Notes of a Gentle Cynic

Ironies

2012-01-26T19:20:00.005-05:00

Growing on the previous post, a poem written by Daniel Berrigan from his book, Prayer for the Morning Headlines: On the Sanctity of Life and Death

Ironies

draw the mind free of habitual

animal ease. Sough of tides in the heart,

massive and moony, is not our sound.

But hope and despair together

bring tears to face, and a human ground,

death mask and comic, such speech

as hero and commoner devise, make sense

contrive our face. To expunge

either, is to cast snares for the

ghost a glancing heart makes

along a ground, and airy goes its way.

And Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantine,"

Consume my heart, sick with desire

And fastened to a dying animal

It knows not what is . . .

Viral Images: Cruelity and the Fact of Evil

2012-01-13T12:09:00.012-05:00

The recent video of Marines desecrating the corpses of Taliban fighters killed in Afghanistan demonstrates a reality of what war creates, a culture of evil that disseminates into our everyday cultural script. This grotesque episode reveals what kind of people we are (plural) if we don’t know the kind of person (individual, group) you are, a pattern that others made that prevails in the world (in the words of William Stafford, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”)

And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,

But if one wanders the circus wont’ find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

To know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

The “fact” is well described by Chris Hedges who serviced many years as a war correspondent (in War is a Force that gives us Meaning).

“The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug, one I ingested for many years. It is peddled by myth makers—historians, war correspondents, film makers, novelists, and the state—all of whom endow it with qualities it often does possess: excitement, exoticism, power, chances to rise above our small stations in life and a bizarre and fantastic universe that has a grotesque and dark beauty. It dominates culture, distorts memory, corrupts language, and infects everything around it, even humor, which becomes preoccupied with the grim perversities of smut and death. Fundamental questions about the meaning, or meaninglessness, of our place on the planet are laid bare when we watch those around us sink to the lowest depths. War exposes the capacity for evil that lurks not far below the surface within all of us. And this is why for many, war is so hard to discuss once it is over.”

The reason why people are so surprised by this and other recent news of deplorable conduct by military personnel is partly because it is below the surface in the dominant societal script, a pervasive script that nurtures us all. The dominate script is “technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism” socializing us all, liberal and conservative; unless we are awake to this fact, disengage and overcome it via an alternative meta narrative that breeds holistic life.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider--

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe—

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

Photograph: William Stafford

C-Span In Depth with Author and Journalist Chris Hedges

2012-01-02T11:57:00.006-05:00

A must see three-hour interview, probing Chris Hedge's entire body of work. It is a comprehensive and power discussion with one of the most important reporters on what he characterizes as our collapsing corporate empire. Follow this link to watch the video.

Chris Hedges is a Senior Fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City. A former foreign correspondent for the New York Times, he was part of the team that won a 2002 Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of global terrorism. He also received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. Mr. Hedges is author of "Losing Moses on the Freeway" and "War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning," the latter of which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School.

Chris Hedges is the author of nine books:

War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning (2002); What Every Person Should Know About War (2003); Losing Moses on the Freeway: The Ten Commandments in America (2005); American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (2007); I Don't Believe in Atheists (2008): Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians (2008); Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (2009); The Death of the Liberal Class (2010); The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress (2011).

Chris Hedges is in my estimation a modern day prophet, who is also a true and faithful journalist willing to take the risk of exposing the whole truth and context of the stories he covers. Chris Hedges' voice nurtures, nourishes and evokes a conscientiousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominate culture around us, which is held captive pervasively by the corporate empire, an "empire of illusion" that is underwritten by our political system. Chris Hedges possesses a deep capacity to penetrate the illusions of our society and is today a significant advocate, activist, and speaker with the Occupy movement across the nation. He writes a weekly column for Truthdig.

Retired Bishop Leads OWS over Church Barricade

2011-12-29T19:28:00.005-05:00

How is the church responding to its primal horizontal ethical response to the current global and domestic nonviolent protests, namely a revolutionary emergence via the Occupy movements? Will the church faithful comprehend the current events while not dissociating from the real issues/people who are always remembered by God (vertical), the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, and the reviled who suffer outside the walls of the Christina church. Recalling here that “the church is the church only when it exists for others” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison).

Like the Korean church faithful, the American church faithful needs to develop its own comprehension of a Minjung theology that offers real promise for the ongoing enculturation of the gospel in our own land with today’s suffering and oppression by the dominant powers. The big question is whether the church faithful can truly comprehend with radical openness the reality of God’s reconciliation in Jesus Christ with the world, a reality that is presented as the hope of a great reversal during the Advent season (see The Magnificat).

Let the conversation begin and may justice flow down like waters (torrents) and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Photograph: Retired bishop George Packard climbs over the fence guarding Duarte Square, owned by the wealthy landowning organization Trinity Church.

Yuletide Venn Diagram

2011-12-27T09:18:00.007-05:00

A humorous visual for a Christmas seasonal smile from JamesWhyte, a Yuletide Venn Diagram showing groups/items sharing common properties.

Re-blogged gratefully by Dan Seifert

Christmas Haiku

2011-12-23T16:17:00.007-05:00

as we open gifts

of paper and plastic

the earth quietly groans

The Coming of an Alternative-Counter Script in Christian Tradition

2011-12-21T10:08:00.008-05:00

Having been greatly helped and prodded along by Walter Brueggemann’s 19 Theses, I yield to their prophetic voice allowing them to speak into the life of Scripture and life itself as a way of detouring conventional, popular notions about God and the church (with their strong warning against the idolatry of nationalism). Here I have interjected (parenthetically) theses 3, 8, 14 and 15 as a way of drawing out meaning while reading Psalm 33:13-22.

The LORD looks down from heaven;
he sees all humankind.
From where he sits enthroned he watches
all the inhabitants of the earth —
he who fashions the hearts of them all,
and observes all their deeds.
A king is not saved by his great army;
a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.
The war horse is a vain hope for victory,
and by its great might it cannot save.

(³- The dominant scripting in our society is a script of technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism that socializes us all, liberal and conservative.)

Truly the eye of the LORD is on those who fear him,
on those who hope in his steadfast love,
to deliver their soul from death,
and to keep them alive in famine.

(⁸- The task of descripting, relinquishment and disengagement is accomplished by a steady, patient, intentional articulation of an alternative script that we say can make us happy and make us safe.)

Our soul waits for the LORD;
he is our help and shield.
Our heart is glad in him,
because we trust in his holy name.
Let your steadfast love, O LORD, be upon us,
even as we hope in you.

(¹⁴ - The entry point into the counter-script is baptism. Whereby we say in the old liturgies, “do you renounce the dominant script?” ^{15 -}The nurture, formation, and socialization into the counter-script with this illusive, irascible character is the work of ministry. We do that work of nurture, formation, and socialization by the practices of preaching, liturgy, education, social action, spirituality, and neighboring of all kinds.)

Artwork: White Crucifixion

Was Hitchens a gentle cynic?

2011-12-20T08:31:00.009-05:00

Perhaps in his own way Hitchens was more than a gentle cynic. My immediate thought upon hearing of Hitchens death was that we can thank him for sharing his ardent distaste for and attack on fundamentalism in religion and the threat they pose on American democracy, yet his disdain of what were essentially idolatries (hypocrisies) inflicted on humanity by religion blinded his vision to see the noble religious experiences and traditions in history. His limited lens for viewing religion under a primary rubric of tribalism resulted in his missing crucial nuances and depth of religious faith. He did made some wonderful points worth contemplating. Some examples . . .

"The noble title of 'dissident' must be earned rather than claimed; it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement …"

"Do bear in mind that the cynics have a point, of a sort, when they speak of the 'professional naysayer'." "To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist. And there is no decent or charted way of making a living at it. It is something you are, and not something you do." – Letters to a Young Contrarian, 2001

"The search for nirvana, like the search for utopia or the end of history or the classless society, is ultimately a futile and dangerous one. It involves, if it does not necessitate, the sleep of reason. There is no escape from anxiety and struggle." – Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays, 2004

See Chris Hedges, I Don't believe in Atheists, Free Press, 2008 at Goodreads: