Working Lonely

Posted on June 18, 2018 by awtraughber

Office SpaceLast month I posted a couple of links to Comment Magazine (along with an extended quote from Henri Nouwen) on the topic of loneliness.  Comment’s most recent issue is about social isolation, and little by little they have released parts of the issue online for free.  The most recent article, written by Brian Dijkema, has to do with social isolation and work.  He starts the article with a sobering realization:

If you work full time for the same amount of years that your children are in the house (let’s say twenty-five), you will have spent fifty thousand hours with your colleagues. That is a lot of time. So much time that it’s possible that at the end of that quarter century, you will have spent more of your waking time at work than with your kids as they grew up.

My first response as I contemplated this was . . . depression.

That’s really a depressing thought . . . and I don’t even have kids.  But I do get the sense of the challenge of proportion and the reality of how we spend our time.  This is even true for teachers, who often cite extended summer vacations as a reason for pursuing the job.    But for a single guy like me, even extended summer vacations away from routine and a more consistent presence of others, can be something of a struggle.

Dijkema has a lot of good things to say about the workplace as a necessary social environment.  It’s a well-cited article (and he even links to some classic Looney Tunes workplace humor!) that is good reading for lots of people, especially for those who lead out.  One of the article’s best quotes:

The basis for determining the value of human work is not primarily the kind of work being done but the fact that the one who is doing it is a person. The sources of the dignity of work are to be sought primarily in the subjective dimension, not in the objective one. . . . In the final analysis it is always man [the Latin here is hominem, plural homines, or people] who is the purpose of the work, whatever work it is that is done by man—even if the common scale of values rates it as the merest “service,” as the most monotonous even the most alienating work.

Among the many things Dijkema accomplishes in the article is the reminder that work can be and should be good, that there is both personal and social dignity in how we “make a living.”  And while the language of unions is pretty foreign to me, I get a sense of what he means when he talks about leading and challenging through dignity.  It’s a good article that you can read here in its entirety.

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Speaking of work and vacation, I’m now a week out from my last official meetings for the year.  And while I’ve still got stuff to do, I’m also just under a week from heading out for a mainland excursion that will include about five states.  So the days are much quieter right now, which is both good and a challenge for me.  Dijkema’s article is a good reminder for the social significance of work, even when you don’t necessarily have to go in.

(image from itpulse.com.ng)

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Friends in Movies

Posted on June 16, 2018 by awtraughber

A friend recently recommended the 2013 comedy Are You Here to me based on the following quote about friendship:

See, nobody believes in friendship.  People talk about it, you see it on TV, people drop by, go to the doctor together, no one eats alone.  But most people are alone.  That’s the thing about friendship: it’s a lot rarer than love because there’s nothing in it for anybody.

The quote is dialogue given by Owen Wilson’s character, a listless man who does his best to love well his deeply troubled friend, played by Zach Galifianakis.  It’s a brilliant and raw moment in a movie that tends to push things in weird directions.  The person the dialogue is said to, played by Laura Ramey, responds:

They’re just two forms of the same thing.

These kinds of moments, where something profound is said in the midst of a far-from-profound story, are rare but inspiring.  Particularly when it comes to the topic of friendship.

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TAGThis weekend saw the release of another movie about friendship.  TAG tells the based-on-real-life story of a group of friends who found a way to play “tag” for decades after graduating from high school.  The movie is almost more action than comedy.  Even still, there are some truly raw moments here as well.  And it’s not just the desperation that the characters feel (which is also true of Are You Here).  It’s the sense of something important being at stake with the game.  One of the main characters, played by Ed Helms, sees the game as a necessary extension of a good life lived together  . . . and a source of solidarity amongst those who are often “it.”  On the opposite end of the game-spectrum is Jeremy Renner’s character, who has spent the past 30 years “never being ‘it.'”  And as farcical as the movie can be, there’s something real beating at the heart of it.

The most recent movie closest to the DNA of TAG is Game Night, and its a genetic quality that goes beyond having a “game” as the plot device.  In both movies, there are friends on the inside and acquaintances/would-be-friends on the outside.  There is something like pride at play in both, too. There’s also the question of “just how fake is this?” raised throughout both stories (and that’s from an inside-the-story sense, particularly as things get outlandish or “too coincidental”).  But there’s also something in each about our need for one another, in particular our need for connections that include but also go beyond spouses.

At one point in the movie, the reporter played by Annabelle Wallis comments to Helms’ character that “It seems like the game has really kept you guys connected.”  Without missing a beat, he responds with “This game has given us a reason to be in each other’s lives.”

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A few days from now, fans of Edgar Wright’s The World’s End will probably be at least a little mindful of the events from June 22: the day that the story of “the Golden Mile” comes to head.  The World’s End is final “chapter” of the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy.  These movies, starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, are some of the best movies about friendship from the last ten years.  There are a few resemblances between TWE and TAG.  Long-term friendships potentially strained by events in adult life.  A quest taken so “set things right.”  The introduction of a female from the past that divides members of the group.  And, well, at least one scene that bridges the movies concerning people in confessional moments.  On some level, TAG is The World’s End without the city-wide conspiracy.  Both of them are ultimately concerned with people and the need for friendship, for some kind of authentic connection that gives both joy and meaning.  It’s good to see movies every now and again that can do that.

Quick word of caution: movies mentioned here are rated R. Quotes and concepts might be diamonds in the rough, with the rough being more evident in some than in others.

(image from denofgeek.com)

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A Matter of Formation

Posted on June 15, 2018 by awtraughber

It’s both interesting and sobering to see how the roles of faith and Scripture are being shaped and perhaps recast in our contemporary moment.  Yesterday’s online conversation was dominated by the meaning of Romans 13 as it relates to government and law.  A lot of our approach to Scripture and interpretation depends on things beyond us, things that say more about us than they say about Scripture.  I found this commentary by Alan Jacobs to be spot-on:

The lesson to be drawn here is this: the great majority of Christians in America who call themselves evangelical are simply not formed by Christian teaching or the Christian scriptures. They are, rather, formed by the media they consume — or, more precisely, by the media that consume them. The Bible is just too difficult, and when it’s not difficult it is terrifying. So many Christians simply act tribally, and when challenged to offer a Christian justification for their positions typically grope for a Bible verse or two, with no regard for its context or even its explicit meaning. Or they summarize a Sunday-school story that they clearly don’t understand, as when they compare Trump to King David because both sinned — without even noticing that David’s penitence was even more extravagant than his sins, while Trump doesn’t think he needs to repent of anything.

It is easy to forget how difficult rightly interpreting even the simplest passage of Scripture can be.  That doesn’t mean it’s an impossible task, mind you.  It’s an ongoing task with significant parameters, for sure.

Jacobs has more to say about the Romans 13 issue here.  Agree with him or not, he has done some good thinking and reflection.  His hyper-links are good to follow, too.

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Kill Your (Social Media) Darlings?

Posted on June 14, 2018 by awtraughber

Ten ArgumentsIt’s odd to think about how quickly our culture became mediated by digital technology.  I started up a blog soon after moving to Hawaii to keep friends and family back home aware of my life.  Facebook took on that role, too, though it added graduates into the mix.    Like many others, I found Instagram to be an interestingly creative approach to picture taking (though I still can’t take a great picture of the food I’m about to eat).  Twitter became a way for me to, for lack of a better term, eavesdrop on writers and movie-makers and organizations that really pushed me creatively and spiritually.  Compared to Facebook and Instagram, Twitter was a real social wasteland, though.  For every one hundred Facebook friends, I found one friend who was actively tweeting or re-tweeting. I drew the line at SnapChat.  Even though I have friends who use the app well, mostly for extended family things, it was just a bridge too far for me.

These days, Facebook is mostly for mindless scrolling or for communicating with friends from afar (often to organize actual face-time when traveling).  Instagram is mostly for travel “documentation.”  I’ve tried reaching out to various people that I share professional or spiritual interests with using Twitter, but that’s always hit or miss.  Part of the tension is a matter of the platform’s purpose, which is why older adults have adopted Facebook even as young adults have dropped it in droves.  Part of it is a matter of personality (which is also tied to platform).  Twitter often serves as a platform for self-promotion, where like-minded people do find each other, but where you need a certain amount of digital-social capital to thrive.  I try and post links to my blog on Twitter, but I don’t always have an easy time posting personal things to that timeline.  It requires an intensity and a pithiness that I often can’t seem to muster.  Oddly enough, most of my random hits on this blog come from people looking for logical fallacies (which I mention often because of classes and comics).

I say all of this because all of this served as my background for reading Jaron Lanier’s Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now.  It’s something that I’ve toyed with often, giving up social media (and to a lesser extent, some kinds of technology).  There’s always a reason, though, to keep an account open here or there.  And while Lanier easily admits that some people’s lives truly are better off because of social media, many people’s lives would be better if they were off social media.  There are economic reasons for this (as Lanier asserts that “social media does not want you to have economic dignity” because it would rather make money off of your data than to pay your for your content).  There are personal reasons for this (we are losing our free will, our empathy, and our happiness to digital life).  And questions of truth, meaning, and the life of the soul that an embrace of social media begs us to deal with (or perhaps would prefer us to ignore).

I imagine that most people have already made up their minds about social media.  They have 10 pictures posted to Instagram compared to my 275.  Or they have no reason for a camera phone at all.  Facebook is for family life with a sprinkling of friendship.  On good days, Twitter is for pats-on-the-back for good content (and oh how I need pats on the back!) or for a self-justifying echo chamber of rage when issues of social significance flare up . . . which is almost every day.  Maybe it’s a war of attrition, or maybe it’s as close to a peace treaty with the 21st century that we can get or allow ourselves.  Interestingly, a number of Christians make a point of giving up social media for Lent or for the Christmas season, a kind of sabbatical from some emotionally hard work. It’s an understandable thing to do (and it’s always interesting when someone “breaks their fast” because of significant ideas or publications that might pop up in the meantime).

I haven’t said much about Lanier’s book in this post, oddly enough.  Lanier is right, I think.  And even though the book’s title doesn’t leave much wiggle room, there are moments in the actual book where he “makes allowances” for social media in day-to-day life.  Because there are days where the good outweighs the bad, where you find people you really want to take the risk of getting to know, where you article you might never have found otherwise shows up in your timeline and makes your day.  For those who cannot quit social media cold turkey, the book is a call to wisdom, to at least be more aware of what is going on in your mind and heart as you share your data and the intimate moments of your life with big companies and your circle of digital friends.

Lanier’s best argument in the book ends up being about a deeper reason for giving up social media.  Lanier doesn’t like the “locked in” nature of particular platforms and processes (most evident in his economic concerns).  The only way to get over that locked-in nature, he asserts, we have to quit things cold turkey and without commentary.  Only when we do that, Lanier asserts, will the companies in control question their practices enough to actually make their platforms better and more effective.

I recommend the book to you, as I haven’t done it justice here.  And thanks for visiting and reading my site.  Every day is the chance to start or continue a good conversation.

 

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Update on That Temporary Vocational Stretch

Posted on June 13, 2018 by awtraughber

Stretch ArmstrongJust over a year ago I posted some thoughts on what I had dubbed my “temporary vocational stretch.”  I’m now one year into that stretch, and it seems that the stretch isn’t quite over.  In May, we made moves that would have brought my time coordinating chapel and helping with camps to a close, but it was not to be.

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A few weeks into the year, I realized that it would also be a year of “letting go.”  Because of other responsibilities, I knew (and was reminded often) that no one thing would get my full attention.  Those around me were gracious with me, students and adults.  And I had an amazing team to work with (as others were taking significant stretches, too).  The student-portion of the school year ended with uncertainty, which means that starting back in August with a sense of “second verse same as the first” that I’m not necessarily looking forward to (but that’s okay).

It has been a good stretch, though.  I’ve been able to process it some with a couple of people, though mostly making allowances for their own dispositions.  There are things looking forward that I feel a little more prepared for. (Wendell Berry would say this is like being around for a second year of farm work: you just know things that you had no clue about the first time around).

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Seth Godin recently posted some thoughts on “taking a stretch.”  He’s got some real wisdom there, I think, because “stretching” is one alternative amongst many.  From his blog:

There are two polar opposites: Staying still and Breaking. It’s easy to visualize each end of the axis, whatever the activity.

In between is stretching.

Stretching is growth. Extending our reach. Becoming more resilient, limber and powerful. Stretching hurts a bit, and maybe leaves us just a little bit sore.

But then, tomorrow, we can stretch further than we could yesterday. Because stretching compounds.

If you’re afraid of breaking, the answer isn’t to stay still. No, if you’re afraid of breaking, the answer is to dedicate yourself to stretching.

I remember well the relief I felt when our final chapel of the first quarter came to a close.  And I remember well the feeling of our last camp of the year brought to an end.  Even now, just a few weeks away from our last chapel (and a few more weeks away from our next), I have a difficult time believing it happened.  I’ll admit to feeling a little sore, a little tired, and in ways that aren’t necessarily easy to articulate to others to to get some recreative rest for.  But that’s the hope for the next few weeks: that in between the reading and gym, through travel and time spent with friends and family, some kind of rest can come and some kind of meaning and sense can be made of the good last year.

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Speaking of “good,” one of my unintentionally funny moments from the year’s end came at the end of our final faculty meeting.  I was introducing the theme for the next year and was closing us in prayer.  “We thank you God, for this year . . . that it is over . . .”  Unintentional pause.  Laughter in the audience and from myself.  “And that it was good.”

(image from dreaminplastic.com)

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The Gospel Charge to Stay Awake

Posted on June 11, 2018 by awtraughber

Yesterday’s Gospel reading from the Daily Office started with one of my favorite “kingdom” verses and then moved into O’Donovan/wake-up territory.  The “kingdom” verse and following from Luke 12:

32 “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. 33 Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

I love the image of the Father’s gift of the kingdom . . . that it’s His “good pleasure,” too.  The bundle of the two verses following add to the significance of pursuing an “kingdom” life, too.

And then the O’Donovan part:

35 “Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning, 36 and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast, so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks. 37 Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve them. 38 If he comes in the second watch, or in the third, and finds them awake, blessed are those servants! 39 But know this, that if the master of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have left his house to be broken into. 40 You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

Be ready.  Be found awake when the master returns.  Be dressed for action.

This weekend I was rereading Stanley Hauerwas’s essay on “How I Think I Learned to Think Theologically,” which I read a couple of years ago but hadn’t revisited since.  I was surprised to see O’Donovan’s thoughts from Self, World, and Time show up throughout the essay.  It was good and encouraging to see the weaving.

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Once More, Rural Juror

Posted on June 9, 2018 by awtraughber

Earlier this week I won a new TV (at the year-end luncheon).  It was a nice surprise.  So before I set it up this evening, I had one last episode of 30 Rock to finish on my old, two lines down the left side of the screen, TV.  Fittingly, it was the season seven finale, which was also the show’s final episode.  One of the many things 30 Rock succeeded at being was a love-letter to television (same sentiment but opposite approach when compared to Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip).  Here’s the closing scene/song for the show, giving us the most we ever got of that great 30 Rock gag, “The Rural Juror.”

Truly, the words don’t really matter.

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About MeowMeowBeenz

Posted on June 8, 2018 by awtraughber

I finished Jaron Lanier’s Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now a couple of days ago.  There were a number of times while reading the book, particularly when Lanier hit a social-relationship beat, where this plot-line from Community came to mind.  Behold: MeowMeowBeenz.

The fifth-season episode turned into a great sci-fi/social commentary episode that we would all do well to watch at some point.

I’ll get my thoughts on Lanier’s book together soon.

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“Hope in the Disastrous World of Time”

Posted on June 7, 2018 by awtraughber

Grey HavensIt’s always good to find writers you appreciate writing well about the stories you love.  Even though I can’t yet bring myself to reread the Harry Potter series, I always enjoy reading things about the story of “the boy who lived,” including the essays by Alan Jacobs about Potter’s adventures.  So I was doubly-glad to see him posting some reflections on The Lord of the Rings.  The context: a response to some thoughts from British science fiction writer Adam Roberts on the possibility of healing.  Jacobs writes:

I would say that healing is not only possible for Tolkien but inevitable — and yet inevitable in a very curious way. That magnificent moment in The Lord of the Rings when Sam, having expected to die on Mount Doom, awakens to find that he is alive and so is Frodo and so is Gandalf and so cries, “Is everything sad going to come untrue?” — surely this is the most perfect embodiment in his writings of what Tolkien calls “eucatastrophe”

“Eucatastrophe,” of course, it the word Tolkien used as a contrast to catastrophe: in this case, a good and joyful ending.  Jacobs wisely notes that victory in Middle Earth is never as final as one might like.  The most recent sense of that can be found in the cinematic version of The Hobbit, where we see the confrontation between the White Council and a reemerging Sauron.  Jacobs goes on to say:

That all victories over evil are contingent and limited and temporary is a strong theme here — and the forgetfulness of all the races of Middle Earth tends to reinforce those limits, and makes the return of evil more likely even among those who start out with “clean earth to till.”

And so, as Tolkien puts it (and Jacobs echoes) there is a long defeat that points to some ultimate, final victory.  But it is not this day.

There will be, then, a “final victory,” but that will be (to return to the quotation from “On Fairy Stories”) “beyond the walls of the world.” Within the walls of the world all victories, all healing, will be temporary and imperfect — eucatastrophic only in the short term. In the longer term the effects of even the most heroic and righteous deeds will seem so narrow and brief that they will scarcely seem worth doing.

Which is why, for Tolkien, the best impetus to heroic and righteous deeds comes from some intuition of a final victory not in history but beyond history. To lack that intuition while clearly seeing the “long defeat” of history clearly is the curse of Denethor — not a person, for all his wisdom, to envy. For Tolkien, the suspicion that there is some perfect righteousness “beyond the walls of the world” is what prompts righteousness and generosity in the here and now. It’s what might make some of us strive to “uproot evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after might have clean earth to till.”

It’s a beautiful post.  You can read all of it here.  And, as always, you can read your way into the world of “the long defeat” in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

(image from the University of Leicester)

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Opening Your Eyes

Posted on June 6, 2018 by awtraughber

Yesterday I posted some reflections on Oliver O’Donovan’s assertion that something significant happens in one’s life when you “wake up” to the world.  Whenever I think of waking up to the world around you, of finding yourself somewhere else or new, this scene comes to mind.

I wish the clip from the first episode of LOST was a little longer.  Jack wakes up, unaware of his surroundings, hearing things, encountering a dog, getting up and running to a beach (past that one hanging shoe).  Whatever world he is in now is completely different than the world before he lost consciousness.  It’s a great illustration of what O’Donovan might be going for.

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After articulating the place that “waking up” plays in the language of the biblical story, O’Donovan asks a series of significant questions that lays out his approach to life in the world:

To what, then, must we wake?  To what give our fullest attention?

He sees the answer given in the Bible in three parts.  First, we wake up to “the truth of the world.”  By this O’Donovan means a world (called “my world”) that is “bounded past and future by a world which was not and will not be mine, which did not and will not surround me, interact with me, condition and respond to me.”  This is a reality that is “beyond myself” yet still somehow includes me.

Second, we wake up to a self of some kind. “The summons to wakefulness is therefore a summons to attend to my agency,” O’Donovan declares.  But we wake up in a world that is already before and will later be after us, so “even when my first observations of the world were granted to me, knowledge of my self lagged behind them.”  As such, we are always catching up.

Finally, we wake in time.  “World and self are co-present only in the moment of time which is often to us for action.”  Which sounds kind of existential and somewhat contingent, but I understand what O’Donovan is going for here (I think).  “The opening of the present is to the future, but not equally to the whole of the future but to the future immediately before us, the next moment into which we may venture our living and acting, the moment which presents itself as a possibility.”  And so we are pressed in on both sides by time, with the future as the only real opening and the present as our opportunity, however limited, to walk well into what is next.

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It feels a bit like knowing and naming the arena of your existence, these three assertions O’Donovan makes concerning our being awake and attentive.  The knowing and naming are important, two things that require genuine humility and deep trust.  But if we are awake, then we are somehow responsible.  The question then is “where do we go (and what do we do) from here on out?”

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