Over a morning break recently, I was watching a show on the History Channel about the Shroud of Turin. At one point, ominous images of people next to the Greek word for 'heretic' were shown in conjunction with the dramatic music playing, the gnostics portrayed as a group of people kicked out of the fold by the Church for arbitrary reasons; a narrator accentuated the made-mood by noting, 'The gnostics were considered heretics for beleiving there was more to the universe than meets the eye. Now, with modern science, we are able to see that they were closer to the truth than previously imagined.'
Whether because of a desire for Marxist sensationalism or otherwise legitimate ignorance, we have now just squashed layers of theological debate and historical fact. Certainly orthodox Christians have always believed there's 'more to the universe than meets the eye', just as the gnostics do. The gnostics were deemed heretics for numerous reasons, and our present first-world West could use a revisiting of those denunciations, as we have fallen into many facets of a neo-gnosticism - with our ideas of 'escaping the physical' for the 'pure spiritual', Christianity (an abstract term, replacing 'the Church' or 'the Faith') being an abstract construction or a 'special' or 'secret knowledge' instead of (or at least before being) an embodied, fleshed-out reality, etc.
There is a delicious historical poetry to the History Channel's defence of the gnostics: modern science can attribute many of its assumptions about the world to a gnostic lineage.* I love the History Channel, but I've often noticed the prideful scientism (and accompanying sensationalism) of our age - to say nothing of its antipathy toward fundamentalist protestants and the Catholic Church; and that makes me sad. Scientism, one of the lingering fragments of modernism, stands before tribal-garbed religion/theology (incense swinging and nose-ring clinking) and puzzles over it, unable to translate; eventually Scientism begins to speak, 'These primitive and ignorant people put flowers on the deceased person's grave because they believed the dead had an acute sense of smell.' Woe to you (i.e. I'm so sorry for you), because you've lost touch with humanity. Yes, you have even lost touch with the feared term: you have lost touch with primal humanity; you are afraid, because underneath the technology and coffee-shoppes we are still creatures of symbol and ritual. Your 'objective' and 'universal' framework for viewing the universe has blinded you to the universe itself.
*cf. Science, Politics, and Gnosticism by Eric Voegelin
-r
11 May 2010
05 May 2010
Rough-Draught Snippet from the Novel
[The Sign]
It all began with war, and the war began with the wooden sign. Or, so we children were convinced. Children tend to hear news second-hand, usually from the hyperbolic talkers, and piece everything together as best they can.
Ten miles west of Reno, a traveler would long have left the empty sprawl of city behind him, passed into the hills, and come to an exit sign proclaiming "Red Rock Rd." To his right, he would have beheld the little desert basin the inhabitants called Red Rock; and should he have taken that exit, he would have passed a gas station into the middle of a loose confederacy of ranch-houses.
This valley was Red Rock, named by the pioneering forebears who had settled there a hundred years before. Though they themselves remained shrouded in the mists of unmentioned history, they had no doubt had the leather skin and bleeding lips of their descendants. Who needed the Truckee River a few valleys over? Luxury. These ancestors settled at the foot of Mount Peavine, hewn in by hills on all sides, digging wells and breeding cattle. A few of their fierce children still remained on the first ranch plots, brazen and expansive.
But the wooden sign shouted WELCOME TO GOLDEN LAKE, not able (as it were) to learn of the exciting history of Red Rock. The real estate corporation behind the wooden sign was able, incidentally, to learn of Red Rock’s exciting history, but "Red Rock" wouldn’t attract buyers – at least, buyers of the corporation’s desired sort.
We ourselves had moved into the area a few years earlier, transplants of an aircraft manufacturer out East. By then I’d developed a sense of the place. The sign amazed me.
"What does it mean?"
My dad had seen the sign on his way from work, and now in that evening we were going to church.
"What does what mean?"
"The sign, Dad."
"Oh. I think they’re renaming the subdivision."
"Who?"
"Whoever owns the subdivision."
"What lake?"
"Hm?"
"What lake is the sign talking about?"
"Oh. I’m not sure, Josh."
Two years before, Dad had built a planter-box for Mom in the backyard – not in the vast two acres of brush and sun-baked clay, but safely within the fence near the house, on the sprinkler-fed grass. My mom bought topsoil and grew tomatoes and cucumbers. While my sister and I ate cucumbers like dessert, we both shared an inability to eat tomatoes without gagging or otherwise ruining a meal. Or, at least I wasn’t able to do so; in hindsight, I think Sarah might have been following her brother’s lead, joining in. In any case, when the planter-box fell into disuse the next year, we ate store-bought cucumbers and rejoiced at the disappearance of tomatoes. The planter-box soon found itself outside the fence.
After Bible study on that day of the sign’s appearance, we returned to Red Rock and were intrigued to find it well-lit from below. The sign was planning to stay, a monument.
The coming weeks brought the sneers of the local ranchers; I enjoyed them at the gas station, the hub of the neighborhood’s pulse. I would bike over every so often to buy a candy-bar and hang around if a rancher was gossiping to the gas station owner.
"What do you make of it?" the rancher was asking.
"Of what?"
"The sign out there."
"Ah."
"My opinion, they can name this goddamn place anything they want, it’s still gonna be Red Rock. –Excuse my french, son."
"Ah, him." My legs were crossed, eyes absorbing the rancher’s burnt face, "Our private-I. Don’t worry about him."
"My great-great-great-grandfather dug the well on my land. Far as I’m concerned, this is Red Rock."
Sometimes two ranchers would intersect at the gas station, and that was always particularly fascinating. Once there was a dispute over a fence built, allegedly, on the adjacent rancher’s land. One rancher’s donkey would terrorize the neighborhood from time to time. Overall, however, it was fascinating to me simply because grown men – tough ones, at that – were talking. The topics of conversation in themselves were generally as bland as feed, fences, and water concerns; the gas station owner was the closest thing we had to a bartender or priest.
There was that one time:
"Did you hear about the McCaskell boy, detective?"
"No. What happened?"
"One of the Irvine boys stole his birthday bike. There was a scuffle, of course, but the Irvine boy’s older, and so he basically just took the bike. So then – all you got’s a ten?"
"Yes, sir. Sorry."
"So then the McCaskell boy – he’s seven, you know – he goes and gets his father’s shotgun. Ha! Your eyes – no, he did get the shotgun, but it was unloaded, of course. He got his bike back. –Here’s your change: five, one, two . . ." For some reason he found that particular story on that particular day exciting, and I didn’t know why; like most bartenders he had ears for all the anxious customers simply because he was stuck behind the counter.
The gas station buzzed for a day or so about the arrival of the sign, but then life chugged along as usual. Nothing fell out of the sky, no visitations or omens. Every so often someone would mention the sign in an effort to stir up conversation. When the owner didn’t listen attentively enough and I was around, these bored souls would bounce their wares off me.
Machinery came a few weeks after the wooden sign, and I was amazed. I wondered about some sort of magical listening device in the area: So, Joshua Baker, you question our naming of this place? You ask where the lake is? Well, we will give you a lake, young sir. No, I would have protested, it wasn’t that sort of question. I just wondered why, that’s all.
For a year, the glorified pond called Golden Lake – a nice pond, mind you, but hardly a lake – stood as a monument. Incidentally, the wooden sign with its proud golden text had already begun decomposition; Red Rock ate latex, bleached dyes, and blistered exposed wood right where it dared to show its face. Golden Lake didn’t have much of a trumpeter anymore.
Wasn’t Nevada the silver state, anyway? I often wondered.
A year later, the sign was barely legible. The real estate corporation appeared to have given up the fight. "Golden Lake," sitting half-planned on the desert basin, dried up before the next spring. My mom’s planter-box splintered and twisted around the same time, chafing against its nails, no longer of use and a cool home for various kinds of scorpions.
-r
It all began with war, and the war began with the wooden sign. Or, so we children were convinced. Children tend to hear news second-hand, usually from the hyperbolic talkers, and piece everything together as best they can.
Ten miles west of Reno, a traveler would long have left the empty sprawl of city behind him, passed into the hills, and come to an exit sign proclaiming "Red Rock Rd." To his right, he would have beheld the little desert basin the inhabitants called Red Rock; and should he have taken that exit, he would have passed a gas station into the middle of a loose confederacy of ranch-houses.
This valley was Red Rock, named by the pioneering forebears who had settled there a hundred years before. Though they themselves remained shrouded in the mists of unmentioned history, they had no doubt had the leather skin and bleeding lips of their descendants. Who needed the Truckee River a few valleys over? Luxury. These ancestors settled at the foot of Mount Peavine, hewn in by hills on all sides, digging wells and breeding cattle. A few of their fierce children still remained on the first ranch plots, brazen and expansive.
But the wooden sign shouted WELCOME TO GOLDEN LAKE, not able (as it were) to learn of the exciting history of Red Rock. The real estate corporation behind the wooden sign was able, incidentally, to learn of Red Rock’s exciting history, but "Red Rock" wouldn’t attract buyers – at least, buyers of the corporation’s desired sort.
We ourselves had moved into the area a few years earlier, transplants of an aircraft manufacturer out East. By then I’d developed a sense of the place. The sign amazed me.
"What does it mean?"
My dad had seen the sign on his way from work, and now in that evening we were going to church.
"What does what mean?"
"The sign, Dad."
"Oh. I think they’re renaming the subdivision."
"Who?"
"Whoever owns the subdivision."
"What lake?"
"Hm?"
"What lake is the sign talking about?"
"Oh. I’m not sure, Josh."
Two years before, Dad had built a planter-box for Mom in the backyard – not in the vast two acres of brush and sun-baked clay, but safely within the fence near the house, on the sprinkler-fed grass. My mom bought topsoil and grew tomatoes and cucumbers. While my sister and I ate cucumbers like dessert, we both shared an inability to eat tomatoes without gagging or otherwise ruining a meal. Or, at least I wasn’t able to do so; in hindsight, I think Sarah might have been following her brother’s lead, joining in. In any case, when the planter-box fell into disuse the next year, we ate store-bought cucumbers and rejoiced at the disappearance of tomatoes. The planter-box soon found itself outside the fence.
After Bible study on that day of the sign’s appearance, we returned to Red Rock and were intrigued to find it well-lit from below. The sign was planning to stay, a monument.
The coming weeks brought the sneers of the local ranchers; I enjoyed them at the gas station, the hub of the neighborhood’s pulse. I would bike over every so often to buy a candy-bar and hang around if a rancher was gossiping to the gas station owner.
"What do you make of it?" the rancher was asking.
"Of what?"
"The sign out there."
"Ah."
"My opinion, they can name this goddamn place anything they want, it’s still gonna be Red Rock. –Excuse my french, son."
"Ah, him." My legs were crossed, eyes absorbing the rancher’s burnt face, "Our private-I. Don’t worry about him."
"My great-great-great-grandfather dug the well on my land. Far as I’m concerned, this is Red Rock."
Sometimes two ranchers would intersect at the gas station, and that was always particularly fascinating. Once there was a dispute over a fence built, allegedly, on the adjacent rancher’s land. One rancher’s donkey would terrorize the neighborhood from time to time. Overall, however, it was fascinating to me simply because grown men – tough ones, at that – were talking. The topics of conversation in themselves were generally as bland as feed, fences, and water concerns; the gas station owner was the closest thing we had to a bartender or priest.
There was that one time:
"Did you hear about the McCaskell boy, detective?"
"No. What happened?"
"One of the Irvine boys stole his birthday bike. There was a scuffle, of course, but the Irvine boy’s older, and so he basically just took the bike. So then – all you got’s a ten?"
"Yes, sir. Sorry."
"So then the McCaskell boy – he’s seven, you know – he goes and gets his father’s shotgun. Ha! Your eyes – no, he did get the shotgun, but it was unloaded, of course. He got his bike back. –Here’s your change: five, one, two . . ." For some reason he found that particular story on that particular day exciting, and I didn’t know why; like most bartenders he had ears for all the anxious customers simply because he was stuck behind the counter.
The gas station buzzed for a day or so about the arrival of the sign, but then life chugged along as usual. Nothing fell out of the sky, no visitations or omens. Every so often someone would mention the sign in an effort to stir up conversation. When the owner didn’t listen attentively enough and I was around, these bored souls would bounce their wares off me.
Machinery came a few weeks after the wooden sign, and I was amazed. I wondered about some sort of magical listening device in the area: So, Joshua Baker, you question our naming of this place? You ask where the lake is? Well, we will give you a lake, young sir. No, I would have protested, it wasn’t that sort of question. I just wondered why, that’s all.
For a year, the glorified pond called Golden Lake – a nice pond, mind you, but hardly a lake – stood as a monument. Incidentally, the wooden sign with its proud golden text had already begun decomposition; Red Rock ate latex, bleached dyes, and blistered exposed wood right where it dared to show its face. Golden Lake didn’t have much of a trumpeter anymore.
Wasn’t Nevada the silver state, anyway? I often wondered.
A year later, the sign was barely legible. The real estate corporation appeared to have given up the fight. "Golden Lake," sitting half-planned on the desert basin, dried up before the next spring. My mom’s planter-box splintered and twisted around the same time, chafing against its nails, no longer of use and a cool home for various kinds of scorpions.
-r
02 May 2010
Floodings
Sitting behind a computer desk at my friend's house outside Nashville, I'm going to be here for awhile - that is, potentially another day or two, or perhaps even more. The rain isn't stopping; my car was originally parked in the street, that is, a raging creek. We went to a Japanese restaurant for lunch where all of us strangers sat around the grill talking about other things, and now we're watching images of history on our local news channels, pictures of abandoned cars in five feet of water and familiar landmarks/roads that have become lakes. There's a rock quarry with a waterfall into it that will most likely be abandoned and christened as a large pond. The roof of the farmer's market near my church is peeking over the top of the water; a friend is pushing water out of her basement.
Craziness.
-r
Craziness.
-r
26 April 2010
Lost Civilisation (remix)
Questions yet emerge about the disappearance of a prosperous, robust Mezoamerican civilisation; a powerful culture disappeared (almost literally) overnight. Did the plague 'get 'em'? It had to be a plague, since all pre-modern cultures were too stupid to wash their hands. Who or what killed them? Did they pack up and leave for Alaska?
Poetry rambles about in my mind. Ayamentu the potential carpenter became obsessed with his epic poems, and Yiloxeto the potential housewife owned a multi-national corporation. Talipoketxa joined a rock-band for six decades. In a burst of exhilirating passion, Utlepacho left his wife for summer in London, or else his wife left him for autumn in Paris. Farming and city-peasantry were for the common folk, who were not so common anymore; everyone lived extraordinary lives - wind rushing through the hair, scarves flying from topless convertibles, generations of sexism crumbling, notions of 9-to-5 ho-hum dissolving - which means no one lived ordinary lives.
One day, the conquistadors found extraordinary ambition awake with the crow's feet of the correspondingly ordinary ruins.
-r
Poetry rambles about in my mind. Ayamentu the potential carpenter became obsessed with his epic poems, and Yiloxeto the potential housewife owned a multi-national corporation. Talipoketxa joined a rock-band for six decades. In a burst of exhilirating passion, Utlepacho left his wife for summer in London, or else his wife left him for autumn in Paris. Farming and city-peasantry were for the common folk, who were not so common anymore; everyone lived extraordinary lives - wind rushing through the hair, scarves flying from topless convertibles, generations of sexism crumbling, notions of 9-to-5 ho-hum dissolving - which means no one lived ordinary lives.
One day, the conquistadors found extraordinary ambition awake with the crow's feet of the correspondingly ordinary ruins.
-r
18 April 2010
Fisherman's Friend - Official Lozenge of the Assumption Schola
This Mass is brought to you by Fisherman's Friend [http://www.fishermansfriend.com], the official cough-drop/throat-lozenge of the Church of the Assumption schola cantorum.
'Gee, Bob, you boys really nailed that Introit this morning!'
'To tell you the truth, Jane, half of us had allergies, the other had a cold, and Fred just sucks in general. (Can't carry a tune in a bucket. Don't understand why he sings with us. Weird.)'
'Wow! Then, how on earth did you guys flutter into those tristrophas and episemas so beautifully?'
'Well, we had a little help: Fisherman's Friend throat lozenges. They're as chock full of menthol and eucalyptus as the FDA will allow, offering cool soothing relief in the form of a nasty brown tablet.'
'Wow, Bob! Where can I get some of my own?'
'You can find Fisherman's Friend right at your local pharmacy, or on the black market.'
(Fisherman's Friend throat lozenges: If fishermen on the briny sea trust 'em, you should be able to, too, right?)
'Gee, Bob, you boys really nailed that Introit this morning!'
'To tell you the truth, Jane, half of us had allergies, the other had a cold, and Fred just sucks in general. (Can't carry a tune in a bucket. Don't understand why he sings with us. Weird.)'
'Wow! Then, how on earth did you guys flutter into those tristrophas and episemas so beautifully?'
'Well, we had a little help: Fisherman's Friend throat lozenges. They're as chock full of menthol and eucalyptus as the FDA will allow, offering cool soothing relief in the form of a nasty brown tablet.'
'Wow, Bob! Where can I get some of my own?'
'You can find Fisherman's Friend right at your local pharmacy, or on the black market.'
(Fisherman's Friend throat lozenges: If fishermen on the briny sea trust 'em, you should be able to, too, right?)
17 April 2010
Doodle Do
House-sitting for a friend, and just pulled off a 72-hr. work week (ka-ching). Wicked cool on both accounts, though all is exhausting in regard to the latter. Blogging Blogger because there's no paper nearby for scratching.
It's a blessing (and a rare one in this life, I realise) to have numerous possibilities present to one's life - HVAC, doctoral study, seminary, so on. It's even rarer to have the temporary opportunity to cultivate many of these possibilities with no immediate exclusion of the other possibilities' possibility. For the forseeable future I've got nothing to lose, and for now, I've got the delicious privilege of choice (prologue to decision). I don't mind thinking this over in these weeks.
-r
It's a blessing (and a rare one in this life, I realise) to have numerous possibilities present to one's life - HVAC, doctoral study, seminary, so on. It's even rarer to have the temporary opportunity to cultivate many of these possibilities with no immediate exclusion of the other possibilities' possibility. For the forseeable future I've got nothing to lose, and for now, I've got the delicious privilege of choice (prologue to decision). I don't mind thinking this over in these weeks.
-r
13 April 2010
Doctoral Studies
So, CUA accepted me into their Biblical Studies doctoral programme. I'm calling the dean and my advisor to-day to figure out what scholarships, if any, I received, etc. The financial edge is potentially enormous; a parking pass for the university is $400 alone.
We'll see, but it's exciting.
-r
We'll see, but it's exciting.
-r
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