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Do not be configured to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of the intellect, so you may test the will of God, which is good and acceptable and perfect — verse 2 from chapter 12 of Paul’s letter to the Romans
Stay calm, and decolonize — Buffy Sainte-Marie
These two exhortations take up bedrock space in my consciousness. I believe they are not far removed from each other, if at all.
Paul’s letter to the Roman Christians is a very dense and difficult read. He is striving to re-torque both Jewish and Pagan understanding of human/cosmic consequence into a new shared and mutually liberating framework. It is a bizarre and audacious undertaking, one that sets Paul and his proposed cosmology perfectly at odds with that of the reigning Roman Empire. Shortly after composing the letter Paul is arrested, and executed some time after that.
I don’t understand it very well at all. I’ve asked a couple of scholar friends to break down the rhetoric for me, and the typical qualifier to their subsequent attempts is, “First of all, there are scholars who devote their entire lives to this one letter . . .” Every now and then I get a flash of what Paul is pointing to, a glimpse of the Cosmic Wow that has him writing in circular fits. And the more I read about the Roman Empire, its class structures, and the immense burden of expectation placed on the Empire’s lowest subjects, the better I get at reading this letter.
As a child I memorized the King James Version: “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind . . .” etc
Stay calm, and decolonize.
We just celebrated Thanksgiving up here. My history with the holiday is uncomplicated — by celebrating Thanksgiving we actively take part in a rite my religion requires of its adherents. It’s easy and it’s delicious.
When asked, my Metis friends (all four of 'em) say they’re cool with that — you do you, cousin. My First Nations friends (all three of 'em) just smile and say, “For us it is a little complicated.”
“Decolonize.” Man, with my tribe the only way we were going to make it through at all was to build colonies in the desperate trust that the Russian Empire, or the British Empire, etc would allow us the privilege and — who knows? — maybe even offer us a smidgen of protection in the bargain.
More remains to be said . . .
Once had Romans recitable right up to about there, or a bit further, mid-way into ch. 12 I think. (Or maybe further? I can’t remember that now, let alone the text itself.) I was around 20 I guess, and this was one of a number of memorization projects. Of course, I’d had constant exposure to it (in various translations) all through childhood & adolescence, and had memorized chunks of it previously (ch. 6 particularly).
ReplyDeleteYears later there was a kind of breakthrough reading moment, in one sitting in the wee hours, where the whole started to cohere a bit for me in a sort of basic epistolary-lit way. That was nice, something of a relief after so many years’ frustration. And still obviously barely a cracking of the door — the letter being what it is, as you say.
My feeling today is that obscuring much more than disclosing is the design, underlying in some way, of those practices of text-obsession — as passed down from earliest early-modern fathers, maybe mostly in spite of themselves, but with some heightening intensity and intentionality in the last couple of centuries, say, in Anglo-world religious culture especially. Nothing novel in concluding as much, I’m sure, but boy, took a long time for it to occur to me.
"Epistolary lit" -- interesting you should put it that way. Pop emailed after reading this post and said he'd just brushed the dust off a buddy's commentary -- John E. Toews. It looks like that is very much his emphasis as well ("Read as a letter rather than a theological treatise" etc). Remarkable, though, that this letter nevertheless holds up as an appealing theological cipher all these ages later. Anyhow, it sounds like my father is enjoying his friend's contributions to a very large library.
ReplyDeleteBTW I never managed to memorize the entire epistle, either. :)
ReplyDeleteHa, I’ve wondered if Mennonites (or the branch you’re from anyway) did that kind of thing too!
ReplyDeletePerhaps relatedly, this article about Toews is pretty interesting for history. (One incidental detail that caught my eye: Mennonite Dispensationalism. I hadn’t realized that was a thing.)
Wow, did that ever stir the silt in my psyche! You struck the mother-lode there, Paul. I can no longer recall how my path ever crossed that of "JB" but it would definitely have been in '86/'87 when I was Ass Ed at the Herald. He struck me then as the kind of man who would have enjoyed a write-up like this one. Nor has the apple fallen far from the tree, it seems.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm recalling a supper-table conversation from my high school days when I was considering what sort of graffiti I'd spraypaint on the family car, if I could. Dad's suggestion was, "Dispensationalism is not of this age." Must've been a hot chestnut at the time.
Reading back(ward) through these — thinking about your choice of form in part iv, among other things.
ReplyDeleteI wrote that one out by hand, actually. My first "Nazi" post, similarly. I don't know if it reads differently from what's usually here, but I find I edit less when I'm transcribing the post.
ReplyDelete