Archive for May, 2011

Origin story.

Infected by various glimpses and whispers around the Internet, I was compelled today to sit through the nearly two-hour finale of Smallville. I gave up on this teen-dramafied retooling of the Superman origin story in the early part of its fourth season, while I was still in college. In the years since, I was always startled to discover that it was still going (limping)—but I never cared enough to tune back in. The show had changed (weakened), or perhaps it was just me who had changed (matured…I think).

But a tenth-season series finale, with cameos of former cast members and John Williams’ iconic music, was enough to reel me in to see how they capped off an overripe show that had meant so much to me in high school. I won’t say much about the finale—which epitomized both the show’s strengths and its weaknesses—except that it provided an odd sort of closure to the high school me, and shuttled my thoughts back to that old self.

Madeleine L’Engle said that we are comprised of who we were at every age, so that I am still (partially) a little boy and a teenager and a young man. I don’t look back all that fondly on the me of high school years, but there were so many things that happened and ways that I developed during that wet cement stage of my life that it is hard to ignore how significant its contribution was to who I am as a human being.

I fed on a show like Smallville during high school because all of its teenage angst, hunger for romance, depiction of family values and the parent/child relationship—that was my life. It simultaneously resonated with my experience and planted the seeds of desire for something bigger and better. Some of it was just the (embarrassing) reenactment so characteristic of my personality; I wore hard yellow boots and flannel shirts in an attempt to be like Clark Kent. But it went deeper than that. I longed to be powerful and attractive. I longed to be important. I had quite a low opinion of myself, and a burning desire to be liked; I clung to the icon of a likable, Abercrombie-model superman like a life raft. I think I even, in my darkest times, longed to be good. Despite its Dawson’s Creek kitsch and melodrama, Smallville mirrored and shaped who I was and what I was turning into.

All of the bands I thirstily soaked up and movies I adored in high school got absorbed into that wet cement of youth, and for better or worse had a role in sculpting my personality. Now that I’m married, independently living “real life,” and closer to 30 than to 20, I’ve outgrown a lot of those things (thank God) and developed an appetite for new stories and new songs. But just like Clark learned in the Smallville finale (here comes the Hallmark card moral!), I do well to accept and live with the things and people that made me what I am…as I look ahead to embracing the destiny of who I’m to be.

What I’ll miss about Pittsburgh.

The end of our year in Pittsburgh is drawing near. Alison and I moved up here last August for a number of reasons: to have an adventure, to be near family, to get out of Florida, and simply because we like this place. She grew up here, and thus has that hometown bias. But I, over the course of our three-year courtship, had really come to appreciate this wildly underrated city, and was thrilled at making it the scene of our first adventure as a married couple.

Several things had already impressed me during my brief visits here. The history and vibe, the dramatic topography, the abundance of trees, the aesthetics of the buildings and houses and bridges. I had already tasted of the city’s luxuriant offering of fantastic food, experienced its wonderfully moderate (compared to Tampa) weather, and seen many of its breathtaking sights (like the stunning reveal of the city experienced when driving through the Fort Pitt Tunnel).

Since we’ve lived here proper, though, I have fully fallen in love with these elements and so many more. And as excited as I am for the next chapter at graduate school in Los Angeles, I am going to miss Pittsburgh.

I will miss the richly historied architecture, the fine brickwork of homes and the vast number of ornate, stone churches. I will miss the crazy hills and asymmetrical intersections. I will miss the cinematic views all over the city—rows of old houses nesting on hills overlooking one of our “three” rivers, big walls of forest residing in and around an old American city with an infinite supply of character.

I will miss the food—the ridiculously rich breakfasts, the Belgian frites and Canadian poutine and Polish pierogies, the experimental cockscombs and artery-clogging burgers. It was the combination of my wife and this city that so broadened my culinary horizons. Pittsburgh is home to so many unique restaurants, award-winning chefs, local traditions, and cultural variety. And while we never found great, authentic Mexican food, the bounties and quality of what we did discover far outweighed such deficiencies.

I will miss the people. Our blessedly generous and congenial next-door neighbors, who have helped us with car problems, looked after our place in our absence, and given us furniture, directions, advice, and the general gift of neighborliness. I will miss the amazing friends we’ve made through our church here, who have served us and encouraged us in too many ways to recount. And of course I will miss Alison’s family, who have bent over backwards to help us (providing lodging, laundry services, free car rental, innumerable meals, and screenings of the best black-and-white television history has to offer).

I will miss North Sheridan Avenue, Highland Park, Oh Yeahs!, budget dates at Caribou Coffee, life group meetings, Pittsburgh’s gorgeous seasons, the friendliness and neighborhood mentality of the locals, and so much more. I will miss our perfect little house. Pittsburgh has been the nursery for our marriage, and for that reason it will always have a singular claim on my affections. I feel a special sense of ownership of this city, a local’s pride and belonging.

I bid Pittsburgh adieu, taking comfort in the knowledge that we have no shortage of reasons to come back here one day. It will always feel like home.

The inescapable risks of interpretation.

There are many Aesopian morals to glean from the slow-motion train wreck of the days leading up to May 21, 2011—the latest ill-prophesied rapture. But the most italicized one, for me, is that we all take certain risks when we choose to interpret the words of the Bible. That’s pretty relevant, in my opinion, because we all choose to interpret the Bible.

Even if you are of the persuasion that the Bible is a lie or an aggregation of myths and doctored history, you are interpreting its words thus. And your interpretation of the Bible as lie or myth is a risk. For those of us who assign some kind of credence to the words of scripture, we all assume certain risks. Ours may not be as high profile as Harold Camping’s and his disciples, and we may not deal in such extreme interpretive acrobatics and Da Vinci Code calculations, but we are all playing a game of risks.

The risk may be that of embarrassment, either on the small scale of family and friends, or a media-hot one like Camping’s. The risk may be exclusion from specific churches or denominations. Or it may be something vastly more significant, like the destination of our undying soul (assuming we have such a thing). The stakes vary and, interestingly enough, what we believe those stakes are (theologically speaking) hinges on our interpretation of scripture. But the risk remains, even if we don’t assign it much import.

For instance, I’m risking whatever threats of punishment or consequences proclaimed by a number of groups (the Jehovah’s Witnesses, as one example) that are believed to result when one does not subscribe to their unique interpretations of scripture. That’s a risk I’m choosing to take, no matter how lightly or soberly I may do so.

But even within our own “fold,” we all place wagers on our individual interpretations of scripture. Some of these wagers have little actual bearing—doctrines of theory that might be fun to speculate on, but ultimately have no impact on the way I live my life. Others have a considerably heavier burden, influencing the way I think about and interact with God, the way I treat other human beings, the way I spend my money and time and energy. As I noted in my introductory essay on religion, what we believe about God impacts every vein of our lives—and our beliefs are direct applications of how we interpret scripture.

I know many people who believe that there can only be one, true interpretation of scripture, and that if everyone would only just read the Bible and take it at face value we’d all reach the same conclusions on every last doctrine and ethical imperative. It’s a lovely idea—a fast-pass to unity if universally accepted—but one that time and experience have proven repeatedly, throughout history, to be unrealistic. Sit two people down in a room together, have them read the same book of the Bible, and they will come to two different conclusions. The “one true interpretation” notion has the frustrating tendency to get muddied by our acknowledgment (or lack thereof) of context (both textual and historical), our preconceived assumptions and beliefs, our religious background, our worldview, our philosophy, our culture, and our wildly different personalities.

None of this is to say that there’s no such thing as absolute truth. I believe that there is (and, for what it’s worth, I believe that truth is a person rather than a book or a disembodied thing). But even if we all agree that absolute truth exists (and I know we won’t all agree on that), we will still reach different conclusions on the same scriptures. We can discuss those differences, write books about them, reason with each other, back up our interpretations with other scriptures, stage debates, and possibly even reconcile and come to the same conclusion on some matters. But will we arrive at the same interpretation of every last scripture and every last word? I believe not. As hard as we may try to be objective and logical and painstakingly accurate, at the day’s end we will interpret some scriptures differently.

And all I’m saying is, those interpretations carry with them risks. And as we look at Camping’s sad folly, we do well to recognize those risks—and the fact that we all take them. At least, that’s my interpretation.

Religion! Everybody hit the deck!

Regardless of who you are, dear reader, you have beliefs about God—who He is and what He is like. You may believe He doesn’t exist, that he’s nothing more than the product of primitive man’s superstition (or ignorance, or fear, or hatred). You may believe He is a distant, impersonal force. Or maybe a grandfatherly, night-duty security guard. You may believe He is not a He at all, or that He has no real power or bearing over the lives we live or the destiny of our bodies (or souls). Regardless, you do believe something about Him—and that belief shapes the way you live.

Many of my readers believe very much that God is a He (by that I mean a real and personal being). But we all probably differ, to some degree, on who we think God is and what He is like. Most of us would claim that our understanding of God is shaped and informed by what is revealed in the 66 books that comprise the Christian Bible. Many of us would say that there is no other way to know God except through what He has revealed through inspired scripture, that anything outside of that (be it other “sacred” writings, personal experience, or intuition) is unreliable or fatally subjective. Yet even within this camp, of strictly biblically-framed understandings of God, we differ. Our perception of who God is and what He is like may be skewed through a lens of the man Jesus, and verses about God’s relentless love and grace. For some it may be skewed through a lens of God’s wrath and relentless justice, His perfect holiness and total separateness from all things sinful and sullied. Some of us may passionately and actively strive to balance these two “extremes,” attempting to reconcile (or at least accept) the tension. Regardless, we all believe things about God, and those beliefs shape the way we live.

I say all this for two reasons. One, this is a fact that dominates a lot of my thinking these days. My beliefs about who God is, and what He is like, and what’s important to Him, and what He hates, and what He loves—these beliefs shape the way I live. They shape the way I respond to the lagging job market, to the death of Osama bin Laden, to what’s on TV right now, to the environment, to my budget, to my wife. My apathy towards God (as a ‘for instance’) shapes the way I live and respond to these things. So does my abject disbelief in His existence. I bring this subject up because it’s powerfully central to the way we respond to everything…to life.

I also bring it up as an introduction to a series of essays I want to unleash on this blog in the weeks and months to come. I don’t want to hijack this blog with uber-serious, religious essays with every single post, so I will do my best to spread them out. (In other words, don’t worry: I’ll continue to whine and wax about film music, Michael Jackson, technology, and the seemingly endless litany of my weirdnesses.) But I am increasingly convinced that all of life, everyone’s life, is religious. Simply defined, religion is our take on life: who or what we worship, what we devote our time to, what we believe, how we behave, how we treat others, and what is important to us. Christians and non-Christians, theists and atheists, Republicans and Democrats—we all have a religion. And religion, in the way I’m defining it, is not a separate entity from politics or literature or music or education or relationships or ethics or humor or economics. That list of life materiel is what makes up our religion. And I believe it does all of us good to talk (openly and honestly) about our religion in overarching and foundational terms, rather than (always) just the little pieces of the whole.

I want this blog to be a place where I can share some of my current musings about religion and how it affects everything else, and how you and I might differ in our beliefs. I hope this can be a safe place to discuss such things; safe for me to posit some unorthodox ideas (whether your orthodoxy is a form of “primitive” Christianity, atheism, or something else entirely), and safe for you, dear reader, to join in on the discussion…if you feel so inclined. At the very least, I beg your patience as I start to pour out some of the passion (and occasional madness) from my brain about the things that are at the heart of who we are and why we are.

The poison of resignation.

I’ve always hated it when adults—both the fictional and non-fictional in my life—offer some exasperated trope about “teenagers being teenagers.” As if they (or any of us) have no other choice but to suffer the rebellious, obnoxious, distant, and disrespectful behavior expected of metamorphosing children. It’s an “established” cultural fact that teenagers behave this way. They withdraw from their parents, shut their bedroom door for four years, offer only monosyllabic answers, treat their siblings and elders with contempt, and generally become disagreeable know-it-alls.

The trope is earned. The above description pretty well fits me in my teenage years. Clearly something inherent about the way a teenager’s life (and body) changes during those years pushes them in the direction of withdrawal and rebellion. But is it inevitable? Or could it be that culture and parents fulfill their own prophecy of resignation by resigning in the first place?

I use this example to illustrate the generally poisonous attitude of resignation. I find it especially toxic in the arena of parenting and marriage: my weathered forerunners patting me on the proverbial back and telling me that “you’ll never really understand women, son,” or “that first year of marriage will be euphoric but then it all goes downhill from there.” Sometimes the resignation is accompanied by a hearty, knowing laugh, but it’s usually spiked with at least a tinge of bitterness and resentment. “This is the way life is,” they essentially say. “We may not like it, but there’s nothing we can do about it.”

I admire people who choose to stick out their crummy marriage or keep plugging away as parents to unappreciative children. Surely there is some virtue in resigning to endure despite oppressive circumstances. But—speaking as an (admittedly potentially naïve) young buck just striking out—your worldly-wise, exhausted, and cynical advice is…well, awful. It is cynicism and resentment dressed up as wisdom, and it poisons our expectations of what life will be like (if we choose to adopt your view).

Marriage will undoubtedly be challenging, but it doesn’t have to be a nightmare. Children will undoubtedly be frustrating, but my relationship with them doesn’t have to be that of a parole officer and his keep. My career will certainly take dips and even nosedives, but it doesn’t have to be the slave master I resentfully report to 40 hours every week till I’m 65. Your life experience does not have to be my experience, and—with an attitude adjustment—your current experience does not have to be your future experience.

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