Saturday Morning Thoughts

Posted on February 8, 2020 by awtraughber

Yesterday I posted a long lecture by Andrew Root about the shift that has changed in youth (ministry) culture over the last decade.  I’ve read a decent chunk of Root’s most recent output the last few months (3 1/2 full books and 2 short pieces).  And while I don’t agree with all of Root’s premises or conclusions, I do think he has a number of wise things to say.  I shared the video with some co-workers a couple of weeks ago and have gotten a little response from them.  For those who have worked with young people over time, a lot of what Root speaks of or hints at rings true.

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This week was an odd one for me.  The weather has been wonderful: the evenings and mornings have dipped into the lowers 60s, which is not often but nice.  Even wore a jacket at work yesterday.  Classes have been good.  Grade check was yesterday, which is always a load off.  I’m still learning to navigate perspectives and personalities.  I was totally caught off guard with one conversation this week.  At the least, I am learning valuable things.  At the most, I’m preparing for a difficult conversation the outcome of which may not be in my favor, if that makes any sense.

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Caught a second showing of 1917 yesterday with a movie-making friend.  I’m glad he finally saw it.  It’s the most I’ve heard him praise a new movie in some time.  The movie flows much better the second time, mostly because the first time you see it you’re marveling at the film’s key narrative mechanism and wondering what they could do in the next scene . . . even though that term is almost meaningless when discussing the movie.  There is, of course, some chiastic structure to the store: beginning and ending leaning on a tree, racing through trenches, making a run over dangerously empty fields.  The small role played by noticeable actors is also less jarring, which is nice.  I have no problem if it wins best picture tomorrow night at the Oscars.  It’s a whole-package movie, even though its key cast could be counted on your big toes.

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Last night after the movie, my friend and I ran into some former students.  Most of them are done with college and have moved on to the world of work.  It was a chance meeting, which made it just a bit sweeter, too.  I am constantly amazed at how much it feels like time has passed even when it’s just been a few years.  Ever since I started teaching seniors, I’ve had to process the sensation that each year is uniquely itself: its own language, its own highs and lows, its own tenor that can be revisited but never replicated.

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The Thing and the Story

Posted on February 7, 2020 by awtraughber

Mr. Root is onto something, I believe.

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New Year’s Hobbit

Posted on February 5, 2020 by awtraughber

tolkien calendarIt took me a little longer than usual to get ahold of this year’s Tolkien calendar.  When I finally remembered my need to order it around Christmas time, it was nigh impossible to find.  Not at Amazon.  Not at Barnes and Noble.  It seemed to be out of stock everywhere.  Luckily, I found a copy at ebay from a Canadian bookseller.  Took a little longer than usual to get here, of course, but that’s okay.  The Alan Lee art is beautiful as always.  And I quite like the quote for January from the first chapter of The Hobbit:

By some curious chance one morning long ago in the quiet of the world, when there was less noise and more green, and the hobbits were still numerous and prosperous, and Bilbo Baggins was standing at his door after breakfast smoking an enormous long wooden pipe that reached nearly down to his woolly toes (neatly brushed)– Gandalf came by.  Gandalf!

What a great way to introduce the characters- saying so much while saying so little.

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In a letter dated 15 October 1937, Tolkien wrote:

. . . I cannot think of anything more to say about hobbits.  Mr. Baggins seems to have exhibited so fully both the Took and the Baggins side of their nature.  But I have only too much to say, and much already written, about the world into which the hobbit intruded . . . My daughter would like something on the Took family.  One reader wants fuller details about Gandalf and the Necromancer.  But that is too dark– much too much for Richard Hughes’ snag.  I am afraid that snag appears in everything; though actually the presence (even if only on the borders) of the terrible is, I believe, what gives this imagined world its verisimilitude.  A safe fairy-land is untrue to all worlds.

It wouldn’t take long, of course, for Tolkien to start weaving together the “long-expected party” that begins the next chapter of Tolkien’s grand story.  I like the idea of “the snag that appears everywhere.”  The snag is a reference to concern that the going deeper into the edges of Tolkien’s forest of a story wouldn’t make for good “bed-time reading” with children.  But the snag is there . . . and the the snag is everywhere, not just in fairy-lands but in all worlds.

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Gospel and Church, Mold and Platform

Posted on February 4, 2020 by awtraughber

Candy MoldIn his survey of failing institutions in American life, Yuval Levin writes about the church in the “close to home” section (which also includes the family and community organizations.  While he writes about the loss of authority of the Catholic church, Levin approaches the plight of the Protestant Evangelical church through the lens of “unmediated individual authority.”  In chapter seven of A Time to Build, Levin writes:

In this arena, as in so many others, we find that the rise of platform institutions  and celebrity culture are together undermining structures of responsibility.  The rise of megachurch pastors has raised the prospect of a genuine celebrity culture within American Christianity.

From there, Levin connects with the thought of Andy Crouch (of The Tech-Wise Family) and leans into what he sees as a positive response to the rise of 21st century celebrity Christianity culture: the rise of various “rules” of life.  Levin continues:

The lure of celebrity lifts leaders out of their protective institutional constraints and puts them on display.  Its immediacy– the directness and authenticity of its message– is among the great strengths that Protestantism offers as a path to the divine.  But it also renders Protestant churches distinctly vulnerable to the lure of celebrity that is so powerful throughout our larger culture.

A growing number of thoughtful Evangelicals are aware of this danger and are working to address it.  They are focused particularly on curtailing the temptations of celebrity through the imposition of rules of practice . . . Rules of this sort are, of course, the foundation of institutional frameworks, and are intended to establish clear forms for behavior.  For clergy and parishioners, these guidelines not only constrain and shape their actions but inculcate habits to guard against the lure of celebrity and assorted escapes from responsibility.  In a sense, they create layers of of structured mediation and restraint between a leader and his or her followers.  They cut against the conflation of immediacy and authenticity because they recognize how vulnerable such immediacy can render a community of people.

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The church is an interesting intersection of what Levin suggests about molds and platforms and our confusion of the two.  At the heart of the Christian church is an experience.  Through Word and witness, the Christian believes that God makes Himself known to people by the Spirit in a way that points to Jesus and convicts us of sin.  Whether it is a “quiet moving across the line” or a real “Damascus road” experience, this experience precedes, theoretically becomes the root of whatever mold or platform comes next.  Because of our quest for authenticity, we tend to put new converts front-and-center with a platform to share their experience.  (This, of course, has some kind of New Testament precedence.)  But it can be dangerous.  Which is why church history records moments in time where new converts went through periods of training and growth before baptism into the church.  (It’s also why new converts are often “enrolled” in classes to help with practices like Bible-reading, prayer, Scripture memorization, and evangelism, even though “the experience” often makes those things flow as a natural consequence).   This emphasis on authentic experience-turned-platform can work against the deeper, longer, quieter molding work of the church, making things like tradition and liturgy seem stuffy and stiff (and therefore not really inspired by the Spirit).

I think this is a good place for today’s church to have a serious conversation about the long life of faith, in how it starts but also in how it continues and what it points towards.  There’s no way around the tangled nature of the church as mold and platform for believers, probably.  But it’s something to consider as we press on in a contemporary culture that looks at us with suspicion or as silly hold-overs of days long-gone.

(you can purchase Levin’s Time to Rebuild here and wherever good books are sold)

(candy mold image from cakeconnection.com)

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Playing our Roles Fittingly (Civics Edition)

Posted on February 3, 2020 by awtraughber

New Yuval LevinIn class I often revisit the question of “how can I play my role fittingly?” in light of the biblical story.  This is a nod to both N. T. Wright’s “five-act play” of the biblical story and Kevin Vanhoozer’s “drama of doctrine” approach to Scripture and the Christian life.  Turns out it is also an important question we should be asking from a civics perspective.  That’s what Yuval Levin is asserting, at least, in A Time to Build, which picks up the thread (and threat) of our failing institutions (and our perceptions of those institutions).  From the New York Times excerpt:

All of us have roles to play in some institutions we care about, be they familial or communal, educational or professional, civic, political, cultural or economic. Rebuilding trust in those institutions will require the people within them — that is, each of us — to be more trustworthy. And that must mean in part letting the distinct integrities and purposes of these institutions shape us, rather than just using them as stages from which to be seen and heard.

As a practical matter, this can mean forcing ourselves, in little moments of decision, to ask the great unasked question of our time: “Given my role here, how should I behave?” That’s what people who take an institution they’re involved with seriously would ask. “As a president or a member of Congress, a teacher or a scientist, a lawyer or a doctor, a pastor or a member, a parent or a neighbor, what should I do here?”

The people you most respect these days probably seem to ask that kind of question before they make important judgments. And the people who drive you crazy, who you think are part of the problem, are likely those who clearly fail to ask it when they should.

I really like that last paragraph.

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As I write this, I’m 2/3 the way through A Time to Build.  It’s a great read.  Levin’s most basic premise is that institutions serve a formative role in society . . . or at least they should.  In today’s culture, though, the formative has been replaced with the performative.  He also puts it this way: institutions that should be acting as molds are now perceived primarily as platforms.  And so a Congressman sees Congress as more of a place to “perform” a position instead of being shaped by Congress’s internal practices.  It’s like a teacher who uses the classroom as a soapbox for ideology without seeing the classroom’s practices as shaping students.

I look forward to the final chunk of the book, where Levin turns from the institutions he sees as being most affected by this shift to finding some way towards institutional renewal.

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Living with Loss

Posted on February 1, 2020 by awtraughber

praying griefLast week America posted a short reflection by James K. A. Smith about how Christians handle loss.  What begins with a nod to Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead takes a personal turn that I found difficult and brilliant.  Smith writes:

A number of years ago one, of my dearest friends was in a serious accident that changed everything for him. An active, athletic man, he was laid up in a hospital bed coming to grips with the fact that he was going to lose a way of life. I didn’t know what to do. I knew, of course, to be present. But I wasn’t sure what to say or how to pray, if I am honest. What is the script for such a situation?

On my way to the hospital, I stopped by the grocery store and bought some crackers and juice. In the hospital room, I pulled the juice and crackers out of the crinkled paper bag, and my friend and I fell into a script we both knew by heart: “On the night he was betrayed, Jesus took bread, and giving thanks, he broke it.” Awkwardness gave way to tears as we repeated to one another, “The body of Christ, given for you.” “The blood of Christ, shed for you.”

I am grateful to Smith for sharing about such a moment.  It is an example of formation revealed in communal expression.  What makes it especially interesting is that it take a Christian reality and doesn’t play it out in the context of the church or of marriage, which tends to be the two places where Christians find meaning in practices.  Instead, it happens in friendship.  I would love to hear more about how this friendship got to this point of Christian connection.

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January flew by.  And yet the first of the month, my last day in Tennessee for Christmas, feels like another world.  This was the first week of the semester where things felt almost normal.  The first week back was Spirit Week.  The second week back involved camp and a big faculty meeting.  The third week of the quarter was packed with meetings both planned and not.  Things calmed down enough this week that I was able to use a couple of planning periods to . . . plan!  I continue to reflect some of this week’s chapel and what moving forward looks like.  The last week had a fair share of basketball games to attend, though now the Sharks are in a nice break for the first chunk of the month.  A couple of TV shows came to an end this week: Arrow (season eight was the only one I’ve watched the whole way through) and The Good Place (which I’ve been with since the moment Eleanor Shellstrop opened her eyes in the afterlife).  We also got a great episode of Doctor Who, which was a nice treat.

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Smith’s reflection on loss begins with a nod to Gilead but ends with a nod to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.  I can’t image two more different stories . . . and yet.  Both stories are wonderfully immersive, though The Road rings you out in the end.  Both bring a palpable sense of time and loss with them.  For all the pain it brings, the feeling of loss is essential to what it means to be human, I believe.  It doesn’t mean that we go around asking for it, but it does mean we learn better ways of acknowledging it and faithfully enduring it until the end.

(image from ibelieve.com)

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Jacob and the Face of God

Posted on January 30, 2020 by awtraughber

Jacob and EsauYesterday I mentioned the manuscript I wrote for this week’s chapel.  The topic was Jacob’s encounter with God.  The task was partly to retell the story to an audience who has a basic knowledge of the story.  Here’s a cleaned-up version of the sermon’s first half.

I wonder if his feet were still wet then the confrontation happened.  He had, of course, just crossed over the stream twice, hoping that doing so would move his family to safety.  He was worried, had been worried for years, that the hammer would finally fall and that his brother would finally extract his revenge.

It had been years since Jacob had left home in a hurry, running at his mother’s prodding from the anger of his tight-rope-tempered brother.  First the birthright, which had been easy. Then the blessing, which was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  And so in haste he ran.  And ran.  And ran.  And before he knew it, he had met his father’s God in a dream.  This God had renewed the covenant he had made with Isaac.  Did this omniscient God not know that he was making a promise to the younger brother, and a scoundrel at that?

But fled he had, and as time passed, he had found a new home.  He worked his way to one wife but found himself tricked into taking a second.  Two wives hungry for approval and children meant bringing two maidservants into the drama, leaving the trickster tricked with a dozen kids: sons and a daughter.

And he had known it was time to return home.  He had taken no chances, though.  The day before he had divided up his wealth: his people and his livestock.  He had sent some of the best ahead of him in waves, all in hopes of appeasing the wrath of the brother he had done wrong.  And then, in one last move, he had helped his family across the Jabbok and returned to the other side for only God knew what.  He was left alone in the dark.  Or so he thought.

I wonder if his feet, still wet from crossing the stream, slipped any when the stranger came out of no where and wrestled him to the ground.  I wonder if, in a moment’s thought, he imagined this was Esau, big and buff and fueled with the kind of rage that wouldn’t wait until daylight.  Jacob had come a long way from moving about the tents as a child: whoever he was facing, Jacob would not give up without a fight.  It was when the stranger wrenched his hip with just a touch that Jacob realized he was in the presence of something holy, divine.  He asked for a blessing, only to have his name changed.  Then he asked for a name, only to receive a blessing.  Jacob named the place Peniel, because he had seen God face to face and had lived.

But that was only half of the story.  Wrestling with God is one thing; confronting a brother you had imaged had nursed a grudge for years is another.  “Jacob looked up, and there was Esau,” the story tells us.  Not much of a chance to catch a breath.  Jacob with his family.  Esau with his four hundred men.  First Bilhah and Zilpah and their children.  Then Leah and hers.  Finally Rachel and her son Joseph.  And then Jacob himself, worn out from a night of wrestling.  Jacob, bowing seven times.  Jacob, likely muttering panicked prayers for protection and favor, that maybe the God of his father would be with him now as He had promised.  Jacob, who looks up to see Esau (the brother who had probably haunted him in nightmares), running towards him.  And instead of a kick or a punch or an all-out assault by Esau’s 400 men, Jacob finds himself in a hug, fully embraced, tears welling up in his eyes.  “Who are these with you?”  Esau asked.  “Children God has given me, your servant.”  “And why all these flocks and herds?”  ‘To find favor in your eyes, my lord.”  “I already have plenty.  Keep it,” said the brother without birthright or blessing.  But Jacob would not relent: “If I have found favor in your eyes, accept this gift from me. For to see your face is like seeing the face of God, now that you have received me favorably.”  How strange, that the man who deceived his aged and blind father has so much to say now about seeing the face of God, both in the stranger in the night and in the face of a brother who had every reason to take revenge but extends his arms in affection.

(image from the 1897 Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us by Charles Foster)

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Submitted for Your Approval?

Posted on January 29, 2020 by awtraughber

I recently spoke for what will probably be “the last time” in chapel this quarter.  If the timing goes well, it could be my last time for the year.  We’ll see.  Either way, in my head I had planned on it being something like a finale.

The theme for the quarter is “twice-told tales,” a take-off  on a collection of short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne.  The plan is for teachers to retell stories of encounter between God and people as found in the Bible.  I spoke about Jacob’s encounter with God followed by his encounter with Esau upon his return home.

It was the first time in my 2+ years of chapel that I used a full manuscript.  I did that because I wanted the words to matter: word order, word choice, repetition and flow and a sense of things going somewhere beyond just the conversational tone that I always use.  I suppose it worked okay.  I definitely enjoyed writing the talk.  I feel like I held most of their attention through the first half.  The second half was less story and more reflection.  I was willing to take that risk.

What I realized/remembered upon being done with chapel was that awkward feeling where you want feedback but not criticism.  And that’s not a way of giving myself permission to dodge what worked or didn’t work.  I think I see things like speaking, be it in the classroom or from a “pulpit,” as the (hopeful) beginning of a conversation.  But beyond writing reflections for homerooms later in the week, there’s no real way to continue the discussion that doesn’t look like praise or criticism.   That’s particularly true amongst peers, I think.  It’s partly how we are trained and partly the consequence of there being so much information/data to process that most of it ends as “garbage in/garbage out.”

It does leave you wondering how to make words matter.  At the end of last summer, the three things I wanted to debrief and decompress on were at the intersection of community, meaning, and communication.  That hasn’t changed.  And while I still haven’t really found a place to have the debrief, I still think it’s an important knot to untie.

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On Friendship

Posted on January 15, 2020 by awtraughber

Earlier this week many conservative writers mourned the loss of Roger Scruton, a British teacher and public intellectual.  His name and thinking have hovered on the edges of my interests for some time now, but I’ve not spent much time looking specifically at his work.  The following clip came across my Twitter feed, though, and I think it worth sharing based on its simplicity and the odd juxtaposition of the two answers.

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From Spyfall to Planetfall

Posted on January 6, 2020 by awtraughber

One thing an early January start-date allows for Doctor Who is that there’s not much broadcast TV competition.  What makes it even sweeter is that the season, two episodes in, has really leaned into the show’s mythology more than every episode combined last semester.  For a fan like me, that’s a great thing.  Last night’s episode ended with a quick trip to Gallifrey . . . or what remains of it.  The show appeared some in previous “Nu Who” stories, but not much and always just a little different.  “The Day of the Doctor” was the best I’ve seen it, and that was in 2013 and told mostly in a kind of flashback.  Regardless, here’s what the Doctor finds upon returning home after an ominous claim is made by the Master:

There’s no guarantee, of course, that much more will be done with the story anytime soon.  That’s been one of the most frustrating realities of the rebooted Who since 2005.  From what I gather, Gallifrey has always been something of a Mad Lib for creators, filling in whatever blank is needed to tell whatever story they want.  This story of “the Timeless Child” could be interesting.  I’ve got thoughts, but they aren’t much yet.

Doctor Who gets one more week before the conclusion of the CW’s Crisis on Infinite Earths.  There’s also Dracula on Netflix, which is tricky to watch after the humor of What We Do In the Shadows.

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Today was the first day back for the new semester.  And what a day it was!  We had some alumni share in chapel about their high school experiences.  We had a first round of classes.  And we ended the day with our first Spirit Week assembly for the week.  Not enough time in the day.  So tonight I’m writing emails, prepping for the next round of classes, and watching the HPU Sharks online (and for free tonight!).  The days are packed!

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