedom to stand foursquare to the world, who values the necessary deed more highly than an unspoilt conscience or reputation, who is ready to sacrifice a barren principle for a fruitful compromise, or the barren wisdom of a middle course for a fruitful radicalism — let him beware lest his freedom should bring him down. He will assent to what is bad so as to ward off something worse, and in doing so he will no longer be able to realize that the worse, which he wants to avoid, might be the better. Here we have the raw material of tragedy."

Freedom can easily be asserted bad and good, evil and virtue. For Bonhoeffer, the one who stands fast is one who is ready to sacrifice that freedom to his faith in God. Bonhoeffer would say, in disagreement with Wolfe, that this is why he stood. Wolfe, in contrast, does not give us another reason. He only provides examples of religious Christians who compromised, and some non-religious folks who did not (though, among his list, I should point out that at least one of the members of the White Rose movement was a Christian).

I do agree that the relationship between professed faith and courage is complicated. I suspect that Bonhoeffer wrote so strongly, in part, because he was unimpressed by the many Christians who compromised, or perhaps tried to avoid the issue all together. But claiming to follow God does not make us God-followers. I can write, in a comfortable house far away from any sort of political persecution, that however blinded by fear, patriotism or what have you, the religious appeasers of Bonhoeffer's day serve as shameful examples of what not to do in the in the face of evil. Whenever we Christians do wrong, or fail to do right, we are not taking orders from God, whether we believe we are or not. For Bonhoeffer, faith led to actions - actions that, whatever or in spite of our own personal inclinations, took God at his very Word - His Word that took on human form and dwelt among us. His Word who said things like, "love each other," "love your enemies," "I am the way, the truth and the life," and "follow me." This Word took sides with the poor, beleaguered and persecuted, and when Bonhoeffer stood against the Nazis, he did the same. Tell me, whose word does an atheist fail should he not be moral? His own? If so, then on what grounds should that concern him? And why should he not deconstruct those grounds to suit his own purposes?

How then, should we understand the noble non-believers? I'm curious how Bonhoeffer would answer that question (perhaps he has in one of the books that I have not read), but Metaxas provides a clue in the German pastor's reaction to another 20th century giant who did not share his faith. A reoccurring theme in the biography is Bonhoeffer's desire to visit Mahatma Gandhi to learn more about non-violent resistance. He was never able to make the trip, but they did exchange letters. It seems that Bonhoeffer thought God was using the actions of a non-Christian to shame Christians into right behavior. Gandhi did not believe in God in the same way Bonhoeffer did, but who is to say that the same God wasn't somehow involved in those actions? What if he is more intimately involved then any of us could have guessed.

Wolfe writes that there were plenty of heroes resisting the Third Reich who were not taking orders from God. But how could he know? More to the point, maybe the leftists, any non-religious Prussian generals and any other didn't know they were following God's Word, but if they stood for up for the oppressed against unadulterated evil, then frankly, they were. What if they were made in God's image, and there was something written in their hearts that compelled them to right action? What if they were blind agents of God, putting to shame many who claimed to see?

Wolfe did not leave Metaxas' biography "in awe" of religion. That's perfectly fine. Who says we should be in awe of religion? The Bible, with all of its religious instruction, never instructs us to glorify religion. Rather, we should be in awe of God himself. His Word, his fulfillment, was in the person of Jesus Christ. I am impressed with those like Bonhoeffer or anyone else, who follow his example, and I wish to learn from them. My religion does not guarantee that I would stand fast in such a time, nor does Wolfe's lack thereof guarantee that he would not. The answer to Wolfe's and Bonhoeffer's question lies not in some sort of triumph for our own will, but in God and his will. May he give us the grace to stand fast when the time of trial comes.

Twain, London, Creativity and Sin

I heartily second almost all of Kathleen Parker's defense of Mark Twain's original text. Eliminating the "n-word" from Huckleberry Finn is a good-intentioned denial of part of our past that could give way to more insidious denials. It is up to teachers to help children navigate and understand the plot and the language, and I am personally thankful to the teachers at Robious Middle School in Richmond, Virginia who did so for me.

I quibble, however, with one sentence: "...it seems to me that racism and the sort of worldly intelligence that inspires men and women to art are incompatible." Now, according to what I've read and heard, Twain was no racist, and, as far as I can know, neither were the other authors Parker lists (Faulkner, O'Connor, Warren, Melville).

It's much more likely, however, that Jack London was racist. Having only read, but not really studied the author, I was surprised to hear the accusation for the first time on NPR while driving my car to a work event. London, along with Twain and Tolkien, were among those who first opened my young mind to reading. His stories of animals, nature and humans under extreme circumstances enthralled me. He may not belong on pantheon Parker mentions, but he had the "worldly intelligence that inspires men and women to art." Yet the fact that London wrote this short story should give us pause.

Whatever London's views, we should not let the creative off that easily. I'm a fan of the creative mind, but I can tell you from experience that sin is even stronger. To say a certain virtue always neutralizes a certain sin risks pride. Pride, in art or in virtue, comes before a fall, and falls can surprise us. Whatever the sin, however disgusting, however horrific, the old Reformed idiom, "There but for the grace of God go I," remains a good reaction.

Pastures and Valleys

During a sermon, our English pastor said that of all the books on prayer he has read, A Praying Life by Paul Miller is the only one that actually helped him pray. Plenty were great books which helped him better understand prayer, but this relatively short text brought him to his knees.

I started Paul Miller's prayer journey while on vacation in Germany and just finished it next to our house's new and still-naked Christmas tree this afternoon, and so far I agree. I pray more. By God's grace, I am confident that I will continue to do so (I know, I know - ask me in a few weeks).

The last book on prayer I started was Richard Foster's beautifully-written Prayer, which moves from elementary to graduate school level praying. I quit half way through. I write this blushing; I'm not proud. I learned good things about prayer, and I gained wisdom from the saints, and Foster's one of the few living Christian writers whose prose is worth the price of admission. But with each chapter came a new level of method and petition that was not going to happen in my life, between early rises and baby cries, Metro rides and computer screens, work, church, marriage, rest, reading, writing.

I read With Christ in the School of Prayer when I lived in Germany several years ago. How I remember it, it was almost the opposite of Foster's book - plenty of passion with less method. My own passion was inadequate to the challenge, and I put the book down feeling tired and thirsty. A good posture for prayer given my need, except I didn't pray any more than I did when I started.

Given my history, I was reluctant to start another one, even after my mom, my pastor and my wife all said I should read A Praying Life. My mom even bought us a copy. The tag line on the back cover, "Let's Face It, Prayer Is Hard!" did nothing to encourage me. It sounds like the squeaky slogan of some Christian salesman who is about to insist that it really isn't hard. "Shields up!" I thought.

If what I just wrote resonates with you, ignore the cynical instincts that protect the old wounds of misplaced hope. Read a book by someone whose experience, suffering and growing care for others has taught him to pray. Paul Miller, without pretense or arrogance, presents himself as someone we can learn from, not because he is an ueber-saint but because he is human. And yes, he honestly and graciously addresses cynicism, wounds and hope deferred.

Here are a few reasons I could stick with A Praying Life. First, he acknowledges reality and reminds us of God's grace. He gently reminds us that in our imperfections, our distracted minds (mine seems particularly prone to distraction), God loves and will meet us in our imperfect offerings. In one chapter, he describes his morning prayer routine. It requires coffee and is interrupted by his autistic daughter and conversations with his wife. No matter. God meets him there, anyway.

Second, Miller keeps us from chasing the rainbow's end called "experience God," and instead reminds us that prayer is to build a relationship. God is there, whether or not we are "feelin' it," and prayer is our way to build nearness and intimacy to One whose love beyond all our asking and imagining.

Many of Miller's prayers are people focused, which helps me. Rather than formula's or recipes, he shows how he prays for his family, his friends, the lost He shows how that in praying for others, he can trust God with them. In doing so, his trust in God grows, as does his love for others. None of the prayer books I've read took me in such specific and intimate prayer journeys.

I could go on, but read the book instead. If it does not help you pray, put it back on the shelf or give it to someone else this Christmas. But I suspect it will. I am thankful for A Praying Life. In it, Miller not only tells but shows how the Lord is our shepherd, how he is there in green pastures and dark valleys.

My Father's Robe

It's been edifying to read Valley of Vision, a collection of Puritan prayers compiled by Arthur Bennett. Puritan prayers are great because the puritans are of the "Big God party," and each word is carefully and generously bathed in His wonder and majesty. They really believed that God is eternal, present and very involved, and reading them helps me to do the same. I commend it to you - try a few prayers on for yourself see if love and holiness, grace and truth are, to your senses, larger and nearer.

The book is divided into sections under different themes (Trinity, Redemption and Reconciliation, etc...), and I have assigned a different theme to each day of the week. The reason I do it this way, rather than just read the prayers straight through, is I do not believe I could survive reading the "Penitence and Deprecation" section all at once. As it is P&D are confined to Tuesdays. A fair criticism of Puritans and personal difficulty (among several) I have with them is that in their emphasis on Total Depravity, there can be so much self-flagellation that the reader forgets that by another's stripes we have been healed. It is worth and necessary to weep and morn in our repentance, we cannot taste Grace and remain somber.

But on this particular Tuesday I prayed a beautiful prayer that I wanted to share, mostly for the imagery. Feel, for a moment, your sin as garments caked with filth indescribable (at least in a family-friendly blog), and feel yourself washed clean, and clothed in the Father's robe (if you own Valley of Vision, it's on page 76):

"I am always standing clothed in filthy garments, and by grace I am always receive change of raiment, for thou dost always justify the ungodly

I am always going into the far country, and always returning home as a prodigal, always saying, Father, forgive me, and thou art always bringing forth the best robe.

Every morning, let me wear it, every evening return in it, go out to the day's work in it, be married in it, be wound in death in it, stand before the great white throne in it, enter heaven in it shining as the sun.

Grant me never to lose sight of the exceeding sinfulness of sin, the exceeding righteousness of salvation, the exceeding glory of Christ, the exceeding beauty of holiness, the exceeding wonder of grace."

Questions for "The Social Network", or Billionaires Are People Too

As a film, few have anything bad to say about "The Social Network." Critics and audiences love it (HT Ross Douthat for the link). The actors, writers and director are excellent, I read. I haven't seen the film yet, and I would honestly like to, more to be a part of the conversation than to think that I would enjoy it. (I've seen much less films in the theaters since my daughter was born, so I may have to wait until it hits my local library)

The haunting previews made me wonder if the film's marketers thought I would be attracted to a take-down of Facebook's wildly successful founder, Mark Zuckerberg (though I love the boy's choir version of "Creep" by Radiohead). He comes across as part Shakespearian tyrant and part insolent teenager with enough computer geek thrown in to remind you of what he does. This probably does not paint the whole picture, of course. News services are doing their due diligence about "The Social Network's" accuracy. I've read mixed reports as to whether or not Zuckerberg himself will see (or has seen) the film, but I'd understand it if he didn't. Imagine if those who disliked or did not understand you made a film inflating the worst parts of your character? Would it help that the critics were salivating?

Given the city I live in, perhaps this bothers me too much. Politics and everything public are a dirty sport, and those involve can expect to "make a few enemies" as the film, smirking, points out. But I can't help but wonder if, what if I were the subject slanderous books describing my childhood, or with protesters carrying my portrait with superimposed Hitler mustache. Yes, the film probably won't ultimately hurt Zuckerberg. He has enough money to stuff his mattress with thousand dollar bills and completely retire from public life. And yes, I'm sure his rise to the top isn't without story and controversy. But I hope the biopic is fairer than the previews and critiques indicate. Whatever the sins and temptations that come from wealth, success and influence, they do not shield us from humanity. Those who make films, write columns or scrawl unaccountable words in cyberspace should keep that in mind.