And It Was Very Good

I have a picture with my new bride standing in the natural light of the sun as it pours through one of the stained glass windows of our church. It’s a stunning picture, even if I am a little bit biased.

Almost two years ago now, under the direction of the deacons and the building committee, our church approved the renovation of the stained glass windows of our church, forking over a significant amount of cash to do so. Perhaps it never was at issue, but I suppose a pragmatic approach to the window problem might have been to “update them”: to pop those ancient things out and put in some “normal” windows that would no doubt have been oh-so-much cheaper.

After all, stained glass in a protestant church! Are we the heirs of the Puritans or not? A significant amount of effort was expended in the Reformation to steer away from the ornate iconography of the Catholic Church, and what often came about as a result was a certain pride in plainness. So what’s the story with our ornate little church raised on the prairie, with its lovely yellowish stone and stained glass windows?

I’m not sure, actually, about the story of the building itself. I have no idea. But I for one am glad that someone saw to it that a beautiful little structure was raised at First Edgerton, and I’m also glad that we didn’t bat an eye when it came to the stained glass windows.

The Church, the body of Christ, is not a building; we all know that. Anywhere two or three are gathered we have the Church, structure or not, freedom to worship or not. And, anyway, our church is not a perfect structure by any stretch of the imagination. Still, it seems to me we did right in preserving something of the beauty of the church.

In his book Surprised by Hope­, N.T. Wright has a chapter entitled “Building for the Kingdom” in which he outlines several areas of work that Christians can think of in terms of “building for the kingdom.” Of the three areas Wright outlines—“justice, beauty, and evangelism”—only one is surprising. “Justice” is something that we as a church know we are to be part of. Recently, we’ve considered our part as a church in the struggle for justice for the unborn as well as considering what justice means in regards to the Belhar confession. And as for evangelism, we are reaching out far and near to try to spread the good news of the kingdom of God.

But beauty? Christians are to work for beauty? Of the three, clearly beauty is the most questionable. Why does beauty matter? And beauty according to what standards? Isn’t beauty in the eye of the beholder? Isn’t it skin deep?

These are all legitimate questions and ones that make this idea that Christians should work for “beauty” certainly debatable. Wright’s point, however, has to do with craftsmanship, has to do with preserving what is good in a world that was originally very good. Wright’s point has to do with the cultural mandate of Genesis 1:28, the command for us to go and make something of the world, and it has to do with the vision of a New Jerusalem that will not be a disembodied world of harps and angels but the city of God come down to earth.

And this is where our stained glass windows are good Protestantism—nay, are good Reformational Protestantism. For surely the ability to craft something of beauty, something that lasts and is a testimony to future generations, is a gift of God, and Reformed Protestantism is all about reclaiming everything—especially work and craftsmanship—for God. And in a world that often crafts things selfishly for today since “tomorrow I won’t be around anyway,” or crafts them pridefully as monuments to ourselves, or crafts them only functionally because we can’t imagine a greater world, perhaps we Christians could impact the world significantly if we thought more in terms of the Godly beauty that we might bring to the world through our work, through making things that are beautiful in God’s eyes.

After all, He is the author of beauty. The creation story makes sure that we’re clear on that. “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Gen. 1:31), we’re told at the close of the story.

As the image of our Maker, may we make the same way He did. And, every Sunday, may we find rest from and enjoyment in that beautiful work.

CSI Epistemology

It came to me suddenly why we're enamored with all the CSIs and SUVs (or SVUs, as one of the Law and Order franchise is labeled), with all the Criminal Minds and Mentalists and Psychs. I was reading Stephen King's short story, "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" in which he turns the premise of those shows on its ear. King does this almost too easily really: he sets up motive, evidence, and outcome for the main character to kill his wife and her lover. Everything points to the main character's guilt except for one thing: he didn't do it. The lesson, I suppose, is how easily we can be deceived, how easily the truth can be made a lie.

Meanwhile, of course, the above shows' collective premise is that "the evidence never lies." In fact, I think that was the slogan of the head agent in the original CSI: Las Vegas--that is, the head agent two head agents before the current head agent on that show. Since the time of that head agent, these shows have proliferated like none other, all of them with this premise: the evidence doesn't lie.

Oh sure, Psych and The Mentalist have added more peripheral evidence like psychology, and my wife's favorite show, Castle has even added a writer to emphasize, perhaps, that violent crime is always wrapped up in a story, but at base they're still all about the truth of 20th century epistemology: the evidence never lies.

Because that's what these shows are about: objectivist, scientific, logical positivist epistemology. In a world where people get bludgeoned to death nightly, at least we can follow the trail of bread crumbs that becomes so clear and overwhelming that the perps will confess every time. They are shows, really, about trails of bread crumbs. And in this way they are somewhat logical positivist and naturalistic: the universe they set up is determined and I suppose just in a mechanical sort of way. It is also an amoral world filled with little joy or true festivity, where the best we can hope for is the capitalist dream of some property and some parties.

It wasn't always this way. Remember the trend of supernatural cop shows, epitomized by the X Files? That spat of Twilight Zone spinoffs even included Baywatch Nights. Notice. It didn't last. With the loss of Lost a couple of seasons ago, logical positivism and "the evidence never lies" seems to have triumphed completely. The idea that human characters can navigate a more unpredictable world based on virtues and our sense of a larger story than evolutionary science seems to have bitten the dust.

On the horizon now, however, is the Inception spinoff Awake, where the lead character can't tell his real life from his dream life. The premise of Awake is no doubt driven by psychology, but it's no Lost. In fact, it looks like it's kind of revisiting Descartes "Evil Genius"--how will the main character know which world is true? Perhaps by recognizing his most "clear and distinct perceptions," the foundation for Descartes cogito ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am"). In the end, if the show bends toward this kind of answer, it will fall into the camp of enshrining our logical positivist epistemology.

Mass culture is a fascinating thing. Our collective impulses tell us how our moral and, even more to the point, our epistemological compasses--how we've conditioned our minds to think--are oriented. While the challenge of postmodernity has put some terribly interesting stories in front of us, like Lost, in the largest category of mass culture we still seem to tend toward the modern, a tradition which stretches at least from Descartes to CSI: the evidence never lies.

Ah, but it does and it can. But a bigger truth than logical positivism can break into the world and reorient it to a larger, less tyrannical truth. What can be a bigger truth?

The Word.

My Cankle

I've said things like, "It reminds you that you're alive," and "Everybody should sprain their ankle at least once in their lives." I guess I stick by that claim: spraining your ankle is one of the most intense things a person can do, where "intense" means "overloaded with sense experience, in this case, pain."

Ankles may be evidence that a certain level of pain is built into the fabric of things. Ninety-eight percent of the time, ankles allow us to be dextrous and lithe, enable an incredible combination of power and grace on a beautifully willowy structure. Still, while there may have been no curbs in the Garden of Eden, there was uneven terrain. Where uneven terrain and ankles meet, sprains are sure to happen. Research shows that sprains happen at only a slightly higher rate in "athletes" than in other people. Okay, I made that up. Still, I do have anecdotal evidence: the same week I sprained my ankle playing pickup ball, my wife's coworker stepped missed a step in a dark garage to the same result. Sprains happen. To anyone.

But ankles sprains heal. This, too, may be evidence of creational design to sprained ankles: the wonder of how bodies repair themselves. I'm not sure what's been stretched or pulled, what's wrenched away from bone under the skin of mine. All I know is I've had one "cankle" for over a week now: the injury has accumulated fluid that reminds me to take it easy. Of course, as my physical therapist wife reminds me, I also want to get that swelling out of there if I want to return to normal function. This is a problem in my creational vision: who would've told Adam and Eve to "RICE" their ankles--Rest, Ice, Compress, Elevate?

Well, what do you think they talked about with God on their walks through the garden? How the creation--including their bodies--worked.

Age also threatens to dampen my theory. I'm into this sprain a week and am frankly a bit worried about bounce-back. Of course, this, too, can be explained by the garden: I am, realistically, on the clock for this body, and so perhaps I'm mending slower. Still, I'm not willing to say our new bodies won't include the possibility of sprained ankles: they're too good in that creaturely sort of way. And I stick by my claim that they intensify life.

Here's how I know: over a week later, the moment it happens remains indelible in my mind. We were down by one at 10-9, meaning if they scored--game. My player, a good shooter, had the ball. Their post came out high for a ball screen. I trailed my player on the dribble, and my teammate slid into position to stop the drive momentarily while I could recover, meanwhile the screener was rolling toward the hoop. I jumped to try to block the inevitable pass and came down on my teammate's foot, forcing my ankle to ninety degrees. I felt the ankle bone hit the floor and an internal "pop" so famous to ankle sprains.

Maybe not the repeated slow-motion close-ups the camera loves to provide of twisted and broken leg injuries, but you get the picture.

Then--I'll admit it--I writhed in pain like I was dying. I laid there and beat the ground, bit my thumb, pounded the floor--all the unmanly things I could think of besides crying.

But I wasn't dying. In fact, according to my own personal ankle philosophy, I'd never been more alive, nor would my body let me forget it. So I laid there with my philosophy: "Everyone should sprain their ankle at least once in their lives"; "sprained ankles let you know you're alive."

I understand that there's something flawed about my logic; I understand that equating pain with being alive is somewhat of the logic of cutters. Still, I stick by the idea because of the wonder of creation, because the idea of escaping a painless universe into utter bliss seems more akin to nirvana than to something as real and intense as the fine-strong leg joint known as the ankle-bone. And even as I think of "perfected bodies," I'm nervous about our vision of them as floating through walls, of our tendency to see them as more disembodied than embodied. There's something wonderful and earthbound about how the ankle allows us to push off, to turn a corner, to leap however finitely, and, yes, even how it allows us to come up against boundaries. With ice on my ankle, I've been reminded of those boundaries now for the past week.

If that's what ankles and their spraining means--boundaries--then here's to boundaries.

Racial Linsanity

It's a good story in the same way the Yankees losing is a good story. It's a good story for the same reason that the Mavs winning the title last year was a good story. Of all the professional sports, the NBA can feel the most scripted, the most predetermined. And in a league where players are anointed as the next big thing as teens and preteens, no one saw this coming: that an undrafted second year player from Harvard would suddenly burst on the scene and almost single-handedly resurrect a multi-million dollar franchise.

So it's a cinderella story, make no mistake, and that means that what we love about college basketball--that any hardworking, no name team might have their "shining moment" (wow basketball fans love cliches)--has made it's way to the next level.

I personally haven't evaluated Jeremy Lin's game. In fact, I've only seen a handful of highlights, including a game-winning three pointer against the Raptors. Of course, no one needs me to evaluate his game. But this is another truth about the NBA and it's style of play: not only are players to "produce" within the individualistic, one-on-one set ups that the rules have been built to foster, these players are to do it in a way that makes a highlight reel, in a way that can be described as a "style."

The greatest "stylist," in this sense, was Michael Jordan, or that's the cliche that people believe. Arguably, Bird and Magic were as good if not better stylists; and I've no doubt people like Pistol Pete Maravich and Oscar Robertson were probably better stylists still though they come before my time. People think Michael Jordan was a stylist when he was just physically dominant, arguably the perfect basketball body--for a certain type of basketball. Jordan was that combination of size, strength, quickness, and athleticism that came together to make a special player, no doubt. Sure, Jordan added to this package by honing a jump shot that was often above average; Jordan played defense in a league where you don't have to; Jordan knew when to dish to his white jumpshooters camping at the three-point line. In short, Jordan did the right things to make himself a legend, he worked at it.

But what I want to argue is that the physically dominant player has had a monopoly on the NBA for far too long. The type we've been looking for, the Jordan type, is only one style of play, one style of player. Now, it was interesting for a while because we kept wondering "who the next Jordan" would be: Vince Carter? Nope. Kobe? Kind of but we can't love Kobe because of his high pedigree. Lebron? An improbably athlete come out of the ugliness of Cleveland and then disses that city and can't win anyway.

So it's no wonder that people aren't sure what to make of Jeremy Lin. Even though he must be a one-on-one player, he's not that kind of one-on-one player. He's not transcendent that way.

And he's Asian.

Saturday Night Live did one of the funniest race-line crossing skits of all time last night, exploring the stereotypes that exist in the NBA--and in America--regarding white, black and Asian (http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/linsanity-postgame-cold-open/1386272/). Four sportscasters, two white and two black, were evaluating Jeremy Lin's game. While three of the announcers could throw around all the Asian stereotypes they wanted, when the one white guy tried to join the fray with black stereotypes, he got shouted down and then fired.

Unfortunately, most people, I think--most white people anyway--will read this skit as the double-standard that blacks are allowed, which is precisely missing the point. No, most often white people can't "join the fray" with black stereotypes because they most often don't get the historical and structural part they have played and continue to play in what often remains a divided America when it comes to white and black. Of course, as is shown in the skit, this so-called "race card" can be played as a card to justify bad behavior on the part of individual blacks.

But the point of the skit is how, while we're aware of and sensitive to black stereotypes, we're not aware of our stereotypes of Asians. Thus, the skit goes so far as to dub over an interview of Jeremy Lin (yes, he speaks English; he was born and raised here) with an English translation that includes references to kung fu moves.

No doubt people are buzzing about the skit this morning. However, this is nothing new. Frank Chin, editor of an Asian-American Literature anthology called The Big Aiiieeeee!!!!! has written about how mangled our sense of Asian-Americans is--filled with ideas of bizarre cultures based in superstition, harsh discipline and collective goals that are thought of us un-American, but also individual stereotypes of the Asian skillset that sets Asian-Americans apart as truly other: exotic and quirky but ultimately somewhat weak and easily marginalizable.

And so, predictably, people won't know what to make of the skit. But Jeremy Lin is still the best story in the NBA--perhaps in sports--this year because he breaks so many of our preconceived notions. He's the hope for pickup players everywhere, breaking the stronghold of the pre-ordained players with only one type of skillset. But he's also a wrench in the works of the conversations on race in America, bringing to light another group that has been here since the beginning--Asian-Americans--but who still often get written out of the American story because we've dubbed them "other."

Another Story of Belonging and Exile?

My dad remembers the days when bands used to come to small town dance halls in southwest Minnesota. Jazz bands these were, and they came to places like Hatfield, which today has a population of 56. Back then, though, in the late forties and early fifties, when there were no hotels around and money was scarce, the patrons would house the bandmembers over night. Someone from the neighborhood of my grandpa’s farm had gone to see the band, then taken them home and put them up for the night since there were. Late in the afternoon of the next day, after sleeping off the night’s festivities, the band went swimming in a pond in the hills adjacent to my grandfather’s farm, where he came upon them. My dad remembers my grandpa laughing to, as they say, beat the band when he returned to the farmhouse. The band members were black and probably the last thing my grandfather expected to see, skinny-dipping in the hills above Champeperdan creek.

I grew up on the same farm in the same hills, hills that were really low rises on a vague plateau. When I was school age, the adults took turns driving the neighborhood kids to the local Christian school in a van we bought together for just such a purpose. It was on this van—first a pink 60’s pill and then a more hearty two-tone 70s almost-conversion van—that I listened to the older kids talk about what was important in the world: sports and music. Friday Night Videos had just been invented and junior high glory was to stay up past the news to catch a glimpse of the real world of music. And what we saw blew our little minds. In many ways the wonder of the "Billy Jean" and "Thriller" videos probably sealed the success of MTV and VH1 at least through the year 2000. It was that powerful, that good. It changed the lives of rural teens forever.

But it didn't end with Thriller. A couple of years later, Prince dominated the radio waves with Purple Rain and generated buzz in the school van by his bizarre costume at the Grammys. When someone on the school van bought his album, it also helped to put our libidos on fastforward: even rural white preteens could figure out what his muse was.

In short black music--no, the absolute genius of black music--continued to make its way into southwest Minnesota and to impact our lives well after my grandfather's revelation above the Champeperdam.

But if Prince moved our nether region, Whitney Houston moved our ideals. Or rather, siren-like, she could move us from our ideals with regard for nothing else but her voice. If beauty is truth, we thought--okay, I thought--this is truth; she could have been singing gobbledy-gook and it wouldn't have mattered. We would follow.

I'm a sucker for Whitney Houston songs; I can't deny it. Also undeniably, at least for a time, Whitney Houston was the voice of America. Just witness her national anthem at the 1991 Superbowl: this was the best America had to offer--the glittering gem that all the seismic upheaval of hundreds of years of American conflict had produced, Zora Neale Hurston's "mule of the world" transformed into its ultimate diva and, in that anthem, spokesperson.

My own personal Whitney Houston siren-song is "The Greatest Love of All," a sappy hymn to self-love that embodies everything the eighties stands for: shameless self-serving self-promotion wrapped up in a package of sham religion. If, as Jamie Smith argues, the political and entertainment worlds are more entwined than we should ever dare think, "The Greatest Love of All" is a perfect example of political ideology packaged for popular consumption. It should have been Ronald Reagan's theme song; that a black woman sang it is pure, calculating, evil genius. Nonetheless, to hear it sung is to disregard all of that. As the key changes climb, our collective spirits and individualist hopes soar with Whitney, the realities of the life around us be damned.

But now two of these 80s icons, and both of them black, are dead. Perhaps, we might argue, "The Greatest Love of All" wasn't enough for Houston, just as starting with the "Man in the Mirror" wasn't enough for Jackson. Meanwhile, other 80s icons blaze or fizzle on: Madonna, albeit somewhat hamstrung, performed at the pinnacle of pop success, the Superbowl; and U2, despite Bono's broken back, completed the most successful world tour in history.

What accounts for the difference? Was it personal flaws that left these black superstars unable to cope with the dizzying heights of stardom? This is what shock-jock radio would have us believe with the taunts of crack-whore being tossed Houston's way--and in essence not just Houston's way, but black America's way.

It's a bit silly for me to return to my grandpa's experience as a sort of parable for America, perhaps, but I can't resist. While the genius of black music in America has left us all with a revelation of sorts--whether real, true awe or a somewhat confused shaking of the head--white America returns home from the revelation, landed and therefore more rooted to the place and, more importantly, to the defining American story.

What happens to the black band swimming in the hills? Who knows? Who cares? Black icons, no matter how successful, are not landed, either literally, like my grandfather, or figuratively landed in the American story, as was the case with both Jackson and Houston.

Sure, there's other things to consider, including the dizzying heights of superstardom that almost no one, white or black, deals with well. But, while I'm the fourth generation to live in southwest Minnesota, while I was changed by the creative genius of two pop icons, they were pushed to the fringes of the American story and are now dead. And I'm afraid to tease out the implications about what this means for the larger story of placed and displaced in America, about the continuing story of belonging and exile on the American continents, about the continuing story of white and black.

But at least let me note that the beauty that we all benefited from for a time has passed out of the world, and that the implications of that passing remind us that in too many ways the continuing story of America remains a tragedy.

Midnight Callers: 12 o'clock and all's well

I felt presided over.

They were just outside our window on the north side of our house, just over our heads. By the sounds of them, one was roosting in the neighbor's pine across the road, though I can't imagine that as a good place to roost, and one was even closer, probably up around the electric pole that marks the boundary with our neighbor to the west. They were close. I was tempted to get up and shine them, just to see their gold-ring irises grow large in the light.

No doubt they were a mated pair, one with a slightly deeper hoot than the other, but both rhythmically hoot-hoo-hooting as if catching up after a week's separation.

How to interpret these two icons of the night, calling to each other at veritable midnight? Eerily foreboding? Love birds hung over from Valentine's day?

Assurance. And that sense of being presided over.

I've heard these owls--or owls with the same pattern of hooting that I'd roll the dice and call a great horned owl--here before, seemingly yearly, stretching back for I'd guess about four years. I'm also not sure about an owl's lifespan, but either way, hearing them again is good sign: either hunting is good enough to produce long life or it's good enough to produce offspring.

But why do I care? Aside from the novelty of a winged predator out my window, the calls of these owls connote something much deeper. Hearing them gently hooting to each other tells me that some network of sustenance that I don't see persists on planet earth, and that, it seems to me, is good for all of us.

I'm reminded of the rabbit problem that developed last spring in the neighborhood. Our beans got stripped, denuded to bare stalk by a brood of young Peter Cottontails. I killed one with a pellet gun and swore I wouldn't do it again, then proceeded to knock off two more. Still, no doubt there's a decent business to be done in rabbits around town for those on the upper rungs of the food chain, but I haven't helped things any. Next year, I'm determined to sacrifice a few beans.

If it means I get a chorus of hoots next midwinter, it'll be worth it.