Long Pauses

Tag: Author: Chittister

  • God Save the Queen

    A friend just sent me this link from the National Catholic Reporter. Joan Chittister, like so many of us, watched Condoleezza Rice’s testimony with great interest, hoping to learn more about our government’s pre-9/11 knowledge of al-Qaeda. Instead, she was stunned by “the amount of self-congratulation spent on the fact of the testimony itself.” Chittister has made of the hearings an opportunity to reflect on the value of a monarchy in the 21st century, and I love her for it:

    As Americans, we are inclined to be a bit insular. Probably because we live on one of the largest islands in the world. Bounded on the east and the west by oceans and on the north and south by nations far smaller than we, the geography may have affected the boundaries of our minds, as well. We see ourselves as the center of the globe, the biggest, the best, the latest, the smartest, the most advanced, the most powerful, the most right, the paragon of all paragons in all things.

    We forget that unlike cell phones in Europe, which will work anywhere on the globe, ours don’t work outside the United States. We fail to understand that our videos can’t play too many places but on U.S. soil. We don’t even advert to the situation facing other coalition troops in Iraq. “I’ve been in the United States for six weeks,” one Brit told me, “and I have not heard a word on U.S. TV about the British soldiers in Iraq though our boys are being killed there, too, and news about U.S. engagement plays on European television daily.”

    We are a world unto ourselves. We forget, in other words, that rather than purporting to lead the human race in all things good, it may be time to join it. And government accountability may be as good a place as any to start. Most of all, at least in the Condoleezza Rice event, perhaps we have forgotten our P’s and Q’s. Or rather, their P’s and Q’s. “PQ’s” is British shorthand for “Parliamentary Questions.” In England, the Prime Minister himself goes to the House of Commons every Wednesday at noon to answer questions from members of parliament about any facet of government policy.

    More than that, the Leader of the Opposition can question or rebut the Prime Minister’s answers on the spot. No talk of “separation of powers,” no refuge-taking behind the veil of “presidential privilege.”

    Whenever I watch footage of those Wednesday afternoon shouting matches, I imagine an American president in the prime minister’s shoes. To be precise, I imagine George W. Bush in the prime minister’s shoes, but I’m all for bi-partisan bitch-slapping. The impeachment hearings certainly would have been more interesting (and perhaps seeing educated adults arguing breathlessly about the meaning of “is” would have helped reveal how absurd it all was). I disagree with many of Tony Blair’s policy decisions, but I can’t fault his intelligence or his articulateness. He handles his accusers with great aplomb and with nary a stutter or mispronunciation. And the political discourse at large benefits for it. Dubya has given fewer press conferences than any modern president, and I think we all know why. I wonder if any ideas have “popped” into his head since Tuesday night. (By the way, don’t you love the way he phrased that line, ascribing the action verb to the idea rather than to himself, as if it were his job to merely stand there waiting for inspiration? Apparently thinking is just too much work.)

  • Dreaming of a 28 Hour Day

    I hadn’t planned to take a four day break from blogging, but life — as it’s wont to do — keeps getting in the way. And by “life” I mostly mean Sobig viruses, network flubs, and frustrated faculty, all of which have conspired this week to make my day job unusually exhausting. Well, there’s that and the freelance writing projects, reading assignments, and Jack, the four-week old kitten we’re fostering, whose cuteness doesn’t quite make up for his refusal to be weaned or his tendency to pee on walls, clothes, carpets, towels, blankets, couches, and people.

    Universities Left Behind

    The Times published two interesting pieces yesterday. In the first, “Bush ‘Compassion’ Agenda: A Liability in ’04?” Elisabeth Bumiller argues that Bush’s broken promises might just catch up with him. The pattern should be familiar by now: Bush stands before a supportive crowd, drapes himself in the simple symbols of patriotism and Christian charity, then stumps for legislation that, if enacted, would demonstrate his “compassion.” But, of course, he never gets around to the actual politicking necessary to see that legislation through Congress. Instead, we’re left with frustrated people like Rev. Jim Wallis, leader of Call to Renewal and a former Bush supporter.

    Mr. Wallis said Mr. Bush had told him as president-elect that “I don’t understand how poor people think,” and appealed to him for help by calling himself “a white Republican guy who doesn’t get it, but I’d like to.” Now, Mr. Wallis said, “his policy has not come even close to matching his words.”

    Add to that such highly-touted planks as AIDS funding, faith-based initiatives, child tax credits, and his No Child Left Behind act, and you get a whole mess of sound and fury but nothing much of significance. Well, that’s not entirely true. You also get great sound bites and photo-ops.

    Only tangentially related is “Universities in Decline” from the Times editors. It’s a simple, four-paragraph statement of a disturbing fact: “Public colleges and universities, which grant more than three-quarters of this country’s degrees, have been steadily undermined by state budget cuts and a mood of legislative indifference.” No kidding. Last summer, thousands of my colleagues and I were deemed “non-essential” employees and given a week off when the Tennessee legislature was unable to balance its budget. (Unable, even, after reallocating its tobacco settlement money.) During my five years in Knoxville, three tuition hikes have placed a greater and greater burden on students, who are receiving fewer and fewer services in return. It’s sad.

    And only tangentially related to that is this bit from the latest issue of Harper’s. A co-worker transcribed and forwarded this to me, and I’m now very curious to read the whole piece, “What’s Wrong with Public Education”:

    Public education is not intended to help the individual but to create a populace that is easy to control, says John Taylor Gatto, the author of four books on education and a former New York State and New York City teacher of the year. The real purpose of mandatory public education, he says, is to train young people to be reflexively obedient to authority and to fill social roles that benefit government and commerce. “It is in the interest of complex management, economic or political, to dumb people down, to demoralize them, to divide them from one another, and to discard them if they don’t conform,” he writes.

    The problem is not that public education is failing to reach its goals, but that it is succeeding in producing a culture of childishness and consumption, he says. “If we wanted to, we could easily and inexpensively jettison the old, stupid structures and help kids ‘take’ an education rather than merely ‘receive’ a schooling,” he writes.

    Perhaps if President Bush had, at some point, learned to “take” his education he would better understand the consequences of his actions (including his frustrating refusals to act).

    And Some Final Thoughts

    From June Chittister’s The Rule of St. Benedict: Insight for the Ages:

    A Zen story tells of two monks walking down a muddy, rain-logged road on the way back to their monastery after a morning of begging who saw a beautiful young girl standing beside a large deep puddle unable to get across without ruining her clothes. The first monk, seeing the situation, offered to carry the girl to the other side, though monks had nothing whatsoever to do with women. The second monk was astonished by the act but said nothing about it for hours. Finally, at the end of the day, he said to his companion, “I want to talk to you about that girl.” And the first monk said, “Dear brother, are you still carrying that girl. I put her down hours ago.”

    The things we ruminate on, the things we insist on carrying in our minds and heart, the things we refuse to put down, the Rule warns us, are really the things that poison us and erode our souls. We dull our senses with television and wonder why we cannot see the beauty that is around us. We hold on to things outside of us instead of concentrating on what is within that keeps us noisy and agitated. We run from experience to experience like children in a candy store and wonder how serenity has eluded us. It is walking through life with a relaxed grasp and a focused eye that gets us to where we’re going. Dwelling on unessentials and, worse, filling the minds of others with them distracts from the great theme of our lives. We must learn to distinguish between what is real and what is not.

  • A Dangerous Admission

    “You are a living mockery of your own ideals: either that, or your ideals are too low.”
    — Charles Ludlam, The Theater of the Ridiculous

    I’m slowly waking to the realization that I’m a socialist. Talk about a word that carries some impressive baggage. Tony Kushner has said in a number of interviews that he has found the label “gay playwright” to be less confrontational for most Americans than “socialist playwright.” In America today, alternative sexualities are less transgressive, less unthinkable than alternative economics. How odd.

    I say I’m a “socialist” fully aware of the problems, both practical and theoretical, inherent in the term. Not to mention the problems of the term itself: In our murky, ideologically informed, sound-bite political discourse, socialism is Communism is Stalinism is (someone explain this last one to me) liberalism. So, with apologies to any political scientists who might be reading (doubtful), here is what I mean when I say that I’m a socialist (in 90 words or less):

    • Although many of his specific predictions have yet to materialize (and likely won’t), Marx was absolutely correct when he demanded that our current situation always be understood in hard historical and economic terms.
    • Capitalism is, by necessity and by design, exploitive. (I say that with the realization that market competition has resulted in obvious and radical societal benefits as well.)
    • The championing of individualism over collective action and social justice is (in a word that I use with some trepidation) anti-Christian.

    An example. Today Nike announced that the shoemaker will be paying LeBron James — the teen phenom who has yet to play a single basketball game in either college or the NBA — $90 million over the next seven years. We’ve become deadened to figures like this, learning to expect that top athletes are entitled to top salaries. It’s capitalism at its finest. James is, after all, only exploiting an existing, highly competitive market. That he is able to do so is, in a very real and very sad sense, the American Dream. But read coverage of the story and you’ll stumble upon passages like this:

    The “marquee” basketball category — hoops shoes that sell for more than $100 at retail — is home to perhaps the sexiest battle in all of footwear. It brings massive margins, approaching 50 percent, as these cheaply made shoes fetch prices up to $140. (Nike tried to get $200 for a recent Air Jordan model, but kids balked at forking out that much.) Nike has traditionally owned this category, due in large part to the phenomenal sales of Air Jordans, but with MJ retiring this year there seems to be a chink in the armor.

    So competitors have lined up young guns. Reebok has Allen Iverson; Adidas has Tracy McGrady (and, until last year, Kobe). And Nike has tried to turn Toronto Raptors guard Vince Carter into its new Michael Jordan. Carter at first seemed the real deal, but he’s lost luster over the years as he has been felled by numerous injuries, and it doesn’t help that he plays up in Canada. Right now, Iverson, McGrady, and Jordan are the only guys who really move product, and Jordan’s on the way out. In short, Nike’s desperately searching for a new Michael.

    Is LeBron James the one? That’s up to the market, but Nike clearly thinks that LeBron is its cup of tea. Marquee shoes are aimed at black, inner-city kids who are willing to spend huge amounts of money every time the new, hot shoe hits shelves. An Adidas exec once told me that “the day after payday” is the biggest sales day in this category (the way he said it, you could tell that exploitation was not really an issue for him). To ring these kids’ consumer bells, endorsers need to be just a little bit flashy and a little bit dangerous. Iverson fits the bill, with his tats and his slightly sketchy past; Kobe does not, with his squeaky clean demeanor (he speaks fluent Italian, for goodness’ sake). McGrady’s athletic, street-ball moves on the court do the trick; Shaq’s oafish approach to the game, though perhaps the most dominant in the NBA, doesn’t sell shoes. What about LeBron? Already put under investigation for receiving “throwback jerseys” (stylish, vintage team wear) and a Hummer SUV while still an amateur, he has the controversy angle sewn up, and anyone who’s seen him dunk knows he’s got all the moves.

    There’s so much to marvel at here — that a single product will routinely return a 50% margin (at whose expense and to whose benefit?); that having a “slightly sketchy past” is now an asset to a company spokesperson (what cultural and economic forces are responsible for this change?); that executives deliberately target already impoverished “demographics” (how are profit motives complicit in the maintenance of that poverty?); and, most damning of all, that we’ve come to accept this as not only the “best we can do” but as the only system imaginable (even waging wars so that we might impose the “freedoms” of capitalism on other cultures).

    The deep, deep cynicism that marks my generation is, I think, the inevitable by-product of this distorted value system. Here’s a haunting snippet from an interview with Susan Sontag. Leading into this paragraph, she had been talking about the value of art, whose job, she feels, is “keeping alive people’s capacity for feeling, feeling in a responsible rather than a facile way.” Sound familiar? It reminds me of a certain poem: “The poets must give us / imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar / imagination of disaster.” Anyway, here’s the snippet:

    After all, if advertising works, and it does, then so does art, and in the same way. These images and stories influence us; they create legitimacy and credibility. They make things which used to be central marginal, difficult to defend. I’d go back to an earlier point I was making: That though many people I know actually are capable of acting on principle, most of them could not defend what they’re doing as acting on principle. They no longer have a language of ethical action. It’s collapsed, it’s dropped away. Whereas new forms of cynicism and cruelty, of indifference to violence, have become central in the culture. And that’s a change. I think that’s a big change.

    “They no longer have a language of ethical action.” That line has lingered with me for more than a month now. I think of it whenever I hear good people (good Christians, in particular) talking about money or taxes or politics, in general. And good Christians talk about these things a lot, often in Wall Street’s terms. Is it any wonder that a growing number of us are feeling increasingly alienated from a church that is, by most measures, indistinguishable from the culture in which it exists and from which it adopts so many of its values? As I told my parents last week, the question that plagues me is: How much of my worldview is shaped by Christ’s radical theology, and how much of it is simply a reflection and reinforcement of middle class America’s chief values — the worship of comfort, conspicuous consumption, and prosperity? Imagine for a moment what it might look like if America and its churches “stood united” behind something that matters instead of something like this.

    Along those lines, I’ve recently begun studying the Rule of the Order of Saint Benedict — this rich, 1,500 year old tradition that is so remarkably and beautifully counter to our culture. Elevating selfless community over individualism, sacrifice over comfort, contemplation over distraction, the Rule captures something of the grace of the Sermon on the Mount, reminding us that a “language of ethical action” certainly exists and must be reclaimed. My friend Karen describes it like this:

    I know what your saying about the Benedictines. My first book was The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris, which was like a breath of fresh air after the hype of evangelicalism. For once, my attraction to learning about them didn’t seem to be a reactionary swing…you know, I was charismatic and I hated it so now I’m Anglican, or vice-versa. And it wasn’t nostalgic because one recognizes the very human side in the rule – the warnings against authoritarianism and laziness and such. Of course, it is also inspired by Scripture so it was another way of breaking crusts off of verses I had been overexposed to. It was just something that seemed to land home for me and still does.

    I’m working my way through Joan Chittister’s The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages and can’t recommend it highly enough.