Approaching Christmas Eve As The Perpetual Newcomer

I have issues with Christmas Eve, particularly the church service. That's the service when I discover that I, my wife and my kids, who have lived in this village for 14 years, are newcomers. I know because I'm told so. The sanctuary fills with people who make this their yearly service, and to whom I, the regular attender, need introducing. Pleasantries get exchanged, and inevitably I hear, “It's nice to see new faces.”

Indeed, Christmas Eve is the one night I wouldn't mind hanging out with my peeps, the Mennonites, if only because we know how to sing. If we must sing hoary old Christmas carols, let's at least dress 'em up with competent four-part harmonies. Alas, my closest tribe of robust singers is a three-hour drive away, and taking pleasure in a once-a-year appearance there would be too bitter an irony for my taste. Instead, it's the local United (formerly Methodist) Church for me, where the musical mode is what you'd encounter at any mainstream Protestant congregation: songs with which I'm unfamiliar, being wheezily sung in lockstep unison.

Yet here I was last Saturday, surprised to find myself actively enjoying the Christmas Eve service. Preempted from my usual pew, I sat in an unusual spot in the sanctuary, and discovered a bizarre convergence of acoustics and sound-system manipulation uniquely attuned to the choir, so I was able to hear the harmonies of the songs being sung. And I was charmed by the unfamiliar carols, including this one:

All Poor Ones and Humble

All poor ones and humble
and all those who stumble
come hastening, and feel not afraid;
for Jesus our treasure,
with love past all measure,
in lowly poor manger was laid.
Though wise men who found him
laid rich gifts around him,
yet oxen they gave him their hay,
and Jesus in beauty
accepted their duty, contented in manger he lay.

Then haste we to show him
the praises we owe him;
our service he ne'er can despise;
whose love still is able
to show us that stable,
where softly in manger he lies.

The Christ Child will lead us,
the Good Shepherd feed us
and with us abide till his day.
Then hatred he'll banish,
then sorrow will vanish,
and death and despair flee away.
And he shall reign ever,
and nothing shall sever
from us the great love of our King;
his peace and his pity
shall bless his fair city;
his praises we ever shall sing.

Then haste we to show him
the praises we owe him;
our service he ne'er can despise;
whose love still is able
to show us that stable,
where softly in manger he lies.

Words: v.1 Katharine Emily Roberts 1927, alt, v.2 William Thomas Penmar Davies 1951
Music: Welsh carol, harm. Erik Routley 1951

The final four stanzas are the chorus, and both times as I approached, “Our service he ne'er can despise,” I choked up.

Since then I've mused over the words and tune, trying to understand exactly what hit the emotional sweet-spot for me. Usually it's my own cynicism I'm choking on whenever I encounter a Disneyfied Nativity Scene; oxen offering up their hay to the Christ child gets me wondering if we won't soon encounter Sleepy, Dopey, Doc and Grumpy among the fabled wise men (who never made it to the manger in any of the gospel accounts).

The second verse is a howler, alright. So it has to be the first and the chorus that caught and kept me off-guard. Married to an ancient Welsh tune, in which the harmonies are easy to hit, the word that, “Jesus, our treasure, with love past all measure . . . our service he ne'er can despise,” was a welcome Christmas message to my ears.

God knows my idea of service is a cautious and miserly bit of business. My bristling hesitance to greet the village's seventh generation — “new faces” to me — is just one example. But these are the small acts on which we slowly build what community we can, hoping against hope that even this frugal service might ne'er be despised.

The Power Of Prayer

Commenting on yesterday's post, Paul raises an interesting point about the potentially fraught relationship between mentor and mentee. I suspect this might be a trait more common among dudes than gals, but usually when someone has the advantage of knowledge and expertise, it gets lorded over the wet-behind-the-ears chump standing in his shadow. Said chump is expected to put up with the abuse, a small fee for the few precious gleanings of technical insight.

As I mentioned in response, BD was not above copping a smarmy 'tude in the face of my ignorance — and neither was I, in response to his. If we knew anything, it was how to make the other rankle. And yet we became, and remained, fast friends for quite a stretch of years. When I finally married, I was astonished to see him show up at the final hour of the dinner reception, having endured a Planes, Trains & Automobiles journey to get there.

As I reflected yesterday over the various slings and arrows we endured from each other, I grudgingly had to admit to what kept us friends: prayer. From age 14 on, we were both standing members of our church youth group, schooled in the Evangelical Protestant prayer vernacular of earnest “Father God”s and “Lord, we just”s. Right from the get-go our burgeoning theologies were as divergent as our personalities.

But we could, on occasion, admit to inadequacy. That's when we bowed our heads and appealed to a Higher Power. And although I approached from the left, and he from the right, I think we felt like God was equally pleased to meet us both. “Where two or more are gathered in my name, there am I in their midst.” Some days the assurance of those words was a profound relief.

These days my intercessory mode is more liturgical. And there are precious few people I feel even remotely comfortable praying aloud with. I haven't talked to BD in years. Would the prayer conversation continue, more or less where we left it? It seems doubtful. But there are sleepless nights when I will my words beyond the ceiling, and whisper, May it be so.

An Aboriginal Lourdes?

I was culling through old e-mails this morning, and ruefully wishing I could just post some of the exchanges I've had with readers and fellow bloggers. Iron sharpens iron, and many of these bits of back and forth have a quality and frankness that greatly exceeds what gets posted here.

I wouldn't do that without seeking permission first, of course. But I also hesitate because the intimacy of exchange is an element that gives weight to the content. Make it public, and *poof*: some of the significance disappears.

Instead, I'll post a link to an old story that I heard on CBC radio a couple of years ago, which I promptly shared with Mary Scriver, to get her thoughts on the matter. It plays like something out of Dostoevsky: aboriginals, and a few others, flock to the site of an old residential school in British Columbia, where they gather round the grave of a young woman who died of TB or pneumonia in 1949. The girl, Rose Prince, was the daughter from a line of chiefs of the Dakelh First Nation — a hunchback, remembered for being gentle and in a near-constant state of prayer. Nothing especially remarkable about her life's story, really, but when her grave was moved a year after her burial, it was reported that her coffin fell open to reveal a perfectly uncorrupted body — and a powerful scent of roses.

Cut to the turn of the millennium, and dirt from her grave is said to have miraculous properties (typically enough, some people are more blessed by this than others). A Catholic priest organizes a yearly pilgrimage to this site, and thousands gather for the Eucharist and a blessing, then take a baggy full of dirt from the site for ailing family members.

Betsy Trumpener, the woman who crafted this documentary, is of course keenly tuned in to the discordant ironies of this scene: Indians volitionally flocking to a site where they were once dragged and tormented throughout their formative years, in order to receive a blessing and . . . be healed. I found the experience of listening to it quite powerful and not a little disturbing. You can hear it here: just head to the upper right-hand corner and click beneath “Related” for the audio.

Speaking generally, there are several aspects common to most miracle stories that usually intrigue me. The first is the outrageousness of the miracle (assuming we take the story at face value). The obvious question that occurs to any listener is, “Why does one schmuck get the benefit of supernatural interruption, and not another? Why not me?” The second aspect is the politicization of the miracle: “Here's why. Now go and do likewise — or else.”

The third aspect is its tangential benefits. In the radio documentary we hear a skeptical woman's thoughts before she takes mass, then after. She believes something has happened to her — chiefly an unanticipated emotional release — and she believes it to be beneficial. That it occurred on this historically vile location is very significant for her.

Just outlining it like this can make it all seem unremarkable, but the details do provide a portrait of human frailty that I find rather endearing — so long as the politicization aspect doesn't piss one off too much.

Lapham's Quarterly

"As for Laney, she was no sure proof of God, and her disappearance proves nothing about God, but God feels a little less present to me because she is no longer in the world. My soul feels a little more tired. Little maid, pray for me"

When Lewis Lapham announced it was time he launched a quarterly, I didn't exactly hold my breath in anticipation. I'd long been an admirer of his prosaic prowess, but by the time Bush Jr. was back in the kitchen, prepping to deliver another four years of material ripe for Lapham's eviscerations I was weary of reading it. Remember the smartest kid in your classroom? Not the one who got the best grades, but the one who could have, and chose not to? As much as I enjoyed hanging out with that kid -- a reciprocal indulgence, I'm sure -- that kid sure knew how to tire me out. Lapham was that kid.

Lapham's podium, Harper's Magazine, was in the monthly habit of persuading me of things I needed no persuasion to believe -- specifically, our collective situation is so much more dire than we think. I'm grateful when anyone of influence blows the whistle on their social tier, but when said whistle-blower is as high up the ladder as Lapham, my first monkey-thought is usually, "If I just scrabble up close to where he is, I can begin to work on the situation, too." I dropped my subscription because it was distracting me from what I needed to believe -- that I could, just possibly, attend and make small differences right now, where I already was. Now he was issuing a quarterly the size of a small phone book? I anticipated heaps of sniffy "Here's what's wrong" proclamations, and thought, No, thank you.

In fact, Lapham's Quarterly is well worth checking out. His editorial policy is surprisingly catholic in its inclusions, resulting in a collected read that gently nudges chambers of thought which might have become a little stiff over the years. I spent a couple of hours in the library, poring through past issues. When the quarterly finally devoted its contents to "Religion" I went ahead and bought it. Once again there is something for readers of every temperament and persuasion. Certainly there are pieces I can't be bothered with; there are also items I don't mind being challenged by. But the real surprise is stumbling across a piece that is actually encouraging -- in my case Garret Keizer's The Courtesy Of God. That's where the above quote comes from, and you can read the piece in its entirety here -- an invitation to which I could only say, Yes. Thank you.

Of Church Ruins And Abandoned Malls

Our county has lost another of its historic churches — Whitby's All Saints' Anglican — likely to arson. Speaking from experience it is quite dispiriting to watch a gorgeous old church go up in flames. Equally dispiriting, I find, is the sort of pulpit-pounding that occurs in its wake: “If only people stopped/started believing in God, the world would be a better place.” The usual comments can be read here.

Turning, for the moment, from disputing the merits and evils of religion, here is a gallery of abandoned shopping malls and outlet stores. The photos were taken by Brian Ulrich.



Paul Bowman linked to the pictures, without comment; Boing-Boing linked as well, but saw fit to include this snippet from TMN's interview with Ulrich: “How can an economy sustain a lifestyle based on exponential growth and the leisure and wealth to support it? It’s not rocket science to expect these kind of illusions to fail.”

Perhaps my gaze hasn't turned so far after all.

What surprises me about the photos is their inability to provoke emotion in me. Much of my adolescence and adult life has been spent inside malls; I dream quite regularly of dimly lit corridors and forgotten cul-de-sacs, where I find all the weird stores. Then there is the business of being a close witness to the closing of an old established bookstore — another frequent dream motif. Yet for all the potential power within these photos, I find them little more compelling than I would shots of trash in the ditch.

I believe that the current strain of North American church architecture has more in common with the shopping mall than it does with previously established religious aesthetics. A photo like the above gives us a very good idea of what the local mega-church will probably look like within 30 years or so. If nothing else, you have to hand it to the religious architects of old for giving us buildings that looked beautiful, even in ruination.

Now, when I give the mega-church buildings a life expectancy of 30 years, I'm being generous. I say this not because I think Christianity is in danger of dying out, but because I believe the last fifty years of public architecture will shortly be untenable, financially. Consider the cost of heating these structures. Now consider the fact that Saudi Arabia is investing in offshore drilling. Now reconsider what the monthly energy bill is likely to come to when OPEC finally slows its exports out of necessity.

But even if I and all my peak-oil nut-job buddies are wrong wrong DEAD wrong, I'd still argue the reasonable approach to building a church ought to be, “This building is good for 25 years. And then it's coming down.” If you are a church goer wondering at my folly, I urge you to pick up your yellow pages. Now find the church segment and run your finger down the list. How many of those congregations have been vibrant for as long as 40 years? If yours is one of them, ask yourself how you're going to beat the odds of a schism for another 40?

Take another look at that picture, if you like.

Another ruin that looms in my dreams is the St. Boniface Cathedral of Winnipeg. When my mother toured the grounds in the '70s, she struck up a conversation with a nun, and said what a shame the fire had been. The nun nodded silently. After a bit of a pause, the sister said, “But that was really a very expensive building to maintain.”



I've thought a lot about that exchange, especially as I've revisited the ruins. St. Boniface is a go-to destination for tourists and residents alike. It hosts weddings, memorials, concerts and performances of Shakespeare. I would argue that people interact with the ruins more frequently and with greater vibrancy than they would with the structure, were it still standing.

If that is the best fate of our most cherished buildings, perhaps it is time for another sea-change in North American church architecture. Perhaps now is the time for forward-thinking congregations and their architects to ask (1) what would a church with a small footprint and the capacity for easy dismantlement look like? And (2) how can we make our building as publicly inviting as a ruin — right now, before the fire?

Spirituality by Carl McColman

Whenever I've engaged someone in The Talking Cure, it's usually been a person with a religious background not too dissimilar from my own. If I'm expected to broach vulnerable subject matter, religious discussion is inevitable, and most of the ground rules take far too long to explain to the uninitiated. More to the point, I finally have difficulty placing the necessary trust in someone who stands completely outside my experience.

My last go-round with a religiously observant counselor, however, raised some unanticipated difficulties. We started by unpacking the train case: a small-town boy moves to big city to even smaller town; the gender role reversal; the religious background — the present religious conviction — perhaps a few issues with . . . . Wup: we had to stop, back up and unpack “religion” for a few minutes, possibly dipping into the steamer trunk. After a few minutes' discussion, my would-be shrink's bottom line on the issue was, “It's about your relationship with God.”

I knew immediately this was our final conversation. It wasn't that I disagreed with the sentiment: I had trouble with the voice — the tonality — in which it was expressed. Had I wished to go further with this person, my responding tonality would have been, roughly, “That is a subjective sentiment posing as an objectively secure dogma. So long as this (my perspective) doesn't threaten to derail our conversation, we can continue.” My sense, however, was that I was now the guy who was standing outside.

Alright, let's cut to the review I agreed to do. TheOOZE.com, a site I've occasionally found thought-provoking (although at the moment its culture content seems to have lapsed into “Is U2 cool, or what?” mode) is attempting to generate “viral blogging” (link) wherein a group of bloggers who have touched on Christian themes review books of a similar nature — purpose-driven blogging, you might say. Since the talking cure wasn't getting me anywhere, I figured I'd gamble someone else's stamp and give this a go. I had four titles to choose from. Carl McColman's Spirituality: A Postmodern & Interfaith Approach To Cultivating A Relationship With God (A) was the one I finally asked for.

Upon receiving the book, my first temptation was to review and critique the subtitle (which in one deft summary raises every single one of my intellectual hackles) and leave it at that. But McColman, who in his introduction claims to have been inspired while listening to the music of evo-bio enthusiast Brian Eno, went through a hell of a lot of work to cable-knit a world-view that might, in turn, regenerate a little cerebral warmth which might, in turn, generate a “deeper spirituality.”

Argh. Already with the scare-quotes. Suffice it to say I found the bulk of McColman's intellectual argument, which is generated largely from etymological riffage, to be unpersuasive. Yet 200 pages later, in spite of all my internal kvetching (or "kicking against the goads" if you prefer), I found myself in complete agreement with his final chapter, "Cultivating The Practice," which summarizes in 12 concise suggestions the author's idea of how best to live a good life.*

The trouble with me as an audience is, I am more predisposed to allow rhetorical argument to dissuade me of fallacy than I am to have the method persuade me of a new, seemingly more enlightened tack. Perhaps that's just the Rortyan in me. I also think stories are more fecund and persuasive material. McColman, who claims a Protestant upbringing, followed by a Pagan change of heart, followed by a turning to Catholicism in later life, must surely have some interesting and even compelling stories to tell. I'm curious enough that I might just pick up his later work, The Aspiring Mystic (A) which he promotes as story-driven. In the meantime he and the "viral blogging" initiative are all about The Conversation, which I also endorse. Here is McColman's website. John Morehead is also generating some provocative discussion among some of the same groups of people: Christians, Mormons, Neo-Pagans, Wiccans — just about anyone, really. Morehead's blog is here.

And, if I've somehow persuaded you to make up your own mind about Spirituality, I encourage you to read it in tandem with Christine Wicker's Not In Kansas Anymore: Dark Arts, Sex Spells, Money Magic, and Other Things Your Neighbors Aren't Telling You (A) which is jam-packed with the sorts of stories I'm after, including Wicker's own. Just brace yourself for the dreams.

*McColman's Twelve Suggestions:

1. Pray or meditate daily
2. Engage in spiritual reading or study
3. Find an anamchara (soul friend)
4. Join a healthy faith community
5. Cultivate beauty in your life
6. Engage in some sort of personal improvement program
7. Tithe
8. Honor some form of Sabbath
9. Relate charitably to those who are needy
10. Actively seek political solutions to complete the ministry of charity
11. Seek ways to interact with persons from other traditions
12. Maintain equilibrium and a sense of humor regarding your discipline

Johnny LaRue's Cure-All

The last few posts seem to find me sinking in a religious direction. As Johnny LaRue used to say, "The only way to cure a hangover is with more booze." Who am I to argue? Seeker-friendly BoingBoing provides 100-proof medicine:



There doesn't seem to be any accompanying video featuring this trio, but I'd say this is a worthy substitute (warning: you WILL be humming this tune for the rest of the day):



Wow. Somehow, in my mis-spent youth, I never caught wind of these guys. Ah, but it's never too late to have a happy childhood.

Prairie Mary is also thinking about religion. As ever her approach is thoughtful and provocative -- but you probably won't be humming when you leave her blog.

And, of course, there is always The Ramones:

Icons, And The Trouble They Brew

"The honor accorded to the image passes over to its prototype, and whoever adores the image adores in it the reality of what is there represented" -- The Doctrine of the Veneration of Icons, formulated in 787 by the Seventh Ecumenical Council (Wiki).

I am not old enough to remember Martin Luther King Junior -- I was a few months away from turning three when his life was taken. He is an icon for me. Usually the buffer of time coinciding with an absence of formative memory serves to remove the threat and demand for transformation that an icon invariably represents. No such buffer exists with this man.

Icons, like King or the Dalai Lama, are maddening figures who make rigorous and maddening claims about humanity's shared existence. The degree to which we shrug off and dismiss these claims is the degree to which we commit ourselves to mediocrity, blinkered self-congratulation and wanton cruelty.

I would like to say more about King, but I am still wrestling with what he represents -- unlike, say, the North American media, which still does not hesitate to put a black preacher "in his place." From Jon Trott, who remembers.

Here's me in the corner, searching for my religion

I was asked if I would teach Sunday school. I explained to the minister that I didn't really believe in God, but I couldn't live as though I didn't believe in him. I found life intolerable without God, so I lived as though I believed in God. I asked him, "Is that enough for you?" -- Madeleine L'Engle in an interview, re-citing a moment from her Crosswicks Journals.

I'm too tentative a creature to articulate my own religious convictions, such as they are, with ML's clarity. My fall-back position in these matters is to wave my fiction and say, "Here's my statement of faith." But lately I've been having trouble moving ahead with my fiction -- I feel somewhat stranded between fictional outposts. Perhaps a few forays into the realm of memory and impression might yield a way forward in my fictive journeys.

First stop: the church.

Walking Away From Faith by Ruth A. Tucker, and a Calvinist-inspired bunny-trail of some significance

I dreamed I had a fever
I was pushin one-oh-three
My mom’s all upset - cryin’ by my bedside
Everybody’s prayin’ for me
I hear a scratchin at the window
I somehow twist myself around
I realize I’m eyes to eyes
With the fella in the Brite Nitegown

Brite Nitegown
Brite Nitegown
You can’t fight with the fella
In the Brite Nitegown

Donald Fagen (mp3 here)

“One-oh-three,” you say? That's kid stuff. The “scratchin at the window,” however, was tangible enough to put me in a metaphysical frame of mind, so among the curiosities I pulled from my laden bookshelves while I was sick was Walking Away From Faith, by Ruth A. Tucker. I'm not sure who clued me in to this book (probably JT) but I was completely taken with it. I found Tucker to be plain-spoken, and forthright about her own doubts and insecurities — a religious academic attempting to explore without guile or defensiveness the issue of apostasy. Intellectually she was both perceptive and receptive in fairly equal measure. A quick Google search reveals that this book receives glowing recommendations from both evangelical atheists (here is one such) and evangelical Christians — surely the most unique distinction for a religious book you could hope to find.

As I scanned the Google links, I was surprised to see how few of them pertained to the book. It's received precious little attention from the commercially-funded religious rags, and after investigating a little further I began to see why: the book and its subject matter have been eclipsed by the treatment Tucker has received at the hands of her former employers, Calvin College and Theological Seminary.

I would dearly love to comment on this specific case, but the only account on record is Tucker's (here). It's as surely biased as all first-person accounts must be, but she's attentive to pertinent details and the fact that Calvin remains mute in response to her objections is more than a little damning of them. Certainly church-funded academia is no stranger to immoral administration. I have a professor friend who has been the recipient of shabby treatment from both public universities and religious colleges: he asserts in no uncertain terms that Christian colleges will screw-over an exiting staff-member more thoroughly than any public institution, because a) there are fewer accountability hoops for the administrations of religious institutions to jump through, and b) the administration, whose chief concern is public perception among the school's donor base, will invoke without censure the self-serving “godliness clause” (JT unpacks it all here).

Instead I'll do the usual: speak from personal experience and make a few scandalous generalizations in an effort to provoke.

So far as I'm concerned, nothing sucks the air out of a room faster than a man intent on selling a Calvinist Benefits Package. Thanks to prolonged manifold exposure (I skulked in the hallways of the ICS and as an MCC hack did some work with CPJ in the mid-90s) on this issue my knee-jerk has been finely-tuned to a hair-trigger response. Recently, however, I've been surprised to discover two spokesmen on behalf of John Calvin (The Man) who snuck past my defences and forced me to reconsider my deeply-entrenched predjudices — and they weren't men at all. I'm speaking of Marilynne Robinson and, of course, Tucker. (Actually, Seerveld has slipped through on occasion as well, but he's a dude and I'm trying not to complicate my invective.)

It's head-slappingly obvious where I'm going with this: if today's self-styled Calvinistas want their public voice to be anything more trenchant than a nostalgic echo of post-war glory days, the fellas running the academies and churches are going to have to roll up their sleeves and work bloody hard to address gender representation, gender discrepancies and public accountability.

On all three issues George W. Bush and his administration are holding to a higher standard than Calvin College does. If that doesn't cause consternation among my neo-Cal friends, I truly fear for the soul of their religion.

****

Getting back to Tucker's book: it's well-written, well-considered and she never condescends. This is the first I've encountered anything like it on the market, so I highly recommend the book to anyone with a vested interest in the subject matter (particularly those readers who aren't as taken with Annie Dillard as I am). Quibbles: the last chapter felt a bit rushed (possibly written while her position was being terminated?), and the font used should, I think, be avoided by all publishers everywhere. I hope once Ms. Tucker has regained her footing she'll publish other books. She's someone I don't mind listening to.

Getting to Miles, Take 2

I've been re-shuffling my links, introducing a new category titled (at present) "Lecterns & Pulpits." I got to thinking I should corral my more overtly religious and political friends and links into an appropriately designated section of the farmyard. I'm not altogether sure what's behind this impulse, but I suspect my overriding desire to avoid reader offence or annoyance is a strong motivation.

Curious how frequently it is the conceptual "stuff" that gets a reader's blood up. Or raises their hackles. Or any other colorful metaphor that best illustrates an individual's impulse toward defensiveness — and I certainly include myself, here. Any writer seeking a quick response from readers should either a) come out loud and proud of his particular world-view and b) point out the inconsistencies of someone else's, particularly if the Other is in the perceived social majority.

These skirmishes can't be completely avoided, and perhaps my efforts to do so are worse than self-defeating. Reading Searchie's espousal of The 51% Solution I can't help but wonder if I'm not drifting around at 49%, or some lesser grade of conviction (W.B. Yeats save us all!). And when I consider her friend's attempt at book promotion, I wonder if depression isn't just as surely a religious issue as it is physical, emotional, experiential, existential, etc. But don't ask me to define my terms, because I'll get dodgy on you. The clearest I can be is to say, I haven't yet read my (pastor) father's recommended reading, either.

In fact, I'm slow to pick up any recommended religious reading. More often than not, what I do pick up is something I've seen on a blogger's sidebar. If it looks interesting or pertinent to my situation, I'll see if I can't track down a copy. If I'm put-off by what I've read, the only recipient of my disappointment is the author.

A friend of mine once saw a book on my shelf and asked if she could borrow it. I hesitated because the book had been given to me by someone of a more conservative stripe than I, which meant its contents were considerably more conservative than my friend was. I finally figured, She's a big girl and she doesn't have to like a book she pulls off my shelf, and I don't have to hold that against her. But my impression was correct: the book really bugged her.

We had a stimulating and entirely pleasant conversation after that, but it concluded with her recommending I read The Pagan Christ. Suddenly we were again in problematic territory. As with the book she had borrowed, I was now figuratively in possession of a point of view someone else held dear, but which I had limited use for. That's the problem with recommended religious reading: the material promoted rarely settles for giving the intended reader a clear idea of where the book-giver is coming from — it often suggests, or states outright, that what the reader currently holds to is a crock of shit.

I may yet use this blog to flesh out some of my religious ideological identity. I'm not particularly logical in my thinking, and when I'm systematic it's in a base and intuitive fashion. I am who I am via a series of episodes and encounters. Occasionally music and books have brought significant comfort or encouragement. In aid of doing a little self-corralling, I will confess: my current way of thinking and to some degree behaving is a farm-hand philosopher's response to Pascal's Wager, followed by an Aristotelian shrug; Northrop Frye's exploration of myth, narrative, culture and Christianity (here and here) speaks to my heart with more eloquence and greater acuity than does Tom Harpur's (which, his own frequent assertions to the contrary, were neither shocking nor helpful); and with one sole exception, the significant religious leaders in my life have all been women.

In the (so far as I'm concerned) non-hackle-raising department: Prairie Mary considers dinner with some interesting company. I'm happy to be reminded of Searchie's fondness for What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt (which I commented on here). I believe Searchie just about embodies Ms. Hustvedt's ideal reader, and that's no small compliment. And as for this Miles, I shall get to him. For now, this is the Miles I'm studying.