6-18-09
5:55pmOff work, and alone in the apartment. Jenni left this morning to her grandparents’ in North Carolina for the weekend. I’ve been putting in overtime every day this week and I’m pretty tired. One more day and then a quiet weekend. Supposed to go to Carson and Sarah’s Saturday night. It’s too bad we’ve gotten to know them just before we leave for Chicago.
Reading the Lothlorien chapters of “The Fellowship of the Ring” just now, probably my favorite in the trilogy. “
Namarië! Nai hiruvalyë Valimar. Nai elyë hiruva. Namarië! Farewell! Maybe thou shalt find Valimar. Maybe even thou shalt find it. Farewell!” Why are the things I feel the most always in fantasy, in music I can’t enjoy without reservation, in images so quickly gone? The basic disconnect. If I could be perfectly objective, could really divorce myself from environment, presuppositions, and fear, then maybe that disconnect would drive me to some scary conclusions. But no it wouldn’t, either. To divorce oneself entirely from all context, from all others: from, in my case, the Church, whatever that has or hasn’t meant to me; would be to abandon myself to utter subjectivity. The distrust I have of my own thought or speech when I’ve been separated from any immediate context, whether by a social situation, beer or tiredness, is not invalid I don’t think. It may be of value where it abolishes social or prideful inhibitions, sure, but whenever I’ve retreated into myself, selfishly or otherwise, and let my mind have free run of itself, I have little to no confidence. I need constructs, however faulty; my mind needs paths to follow.
We’re supposed to have glimpses, fleeting images of what’s to come. And I guess that’s true – I suppose I do. But most times the spaces between stretch out broader and duller than I have the wherewithall to see beyond. Glimpses so fleeting they only tease, and belittle. “Memory is not what the heart desires.” If even in memory the fullness could be found. The heart desires more: and often, on the lathe, or driving to church, or sitting in the living room in the late afternoon, it despairs. I don’t ask much. Only for enough to get me through.
“Farewell! Maybe thou shalt find Valimar. Maybe even thou shalt find it. Farewell!”
6-1-09
5:24pm
Here’s a letter I wrote to the Dean-o a couple of months ago. Parts of it summarize my thoughts over the past year quite well. This journal is getting terribly repetitive, which I guess is a little damning of my thought patterns. Oh well.
Dean,
I was going to send this via email, but I think there’s something to writing it out and mailing it. Not quite sure what it is, but it seems worthwhile.
Hm...there's a fine distinction to be made between the faith we've inherited, and the faith we participate in. You write that "the faith we've inherited is lacking...we've been given a piece and are expected to be content with just that piece." I can commiserate with that kind of thinking. We sustain, in our daily experience, wounds from the shortcomings of the institutional expression we've grown up in. We've been enculturated in it. After all, we’re products of fallen humanity, both cause and effect. But we also have, dwelling within us to animate and vivify, the Holy Spirit of God, the "perfecting cause" of the Trinity (as Lossky puts it), perfecting in us the perfect work of Christ, completed and all-sufficient. And that is not lacking at all. The writer of Hebrews encourages us to "strive to enter that rest" (4:11). This theological rest, the provision of Christ, is always waiting and eager for us to enter into it. It’s the picture of the rest, perfect, and of us, imperfect, struggling, persisting. You ask, "why it is that God keeps Himself such a secret?" I think it is not so much that God keeps himself a secret as that we cannot see him in our present state until we are made like Christ. We can't meet the gods face to face "till we have faces."
Because I don't think that true knowledge of God begins or ends with intellectual questions and answers, or with "right practice" (as in, the ideal worship service). It begins with a posture. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." In other words, the paradigm we've inherited may be faulty in many aspects, but the way forward is not through a search for "the right expression of the faith" (could we ever find it the way we've idealized it anyway?) but through a renewed participation in the perfect salvation we've recieved from God. Like I wrote in that piece you read, I don't believe truth to be external or dogmatic only, or even primarily (that is, a particular institution or expression of belief, other than the Church Universal of course) but internal and pneumatic. Without being the least spooky or pantheistic, I believe that the truth is within us. Obviously it is outside us as well, in natural theology, in the "God-breathed" Scriptures, in our brothers and sisters. But all these venues have to be interpreted, and interpretation is always subject to the human mind. "The kingdom that's within is true." Inward to the infinite microcosm of the Kingdom of God within us; outward to the macrocosm of the world and even the universe. For He fills everything in every way. An inner silent mystery, an outer clamoring reality. It must be both (since to deny one or the other you'd have to be some sort of Manichean); but it must begin within, in submission, in silence.
That's an awfully grand and arrogant way to start off a letter. I'm sorry...you just pulled my string I guess. Forgive my presumptuousness. It's certainly not my intent to "tell you how it is" - I barely understand any of that myself. Just what I've been thinking lately. As you know, I've thought a lot in the past months about Orthodoxy, and I have a big tendency to get all angsty and freak out, as though my decision is due tomorrow. But I've reached the conclusion that God is far more concerned with my heart, my inner response to his Spirit, than with what tradition of faith I allign myself with. You're right, of course, our inherited faith is imperfect. Frustratingly so. But there is no perfect tradition. Maybe one day I will find one which I believe is more accurate, more holy - fuller, I guess - than Evangelicalism. Maybe not. But it will always be the same Christ, the same work of redemption, and the same task laid on me. To strive to enter into that rest.
You said that one of the things you like about Evangelical thought is there is so much freedom to form your own convictions. I don't know that I can agree with you there...in fact, that is to me the scariest thing about the Evangelical paradigm. I don't want to form my own convictions. I don't trust my own mind that much, I guess. I'd rather let the true faith of the apostles and fathers form them, and I will just walk in them as best I can. Just a thought.
So Carson told me today that Joel is presenting a paper at the conference here in February. Any chance you were tagging along? Just wonderin. I will be presenting a paper on "Evangelical Patriotism and the Kingdom of God" - something I'm increasingly dreading. I do have strong feelings about that subject, but they're not very well developed and the more I've read on the subject the more bored I've gotten with it. I had a different idea - I wanted to do something on the apophatic vision of the East - but Carson suggested this as being more relevant to the subject matter of the conference. And he's right, of course, but I'm just not jazzed up about it. Maybe it will come.
Thanks very much for taking the time to write. I need this kind of interaction. It's funny how little time I spent in college talking with my friends about things that actually mattered. We were too busy talking smut and making fun of people. It seems like it was actually awkward to jump into something really serious a lot of the time. That's one of the reasons I've valued your friendship. Not that we didn't talk our share of smut too.
Take good care,
Ethan
My apologies to Dean for airing his private mail, to the three people who will ever happen across it.
