Zero Sum Politics and Silly Comparisons

My wife and I canceled our cable subscription a few years ago and it has allowed me to miss so much of what qualifies as political reporting in our news-obsessed, culture war era. Now, living in a long-term hotel with free cable it is all coming back to me how disgusting our political discourse really is.

The other morning I was at the gym running on the treadmill before work and Fox News, that paragon of journalistic integrity, was broadcasting their morning show. The topic of debate concerned the new law in New York City, put forth with all the earnestness of a wealthy and out of touch billionaire, concerning the size of soda to be sold in the five boroughs. Most of you are probably familiar with the ban and have an opinion on the subject, but the ace team at Fox News had this question to ask: “Why is Mayor Bloomberg so concerned with what people drink while the economy is such a mess?” To me, this is a bit like asking, “Why would I want a new pair of pants when I already have plenty of books?” In other words, what in the hell do these things have to do with each other and why are they treated as a zero sum decision? Is it not possible for the mayor of New York, the grandest city in the world, to be concerned with multiple things all at the same time? Don’t we want this out of our leaders? Sure, we want our political figures to be greatly concerned with the state of the economy in times of recession, but we can’t possibly imagine that is the only thing that ought to occupy their time.

Coming from the other side of the aisle, I have seen this very same move in debates about forcing religious organizations to provide birth control or restricting access to abortion. People say, “If these lawmakers who are so concerned with restricting women’s reproductive rights (a marvelous Orwellian phrase) were half as concerned with the economy we would be trying to figure out ways to spend all of the money we would have.” (I saw almost this exact poster on facebook the other day.) Even if you think lawmakers have no business deciding things like whether or not or when or at what age women should be allowed to have an abortion, can you really believe that if the culture war issue of abortion were dropped tomorrow that our country’s lawmakers, unburdened by the unconscionable amount of time they spent trying to force women into chastity belts, would with their free time fix the broken economy, stop global warming in its tracks, and unite the world in a Hallelujah chorus?

My point here is simply that politics is not a zero sum game in every situation. Also, there are things that are just as valuable as the economy. The idea that human flourishing—something I hope both sides could agree is roughly the goal of government—is purely a matter of economics is stupid. To restrict the goal of government to balancing books or redistributing wealth or getting out of the way and letting the omniscient Invisible Hand of the Free Market run things is not something either side even wants out of government. They only want it when the other side does something that pisses them off. Conservatives would be fine with the government ignoring the economy for a spell while they passed sweeping reforms on abortion. Likewise, I heard few liberals complain about the Obama administration ignoring the plight of the economy to force through health care legislation.

And, really, that’s fine. Conservatives should be allowed to be OK with thinking about stuff other than the economy; liberals should have the right to press for liberal reforms when they are in power. There was a time when this was referred to as democracy. If you don’t like what the other side is doing make a better argument. Don’t make specious comparisons. After all, you can have your new pants and your books. 

Increasing Perspective: Or Learning to Love (or at the very least tolerate) Pentecostalism

If you move to Salt Lake City, I suppose you ought to know a thing or two about Mormonism. If you wind up in Jerusalem, brush up on Judaism. Indonesia… well, you get the idea. What I did not know, though, was that if the cold hand of fate at some point leads you to Tulsa, Oklahoma you are better off getting to know a thing or two about Pentecostalism. Oklahoma is Bible belt. I knew that. But I didn’t imagine it would be much different than Kansas. I knew that qualitatively speaking Oklahoma is a far worse place than Kansas, but I didn’t imagine the differences in the spiritual climate would be so stark.

Manhattan is a religious town in a lot of ways, but it seems more practically minded in its pursuit of Christianity. Tulsa, in my admittedly anecdotal experience, is far different. In the same way that Colorado Springs serves as a hub for evangelical Christianity, Tulsa serves as a hub for Pentecostalism. There are several large Pentecostal churches and a number of smaller ones.

I have only been here for a little over three weeks and wouldn’t presume to pass a judgment on this issue, but at this point I can only say that this is the first time I have ever really been around a pervasive Pentecostalism and I am glad for the opportunity. Not that I see myself converting, but I am enjoying the increased perspective it is giving me on this unique movement. Pentecostalism is the one form of Christianity that is booming around the globe right now, and my knowledge of it to this point consisted in brief readings on the sociology of the movement and sound bites of Joel Osteen and random other snippets of preachers working crowds into frenzies on TBN.

In other words, my knowledge wasn’t very nuanced or very deep. And this limited level of understanding allows me to be casually dismissive, something which I don’t like very much. I feel like there is too much of this in our culture: everybody knows that they are right and just wishes everyone would listen to them, but they would never dream of extending the same courtesy. By nature I think humans tend to ghettoize ourselves around like-minded folk—to good and ill effect at times. The university is an almost perfect model of this—originally intended to allow for dissent and opposing voices, it has turned into an echo chamber with quite clear lines. In any event, like with most shortcomings, I see the speck in my neighbor’s eye before noticing the plank in my own. And I want to give due diligence in seeking out why so many people are attracted to this theological model.

A perfect case in point is a coworker of mine who attends one of the larger Pentecostal churches in town. When I first found this out I was tempted to be dismissive, and he said a few things off the bat that would have allowed me to feel justified in doing so. But what I have learned over the past few weeks is that he is absolutely sincere and absolutely faithful in the way he lives out his faith (two things I cannot say for myself). He really believes that God doesn’t want people to be sick and so he allows faithful Christians to act as healers. Moreover, he has stories of him doing this. And he doesn’t strike me as the type of person to lie about something like this. Maybe he is, but he doesn’t feel like a charlatan. Knowing him as I do, it almost feels disrespectful to suggest that he might be. 

In short, I feel a wall breaking down in my heart. Not, let me reiterate, the one that stands between me and acceptance of Pentecostal theology, but the one that allows me to dismiss them out of hand and not have to deal with them. I have enjoyed my conversations with my coworker and found him to be very generous (though not at all interested in hearing about my own Calvinism—you would have thought I had just kicked a puppy when I told him I was a Calvinist—but maybe this wall will break down for him, too) and look forward to more talks in my remaining time here. And for someone naturally inclined to pettiness and tribalism, I am enjoying having my perspective broadened and my humility and basic charity towards others increase. 

Commonplacing: Marilynne Robinson and the Sacred/Secular Divide

I have thought for sometime now of using this space as a commonplace book as well as a traditional blog. A commonplace book, for those unfamiliar, was a popular classical model for collecting quotations on various subjects by the best authors. So, for example, Calvin kept a commonplace book that included the major authors from antiquity arranged categorically: quotations about love or justice or mercy or virtue. Some quotes, obviously, would qualify in more than one category. Many children were taught to read and write through the use of commonplace books. They would write out a famous oration by Cicero, learning how to write, read, and think like the great Roman republican. It has fallen out of fashion in the modern school system for lessons about... come to think of it, I can't remember much of what they taught us in school, mostly rote memorization of historical, grammatical, and scientific facts. Easy come, easy go, as they say. 


So consider this, without further learned explanation, the first entry in what will function as my online commonplace book. It will contain quotes from books, articles, and other things that I read. Not much further explanation is needed. And, fittingly, I begin with Marilynne Robinson, unequivocally my favorite living writer and one of my favorite living human beings, from her new collection of essays When I Was a Child I Read Books. 


This is from the first essay in the collection, which retreads some familiar territory for Robinson's work: the supposed antagonism between science and religion. The essay is called "Freedom of Thought."

“But almost everyone, for generations now, has insisted on a sharp distinction between the physical and the spiritual. So we have had theologies that really proposed a 'God of the gaps,' as if God were not manifest in the creation, as the Bible is so inclined to insist, but instead survives in those dark places, those black boxes, where the light of science has not yet shone. And we have atheisms and agnosticisms that make precisely the same argument, only assuming that at some time the light of science will indeed dispel the last shadow in which the holy might have been thought to linger. Religious experience is said to be associated with activity in a particular part of the brain. For some reason this is supposed to imply that it is delusional. But all thought and experience can be located in some part of the brain, that brain more replete than the starry heaven God showed to Abraham, and we are not in the habit of assuming that it is all delusional on these grounds. Nothing could justify this reasoning, which many religious people take as seriously as any atheist could do, except the idea that the physical and the spiritual cannot abide together, that they cannot be one dispensation.” (10)

My plan is to not add much to these quotations in the way of my own thoughts, especially in such a case where the excerpt does more than I could ever hope to do on my own. But Robinson is getting at something which has been almost constant on my mind for the past two years--the ridiculousness of our easy separation of the secular and the spiritual, the profane and the sacred. We have adopted a Manichean dualism, Christians specifically, that treats physical as bad, spiritual as good. Atheism treats physical as the only real and spiritual as delusion, but the effect is the same. In either case, it is bad. Also, neither position is true.

Milton's Sonnet 23

In graduate school, I was the Milton guy. Every time Paradise Lost was mentioned in the past two years, or Milton more generally, the eyes in the room turned to me for, well, I'm not sure what--a knowing nod of approval? a smile as my boy is mentioned? This, as I see it, reflects two things: the increasing specialization of the university (something I do not like at all, but am not writing now to complain about), and the fact that the old Puritan poet has fallen quite out of esteem in the popular consciousness. Everyone reads Shakespeare in high school, very few read Milton. I could get in to why I think this is and why I think it is wrong, but I won't do that here either. Here, I am just going to post this incredibly haunting and beautiful video of the British actor Ian Richardson reciting Milton's "Sonnet 23" and let it do the convincing for me. Watch the video before you read what little I have to say below.

Take a moment to dry your eyes.


Good. This poem is moving even if you know nothing of Milton. The classical allusion, the fading vision of a dead spouse, the haunting final image of day bringing back night (who hasn't felt this before?). The loss is clear, palpable. 


But if you know some things about Milton it comes alive with even more meaning. Sonnet 23 was written after the death of Milton's second wife, Catharine Woodcock, who died in childbirth slightly less than a year into their marriage in 1656. Milton's first wife, Mary Powell, had died in 1652 from the same cause. There is a debate about who this poem is about. (To me it is not much of a debate, as it seems to be quite clearly about Catharine Woodcock, but critics must have something to talk about.) 


The poem is further enhanced by another biographical tidbit about Milton--namely, he was blind when he wrote this, losing his sight finally sometime around 1653. This explains why he cannot see the woman he imagines is his late espoused saint, and why his sight of her is fancied. He never saw his wife, whom he loved dearly, and his only hope of seeing her short of heaven is in his dreams. How heartwrenching is that? It also lends extra gravity to the final line. Day, quite literally, brings back night for Milton. It is only in his dreams and fancies that he can see. He must have wished for dreams, longed to imagine the sight of someone he loved so. 


St. Paul, in his great chapter on love in 1 Corinthians, writes that "now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known." I have always taken these verses to be talking about the way we see God--that we only have a glimpse, can only see through a dim glass, a dark mirror. And this is true. But this little poem makes me wonder if Paul is not also talking about other people in this passage, even ourselves. My sight makes me think I can see others. But it occurs to me that I don't ever. Not really. Not face to face, not in full. Milton, in his blindness, understood this better than I ever will. When he looked at his wife without sight he saw her purity and goodness and sweetness and love. In other words, when he looked at her he saw her. 


You should read Milton. Trust me, I'm the Milton guy.

20 in 20

For those of you who have seen me recently, it should come as no surprise that I have put on quite a significant amount of weight in the past year. Something like 20 pounds, at least 15. The final year of graduate school was not kind to my waistline. The combination of apathy toward running, energy drinks, and whiskey added up to a spare tire. I had expected the open schedule of graduate school to usher in an era of 60+ miles per week running and a few mornings of weightlifting on top of that. Alas, for reasons discussed in my last post, this did not happen.

So here I am now. And what to do, but contrive some silly goal for losing weight. Long-time readers will recall my total sweet fast in 2008. This time I have decided to lose 20 pounds in 20 weeks and take a 20 mile run on the last day of this program. Depending on how running goes I will come up with a time goal for the run (ideally sub 2:30). 

I started last week. I am not sure I have lost my pound yet, but I imagine I am close. There is something about having a goal, though. Clara and Owen flew to Denver last Thursday morning for a 10 day trip leaving me bereft and alone in an unfamiliar place. I am quite jealous. They are all camping in the Tetons for the next several days. Anyway, on my first night alone I got home from work a bit exhausted and sullen. I started watching Season One of Deadwood on my laptop and was eating some mint chocolate chip ice cream. It occurred to me as I lay there that this was no way to lose 20 pounds in 20 weeks. So I got off the couch, laced up the running shoes and drove to Turkey Mountain, a paradise in the middle of Tulsa with over 40 miles of dirt trails for running, biking, and hiking. And I ran. I ran till I puked (the two cigarettes and bag of gummy bears that I consumed during the working day combined with the ice cream created a foul mixture), and then I ran some more. It was 100 degrees out and I could wring sweat out of my clothes when I finished, but I loved it. There were times when I was in tune with the trail, using the rocks on the trail as springboards, deftly skipping over tree roots. I also fell twice. But, again, I loved it. I smiled most of the time (especially after puking). I felt that I had accomplished something, when really all that I did was run through the woods for an hour. And what had been a sad day was transformed.

This is all to say that the goal in this next 20 weeks has very little to do with weight. Fit is a feeling. A great feeling. One worth chasing. Preferably through the woods.

Like a Rolling Stone

I am writing this from my new temporary residence in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I knew coming into Manhattan that my time commitment in this town was short. The graduate program would last for only two years and then it would be time to figure out a next step. And until quite recently I had no idea what that step might be. It turns out, in an odd twist of fate, to be a two month stop in Tulsa. My recent tour of the middle states continues. (I would sooner move to Cuba as Castro’s masseur than move to the state just north of Kansas). Allow me to explain how this happened. Quickly, if I can.

The big debate for the past year was what to do in the future—more graduate school (i.e. PhD program), seminary, or returning to the business world. I was waffling as it came time to make the decision, per my usual tendencies. There is a lot to debate, a lot that I don’t have time to rehash, but when push came to shove I decided to go back to the business world in the hopes of landing back in Colorado. This isn’t necessarily an irrevocable decision—PhD and seminary are both still on the table—but it is the one I felt the best about making as I did a lot of deep reflection.

I like myself better when I am working full-time at a job. It structures my life, gives it a rhythm, and from looking at my past I thrive around structure. Grad school is great in a lot of ways but it gave me a constantly open, yet burdened schedule. I had very few strict time commitments—teaching and taking a couple of classes—which gave my schedule a lot of flexibility, but also a lot of potential to waste time. Further, even though I did not have strict commitments, it always felt as if there was something I could/should be working on. So I was free, but felt busy the whole time. Some people with different dispositions can and do handle this better. I just don’t feel cut out for it.

When I was working full-time I was extremely committed time-wise. Generally 55-60 hours per week including commuting time. But it sharpened me. If I was going to run it had to be right after work or right before work. If I was going to read I had a precious short window of time in the evenings to accomplish this. If I wanted to hang out with people I had to sacrifice to make it happen. But I did all of these things more when I was working full-time than I did in a much freer graduate school schedule. I am not saying this wasn’t my fault—it completely was, but I never seemed to be able to shake it. And that worried me when I thought about doing something like a PhD—four more years of trying to fight my tendency to be lazy when my schedule is up to me.

As I was working through some of this, I took a personality test. It said a lot that I already knew (I’m good at taking tests; I like teaching), but one category that surprised me was my military preference (something like 90%). In other words, what I was sensing throughout school—structure and discipline=good—was borne out by my test. I figured that meant something.

Another thing, having a kid changes the way that I think about everything. The first time I held him when he was born last year my life changed, including the way I think about the future. As I watched my parents hold him and we took him to Colorado when he was a couple of weeks old to meet the rest of his family something changed. My life was no longer only about where I want to be and what I want to do but about how I could provide for this little person who was all of a sudden in my charge. I also decided then that I wanted him and the ones that come after him to be raised around as much of their family as they can be. This is a precious and increasingly rare ambition. But I want him to know his cousins, his aunts and uncles, his grandparents. Given that all of these people happen to be in Colorado, I also want him to grow up around the mountains, skiing, hiking, climbing, and breathing the mountain air.

In many ways, these ambitions supersede my career goals. Our generation has been taught to make much of our personal preferences and goals. Sometimes this can lapse into outright selfishness. We are increasingly reticent to rescind our independence because we don’t want others to have the right to make claims on us. We want to be able to do what we want to do. My life does not have that option. I gave that up when I got married; still more when we had a child.

There is a lot to be said for duty. I am banking on the idea that there is also pleasure in duty. We are taught to look for the next big thing, to not limit our options lest something better come around the corner and we’re stuck. I am deciding that my best life is here with this woman and this boy and whoever else joins our bunch over the next few years. I am deciding that Sunday lunches at grandma’s, watching my kids running around in the backyard playing with cousins, is more important than me getting to teach Milton every three years at a junior college in North Dakota.

There is also a lot to be said for doing what you love. I would never deny that and I don’t think that someone trying to do so is selfish. This is about me, not about others. But I think in large measure we can decide to love what we are doing. I am also banking on that.

Here’s to the next step.