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Last Sunday of the Month

Sunday 28 February 2021

The last Sunday of the month means only one thing: Polish Mass. Of course, it’s only been Polish Mass in name and spirit for several years now. The local parish priest conducts the Mass, and he’s from Columbia. He’s learned a little Polish for the Mass itself, but otherwise, he’s a complete non-Polish-speaker. The “Polish Mass” part comes from the community that gathers.

This week, though, there was a little something different: the new parish center, complete with gymnasium, is now open. Several families headed over after Mass to try it out.

Dinner

Saturday 27 February 2021

Yes, that’s right — cinnamon rolls.

February Evening

Thursday 25 February 2021

I head out for a walk with the dog as I listen to one of Sam Harris’s latest editions of the Waking Up podcast in which he discusses the nature of time with physicist Frank Wilczek. We like to think of time as this little moving slice of now that’s passing through the past into the future, but it’s really not like that at all. Time in a sense is the measure of change, and basically clocks things that change predictably and regularly against which we mark the seeming passing of time. In that sense, then, everything that changes is a clock, Wilczek points out.

Everything is a clock. I stopped in mid-stride to think about that. It’s so profound and yet so simple at the same time, an observation that’s been staring us in the face all our lives but eluding us at the same time. Simple, elegant.

As I continue my walk, I pass a man standing in his garage talking on the phone. I raise my hand in greeting. It’s a Southern thing — we wave at everyone — but he doesn’t wave back. “Perhaps he didn’t see me,” I think. Then, noticing some of the flags hanging in his garage indicating a political persuasion diametrically opposed to mine, a little thought experiment begins in my head. “What if we could read each other’s minds? We’d know where the other stands on so many issues that we otherwise keep to ourselves. We’d really, truly know one another. Would we be less likely to wave at each other?” And that’s a terrifying thought.

About this time, I grow tired of the podcast and switch to a playlist I’ve created called “Nostalgia” — songs to induce just that. The first song up: “Private Universe” by Crowded House. What a strangely perfect song. It’s not at all about the private universe I’ve been contemplating, but what a coincidence. Private universes — the physicists’ idea of a multiverse is a reality, because we all live in our own private universe. It sounds lonely, but it’s much more comfortable for us to live in these little walled-off universes because they afford some privacy that a non-private, evening-walk-thought-experiment mind-reading universe would render impossible. Even if that means we never truly know one another, it’s better in our private universes. We’re passing our experiences and memories, emotions and impulses through our own filters as we share them with others who then pass them through their interpretive filters. There are so many layers separating us that it’s a miracle we can claim to know anyone at all.

But there’s a hint of tragedy in this, because even with those with whom we’d be most willing to share such a non-private universe, it’s impossible. I will never truly know my children because of all the things they don’t, won’t, or can’t share with me, and they will never really know me. In a sense, we live with strangers, each and every one of us. The only thing we truly have in common is the fate that awaits us all — when the clock that is our body wears down and stops recording time for us as conscious individuals and begins to be a measure of unconscious decay.

It’s about this time that the next song comes on: Billy Joel’s “Lullabye (Goodnight My Angel).” This song has always made me think of Natalia, a student I taught in Poland who died before her senior year in the summer of 1999. “That’s almost 22 years ago now,” I think. “Had she not died, she’d now be old enough to have children older than she was when she died.” The song winds down:

Someday we’ll all be gone
But lullabies go on and on
They never die
That’s how you
And I will be

How did I never notice that nod to mortality at the end of the song? And how is it that a talk about physics can end with such nostalgia? I feel like I should have an answer, but I also feel like none is needed. I’ve done what I set out to do: record some thoughts I had one February evening as I walk our silly dog, and that’s really all this is for. Billy Joel writes his songs that will never die; I write a blog a decade after they ceased being hip.

Cliche

Wednesday 24 February 2021

In class today, we went over formal voice, and one of the rules I presented concerned the avoidance of cliche. “Avoid them like the plague” is the old joke — they didn’t get it because they’d never heard the cliche.

Cliches are a little depressing: they’re victims of their own popularity. Someone comes up with a clever metaphor or conceit, then everyone wants to use it. Suddenly, it’s everywhere, and just like that, a clever saying has become a dreaded cliche. Even “tired old cliche” is cliche.

When it came time for creative writing at the end of the day, I gave them a simple prompt: “Based on what we talked about in English, do the opposite. Try to come up with a text (about anything) that is filled with as many cliches and colloquialisms as you can.”

Here was my effort:

So, I lost track of time when thinking about cliches. Initially, I was like a kid in a candy store when the teacher told us, “Try to be like, ‘I’m such a bad writer’ and include a lot of cliches.” But I feel like a fish out of water trying to write badly. I always feel like Big Brother is watching me when I write. (I guess you can read between the lines on that.)

Writing in cliches is a snap in a way because it’s just a matter of time before anything and everything turns into a cliche. Soon it’s going to require nerves of steel to avoid cliches because everything can become a cliche. Sure, it’s likely every saying lives in heart-stopping fear that everyone will fall head over heels for it and use it all the time, thus turning it into a cliche. At that point, the saying, now a cliche, slinks off with its tail between its legs when it should be going around without a care in the world. After all, even if it’s ugly as sin, it’s not the cliche’s fault that everyone uses it. I’m just saying the saying shouldn’t cry over spilled milk. I mean, the writing is on the wall, and it’s the thought that counts.

And I’m sure some sayings just want to go straight for the cliche phase, but better late than never. They want to move right past that fresh-as-a-daisy, I’m-a-new-saying phase and straight to the tired old cliche phase.

Whatever your view on cliches, I guess we should all just live and let live.

That’s 19 cliches and 8 colloquialisms.

The Inevitable Move

Tuesday 23 February 2021

A few days ago, Fr. Mike, on day 50 of his Bible in a Year podcast read Exodus 37 and 38 as well as Leviticus 26. The passages in Exodus all had to do with sacrificial offerings, but the chapter from Leviticus was, in many ways, the most troubling passage in the whole Bible so far. It is, in short, a list of the punishments the god of Old Testament will mete out on Israel if they abandon the proper worship of him, but it presents such a conditional love, which bears all the hallmarks of an abusive relationship that I don’t see how someone can read these chapters and not absolutely cringe.

It begins with a promise of what will happen if they do remain faithful:

“If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them, then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. And your threshing shall last to the time of vintage, and the vintage shall last to the time for sowing; and you shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land securely. And I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid; and I will remove evil beasts from the land, and the sword shall not go through your land. And you shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. (Leviticus 26.3-7)

One might question whether this god would be upset to discover that people were worshiping him because they want all the benefits, but this supposedly omniscient being should know that and perhaps work that into the passage. “You must honestly love me and worship me.” Something like that. Still, that’s a trivial point compared to what happens later in the chapter.

By verse 14 it turns quite troubling:

“But if you will not hearken to me, and will not do all these commandments, if you spurn my statutes, and if your soul abhors my ordinances, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant, I will do this to you: I will appoint over you sudden terror, consumption and fever that waste the eyes and cause life to pine away. (Leviticus 26.14-16)

Fr. Mike, in his commentary, explains, “There are consequences for actions. […] He hands them over because he loves them.” If this doesn’t call Israel back to their god, Fr. Mike explains, then their god will let more stuff happen to them until they do turn back to him. “The whole point of this is not punishment,” Fr. Mike assures us. “The whole point of this is rescue.” This is the first problematic idea, and it hits at one of the biggest issues I’ve had with Christianity for some time now. “Rescue” suggests the following:

  • Force A
  • affects entity X
  • and entity Y somehow stops force A by
    • getting rid of force A,
    • removing entity X from the effects of force A, or
    • mitigating the effects of force A.

Within all of this is the idea that force A is separate from entity X doing the rescuing. If I’m beating my son and then stop beating him, I’m not rescuing him. If I’m holding my daughter’s head underwater and then stop holding her head underwater, I’m not rescuing her. It’s only a rescue if someone or something else is doing it, and I somehow stop it.

The problem with Christianity is simple: this god is the one doing the beating; this god is the one holding heads underwater. How so? Simple: Christians frame all this “rescue” as a rescue from the consequences of sin. But the god of Christianity defined sin. He designed the consequences of sin (and everything else) by creating the world as he did. He’s ultimately the victimizer and the savior. That’s not rescuing. That’s a sick relationship.

Putting that aside, though, it’s disturbing to look at the consequences listed in Leviticus, through verse 45:

  • I will bring more plagues upon you, sevenfold as many as your sins.
    This is not a consequence. This is God responding to one’s actions, and with a sort of severity that might even be rare in the mafia.
  • I will let loose the wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number, so that your ways shall become desolate.
    Who is really paying the price if the children are getting devoured by wild beasts? And what kind of relationship does this inspire? We’re just cowering in fear of what this being might do to us.
  • I will walk contrary to you in fury, and chastise you myself sevenfold for your sins. You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters.
    What!? God here is saying he will, in fury, bring such desolation that the Israelites will turn to cannibalism. Will he be like with Pharaoh in Egypt? Remember: several times Pharaoh agreed to let the Israelites go, but according to Exodus, “God hardened his heart” so that he would change his mind. Is God going to harden the hearts of the Israelites to make them turn to cannibalism, or will things just get so bad that they won’t feel they have any choice? (And when would a parent ever really feel that way?)
  • And I will devastate the land, so that your enemies who settle in it shall be astonished at it.
    The implication earlier is that Israel’s enemies will do all this destroying, but here it seems to indicate that God doing it. After all, the enemies come and are astonished, presumably at the brutality which has swept through the land.
  • And as for those of you that are left, I will send faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; the sound of a driven leaf shall put them to flight, and they shall flee as one flees from the sword, and they shall fall when none pursues.
    Again, God does this, not the enemies. He seems to be suggesting that he’ll make them such cowards that they’ll be eradicated.

How does Fr. Mike explain all this? He makes the move I’ve been waiting for him to make the whole time, really the only move he can make: The fact that it doesn’t seem right is our fault. “We just need to trust God and understand that there is an answer to all these questions,” he argues:

This is the discipline of a father, and this is so important to us. You know, when we approach scripture, and we don’t trust God, we see these things and go, “Wow, that’s crazy. I’m done with this. Day 50, that’s it. I’m out.” But when we approach the word of God, and we have that spirit of trust where it’s like, “Okay, if I don’t understand this, it must be me that doesn’t understand this.”

If I begin to be suspicious of God, and I say, “Wait, let me pause. God is a good dad. And while I don’t understand what he’s doing here or not doing there, I have to look at him, look at life, look at myself through the lens of ‘Okay, God is a good dad.’ So why would a good Dad allow these punishments to come upon those who are disobedient?” Well, because, like any good dad, like any good parent, I want more for you than just your comfort. I want more for you than for you to just go about your life and do whatever it is you want to do. I want the best for you.

So this is God, who is the good dad. And he says, “I want the absolute best for my children, so if they refuse to walk in my ways and walk contrary to me, here’s the consequences. Because I want to bring them back to my heart.”

But how do we know that this god is a “good dad,” as Fr. Mike suggests? It hits at the very heart of the question of theism: how do we know anything about this supposed being? All Christians claim to know about him comes from three sources:

  1. Personal experiences with what we call the divine.
  2. What the church teaches about this being (and here I have in mind the Catholic idea that the Bible and the church are equal authorities).
  3. What the Bible says about this thing we call the divine.

Personal experiences are just that: personal. If you have a warm feeling in your heart, that’s all you know. To attribute it to the Holy Spirit or anything else is interpretation and therefore highly subjective. In this sense, the believer is putting faith in herself and her interpretation of her inner experience. The other two sources, though, inform that faith.

What the church says about its god is just what other people say about, and so ultimately the believer is putting her faith in these other people.

The Bible is just a book. Nothing more, nothing less. If believers purport it to come from the hand of their god, there should be evidence of some sort in the book itself. The safest way to approach it, then, is to look at the Bible and ask, “What sort of god is presented in its pages?” From this reading in Leviticus, it seems a stretch to say that this being is in any sense “good.” He’s vindictive, envious, and petty at best and ghastly, wretched, and unspeakably cruel at worst.

So where does Fr. Mike get this “good dad” stuff? Simple: it’s his working preconception. He’s making assumptions about the Bible before he reads the Bible, and he’s suggesting believers do the same. And to be fair, what else are they going to do? If they’re committed to his idea that their god is good, they have to approach it with that assumption, and no one really wants to worship an evil god. In addition, if they were raised in the church, they were taught that their god is a good and loving god long before they can read the Bible for themselves and see all these terrors.

It is here that the true horror of the situation enters, for it is here that believers being to look like spouses in an abusive relationship. Take what Fr. Mike said about his god and reframe it: imagine that Fr. Mike is an abused wife and his god is the husband:

If I begin to be suspicious of my husband, and I say, “Wait, let me pause. My husband is a good husband. And while I don’t understand what he’s doing here [with all the unspeakable abuse mentioned earlier] or not doing there, I have to look at him, look at life, look at myself through the lens of ‘Okay, my husband is a good a good husband.’ So why would a good husband allow these punishments me? It must be because I am disobedient.” Well, because, like any good husband, he wants more for me than just my comfort. He wants more for me than for me to just go about my life and do whatever it is I want to do. He wants the best for me.

That is classic victim-blaming. Worse: it’s victim self-blame. “My husband beats me because I deserve it. It’s for a greater good, and if I don’t understand that, it’s just because I’m not as smart as he is.”

If any of our friends spoke this way, we would encourage her to go to a shelter immediately with her children. But Christians simply stay in this relationship. They believe they deserve it because of Original Sin and their own short-comings. How many times have I heard Christians talk about how wretched they are? “Amazing grace, that saved a wretch like me.”

Most Christians would respond, I think, by saying, “That’s the Old Covenant. Look at how beautiful the New Covenant is! That’s where I draw my faith. Jesus saved us from all of that!” Yet the response to this is so simple that even a child can make it — and has. “But that’s the same god!” These are not different entities. The Christian doctrine of the trinity paints them into a corner, and they fail to see that it’s happened. In doing so, it makes the relationship even more toxic.

I, for one, got out of that relationship, and I feel so much better for it.

Arrival in Knoxville

Friday 19 February 2021

We made it to Knoxville for the next tournament. Two weekends in a row — that would be exhausting if K and I didn’t split the duty.

On the way here, L and I played music for each other: she selected one song, then I selected the next. I think we were both trying to find something the other liked. I liked a few of her songs; she “mehed” most of mine.

“I’m into alternative and indie stuff,” she said. And then very little of what she played sounded like what I would have considered “alternative and indie.” That was one of my staple genres growing up, so I played some R.E.M. for her. They are the godfathers of alternative. “Meh.”

At one point, she claimed I didn’t choose my song quickly enough and so that meant she got two songs in a row.

“That’s fine,” I said.

My next song: Genesis’s “The Musical Box,” which clocks in at just over ten minutes.

She was shocked and aghast.

“Next I’ll go with Pink Floyd’s ‘Dogs,'” I suggested, “which is 17 minutes long. After that perhaps Genesis’s ‘Supper’s Reader,’ which is 24 minutes long, and then maybe ‘Echoes’ by the Floyd again, which is 23 minutes long. We’ll end it with Jethro Tull’s ‘Thick as a Brick,’ which is a full album — one song, 44 minutes.” She was horrified.