Pivot into the New Year

Posted on November 26, 2017 by awtraughber

I’m a few minutes from boarding my flight from Vancouver to Honolulu (Air Canada got me on an earlier flight out of Victoria without any prompting on my part, which has been nice). Many churches today are acknowledging today, the last Sunday of the church calendar, as Christ the King Sunday. It’s pretty new to my way of looking at things, but I like the idea. The folks at the National Review just posted an explanation of the day by Kevin D. Williamson. The whole thing is worth a read, but here’s how the article, which places the day in its historical context brilliantly, ends:

The United States has had an uneasy relationship with the Catholic Church. Some of the Founding Fathers believed that it was a mistake to extend religious liberty and other civil rights to Catholics, who had, in their view, pledged their allegiance to an alien power. And the Catholic Church, for its part, has not always had the most enlightened attitude toward Anglo-American liberalism and its separation of the priestly and stately powers. But the spirit behind the institution of Christ the King was and is entirely consonant with the American idea. To the encroaching and arrogant spirit of communism and fascism the Vicar of Christ said: “No. You are not the beginning and the end. You are not the dispositive power in this universe. You are not the final judge. There is something above you and beyond you and infinitely greater than you. You, with all your bombs and bayonets and prisons, may command all the known world to kneel at your feet, but we have seen pharaohs before, and emperors and god-kings, too, and we have in the end stood over their graves, and thought on the grave that is empty.”

We Americans have a related creed, one that holds these truths to be self-evident, that all men are endowed by — there’s no avoiding the question — their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Our founding notion is that even a king may go only so far and no further — because even the greatest powers on this Earth are, in the end, answerable to an infinitely higher power. On this, there is and can be no negotiation and no compromise. It is not mere coincidence that what the Nazis and the Communists had in common was their paganism, reconstituted for 20th-century consumption. The Christian understanding of the universe, in which God and man meet in the person of Jesus, is fundamentally incompatible with the totalitarian view of the universe, the philosophy of man as meat, the understanding of the human being as a herd animal to be husbanded, traded, milked, and, if the powers that be so decide, slaughtered. The message of Christ the King is that while we may owe the legitimate secular powers some obedience, they cannot claim us as property to be disposed of in accordance with their own whims, because there is Another who has a prior and superseding claim on us.

A good reminder for these days, where too many good and true things are too easily forgotten. You can read the whole article here. Now please excuse me while a go buy a couple of bags of maple candy goodness before heading back to the Aloha State.

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Sunday’s Best: Frazz Thinks Truth

Posted on November 26, 2017 by awtraughber

There’s something extremely right about today’s Frazz strip.

(Image from gocomics.com)

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Comics and Books

Posted on November 25, 2017 by awtraughber

Saw a bit of a theme in a couple of recent classic comic strips. We’ll start with this recent Peanuts strip:

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I can imagine a friend or two of my own saying something similar (sans kiss). Just glad to see someone reading, right?

And then here’s a recent “classic” Calvin and Hobbes strip with Calvin the Consumer demanding too much from his bedtime stories:

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This weekend has been a pretty good book-buying trip for me. Found a Douglas Coupland book not published in the States as well as a Walt Simonson tpb whose existence I must have blocked out of my mind. Beyond that: a cool new edition of The Horse and His Boy that acknowledges the series original publishing order.

Have I read any of the books that I brought with me? Not so much. I’m still working through Awaiting the King. Plus I’ve been spending some time in Ephraim Radner’s Church, which is taking an interesting approach to understanding a concept we too easily take for granted.

(images from gocomics.com)

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Fall Retreat and Advance

Posted on November 24, 2017 by awtraughber

img_0722I have to admit, this quick Canadian getaway has been enjoyable.  I’d like to think of it as both a retreat and advance: looking back and moving forward.  It’s been a good opportunity to enjoy a beautiful place while still taking some time to reflect on times past.  The weather, though a bit chilly, has held up nicely.  The food has been great (even got some turkey and dressing on Thanksgiving night; had British afternoon tea today).  Today I took some time getting all turned around in Beacon Hill Park, which is right across the way from where I’m staying.

I’m hoping to do more of the same tomorrow while also working in a movie and some fish-and-chips.  I’m also hoping to sleep in a bit (last night I got about 9 hours of sleep, more than I’ve gotten in a long time), which the cold weather helps (I’d like to think).  It’s been good having limited internet (only when in-room or at a coffeeshop, really). And since there’s nothing new on TV, that time-suck hasn’t been an issue.

Time will tell (sooner rather than later) if this excursion sets me up to end the semester well or puts me behind and out-of-rhythm.  I’m hoping for the former more than the latter.  Either way, this has been a good getaway.

 

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Victoria

Posted on November 23, 2017 by awtraughber

It’s been a long day of travel, walking, and eating.  Here’s a quick picture of one of my favorite places in Victoria: Russell’s Books.  And I only bought two books today.

img_0658And this isn’t even my favorite section of the store . . .

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Smith and the Benedict Option

Posted on November 16, 2017 by awtraughber

I haven’t seen much in Awaiting the King (by James K. A. Smith) that deals with Rod Dreher’s “Benedict Option” aside from one or two “so-called Benedict Option” lines.  So I was a little surprised to see a longer mention of it in this recently-released video that serves as a kind of “promo” for the book.

It’s an interesting juxtaposition, for sure: cozying up to political power on one end and running from it in fear on the other.  I’m glad to see Smith acknowledging the close connection between his approach and Dreher’s.  And while I do have a better sense now of where Smith’s frustration with the Option comes from, I can’t help but think that there’s a difference between fear and facing reality.  I think Dreher’s assumption is that most Christian communities are no where near ready for the kind of engagement Smith thinks is possible.  We need some rehabilitation to get there.  And, ironically enough, Smith’s work is one way of helping that rehabilitation along.

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Our Liturgical/Political Reality

Posted on November 15, 2017 by awtraughber

I’m slowly making my way through James K. A. Smith’s Awaiting the King, hoping to have it read through once before Thanksgiving.  It’s a good read that brings a lot of threads together (along with some nice nods to pop culture, which is always appreciated).  One thing that Smith does early on is address the question of the “social imaginary” of politics.  Social imaginaries were a big part of the first Cultural Liturgies book, so I’m glad to see that thread brought back here.  In this video, Smith talks about “space” and the liturgical reality of our political and public lives.

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Monks without a Monastery

Posted on November 13, 2017 by awtraughber

monasteryJoshua Gibbs, who teaches at a classical Christian school in Virginia, recently recounted what happened when he challenged his sophomore students to consider the “rule” of St. Francis in the context of adopting their own “rule” for living for one week.

“Rule,” of course, is a tricky word for many of us, one rife with opportunity for equivocation and miscommunication.  Most of us hate rules.  But most of us also understand our need for rules.  And then, when you add the monastic concept of “rule” into the mix?  Well, that doesn’t happen as often as it should.  Gibbs reflects:

What do American Christians think of rules? Christians are suitably concerned that this nation should have the right rules governing marriage and immigration and abortion. But when a Christian leaves earthly concerns behind and begins to dwell on working out his salvation with fear and trembling, he is often tempted to turn up his nose at the rules, dismissing them as legalism.

And legalism, definitely, is something we are constantly challenged to avoid.

If legalism is a disease, the cure is worse. Christians in this country have heard “Doing X does not make you a Christian” for so long, they do not know what Christians do. Many are offended at the idea that Christians should do anything, for salvation is a state of being, and being transcends acting. The less we do, the greater our faith.

Gibbs has much to say in the article concerning temptation, which is pointed and refreshing.  Even recently reflecting on the Christian year (starting soon with Advent), I was reminded of how the series of moments from Advent to Pentecost, too often clothed in party garb, is really corrective and medicine.   Gibbs adds:

If Christians would fight temptation, they must have not only the desire to win, but a strategy for obedience that respects the prowess of their enemy.

For Gibbs, a “rule” in the monastic vein isn’t simply about things Christians already know they should do.  Some of this students mentioned things like gossip and kindness, things explicitly mentioned in Scripture.  Things like bed times and tech use? not so much.  And that’s where a “rule” comes into place.

I’ve been thinking about rules for some time, definitely since moving to Hawaii a decade-and-a-half ago.  Some of that stems from the practical reality of living alone, which can make the rhythm of life inconsistently difficult (and assumes, rightly or wrongly, that families and households have it better).  Some of that stems from a felt frustration with church life, with Christian community: how do you maintain a proper disposition of faithfulness when church life looks more like programs and parties?  How, even, do you talk about the Christian life without a language to support it (and the language of programs and parties is definitely deficient here)?

Scripture, perhaps, asserts that “this is the way the world moves.”  A “rule,” then, is a way for us to move through it and with it.

As we move closer to the beginning of the church year with Advent, I can’t help but feel some hope for the return of a kind of rhythm that has disappeared during these months of “ordinary time,” when it has felt like “anything goes” and that whatever happens happens.  Not only that, but simply being pushed back and forth amongst different calendars (be it from Hallmark or the school hallway) makes you want to find good root in something deeper.

You can read more of Gibbs’s article here.

(image from meteora.com)

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Stranger Reflections

Posted on November 9, 2017 by awtraughber

HopperI finished the second season of Stranger Things Tuesday night.  Or rather I should say “we,” as I was grateful to get to watch the season with friends (the same from season one).  That kind of thing seems only appropriate for a show rooted in friendship, in a kind of adventure that eludes most of us now that we are deeper into adulthood.

It was a good season.  Odd, really, because of the show’s comfortability.  Really, I suppose, it’s our comfortability with the characters.  The show, really, is anything but comfortable.  At moments, it felt like an after-school version of Broadchurch, with everyone struggling to make sense of something both foreign and right before their eyes.  To summarize the thoughts of others: the season was part Aliens, part Goonies,  and part the Exorcist (and that doesn’t even include Eleven’s X-Men like turn in episode seven).  I suppose that, on some level, it was easier to take certain thematic elements for granted now that we have two seasons of Hawkins goodness.

Nick Olson recently posted an article at Image Journal that gets at something about the show and its allure (hat-tip to Twitter for the find).  Olson asserts:

My mind is first drawn to the context of watching Stranger Things before the show itself. This is instructive for how the show has become a pop cultural phenomenon: Its attention to the past isn’t reducible to its 1980s setting. I was born in 1985, but I am a child of the 90s. I miss more of the show’s references than I recognize, yet its nostalgic spell affects me.

If nostalgia is the ache of homesickness, then the longing that animates Stranger Things isn’t reducible to the desire for Phil Collins and mullets and Dungeons and Dragons. The show’s sense of nostalgia is deeper and wider—perhaps the powerful subtext that some critics have been looking for.

Stranger Things recognizes the profound ways that we are estranged from home, enfolding the resultant nostalgia into the show’s every layer.

Nostalgia compounds “homecoming” and “pain.” I’m intrigued by how the show’s nostalgic sensibility is situated in horror and science fiction. The scares are fundamentally about homesickness, and science fiction, even when set in the past, orients us to the future—to where our scientific discovery and technological application can lead us.

Stranger Things combines these—nostalgia, horror, and science fiction—into a potent brew for us to binge until we are familiar again with what ails us.

I’m not quite sure most are willing to do much more “with what ails us” than by being reminded of it, but something like Stranger Things is at least good for that if not more.

I think the thing that stood out the most to me this time around was how utterly fearless most of these characters were written to be: jumping into underground tunnels, driving into the lions-den of demadogs, wielding gnarly bats and drug-soaked needles.  The single-synapse reactions were a good and refreshing challenge for those of us who take way to much time to decide to do what is good and right.

There’s a part of me, of course, that wants there to be a third season.  Another part of me, though, feels like this was a good and appropriate ending to the story (at least on the personal level, not so much on the narrative of the Upside-Down invasion).  In that way, it’s like Broadchurch season two, too.  Even still, I’ll enjoy the third season when it comes, hopefully with friends.

You can read the rest of Olson’s article here.  The last three paragraphs are quite good.

(image from heroichollywood.com)

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Waiting for the King (but not for the book)

Posted on November 4, 2017 by awtraughber

Sample_nopriceThanks to the kind folks at Hearts and Minds Books, I was able to get my copy of James K. A Smith’s Awaiting the King a few days before the actual release day.  And so I waited for Thor:Ragnarok by reading through the preface and introduction to the third volume in Smith’s “Cultural Liturgies” series.

There’s something very comfortable for me about reading Smith.  In some ways, he reads a lot like Steve Garber: a consistent blend of pop culture references with ancient texts and everyday concerns that sheds real light on things too easily taken for granted.  It definitely makes you want to take your time with the book.  When necessary, Smith writes with a good kind of density, too.  Good footnotes and interesting asides abound (and really, do I want to see the oft-maligned The Postman now?  maybe a little).

From the outset, it is clear to me why Smith looks askance at Rod Dreher’s “Benedict Option.”  It has something to do with hope, I believe.  He (perhaps incorrectly) interprets Dreher’s proposal as a kind of giving-up-hope, which defeats a key part of Smith’s purposes in the book.  Reading Smith excites me, but Dreher’s work connects more with lived experience and concern, I think.

Thirty pages in, one of the things that I am appreciating most about Awaiting the King is the constant reminder of the significance of the telos, the end point of the design, that to which things point.  I feel the tension of the lack-of-telos often, really.  It is a refusal to see (or be reminded of) a viable big picture.  And so we are too often left with our own little “scenes” and our own individual “purposes” when something more clear and true is available.  That ought not be, particularly when it comes to church and to education, to areas of life where telos should be “baked in” to the composition of things.

Smith asserts something basic and easily forgotten in the introduction that Christians today would do well to remember.  Smith asserts:

There is something political at stake in our worship and something religious at stake in our politics.

That’s true across the board, whether or not you believe that a good God has involved Himself intimately in the unfolding of creation.  I’m looking forward to seeing how Smith unpacks that thought particularly while using the work of Augustine and O’Donavan for framing the big picture of what is at stake.

(image from bakerpublishinggroup.com)

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