tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42425755912401311712024-03-23T12:51:09.147-05:00Ken's BlogKen's Blog reflects the interests of the author: religion, Japanese arts, poetry, politics, the Shakuhachi, movies, and whatever is happening in his life. Ken and his wife Connie live in Portland, Oregon. For more see http://webworks.ken-arnold.com.Noh Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03539473088426090880noreply@blogger.comBlogger52125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242575591240131171.post-29366190249221170552008-02-12T18:18:00.000-05:002008-02-12T18:41:48.692-05:00Last PostThis will be my last post from this blog page. Next week, my new publishing website, www.kenarnoldbooks.com, will go live. It will contain a new blog space, KABlog, which will be open to contributions from other writers. I will continue to post something there once a week on same schedule, but you will have the pleasure of hearing other voices as well as mine. I encourage you to visit the new website and blog--and to sign up there for our newsletter, which will keep you up to date on our forthcoming books and bloggers.<br /><br />I have been writing this blog for just about a year. Over that time I have talked frequently about the Episcopal Church and its struggles with dissidents--the conservatives who have been outraged by the consecration of a practicing gay bishop (for those of you on the outside, there are plenty of gay priests and bishops in the church, but Gene Robinson, the gay bishop in question, did not pretend to be other than who he is and did not hide his partnered relationship). That story continues to play itself out, but increasingly over the year I have found it to be tiresome. It is about life on a theological pinhead, for the most part. The serious issues of our time are not being ignored by the church--or churches--but on the whole the real work on global warming, armed conflict, economic injustice, and racial tensions is being done by groups not associated with the church. (Before some of you write to me about this, I know of the few exceptions and that in some parts of the country and the world, important and risky work is being done. My point remains: most of the church's attention is directed toward the small print.)<br /><br />The presidential election has turned out to be more important that some of my earlier posts suggested I thought it would be. The emergence of Barack Obama is a hopeful sign, if only because he has brought out more voters and seems willing to raise the issues that matter most. (I do not believe that he is not a politician, however. He is a very able politician.) Hillary Clinton remains a strong and viable option, leaving us Democrats in the unusual position of having two similarly strong candidates to choose between (assuming that the current Obama sweep doesn't knock Clinton out). And even John McCain isn't just another zombie from the Reagan tomb. We still have our heads in the sand when it comes to the problems of our extravagant and wasteful way of life. I have nothing wise to say about the escalating problem of the global climate; I do plan to publish some books this year about it, however.<br /><br />In the past year, Connie and I have moved from New York City to Portland, Oregon, changing cities and employment. We have started a new publishing company; I have finished the first draft of a new book on Christianity tentatively titled <span style="font-style:italic;">The Christian Atheist</span>. Connie has finished a book manuscript and begun another. We are both actively writing and seeking publishers, while working every day to find new authors to publish. It's been a hectic and in some ways frightening year for us. There was even a time last spring when we were not sure how we were going to survive or where we were going to live. <br /><br />But here we are. In the end, it is where we need to be. The shift from this blog space into a new one is, in a small way, indicative of the changes. We are moving into a broader environment, one in which we intend to flourish. I hope that those of you who have been reading this blog will make the trip over to the new space. Some exciting publishing will be happing there, in addition to these weekly ruminations, rantings, and redactions (not sure those all mean something here but I got interested in "r" words).<br /><br />Let me close with a haiku:<br /><br />dry leaves cling<br />to the Butterfly Maple<br />oh! last summerNoh Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03539473088426090880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242575591240131171.post-41440000123352305432008-02-05T02:13:00.000-05:002008-02-05T02:30:23.085-05:00AshesPerhaps it is meaningful that Fat Tuesday is also SuperDuper Tuesday. After the feasting come the ashes, if you go in for that sort of thing. (Even if you don't, they will come.)<br /><br />Some years ago when I was the on-call chaplain for St. Luke's Hospital in Manhattan, I went into the wards on Ash Wednesday to put ashes on foreheads and remind people they were going to die. There was great eagerness among the nurses in particular, who were positively gleeful as they lined up. I recall that as I was imposing ashes on the nurses in the Intensive Care Unit a man in the room nearby went into cardiac arrest. The doctors rushed in to save his life. I am not sure exactly what they were doing; I was busy marking the smiling nurses with death. I had not gotten to him yet.<br /><br />This brief recollection is just a prelude to a poem, which I wrote a few weeks ago, not thinking about Lent at all. It is not a poem about Lent, but it is about ashes. As the poem says, that is enough.<br /><br />Ashes<br /><br /><br />Scatter them you said<br />on the Columbia where Multnomah Falls<br />bisects the cliff’s face <br />knife plunged through the rock<br />a flash of brilliance in the sun<br />so that they sink into the everlasting flow of things<br />dissolve into memory <br />into fact <br />into the western sun<br />what I want you said is to leave the country<br />lose myself in the Pacific <br /><br />it was one of those conversations <br />we did not plan to have <br />how do you want to be memorialized <br />I asked<br />when you’re gone<br />what songs should we sing<br />and what do we do with the body <br />you no longer need <br />and we are too creeped out to keep<br /><br />burn it you said<br /><br />and I agreed<br />I do not want to be deposited in dirt<br />I said<br />nor in the family vault<br />burn mine too<br />and you and all my friends <br />be joyful on a hill<br />among the spruce and rock<br />and if you cannot bear to watch <br />the flames consume me<br />recall the heat of all the passions<br />of our days and feel within <br />the unexpected power of<br />what bursts forth when we let go<br />of what we were<br /><br />you smiled and said ok<br />we’ll dance for you like dervishes<br />but if I’m gone before you<br />just be sure you dump <br />my ashes in the river<br />that’s enoughNoh Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03539473088426090880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242575591240131171.post-81921023499688969752008-01-28T21:17:00.001-05:002008-01-28T21:17:47.359-05:00Art and GraceOn Saturday I went to Seattle by train, my maiden voyage to the soggy city. The purpose of my trip was to be present for the creation of a chapter of a national organization of artists in the Episcopal Church, known as ECVA (Episcopal Church and the Visual Arts). As a member of the board, I wanted to meet some of these artists and see their work in person (we can see a lot of it online at www.ecva.org--you can too).<br /><br />The artwork was wonderful--a great variety of themes and materials, from fabric to photography, enamel to sculpture. One enigmatic head of Jesus with blue eyes and vaguely Hispanic features was a fresh and somehow disturbing take on a common image. It was almost an icon but also just a photograph mounted on gold. A small box with a dozen nails driven into it sat serenely beside beautiful enamel pendants--and at the other end of the table was a cloth book, each page stitched in homage to community gardens, the cover comprised of dirty gardening gloves. A precise drawing of a crumpled piece of paper and a pencil was a Zen masterpiece. <br /><br />It was worth the trip to see the work and hear the artists talk about what they had made and how they brought to their art spirit as well as technique. All art, I think, is spiritual in some way; at the core of a work of art is that ineffable something that transforms technique. <br /><br />A couple of us talked later about whether an image of Jesus or the Madonna would read as a religious object to someone who knew nothing of the story behind the images or of the religious tradition that begat them. I argued that viewers would know that these were spirit-filled images, just as Rothko paintings, which do not contain realistic objects or people, are clearly spiritual at their core and in their effect on viewers. Buddhist art can similarly inspire reverence, even when the viewer knows nothing of Buddhism or the "saints" who animate its memory.<br /><br />But the most important event of the evening, for me, was an encounter with one artist who had shown us an apron she had made, using materials from a thrift shop that caters to the homeless. It was a simple apron, hardly what we would term art. After the formal presentations, she came up to me and asked if I published work by other writers (I had been introduced as a publisher and she wasn't sure whether I just published myself). I said I did. She told me that she had been homeless herself and while she was in the shelter had written poems. <br /><br />Her manner was diffident. She was almost girlish in her movements, swinging side to side, twisting a foot nervously behind an ankle--even though she was at least sixty years old. I said that we were planning to publish a book in which her poems might fit, and I offered to read them.<br /><br />She quickly touched my arm, embarrassed that her motives had been misunderstood, and said, "Oh, no. I have someone who wants to publish them. No, I just wanted to know what you are doing so I can pray for you. For your success."<br /><br />I admit to being stunned. I assumed I was doing something for her by offering to read her poems, which I also believed were probably not very good. But on the contrary she was offering to do something for me. I gave her my card and she also wrote my wife's name, Connie, on it, so that she could pray specifically for both of us.<br /><br />I could see in her a spirit at work that had nothing to do with the traditional stories and images we associate with grace. She was, however, a channel of grace, or of the spirit, the heartbeat of the universe, what the Buddhists call a Bodhisattva, or what we, Saturday, were calling an artist.<br /><br />I suspect her poems are as wonderful as her apron.Noh Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03539473088426090880noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242575591240131171.post-46963856762662723532008-01-21T10:39:00.000-05:002008-01-21T11:36:09.642-05:00King and HeschelSome years ago a friend told me that he read Martin Luther Kings Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" on this day of recollection. I began doing it myself and am struck every time by its power. The letter was written while King was held in solitary confinement in April 1963 in response to a statement from eight white, "liberal" Alabama clergy admonishing King to pursue racial justice through the courts not in the streets. Episcopal Bishop C.C. Jones Carpenter was the instigator and first signer of the clergy statement, "Call to Unity." Despite his credentials as a critic of segregation, Carpenter, as the senior Episcopal bishop in the US, failed to lend his prestige to King's efforts. Carpenter criticized King for a lack of respectability (according to Taylor Branch in his magisterial <span style="font-style:italic;">Parting the Waters, America in the King Years, 1954-63</span>). Alas, it is just what one might expect from an Episcopalian.<br /><br />King's letter is nothing less than a definitive statement about the need for prophetic action to achieve social change. For us in an election year, as we listen to the sound bites and moral shuffling of the candidates, it is a reminder of how far we have fallen from the mountain on which King stood. I have said this before, in an earlier post, but it bears repeating: the church has fallen silent as a prophetic witness. No one speaks with moral authority from the pulpit, with the possible exception of Jim Wallis. But in the streets where poverty continues to destroy the lives of men and women and children of color, and in the fields where migrant workers are exploited for our collective benefit (and then excoriated by opportunistic politicians for being immigrants and poor), there are few with the courage or the will to object.<br /><br />We live in a state of governmental control that has, over the years, grown tighter, but we have scarcely noticed. At play in our consumer gardens, we worry mostly about our perquisites. We are like the proverbial frog in the slowing warming water that, when it reaches boiling, will cook us before we know what has happened. And yet no church leaders speak out against the slow evaporation of our basic liberties. <br /><br />We live next to the federal building here in Portland and the other day Connie saw a woman standing in one of the windows with a pair of binoculars focused on a floor somewhere below ours. We had heard a story when we moved in about federal agents raiding the apartment we now live in because the resident was cleaning a rifle (he was a former member of the military who owned the gun legally). I offer this image as a symbol of the way we have become accustomed to living. We are watched, we watch each other, we have accepted the basic premises of a police state.<br /><br />King and the black Americans of his day--and of the country from its beginnings--lived in a police state. Those of us who were teenagers in the 60s remember the dogs and the fire hoses, the murders and jailings. I was in Lynchburg, Virginia, as a college student between 1962 and 1966, and was dragged out of bed to be beaten for my modest civil rights activities. The local newspaper published a front-page notice edged in black suggesting I go back north to be with my communist buddies. The paper made it clear where I might be found. The rumor was the American Nazi Party was looking for me.<br /><br />"Letter from Birmingham Jail" is addressed to all of us who urge care and caution, who are content in our wealth and respectability. Bishop Carpenter, by all accounts a decent man, stands for our cowardice. Decent though we are, we are content to allow the poorest and the least powerful to be sacrificed to our need for order and security. "We know through painful experience," King wrote, "that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor." Are we oppressed? Surely, that is an overstatement. Analogously, we might ask: has global warming inconvenienced or hurt us? Not yet. <br /><br />The churches are silent. Our political leaders are compromised nearly beyond redemption. Who is there like King and his comrades in the 60s that might bring to our public dialog the moral clarity of "Letter from Birmingham Jail"? <br /><br />As it happens, this year some Jewish leaders are also remembering Abraham Joshua Heschel this week; he would be 101 years old. A mystic, scholar, and activist, Heschel marched with King in Selma. But he represents that other side of activism, the meditative preparation required if one is to survive solitary confinement, ostracism, and rebuke--if one is to meet death with equanimity. In his brief book, <span style="font-style:italic;">The Sabbath</span>, Heschel writes of the sanctification of time. "In technical civilization, we expend time to gain space. To enhance our power in the world of space is our main objective. Yet to have more does not mean to be more....There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern." The Sabbath offers another vision of who we are called to be.<br /><br />These things in space are the idols of empire, and we have fallen before them in worship. Although King and his fellow activists were extraordinarily successful in bending the will of empire to justice, their accomplishments are slowly being eroded by our national obsession with security. We live in the empire. We are each implicated in its actions everywhere. We are all in a Birmingham jail. And we are silent.Noh Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03539473088426090880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242575591240131171.post-17258325426996632972008-01-09T01:24:00.000-05:002008-01-09T01:37:24.276-05:00RainIt's that season of the year in Portland in which nearly every day is a rainy day. Not necessarily all day, but sometimes it is. The streets are wet whether there has been rain that day or not. Along what is known as the Park Blocks, a green pedestrian mall near our apartment, the ground is puddled. The squirrels are soaked but don't seem to mind. In fact, no one seems to mind being wet. It is a fact of life. At the same time, there is also some sun almost every day, often in the mornings, and the clouds blow quickly north or east, sweeping away the patches of blue, the sun itself, and yet they are high and somehow lighter than the clouds I recall from New York that seemed to sit on the city like a portent of doom. Not so long ago, as we were entering this season, I wrote a poem that expresses something of what it's like here in the rain. Here it is.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Rain</span><br /><br /><br />Most days it is predicted<br /><br />but doesn’t always come although the clouds do<br />they rumble in from the west <br />where the ocean whips them up<br />then collapse on the mountains east of us<br /><br />when it comes there is no warning no excitement<br />just the rain where before there was no rain<br />slant lines across the view<br />usually from the south<br /><br />we walk around in it<br /><br />sometimes it rains here <br />and at the same time over there is no rain but sun<br />or on one occasion as we sat in a restaurant<br />hail bouncing on the street <br />as if some kids were playing hailball<br />and in the next block up <br />bright sun dry street<br /><br />At noon I walk through the rain to the dumpling café<br />for dumplings<br /><br />how’s your day goin the guy behind the counter asks<br />people ask that question a lot here<br />I say ok<br />it’s nice and steamy in here<br />but surprisingly warm out there I say<br /><br />we look at the rain<br /><br />nothing to complain about he says<br />the rain comes and goesNoh Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03539473088426090880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242575591240131171.post-65614640348839202002008-01-01T15:41:00.000-05:002008-01-01T16:44:38.279-05:00Ten BooksAt the end of the year, lists of the ten best this and thats proliferate. There are multiple ten best book lists, usually focused on what was newly published in the year. Here is my list of the ten best books I read in 2007--and it turns out that a goodly number were also published during the year. I have left out all but two of the books I read as part of the research for my new book, which I am revising before submitting to a publisher in the next couple of months, even though many of them were fascinating. They were also heavily theological, and who needs theology on New Year's Day.<br /><br />So, here goes (in no particular order).<br /><br />1. <span style="font-style:italic;">The Savage Detectives</span>, by Roberto Bolano. A strange book that I was reading for months--it seemed for the whole year--about poets on the run. Broken up into apparently disconnected sections, the bulk of the book lacks plot or even coherent narrative. And yet it is so well written, so engagingly literate, so suggestive, that I literally had to finish it. It is like a mysterious person you feel you have to get to know, but the more time you spend with him/her, the more elusive, the more intriguing s/he becomes. How to account for the allure of this book....and it's a translation, so who knows how much better it must be in Spanish.<br /><br />2. <span style="font-style:italic;">Tree of Smoke</span>, by Denis Johnson. A novel that turns up on almost everyone's list for the year--and for that reason I thought of leaving it off of mine. But I just finished it a week or so ago and it is still so fresh. At first I wasn't sure I was going to like it or get through it. Like Bolano's book, this one is very long. But the fast and truthful dialog, the voices that seemed to come out of my own head, drew me in and on. There is a quality to this of <span style="font-style:italic;">The Heart of Darkness</span>, I would guess intentional, that adds weight to what seems almost a casual thriller. Except there is no thriller plot. The book illuminates the moral bankruptcy of Vietnam, as if we needed to hear that, while offering an odd and disturbing insight into what it takes to live after catastrophe--which we do need to hear.<br /><br />3. <span style="font-style:italic;">All Aunt Hagar's Children</span>, by Edward P. Jones. This collection of stories came out in 2006, but I picked it up around the time I was in Washington, DC, for the ordination of my niece. As it happens, Jones writes vividly and particularly about DC, complete with addresses, and one of the stories I read soon after the ordination takes place on the street where the church was located. Meaningless to fiction, of course, but at the same time it illustrates how immediately alive these stories are, as if one were right there just this morning. Jones is a wonderful writer. His stories feel like entire novels condensed into a relatively few pages. They also tell the white world more about American race than most of us will ever learn by just walking around in our protected skin.<br /><br />4. <span style="font-style:italic;">After Dark</span>, by Haruki Murakami. Murakami is my favorite writer of fiction right now, and this was his new novel for 2007. I don't think it is up to <span style="font-style:italic;">Kafka on the Shore</span> (2005), but it is a good book to read if you want an intro to Murakami's world and style. He can be disconcertingly allusive or off-hand. His characters are often too ephemeral to take hold of and the world he inhabits is often a distortion of the world in which we live, just beyond recognition, but disconcertingly familiar. In this book, we watch, as voyeurs, one woman asleep while her sister slips almost thoughtlessly into the night world of Tokyo that never sleeps; but the sleeper somehow effects what happens in our waking world. The boundaries between realities, as in all of Murakami, are distressingly permeable.<br /><br />5. <span style="font-style:italic;">Exit Ghost</span>, by Philip Roth. I can hear you now: Ken, how could you! Philip Roth is so, uh, mean, sexist, obsessive....Right. All true. It's like reading John Updike, I hate myself in the morning. What sucked me in here is that this novel about one of Roth's alter-egos, Nathan Zuckerman, is also about the fears and physical distress that accompany prostate cancer. I could identify with Zuckerman. It's a well-written book, as Roth books are, and you might enjoy it, especially if you've had prostate cancer or might one day. Ok, it's a book for guys who fret about impotence and death (that would be all of us). That's ok, I think, every now and then.<br /><br />6. <span style="font-style:italic;">The Laying on of Hands</span>, stories by Alan Bennett. A paperback collection from 2002 I picked up in the Fall. I had not read Bennett before. Two of the three long stories here will lead me to look up more of this work. The first, "The Laying on of Hands," is a must read for Episcopalians, Anglicans, and Anglophiles: it is a screamingly funny and precise evisceration of church liturgical politics. The third, "Father! Father! Burning Bright," is a touching but also wickedly pointed account of a dutiful son waiting at the bedside of his dying father. We don't write like this in the United States because we don't understand our own class structure well enough--mainly, I suppose, because we don't think we have one.<br /><br />7. <span style="font-style:italic;">Messenger, New and Selected Poems 1976-2006</span>, by Ellen Bryant Voight. I read quite a lot of poetry, but this was someone I had not read (shame on me). Voight is a clear and evocative writer with a narrative line that is subtle and sorrowing. The books consists of selections from other books and serves to send one back to the originals to experience the the shape of the work. "All ears, nose, tongue and gut,/ dogs know if something's wrong;/ chickens don't know a thing, their brains/ are little more than optic nerve...." The beginning of a long book sequence titled <span style="font-style:italic;">Kyrie</span>, about the Influenza epidemic of 1918. Curls your hair.<br /><br />8. <span style="font-style:italic;">Inner Christianity: A Guide to the Esoteric Tradition</span>, by Richard Smoley. For those of you who, like me, are fed up with traditional Christianity and its smugness, this book offers a smart and informative overview of what the church has effectively hidden all these centuries. Elaine Pagel writes about this tradition, and you may have read her, but Smoley gives us even more. The spiritual world he describes feels strange to one steeped in the dogmatic theologies of the church, as if one has happened upon a midnight rite of passage that is supposed to be vile but turns out to be not only illuminating but liberating.<br /><br />9. <span style="font-style:italic;">I Am A Strange Loop</span>, by Douglas Hofstadter. I read Hofstadter's book as part of the research for my book (that's also why I picked up Smoley). What interests Hofstadter is the nature of consciousness--Who Am I?--or, as he puts it, what it means to have or be a human soul, without the religious connotations. Hint: consciousness is shared. Part of what drives the author is the death of his wife and his yearning to know what or how we live on, not just as memory, in the consciousness of others. It's a provocative and sometimes annoying book. You may know Hofstadter from <span style="font-style:italic;">Godel, Escher, and Bach</span> way back in 1979. This is an easier but equally mind-bending read.<br /><br />10. <span style="font-style:italic;">Elia Kazan</span>, by Richard Schickel. This biography was first published in 2005, the paper edition in 2006. I've wanted to read it since it was first published but just got around to it in 2007. Schickel is a good writer and brings to life the nuts and bolts of Kazan's work in theater and film. Most helpfully, he gives us some deeper sense of why Kazan testified against his fellow "communists" before Congress. I think that Schickel bends over too far to exonerate Kazan, but he makes a strong argument in his defense. Most importantly, Kazan's work is well examined here. And it is at the heart of our best theater and film of the mid-twentieth century. Go back and watch "On the Waterfront," "A Streetcar Named Desire," or "A Face in the Crowd" to recall how deeply we know this work--and how much better it is than almost anything you can see today on the screen or stage.<br /><br />Ok. Long post. Apologies. May you all have a year of blessings and blossoms.Noh Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03539473088426090880noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242575591240131171.post-21803130977462359492007-12-26T14:35:00.000-05:002007-12-26T14:37:46.898-05:00Santa Turned Away by White HouseOk, I published a new post on Monday but this came in this morning from the Center for Constitutional Rights, and I wanted those who read this blog to see it too. <br /><br /><object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ohc8Uyl95xQ&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ohc8Uyl95xQ&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>Noh Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03539473088426090880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242575591240131171.post-44612691793989954062007-12-24T17:55:00.000-05:002007-12-24T18:36:54.581-05:00Merry Christmas. Seriously.Last year, you may recall, there was a lot of angst about putting "Christ back in Christmas," especially on the Fox Network. I don't know if the anxiety has been as high this Christmas, but the presence of Christ in the season is not in doubt, whether we say "Happy Holidays" or "Seasons Greetings" or something more "religious." <br /><br />One way to read the incarnation is that the divine, or the elemental life force that animates the universe, is manifest in our daily lives, whether we recognize it or not. The story of the birth of Jesus is clearly a myth designed to show us how we are children of this elemental force and that our arrival is an occasion of hope and joy. Jesus stands in for each of us, as do his beleaguered parents and the poor and rich alike who seek enlightenment. The star is not out there but within. We can re-enact the birth scene, as St. Francis did (and as we imitate each year in pageants and creches), but we are limiting our understanding of incarnation if we insist on the historical "truth" of this birth story. Too many details are simply wrong; the story is not consistently told. But the myth is powerful because it gives us hope in our own future. And that has value in our difficult times.<br /><br />In the United States, the Christmas story is one of economic success. For most retailers--and publishers, as I well know from my own work history--without Christmas there is no profit. If we did not have Christmas, we would have to invent another holiday that encourages people to buy. Christmas is the engine of our economy, one could argue. In that sense, the holiday is wholly (and holy) one of the Christ event, in which the incarnation finds its ultimate validity by disappearing into our secular lives. The near disappearance of overt Christian observance in Europe and in the UK is a sign of the complete success of the incarnation. We can no longer tell the difference between secular and spiritual life. They are one. <br /><br />In other words, the season is not about god coming in and taking over.<br /><br />The devout might protest that the secular has taken over, that the spiritual is gone. But that is a perspective that claims for the spiritual a separate sphere and meaning. By the myth of the birth of Jesus we in fact are shown the opposite: that the spiritual inheres in the secular and the less we insist on separating the two, the better off we will be. <br /><br />But be careful: the message is not that theocracy is the answer. We have seen too often that theocracy is a death-delivering system that crushes human spirit and creativity. I am talking about secularism, humanism, whatever word you want to use, in which the sacred is part of and subservient to daily life. The arrival of Jesus, as the myth clearly shows, is about how the elemental force of life that drives all things is not a Ruler. It opens a way and steps aside.<br /><br />Do I like the commercialism of the season? No. In fact, we aren't buying gifts this year. But we actually take this time, even in spending sprees that are meaningless, to say the words that express the deepest longings of our hearts: that we might have peace, that we might be good to one another, that we might be free of our fears. It might take a new HDTV to make those wishes manifest. The makers of the televisions receive their wages, as do the workers who sell them. When the Wise Men in one version of the myth show up with gifts, no one complains, even though as gifts they are on a par with that tie you'll never wear. <br /><br />As my parents always said, and probably meant, "it's the thought that counts." Having thoughts of comfort and joy at a given moment of every year is good, even if we do not explicitly connect them with mythic events or a religion that often seems out of touch with what's really going on.<br /><br />Merry Christmas. Seriously.<br /><br />PS: Last week I identified some trees in Oregon as Birches, thereby showing my east coast roots and ignorance of local flora. A friend wrote to say that I probably saw Alders. I know that Frost writes in his poem, "Birches," that boys might have been swinging on them; I think boys could swing from Alders too. It might be worth a try.Noh Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03539473088426090880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242575591240131171.post-6233846186237094362007-12-18T09:54:00.000-05:002007-12-18T10:52:18.326-05:00To the BeachMy daughter Ruth is visiting for a few days, glad to be in the northwest instead of Philadelphia where, as in the rest of the northeast, the weather is at best cold and sloppy. Yesterday, we drove to Cannon Beach, a town on the ocean whose main attraction is Haystack Rock, which juts out of the surf like a bishop's mitre. Several of these startling behemoths guard the Oregon shore. They are lava formations (our major mountains--Hood, Adams, St. Helens, and Ranier--are volcanoes, one not as dormant as the others). The temperature was in the mid-forties and, despite forecasts, the sun was shining or at least visible through a light cloud cover while we were in Cannon Beach. <br /><br />Light rain was falling as we left Portland, and it stayed with us for about fifty miles. When we got to the ocean side of the coastal range, we encountered the first signs of wreckage left by the fierce storms of two weeks ago. At first there were just some downed trees, not unusual in the forest of mostly spruce and cedar that covers the range. Stands of birch among the conifers surprised us, ghostly gatherings in the shadows. Another variety of tree--and I admit here to my ignorance of what grows in the northest--was leafless and covered with a reddish fuzzy moss. Ruth asked me what was covering the trees--it looked like an affliction--and I said it was the tree Elvis Presley was referring to in "I'm All Shook Up," when he sings, "I'm itching like a man on a fuzzy tree." <br /><br />Then the number of downed trees increased dramatically, chaotic piles of debris that had undoubtedly once blocked the road. Huge root systems yanked out of the ground, stacks of tangled trunks. Bent birches (not because, as Robert Frost wrote of New England birches, "some boy's been swinging on them") and others broken at the ground disrupted the upright certainty of clustered white stalks. I saw as we rounded a curve the denuded hump of a hill to the south which, as we got closer to it, was covered with trunks that had been topped by the vicious winds that blasted through at a hundred miles an hour. After that first hill, there were others also savaged, the snapped-off tops of trees littering the landscape among the headless trunks, like an army ambushed. We saw only two houses on which fallen trunks still lay. <br /><br />During lunch we heard a waitress talking about the storm. "You could hear the trees exploding," she said, and it was almost more frightening than the ninety-mile-an-hour winds along the coast that continued for hours. "We thought they would never stop, the winds, and then there was this calm and it was sixty-five degrees and sunny, and we thought, uh-oh, it's going to start again."<br /><br />Outside the restaurant window, we could see Haystack Rock and a roiling surf that began a few hundred yards out and broke and tumbled chaotically to the flat sand where only a few were walking. And then where we were walking. Peace had settled over the shore. Last summer, Haystack Rock was harried by the multiple varieties of seabirds that nest there. Yesterday, we could see one solitary gull against the rock's dark face. "He's thinking about last summer," I said, "remembering the good times with all the other gulls."<br /><br />Ruth was snapping shots of the rock with my cellphone camera. A phalanx of walking gulls looked like gangsters with their hunched shoulders. I picked up a small dead fish and tossed it into the air. A gull was on it the moment it landed, tilted back his head, swallowed it whole.<br /><br />Driving back, I was transfixed by the disaster that had befallen the trees, trying to imagine what it must have been like to fear the wind spraying treetrunks across the hills, the few people who live among them huddled in the dark. <br /><br />A friend who dropped by to see us after we returned home said, when I talked about the damage caused by the storm, "Yeah, in the coastal range, that happens every year." <br /><br />After dinner we exchanged gifts and played "Trivial Pursuit."Noh Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03539473088426090880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242575591240131171.post-23206978664502755042007-12-09T17:30:00.000-05:002007-12-09T20:16:56.377-05:00GodTubedA friend of mine whose job it is to keep up with the world of the weird told me about GodTube last week. It is the "Christian" equivalent of YouTube, featuring videos with supposedly uplifting, mostly evangelical content. "Broadcast Him" is the tag line. There are music videos as well as playlettes showcasing the dangers of sin. And of course advertisements, one for Liberty University right at the top of the landing page. See it for yourself: www.godtube.com. <br /><br />After a week in which Mitt Romney appeared on television to affirm his Christian credentials for Iowan Republican Evangelicals, it seems a kind of GodTube was everywhere. Those of you who watch TV probably saw endless replays of what he had to say, interminable discussions of what it means that a major candidate has to explain his religion, reruns of JFK defending his Catholicism, talking religious heads, etc. Religion was big last week. It will stay big throughout the election year, I think, because everyone running for office feels s/he has to pander to the Christian Right in one form or another. And you cannot be other than Christian if you want to be president. Imagine a Muslim trying to address the nation and concluding with a phrase other than God bless America. Allah, anyone? Or an observant Jew declining to mention the name of the Holy One at all.<br /><br />The fact is, Romney really has nothing to say about religion. I am content that he is a practicing Mormon down to his underwear and that if he is elected president (he won't be, of course) he will behave no more badly than our current leader. He could hardly be worse. As governor of Massachusetts, he left the state about as liberal as he found it. Listening to him pontificate about his faith must be ten times more painful than reading his words. I hope the others don't follow suit. I don't want to hear Clinton talk about being a Methodist, nor Huckabee tell me about his personal relationship with the Savior and Redeemer of the World.<br /><br />It is rhetorical nonsense. I was struck that some commentators were concerned that Romney did not argue for the inclusion of nonbelievers in the American civic landscape. Nonbelievers are doing just fine, thank you. The voice of Christopher Hitchens was heard, strident as always, last week in an article condemning, of all things, Hanukkah as a primitive throwback that Jews should repudiate. I also found an image of Santa on the Cross, which Landover Baptist Church (http://www.cafepress.com/landoverbaptist/33515) puts on t-shirts and mugs as a pro-Christian (put Christ back in Christmas) statement. The image here also decorates a thong on their website. These are some pretty rad Baptists. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitW7vSIfXF_NQiFfBR8UAFX_J2RAHee8SZVpQzkMnxDlaMbJSkAjvFyFq18dMBT0Qc8vkFY2Hma9KXqcTmVBw_1VjSABA8n5tNYoWCP4lywSKaEc5jrvV4GnwSKckluIq49pHef4S9rYFh/s1600-h/santajesus_175x125.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitW7vSIfXF_NQiFfBR8UAFX_J2RAHee8SZVpQzkMnxDlaMbJSkAjvFyFq18dMBT0Qc8vkFY2Hma9KXqcTmVBw_1VjSABA8n5tNYoWCP4lywSKaEc5jrvV4GnwSKckluIq49pHef4S9rYFh/s200/santajesus_175x125.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5142108770483415122" /></a><br /><br />Religion is dished up to us daily in a variety of repulsive forms. One of the most offensive is currently running in movie theaters. Perhaps you've seen it. The video is an advertisement for the National Guard. It features a band on a hillside singing with that breathy sincere sound while soldiers, in Iraq and our own Revolutionary War, rescue children and promise to be there whenever we need them. It is a religious message in every sense of the term, offering salvation, security, and really bad music to true believers (in the American military way). It is exactly the kind of music featured on GodTube, except it extols the citizen soldier instead of Jesus. Both of course are redeemers.<br /><br />If you haven't already been subjected to the video at a movie theater, you can download the MP3 file and listen to it at http://www.1800goguard.com/movie/index2.php. When we first heard it a couple of weeks ago here in Portland, the audience began hissing before it finished playing. It's one of the reasons we like living here.<br /><br />What's my point this week? We could use some serious, and less noisy, faith practice in this country (not more religion--we have too much of that). What we have now is a parody of faith: marketing, manipulation, and unbridled ego. Another example of religion as parody, and I'll finish with this one, is from the Episcopal Church, my favorite institution. A diocese in California has officially voted itself out of the church because it, the diocese, knows itself to be purer than those of us who sup with gays and take communion from women priests. The bishop in this diocese sounds just like Romney or any of our political candidates: unctuous, full of himself, and lacking in credibility. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.Noh Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03539473088426090880noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242575591240131171.post-6899132558477631042007-12-04T14:17:00.001-05:002007-12-04T18:38:06.226-05:00HuckacainthompsonbeefritzbottomA friend wrote to me this morning asking if were building an ark. Given the news about the weather in the northwest these past few days, his inquiry was not without merit. It has rained. But the suffering caused by a convergence of Pacific storms has not afflicted us much here in Portland. We are a hundred miles from the Pacific, and there is a coastal range between us and most of the furor. One town, Vernonia, just thirty-five miles away to the northwest was isolated by mudslides and residents had to be evacuated by the National Guard. Some people have died. So the fact that we were mostly spared in Portland is not the story. <br /><br />It is odd to be so close to so much mayhem and know little to nothing about it. We gave up television when we moved west from New York City, a grand experiment. We rely on the newspapers, including the New York <em>Times</em> on Sunday, and the internet. What we do not see is the televised hysteria that accompanies every twist of natural or national fate. We are aware that there has been a drumbeat for war against Iran, but we have not watched Wolf Blitzer posting minute-by-minute bulletins, nor had to listen to our Commander in Chief bloviate about the threat to "Amurica by the tarrists." We were somewhat relieved to read this morning that the Iranian threat may have been overstated--but the lack of a threat did not stop the US going into Iraq and probably will not stop our government leaders from launching another war against someone. At least tonight, we do not have to listen to the administration explain how no Iranian threat is actually an increased Iranian threat. (Or how peace is about to break out in the Middle East once again because an American president decided to make it so.)<br /><br />We do not have to watch television to know that reality shows trump reality or that the candidates for president are almost uniformly dreary, talking endlessly about the nonessentials. The Republicans are busily showing how tough they can be on illegal aliens; the Democrats are trying to show they can be believably tough about anything at all. We are at least spared having to listen to their voices. <br /><br />In this election everyone believes in god and wants to be sure that we all know it. It is mostly meaningless, this constant reiteration of our national creed. In politics, we believe in power and money--and that's about it. We do not need a television to tell us that has not changed. <br /><br />A couple of months ago we took a quiz about the political campaign in which we indicated our positions on certain "hot-button" issues. The quiz results told us which candidate most nearly represents what we think. Both Connie and I found ourselves squarely in the Kucinich camp--the only candidate to publicly ask why we are not impeaching George Bush. (The silliness about UFOs is a perfect example of why one can safely avoid television.) Not only that, the candidates most likely to be nominated--Clinton, Edwards, and Obama--were quite far down our list (and of course way ahead of Guiliani, Romney, and Huckacainthompsonbeefritzbottom, although for awhile we liked his lapel pin). What's a citizen to do?<br /><br />That's exactly the question, isn't it? How many of us will come close to voting for someone we actually trust, admire, and agree with? We said to ourselves: We can't support Kucinich. He won't win. Duh.<br /><br />At a dinner party a few nights ago, someone said that the government is building camps for dissidents--those who will oppose the coup that is coming in the next year (so that Buscheny will not have to leave office). Someone else said the atmosphere feels like Germany in 1933, the end of a party and the beginning of terror--not the terror caused by imagined jihadists, but the terror caused by our own government, our own society, by Blackwater mercenaries. I have not seen any evidence that the government is building camps for me and my liberal friends. <br /><br />But I also have seen nothing of the devastation over the mountains to the west, where storms have been raging and people have been swept away by forces over which they have no control. It happens. <br /><br />We watch these events on television and are told how to feel about them--when to be afraid, angry, distraught. When to pray fervently for the return of the last missing white girlchild. When to pray for the safety of the soldiers we have needlessly put into harm's way. I think Americans will probably watch the coup on television and not realize that something has happened. It will seem all too ordinary by then. <br /><br />Connie and I will miss the coup if we continue to try to live without cable. I hope some one out there will let us know when things get hot, so that we can call Comcast and get hooked up before the excitement's over. Or take a train to Canada.<br /><br />Did I mention that the sun is shining today in Portland and that the temperature is around 50 degrees? Perhaps there were no mudslides, no torrential downpours, no deaths, no dramatic rescues on the Pacific coast. Who really knows anything?Noh Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03539473088426090880noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242575591240131171.post-17966041498208382792007-11-26T11:51:00.001-05:002007-11-26T12:10:20.769-05:00Jesus for PresidentI have not used the powerful platform of this blog to advocate for a particular political candidate. But this weekend I discovered that there is an alternative candidate that the liberal media has not been covering. Even worse, this candidate, whom many of you know and love, has run before. If you Google the name of his movement, "Jesus for President," you will find that as long ago as 2000 (remember the turn of the millenium?), this good man was a candidate. He and his surrogates have been using YouTube as a medium for getting out the message (a problem for them back in 2000), and if you want to see more of the campaign and its message, go to YouTube and search for "Jesus for President." I think you will realize, as I have, that the answer to our nation's problems is right in front of us.<br /><br />Here (below) is one of the most effective of the campaign's video spots. In it, the Son of God appears as himself, most surprising, perhaps, for his choice of clothing. It looks like a Christmas sweater from his mom. But the message is one we all need to hear, particularly the parts in which he corrects some of the misinformation in the Bible (which he refers to as a biography). <br /><br />Bishop Ken endorses Jesus. And so do I. What about you? Will you put your politics where your faith is? Obama, Hilary, John, Rudy, Mitt, John, Fred, Harry, and Dave (just to make sure I have covered them all) are telling us that they pray. Well, why not go right to the top and elect the one to whom or through whom they pray? I have not heard the leaders of America's churches speak about Jesus' candidacy. I wonder why they are so quiet. Since the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church is the one I look to for guidance, I will ask her directly (I know she reads this blog): When are you going to endorse Jesus? (And, by the way, I saw your performance as Kate Blanchett playing Bob Dylan in "I'm Not There" and I thought you were fabulous.)<br /><br /><br /><object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/8YS7aNAM3Y4&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/8YS7aNAM3Y4&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>Noh Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03539473088426090880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242575591240131171.post-56325549241501336342007-11-14T13:27:00.001-05:002007-11-14T20:28:13.408-05:00The Parish of Despair<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO1HAa5NtmfDzC9coNT3bk9NhFQTyYa9ZJyQi_xLtf3LwfBKNPWeBd1eiO3EhyCQsrxVl1rGGwXoerMDDIICB48kCMaS1e82DfvNc3jKhFevGeehcfVL_S0i2-d8Ddm9ZlzMg0OlarXJWL/s1600-h/varah190[1].jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5132766020777005986" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO1HAa5NtmfDzC9coNT3bk9NhFQTyYa9ZJyQi_xLtf3LwfBKNPWeBd1eiO3EhyCQsrxVl1rGGwXoerMDDIICB48kCMaS1e82DfvNc3jKhFevGeehcfVL_S0i2-d8Ddm9ZlzMg0OlarXJWL/s200/varah190%5B1%5D.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>I want to pause to note the passing of The Rev. Chad Varah, shown here (in a photo from Reuters) on what might be a precursor to the cell phone before miniaturization. You have to love this guy. He set up a hot line for the suicidal and founded Samaritans, a charity that worked to prevent suicides. Here are some of the other major reasons to love him (as indicated in the New York <em>Times</em> obit this morning, which I urge you to read in full for all of the juicy details):<br /><br />1. The Samaritans was named from a headline in <em>The Daily Mirror</em>. Father Varah disapproved of the name for his organization because he believed that religious teachings, presumably including Bible verses and stories meant to be instructive, should be avoided in helping the desperate. Treat em don’t preach to em.<br /><br />2. He chose as his parish one that had a single parishioner—the lord mayor, as it happened—which gave him the opportunity to serve, as he put it, “the parish of despair.”<br /><br />3. Father Varah supplemented his undoubtedly meager income writing for comic strips, an avocation I suspect most priests are not irreverent enough to pursue. (I do know of one cartooning Episcopal priest, Jay Sidebotham, the exception that proves the rule.)<br /><br />4. When called to testify in the obscenity trial of Linda Lovelace, who starred in the pornographic film <em>Deep Throat</em> (the one that started pornography chic), he was questioned about the commandment forbidding adultery (which he had previously made clear in writings for what the <em>Times</em> calls a “sexually frank magazine” he did not always condemn). His response was, “Why are you quoting this ancient desert lore at me?” You go, guy!<br /><br />5. He retired at the age of 92—at which point he was still getting around on public transportation. He died at 95 in Basingstoke, England. The rest of the Anglican Communion must be relieved.<br /><br />6. He once characterized Pope John Paul II as “an ignorant Polish peasant” for his condemnation of contraception. I don’t know if the late pope was either ignorant or a peasant (I have my opinion), but what you have to admire is Father Varah’s willingness to say what he thought in public and for attribution (another uncommon trait in clergy).<br /><br />7. He believed in reincarnation.<br /><br />Be careful out there. Father Chad Varah could return as a member of your congregation. You won’t like what he has to say if you’re an orthodox Christian (whatever that is). And for god’s sake don’t put him on the vestry.</div><br /><p></p><br /><p></p><br /><p></p><br /><p></p>Noh Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03539473088426090880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242575591240131171.post-75820820593312181732007-11-07T01:16:00.000-05:002007-11-07T01:30:14.814-05:00AnniversaryAs some of you know, I suffered an emotional collapse just over a year ago—All Saints Day, to be exact. It took me a few months to recover, with the help of an excellent psychiatrist and some medication, although it has taken this full year to begin to feel like myself again (whoever that might be). I no longer take meds. Leaving the New York City stress factory has helped my healing. Being able to retire as an Episcopal clergy has been a pivotal blessing: The Episcopal Church (or, to be fair, any church) is a petri dish for killer stress. Moving to Portland, Oregon, has revived my spirit and improved my vision. Everyone here is so positive—and, as those of you who know me know, I have to struggle to see the good news. But mostly I think I am just happy to be more than four thousand miles away from the east coast, where I lived all of my former life (although I miss many of you who live there, especially my [adult] children and my aging mother).<br /><br />We have a surprising number of new friends here, most of them writers. I have been writing almost constantly since we got here in June. I have nearly finished a book critiquing the church (but also offering some reflections on what I see as a way out of the current Christianity quagmire). There have been several short stories (a new genre for me), a fistful of poems, notes for a new play, and the draft of the first third of a novel.<br /><br />A couple of my older plays are being read by theaters—one of them, <em>Enlightenment</em>, is based on the last years of Thomas Merton; it has not been produced. It excites me to know that theaters are interested in it. The idea for the play was first suggested to me in the early 1980s by my agent at the time, Lucy Kroll. She was right that I should write it, but the play itself had to await the publication of Merton’s complete journals because of privacy issues. When the journals came out in the late 90s, I read them all and quickly wrote the play. It had been gestating for a long time and was ready to be born. After one staged reading in New York, however, the script sat in my desk drawer for seven years while I worked long, frustrating, and mostly fruitless hours for the church. Last month I completed a revision and sent it off to a theater here on the west coast. When it is produced—and I know it will be—I will let you know. Soon, I hope.<br /><br />Perhaps the most unexpected accomplishment of these months has been the founding of my new publishing company, KenArnold<em>Books</em>, which will issue its first four titles in January and February of 2008. The launch party will be in early March. I will have much more to say about the publishing program as time goes on—but it should surprise no one who reads this blog that I am looking for books that are radical in their perspective, daring and provocative. I am not seeking to publish orthodox thinkers or writers. Nor am I only interested in religion—but insofar as I am publishing books with a spiritual bent, they will represent all traditions.<br /><br />So, a year after a frightening encounter with demons, I am engaged with the work that has always mattered most to me: writing and publishing. And for the first time in my life I am doing both with as much freedom as we ever achieve. I can write (almost) whatever I please and publish only what interests me.<br /><br />May you all know such freedom in your own lives. If you do, hold on to it; if you don’t, do something now. We so quickly run out of time. The demons are always waiting.Noh Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03539473088426090880noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242575591240131171.post-9562452187994802432007-10-30T18:41:00.000-05:002007-10-30T18:47:17.841-05:00Rev. RuthI got a call from my daughter Ruth on Saturday, the first time we had spoken since she returned from Colombia, S.A., a few weeks ago. She had gone to Medellin in particular because that is the city where she was born twenty-seven years ago. We adopted her when she was six months old and suffering from malnourishment. I remember our time in Medellin as a nightmare of Colombian bureaucracy and poisoned air. The city sits in a bowl among mountains, and in those days the atmosphere was a barely breathable carbon monoxide soup. The day we were supposed to leave Medellin for Bogota to pick up her U.S. visa, we learned that the embassy would be closed in observance of the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. Say, what? I spoke with an official there who said that the closure was out of respect for the local customs and that she would ordinarily be glad to come in and handle the visa for us except that her daughter was being confirmed that day. A big party was planned.<br /><br />Ruth tells me that Medellin is now a tourist destination, a pretty cool place. While she was there, I saw an article in the New York <em>Times</em> Sunday Travel section saying the same thing. The city has come a long way from the 1980s when the drug trade was about to take over the economy. There are still dangerous parts of the country, of course, because a civil war continues. I confess to having worried about her while she was gone, but every now and then I’d get a text message from her saying something like, “Spending the day at the beach. Having a great time.” She’s a gregarious young woman and met a lot of people, it seems, who took her around to see the sights. She was in good hands.<br /><br />When she called, I asked her, “What’s up?” And she started to giggle. “I’m the Rev. Ruth Arnold,” she laughed. And what did that mean? I asked.<br /><br />“Well,” she said, “my friend in Albuquerque” where she went to college “wants me to marry her and her fiancé next June and they said I could go on this website, Universal Life Church Monastery, and get ordained. So I did.” She laughed and laughed.<br /><br />I looked up the website while we were talking, and there it was. I loved the headline, so reminiscent of the early McDonald’s burger stands: “Over 20 million ordained since 1959.” I should have known about this option back in the late 1980s when I was turning my life inside out to get the Episcopal Church to agree to ordain me. I noticed on the ULC website that I could still become a Doctor of Metaphysics, which has a certain appeal. (How many certified metaphysicians do <em>you</em> know?) But my daughter clearly loved the fact that she got ordained in fifteen minutes on line, whereas I had spent eight years in order to become a . . . deacon. She’s right. It’s pretty funny.<br /><br />But, you might say, that’s different. You’re ordained in a real church by a bishop in Apostolic Succession, a direct line straight back to Jesus himself.<br /><br />Right.<br /><br />I’m going to fill out this application for my metaphysical degree. Won’t take a minute.<br /><br />Uh-oh, I hear Bishop Ken stomping down the corridors of the other world heading my way. I’m in trouble. Hit “Send” now!Noh Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03539473088426090880noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242575591240131171.post-63808576650192058992007-10-23T16:39:00.000-05:002007-10-23T16:48:14.332-05:00Justa!<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjaYjpQ6EVBJNjfq5EA_2R4IaMpU0veXFNNKFwdNf1Qw7xdzfAW4ou0K9gWOOIaF8mwH8JeScUweIP3q2tlF7FEoK3GUyBRsugnNErDdFvjNtp7EMb-wxWo9gFCtixjd4vfvg5HrI_OaAK/s1600-h/20319[1].jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5124650456088382770" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjaYjpQ6EVBJNjfq5EA_2R4IaMpU0veXFNNKFwdNf1Qw7xdzfAW4ou0K9gWOOIaF8mwH8JeScUweIP3q2tlF7FEoK3GUyBRsugnNErDdFvjNtp7EMb-wxWo9gFCtixjd4vfvg5HrI_OaAK/s200/20319%5B1%5D.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><br /><br /><br />“Justa, Justa. Come quickly.”<br /><br />I was working quietly in my new home office here in Portland this morning when Bishop Ken interrupted, as he has a habit of doing, by calling to me imperiously from the other world. [For those of you who missed last week's post, Bishop Thomas Ken was active in Britain in the 17th century; he has begun to visit me, Deacon Ken, from the beyond, attracted, I believe, by the similarity of our names. A friend wondered if the bishop speaks to me from the radiator. He does not. He speaks to me as all bishops do, out of nowhere and in a loud voice.]<br /><br />“I’ve told you, my name is Ken,” I said.<br /><br />“No, no,” he chortled. “Justa. As in, Justa Deacon.” He laughed uproariously. “S'blood, I crack me up.”<br /><br />“What do you want? I’m busy.”<br /><br />“Did I ever tell you about how I refused to allow the King to park his trollop, Nell Gwyn, in my residence? You see, I was Royal Chaplain to King Charles and he thought maybe he could hide his mistress in my apartments and escape notice. Well, I can tell you I wasted no time in sending His Royal Highness a pretty sharp rebuke.”<br /><br />“I’ve read about it. Very courageous of you.”<br /><br />“But did you hear what I wrote? ‘The Royal Chaplain shall not double as the Royal Pimp.’ Pretty good, eh what? Anyway, that is how I came to be appointed Bishop of Bath and Wells. The King reportedly declared—I have this on the highest authority—‘None shall have this bishopric save that little man who refused lodging to poor Nellie!’ And when he died, the King that is, it was I he summoned to be with him at the end. Not that I’m actually such a little man, mind you.”<br /><br />“That’s great,” I said, putting a Charlie Parker disc on the Bose. “But no one cares about King Charles and his mistress anymore. The church has more important matters to attend to than who’s sleeping with whom.”<br /><br />“Ah,” Bishop Ken sighed. “I could have been executed for my stance. For what are your bishops prepared to die?”<br /><br />“Church property and pensions.”<br /><br />There was a knowing silence from the other world.<br /><br />“Oh, dear, Justa. I’ve run out of tobacco. Be a good lad, will you, and fetch some for me.”<br /><br />I turned up the volume on “Salt Peanuts.”<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>Noh Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03539473088426090880noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242575591240131171.post-62121779432773653062007-10-16T12:41:00.000-05:002007-10-16T13:27:42.091-05:00Bishop Ken Speaks<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt2ykFP2AzBGizsEPeCGqnxz0Agosxg32nYCEmfHo_bUgc-3FmJEvtRlag6Uz6XiLOSsNiV9E5lnWpwwvNZyhj5_LuY74lPKug1FtLyi4BntCFXk0ErYbBealp5j21VUrHJg7VsSG87dub/s1600-h/Ken+Image.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5121998767048605570" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt2ykFP2AzBGizsEPeCGqnxz0Agosxg32nYCEmfHo_bUgc-3FmJEvtRlag6Uz6XiLOSsNiV9E5lnWpwwvNZyhj5_LuY74lPKug1FtLyi4BntCFXk0ErYbBealp5j21VUrHJg7VsSG87dub/s200/Ken+Image.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div></div><br /><div></div><br /><div></div><br /><div>It has come to my attention that the author of this blog, whatever that may be, hath written calumnies against the Church, and yet being a deacon hath not attached himself as he should to a Bishop upon whom he may rely for counsel. I, Bishop Ken, have offered myself in Christian Charitie to tutor this wayward deacon in the ways of his calling. I may therefore on occasion intercede for him here and correct his lack of knowledge (but he being but a deacon is not charged to know anything but rather to do as he is told).<br /><br />First, it is to be acknowledged that my half-brother-in-law, Izaak Walton, angler of some fame, who with my half-sister Anne did rear me from my birth in 1637, has informed me of Deacon Ken’s prowess as a fisherman, a sport of dignity, which alas I never learned from Mr. Walton. I know not what became of my natural parents. Nonetheless, it is a good thing to spend time in the country among rivers and the fishes and I commend the deacon for his attention to God’s creation.<br /><br />However, and second, the goodly deacon, as I understand his wife Constance is prone to call him, for reasons unclear, has on occasion spoken sharply to bishops, admonishing them in their behavior. I hereby order him, in love and charitie, as his new bishop father in Christ, to desist from such speaking. The bishop is the sole keeper of the Word and it is his office to admonish, not the deacon’s. The deacon's office is to <em>be admonished</em>.<br /><br />Deacon, I command you to attend upon me in the morning with my tea and toast and prepare to dress me for the Lord’s service, after which you may eat and take communion to the poor and sicke, whilst I attend to higher things.<br /><br /><em>Hold it, Bishop. I just want to point out that you challenged the king in the matter of the Declaration of Indulgence and were imprisoned in the Tower of London. And then refused to take an oath to William and Mary and were relieved of your office as a result. Like you, I think that there are times when leaders in the church have to speak out against those who abuse their power. For example, we have a regime in this country that tortures prisoners, denies health care to children, murders the innocent citizens of other countries, lies to its citizens, deports and mistreats the strangers in our midst....<br /></em><br />Ah, Deacon Ken, it is true that on occasion one must refuse illegitimate power. In telling me, your bishop, of these terrible acts, you are doing your diaconal--and indeed Christian--duty. I commend you for it. What benighted country is this that you speak of? Its leaders are behaving shamefully if what you say is true. Perhaps you could tell me the name of church leaders to whom I could speak about these deplorable conditions. I wonder that they, your bishops, are silent on these matters. They too, by their inaction, abuse their authority.<br /><br /></div><div> </div>Noh Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03539473088426090880noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242575591240131171.post-83767819206088870192007-10-09T11:32:00.000-05:002007-10-09T11:39:07.557-05:00Cycling to St. PaulLast Friday, I went cycling with Mark, a new friend here in Portland. He drove us to Champoeg Park (pronounced “shampoo-ee.”) twenty miles or so out of the city. Because I don’t have a car, I bike mostly in and around the city, which has miles of paths and bike lanes. It was good to get out and see some of the Oregon country, which is flat where we were riding. Along the road were fields planted with firs of various sorts, mostly Christmas trees, I think, and a couple of large hickory nut groves (around here, the nuts are called filberts). The nuts turn up in creative restaurant dishes around town. You can buy them fresh in the open air markets. The nuts were lying on the ground along the road we were traveling.<br /><br />We decided to go to St. Paul, a town that hosts a somewhat famous rodeo on July 4th. The town itself is not much. Not far from the Willamette River, which also flows through Portland, it is a Roman Catholic hot spot. The church is located centrally—and I did not see any other denominations represented there, just the brick RC Church and the high school, also Catholic. Street names like Mission Road, Convent Avenue, Church Avenue gave away its identity. We rode into town by the church and out again into the countryside, noting on the way a couple of coffee shops we might visit. We decided on Banker’s Cup, which had a porch and pretty good coffee. Mark and I sat on the porch, looking across the parking lot at a couple of sheds that stored farm equipment (or something else, I couldn’t tell what). On the side of one of the sheds was an old billboard advertising the rodeo. On the bumper of an SUV in the parking lot was a sign reading: “You can’t be Catholic and pro-choice.”<br /><br />“I told you it’s a Catholic town,” Mark said.<br /> <br />The sky is wide open in Oregon and out there on the plain you could see its great expanse. There were some puffy clouds behind the sheds. Not much was happening and we were happy to sit there drinking coffee.<br /><br />Mark told me he had been raised Catholic but by the time he was twelve or thirteen he and his friends had figured out that the religion was essentially bogus, even as they went through the motions. When they skipped religious classes, they spent a lot of their time talking about the “theology” of avoiding the priests and their increasingly doubtful view of reality. They understood, he said, that it all rested on the veracity of the priests, whom they knew to be untrustworthy. Once their authority was in question, the rest of the infrastructure fell with them, all the way up to the Pope. He was talking as much about Christianity in general as Catholicism in particular.<br /><br />I said that, indicating the expansive sky and clouds in front of us, many people I know in the church would talk about the beauty of God’s creation and describe how their emotions reflected God’s call to them from and as part of that creation. Mark responded that he saw the natural world as it is, and that is good enough.<br /><br />Knowing that I am ordained in the Episcopal Church, I think Mark was curious to know how I would respond. And basically I had to agree with him. These days, when I look at the world I do not see a deity, nor do I hear a deity’s call to creation. What Mark had abandoned was a belief system—Christianity’s doctrines—that no longer reflected what he saw around him or what he experienced. And the argument for abandoning the system is a strong one.<br /><br />I think a lot of people feel the same way. The Christian creedal world does not speak to them, except as a framework for control or denial, and they want none of it. Around here, in Portland, I’m told that about ten percent of the population attends church.<br /><br />“People want meaning,” I said. “The church for the most part doesn’t give them a sense of meaning. It explains nothing. If the church is going to survive, it needs to figure out how to do that again.”<br /><br />I still have an interest in the church's survival, but it's a hard position to maintain.<br /><br />For me, the natural world has meaning, but it isn’t Christian meaning. The Buddhist explanation of reality resonates more strongly with me these days, but there is something missing there too. Its explanation of the origins of things makes more sense—all arising in mutual dependency out of the void—and its rejection of a theistic deity also sounds right. But that does not answer the twenty-first century yearning for meaning, which for most people is found more often in the company of another, whether a friend or a family member or a lover, or in a book or in music.<br /><br />We had a good ride. On the way back we talked about some books we both like, Hemingway’s <em>The Sun Also Rises</em> and the fiction of Haruki Murakami, for example. Sunday morning we plan to ride again, this time along the Columbia River.Noh Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03539473088426090880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242575591240131171.post-86518109616050983502007-10-01T14:29:00.001-05:002007-10-01T14:29:50.534-05:00New Church, True ChurchI understand that the dissident Episcopal Churches meeting in Pittsburgh last week intend to move forward with the formation of an institution reflecting a “more unified orthodox Anglicanism in North America,” now that the House of Bishops has failed to accede to the demands of the Anglican Primates A joint statement from the Anglican Communion Network affirmed: “We, <a href="http://www.acn-us.org/archive/2007/09/common-cause-council-of-bishops-opens.html">with others gathered in Pittsburgh for the Common Cause Council of Bishops</a>, are committed to remaining within biblical Christianity even as The Episcopal Church once again has chosen to continue on its own tragic course.”<br /><br />Good idea. I know that the leaders of the Episcopal Church are trying to keep the dissidents from leaving by creating special arrangements for Episcopal visitations and so forth, but I think that the church should encourage those who disagree with the direction the church has taken to leave. This position is contrary to the long-cherished Anglican desire to keep everyone together by following, as a church, the middle road, the way of compromise. The problem is that the differences between those who believe that the Episcopal Church is on the right path and those who disagree reflect completely different religious perspectives.<br /><br />The dissidents espouse a faith based on the notion of a Sky God who hands down immutable laws, found in the Christian Bible, to priests and bishops who are authorized to speak authoritatively for this God. The myth on which their faith is built describes the sacrifice of this God’s son for the salvation of sinners, who may receive this grace by repenting of their sins (as described in the above-noted immutable laws) and returning to righteous ways (as described by the above-identified priests and bishops).<br /><br />The Episcopal Church opposed by these dissidents actually believes pretty much the same thing when it comes to official doctrine (see, for example, the Nicene Creed), but is nonetheless struggling with the idea that a church might be born that is about a path of spiritual maturity following the way of Christ as opposed to a set of orthodox beliefs required for admission to heaven. The House of Bishops made statements opposing the war in Iraq and racism (good, good), as well as affirming its support for justice and dignity for gays and lesbians (very good).<br /><br />These two branches of the Anglican Communion are not speaking the same theological language. Two churches are already in place. Why not allow them to be formally established? Some suggest that this approach does not reflect Christian virtues of love and community. But on the contrary, we Christians have always found our way along the path of Christ by stepping out of the existing institutional structures. The reformation must be ongoing or the church will simply whither and die. I believe that the Episcopal Church that seeks justice for gays and lesbians is going in the right direction, but I do not want to stand in the way of those, like Robert Duncan, who believe otherwise. We should support his and his fellow orthodox believers in finding the way back to their true faith.Noh Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03539473088426090880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242575591240131171.post-73576215511394421762007-09-24T19:52:00.000-05:002007-09-24T20:13:32.600-05:00Trumping the GospelLast week, an estimated 60,000 people descended on Jena, Louisiana, to protest the unequal treatment before the law of whites and blacks in that town. Mykal Bell, a black seventeen-year-old, had been tried as an adult for attempted murder; his conviction was overturned by an appeals court. But Bell remains in jail. Who knows why. Oh, yes, he’s black. Dangerous. More dangerous than the white boys who hung nooses on <em>their</em> tree in the school yard as a warning to blacks who sat under it.<br /><br />Earlier in the summer, I wrote about this case, at a time when little attention was being paid. Last week, the plight of these young men was all over the news. The media finally woke up to what was happening in Louisiana (not my doing but the work of many others). The church remains asleep, as events in another part of Louisiana demonstrate.<br /><br />The Bishops of the Episcopal Church happened to begin their semi-annual meeting in New Orleans last week just before the protesters arrived in Jena from all over the country. Before the bishops is the earth-shattering question of how they should respond to an ultimatum from the rest of the Anglican Communion that could result in a split between the Episcopal Church and the others. Readers of this blog know that the issue revolves around whether homosexuals can be bishops and whether they can be sexual as priests and bishops and whether they can be married. Yawn.<br /><br />A couple of days after the Jena Six protest the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts-Schori, preached at a Eucharist at Christ Church Cathedral in New Orleans that included the blessing of the hand-built "Elysian Trumpet," dedicated to the memory of all of the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Jazz trumpeter Irvin Mayfield played "Amazing Grace" on the it. I do not doubt that this event was moving and appropriate to memorialize the victims of Hurricane Katrina (or, rather, the victims of governmental incompetence, beginning with the inadequate attention given to levees affecting the African-Americans living in the Ninth Ward and continuing with federal mismanagement of the aftermath--but that wasn't mentioned).<br /><br />So far as I can tell, no bishops joined the Jena protest. They were in church.<br /><br />The issue before the Episcopal Church is whether it will continue to be a church of hierarchy and privilege. That is what is really at stake in Louisiana. A new church might come into being, one that is wholly inclusive and one that is marked not by meetings of men and women in fancy clothes counting angels on the head of a pin, but rather by men and women who go to places like Jena and put their bodies on the line for justice. (I note that the bishops did put on work clothes and build houses or something like that. There were a lot of photos taken. Praise them in their plaid shirts and blue jeans, praise them for their hammers, the nails....)<br /><br />Be not afraid, however, the old church is firmly in command, according to dispatches from Louisiana. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who came to listen, rejoices that the bishops are “passionate” about the Anglican Communion. <em>Passionate. </em>Bishop Katharine spoke passionately and eloquently about “trumpeting the Gospel” in her sermon. She imagined an inclusive procession of all God's people (going I'm not sure where). It really was good, beautifully written. Hearts beat faster as she preached. But as usual it was mostly talk--sound and fury, signifying nothing. The church at its best in ceremonial display and eloquence.<br /><br />The real split the bishops should be concerned about is the one that is already killing the Episcopal Church, and indeed all of the Christian Churches: the split between those who are tired of what one writer called “the narcissism of small differences” and the clueless who are parsing doctrine in Louisiana this week.<br /><br />The Gospel is being trumped, not trumpeted.Noh Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03539473088426090880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242575591240131171.post-18386218816216702132007-09-18T12:59:00.000-05:002007-09-18T13:06:13.057-05:00Water in the DesertLast Friday evening, I was sitting at a bar in the Ramada Plaza Hotel at JFK Airport in New York, eating my fish and chips, as the Lou Dobbs nightly program began. Some of you may know that Lou Dobbs has been especially tenacious about the “problem” of illegal immigrants (especially those pesky Mexicans) in the US. Dobbs himself was away, but his substitute (whose name I missed, but she’s also a regular) continued to read from the same script. She decried the renewed efforts by those pernicious Democrats to resurrect the “amnesty” proposals that have already been twice rejected by congress. “When,” she wanted to know, “will they understand and abide by the will of the people?” The Russian woman behind the bar brought me a glass of Cabernet.<br /><br />Well, I don’t know about the will of the people. In this administration, and in some media environments, it is hard to separate information from manipulation. But clearly the attempt to demonize immigrants and particularly Hispanics, which I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, is going forward. Migrant workers from Mexico are an easy target, as are “towel heads” and other undesirables. It has been a part of our history since its beginnings, that the foreigners are the cause of our problems. Never mind that we are all foreigners.<br /><br />I referred in my last blog entry to a migrant workers’ aid program in Arizona supported by my aunt’s congregation, First Christian Church in Tucson. The program is called Humane Borders. Its ministry is to migrant workers crossing the desert from Mexico into the US who do not have food or water for the journey. Many of them die. Humane Borders maintains water stations in the desert, presently over eighty of them, with the help of 8,000 volunteers. The program has been underway since 2000.<br /><br />Humane Borders also advocates for legislative change. There are six actions the group recommends (see their website, <a href="http://www.humaneborders.org/">www.humaneborders.org</a> for information on the group and its work): (1) legalize the undocumented now living and working in the US; (2) begin a responsible guest worker program by issuing work visas directly to migrants so that they are not tied to any one employer or sector of the economy and allow workers to be organized; (3) increase the number of visas for Mexican nationals; (4) demilitarize the border; (5) support economic development in Mexico; (6) provide federal aid for local medical service providers, law enforcement and adjudication, land owners and managers.<br /><br />The program Humane Borders recommends sounds like a reasonable one to me, more so that the Dobbs approach, which is to nail up the doors and windows. This xenophobic reaction is increasingly common in this country. One of the Humane Borders workers, Sr. Elizabeth (a Franciscan, I believe), was in Minnesota for the summer. Speaking to the media while she was there, she described her work as ministering to Jesus in the desert. The group’s newsletter, “Desert Fountain,” remarks: “You’d have thought she was giving guns to terrorists. . . . In a matter of days, over 500 emails were compiled by the St. Cloud newspaper.” The emails did not applaud the analogy or her ministry.<br /><br />Take a look at what Humane Borders is doing. It is a worthwhile model for faith-based action, prophetic and sustainable.<br /><br />Next week I will talk about the New Sanctuary Movement, which is aimed at supported immigrants facing deportation. It too is prophetic and essential, but a lot more dangerous. You don't have to ask Lou Dobbs what he thinks of either of these responses to the reality (not the problem) of human need among migrant workers and immigrants.<br /><br />Meanwhile, I note that the Episcopal Church House of Bishops meeting begins September 20. Apparently the most important question on the agenda has to do with how the church will respond to demands from the "traditionalists" in the Anglican Communion that it become less inclusive and adhere to myth-based doctrines forbidding sexual relations between people, or perhaps even animals, of the same gender. What is there to discuss?<br /><br />One group of Christians is giving water to people in the desert. Another is consumed with its own existence as an institution. How sad for the Episcopal Church. Perhaps Humane Borders can show the Episcopalians where to find living water before they (we) die of thirst in the desert.Noh Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03539473088426090880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242575591240131171.post-18087667115897945812007-09-04T15:31:00.000-05:002007-09-04T15:37:59.776-05:00The Big ThreeThree issues are occupying my attention right now. Perhaps they are important to you too. One of my goals for the month is to become more engaged in each of them in some way.<br /><br />The first and most immediately pressing is the war in Iraq. On the weekend we saw a movie I commend to all of you: <em>No End in Sight</em>. It is a documentary that explains clearly (and for me for the first time) how policy decisions in Washington and the Green Zone led to the insurgency and our almost certain defeat in Iraq. It is a compelling and horrifying film. Despite the continuing chaos and government floundering (and I include here the Democrats as well), too many Americans are silent. The churches are virtually comatose. There is a vote coming in Congress about the future of the war that will be based on the success of the so-called “surge”—escalation by any other name—which has clearly not been successful in bringing about political stability. I am joining with PDX Peace, a Portland-based group, to apply pressure on local senators and representatives in a series of Wednesday vigils to collect signatures opposing the continuation of the war. Please be in touch with your own congressional delegations. The lack of pressure from the public is translated by government officials as support for the status quo.<br /><br />The second is an issue that I have discussed before: sex trafficking, particularly in the United States. There is an article by Bob Herbert in today’s New York <em>Times</em> that talks specifically about the situation in Las Vegas, where the sex trade is booming under the leadership (if that word applies here) of the present mayor, Oscar Goodman. Herbert describes the situation facing teenagers, some as young as fourteen, who engage in prostitution at widely advertised sex clubs. When I was in Vegas three years ago for a meeting of the National Episcopal Council of Clergy Associations, hosted by the bishop of Nevada, Katherine Jefferts-Shori (now the Presiding Bishop of the church), I saw the billboards hauled by pickups through the streets advertising the services of young women who could be delivered to your hotel room. Although prostitution is not legal in Las Vegas, the mayor would like to make it so. Meanwhile, the sex trafficking business is alive and well in the city. It is hard to know what to do about this situation since the sex trade is a routine part of our cultural life. We ignore it and the impact it has on young people. I know it must be part of the Portland, Oregon, landscape: we have more strip joints per capita than any other city in the country. And therefore I assume young boys and girls are being trafficked through here. After all, the city is a major international port. I wonder if the Presiding Bishop might like to return to Las Vegas and make a public statement about the sex trafficking business there. I’m sure she knows Mayor Goodman. Maybe a lot of us would be willing to go with her. Meanwhile, I’m sending this blog to Bishop Itty here in Portland asking if he’d like put together a group to tour some sex clubs to see about how many dancers are under age.<br /><br />Third, the situation for illegal immigrants—and legal immigrants—is growing worse. When some young people were executed in Newark, New Jersey, not too long ago, a couple of the killers turned out to be of Hispanic origin. I thought at the time that some politician would use that information to suggest that Hispanics are dangerous. And, sure enough, that’s what happened. There is a modest sanctuary movement growing in the country among churches that are concerned that the Hispanics will be targeted next as the newest cause of all American ills. It appears that some Republican candidates for President are already talking about the immigration issue in terms previously used by Bush the First when he abducted the image of Willie Horton to race bait the country. My aunt is a minister in the Disciples of Christ Church in Arizona, and her congregation is engaged in a simple ministry, providing water to immigrants as they make their way across the desert. What might other churches do to support the men and women who do so much of the work that supports our social structure as they come increasingly under attack by the government? I don’t have an answer.<br /><br />I offer these issues as those of primary importance to me right now. Naturally, I hope that some of you are working on them and perhaps have some ideas to pass along about what we might do to end the war, end sex trafficking, and end discrimination against Hispanic immigrants. Perhaps you could also share with us what is of deepest concern to you. The question is what we do to make a difference as individuals and as members of faith or action communities. Prayer is good, of course. Now what?Noh Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03539473088426090880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242575591240131171.post-85440142076976459452007-08-27T12:50:00.000-05:002007-08-27T13:13:22.799-05:00Books You Haven't Read (Maybe)Critical Mass, the National Book Critics Circle blog (<a href="http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/2007/08/secret-sellers-books-that-just-keep.html">http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/2007/08/secret-sellers-books-that-just-keep.html</a>) lists ten best-sellers you have probably never heard of or read. Here's the list with sales or in-print figures:<br /><br />1. Anne Fadiman's <em>The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down</em>. (614,000 copies sold)<br />2. Chuck Klosterman's <em>Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs</em>. (325,000 in print)<br />3. <em>Shadow of the Wind</em>, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (close to 600,000 in print)<br />4. <em>Imagined Communities</em>, by Benedict Anderson (83,000 sold)<br />5. Gary Shteyngart's <em>Absurdistan</em> (over 200,000 in print)<br />6. <em>How the Light Gets In</em>, by M.J. Hyland (over 50,000 in print)<br />7. <em>Best Friends</em>. by Martha Moody (over 500,000 in print)<br />8. <em>I Rigoberto Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala</em> edited by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray (130,000 sold)<br />9. <em>The Dante Club</em>, by Matthew Pearl (782,000 paperbacks in print)<br />10. <em>Interventions</em>, by Noam Chomsky (nearly 25,000 in print)11. Honky, by Dalton Conley (90,000 in print)<br /><br />A couple of the authors are familiar. But what’s fascinating about the list is what it says, or doesn’t say, about American culture. The Best Seller lists are in themselves interesting indicators, but at the same time the books that make it there are (somewhat) understandable. The authors are famous; the titles are provocative; the buzz has been generated and we salivate and buy. But the ten books in the NBCC list are just weird.<br /><br />What are these books doing here? What does it mean that the biggest seller is a first book mystery story (<em>The Dante Club</em>) about a group of nineteenth-century Bostonians, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell, who gather to translate the <em>Inferno</em> and find themselves on the trail of a serial killer? Who are these 700,000+ readers?<br /><br />Anne Fadiman’s <em>The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down</em> is a memoir by a Hmong immigrant—and is one of the most-often assigned books in freshman college courses. Did you know that?<br /><br />Take a look at the other books. Read about them on Amazon.com. One of the fascinating aspects of this list is how intelligent most of these these books are, unlike so much of what is normally on the best-seller lists. Rigoberto Menchu? I remember when this book came out—and I also recall that it was later thought to be a fraud, not written by the presumed author at all. (I don't know if that was ever proved or not.) It’s a radical critique of colonial US culture. <em>Best Friends</em> is another first novel, this one about college chums.<br /><br />What’s my point here? (I'm trying to find one.) Those of us who are interested in contemporary culture and what makes it go find helpful direction in the book world. What are people buying and reading? (Why was Mary Gordon's book about her mother and Roman Catholicism reveiwed on the front page of the New York <em>Times Book Review</em> yesterday?) Does it mean anything that people are buying these ten books and not ten others of perhaps equal value? (Maybe they are and those books are on someone else's list.) What about the fact that many of these titles were initially reviewed tepidly or even negatively. Pearl’s was recommended only for the largest library collections by <em>Library Journal</em>—ie, too dense for most people. In publishing we used to say that a negative review is just as helpful as a positive review.<br /><br />There are no books with “religious” themes here. The list is obviously eclectic, however--not at all "scientific" or representative. It is not meant to reflect any particular reality except that of the blogger who thought this was an interesting collection of best-sellers most of us haven’t heard of. We know that <em>The Left Behind</em> series of books outsells everything, except maybe <em>The Purpose Driven Life</em> and the Harry Potter books.<br /><br />We also know the <em>Holy</em> <em>Bible</em> outsells everything. The <em>Koran</em> anyone?<br /><br />Well, I thought you might find this list as interesting as I did. If you are still looking for something to read this summer, maybe one of these books will attract your attention.<br /><br />I'm not reading any of them. Right now, my leisure reading of choice is Philip K. Dick, <em>Four Novels of the 1960s</em>, in the Library of America series. I'm halfway through <em>The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich</em> from that collection. Dick is one of those writers being recovered by American readers. All of a sudden. Who knows why? It's kind of like this list of books.<br /><br />Professionally, I'm reading <em>Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith</em>. It definitively takes apart the Intelligent Design argument, but it also raises some pretty serious questions about the whole idea of a created universe for those who think of themselves as Christian and evolutionists. Really? Have you thought that through? Can you explain how the Creator God who is interested in us personally also made/makes the universe and all of its suffering so that we might worship him/her/it?<br /><br />Ok, I've slipped from frivolous end-of-August space filling to something serious. Sorry. Go back to reading Danielle Steele.Noh Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03539473088426090880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242575591240131171.post-19523895632771794152007-08-20T11:57:00.000-05:002007-08-20T12:00:19.903-05:00Instructions: A PoemNo music, please<br />Only silence such as I have entered<br />only the ambient squall of traffic<br />airline passengers in falling flight<br />the shuffling of impatient feet<br />a chair<br /><br />and let me be hidden from the congregation<br />congregated for me<br />neither in vessel nor box<br />but truly somewhere else than where they are<br />not out of disrespect for them<br />and grief<br />but my necessity<br /><br />I am gone<br />let that be clearly known<br />by darkness and the silence<br />by the emptiness I have gathered<br />let no one pray or bark a word of praise<br />let there be no story telling<br />of the time I did or did not do whatever<br />nor retelling of the jokes I never told so well<br />let no one that I’ve loved come near<br />the stage of my departing<br />you know why<br />you know what I have been and done<br />as others do not know<br />this is your chance<br />to forget<br /><br />I send you these instructions having seen<br />the beyond not far from any<br />there is no point in explaining<br />it is not what you expect<br /><br />do you remember walking on the shore<br />of Oregon to Haystack Rock between<br />the clouded heads at either end<br />of Cannon Beach<br />and families in recumbent bikes<br />like crabs escaping withering tide<br />but circling back and back<br />the overcast above the rock crackled<br />by the gulls and chilling rain<br />the goofy dogs erupting from the waves<br />without a clue<br />torpedoed us<br /><br />where I am is nothing<br /><br />for god’s sake don’t say anything<br />to give my life awayNoh Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03539473088426090880noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4242575591240131171.post-31782200883897587302007-08-13T13:14:00.000-05:002007-08-13T13:23:55.547-05:00God Is Dead, OK?Ron Currie, Jr., is not a writer I have encountered before. A couple of weeks ago in Powell’s bookstore here in Portland I spotted the title of his book, <em>God Is Dead</em>, and thought, “Well, that’s old news.” Flash back to the fifties and the “God is dead” theology that famously made the cover of <em>Time</em>. I picked up the book and was hooked by the first sentence: “Disguised as a young Dinka woman, God came at dusk to a refugee camp in the North Darfur region of Sudan.” I bought the book.<br /><br />The Dinka woman, aka God, is killed by the Janjaweed, and word of his/her death spreads quickly. The end of the Supreme Being is catastrophic….or is it? This is the implicit question in Currie’s clever and horrifying fiction.<br /><br />The world of the first chapter is all too familiar and includes a hilarious and outrageous appearance by Colin Powell who tries to rescue the Dinka woman, in spite of official consternation that he is taking an interest in this lowlife woman. She changes Powell, who suddenly begins to tell the truth. In a riveting telephone call with President Bush, he calls the President a “silver-spoon master-of-the-universe motherfucker.” All <em>right</em>.<br /><br />God apologizes to a young man she has asked Powell to find for her—not actually the one she asked for but an imposter:<br /><br />“Guilt gathered in God’s throat and formed a lump there. He realized with sudden certainty that this boy, or any of the people in the camp—the men suddenly alone in their old age, the young women with disappeared husbands and hungry children—were as deserving as [anyone] of his apology, would serve just as well as the altar for him to confess his sins of omission and beg forgiveness. God slid from the cot and stooped on his knees before the boy, like a Muslim at prayer.”<br /><br />As God lies awaiting death, he closes his eyes and wishes “for someone he could pray to.”<br /><br />That’s the first chapter. What’s an author to do next? Currie describes a world sunk in chaos and war, horror and cruelty. It seems like a cliché—God is dead and now everything, as the philosophers used to say, is possible. Morality flies out the window. As one character says, talking about violence in the world, “there is no why. There’s the impulse, and the act. But nothing else.” Martial law is declared; the National Guard moves into every American city. Suicide among nuns and clergy rises to an epidemic scale. Looting of Little Debbie snack cakes escalates. Serious shit.<br /><br />But then the cliché begins to turn on itself. Feral dogs that fed on God’s corpse begin to speaking a “mishmash of Greek and Hebrew and walking along the surface of the White Nile as if it were made of glass.” It's a story straight out of supermarket tabloids. Temples are built to them. But among people braced for the end of everything, a gradual realization dawns: nothing has changed. “God had created the universe and set it spinning, but it would continue chugging along despite the fact that he was no longer around to keep things tidy.”<br /><br />Needing something to revere in place of God, the people of the US begin to worship children: “God has abandoned us. The way to salvation is through the child.” Since, as the author observes, Americans virtually worship children already, the step to actual worship is easy. Evolutionary Psychologists try to break Americans of this idolatry, but it is not easy.<br />When war erupts between the Postmodern Anthropologists and the Evolutionary Psychological forces, the Evo Psychs threaten invasion of the United States. All hell really is about to break loose in the name of absurd ideologies.<br /><br />What we realize as we read the evocative and unnerving stories Currie has written is that the world after God is the world we already live in. <em>Time</em> was right. <em>God Is Dead</em> is a fable of our own times and our own culture, our idolatry and indifference, our cruel warrior mentality, our false religions. Despite our high rates of religious observance and our national assertion of belief in God, we Americans in fact behave exactly as we would if we knew for a fact that God does not exist. We simply worship what makes us feel good and secure. For all we know or care, a Dinka woman eaten by dogs in the Sudan might well be God.<br /><br />What’s the Sudan thing again? I mean, like, what<em>ever</em>.<br /><br />Currie has written fiction but it is, like all good stories, simply the backside of our daily lives.Noh Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03539473088426090880noreply@blogger.com2