Camels and Needles

My wife and I have been trying to be more generous in the last few years. It’s hard to criticize that, especially since our generousity has at times required sacrifice. We’ve tried to be more free towards others with our financial resources, our time, our energy...and I can’t deny that it feels good.

But generosity has a dark side.

The dark side of it is based on a lie, and that lie is that anything belongs to me to begin with.

Paying attention to Food

How often do we pay attention to what is in our mouths as we're eating it?

How often do we pay attention to where our food came from? (I don't mean which store, I mean where it actually came from - which field or barn, how far did it travel, what conditions was it grown in)

A couple weeks ago I was in Florida and experienced a moment of confusion. I was in a large grocery store and noticed that orange juice was exactly the same price there as it was at home in London, Ontario. At first it seemed wrong that I should pay such a high price for a local product, but then I started to wonder if the local price was more reasonable, and my home price was being somehow subsidized....was I not paying for the thousands of miles of transportation (not mention the environmental costs) of having Florida orange juice in wintery London?

Truth must shape us

I was flipping radio stations the other day and heard this from a contemporary American philosopher/poet:

"They say what don’t kill me, can make me stronger 
 So two drinks a night should help me live longer"
 (Ludacris, "Rest of My Life")

Ludacris, is of course referring to a statement by the German philosopher/poet Freidrich Nietzsche, who did say: 

"That which does not kill us, makes us stronger".

I snickered a little. Leave it to a popular musician to completely miss the point and make it into a song lyric. Probably thinks he's a real clever lyricist for slipping a line like this in.

Lately I've been trying to be less critical in everyday life. Not by just restricting my behavior, but by finding myself in the behaviors I'm quick to criticize. 

The truth is that I interact with a lot of truth and wisdom in a similar way to Ludacris.

I think about the way many of us approach religious texts like the Bible. Ludacris takes a passage from Nietzsche and misapplies it, in this case making it a universal truth, without hesitation that logic might dictate some limits to the ways in which an idea is true. It is obviously not true that anything that doesn't kill us automatically makes us stronger. Chemotherapy is tailored to kill certain cells but not all cells....it may cause a cancer to remit, and even temporarily stall death, but it doesn't "make us stronger". 

Nietzsche was referring to adverse life circumstances, not providing a prescription to take small doses of poison as a method of building physical health. (Interestingly, it seems small daily consumption of alcohol may have some scientific support for having health benefits, but I'm pretty sure this isn't what Ludacris is referring to).

In a conversation the other day someone quoted me Psalms 37:4 "Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart". She used it to justify her belief that God should give her whatever she wanted. I gently suggested that maybe she was too broadly applying an isolated text, and that it was both clear and good that we don't get whatever we want in life. I've desired some rather terrible things after being cut-off by another vehicle in traffic, or after my beloved Green Bay Packers have take a bad call from a referee. When I simmer down I realize the desires of my heart often involve things that in retrospect aren't good for me, and I'm glad that God so often saves me from my self and my desires.

But the reality is that we all do this on a regular basis. Like Ludacris with Nietzsche, and my friend with this scripture, we approach wisdom (philosophical, Biblical or otherwise) like a product to be consumed, and consumed in a way that satisfies us. It is our posture as consumers of truth that leads us to ignore the complexity of a truth and apply it ways that render it untrue.

The truth is, Ludacris, if you're drinking two drinks a night, it probably is to avoid some real difficulty in your life, and avoidance doesn't make us stronger, it makes us far weaker.

The truth is, friend who quoted me scripture, that if you read this Psalm in light of the other Psalms and the rest of the Bible, that God is deeply concerned with the desires of our hearts because they are so often destructive and to us and to others. The Bible is filled with a story in which humanity's desire to be its own gods, is rescued and helped to reshape its hearts desires to what is true, and good, and beautiful.

Whenever we approach truth and wisdom from the position of a consumer, we run the risk of shaping it into something that satisfies us or works for us. But ultimately it should be the other way around. Truth should shape us. It should confront us, challenge us, not give us what we want, but call into question the very legitimacy of our desires.

Delighting in the Shame of Others

Here’s a pretty bizarre story that comes right after the story of the flood. It has a despicable place in history as a long held justification for slavery. Pseudo-scholars took this passage as a prescription for history, saying that Africans were descendants of Ham, and that the enslavement of the black races was merely a fulfillment of what Genesis had predicted.

Yikes. I don’t think I need to go into the details debunking this. But rethinking this passage has value for us today….a lesson often missed in the past.

What's with the Blog Title?

So my imaginary audience is asking: "What's with the title, 'one lost sock' ?"

Putting away clean clothes a while ago (thanks luv), I found myself thinking about lost socks. We've all wondered where they go...their seeming disappearance is one of those mysteries of modern life.

But for a moment I found myself thinking of how I feel like the one sock, missing it's other half.

I love my wife. We're partners in many things. We work well together (most of the time) and I experience deep gratitude for the ways in which she is strong when and where I am weak, and how well she compliments me in life. I've even become aware of how other people relate to us a couple, as something more than the sum of our parts.

But I've also learned that it is dangerous and unfair to expect her to "complete" me as a human being. Putting her in a position that demands she, as another broken human being, should meet my deepest spiritual and emotional yearnings is highly problematic for both of us.

To recognize that there are limits to my intimacy with her, limits to how she can help my brokenness, and limits to what I can do for her, is both a disheartening and liberating place to arrive at. She is my helper in life, and I am hers. We are not each others' saviors, and we do not ultimately complete each other. We journey together to find our ultimate completeness in the Divine.

She is not my "missing sock". It turns out she is also a lost sock, and we're in this laundry basket together. We all are. (some of my friends would say I'm missing more than a sock, read other entries and judge for yourself)

Yes I know, it's kind of a bizarre metaphor, and probably not the best one (so cheesy in fact that I'll have to make sure any serious writers don't see this). But I make no claims at literary, philosophical, or theological brilliance. It just kind of resonated with me - the sock thing that is. I'm also aware of its limits as a metaphor, so I probably won't write about it again, although that sense of being "lost" is probably a theme that will creep up.

At times I feel the weight of existential loneliness. I voluntarily enter into the suffering of other people on a daily basis, and suffering very often makes us feel alone. Many days, I do not sense God in the midst of this loneliness. I've learned not to give up when my human faculties fail to perceive the reality of God. And although I feel that profound angst when my thoughts and feelings fail, I am learning to stop and look, and listen, and reflect. I am learning that the other sock may not be so far away, and that there are likely reflections hidden in plain sight, if only I learn to perceive them.

So, essentially, I'm one lost sock learning to see, to hear, to perceive, to experience God in the ordinary. I don't expect to be reunited with the other sock any time soon. It is enough for me to find reflections of its presence in the daily, ordinary, mundane things of life. My separation from the other sock is a teacher. In being a lost sock, I'm learning to recognize things about God, things I might not have learned if I weren't struggling to find it. 

My blog is a sort of virtual laundry hamper. (not toilet, so don't dump on me) Other lost socks are welcome, especially if you're looking. Hopefully the discussion will help us all find God a little more clearly in the ordinary things of life.

Failed Political Discourse

I'm getting tired of hearing that the Republicans lost the election because they failed to appreciate the changing demographics of America. Strategists keep spouting the opinion that the Republican party must re-tailor its message to appeal more broadly, and judging by their attempt to use Sen. Rubio as their poster-boy last night, this is the direction they're headed.

But this is all at the heart of what has gone wrong with political discourse in the US and Canada.

It hinges on the assumption that parties should design a platform that will strategically appeal to the self-interest of enough individuals, so that the party will be successful in accumulating power to pursue it's own self-interests. We have lost an understanding that our politics must chiefly be about the common good.