Christmas Poetry

For some reason I felt a need to find some Christmas poetry last night. I thought that the Swedes might provide, so I worked my way through Nils Ferlin (not a terribly religious poet), Tomas Transströmer and Gustaf Fröding. All great poets and there were great poems. But no Christmas poems. There is the classic Rydberg: Glans över sjö och strand. Beautiful. But actually typical of 19th century orthodoxy.

I wanted something that wasn't the orthodox piety of the 19th century, nor the Pietism of Lina Sandell. I wanted a poem that both moved my heart and made me think.

The poem I found is actually a hymn: Richard Wilbur's "A Stable Lamp is Lighted." Looking thru Youtube I found - to my great surprise - that the text has been set to a number of tunes. This one is a folkie tune, so it's one I like.



I didn't find the tune that I first learned when I was in seminary. I like that version a great deal, probably because it is the first version I learned.

What I like about the Wilbur text is that it draws my mind to the simplicity of the event and its far reaching consequences. How simple and how unnoticed. Is that the way that the great changes of our lives and of our world actually take place? Not among the big and noble and noticed, but among the little and lowly?

I like to think that it is. I like to hope that it is. Because that means that it is possible, even probable, that somewhere out of sight the seeds of our salvation as a race has already been born. My role then is to watch and wait and hope and keep my cynicism in check. The first three are difficult. The fourth may be close to impossible.

America's Team

Notice on Sports Center this morning that Dallas Cowboys are "no longer" "America's Team." Apparently they've been replaced by the Green Bay Packers.

I find this whole thing a little confusing. This change in our "national team" came because Public Policy Polling surveyed the country, offering nine choices for "America's Team." The Packers got a 22% positive rating. The Cowboys came in second at 11%. But the Cowboys are also America's most hated team at 22%.

This is ridiculous.

First, it's ridiculous to call anyone other than the lovable loser Cubs "America's Team." Second, 22% makes you most loved or most hated? And you don't even get to choose any of all the teams in a particular sport?

The whole idea of having a team that everyone in America prefers is non-sense. It's a waste of survey time. And declaring that 22% preference makes you "America's Team" makes the survey company a joke. That's the percentage that Romney is polling, and he's not even the Republican's choice, much less America's choice.

I never bought the idea that the Cowboys were "America's Team." I found them arrogant, artificially pious, sanctimonious and self-righteous back in the Tom Landry days. Since then I've just found them to be Texan and therefore abhorrent. Tebow Denver seems to be matching the Landry Cowboys for supercilious piety. So I don't have to change my preferences. I'm still ABD - but the D now covers two teams rather than one.

I'm pulling for Green Bay this year. The Vikings suck (as usual) and the Bears are iffy. I like the Lions being back on a playoff path. But Green Bay and Aaron Rogers are the winners in my division, the black and blue division, so I'm rooting for them even though they are going to dismantle the Bears this week. Next year I'll root for my hometeam and revile the Packers. But that's next year.

I don't need my favorite team to be "America's Team." From the actual survey results it looks like the majority of American's don't either.

Year End Gifting

It's the end of the year and we're being inundated with year end begs from all the charities to which I have ever given any money.

But it's been a rough year for us financially. We lost about 1/3 of Kris' income, in addition to my illness - which has cost us $2500 we hadn't planned on spending (and a bit more, that's just deductible and the part of payment I share with the insurance company. I also have the copays for the doctor visits and for the medication).

Thus, our charitable giving has had to shrink a bit. We've held off on a number of organizations to which we have belonged, even some we've belonged to for years. We keep up on Greenpeace, and sometime early next year we'll probably rejoin Habitat for Humanity. We are still members of the Swedish American Historical Society, but we've dropped the Swedish American Museum in Chicago.

It's just the way it goes.

Tonight I loaded Open Office's office suite on a PC, and I stopped for a moment when asked for a donation. The folks who've developed the Open office suite of tools aren't particularly pushy about the donations. If you don't give you still get. Everyone can use the software, and since it is an open platform everyone can contribute to the code (if you know how to do it - which I don't.) I stopped for a moment and then I gave.

It was a small donation, especially considering all the use I have for this software. I've loaded it on to every PC and every Mac under my control. So a small donation for six suites of software, that's not major sacrifice for me and it makes me feel good about myself. I've given back.

Before the end of the year I hope we can make additional donations to our church. As I said, I want to make sure we give to Habitat and Greenpeace. Maybe one or two more charities.

With money being tight, I wonder where my friends are going to give at this year end feel good charitable giving time of the year.

Let's Get Santa

Best Buy has been running a series of commercials (sorry I'm watching too much television while recuping) in which a young mother takes on Santa Claus.



Is this really a good idea?

First, it makes Christmas giving into a competitive event. Admittedly, it makes it a women against men competitive event, with the women winning. That part probably is good, given the third or fourth wave feminist attitudes I see in the young women I teach.

But these women don't just win, they win in ways that allow them to gloat. One relegates Santa to giving toys to the dog. A second Ims Santa to the phones on the tree – to which Santa, like a defeated bf responds, “Very mature.” The third meets Santa on the housetop and topples a plastic elf onto the lawn in a sort of “watch out fat-man or you're next” threat.

OK, so maybe this is empowering. I don't know. I'm not a young woman (in case you haven't noticed). But this is Santa Claus. For much of his life he's imaged without a woman. The whole Mrs. Claus thing is just a cover to give the elves some breathing room. This is Santa, the jolly fat celibate who sneaks into your house to bring toys and jollies and eat cookies. This is a beloved, if somewhat weird, elder statesman of the holiday season. Is it really a good idea to humiliate Santa? Does that really make you see powerful – or just petty?

My vote is for the latter choice. I don't like the Best Buy commercials. They certainly haven't made me want to shop at Best Buy. I don't have a thousand dollars to blow on Android Powered Smart Phones for the whole family. In fact, the only way my family is going to get that technology is if Santa delivers them. But then, I'm not – as I've already said – a young woman looking for empowering experiences by humiliating Saint Nick.

What's With All the Posts?

I've been posting regularly these days. What's up with that?

I think its because I'm well enough to think and I need to keep doing things before January when I get busy writing syllabuses and doing research for new classes and directing energy in school tracks. In the meantime I can explore and think and complain and write about whatever I want to write about. It's a blessing that has unlocked a whole lot of energy. I'm even rewriting my essay on Greta G. for publication (hopefully) with a Swedish American publication.

Broncos Lose to a Good Team

Stefan Fatsis has an amazing commentary on the Pat's destruction of the Broncos and Tim Tebow over on Slate. As several other commentators have pointed out, the Patriots were the first team with a winning record in quite some time - and the last team to have a winning record was the always unreliable Jets. Fatsis' peroration deserves a reprint:

Unlike other miked-up quarterbacks, we don’t see Tebow analyzing photos from the All 22 cameras or suggesting to a coach or teammate how to exploit a weakness he’s detected in the defense. With Tebow, it’s prayers and bromides, the NFL as produced by the Christian Broadcasting Network. That’s just edited video, of course, and none of us knows what’s happening in the Broncos’ locker room or quarterbacks' meetings, or on the sidelines. Still, the rational among us were reminded on Sunday that, regardless of what if any god you pray to, a very good NFL team with an exceptional veteran quarterback will usually beat a decent team with a quirky inexperienced one.

 

I didn't know that Tebow was ever all miked up – so I didn't hear those bromides and prayers. It is, I'm afraid what too many Christians have to offer too often: bromides and prayers. I wish I could hear sermons that weren't filled with bromides and platitudes. I wish the prayers of the people cold capture the hearts of the people. Unfortunately, in life these days, under the leadership of the fundagelical wing of Christianity all there is to offer is bromide, platitudes and “just make my heart just wait upon thee my Jesus” prayers.

Bad enough that it's all I hear in church. Sad to hear it on the football field as well.

Hoarders & Me

For some reason I've gotten hooked on Hoarders.

One episode I watched this morning featured a 28 year old hoarder whose hoard hadn't yet become life threatening. This 28 year old was extremely controlling, and yet extremely insightful. She recognized that her behavior was undermining her relationship with family and significant other. She made it impossible for the significant other to say anything about her behavior, to voice his opinion about anything, to make any requests for his own space or to satisfy his own needs. When he asked for something she responded emotionally in a way that most of us are fearful to confront.

A&E offers those who participate in the show aftercare funds to work with both therapists and organizer. This hoarder undermined that as well, making it impossible for the organizer to help her -- putting up obstacles until the organizer gave up and quit.

All of this can be ascribed to the illness, the compulsive hoarding. But I was also left wondering if this hoarder was aware of her disease and was using her disease as a way of manipulating others, an excuse for essentially bad behavior.

But it also made me wonder if I do/am doing the same thing. I think I am and I do.

I think I use my illness as an excuse for getting snappy at Kris. Yes I am drugged. Yes I am in some pain fairly constantly - though it isn't great pain but it is a pain that keeps me aware that I have recently had major surgery. I do use the illness as a way of excusing my not calling the people I need to call to get things done around the house. I do use the illness as an excuse for watching a lot of television and reading very little.

OK. I am using my illness as a way of avoiding actual responsibility. So, will I change that, call the plumber and get the home in the shape it should be. Will I at least turn off the television and open a book.

Sure, just as soon as this episode of Hoarders is over!

Evigheternas Evigheter

The Sunday following my long posts on time and eternity the lessons for the day are full of promises about everlasting kingship, unforgotten, timeless promises of the divine toward the chosen people, and "forever."

Just for fun I take the Swedish bible along and read the lessons in Swede while they're being read in English. The second lesson, Paul's doxology to the Romans reads - in Swedish - "den ende vise Guden tillhör äran genom Jesus Kristus i evigheternas evighet." I am not entirely sure of my translation, but I read this as saying "the only wise God through Jesus Christ to him belongs glory for the Eternal's eternity." The English reads "the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever."

What's got me confused is the phrase "Evigheternas evigheter." The Endless ones foreverness? Something like that.

To solve the problem I need to consult commentaries and the Greek text. I wonder if this is an odd phrase in Greek as well as Swedish. What this does for me though is to keep me pondering the relationship between time and eternity, feeling fairly certain that I haven't yet gotten to the last insight on how Now fits into Forever.

If I were a poor black kid

If I were a poor black kid . . . Gene Marks wrote this advice, presumably to influence poor black kids who read Forbes. It's been thoroughly attacked, rejected, abused and refused by a large segment of the public. Lots of not-poor not-black and not-kids have commented. Some formerly poor black kids have added their opinions. So why not me too.

If I were a poor black kid . . . I'd be very amazed and puzzled. How'd that happen? Unlike Navin P. Johnson, (Steve Martin's character in The Jerk) I was born a middle class white kid. My dad was the sole breadwinner in the family, and his paycheck was just enough to pay all the bills and put a little aside.

No matter how well my imagination works – and sometimes it works pretty well – it would take a monumental effort to imagine myself “a poor black kid.” I'd also need lots of solid data about the actual existence of actual poor black kids to inform that imagination.

It might also be useful to have a whole lot more information about brains and the differences among brains. It seems to me that there are profound differences among brains.

For example, some of us “get” literature and metaphor and allusion. Others of us don't get it, never will get it, no matter how much training we receive in reading metaphor. Those who don't get it can learn to see that there is something they don't get and even appreciate what it is that they don't get, but they'll never be great at reading metaphor and understanding and commenting on art – and therefore they shouldn't plan on making a living as a playwright or poet.

In the same way there are people for whom numbers have a reality, even a personality that they lack for me. I think of Mark Ahlseen, member of Bethany's faculty, who has an amazing facility with numbers. They clearly mean something to him that they don't mean to me. He understands numbers in a way I never will. I can barely keep my checkbook. Mark makes sense of where his money goes as if that paycheck were his good friend. I am convinced that it isn't just training – I can be better at understanding numbers, Mark likely can be better at understanding metaphor – but there is something inherent in each of us that is quite different. No matter how I try I could never be an accountant. No matter how hard Mark tries, I doubt that he'd ever be a poet.

So, if I were trying to imagine myself being something other than what I am I'd need to feed my imagination with lots of clear data about actual social conditions, about actual brains and their workings, about actual beings actually existing in a life that isn't mine.

Where Gene Marks goes off the rails is in his presumptions about the life of other people and how they would, could, and most importantly should behave in order to succeed in this world. Because his writing does not reflect his having invested himself in coming to understand how poor black kids actually live, the piece seems shallow and condescending.

It also seems like a call to behave, to willingly cooperate in being co-opted by “the system.” Behave, get good grades, learn technology – not so you can rule rather than be ruled – but so you can get a good job and be a good cog in the machine. Marks' call is not unlike Gingrich's desire to replace adult janitors with child janitors in training (which makes no sense, because you're going to be fired as soon as you become a competent adult janitor and earn a living wage).

For me, this raises the question of the purpose of education. Is education supposed to prepare us to be better workers or is education supposed to prepare us to think independently – independent of our job and the will of the state? In my view education should prepare us to resist the imposition of the will of the hegemon. But that's not my main point in this post.

My main point is that offering advice to others requires an empathic imagination. I need to see myself in others' circumstances.

What would I have been had my father not emigrated in the 1920's, lived through the depression by farming in Minnesota and the war by serving in the Army Air Corps? What would I have been had my father not left the family farm some twenty miles outside Haparanda, Sweden? I look at my cousins' lives in Sweden and realize that it is entirely possible that I would have become a child of the middle class. I might still have been a priest and a believer. I might have a darker, less optimistic view of the world if I had grown up in the “city in darkness” (that's the title of a prize winning novel about life in Haparanda).

I can sort of imagine what my life might have been like if I had grown up in the forests of the far north of Sweden. I can sort of imagine it because I've been there, seen the house, used the privy, walked the roads, slept in the summer night. But even then it is difficult to imagine.

How difficult is it then to cross the major lines of race, culture, religion and imagine ourselves members of another race, living in another culture believing in god in another set of thoughts with another revelation. Yes, I might imagine myself aspiring to a materially and even spiritually better life – but I don't think I could give advice to that alternative me, much less advise those who are actually living that life.

Time and Eternity II

Eternity seems to me to require an essential difference from time. As we sing in the old gospel hymn “Just a closer walk with thee:” “When my feeble days are o'er, Time for me shall be no more . . .” It seems to me that most evangelicals don't see eternity as a state of being when time is “no more.” Rather, evangelical eternity is time extended indefinitely.

Admittedly, talking about eternity as essentially different from time stretches our ability to say anything meaningful. Thus religious texts must talk about eternity – in so far as they talk about eternity – in terms of time. But if we take the metaphors of scriptures and attempt to treat them as concrete bits of data like “it's currently 8:30 pm and I am watching television” is to badly misunderstand and misuse the religious text.

Eternity, in order to be eternity must be different from extended time. But what then is it? It is qualitatively and quantitatively different. It has no quantity, and no duration. Time has duration. Eternity cannot have duration or it would simply be more time – which it cannot be. It has a quality different from the quality of being “in time.”

But what is it to be “in time” except to experience duration – more or less. Perhaps better said, being “in time” means that we are aware of duration and the passing of time. In eternity we are unaware of the passing of time because there is no time to pass.

Perhaps I've made a leap that is unjustified by tradition or scripture. Perhaps what the gospel writers meant by eternal life was simply a continuation of this earthly life on this earth and continuing it forever with a cognizance of the passing of time.

I'm working from memory, so I may get the details wrong and I don't claim that these are my final thoughts about the subject. But as I recall it, when the Christian scriptures talk about eternal life they do so in codes that are fairly obviously meant metaphorically. John's vision of the martyrs hidden under the altar is surely not meant to be taken literally. Martyrs keeping an unending vigil crouched or crammed or somehow confined under an altar and being forced to sing one line over and over and over again would seem to be not far from the kinds of punishment that good evangelicals reserve for the atheists and others who question their sadism.

John's vision of the heavenly city, one of my favorite passages from the Christian scriptures, likewise seems to me to force a metaphoric, synecdochal interpretation on the reader. If we take it literally, there isn't room in this puny city – this heavenly Jerusalem – for all the inhabitants that would have to be accommodated from Jesus' day to ours. It's rather like the dilemma of attempting to cram all the “living creatures” onto Noah's ark. They just wouldn't fit.

I don't want to drive myself batty by spending all my time trying to think thoughts that have been better thought by actual philosophers. Still, I've been pondering time and eternity for a long while, and never more seriously than these past six months.

It seems to me that the fundagelicals in particular have it all wrong. I don't think I have it all right, but I do think, no I'm certain, that the idea of a place of punishment where Christopher Hitchens is being fried over and over and over again – and is conscious of the continuation of his cooking is both a vile sadism and not eternity. Likewise, the notion of a place of bliss where we are with our unborn unformed unexperienced unchildren for an unending family reunion is pure sentimentality. I can understand why people find consolation in that idea, but I find it as much of a torture as the idea of hell. After all, what will the Duggers say to little Jubilee Shalom after the first “Hi, how are you, sorry you didn't get to live on earth?”

I love family reunions. But they have a end and I look forward to the end.