Dear Augustine,
One of the things that I appreciate about my parish is that while individual members might be politically involved [and for the most part bend more to the left]...usually, the church itself seems to stay out of politics. Or at least that's my perception. And perhaps it's just because I don't pay close enough attention. But that's just it--you can avoid political things.
It's such a stark contrast to the way I grew up, where not only was everything political, but it was entirely one-sided: there was no nuance, no discussion of differing perspectives, it was used to just stir up emotions instead of looking at things in a rational way. Trying to untangle a certain brand of politics from my faith has taken so long and been so difficult. And then I'm always trying to check myself, now that I'm on the opposite end of the political spectrum--am I sure that I'm not being irrational or just being manipulated from the opposite end now? I feel that stress whenever I'm back with people from my previous church life--because those discussions seem to pop up when you least expect it.
It all came unraveled a bit this evening, because apparently some of the leaders of my tradition are aligning against one of the propositions on a state ballot and were sending out email blasts about it, etc. I just want church to be the one place where I don't have to deal with politics, and don't have to constantly be disappointed or sitting there in silence--too upset to try and speak up to discuss my views or put out a counterpoint to something being said. And then being mad at myself later for not speaking up. It seems like a simple thing, and it is, but it's just one more place where I have to be a little bit more anxious now, a little more on my guard.
+Athena
Saturday, November 5, 2016
Friday, November 4, 2016
Athena: Auntie
Dear Augustine,
I'm so glad that in the midst of what sounds like a crazy meeting, you were able to think of a really happy memory--your niece sounds like the sweetest little pea! I love that you sing to her. For some reason, I always get nervous...I love to sing, but not usually flying solo. Even if it's in front of a kid, it's like my throat gets stopped up somehow.
My precious niece, who is five now, I seriously can't even believe it...loves when I sleep over and asks if she can "snuggle" with me in the morning. Because I can never really sleep, and she wakes up super early, so our tradition is that I turn on cartoons and wrap her up in the blankets with me on the couch while I doze for the last hour or two before I actually have to get up. She doesn't trace her hands over my face, but she turns in kisses my forehead every now and then, whispering, "I just love you, Auntie Athena." I literally want to melt in a puddle from the preciousness.
People always talk about how children teach you unconditional love, and it's true. They're not even my own children, but I can't imagine ever not loving my niece and nephew. Ever ever. But the other thing is their own unconditional love for you. When they hear I'm coming over, I can hear them shouting excitedly through the phone, and they jump up and down when I walk through the front door. Nobody's ever been as excited to see me as they are--and it's nice to rest in that sometimes. And even nicer to get to love them right back.
+Athena
I'm so glad that in the midst of what sounds like a crazy meeting, you were able to think of a really happy memory--your niece sounds like the sweetest little pea! I love that you sing to her. For some reason, I always get nervous...I love to sing, but not usually flying solo. Even if it's in front of a kid, it's like my throat gets stopped up somehow.
My precious niece, who is five now, I seriously can't even believe it...loves when I sleep over and asks if she can "snuggle" with me in the morning. Because I can never really sleep, and she wakes up super early, so our tradition is that I turn on cartoons and wrap her up in the blankets with me on the couch while I doze for the last hour or two before I actually have to get up. She doesn't trace her hands over my face, but she turns in kisses my forehead every now and then, whispering, "I just love you, Auntie Athena." I literally want to melt in a puddle from the preciousness.
People always talk about how children teach you unconditional love, and it's true. They're not even my own children, but I can't imagine ever not loving my niece and nephew. Ever ever. But the other thing is their own unconditional love for you. When they hear I'm coming over, I can hear them shouting excitedly through the phone, and they jump up and down when I walk through the front door. Nobody's ever been as excited to see me as they are--and it's nice to rest in that sometimes. And even nicer to get to love them right back.
+Athena
Augustine: Flotsam Jetsam Swish and Swirl
Dear Athena,
I'm writing to you
this morning from our department meeting. There was a wild restructuring
yesterday. I came to this meeting. I took something to make it less painful.
I'm just sitting here. An observer. Looking and hearing. It washes over me like
waves and time. A lullaby comes to mind
by Sara Groves:
Starfish Starfish
Wonder what you are
fish
Time and Tide go
washing by
And you don't even
care
Peaceful creature
Come and be my
teacher
Flotsam, Jetsam,
Swish and Swirl
And you don't even
care.
I sing this to my
niece, Eleanor, when she is going to bed. She runs around the room, not wanting
to go to bed, but I lure her to her bed by promising a song. I sing, over and
again, my forehead to hers. She runs her fingers over the hair on my face and traces
the topography of my eye. Her eyes trace the lines on my face. I whisper about
a peaceful creature and the time and tide.
Thursday, November 3, 2016
Athena: Gifts
Dear Augustine,
This line struck me so deeply, "In a world of consumerism, do you begin to feel less human and more like your parents' doll?"...and beyond just the immediate context of "designer children."
In many ways, it seems like the temptation is already so strong to mold children into our own hopes and dreams instead of letting them discover their own. Of course, I'm obviously not a parent yet, but I've felt this pressure sometimes in my own life and seen it among my friends who are parents. Having the option to possibly "design" a child in any way seems like it would exacerbate this even further. The tendency would be to consume and control instead of to receive things as a gift. Which of course sparks so many thoughts for me, but most of all one of my favorite passages in For the Life of the World, by Fr. Alexander Schmemann.
He writes so beautifully about the role of humankind on the scheme of the cosmos--humanity as the priesthood of creation, as those who receive the gifts that are given and offer them back to God in worship. It reminds me of the first sacrifices of Abel and Cain, and of the words we speak each Sunday in liturgy about the bread and the wine, “Thine own of Thine own we offer unto Thee, on behalf of all and for all.”
Schmemann writes:
"The first, the basic definition of man is that he is the priest. He stands in the center of the world and unifies it in his act of blessing God, of both receiving the world from God and offering it to God--and by filling the world with this eucharist, he transforms his life, the one that he receives from the world, into life in God, into communion with Him" (15, and it is worth reading the whole chapter at the link posted above).
I love this because I grew up (as many of us did) in a church subculture that at times seemed very Gnostic. Most things relating to the body were treated as bad or shameful, and this life on earth was constantly devalued. Science was de-valued too, for its focus on the material world, occasionally to the exclusion of anything more. And that's perhaps why I love this passage so much...it's anti-Gnostic. It's a celebration of the physical world, but not one that is materialistic to the point of being devoid of God. Quite the opposite, it's a world sparking and alive, waiting to be received as gift and offered back to God in worship.
Perhaps if we were able to view things with more of that balance and gratefulness, we would see them rightly.
+Athena
This line struck me so deeply, "In a world of consumerism, do you begin to feel less human and more like your parents' doll?"...and beyond just the immediate context of "designer children."
In many ways, it seems like the temptation is already so strong to mold children into our own hopes and dreams instead of letting them discover their own. Of course, I'm obviously not a parent yet, but I've felt this pressure sometimes in my own life and seen it among my friends who are parents. Having the option to possibly "design" a child in any way seems like it would exacerbate this even further. The tendency would be to consume and control instead of to receive things as a gift. Which of course sparks so many thoughts for me, but most of all one of my favorite passages in For the Life of the World, by Fr. Alexander Schmemann.
He writes so beautifully about the role of humankind on the scheme of the cosmos--humanity as the priesthood of creation, as those who receive the gifts that are given and offer them back to God in worship. It reminds me of the first sacrifices of Abel and Cain, and of the words we speak each Sunday in liturgy about the bread and the wine, “Thine own of Thine own we offer unto Thee, on behalf of all and for all.”
Schmemann writes:
"The first, the basic definition of man is that he is the priest. He stands in the center of the world and unifies it in his act of blessing God, of both receiving the world from God and offering it to God--and by filling the world with this eucharist, he transforms his life, the one that he receives from the world, into life in God, into communion with Him" (15, and it is worth reading the whole chapter at the link posted above).
I love this because I grew up (as many of us did) in a church subculture that at times seemed very Gnostic. Most things relating to the body were treated as bad or shameful, and this life on earth was constantly devalued. Science was de-valued too, for its focus on the material world, occasionally to the exclusion of anything more. And that's perhaps why I love this passage so much...it's anti-Gnostic. It's a celebration of the physical world, but not one that is materialistic to the point of being devoid of God. Quite the opposite, it's a world sparking and alive, waiting to be received as gift and offered back to God in worship.
Perhaps if we were able to view things with more of that balance and gratefulness, we would see them rightly.
+Athena
Wednesday, November 2, 2016
Athena: Futility
Dear Augustine,
It's five days before the election now, and every few years it seems like things get crazier and crazier. But it's not even just elections anymore, there are so many things that just get incredibly overblown in all sorts of ways even in a non-election season. Many of them are politically-related, but certainly not all.
There's a certain part of me that can't wait for November 9th--when we'll get a hint of reprieve from the endless political ads, flyers, Facebook rants, and articles. And I live in a battleground state and on a state border--which means ads are non-stop, some of them are even for my neighboring state...about issues and contests where I cannot even have a say. It's overwhelming, ubiquitous, and...depressing.
I think what frustrates me sometimes is that it seems like there is no realistic way out of the absolute mess that we're in--on so many levels. I was chatting with a friend the other day about the 'news', and while it absolutely seems reasonable to get frustrated by what qualifies for 'news' nowadays...I feel like we often neglect the part we play in the cycle as well. The news has changed drastically over the past few decades--we can talk about the 24-hr news cycle, the internet, the way funding has changed, etc. There are so many factors at play that it would be impossible to cover them all, but it seems like one of the biggest problematic areas to me is how desperate newspapers are to get views, clicks, and engagements. In a certain sense, they have to cover things or title them in a way that is going to draw attention, and they have so much more competition now than they ever did before. They need the ad revenue and engagement to survive and continue in their business...and clickbait articles and titles, or "bombshells" and "surprises" that capitalize on ambiguity, or inflammatory reporting as opposed to lengthy, nuanced discussion gets more attention. And that's our fault too--we fall prey to these things, we have our guilty pleasure-reading or we just can't help ourselves from clicking on that ridiculous story to call it out...and we play into the cycle ourselves. And even if we could control our clicks, reduce our propensity to fall for the shallow, simplistic, gimmicky "stories"...we know that the vast majority of our fellow citizens won't. So news orgs will continue to play into that and design things to more effectively prey on our illogical sensibilities in new and more efficient ways, and we'll demand more of these crap articles, which will get published more and more, and the cycle continues.
There's no real incentive on a large scale to change the model--it's not like you can have a government-funded news org, because that would come with its own host of problems. And even if you could have a publicly funded org that somehow wasn't associated with a government...you couldn't get rid of the private sector competition, which would either push the publicly-funded one out of existence or prompt it to become just as problematic as all the rest.
And this is a rant of sorts, but it's largely because it feels like things are futile--like there's no way of ever really incentivizing change when you can only control your own behavior. And maybe not even that all the time. And thus I end up in my own endless cycle of cynicism, ranting, and then futility.
+Athena
It's five days before the election now, and every few years it seems like things get crazier and crazier. But it's not even just elections anymore, there are so many things that just get incredibly overblown in all sorts of ways even in a non-election season. Many of them are politically-related, but certainly not all.
There's a certain part of me that can't wait for November 9th--when we'll get a hint of reprieve from the endless political ads, flyers, Facebook rants, and articles. And I live in a battleground state and on a state border--which means ads are non-stop, some of them are even for my neighboring state...about issues and contests where I cannot even have a say. It's overwhelming, ubiquitous, and...depressing.
I think what frustrates me sometimes is that it seems like there is no realistic way out of the absolute mess that we're in--on so many levels. I was chatting with a friend the other day about the 'news', and while it absolutely seems reasonable to get frustrated by what qualifies for 'news' nowadays...I feel like we often neglect the part we play in the cycle as well. The news has changed drastically over the past few decades--we can talk about the 24-hr news cycle, the internet, the way funding has changed, etc. There are so many factors at play that it would be impossible to cover them all, but it seems like one of the biggest problematic areas to me is how desperate newspapers are to get views, clicks, and engagements. In a certain sense, they have to cover things or title them in a way that is going to draw attention, and they have so much more competition now than they ever did before. They need the ad revenue and engagement to survive and continue in their business...and clickbait articles and titles, or "bombshells" and "surprises" that capitalize on ambiguity, or inflammatory reporting as opposed to lengthy, nuanced discussion gets more attention. And that's our fault too--we fall prey to these things, we have our guilty pleasure-reading or we just can't help ourselves from clicking on that ridiculous story to call it out...and we play into the cycle ourselves. And even if we could control our clicks, reduce our propensity to fall for the shallow, simplistic, gimmicky "stories"...we know that the vast majority of our fellow citizens won't. So news orgs will continue to play into that and design things to more effectively prey on our illogical sensibilities in new and more efficient ways, and we'll demand more of these crap articles, which will get published more and more, and the cycle continues.
There's no real incentive on a large scale to change the model--it's not like you can have a government-funded news org, because that would come with its own host of problems. And even if you could have a publicly funded org that somehow wasn't associated with a government...you couldn't get rid of the private sector competition, which would either push the publicly-funded one out of existence or prompt it to become just as problematic as all the rest.
And this is a rant of sorts, but it's largely because it feels like things are futile--like there's no way of ever really incentivizing change when you can only control your own behavior. And maybe not even that all the time. And thus I end up in my own endless cycle of cynicism, ranting, and then futility.
+Athena
Augustine: Dull Catalogue of Common Things
Dear Athena,
You write to me that "Science has demystified the world." And I am reminded of the melodramatic caution of Keats.
You write to me that "Science has demystified the world." And I am reminded of the melodramatic caution of Keats.
There was an awful
rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof,
her texture; she is given
In the dull
catalogue of common things.
Lamia, John Keats
(Part 2, II. 231-33)
Keats admonishes the
scientific community, claiming they ruin the sense of beauty held by an object.
That when we understand something, we no longer appreciate it. Which, really,
only causes me to laugh because I imagine the absurdity of thinking that a parent
would no longer appreciate their child because they know their genes. I suppose
knowing your child's genes does not totally demystify them and may be an unfair
comparison. But what if they could? What would be the impact of the rumored
eventually of "designer babies"?
To pick not just the
sex of the child, but their height, eyes, facial structure, skin tone? After
the long pains of labor, would you look at your child with wonder and
amazement, or think to yourself "Do I like the features?" Would there
be a representative of the Geneticists Inc in the delivery room standing nearby
to help debrief the mother?
"Congratulations
on your new baby! Now, some quick reminders, traveling through the birth canal
will cause some temporary disfiguration, but that will subside in a few days.
Some features will be immediately noticeable, such as eye color. Others will be
a close approximation, such as the skin tone which is develop in the next few
months. Over the course of the next few years we will do yearly facial
structure analysis to ensure development is occurring as intended. Your next
visit will be at our offices in 1 month for the first body and facial
analysis. Again, congratulations and
please don't hesitate to call our offices at Geneticists Inc with any
questions."
Once we may have
feared the cruel, anonymous, indiscriminate Fates, but what does it mean to
grow up; admiring, loving, hating, cursing, and knowing the face of the person
who picked your face. Do you love them more for their care in picking your
features? Do you feel more loved by them knowing they got exactly what they
wanted? In a world of consumerism, do you begin to feel less human and more
like your parents doll?
When parents pick
their child's race, what does it mean to be part of a community that is black,
white, Hispanic, native, Asian?
If we all look like
the models our parents wish they were, what becomes our standards of beauty?
But how do you say
"no"? If all the other parents are picking their perfect child, will
my child hate me if I leave it to the fates?
Control begets
power. And responsibility. And liability.
+Augustine
+Augustine
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
Athena: Is Biology the New Fate?
Dear Augustine,
I read this article the other day (x) about whether or not you would choose to know "the secrets hidden in your baby's genes" and it reminded me so much of all the things that we read nowadays that talk about our genes or our brains and their relationship to everything from our health to our behavior. A few weeks ago, I was in the midst of grading Oedipus essays about the role of Fate vs. Freewill when I came across one of these articles...and it struck me that in many ways Biology is the new Fate.
By and large, our culture doesn't put much stock in prophecies anymore. The power of it in plays such as Macbeth or Oedipus falls on deaf ears to modern students. They understand it when it's explained to them, can relate it sometimes to personal religious belief [or religious belief as they've seen it], but its power is nothing like it seems it was in the ancient world--or even in Shakespeare's time.
Science has demystified the world, and in so many ways that's a good thing. We know about germs, we don't believe mental illnesses are caused by 'evil spirits' and our treatment [though it still has far to go] of people with sickness of various sorts has changed for the better because of it. And yet there are still moments when I see hints of a certain determinism in certain streams of scientific thought. Sometimes, it's harder to argue against that.
But there's a deep part of me that wants, needs to fight fight fight against it. There's something in me that screams for control and wants to fight like the tragic heroes against Fate--biological or otherwise--to defy the odds, to spite any forces beyond my own choices that would seek to control me. I will be no force's puppet, playing out some scene in response to stimuli or genetic coding or predestination of any kind.
Yet I remember that in the old stories, it's the very struggle against Fate that brings prophecies to pass. In such a case, perhaps ignorance is bliss? What we don't know can't shape us, at least not consciously, and at least we can delude ourselves into thinking that our choices are our own. And while there's a part of me that desperately wants to know everything, I think the part of me that needs control--even if only the illusion of it--is so much stronger.
+Athena
I read this article the other day (x) about whether or not you would choose to know "the secrets hidden in your baby's genes" and it reminded me so much of all the things that we read nowadays that talk about our genes or our brains and their relationship to everything from our health to our behavior. A few weeks ago, I was in the midst of grading Oedipus essays about the role of Fate vs. Freewill when I came across one of these articles...and it struck me that in many ways Biology is the new Fate.
By and large, our culture doesn't put much stock in prophecies anymore. The power of it in plays such as Macbeth or Oedipus falls on deaf ears to modern students. They understand it when it's explained to them, can relate it sometimes to personal religious belief [or religious belief as they've seen it], but its power is nothing like it seems it was in the ancient world--or even in Shakespeare's time.
Science has demystified the world, and in so many ways that's a good thing. We know about germs, we don't believe mental illnesses are caused by 'evil spirits' and our treatment [though it still has far to go] of people with sickness of various sorts has changed for the better because of it. And yet there are still moments when I see hints of a certain determinism in certain streams of scientific thought. Sometimes, it's harder to argue against that.
But there's a deep part of me that wants, needs to fight fight fight against it. There's something in me that screams for control and wants to fight like the tragic heroes against Fate--biological or otherwise--to defy the odds, to spite any forces beyond my own choices that would seek to control me. I will be no force's puppet, playing out some scene in response to stimuli or genetic coding or predestination of any kind.
Yet I remember that in the old stories, it's the very struggle against Fate that brings prophecies to pass. In such a case, perhaps ignorance is bliss? What we don't know can't shape us, at least not consciously, and at least we can delude ourselves into thinking that our choices are our own. And while there's a part of me that desperately wants to know everything, I think the part of me that needs control--even if only the illusion of it--is so much stronger.
+Athena
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