Worthwhile poetry

I really like Derrick Brown's poetry, and I found this online recently on Google Books. Very cool. Have a glance through!

Well...

Today was the perfect day. I rode my bike downtown and got coffee at Habit. Then I went to yoga and left feeling totally rejuvenated. I went to Hernandez's for Mexican food and then went to Street Level Espresso; I took my coffee to the public library and sat in the square reading. When I got home I found a package from Amazon had arrived and I spent the rest of the afternoon poring over a translation of the writings of St. Romanos. I'm just about to head off to work out and then go to a BBQ; this evening I'm going to a beach party.

Life is good!

ahem

This blog is seriously in need of love. I'm going to try to revive it in the next week. If that doesn't work I will probably just kill it.

The Shack

I recently read this book after a conversation with my Thursday breakfast group in which one of my friends told me I should read it. There is a lot of both uncritical praise and heated criticism of the book on the Internet, and my initial reaction was more along the lines of the latter, but I've checked myself in the last day or two and have decided to do my best to give the book a balanced review, after which I will shut up entirely about the book altogether.

The Shack is written by William Paul Young, a middle-aged, Canadian-born man who currently resides in Oregon, the setting of the book. Young was raised by missionary parents in Dutch New Guinea, and suffered sexual abuse as a youth at the hands of members of the church his parents were pastors of. He currently is not a member of a church, and says that institutional church "doesn't work for those of us who are hurt and those of us who are damaged." Young has certainly seen his share of damage and hurt, and caused a wee bit too; he cheated on his wife with her best friend when he was 38 and their marriage almost ended. He spent years recovering from the damage his marriage sustained. He sees himself as someone who thinks outside of 'the box', and feels his ideas don't mesh well with the teachings of the church, but has a strong sense of closeness to God, who he calls 'Papa'.

The plot of the Shack is fairly straightforward: The main character, Mack, loses his daughter Missie in a tragic kidnapping and murder while on a camping trip. Three years later, he receives a letter in his mailbox from God: "It's been a while since we talked. Meet me at the shack next weekend." The note is signed, "Papa," which is his wife's affectionate nickname for God. Mack arranges the trip without his wife's knowledge; she, by fluke, leaves town that weekend to visit the San Juan Islands with the kids. Mack makes the trip in a truck borrowed from his friend Willie (who it turns out is the narrator of the story and has the same name as the author). When Mack arrives at the shack in the midst of a snowstorm, he falls into a deep sleep and wakes up to find the snow gone; it is spring, and the shack has turned into a log cabin. He enters the cabin to find himself face to face with a black woman who introduces herself as 'Papa'. Sure enough, it is God the Father, who introduces him to Jesus, a homely Middle-Eastern man, and Sarayu (the Holy Spirit), who appears as a beautiful Asian woman. Mack spends the weekend eating, drinking, walking and talking with God as manifested in these three persons. The bulk of the book is a dialogue between Mack and the persons of the Trinity. During this weekend, Mack undergoes a process of personal transformation which involves forgiving himself, his father, his daughter's murderer and, most importantly, Papa. This forgiveness enables him to bond with Papa, and the resultant relationship with Papa makes him a new person. I will leave out a few of the crucial plot details for the sake of those who intend to read the book and haven't yet, but that is pretty much the gist.

I have to come out and say I thought the writing style was terrible. I was so sick of simile (i.e. 'like', 'as it were' and 'as if' used repetitively throughout) by the end of Chapter 1 that I wanted to strangle the writer. Things like, "His sadness swept over him LIKE a tidal wave," or "it was AS IF a giant hand had grabbed him and squeezed him in its icy fingers," just about drove me bonkers.

There are many reviews on the web already pointing out the theological errors in this book, and I believe they are most certainly accurate in their criticisms, and so I don't really wish to add my voice to their number because it would be a waste of time, although I am certainly concerned about what Young 'teaches'. Suffice it to say that the most important errors concern how Young understands the Trinity, the relationship between God's will and evil, and the nature of the Church. For your interest, I'll provide you with some links:

Tim Challies
Ben Witherington
Walter Henegar
And, just for a little balance, on the other side of the fence, the Internet Monk (although he too admits the presence of error)

Young has defended himself against theological criticisms by stating that he wrote a work of fiction and did not intend for the book to be a theological treatise. Most of his defenders (and he has many) repeat this line of defense as well, although they simultaneously state that this book has deconstructed every 'stereotype' they previously held of God. I find this defense interesting, for reasons I'll now state:

I've listened to interviews with Young and read his notes on the writing of the book. He says that his wife, a few years back, asked him to put his 'very different' ideas in book form so his family and friends could read it. Over the course of a few years and a few thousand train rides while commuting, he wrote pages upon pages of imagined conversations with God, the bulk of which found their way into the book. As these dialogues formed, he imagined a story into which these conversations could be situated, and the character of Mack was born, the details of his tragedy were conceived, and the story evolved into what it is today.

It would seem that, by Young's own admission, the story is secondary to the ideas presented in the conversations between Mack and God. These conversations read rather like a Socratic dialogue, in which Mack provides questions almost on cue to direct the line of conversation God follows. It is almost certain that God's words express Young's actual ideas about God. God's words about church, the egalitarian nature of the Trinity, predestination etc. very clearly reflect the ideas Young appears to hold (as evidenced by the writings and links on his blog, which seem to indicate that he holds a position commonly referred to as "Christian anarchism"). Young obviously does not believe in a God who forces His will upon the universe; he doesn't believe in the primacy of the Father in the Trinity; he doesn't believe in the institutional church or hierarchy therein; he doesn't believe God wills evil in any sense (ultimately or providentially) because God doesn't rule His creation coercively whatsoever (i.e. He doesn't force His will on anyone or anything). Whether one sides with Young here or not, it must at least be acknowledged that he is certainly arguing for his own position by rhetorically putting these arguments in the mouth of God. However, when his arguments are criticized, he neatly dodges the criticism by saying that the conversation is fictitious and not meant to be real theology.

I have to say that I find this technique to be a bit unfair. It would seem strange to take anything that Papa says seriously if none of it those words are meant to correspond to how God actually is. Yet this is actually what people are doing; they claim that their perceptions of God have radically altered. Why should this be, if Papa is not meant to truly be a reflection upon the God who is real? Young certainly believes that the impact of his book on the masses is "from the Lord". On his website he states that he wants people to get to know his "Papa". In the notes he writes about the book, he states that the book grew out of his reflections on the nature of God, and is meant to reflect his views. And yet, when criticism arises, he retreats neatly under the cover of 'fiction'.

However, I don't wish to say that the book has no value. It does indeed have great value, and I believe there is good reason for the popularity of the book (other than it being "from the Lord").

Value: The book compellingly describes the process of grieving a death, and compassionately leads the reader through the story of Mack's "Great Sadness", and vividly depicts the painful but necessary process of forgiveness. Indeed there are a few stereotypes of God that it successfully dispels: for example, Young reminds us that God is neither male nor female, as Papa states; rather, the mystery of human gender (meaning both genders) is derived from the nature of God in whose image both male and female are created. Young also vividly narrates a vision of the Holy Spirit's diversity and continuous labor. Further, God is indeed less interested in our performance than in our willingness to encounter Him honestly and openly as we are. God indeed desires true intimacy with us, and that is in fact what our souls were created for. This is the greatest value of the book, as Young vividly paints a picture of a God who is willing to sit and have coffee with His children, a God who is very much like the wonderful monks I love to visit in Gibsons; kind, loving, hospitable, approachable and certainly not afraid of my humanity.

Popularity: I believe the book taps into the popular dissatisfaction with institutional church, rules-based Christian religion, theology, seminaries, dogma etc. In other words, Young's audience is fed up with intolerant, ungracious and intellectual Christianity. This is surely nothing new; surely Papa is preaching to the choir of disgruntled Christians (and how well she does it! "You sho' don't trus' My ways, does you Mack!").

I do feel compassion for Young, as he reminds me of so many people in the church I grew up in. Our family, too, has experienced its fair share of spiritual abuse, particularly the abuse of spiritual authority and trust by pastors. We've been gossiped and hen-pecked to death. So many of my parents' friends no longer attend church, and I can't say I don't understand why they wouldn't want to. Nonetheless I see them spinning their wheels spiritually, and I do think dropping out of church, as much as it is a relief in the short term, only leads to death in the long term. Young's concept of church as community/family is certainly a good place to start, but it never moves beyond BBQs and coffee groups to something stable, Eucharistic and life-giving. Young's church is a spider's web of connections between cells. It fails to become a real body. And so finally I feel that I must speak the truth in love as much as I am able.

Young is a kind man and he means very well. I think that what he has written will provide many people with a way to express what they have been feeling now for a very long time, and I think it will lead many into truer and more beautiful relationship with God. However, I fear that in doing so, he is also reinforcing bad stereotypes of God and slagging both church and Scripture in the process, and what he's written will only widen the gulf between Christians and the Church, not bridge it. I only hope that those who take comfort and healing from the book (which is surely up to God in the end) will move past their pain and rediscover the joy of fellowship in the visible body of Christ, i.e. the local church (which is surely also God's responsibility).

Old Boats

Tonight I went down to the Inner Harbor with my dad and Mira to see the 'Classic Boats' moored there for the long weekend. The Causeway was brightly lit and festive, and through small portholes we could see people in tiny galleys clinking glasses as we walked along the dock. One man appeared on deck with a mandolin just as we passed and started flat-picking rapidly. The mixed smell of salt water and gas was depressing and yet also familiar and comforting.

Joshua Andrew Davidson is three months away from his descent through Mira's midsection into the wide world. He's rather active these days, and responds to a simple squeeze or tap. I am contemplating teaching him Morse code at this critical stage in his development.

I have learned the secrets of Romanian sausage-making recently, and am quite anxious to expand my sausage-making repertoire ASAP. Luckily I have a few friends who are also interested in this past-time, one of whom is a butcher's son, the other of whom is well-acquainted with a German sausage-maker. Me, I just want to do nice savory meat concoctions in sausage skins for cooking, nothing fancy.

I'm in the middle of Karamazov (Dostoevsky - 5 stars), Musicophilia (Sacks - 4 stars), and have just started The Shack (so far, 1.5 stars). If I weren't so blooming tired I would tell you more. Next blog post will be all about books.

Testimony

Yesterday I was strongly compelled, while at the bus stop, while listening to Chris Tomlin, to write a hallelujah post. I'm the type who would rather kvetch and criticize - or comment and analyze - than take the risk of giving thanks for the profound goodness that does in fact exist in the world, for the abundant grace in my own life. And so here I go, not trying to sound smart I hope, but hopefully to simply say in my own way, "Thanks be to God."

I have a son. I have not held him in my arms, but I have seen him on the ultrasound screen, moving around and kicking. He has a name, which you will all know soon. His mother is a good woman, my beloved wife, and although we have been through a valley this year, we are truly learning to be happy together.

I have an amazing job taking care of disabled people, which teaches me every day that I am weak as they are weak, and so I should not fear weakness in others, because their weakness helps me to face my own, and in my weakness God's strength is proven. And glory be, I manage to work 18 hours per week and still have every day available to me for indulging in creative life.

I have a wife. Mira is beautiful, generous, interesting, intelligent and sincere; I love her and am grateful for her. She is much more organized than me, and is braver than I in the face of economic hardship, the threat of which keeps me awake at night often. She often makes me laugh and does not pester me too much; who could ask for more? She loves me though I do not exactly deserve to be loved. She does not point this out, God bless her!

I have a life full of good memories thus far: youth group, summer camps, churches, church bands, clusters of friends laughing in pubs, meaningful community prayer, worship services on beaches. Solitary moments on beaches with guitars, songs I have written, jam sessions, good beer and quality tobacco.

Every so often I have a moment where I express exactly the words I have been hearing inside of me (heart, head, where?) and I think that I might one day be able to hear the voice of the Lord. These are truly wonderful moments of which it is impossible to properly speak.

I have a few good friends who I manage to see often, who constantly nourish me. I have dear friends who live too far away for my liking, and whom I speak to not nearly as often as I would like, but the conversations I have with them are always precious and life-giving.

I have music and words flowing through me always, and they are like blood to me. Without this flow I do not think I could live and call myself a human being.

I will close with the words from an Orthodox prayer:

Glory to You for calling me into being.
Glory to You, showing me the beauty of the universe.
Glory to You, spreading out before me heaven and earth, like the pages in a book of eternal wisdom.
Glory to You for Your eternity in this fleeting world.
Glory to You for Your mercies, seen and unseen.
Glory to You, through every sigh of my sorrow.
Glory to You for every step of my life’s journey,for every moment of glory.
Glory to You, O God, from age to age.

Fathers

1.

Today I realized that, just as most children entertain the idea that their father is able to protect them from anything, just as they believe that their parents know everything, my son is probably going to think this way about me. This prospect bothers me. I am not omniscient or powerful; I am barely scratching the surface of what it means to be wise; I have only a small idea of what it might mean to be strong. And even as I begin to engage the possibility of human wisdom and strength, I am more intensely reminded of my stupidity and weakness.

I don't want my son to have false ideas about me. While in many ways I am glad that I had the illusion of safety as a child, it is somewhat disconcerting to know today that my father was as weak then as I am now. It was somewhat scary to realize, as I did with a loud shock one day in my twenties, that my dad had some opinions that I didn't think were particularly well-founded. Similarly, I have recently come to 'emotional grips' with the fact that my pastors have always been broken men.

It's one thing to believe, as I always have, that 'humans will let you down at some point, but the Lord never fails'. It's quite another thing to experience the actual failures of others, especially when those others happen to be your parents, spouse, friends, mentors and pastors. While the theoretical knowledge of human sin is distressing in a sort of boring-but-uncomfortable way, the experience of it is often appalling.

2.

I just finished reading the (fictional) story of Father Sergius (Tolstoy), born Stepan Kasatsky, who becomes a monk after his fiancee, the Countess Korotkova, is unfaithful to him (with the Tsar, of all people). He is tonsured as a monk and given the name Sergius, and earns a reputation as a holy man who has overcome all the temptations common to man, particularly lust. At one point, as a hermit, he is seduced by a woman who comes to his cave and asks to stay the night; he immediately removes himself from the sleeping area and spends the night in the woodshed. She begins to moan and undress; he is overcome with desire and, in his desperation to overcome temptation, he cuts his own finger off. After this incident, he begins to heal people and earns a reputation as a wonderworker. However, he becomes proud of his holiness, and eventually is seduced by a young woman and spends the night with her. The next morning, he casts off his monastic cloak, having broken his vows, and he cuts his hair and re-enters the world. He wrestles with despair and the feeling of failure, and just as he is contemplating suicide, he has a dream where he remembers, from his childhood, his cousin Pashenka, and is overcome with the sense that his salvation lies with her; he wakes and sets off to find her. When they meet, he confesses what he has done and she receives the news with grace, although she is shocked, having thought him to be a holy man. She gives him food and drink, and tells him how she has lived for the past years: patient wife to a violent man, caretaker of sick children, music teacher, reluctant Christian. She feels herself to be an insincere Christian, although she has lived a virtuous life.

After Stepan takes leave of her, he says the following to himself:

So that is what my dream meant! Pashenka is what I ought to have been but failed to be. I lived for men on the pretext of living for God, while she lived for God imagining that she lives for men. Yes, one good deed--a cup of water given without thought of reward--is worth more than any benefit I imagined I was bestowing on people. But after all was there not some share of sincere desire to serve God?...yes, there was, but it was all soiled and overgrown by desire for human praise.

And he concludes:

Yes, there is no God for the man who lives, as I did, for human praise. I will now seek Him!

3.

I am almost 30, and I find it depressing to look at my life and add up the little I have accomplished, compared to what others my age have achieved in terms of education, creative productivity, contribution to important academic conversations of our time, humanitarian work and financial success. Nobody is going to write anything about me. Perhaps my son will remember me well as a good dad. This is rather empty measuring, however, and as Fr. Sergius points out, is practical atheism. Those who live for the good faith of others and those who put their good faith in others might as well not bother with God, for they have spoiled whatever faith they might offer Him. This is the central point of the gospel, and it is thus vital to our life in Christ. Enemies will certainly strike at us, and we will most certainly fall. And whatever I teach my son, I hope I teach him forgiveness, so that he may know there is a merciful God, and he may learn to seek Him when I fall and when he falls.