Ah, Those Little Things (that give you away)

Posted on June 23, 2018 by awtraughber

Perhaps the one song from U2’s Songs of Experience that has really stuck with me over the last few months has been one of the album’s slower songs, “The Little Things That Give You Away.”  A few weeks ago I was in my classroom with the speakers up and it felt like I was hearing the song’s bridge for the very first time:

Sometimes I can’t believe my existence
See myself on a distance
I can’t get back inside

Sometimes the air is so anxious
All my tasks are so thankless
And all of my innocence has died

Sometimes I wake at four in the morning
Where all the doubt is swarming
And it covers me in fear

Sometimes, sometimes, sometimes…
Sometimes full of anger and grieving
So far away from believing
That any song will reappear

That first set of lines is a great picture of the abstracted self, oddly distant and seemingly irreconcilable with day-to-day existence.

Here’s a recent performance of the song by U2 for Spotify.  A great rendition of one of the album’s best songs.

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Generational Encouragement of a Necessary Kind

Posted on June 22, 2018 by awtraughber

I finally got around to watching Chris Pratt’s “Generation Award” acceptance speech at the recent MTV Video and TV Awards.  It’s one of those nice bits of pop culture that float to the top every now and then that can remind us not only that there are Christians out there in fields beyond us, but also that articulating the Gospel takes on different forms in different contexts.  Consider:

It’s a good mixture of PG-potty humor and some kind of real wisdom.  And it’s a nice build towards something of significance.  Sure, the odd cheering for difficult truths is interesting, but I think the overall presentation is worth it.  It’s almost a “slow build” from the belief in a soul to the imperfect soul’s need for grace.  And that’s what makes it an interesting case for a kind of “evangelism” we too often forget: working from the ground floor to build something that points higher.  Everything, of course, is evangelism in one way or another.  And the way we articulate it might change from moment to moment, from culture to culture, but that kernel of Truth and its first-fruit implications (saying “you’re not perfect” is more than just letting possible perfectionists in a perfectionistic culture off the hook) are vital if we as Christians are hoping to “play the long game” in a culture that’s oversimplifying everything.

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Crashing through the City of Mirrors

Posted on June 21, 2018 by awtraughber

CIty of MirrorsLong have I considered myself a zombie guy.  The sense of civilization lost, of a rag-tag group of survivors trying to make things right (or at least stop things from going so very, very wrong), the sobering irreversibility of so much lost and nothing gained.  Which is why I was surprised to find myself so enthralled by Justin Cronin’s The Passage a few summers ago.  Much like the story, I can’t quite call it a vampire story, though that’s exactly what it is.  It’s like the movie Contagion but with real blood-letting consequences.  I had a daily lunch-date with Amy and Wolgast and their attempts at understanding what was happening to the world around them.  It was a story so good that I didn’t feel any need for a sequel (even though the story of Amy obviously begged for one).  Then came The Twelve.  It moved the story in an interesting direction, not-the-least-of-which was a jump in time to a frontier-like picture of life after the virals all but conquered North America.  The novel’s climactic conflagration cemented in my mind Cronin as a master of plot and timing.  Then came The City of Mirrors.  I bought it as soon as it came out but couldn’t get into it.  And so I put it aside . . . until last week.

Much like The Twelve, The City of Mirrors plays with time a little, skipping both forward and backward across its 600 pages.  The cast from The Twelve mostly return, though many are changed, have grown older and, in different ways, wiser.  And in that passage of time, the stakes have once again gotten very, very high.  Despite its size, the cast feels wonderfully realized, easily distinguishable from one another.  The big shift in this book, of course, is the intentional telling of the story of Zero, Timothy Fanning, the first viral.  His story takes up an inordinate amount of the book, which shocked me at first.  If nothing else, it was evidence that Cronin could do more than just tell tense action scenes well.  With Fanning, we get a glimpse of college life in the 90s through the point-of-view of an outcast who finally finds people he loves.

It’s all set-up, of course.  In fact, the first two-thirds of the book is set-up.  Which, in Cronin’s hand, is perfectly fine.  There are enough twists and turns in the first two-thirds of the book that you can’t help but read on.  And then, once all of the pieces are in place? No turning back, not at all.  And you wouldn’t have it any other way.

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There’s something very cinematic about Cronin’s style.  You get a great sense of that in The Twelve.  And then he’s obviously honed that ability by the end of Mirrors.  The cuts he makes from character to character, storyline to storyline,  work in a way that almost defy good novel-specific storytelling.  It’s read just like the best, most climactic moments of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings view: multiple cuts with tension and a thematic thread holding things together.

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Last month FOX announced that it had picked up The Passage for its 2018-2019 television season.  It’s a second attempt to bring the story to the small screen.  And while the show’s trailer, which I posted here, doesn’t look all that different from other stories of its kind, I can’t help but hope that the show is good enough, sticks around long enough, to fully embrace the gripping and consuming story it eventually becomes.  It would definitely require a shift in tone and cast after a season or two, but it would be worth it.

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This puts me at four books read this summer: Lanier, O’Donovan, Palahniuk, and Cronin.  I’ve got a second O’Donovan book in the bag . . . really abstract, but some real wisdom in there.  I’ve got a Chabon novel up next, along with a couple of recommended theology books from Richard Hays.  I’m not sure which, if any of these, will make it on the plane next week.  Plus there’s the necessary re-read of Alan Jacobs’s How to Think before the school year starts up.  Guess we’ll have to see how much reading happens between now and then.

(image from latimes.com)

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Second Thoughts on First Reformed?

Posted on June 20, 2018 by awtraughber

First ReformedScratch the surface of the 96% Rotten Tomatoes approval rating for First Reformed and you’ll find frustration and discontent from those hoping for a more faith-filled movie about a small church pastor trying to make sense of the ever-bleaker world around him. This review at First Things is a good rundown of some of those concerns . . . definitely more thoughtful than I could ever put together.

I tried going into my recent viewing knowing as little as possible.  I knew it was bleak.  And I heard a little about its environmental concern (though not the extreme sense that comes through in the movie).  And while it’s totally bleak and truly frustrating in a faith-empty way, it does point towards some tensions worth teasing out in conversations.

The first is danger of isolation.  This is a very lonely movie, and it’s not just a loneliness for a single clergy.  Toller, the priest, is lonely.  Mary and Michael, the married couple who serve as one of the catalysts for the movie’s conflict are lonely in their marriage and as a marred couple.  So it’s not just a single, celibate thing (which is the direction some might turn the conversation).  Setting the story in a bleak New York winter only accentuates the loneliness, too.  Toller’s church is mostly empty.  The same could be said for his parsonage, with maybe one simple set of furniture in each room.  This definitely begs questions about community and fellowship, both with other Christians and with others in civil society beyond the Sunday  morning crunch.

The second tension is the relationship between old and new when it comes to ecclesiology.  Toller’s First Reformed Church is consistently contrasted with the larger, sponsoring church, Abundant Life Church.  Large sanctuary.  Youth choir.  Recording studio.  Cafeteria?  Michael, the depressed young man whose wife seeks out Toller, refuses to go to Abundant Life for counseling because of its artificial feel.  The assumption, right or wrong, is that the kind of spiritual wisdom that cannot exist in a large, factory-sized, church can and should be found in a smaller church.  If only that had turned out to be the case.  There seems to be a good bit of worldly wisdom found at Abundant Life Church, but Toller flees from it, is probably pushed farther into a more isolated life as a way of being critical for what appears to be a more artificial approach to the faith.

The third tension is the question of suffering and success.  There’s this great scene about halfway through the movie where Toller visits the youth/young-adult group at Abundant Life Church.  The meant-to-be-cool pastor is checking in with his group.  One person gushes about the faithfulness and goodness of God.  The pastor responds warmly and with great cliche to this news.  Then a young woman shares about her father, how is a faithful Christian who has lost his job and has no prospects for what’s next.  Instead of answering her concerns, the cool pastor turns attention to Toller, who has to find some way to answer questions of theodicy that the other couldn’t.  And so the tension of success and suffering ultimately articulates the best/worst of both sides of the spectrum.  In the end, any “success” is shallow because it is compromised by worldly intervention.  But Toller’s “suffering” is also frustratingly shallow.  By the end of the movie he puts on the metaphorical “hair shirt” as a kind of penance for his inability to work well in the fallen world.

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I can’t say that I loved the movie.  But I did find it engaging.  Some of the tensions played out in humorous moments, though with a dark humor, I suppose.  A number of the turning points were sad and frustrating, too.  It makes you wonder how easily the Gospel could get lost in the mess of the movie . . . but then you realize how easily we lose it in our own lives together.  Ethan Hawke, who plays Toller, does a great job.  He brings some interesting nuance to the role.  He’s a deeply tortured soul.  I wanted to know about his formation (beyond the personal tragedy that moved him to the church).  They probably won’t make a movie about that, though.

(image from birthmoviesdeath.com)

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Beyond Working Lonely

Posted on June 19, 2018 by awtraughber

A couple of weeks ago, I posted some thoughts on what set Parks and Recreation apart from the other comedies of its particular moment.  I stand by my assertion that of all the Thursday night shows on NBC from the time, the Parks and Rec gang was the group that really embraced the idea of friendship in a way the others couldn’t.  But yesterday’s post about loneliness at work brought to mind two particular moments from The Office that keep it in the running.  The first is great, but the second has the money quote.  First: Jim says farewell to Michael.

And then, in the final clip involving a missed connection with Pam, Michael makes a profound statement for our times.

It’s highly possible that I’ve shared both clips before on this site, but that’s okay.  It is good to be reminded of these things, these moments, as fictional and extreme as they might seem.  Something I’ve slowly learned over the last few years of working with seniors is that “sometimes the things that often ‘go without saying’  actually need to be said.”  Even if it took years to get there for people like Jim, Pam, and Michael Scott.

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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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