Saturday, December 22, 2007

MERRY CHRISTMAS, I'M AN ATHEIST

Many of you have emailed me to check on how I've been these last few, quiet months. Rather than call via satellite or fiber optics, stop by your home for a visit, meet you for breakfast, run a tin can with twine from your treehouse to mine, get a gig at a major venue and send out a sensitive ballad just for you, make a personal documentary for viewing at your local cinema, send a singing telegram or a message in a bottle, pass notes in class, mail a Christmas card, offer an interpretive dance (or, "choreographed movement" we called it in the Baptist church), write an autobiographical novel (don't get me started), YouTube you, Facebook you, MySpace you, or otherwise assault you with personal messages from me to you, I thought I would objectify and dehumanize our relationship by catching all of you in this world wide net.

How have I been? Okay, I suppose. It has been a year of Sturm und Drang. I've questioned who I am as a father and a son. I haven't always been the best husband or friend. My faith has been tested, confirmed, and tested again. People who matter a great deal to me have taken hits. It would be easy to sit and pout as I pick the shrapnel of collateral damage out, but it hasn't all been lateral. Some of it has been internal, self-inflicted. When you walk stumble-drunk in a minefield, you're bound to lose a limb. But, hey, we go to war with who we are, not who we want to be.

I have had trouble finding joy. It has to find me. And it does from time to time. It finds me in the classroom and in the middle of a song. It finds me in the swing of a hammer and in the middle of a tight, tight hug. It finds me when we cut through the bullshit and tell each other the truth. Not the partisan, scriptural, or certified truth; just those moments when we get humble and honest and connect in those transcendent ways that can only happen when pretense is outlawed and self-preservation is replaced by love.

I haven't written much. Of anything. It's like I've run out of things to say. Cause for disappointment from few and celebration by many. I'm not exactly sure why I have been absent from the blog. I suppose some of it is the rancor. I know I dish it out as much as it is served to me, but consistent with my strong belief that the WAY we talk is more important than WHAT we say, I took the measure of you and me and found us wanting. That is not to say there aren't still plenty of people in high (and low ) places who need an occasional boot in their ass, me being chief among them, I just don't want to worship the gods we create and serve in our kicking. One of my favorite songwriters, David Wilcox, would say I'm becoming an "Atheist."*

Merry Christmas. And, as the old year gives way to caucus and taxes, classroom and faxes, theory and praxis, grinding and axes--the pitch and yaw of all that awaits us in 2008--may we all be atheists.

*Apparently this song is an adaptation from the original by Brian McLaren.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

DAN FOGELBERG 1951-2007

I know. I've been absent for a long time. You might expect me to come back to you with a reaction to Barack's surge in the early primary states, or with a comment on faith and politics via Romney and Huckabee, or with my take on Oprahlooza. Sadly, I return with the news that a great songwriter has left us. I have to admit I haven't followed Fogelberg's career enough lately to know that he was suffering from prostate cancer, or that he had dropped out of live performing three years ago, due to his illness.

Few people will step up and anoint him the songwriter of a generation, or point to him as a trailblazing musician; but most of us who love music can point to his influence in our lives. Even if it is nothing more than the top-40 hits from his 1981 album The Innocent Age ("Run for the Roses," "Leader of the Band," "Same Old Lang Syne"), all of us have probably been affected by this extraordinary artist.

It is a little more personal for me. I only saw the man in concert once, but there was one performance of his I'll never forget. It was a wet night in the summer of 1985. I was sitting on a screened-in porch with my girlfriend, watching it rain. The old Pioneer turntable playing in the background had this really cool repeat function that allowed you to play the same side of an album multiple times. Side A of Fogelberg's "High Country Snows" played over and over and over again, for probably an hour or so, while I screwed up the courage to ask this lovely woman to be my wife. She said yes. I have always given Dan some credit for the grace shed on me that night.

It's only fitting that I mention his death here, since--some of you may remember--Dan Fogelberg was the first songwriter I ever quoted on this blog...my very first post.

I have to leave you with the lyrics from his song, "The Reach:"


It's Maine, and it's Autumn, the birches have just begun turning
It's life and it's dying
The lobstermen's boats come returning with the catch of the day in their holds
And the young boy is cold and complaining
The fog meets the beaches and out on the Reach it is raining
It's father and son, it's the way it's been done since the old days
It's hauling by hand ten miles out from the land where their chow waits
And the days are all lonely and long and the seas grow so stormy and strong but...
The Reach will sing welcome as homeward they hurry along

(Chorus)

And the morning will blow away as the waves crash and fall
And the Reach like a siren sings as she beckons and calls
As the coastline recedes from view and the seas swell and roll
I will take from the Reach all that she has to teach to the depths of my soul
The wind brings a chill, there's a frost on the sill in the morning
It creeps through the door
On the edge of the shore ice is forming
Soon the northers will bluster and blow
And the woods will be whitened with snowfall
And the Reach will lie frozen for the lost and unchosen to row

(Chorus)


Dan Fogelberg, may you reach no more.
May you discover what a heaven is for.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

GOODBYE, GOOD RIDDANCE

But, we all know he's not going anywhere. He will never go away. Whatever happens, it's quite certain the effects of his influence will take generations to purge.

Sure, division, enmity, polarization...these things have always been part of the human social condition. But Karl Rove took us to new lows. No single individual in the twenty-first century has worked so hard to consciously generate ideological division than this man. Who had ever heard of blue states and red states until this administration? When did evangelical Christianity become known almost exclusively for its opposition to homosexuality and gay marriage? For that matter, when has there ever been such a sharp distinction among Christians about which party they should support? All of this coming from a guy who doesn't even claim to be religious. He played us. Well, at least he played several million otherwise decent people into believing in a chimera, and buying into a artificially generated cultural and spiritual war that never existed, except in his evil brilliance.

No question the guy is a genius. How else will history account for one of the most incompetent presidents ever to hold the office winning an election he lost, then getting reelected? It takes an architect of ungodly skill to pull it off.

Rove, along with like-minded demagogues, has spread a brand of anger, distrust, and cynicism that may never go away. We can't change that; but we can change us. And we can decide today that we will not allow it to happen to us again.

There is only one candidate in the field today who eschews talk of blue and red, them and us, liberal and conservative, etc. Only one who thusfar has not played the game of polarization, divide and conquer. He may not turn out to be some messiah, but he is better prepared to take us a new direction than anyone else.

"Karl Rove was an architect of a political strategy that has left the country more divided, the special interests more powerful, and the American people more shut out from their government than any time in memory. But to build a new kind of politics, it will take more than the departure of a man or even an Administration that constructed the old -it will take a movement of everyday Americans committed to changing Washington and reclaiming their government."

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

SUMMERTIME AND THE LIVIN' AIN'T SO EASY

That's a lie. It's pretty easy. If by easy you mean no set schedule or formally defined expectations (benchmarks). However, over the course of this last year I have found that it is much more difficult to work for myself than anyone else. There are no clearly defined parameters, working hours, or evaluations. So, when you add the various dimensions of guilt I was raised with, it makes for a almost constant sense of failure, or fear of failure. So, maybe the livin' ain't so easy after all.

This summer has been quite good, actually. No real vacation trips planned this year, since we helped send our daughter to Spain. It didn't work out too well, she came back. I have been spending my days writing, remodeling my dining room, and playing music. I have discovered a similar neurosis in the writing and remodeling. I seem to be more comfortable with deconstruction than completion. I start in on a book chapter, and after several hours discover that I managed to tear apart what was already there and make it far more complicated than it was when I started. What was a simple, clean plot now has 17 fragments that will require advanced narrative geometric analysis to fit together. Likewise, my remodeling job was supposed to consist of opening a doorway between the kitchen and dining room, to create some flow and a more enjoyable space for our new dining room table. When I started, I wondered if I would be able to fit all the plaster and lath in our little trash bin. Several weeks later, I have delivered about 7,000 pounds of debris to the landfill, reinforced numerous wall studs, replaced ductwork and wiring, reinforced ceiling joists, completely rebuilt one wall and doorway, cut out and patched portions of the wood flooring, and replaced the french doors. I now have a much bigger set of fragments it may take an architect and contractor to put back together.

Saturday, February 10, 2007

A LITTLE BIT LOUDER NOW, OR THE WAY TO THE WHAT

What can I say, I'm excited. But I'm nervous. Basking in the afterglow of the announcement speech, I just want it to stay this way. Can't we just hold each other and spoon forever? No. No we can't. They won't let us.

By tomorrow at least two things will begin happening that remind me how hard it is to live in this world. First, the attacks, which have become de rigueur for American campaigns will begin. Second, jaded media will begin calling for less "lofty rhetoric" and more policy details from Mr. Obama.

"What's wrong with specifics?" you ask. "Don't we want our candidates to tell us what they will do if elected?" Well, first of all, this is my blog and you have no business asking me questions in the middle of a post. But, if you must know, here's what's wrong with it: It's politics as usual, and it shackles us to a cycle of despair. We line up candidates and make them lie to us so we can create lists that can be measured by whatever ideological or personal instrument we happen to be using. We are made to feel like we are voting for specific policies. Then, people are elected and proceed to do nothing they promised, either because they are liars (recall "compassionate conservative") or because the overwhelming inertia of the system simply won't allow it. In the meantime, we dismiss idealism and powerful oratory as "mere rhetoric," and exchange knowing smirks with the turn of every beautifully-crafted phrase.

Well, I'm sick of it. We have before us the best campaign speaker in forty years. We have an opportunity to move back from cynical pragmatism that asks "Where's the beef?", and settles for the inevitability of inaction and betrayal. We have a chance to consider the speech of an audaciously hopeful figure, who inspires us to change the way we communicate. That's what Obama's message is about: communication. His argument is that the WAY we do democracy is as, or more, important than WHAT we do--that, in fact, the WAY actually can become the WHAT.

So, wait for it. Tomorrow all the talk will be about the WHAT, but no one will point out that, once elected, candidates probably won't deliver on the WHAT, but the WAY is entirely in their hands.

"By ourselves, this change will not happen. Divided, we are bound to fail. But the life of a tall, gangly, self-made Springfield lawyer tells us that a different future is possible. He tells us that there is power in words. He tells us that there is power in conviction. That beneath all the differences of race and region, faith and station, we are one people. He tells us that there is power in hope."

Scoff if you wish, but there is power in words.