For some reason, my friends have been talking to me about God lately. One, in talking about some writing she’s doing, said she wanted to capture the “baggage of God” in her work. Another has been thinking about the odd path he’s taken in belief, sometimes seeing God vanish entirely while the need to worship, to be a part of a communion, growing no weaker and if anything being more of a support to him as he gets older. My ex-wife and I had a brief but powerful conversation about how or whether to introduce concepts of the divine to our son – we’re both technically in violation of our pre-marriage pledge to raise him in the Church, but that isn’t really a motivation, it’s just that we’re wondering what it is we should do or shouldn’t do. Also her parents have asked if I’ve accepted Christ as my savior and groveled for forgiveness for leaving her; again, not a motivation, but part of the dialogue. Reading lately has brought me back to Max Weber’s sociology of religion, and the Charles Taylor work is dissecting the path way from religion as source of morality and meaning to its redefinition in personalized pathways instead of state-like institutions or outright rejection in the modernist era. And of course I’m couch surfing at my parents’ house, former clerics both, with my father’s best friend from the monastery coming for a visit next month.
Five four six
It’s May the Fourth, which means I’ve heard the John Williams opening theme to Star Wars on three different radio stations and it’s not yet 11 am here in Portland. For me, though, today is a wonderful day – it’s my son’s sixth birthday.
Holly, Ontario
(with apologies to Said the Whale)
The sky is filled with high clouds, some white, some grey, some gold as the sun edges behind them toward the west. The wind pushes the water west to east, on the inner arm of an inner arm of an inner arm of a bay of Lake Ontario. Willow trees line the shore, stalks of old celery with less water and more time making them stretch towards the sky, the brown green fuzz of spring buds anointing their furthest limbs. Across the water the birch trees are still bare. The trees on the south shore get the spring light last; their leaves will take a few more weeks to appear. Yesterday was bright blue sky, no clouds, but the wind was stronger from the north. Today is warm and kind, the wind from the west, the sun a little harder to make out.
Shift
I was in Cooperstown, New York on Thursday night. The drive from Portland was fast and easy, a little rain to begin which quickly cleared up. The highways were clear – not many people traveling on the Mass Pike or the New York Thruway on a spring midweek midday – and the dog and I made the most of the empty parking lots and open fields of the rest stops. I haven’t driven west of Sturbridge in a long time, but memories came back – the long climb into the Berkshires with an old farm barely fifty feet from the eastbound lanes, the drive across the Connecticut River outside Springfield, then across the Hudson south of Albany. The Hudson River bridge was terrifying; the railings are open down to the roadbed, and the bridge carries three lanes with no shoulder on either side. I stuck to the middle lane as my panic level slowly rose, reminding myself that we would get across, talking to the dog and trying to reassure myself while telling him it would be okay.
Understandably so
First, a quick apology. I referred to Jurgen Habermas’s The Theory of Communicative Action in my last post as a “lousy book”, and was quickly called out on it by an old friend in the UK who, apparently, wrote his doctoral dissertation on said book. In fairness, the book isn’t lousy; it’s a bit densely written, which is in keeping with it being a work of philosophy by a German author, and I’m not sure I’m wholly convinced of the argument within it, but it’s closely reasoned, provocative, and intelligent. And not lousy. This also gives me a chance to link to my friend’s own writing, as the way he writes and what he writes about is worth checking out – please visit. He’s also a wayward banker, so for those of you thinking about concepts of value and credit and their changing essence, you’ll enjoy visiting his work.