Flippant Friday: theology, pretty boys and, yes, more vampires

What would happen if I tried to write something on here every day? Would there be a point? I don’t know, but I feel an edgy twisty sort of urge to write something today, and you, dear readers, benefit.

This morning while I was working on a really dull updating project, I listened to Peter Rollins being interviewed by Rob Bell. I love Peter Rollins. He’s my favorite theologian, primarily because he’s the only theologian I’ve almost read. Actually, I’ve also almost read McLaren, but you see Rollins has an Irish accent. Everyone should talk about God with an Irish accent. I love English accents, but theology just sounds softer and more approachable with a brogue.

In general I avoid reading theology and philosophy because my brain is already fully occupied pondering such things as what’s going to happen to Sookie Stackhouse and her vampire friends next. This would be a good point at which to insert a completely unnecessary picture of Alexander Skarsgard, because that’s how my brain works, skittering across the superficial.



What Peter says about doubt resonates deeply with me, and it’s also really irritating, because resonating carries a frisson of being on the verge of an answer, but of course there aren’t answers. It’s the same tickly feeling you get from reading a koan. I also think that any time I ever want to experience true conviction of sin, I only need to listen to him talk about how we reveal our true selves in our material existence. My inner world has never felt more phony. Hell, here’s a photo of Pete, too.

I’ve also been “reading” (note those quotes – reading nonfiction involves a lot of skimming and skipping back and forth between chapters) The Upside of Irrationality. So far I’ve learned that people mate roughly within their own range of attractiveness – 10s with 10s (for example, Alexander Skarsgard and Kate Bosworth, Peter Rollins and God), 4s with 4s and so on. Since everyone prefers 10s, those of us in the lower ranges have to reprioritize the traits we look for in a mate, you know, like booting “sense of humor” up over “six-pack abs.” I found this mildly depressing.

In other news, I’m eagerly awaiting the release of the film Let Me In. The book is awesome and creepy. I saw the Swedish version of the film (Let the Right One In), which was probably great, but we somehow got hold of a dubbed version, so we had to listen to bad American voice talent, which really distracted me from the brutality, blood and anatomical anomalies. Here’s the trailer for the new American version.



And there you have today's edition. Now I need to locate some fair-trade coffee and a community.

Me, Myself and I

When the child was a child,
Berries filled its hand as only berries do,
and do even now,
Fresh walnuts made its tongue raw,
and do even now,
it had, on every mountaintop,
the longing for a higher mountain yet,
and in every city,
the longing for an even greater city,
and that is still so...

~Peter Handke

Besides watching episodes of this fascinating BBC teen drama Skins on Netflix (you'll be glad to know I'm using my time so wisely), I've been slowing turning over various thoughts. My mind is not like a rock tumbler - the stones don't come out polished and shiny. My thoughts are more like the clothes you forgot in the dryer, so wrinkled you need to put them back in the wash.

The wrinkled laundry includes: ambition and desire, artistic production, doubt and longing, God and creativity, God and desire, emotions versus values, and my stupid tooth. I'll get that last out of the way first - I had a root canal and now another tooth hurts. All expressions of deep sympathy are welcome. On the positive: I now have a bottle of Lortab.

I keep thinking about that Insurrection event. I've already mentioned Peter Rollins' take on doubt, which I found incredibly comforting and challenging at the same time. I've been practicing not leaping in to fix negative feelings. You know how therapists will tell you to rewrite the tape or recognize the distortion and rebut it? Well, I'm giving that up. My thoughts and emotions are what they are and if I try to correct them at every turn I'm just getting more enmeshed in myself. So, no beating up doubt with the cudgels of faith. I'm tired of always trying to soothe myself. No wonder my memory is crap - my eyes are pretty firmly fixed on myself.

At one point, he said something along the lines of "I desire your desire." At the moment he was alluding to the human need for approval, love, and admiration, but it made me think of God's desire for us. If we yearn for Him, he must also yearn for us. I guess that's Christianity 101, but it isn't something I get. It's like doubt, which we say is important and understandable but we really just tuck it away with the ugly Christmas present from Aunt Agnes. We act as if God were a frigid, purse-lipped missionary who drops by to say the occasional hello, leave some pamphlets, and check the sheets. Or perhaps as the smug and glib CEO who drops by on a Sunday morning to graciously receive our applause and drop a few inspirational words in our ear in return for dippy praise music. If God wants us, really wants us, that's kind of...weird. Why would He?

Desire, ambition, yearning, creativity. I desire your desire. I am reminded of that interminable book I read many years ago by Deleuze and Guattari, which spoke of desiring machines. I only read it because I had a crush on my lit crit professor. It was over my head, or full of crap, or both - something about production and schizophrenic capitalism. It was very French. But that in turn made me think of a friend who told me she got turned on listening to a lecture about Paul Ricoeur. I guess we all have our kinks. I tried reading Ricoeur and it did nothing for me. Which made me think about the excitement of ideas, because I actually totally get what she means. Why else did I have a crush on my lit crit prof anyway? He wasn't all that cute, but he was a purveyor of interesting ideas. That's why we have celebrities that people obsess about. If you hear music that completely floors you, that breaks open your heart, and there in front of you is the musician, that musician becomes the most desirable person on earth. You would like to be their best friend ever, or have their babies, or just a few hours in a motel, whatever. You think that surely God swept through that person, and maybe He's waiting there for you. Or at least I think like that. I have the urge to yank the divine out of the people I lust after admire.


He also talked about how the stories we tell don't always match up with how we actually are. The way we appear online, but also in person, is highly edited. Of course. Otherwise everyone would hate us. I have one story at work: straightforward creedal Christian, dry sense of humor, something of a scandalous past that I've fully repented. I know the lingo and I can use it. With others I would downplay the Christian part, because I'm way too cool for that. It's just decoration. In general I want people to think I'm witty, intelligent, a good writer, insightful. I'd rather be smart and clever than nice, but I would rather be nice than contradictory. I want everyone to like me. I desire your desire, only that sounds as if I want to sleep with you, which I don't. Well, some of you maybe. I reveal a lot about my weaknesses and foibles on here. But, in fact, I am the definition of "disingenuous." It is, I find, quite easy to deliver over parts of myself; I can transform them in the writing, give them a bit of panache, and it's all about me. I've always been fascinated with me, even when I've loathed my very existence.

Peter mentioned Columbo in connection with making the story told match the events that actually happened. Well, Columbo reminded me of the great film Wings of Desire, in which Peter Falk appears pretty much as his TV persona. There - desire again, the desire of angels to experience being human, which is the desire of humans to experience being human, the suspicion that this world should be heaven, because the leaves turn brilliant colors, and cats sleep in the sun, and there are paintings by Caravaggio and Rothko and poetry by Rumi, John Donne and Mary Oliver and music by Bach and Schoenberg and Owen Pallett. Shiraz and Chardonnay, strong coffee, chocolate chip cookies, romance and love and friendship. Heaven should be that, for everyone.

But the problem is, I'm all talk, and I really have to change that.

The Human Abstract

Pity would be no more,
If we did not make somebody Poor:
And Mercy no more could be,
If all were as happy as we;

And mutual fear brings peace;
Till the selfish loves increase.
Then Cruelty knits a snare,
And spreads his baits with care.

He sits down with holy fears,
And waters the ground with tears:
Then Humility takes its root
Underneath his foot.

Soon spreads the dismal shade
Of Mystery over his head;
And the Caterpillar and Fly,
Feed on the Mystery.

And it bears the fruit of Deceit,
Ruddy and sweet to eat;
And the Raven his nest has made
In its thickest shade.

The Gods of the earth and sea,
Sought thro’ Nature to find this Tree
But their search was all in vain:
There grows one in the Human Brain

~William Blake

In which Peter Rollins totally rocks, Dear Husband surprises me, and Netflix provides palliative care

I would like to say that during my blog absence I was pondering the deeper mysteries of life. What actually happened is that we received a CD from Netflix that allows us to download movies via our Wii. I've had a candy box of movies open before me, and I'm taking a bite out of everything. Don't bother watching The Passengers, by the way - totally lame. I am now working my way through the BBC teen drama series Skins.

On a more serious note, Dear Husband and I went to the Atlanta stop of Peter Rollins' Resurrection=Insurrection tour. I like Peter Rollins very much, and I'm still thinking about that event. What I found very profound was his statement that it is in the very midst of experiencing God's absence that God is most present. He used Jesus' "Why have you forsaken me" as an example. He also mentioned that churches don't appreciate doubt - it's all happy clappy affirmation. I wrote down this not quite direct quote: "Church as a desert in your oasis, not an oasis in the desert of your existence." I think this is connected with his statement that "God is the wound that births your yearning." Get rid of the painful yearning and you've pushed God aside. He also described how often we say doubt is important and necessary but in fact we let the institution believe for us. Oh, yeah, direct hit there. Oh, and then he answered complaints that his thinking would lead to denying the resurrection. He said that yes, he denies the resurrection every time he walks by someone who needs help without doing anything. Wow.

A little frustrating to me is the fact that Dear Husband actually cornered him and talked to him at length, whereas I only managed a quick "thanks oh so much I'm an idiot who thinks you are oh so swell and really hot and jeepers you actually gaze into people's eyes when you talk to them which is completely rattling me so I'll be off now." Uh, yeah. I'm a total dork around cute men with Irish accents.

Now, Dear Husband has always been the conservative, orthodox bulwark of our home. We've clashed on many an occasion. I've fussed and fumed about penal substitution and inerrancy and the focus on personal salvation. Well, you think you know someone and then they go and read Brian McLaren. All of a sudden half (or more)of what he has up to this point believed has been overturned and replaced with, well, pretty much what I believe. This is not as comforting as you might think (see above about letting institutions believe on your behalf). I've rather relied on Dear Husband as a foil to my fanciful theological pondering, attacks of doubt and general faithlessness. Now he's gone all emergent and progressive.

Easter itself was not quite as cool as the Rollins event, but the sun shone through the church windows (oh God I am so happy to go to a church that actually has windows), and we rang bells and shook key chains and some of the ladies had fantastical hats like something out of Dr. Suess. But this isn't our church. We don't have a church.

Now, I wonder what's on Netflix...

Resurrection = Insurrection: in which I prove once again that I'm incapable of serious thought

I think this floated by in my twitter stream. I don't know much about Peter Rollins, except that he wrote a book called The Orthodox Heretic and a book of parables. I've been on his blog a few times, and thought I was out of my depth. But, you know, it was hard to pass up a teaser like "Resurrection = Insurrection" (the tag line for his blog is "To believe is human; to doubt divine", which makes me want to get hold of his book). So I pressed play.




Resurrection = Insurrection

Great stuff - so much more interesting than the Westminster Catechism.

Now, what do you think my first thought was when I played this?

Do you want to know?

C'mon, guess.

Hit play yourself. You don't have to watch the whole thing (though it would be well worth your time).

*drums fingers*

*whistles*

Well?

My first thought was "Wow, he's hot." Yep. Here's this theologian delivering a really great message about Christ and transformation and my first thought is that he's cute and his accent slays me. My second thought was "Why the hell are they filming him leaning against a wall?" What is it with religious films and funky camera hijinks? I watched a series of videos in which the camera was positioned so that every speaker delivered his message to the air on my left. The director was determined that you were never going to see the speaker head-on. And then of course there are the Nooma videos, which I love but, you know, they have that self-conscious look to them, the "I'm a Christian but I'm not that sort of Christian who decorates with Precious Moments figurines and Thomas Kinkade prints." Which I fully appreciate, don't get me wrong. I'm a snob.

I'm not just a snob; I'm a shallow snob.

But, seriously, what he says about the narrative self and the true self has me thinking. It's a topic I've pondered a lot, particularly since I have one deliberately evasive "good Christian" narrative self for work and another for play and another when I want to appear intellectual (I'm so not spinning that narrative at the moment) and so on. If there is a true self (wow, that sounds really weird to someone raised on postmodernism) I'm not sure who she is. I don't think that I demonstrate love, unless love for my family counts. That seems very insular. I know I'm not participating in a global transformation, important as I think it is. When you get right down to it, I'm self-serving, self-focused, and self-centered, all of which I try to spin into amusing commentary.

Ha! And here's Lent right around the corner...