--
I had
Stumbled upon
Someone else's poesis,
Staged from the pregnant dawn when time first trickled out,
Stage
NASHVILLE, who whispers discontent
UNION STATION, quietly anticipating
THE TRAIN, asleep, sun-down on her anger
THE TRACKS
SUNSET
THE STORM, brooding unseen in the backdrop
THE NORTH
Staged,
Not yet framed, not as yet created
In that first dawn of time's spilling out,
But a mind's eye hinting at
The Eyes,
The Being of supreme Imagination
Who can conceive every
Stage, Drama,
Conceived and Conceivable,
Always embodied everywhere;
But often lost to the finite, fretful eye, a
Glimmer of this cosmic tin occasionally flickers in the river.
NASHVILLE--
A few minutes early, I
Decide, haphazardly, to light
Up on the patio behind
Union Station by
The train tracks.
UNION STATION--
Intangibly, I could sense
A dark energy wafting incensed
From the North, an unsettled cosmic exchange, when
The train cracked
CLACK
(Shudder,Shudder--)
A taste of burning metal
Shrouded sunset and half-hidden silk moon
Slapped clattering against
The dark violet front of the North
Lightning, flash lightning, violence,
Sharp bolts
Steady moan of the violin train and tracks
White light and sparking off
Union Station's cold granite gol gothic facade,
A cosmic conversation, cobalt and granite seraphims.
Shock
Melts into a throbbing unfolding,
Train squealing on,
Train squealing, squealing, on,
Storm rolling in, arriving,
Smoke puffing backward against my intentions,
A cosmic conversation, cobalt and granite seraphims.
--I had stumbled
--I had stumbled upon
--Go away,
Go away from me, LORD,
I am sinful.
--
Which came first,
Water, Thirst?
Drops lance down the window,
Comets, weave:
'Will this drop intersect that drop?'
The Interrupter makes it out as a horoscope.
But
Moved beyond awe or games into bared horoscope,
No snowflake imitating,
No drop intersecting alike in a test-tube,
No test-tube,
No test,
There will remain unknown yet a rhythm
Or cosmic Smile playing pots and pans.
11 August 2008
05 August 2008
Leviathan Has Attention Deficit Disorder
(Leviathan does not typically carry two forms of I.D.
And will not wait in D.O.T. lines forever.)
. . .When the wasps first lit on the awning
In the first light of the dawn of spring,
We continued to open our windows and spanked our children's talking-back asses raw,
Getting them out of our hair and into the out-of-doors.
(The wasps invited more.)
-Good old Amos!
Amos burned an American flag in the Capitol building
And refused to serve the mandatory community service
And did not apologise to the troops or minorities in mandatory written form
And did not laugh at the cued jokes
And did not sacrifice his head at the altar of the omniscient Stages of Development
And did not trim his hair according to medical breakthroughs
And did not set forth according to the captain of industry's maps, and
Said instead, 'Mr. Mayor Incarnate, Mrs. State Secretary, - the Flood will make a statuary
Out of them, out of us, on that day She interrupts and arrives.
Heavy-chested, in hives, our dam-workers will have had their fill of woes in
Our negligence we have summoned a sigh rise forth,
We tease our pearly-eyed inviting women in the south whilst from the North
Back-burner pots even now bubble over to sleepy shadows, and the
Toothy fed feasts of ours remove fear of the Waters rising in the West.
Clammy-eyed, those dam-workers can't continue to hold all our woes.'
(The wasps have even now disappeared amid, within the awning)
'For our centuries, we have thrust our City down in the "valley"
And made the "valley" all ours;
When the time falls ripe, the River will come to lay claim Her bed,
And She shall only know in her heart that She has been meant
To sleep in Her bed (our "valley"),
Even as Leviathan disregards any hooks or screams in his next drumstick meal
-These ant legs on Her bed
She does not comprehend
-But She feels the rhythm of the Order of Vocations,
She has always known Her bed well.
'Bid farewell to this present house, children-
So I say, and you laugh, and your hands shield your temples from me.
Leviathan can't be hooked and flashed forever.
When will we hear? will you see?
For we have already woven wasps within
All walls, and swallowed Leviathan goldfish with giggles;
But these are our new walls, dammed "valley"
-Because we disliked the hue of the old walls
That are still in our place by the river bed
-Because we preferred Her bed to our own
And forsook the gentle Stream in Her bed
-But these are our news walls, dammed "valley",
That were made out of negligence, bile, wasp eggs . . .'
(Dregs and smiley clanks await and are summoned for silly Amos profusely;
We still hum, doubt; new
News bulletins flee from the Bells that might - that have just now sounded the toll:)
'When will we hear? will you see?
-Who me? but I do love the City,
but I love the River who loves Her valley,
I do love the Name who set our City.'
-r
And will not wait in D.O.T. lines forever.)
. . .When the wasps first lit on the awning
In the first light of the dawn of spring,
We continued to open our windows and spanked our children's talking-back asses raw,
Getting them out of our hair and into the out-of-doors.
(The wasps invited more.)
-Good old Amos!
Amos burned an American flag in the Capitol building
And refused to serve the mandatory community service
And did not apologise to the troops or minorities in mandatory written form
And did not laugh at the cued jokes
And did not sacrifice his head at the altar of the omniscient Stages of Development
And did not trim his hair according to medical breakthroughs
And did not set forth according to the captain of industry's maps, and
Said instead, 'Mr. Mayor Incarnate, Mrs. State Secretary, - the Flood will make a statuary
Out of them, out of us, on that day She interrupts and arrives.
Heavy-chested, in hives, our dam-workers will have had their fill of woes in
Our negligence we have summoned a sigh rise forth,
We tease our pearly-eyed inviting women in the south whilst from the North
Back-burner pots even now bubble over to sleepy shadows, and the
Toothy fed feasts of ours remove fear of the Waters rising in the West.
Clammy-eyed, those dam-workers can't continue to hold all our woes.'
(The wasps have even now disappeared amid, within the awning)
'For our centuries, we have thrust our City down in the "valley"
And made the "valley" all ours;
When the time falls ripe, the River will come to lay claim Her bed,
And She shall only know in her heart that She has been meant
To sleep in Her bed (our "valley"),
Even as Leviathan disregards any hooks or screams in his next drumstick meal
-These ant legs on Her bed
She does not comprehend
-But She feels the rhythm of the Order of Vocations,
She has always known Her bed well.
'Bid farewell to this present house, children-
So I say, and you laugh, and your hands shield your temples from me.
Leviathan can't be hooked and flashed forever.
When will we hear? will you see?
For we have already woven wasps within
All walls, and swallowed Leviathan goldfish with giggles;
But these are our new walls, dammed "valley"
-Because we disliked the hue of the old walls
That are still in our place by the river bed
-Because we preferred Her bed to our own
And forsook the gentle Stream in Her bed
-But these are our news walls, dammed "valley",
That were made out of negligence, bile, wasp eggs . . .'
(Dregs and smiley clanks await and are summoned for silly Amos profusely;
We still hum, doubt; new
News bulletins flee from the Bells that might - that have just now sounded the toll:)
'When will we hear? will you see?
-Who me? but I do love the City,
but I love the River who loves Her valley,
I do love the Name who set our City.'
-r
04 August 2008
Recent Playings
I'm currently writing an article concerning the nature of art, the exploration of objectively 'good art,' and so forth - which I'll most likely post in some form here when finished. For the time being, here are some relatively recent works of a similar subject . . .
Untitled
Acryllic on ceiling tile; grid formed from air-conditioning unit packaging. More industrial-inspired art.
1996 Camry, 4-cylinder Automatic
Hurrah. Palette and materials speak for themselves.
Hurrah. Palette and materials speak for themselves.
Carya monolithis, Monument to Modernity
This was my second and (to date) last attempt at an experimental medium inspired by industrial sanding. I painted layer after layer of varying colours on a piece of plywood - in this case: white, then blue, then yellow, then red - and then used a power-sander to 'shave' it to what can be seen here. This is sacramentally intentionally ugly beyond all attempt - a picture of a 'tree,' based on poem concerning the same subject. While the central subject is blue-separated-from-yellow with a 'balloon string' trunk, there is the subtle outline of a 'real' tree along the outside of the test-tube tree. The inscription translates: 'Ginsberg, Ginsberg - you were the blind, mute bastard of Komos; you are the one who spoke of the end of the world.'
This was my second and (to date) last attempt at an experimental medium inspired by industrial sanding. I painted layer after layer of varying colours on a piece of plywood - in this case: white, then blue, then yellow, then red - and then used a power-sander to 'shave' it to what can be seen here. This is sacramentally intentionally ugly beyond all attempt - a picture of a 'tree,' based on poem concerning the same subject. While the central subject is blue-separated-from-yellow with a 'balloon string' trunk, there is the subtle outline of a 'real' tree along the outside of the test-tube tree. The inscription translates: 'Ginsberg, Ginsberg - you were the blind, mute bastard of Komos; you are the one who spoke of the end of the world.'
Untitled
Acryllic on cardboard. Using a small piece of cardboard for this work was an attempt to afford 'sacramental' movement - to bring a physical correlation to the image portrayed.
Acryllic on cardboard. Using a small piece of cardboard for this work was an attempt to afford 'sacramental' movement - to bring a physical correlation to the image portrayed.
Untitled
Acryllic on ceiling tile; grid formed from air-conditioning unit packaging. More industrial-inspired art.
Untitled . . . 'That Shirt'
Materials: red acryllic, pages from a Church of the Nazarene Manual, a letter box, an empty toilet paper tube, a broken mirror, a black marker, a red marker, two image clippings, a dress shirt, a tie, a Church of the Nazarene return address label, nails, and a bandage.
I made this just prior to my Confirmation, as a sort of reflection of the journey to reach that point of deliverance. At first, as in the first picture, I had the tie untied and open, but the 'tie noose' idea clicked and, in my opinion, really completed the piece.
In the first place (and this is the level I was operating on), this is loaded with all kinds of personal expressions and realities. In my struggle over/with the Nazarene denomination and with my coming to deeply understand the steep cost of becoming Catholic, I seriously considered suicide. The pages and illustrations and notes on and inside the shirt have to do with my trying to help 'fix' the Nazarene denomination's catechesis and doctrinal crisis, as well as the utter despair that followed.
However, I think a photograph of this seems incomplete without a viewer looking at it; it seems to have struck something beyond whatever it was I was trying to strike at. I've noticed that the piece itself makes the viewer the 'piece of art,' on display in a profound way. This seems to be a conduit/window that 'stirs up' the human struggle with ugly realities, in oneself and in others. In some instances, the viewer averts her/his eyes quickly. In some instances, the viewer stares quizzically. Sometimes - and usually only after a few encounters - the viewer timidly and curiously moves closer to peer into the 'heart' of the shirt. Any given person can have (and has had) any or all reactions to the piece, even as the human (at least our present and particular manifestations) seems to do with her/his life.
Materials: red acryllic, pages from a Church of the Nazarene Manual, a letter box, an empty toilet paper tube, a broken mirror, a black marker, a red marker, two image clippings, a dress shirt, a tie, a Church of the Nazarene return address label, nails, and a bandage.
I made this just prior to my Confirmation, as a sort of reflection of the journey to reach that point of deliverance. At first, as in the first picture, I had the tie untied and open, but the 'tie noose' idea clicked and, in my opinion, really completed the piece.
In the first place (and this is the level I was operating on), this is loaded with all kinds of personal expressions and realities. In my struggle over/with the Nazarene denomination and with my coming to deeply understand the steep cost of becoming Catholic, I seriously considered suicide. The pages and illustrations and notes on and inside the shirt have to do with my trying to help 'fix' the Nazarene denomination's catechesis and doctrinal crisis, as well as the utter despair that followed.
However, I think a photograph of this seems incomplete without a viewer looking at it; it seems to have struck something beyond whatever it was I was trying to strike at. I've noticed that the piece itself makes the viewer the 'piece of art,' on display in a profound way. This seems to be a conduit/window that 'stirs up' the human struggle with ugly realities, in oneself and in others. In some instances, the viewer averts her/his eyes quickly. In some instances, the viewer stares quizzically. Sometimes - and usually only after a few encounters - the viewer timidly and curiously moves closer to peer into the 'heart' of the shirt. Any given person can have (and has had) any or all reactions to the piece, even as the human (at least our present and particular manifestations) seems to do with her/his life.
Untitled
Acryllic on canvas. An experiment with a colour-contrast method. This piece is based on the coronation ceremony for a new pope, in which (traditionally) a barefoot monk interrupts on three occasions, lighting a flax rag on an iron pole and pronouncing, 'Holy Father, thus passes the glory of the world.'
-r
Acryllic on canvas. An experiment with a colour-contrast method. This piece is based on the coronation ceremony for a new pope, in which (traditionally) a barefoot monk interrupts on three occasions, lighting a flax rag on an iron pole and pronouncing, 'Holy Father, thus passes the glory of the world.'
-r
28 July 2008
The Weighty Collection
A key lime pie for a quilt
And a cotton tuft for breakfast
On the kitchen tile, we awake late
To find our loopy stomach
And a just hang-over clinging; . . .
[And so now my thumb is split at the joint,
What, for writing all this parlour-room poetry?
Parloir, parloir,- 'nous parlons de rien']
. . . Sing our new morning psalm, a still
Reserve, no ripples, a rationale for getting the words
Until the mottled and drippy day
Simply puts pressure lines on our backs, on the back of our neck
And frets, simply sighing a just defeat.
-For this time, write no more of this poetry for women,
No more of these simple parlour tricks in play:
Beat the poemed ploughshares into swords
For all these ugly days of reckoning;
For slithering horrors brood just beyond the women
Just outside the parlour,
Pooling on these doors.
-r
And a cotton tuft for breakfast
On the kitchen tile, we awake late
To find our loopy stomach
And a just hang-over clinging; . . .
[And so now my thumb is split at the joint,
What, for writing all this parlour-room poetry?
Parloir, parloir,- 'nous parlons de rien']
. . . Sing our new morning psalm, a still
Reserve, no ripples, a rationale for getting the words
Until the mottled and drippy day
Simply puts pressure lines on our backs, on the back of our neck
And frets, simply sighing a just defeat.
-For this time, write no more of this poetry for women,
No more of these simple parlour tricks in play:
Beat the poemed ploughshares into swords
For all these ugly days of reckoning;
For slithering horrors brood just beyond the women
Just outside the parlour,
Pooling on these doors.
-r
22 July 2008
Se Lever
Souvent elle habite en le jour par la mare,
Eclaboussant ses jambes dans la mousse du midi
Et les permettent de refroidit
Dans l'endormi
Ondule de crépuscule;
Le sel dans son pleurer, le souffle du rire,
Dans tout, un mystère.
Je pleure, pour
La Vérité est trouvé
Dans le moment
Dans la mousse,
Dans la saumure, dans le rire coulant, coulant, coulant,
Dans le calme.
M. Hegel, s'il vous plaît: lisez un livre;
Arrêtez avec les chansons de tuba gais à nos funérailles.
Vous réduisez le Processus et la Fin,
N'importe quelles bougies, la saumure, la bouffée,
Dans les boyaux cireux
Et la violence hypothétique pathétique.
Le sens n'arrive pas en soulevant
La phrase de chaque livre sur la phrase
Mais dans permettre
Les phrases et les livres pour embrasser
Quand ils se traversent dans l'allée.
('. . .Mr. Hegel, please: read a book;
Stop with the jolly tuba songs at our funerals.
You reduce the Process and End,
Any candles, the brine, the puff,
Into waxy guts and pathetic hypothetical violence.
The meaning doesn't come in lifting phrase from each book upon phrase
But in allowing the phrases and books to kiss
When they cross each other in the aisle.')
r
Eclaboussant ses jambes dans la mousse du midi
Et les permettent de refroidit
Dans l'endormi
Ondule de crépuscule;
Le sel dans son pleurer, le souffle du rire,
Dans tout, un mystère.
Je pleure, pour
La Vérité est trouvé
Dans le moment
Dans la mousse,
Dans la saumure, dans le rire coulant, coulant, coulant,
Dans le calme.
M. Hegel, s'il vous plaît: lisez un livre;
Arrêtez avec les chansons de tuba gais à nos funérailles.
Vous réduisez le Processus et la Fin,
N'importe quelles bougies, la saumure, la bouffée,
Dans les boyaux cireux
Et la violence hypothétique pathétique.
Le sens n'arrive pas en soulevant
La phrase de chaque livre sur la phrase
Mais dans permettre
Les phrases et les livres pour embrasser
Quand ils se traversent dans l'allée.
('. . .Mr. Hegel, please: read a book;
Stop with the jolly tuba songs at our funerals.
You reduce the Process and End,
Any candles, the brine, the puff,
Into waxy guts and pathetic hypothetical violence.
The meaning doesn't come in lifting phrase from each book upon phrase
But in allowing the phrases and books to kiss
When they cross each other in the aisle.')
r
14 July 2008
Four Months A Catholic. . .
I've recounted here, in various ways and times and instances, the utter blood loss - how I basically came to understand that Protestant faith was quickly killing me. After years of playing the occasional, detached lawyer for the Catholic Church against the occasional and unfair Catholic-bashings of my college peers, finally, one day in the counsel chambres, the historic Church finally began getting through to me: 'Thanks for your help and everything, but I'll be okay. In case you didn't know, I've been around the block a few times. However - and I've been trying to tell you this for some time now - you're missing some vital organs, and you're bleeding all over your nice suit and leather briefcase.' And I was. Long before finally deciding to participate in Confirmation, I knew something had to give. If Someone didn't heal me soon, it would be curtains.
Life before being Catholic, life now as a Catholic- there is no way to even begin describing the two different lives, the surprisingly utter transformation. It is indescribably different and utterly natural to be a Catholic Christian. I'm finally home, finally at peace, feasting with our Lord and brothers and sisters at the Table where (in one sense) I'd always grown up but never actually lived. This always seems to cause confusion in conversation with my Protestant friends - this idea of 'coming home,' like it's some sort of a death/end to the 'Christian journey.' No: it's not that the journey ends, but now it's that you suddenly know (in all your journeying) where Father and Mom literally are. All the truths I had clung to as a Protestant were suddenly made complete and allowed to find harmony in such a way that my 'personal experience' is now actually fulfilling and not timidly skeptical, now wrapped up in something much more expansive than my own little definitions. It's like having lived your entire life in a car on an endless vacation and then, late one night when you're despairing and drifting somewhere near another restless dream, pulling up to a strangely familiar house, crashing on a bed that is as you might have remembered it. There will be tomorrow morning to explore the yard, but for now, as it is, it is sensory overload to discover the mystery of a pillow that holds strangely familiar smells.
The incense pours forth at the Vigil; the chant reminds you of a Christianity you never knew but always knew; terms like 'offertory' finally begin presenting themselves to you as the embodied, meaningful realities that they are. The Catholic doesn't need to bring a Bible to the Mass because the Mass is the embodiment of the Holy Word and His Scriptures, a living-out of the Holy Scriptures. After all, Catholicism embodies the reality of the Incarnation, and heaven and earth come together again. When the Psalmist writes 'I will enter His gates with thanksgiving in my heart,' as a Catholic, I am now literally caught up in this reality on at least a weekly basis (daily when possible); the doors of the church open, the Mass begins, the Gate of Heaven offers Himself to us, and we literally kneel before Him praying, 'Lord, I am not worthy to receive Thee, but only say the word and I shall be healed.'
-r
Life before being Catholic, life now as a Catholic- there is no way to even begin describing the two different lives, the surprisingly utter transformation. It is indescribably different and utterly natural to be a Catholic Christian. I'm finally home, finally at peace, feasting with our Lord and brothers and sisters at the Table where (in one sense) I'd always grown up but never actually lived. This always seems to cause confusion in conversation with my Protestant friends - this idea of 'coming home,' like it's some sort of a death/end to the 'Christian journey.' No: it's not that the journey ends, but now it's that you suddenly know (in all your journeying) where Father and Mom literally are. All the truths I had clung to as a Protestant were suddenly made complete and allowed to find harmony in such a way that my 'personal experience' is now actually fulfilling and not timidly skeptical, now wrapped up in something much more expansive than my own little definitions. It's like having lived your entire life in a car on an endless vacation and then, late one night when you're despairing and drifting somewhere near another restless dream, pulling up to a strangely familiar house, crashing on a bed that is as you might have remembered it. There will be tomorrow morning to explore the yard, but for now, as it is, it is sensory overload to discover the mystery of a pillow that holds strangely familiar smells.
The incense pours forth at the Vigil; the chant reminds you of a Christianity you never knew but always knew; terms like 'offertory' finally begin presenting themselves to you as the embodied, meaningful realities that they are. The Catholic doesn't need to bring a Bible to the Mass because the Mass is the embodiment of the Holy Word and His Scriptures, a living-out of the Holy Scriptures. After all, Catholicism embodies the reality of the Incarnation, and heaven and earth come together again. When the Psalmist writes 'I will enter His gates with thanksgiving in my heart,' as a Catholic, I am now literally caught up in this reality on at least a weekly basis (daily when possible); the doors of the church open, the Mass begins, the Gate of Heaven offers Himself to us, and we literally kneel before Him praying, 'Lord, I am not worthy to receive Thee, but only say the word and I shall be healed.'
-r
06 July 2008
Orthodox Economics, Part 1
'One of the great difficulties of all-knowing modernity (including postmodernism and the other reactionary '-isms' into which it tends to fragment itself) is its blindness to its own blindnesses.'
-John Montag, SJ ('Revelation - The false legacy of Suarez')
How do 'economics' and 'Christianity' work together? Where do the two meet, if at all? How do the two communicate with each other?
I won't retrace the history here, although the narrative painting is important. The Eucharist was denied Himself, and so (in the turn of time) the newly birthed secular concluded, 'What do you, the Church, have to offer anymore?' and established an incarnation to replace the Incarnation (which had been debunked). Thankfully, the times have changed across the board; this age feels the absence of the Incarnation, and so there is the possibility of rediscovering the Presence, since in the first place it really hasn't left. In our peculiar social situation - what is being called the 'post-Christian West' - now more than ever it's important for Catholic Christians to embody the kind of truly Christian, truly theological worldview that narrates every facet of life; the days have come and gone when Christians can simply take cues from secular narratives. Catholic literally refers to that which is wholistic - complete, universal - and this is the kind of theology we need reclaiming all areas of discussion.
In what I've observed of our culture's overly defencive political conversations, a statement like 'I'm against our manifestation of capitalism' inevitably translates itself into something like 'I'm a socialist' or 'I love communism.' And we immediately find ourselves dancing the same predictable steps toward some little triumph or another; or else we begin having some emasculated discussion that emulsifies the different systemmes into a 'no one knows' cream. Capitalism versus socialism/communism - this is how I've always seen the dilemma phrased, with one side or the other being 'the safest/most correct/best systemme' or else being shrugged off together in a relativistic manner.
What I would like to suggest, first and foremost, is that we put the long-sanctioned horse before the long-omnipotent cart . . . and then (with the horse and cart in a healthy and loving relationship) work hard from there onward. Capitalism is not in itself a complete portrait of reality; nor is socialism, nor is communism. And most of us seem to understand this, begrudgingly, when we note the abuses of our consumerist/materialistic systemme. The blunder Christians have made in our various conversations is to accept the criteria we have been handed by modernity's secular conviction: that the secular is the 'truly human' that describes central human reality - a reality deeper than the 'extra, ornamental fluff' of the sacred 'realm' (private religious experience). Thus it is that our discussions of economics never truly touch our discussions of orthodox Christianity, and we timidly juxtapose capitalism with other secular financial systemmes. What is absolutely never done - it amounts to secular blasphemy - is for our current consumerist/materialist systemme to be measured by (and birthed out of) theological concerns. The two realms - the secular and the sacred - must remain dual aspects, at the least, for the secular myth to continue.
A disclaimer: I do understand that there isn't one economic systemme that is 'the Christian' economic systemme; that sort of talk plays into the superficiality of secular economics by attempting to reduce shades of beauty into a monochromatic science. Instead of allowing many harmonious, Incarnational realities - an Ireland and a Greece - to coexist in Incarnational unity, all is crushed into an abstract/disembodied test tube. However, I would say that, historically, we have made the exact mistake in the opposite direction by telling Catholic theology to take its toys home; if the Catholic Faith truly does believe in a Saviour who embraced, embodied, and was (and represented, and enacted) the perfection of the human race, it is essentially heresy for us to make any claims - economic or otherwise - that do not begin with that unfolding, theological Revelation as a starting place.
-rick
-John Montag, SJ ('Revelation - The false legacy of Suarez')
How do 'economics' and 'Christianity' work together? Where do the two meet, if at all? How do the two communicate with each other?
I won't retrace the history here, although the narrative painting is important. The Eucharist was denied Himself, and so (in the turn of time) the newly birthed secular concluded, 'What do you, the Church, have to offer anymore?' and established an incarnation to replace the Incarnation (which had been debunked). Thankfully, the times have changed across the board; this age feels the absence of the Incarnation, and so there is the possibility of rediscovering the Presence, since in the first place it really hasn't left. In our peculiar social situation - what is being called the 'post-Christian West' - now more than ever it's important for Catholic Christians to embody the kind of truly Christian, truly theological worldview that narrates every facet of life; the days have come and gone when Christians can simply take cues from secular narratives. Catholic literally refers to that which is wholistic - complete, universal - and this is the kind of theology we need reclaiming all areas of discussion.
In what I've observed of our culture's overly defencive political conversations, a statement like 'I'm against our manifestation of capitalism' inevitably translates itself into something like 'I'm a socialist' or 'I love communism.' And we immediately find ourselves dancing the same predictable steps toward some little triumph or another; or else we begin having some emasculated discussion that emulsifies the different systemmes into a 'no one knows' cream. Capitalism versus socialism/communism - this is how I've always seen the dilemma phrased, with one side or the other being 'the safest/most correct/best systemme' or else being shrugged off together in a relativistic manner.
What I would like to suggest, first and foremost, is that we put the long-sanctioned horse before the long-omnipotent cart . . . and then (with the horse and cart in a healthy and loving relationship) work hard from there onward. Capitalism is not in itself a complete portrait of reality; nor is socialism, nor is communism. And most of us seem to understand this, begrudgingly, when we note the abuses of our consumerist/materialistic systemme. The blunder Christians have made in our various conversations is to accept the criteria we have been handed by modernity's secular conviction: that the secular is the 'truly human' that describes central human reality - a reality deeper than the 'extra, ornamental fluff' of the sacred 'realm' (private religious experience). Thus it is that our discussions of economics never truly touch our discussions of orthodox Christianity, and we timidly juxtapose capitalism with other secular financial systemmes. What is absolutely never done - it amounts to secular blasphemy - is for our current consumerist/materialist systemme to be measured by (and birthed out of) theological concerns. The two realms - the secular and the sacred - must remain dual aspects, at the least, for the secular myth to continue.
A disclaimer: I do understand that there isn't one economic systemme that is 'the Christian' economic systemme; that sort of talk plays into the superficiality of secular economics by attempting to reduce shades of beauty into a monochromatic science. Instead of allowing many harmonious, Incarnational realities - an Ireland and a Greece - to coexist in Incarnational unity, all is crushed into an abstract/disembodied test tube. However, I would say that, historically, we have made the exact mistake in the opposite direction by telling Catholic theology to take its toys home; if the Catholic Faith truly does believe in a Saviour who embraced, embodied, and was (and represented, and enacted) the perfection of the human race, it is essentially heresy for us to make any claims - economic or otherwise - that do not begin with that unfolding, theological Revelation as a starting place.
-rick
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