Mondays with Marilynne: One Kind of Vision

Last month in Mondays with Marilynne, we discussed novelist Marilynne Robinson's critical success, her cultural impact, and some of the ways her faith shapes her perspectives on the public life of our nation. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that Robinson's political vision is the most important aspect of her work. After all, there are other figures in contemporary Christianity saying, substantively, the same things as Robinson about social and economic issues, but there are few who are able to capture in such moving prose the beauty of a spiritual life.

Robinson's spirituality, like her politics, centers on the theology concept of imago Dei, the image of God. The centrality of this concept is evident from the first pages of her best known work, Gilead, in which the narrator John Ames, an aging Congregational minister, confesses:

“I can’t really tell what’s beautiful anymore. I passed two young fellows on the street the other day. I know who they are, they work at the garage. They’re not churchgoing, either one of them, just decent rascally young fellows who have to be joking all the time, and there they were, propped against the garage wall in the sunshine, lighting up their cigarettes. They’re always so black with grease and so strong with gasoline I don’t know why they don’t catch fire themselves. They were passing remarks back and forth the way they do and laughing that wicked way they have. And it seemed beautiful to me. It is an amazing thing to watch people laugh, the way it sort of takes them over. Sometimes they really do struggle with it. I see that in church often enough. So I wonder what it is and where it comes from, and I wonder what it expends out of your system, so that you have to do it till you’re done, like crying in a way, I suppose, except that laughter is much more easily spent. “When they saw me coming, of course the joking stopped, but I could see they were still laughing to themselves, thinking what the old preacher almost heard them say" (5).

Here we see Ames' characteristically Protestant way of being grandiose and understated at once. What Ames hears in the laughter or crying of the people around him is the laughter or crying of God's very Self. Although he'll occasionally launch into reflections on Calvin or Feuerbach, Ames is, on the whole, far more of pastor than a theologian, far more present to the people and things surrounding him than to anything he may have studied in seminary.

Ames, like Robinson herself, is alive to the mystery of divinity in humanity, a mystery which must be carefully taught and zealously guarded lest it go unnoticed: "You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but love and loyalty and mutual incomprehension" (7). For Ames, this knowing in unknowing comes most clearly in the moments a human life begins or ends, moments he has been observing for a lifetime in his vocation as minister. He perceives this existential awareness as a gift of divine grace he received most clearly at the birth of his daughter, who died in infancy decades before the start of the novel:

 "Memory can make a thing seem to have been more than it was. But I know she did look right into my eyes. That is something. And I’m glad I knew it at the time, because now, in my present situation, now that I am about to leave this world, I realize there is nothing more astonishing than a human face … It has something to do with incarnation. You feel your obligation to a child when you have seen it and held it. Any human face is a claim on you, because you can’t help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it. I consider that to be one kind of vision, as mystical as any" (66).

The full beauty of Robinson's spirituality here is that, even if few of us will ever be able to write like Robinson, the experience to which she points is accessible to all of us--to anyone willing to pay attention to his or her neighbors, friends, family, anybody we meet. Here, admittedly, Robinson might owe as much to Whitman as to Whitefield, but the point remains. The simple attentiveness commended in these passages from Gilead gives rise to Christian love, and "Love is holy," Ames points out in perfectly Calvinistic fashion, "because it is like grace--the worthiness of its object is never really what matters." Rather, it is always something else. When we think of someone we love, we may be able to offer a list of characteristics in that person which we admire, but none of them constitute the reason we love the person. If we tried to name that mystery, I suspect the only language we'd have is the sort of religious vocabulary Robinson reclaims from the spewers of cliches: words like grace, love, incarnation--and yes, the image of God.

Hearing God's Voice

God speaks to us far more than we realize.

How can I make this assertion when no matter where we look we don’t ‘see’ or ‘hear’ God anywhere? Clearly I have to answer this question before I can even begin to explain how we can hear God. Philosophy has a name for this problem. It is known as the problem of Divine Hiddenness and it has certainly kept many people awake at night. 

I think God wanted it to be a ‘problem’. He honestly wants it to be hard to see him, at least initially. Philosophy’s answer goes something like this: ‘If humans could see God they would always do the right thing. However, they would do the right thing for the wrong reason which is out of fear of punishment. Therefore, humans under this view must freely choose to do what is right and this requires God not be entirely obvious to our senses.’ 

This is not a bad answer. Indeed it gets very close to the heart of the matter. Yet, there is an even deeper truth. The truth that only the sufferers and mystical seekers dare to know. God is not hidden. Rather he screams his presence in silence, and glows brightly in physical shadows. He resides in the depths of darkness and lives at the heights of light. 

The Psalmist practically laments his inability to escape God’s presence in Psalms 139. This Psalmist (who may have been David) realized something which few have internalized deep down beyond intellectual assent. God really is everywhere, and everything expresses his glory and presence. Humanity’s ‘original sin’ was losing the ability to see and hear him in everything. God speaks through his creation, but many times in ways we either ignore or refuse to accept. The path of prayer could be said to be the path of relearning this truth.
 

Over the centuries, Christians and Jews have found solace
in the story of the prophet Elijah, who met God not in the
wind, the earthquake, or the fire, but in a "still, small voice."

This relearning may not always be easy and can even require one to “pick up their cross” and follow Jesus’ example of accepting suffering. So how do we hear God’s voice? Well there are plenty of examples in the Bible that show God loudly announcing his presence. The God of the Old Testament is definitely into flare and pyrotechnics! Bushes that don’t burn, axes that float, cities that are destroyed, loud swirling whirl winds! Yet, in our own lives very few of us can claim to have experienced such magnificent spectacles. Indeed, when we read the Bible, we find ourselves begging God to give something to prove he is out there. And it seems that for the mass majority of us, God is nowhere to be found. 

The New Testament has less of the flare but still holds enough miracles to keep our attention. Jesus is healing people left and right. Why do we see so few of those? The answer is twofold. We are too closed off to see them and we forgot who to imitate. The popular and perceptive New Testament scholar N.T. Wright gives us an answer to the first. He explains in his book Surprised by Scripture that our understanding of miracles has been influenced by a pagan understanding of God created by the philosopher Epicurus. 

Epicurus claimed that no gods exist and that even if there are some they are certainly far removed from human experiences. Wright believes that this corrupted all of modern philosophy. He also asserts that it has confused us on the nature of miracles. Currently many people believe miracles are moments of radical insertions of God’s power. In this view God does not interact with the world until he wants a miracle. Immediately after the miracle, he is gone again. This, Wright believes, misses the Christian understanding of what a miracle is. Miracles are God’s working in the world and helping to shape this world. It is not something which simply happens randomly and then is gone. In a sense God is always working in the world so miracles are occurring all the time! 

This is a truth which many mystics have come to learn. God created this world, and he isn’t going to leave it alone. Richard Rohr, a modern Catholic mystic, sums up this point beautifully when he states that there is no sacred versus profane. Rather, one could say that there is only realization and ignorance. The Christian process of becoming holy, sometimes known as sanctification, isn’t about becoming better at doing the right things. It is about realizing the amazing and wonderful truth that God is always loving and welcoming. Once we start on this path of becoming more and more aware of God’s constant presence in the world and all loving nature, we automatically come to have deeper and deeper trust and faith in his will and find ourselves doing the right thing even in spite of themselves. 

So what does all of this have to do with hearing God? Once you realize these truths, the next step is to stop asking God to speak and start listening. One of the best ways to do this is to go into solitude. Quiet the mind which is constantly forgetting God’s goodness anyway. Enter into a deep peace. 

After this point I can’t say how God will speak to you. The Bible is ripe with different ways God gives his message. But before you can hear God over your own egotistical thoughts follow the Bibles advice in the Psalms. “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10) and enter into “the Peace which surpasses all understanding.” (Philippians 4:7). 

In this state of remembrance and peace you will be more likely to actually hear what it is that God has been saying to you. You might hear the advice God has been trying to get through to you all along. Then you too will know.

God speaks to us far more than we ever realize.

On Technology, Culture, and Faith: The Hollywood Fix

We exited the theater, the light painfully pushing past our squinted eyelids while the rush of reentering reality gives us pause.

We reflect on the experience, laughing at its jokes, marveling at its intricacies, taking a poker to its shortcomings so we know we are still the dominant one.

We pull away, awash in conversation; I, however, silent.

My surroundings full of activity and engagement, I feel an inexplicable solitude. I feel lack.

I self-check, examining the paths of thought and tide of emotions I've encountered recently to gather evidence to the way I feel.

Nothing. Logic stat-

I respond to a question. Life around me continues.

Logic states I start at my last exposure and work backwards, searching for a source.

Answer. Question. Conversation around me. Car ride. Leaving theater. Movie.

Movie.

I wish I was that hero, the very likeness of goodness, charging headfirst into the hordes of evil and what is sure to be my doom.

I wish I was that man, the man who ran barefoot through hell and swam through high water for the woman he loves.

I wish I were able to answer the beckoning of distant lands and strange experiences, returning one day a mystery and legend.

I wish it were me in that movie. Experiencing those things.

I briefly examine my life, fitting it into scripts, plot, lighting cues, and camera angles, and I'm struck at its unavoidable boringness.

I still feel lack, the solitude of an empty heart. Ah well, those things only happen in movies.

I merge into the conversation around me like the car we share onto the interstate home. We don't speak of it, but we all feel the same.

The conversation turns to the next promising blockbuster, and our blood pressure spikes like that of an addict when he sees his drug of choice.

Awash in conversation, I forget my lack, though I only manage to cover it's emptiness with rotting boards destined to break again.

We reflect on the experience, laughing at its jokes, marveling at its intricacies, taking a poker to its shortcomings so we know we are still the dominant one.
                                    --------------------

I'm going to be straight with you. Try as I might (and believe me, I did), I cannot write anything to convince you to drop Netflix, sell your TV, or stop watching movies so much. The primary reason being that there's nothing inherently wrong with any of those things, the second reason being I am not that kind of writer. 

I am not able to write about just anything. My passions and experiences are the flesh and bones of my scribbles, opinions may as well be water in my scribbling engine. All that said, I can only tell you of my experiences.

As I'm sure you may have guessed, the whatever-that-is in the italics above is a reflection of myself. I was the guy who left movies wishing he were the protagonist. I found myself daydreaming about the other worlds presented in television shows, envisioning how tales of my adventures would weave into its history.

I actually grew up without a television. We watched DVD's from blockbuster or the library on our computer, but we never had any kind of satellite or cable service. I always found myself being jealous of the kids who did, those able to sit in front of that screen watching the coolest stuff for hours on end.

When I got to college and discovered Neflix, it was like a horse had just stumbled into a sugar factory. I dove, and I dove hard. BBC's Sherlock lasted all of a few days, if that tells you anything. Show after show, movie after movie, I was hooked deep. 

I started wondering if this was healthy, but quickly realized everyone around me had normalized this obsession, calling it "binge-watching" (which is odd since any other action with "binge" before it is considered wildly unhealthy). I justified my actions by claiming that I loved stories. Which, to an extent, is true. But it was also an excuse.

A few months passed before I started feeling strange. Sure, I had gone through a rough breakup, classes were tougher than ever, and I suddenly had to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up (graduation) - but it was more than that. Deep down I was really, really unhappy with my life.

I was doing two things: comparing my life to what I was seeing on the screen and medicating the resulting pain by watching the screen more. I was forfeiting relationships, school work, and social activities because I didn't want to make the hard decision to deal with my pain and choose interaction over isolation. Looking back now, I see that I honestly wasn't watching TV any more than your average family, and that really scares me.

During that time I only saw my life for what it wasn't. It wasn't some grand adventure across new lands. It wasn't some bizarrely intricate dramatic-yet-cheesy plan to get some girl. It wasn't heroic even in the least. Compared to what I was seeing, I was incredibly boring.

It took some time, but this has passed for me (praise Jesus). Why did you read all that? Well, hopefully we can talk about it a little and perhaps you might gain some insight into your practices and lifestyle involving the tele.

Hollywood is a business, guys, and like any business its goal is to make money. You're the user group, you're the one it needs to keep selling product to, and it does that by hooking you so you will keep coming back. 

Hollywood's entire business platform is this simple statement: reality is boring. If that weren't true, any market for video entertainment would collapse instantly. Did you know that even the truest movies are at least 90% embellishment? Think about it - if you were watching those events play out exactly how they probably did, would you have paid money to see it? Of course not, it would mostly be incredibly boring!

We're not being sold movies and TV shows. We're being sold experiences. Or, more accurately, experiences we won't have because we think we can't. Are traveling to Iceland and seeing a few shots of it in a movie even slightly comparable? Then why do we sit around on couches wondering what far-off lands look like when we catch glimpses of them on screens?

Is pursuing and fighting for someones affection the same as watching a mushy-yet-clever movie? Is the satisfaction of getting involved in something bigger than yourself equivalent to seeing someone else do it on TV?

I realize you're reading this and thinking, "That's nice and probably true, but I'm fine. I'm not addicted or anything, watching stuff isn't bad." Like I said earlier, I can't write anything to convince you otherwise. I see movies and TV like I see alcohol - only damaging when you use it to be. What I'm starting to think, though, is that our culture has accepted as normal what is actually damaging.

I see a lot of families spending hours watching television, yet starving for minutes of interaction and daily investment in each other's lives. I see (and have been a part of) couples who slowly start to spend most of their time together watching movies and television rather than experiencing new things, making memories, or even getting to know each other better. I see a deep relationship famine in our culture, and a very cost-effective and doable solution is to drop the TV and movies.

I will leave you with this. Go out and experience stuff. Don't let TV or movies be a drug-like adventure fix for you the way it was for me. Yes, "adventure is out there," but you can't have experiences you don't choose to have. Choose relationships. Choose interaction. Choose the unknown, the unsafe. It doesn't have to be huge. Start with small, unexpected decisions. It'll grow from there.

Can you live without TV or movies? I really think so. Actually, I think you'll experience an unexpected amount of life and fulfillment without them.

"Take wrong turns. Talk to strangers. Open unmarked doors. And if you see a group of people in a field, go find out what they're doing. Do things without always knowing how they'll turn out... There are so many adventures that you miss because you are waiting to think of a plan. To find them, look for tiny interesting choices. And remember that you are always making up the future as you go" - XKCD