Rumors of Another World: Je Ne Sais Quoi

     Athena was not her real name, but it would have suited her.  As I leaned over to help her with an essay in our High School English class, I tried to disguise how delirious the scent of her perfume made me. 

     “Focus, Ellett,” I told myself. Taking her pencil, I scratched out ways of reconstructing Athena’s sentences before she offered me an immortal line of her own:

     “Kent, you are so nice,” she said.

       A more confident man would have returned the compliment, or sensed the opening and actually asked if “nice” could get him a date.   Instead, I remember wondering why I was so terrified of the things I wanted most.

      Our desires frighten us for many reasons.  Chief among them is the fear they can never be satisfied.  I have a friend who is afraid to go to England because he fears that going there will ruin his idealized version chivalric myth.  We fear that actually going out with Athena will reveal that she is not the intoxicating goddess for which our hearts pounded in High school.  Even as a teen, I sensed what Evelyn Waugh knows: “our crushes are merely hints and symbols” of a kind of love that often eludes us.  We want to be known deeply as well as to be a source of someone else’s delight.  We want to share freely, deeply and yet find in another person a source of continual discovery.

      Our thirst for this intimate union is infinite; the problem is that people are not.  So, most of us grow frustrated with our deep longings as long as we try to satisfy them with people—even the very best people.  But does that mean that our inner romantic is a liar? Is romantic aspiration just hormones playing tricks on us? 

     I don’t think so.  Most people don’t stand in the British Museum before the statue of the Muse Thalia or gazing upon Rosetti’s painting of Dante’s Beatrice the way some watch a porn star dance.  The sense of longing which these profound works of art awaken in us is related to but are not primarily about that kind of eroticism.  Dante’s fascination with the dazzling beauty of Beatrice, for instance, began when he was but a 9-year-old pre-pubescent boy.  It simply will not do to dismiss Dante’s crush as sexual fantasy.  Even Rosetti, whose rendering of Beatrice is perhaps subject to the criticism of being too sensual, is on to something much more than mere biochemistry.

     One testimony to the power of this longing for the transcendent is its persistence.  No matter how many break-ups we endure—no matter how boring this world of loneliness can become, we can’t quite extinguish this longing. 

     The Philosopher-poet Samuel Coleridge couldn’t let it go.  At times his romantic obsession is somewhat embarrassing.  He even developed the literary figure of Asra--to talk about the beauty of the infinite in his rather troubled relationships with women.  In his poem, “To Asra,” he lauds a love that somehow always continues to grow, expanding his soul.  Yet, the last line of the poem surprises the naïve reader who might think the poem is just about a simple love affair.  It asks Asra’s age, and Coleridge tells us, “eternity.”   

      Coleridge seems to be following the Apostle Paul’s own literary strategy when he attempts to redirect our relational longings toward God.  In Ephesians 5 the Apostle describes the intimacy of the ideal union between husband and a wife before surprisingly punching us: “I’m talking about Christ and the church.” Paul is pointing to our need for a spiritual lover.   G.K Chesterton rather famously remarked that every man who steps “into a brothel is searching for God.”  While it’s infinitely more benign, the same could be said of every young woman who searches for Prince Charming in her next boyfriend.   

      No parent will simply let their daughter go unwarned about searching for the infinite in the finite, or as an angel once said searching for the living among the dead. For the same reason it will never suffice in the face of Beatrice to say, “she has a certain, je ne sais quoi--”a certain, secular "I-don't-know-what” quality about her.  For the fact is that we do know something of the kind of infinite desire she awakens in us, and we do know that when we actually get to know the person who evokes this mystery that this person is not, in herself, what we thought we were looking for.

     Augustine learned that our longing for beauty cannot be satisfied by merely having relationships with human beings. He gave this approach the old college try, but he kept crashing into a sense of emptiness until he found the fulfillment in the infinite beauty of God.  It was only then that all his human loves became energized by the experience of real union. 

       This is all, perhaps, a round-about way of saying that our romantic longings are not foolish.  To borrow Wordsworth’s phrase they are real “intimations of immortality.”  Every schoolboy who inwardly trembles at the sight of a Beatrice or an Asra or an Athena stands in a long line of passionate wisdom that knows that in taking up Athena’s pencil I was not just enjoying being close to a girl.  My attraction to Athena was more than biochemistry. What I sensed in that moment was something mysteriously other.  What exactly was it that seemed so different about her? I can’t say.  My words fail.  But I do know that what it was, has ever since caused my heart to ache for another world. 

April 4, 1968

       Mayor Lugar expressed concern about Robert Kennedy speaking in Indianapolis on April 4, 1968—the day Martin Luther King was murdered.   Numerous enraged citizens had dispersed themselves among Kennedy campaign supporters for the purpose of inciting a riot.         

      Yet, Kennedy, off the cuff, spoke into the volatile situation.  Kennedy admitted that he understood why people would be enraged about the assassination.  He admitted experiencing feelings of hatred after his own brother had been murdered.  Nevertheless, he had the courage to ask the crowd to respond with love.   Kennedy said he had experienced God’s healing while engaging the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus, who wrote: “And even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

        Many other American cities erupted into violence after King’s death.  Indianapolis did not, which has led historians and political commentators to do a rhetorical analysis of Kennedy’s speech.  I watched a PBS documentary about it last year.  Commentators point out that the speech was authentically Kennedy’s own.   They say things like even disadvantaged audiences appreciate high art which enriches the soul.  True enough.

     But only Bobby Kennedy could have made that speech.  Only someone who had born in his soul the kind of murderous injustice which others feel—only one who bears the crown of others’ thorns or suffers from the same bullets-- can ask of a bereaved crowd what Kennedy asked.  Only a fellow-sufferer can channel vengeful zeal into an awe-inspiring love that shuts the mouths of lions, makes peace in Indianapolis, and redeems the world.    

     When such a fellow-sufferer speaks it’s important to listen to what they actually say: Kennedy said the grace of God slowly bestows wisdom upon broken hearts.  Drop by drop, even in our sleep, grace gives us wisdom in the middle of pain.  Even when our hearts would rather hate, the undeserved mercy of God turns our pain into love.   That’s the message of Dr. King.  It is, by the way, also the message of the cross.

Thirty-Three Minutes

     During my recent trip to Texas, I had a daily commute in order to get to my social anthropology class.  My hosts live on the Southwest side of Fort Worth, and my classes were on the North side of Dallas—a distance of some 45 miles of the densest freeway traffic Hoosiers can imagine. 

      About half-way through my final trip, Google Maps told me that I was on the fastest route and that I was 33 minutes from my destination.  Then traffic began to slow. Google re-routed me twice.   I kept driving.  Over the next twenty minutes, I continued to look down at the map program which continued to read “thirty-three minutes to my destination.”  I started making aggressive lane changes like the locals. Yet, because Google was calculating for emerging problems ahead of me, I remained thirty-three minutes away from class. It felt like time was standing still. 

     Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, describes this kind of traffic as “soul destroying.”  He proposes boring new high-speed freeways under the ground.  Yet, as I throttled at five miles per hour, I fantasized about other traffic solutions.  Should we not just design communities that help people work where they live?  What would be wrong with our coworkers becoming our neighbors?  What would be wrong with walking to work?  I know this sounds radical, but sitting in Dallas traffic will radicalize a person.

     Then, I realized that Musk and I were expecting too much from technical solutions.  Traffic, by itself, is not a “soul-destroying

” problem.  Being stuck mid-trip is a just a metaphor for being stuck in life, unable to achieve what we set out to accomplish.   Neither modern science nor postmodern communes will eliminate our experience of coming up short—feeling frustrated when we can’t accomplish something.

     So I began praying. Heaven opened.  God reminded me that I tend to achieve more when I stop worrying about future goals and just start loving people-- like Jesus-- in the moment. 

      I let some merging traffic go ahead of me. Astonishingly, I was even happy about it.

Snoop Dogg Thanksgiving

      Did you hear what Snoop Dogg said when he was given his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame?  He said, “I want to thank me for believing in me… for doing all this hard work… I want to thank me for having no days off; I want to thank me for never quitting [and] trying [to do] more rights than wrongs; I want to thank me for just being me at all times.”

      Well, I want to thank Snoop Dogg, too.   He gave me a good belly laugh, and, if my rhetorical analysis doesn’t ruin his humor, he’s helping me launch a light-hearted conversation about the nature of thanksgiving.

     I commend Snoop Dogg for unashamedly talking to himself.  For some reason, people widely associate talking to themselves with mental illness, but in order to have a healthy sense of self, we must have a knowable self to talk to.  The Psalmist talks to himself when he prays, “be still, my soul.”  The words consciousness and conscience, are ancient compound words which involve an inner “knowing together.” There is always an implied “other” in our self-awareness.  To give thanks involves telling ourselves that we have been given gifts-- even if, as Snoop Dogg assumes, it is our mysterious inward other that is giving them to ourselves.

    I commend Snoop Dogg for first thanking his parents, wife, and friends.  These acts of conventional gratitude went unreported, and they give context to his other self-congratulatory remarks.  We should be responsible to our best selves, after all.

     Yet, I want to thank Snoop Dogg for saying out loud what we are tempted to believe but are too timid to say.  We’re easily deluded into thinking our well-being depends on our good decisions.  We forget the ways others have enabled us to make good decisions. Perhaps most of all we forget we can’t make good decisions without that inward other who pervades the whole universe as well as giving life to our consciousness.  Forgetting that other is how Snoop Dogg set the whole concept of thanksgiving on its ear.  

When Distractions Aren't

     The dog in the animated feature, Up, irritates me. He’s constantly being distracted by squirrels.  Yet, yesterday I found myself distracted by what my family now calls “squirrel moments.”

     I asked my wife if she’d seen a magazine I wanted to reference for my next newspaper column. 

    “No,” she smiled.  “But here’s your new Triple-A Card.  Do you have your wallet?”

      I dutifully found my billfold and inserted the card, taking the old card over to the shredder.  But the shredder wouldn’t work because the bin was full.  So, I dumped the shredded paper onto the compost pile.  Returning to the house, I saw the dehumidifier bucket was also full.  So, I dropped the empty shredder bin, pulled out the dehumidifier bucket and emptied it in the kitchen sink, only to find the sink, too, was full of dishes.  So, I did the dishes, returned the dehumidifier bucket, returned the shredder bin, shredded my old card, and resumed looking for my magazine so I could resume work on my article. 

      These interruptions so frustrated me that I just started writing about this fiasco. Initially, I thought this article would be about the importance of staying focused.  Such a theme would certainly make the leadership gurus happy.

       Yet, I finally risked sharing these boring details in order to say this: we should not be so focused on narrow goals that we forget to be present in the moment.  I cannot presume on my wife’s willingness to empty all the bins because I fancy myself too busy to be bothered by my household. 

     Life always interrupts, and if we’re not going to resent most of life, we will have to learn to value what is in front of us.  Jesus once stopped for a sick woman who was among those pressing up against him, preventing him from promptly responding to an emergency call.  He was already late to save the dying child of a synagogue ruler.  (Luke 8:45-50)  Yet, this woman’s intervening need was somehow more than a distraction.  Our most important work is often done when we thought we were busy doing something else.     

Cherishing Jews

        I rarely write to authors who have influenced me.  But one who has written me back is a Jewish author residing in Jerusalem by the name of James Kugel.  In his book entitled, “In the Valley of the Shadow,” he shares his experience with cancer and the way he experienced God through his suffering.

       Nobody in the last 40 years has taught me more about how to understand Jesus’ resurrection than Kugel’s Harvard schoolmate, Jon Levinson, also a Jew.  Since I’m a Christian, this may strike readers as odd unless I explain that Levinson emphasizes a traditional Rabbinic Judaism which believes the God of Israel will be faithful to people by raising their bodies from the dead.  

       I got to meet Levinson once. His is one of only two autographs I have asked for in thirty years.  Levinson shows how seriously Judaism once took the hope of resurrection, and why it was natural that the Jewish Saul of Tarsus (who became known as the Christian Apostle Paul) interpreted his Damascus Road experience as a meeting with a resurrected Jew-- Jesus Christ.

       Of course, when Saul/Paul called Jesus “Christ” he was not using Jesus’ last name.   Christ means the “one anointed” to be King of Israel.  In light of the recent hate-crime in Pittsburg, it’s important for Christians to remind the world that Jesus, too, was a Jew. He was crucified for claiming to be the King of the Jews.  Despite popular notions, the writers of the New Testament did not hate Jews.  They were themselves, from first to last, Jews.  Whatever one might think of predominant forms of politics practiced among some Jewish people, one cannot understand Christianity without understanding that it is the child of Judaism.  

      While early Christians got cross-ways with some Jewish authorities, that’s partly because many Christians felt like they should invite all races of Gentile people into their Jewish synagogues.  Jesus gave his life to “create one, united humanity by breaking down dividing walls of hostility, thus making peace” between Jew and Greek. (Ephesians 2:14)

     Sadly today, such a vision bears repeating.       

Where Rage Leads

      It’s almost never a good idea to try to lead people away from their rage.  This is a hard lesson, because as children we learned that unholy bitterness can be destructive.   So, it’s natural for us to get stressed out in the presence of another’s righteous anger and suffering.  We tend to want to cheer such people up.

      We might even try to explain away their pain.  I’ve heard people tell grieving parents to find God’s “silver lining” in the loss of their children.  This is not just terrible poetry; it’s bad theology.  Nobody truly standing in the darkness that descends over the cross will have the audacity to tell Jesus, “cheer up and live in the sunshine.”  The only songs the suffering Jesus can manage are laments--“My God, why have you forsaken me?”

      Christian faith teaches us to explore our disappointments.  The path to healing and releasing our bitterness is through anger—not around it.  In light of the clergy scandals in the last couple weeks, it’s perhaps timely for me to acknowledge that the victims of sexual violence, whom I know, are relieved that I think they have every right to be enraged.  They’re surprised, I think, because religious types have too often silenced and buried their protest, cut lament out of the Bible, and made worship a perpetually cheery concert led by “praise teams.”

      Yet, if the church maintains a place for God’s anger, then it will be more acceptable for us to explore our own.  We can discover that our anger is righteous because a standard of right has really been violated.   Following our anger to its source, we will find that this Standard of Right must be at least as angry as we are.  This is why it’s actually “right” to be mad at injustice.  For, if the world were purposeless, then our expectations would be meaningless, too.  In such a world we could not expect anything but meaninglessness.   So, if we’re allowed to really mull over our disappointment, we’ll realize it takes a God to validate our anger.