The Money's Gone

The money's gone, the money's gone,What we gonna do since the money's gone.
The money's gone, the money's gone,What we gonna do since the money's gone.

The fundamental principal of capitalism (and I'm no economist, so check my work) is, "Wealth accrues to capital."  If one has capital (traditionally real estate, manufacturing goods, stocks and bonds, but lately, believe it or not, "credit"), one can simply sit back and watch wealth come to it.  A capitalist system relies on industrious individuals to work hard to get capital, then to use the wealth that comes to capital to buy more capital, producing more goods, and use that greater wealth (more capital means more wealth comes to it) to produce more capital, etc.  Nothing wrong with this economic system:  in fact, one may argue quite successfully that a capitalistic economic system leads to greater wealth per average person quicker than any other.

The problem with capitalism doesn't appear in the early phases, or even in the mature phases.  The problem appears in the later phase, such as that in which we here in the United States find ourselves:  if left unchecked, the fundamental principal of capitalism will result in fewer and fewer people controlling a larger and larger percentage of the wealth.  You can see how this follows from the basic principal, "wealth accrues to capital," assuming that a person pursues more capital with her or his wealth.  Eventually, without redistributing the wealth, a country will find itself with less than five percent of the populace controlling more than ninety-five percent of the wealth.  In that situation, our situation, states don't have any money, universities don't have any money, a whole lot of people don't have any money, even the federal government doesn't have any money, because all the money is in the hands of that five percent.

I'm not mentioning this to be critical of capitalism, though as a Christian I have to be at least a little critical of an economic system that values things over people and their well-being (though we do recognize "intellectual capital").  And capitalism is basically an economic system that persists on our telling each other over and over that things have value, economic value.  And let's be honest:  many things should have absolute value - food, shelter, transportation (since we need that for getting food and working), medicines, basically any thing that leads to safe, healthy and secure lives.  But there's a really fuzzy line between "any thing that leads to safe, healthy and secure lives" and frivolity, such as diamonds (which admittedly don't have absolute value, though I know of very few who give diamonds no value whatsoever).  One can add to the frivolity easily (I'm sure you can think of examples), but most notoriously, in a capitalist economy, is the case when one person has way more than she or he needs while another person - sharing the same economic system and society and commonwealth - doesn't have enough of what she or he needs.  When this latter situation becomes extreme - where, for instance, five percent of the populace enjoys a standard of living in which they have waaaay more than they need while ninety-five percent are struggling to get by - then capitalism becomes very unstable.  And when those percentage get more lopsided, they can pass a point where capitalism collapses, not least because the participants in that economic system begin to revalue what things are worth.

The classic solution to a capitalistic wealth-imbalance is redistribution of the wealth.  I'm sure those of you in the United States remember when then-candidate Senator Obama said to a farmer in the midwest (I think, though I may be wrong) that we need to redistribute the wealth.  By saying this, he was simply being honest and aware of the limits of capitalism (just like President Reagan was being sooo honest when he named our economy a "trickle-down economy," because that's exactly how capitalism works:  wealth accrues to the top [capo] and drips down to the rest).  Without redistributing the wealth, wealth will continue to accrue to the top and eventually the whole system will topple.  Now, one would think that a government so capitalistic would be able to recognize when the system begins to totter and do something about it, such as increasing the federal minimum wage (a really small but important step in redistributing the wealth) or taxing the top to fund things like small business tax credits, social services, etc.  But an ironic aspect of a mature capitalistic system appears when anyone suggests such pragmatic moves:  since ninety-five percent see themselves as not having enough, proposing such governmental programs appears to them as if the government is trying to take even more away from them.  So the general public tends to protest a move that would benefit them.  And governors, whose primary goal seems to be to remain governors, don't want to alienate their constituents (forgetting, at all levels of our government, that our representatives do not represent parochial but common interests), so they sit on the needed reforms.

Recently in the United States, individual citizens have stepped forward to see if they can accomplish some wealth redistribution without the government's help (capitalism encourages individual rather than governmental initiative).  Bill Gates and Warren Buffet - two of the four hundred and sixteen billionaires in our country, have begun to reach out to fellow billionaires and encourage them to donate half their wealth to charities.  Please know how much I applaud Mr. Gate's and Mr. Buffet's efforts:  indeed, I do so wish my church, the PC(USA) (the richest per capita denomination in this country), would have done this ourselves (and done so by example).  I think this is a good first step, but still I have to ask:  if one is a billionaire, is giving away half enough?  Does one person or family need five hundred million in personal wealth?  Still, this is a great move and I wish them much success.  I doubt, however, that this move alone will be enough.

Rather than redistributing the wealth, our country emphasizes the ninety-five percent's taking on more debt.  I have heard many times that our economy depends on consumers consuming:  industry after industry, apparently having no cash reserves (the money's gone), depend on consumers who apparently have no cash reserves (the money's gone) continuing to consume:  the housing industry, the automobile industry, etc., are struggling because no one's buying.  So our government's response is, "Let's get the credit flowing again!"  The eight thousand dollar tax rebate on purchasing a new home looks good on paper (and certainly propped up the housing market the last several years:  indeed, Nancy and I sold our house to a first-time home buyer who wanted the rebate), but it actually encourages people to assume more debt.  In fact, the "American dream" of owning a house is actually a banker's dream of getting a consumer to mortgage a house for thirty years and, over the life of the loan, pay three times the cost of the house (or, from a consumer's perspective, paying three times what the house is worth).  All credit works this same way:  relieve the borrower of having to save cash and, subsequently, get her or him to pay more than the item is worth.  Any credit works the same way, even student loans.  And in a capitalistic system, credit means paying too much for something, encumbering it with debt, and subsequently slowing the process of wealth accruing to capital (even a home, encumbered with debt, is not a surefire way to accrue wealth, as we've found out here over the last several years).  Using credit - actually taking on more debt - just accelerates the flow of wealth from the ninety-five percent to the five percent, as I'm sure the five percent well know.

So that's kind of the glaring emergency in our capitalistic system, but I actually wanted to speak about a much narrower issue, though I hope you see how it relates:  values.  I hear and read so much about values:  family values, American values, Christian values, etc.  What I don't hear so much is questions about "values" themselves.  A "value" is a measure of worth you and I ascribe to something, implicitly ranking it in terms of worth with other values, creating a value economy (some are worth more than others).  But values are weak, flighty, fluctuating, much like a credit market.  Values have no inherent worth, only the worth we ascribe to them based on various factors such as mood, temperament, scarcity, abundance, etc.  In other words, there are no absolute values:  by their very definition, values my be devalued to the point where they do not exist.

I hate Christian talk of values:  what are our values, what do we value, etc.  I want to talk of principles.  Principles have this supreme characteristic:  they are unaffected by changes in valuation.  One may ask what a principle may cost a person, particularly a brave or unpopular principle (such as looking out for the have-nots rather than the haves), but whether or not people value the principal doesn't alter its worthiness.  Now, to be honest, what we call "values" are actually principles:  a family value, such as "parents, don't fight in front of your children," is actually quite principled.  Many of our so-called American values - compassion, patriotism, integrity - are actually and were formerly called "principles."  I object to values not because they are actually principles, but because we're calling principles "values," meaning, like everything else in our economy, they're for sale, they depend on market forces, some are up and others are down.  We devalue principles by calling them values, which is, I believe, the goal of some who want everything - our nation, our churches, even our faith - to be subsumed into our economic system.  And when everything gets a value, and hence gets put on sale, those with the money will be able to buy everything, even our principles.

Here's a principle for you:  don't buy on credit, buy with cash.  That's a foundational principal for a good capitalist.  Don't let anyone convince you that your credit rating has value, especially those who would never buy on credit themselves.  Let's stop the money flow, even reverse it.  Let's refuse to let anyone attach a value to our principles.  Thank you for reading.

Trilectic

In previous posts, I've laid out a schema for reading narratives that seeks a way to determine whether the Spirit is actually present.  However, though I've often strayed into phenomenology - that is, into analyzing a situation as a divine/human encounter rather than reading the narrative produced from that situation - I want to try to stay at the narrative level.  The theory is a tool not just for reading past experiences but for reading experiences as they're happening.

Staying away from phenomenlogy (which is a whole 'nother can of worms), the most we can accomplish in our analysis is (a) determining if the narrator(s) (including ourselves) believe the Spirit is present and (b) determining if the narrative matches traditional and authoritative narratives of the Spirit's presence.  Even though the narrative cues match our criteria for identifying the Spirit's presence, still we may be mistaken, but I'm kind of stuck as to getting more precise:  ultimately, whether the Spirit is/was present or not becomes a question of belief more than analysis.  However, analysis can demonstrate that, if the narrative is way out of whack, the Spirit could not be present and remain the Spirit spoken of in scripture/tradition.  In that situation, we're dealing with a (S)pirit or a communal spirit rather than the Spirit.

The term "trialectic" points to the conversation or debate between the community members and God.  Persons express in their personas their conviction/personal history about the Spirit's presence.  These expressions are negotiated in the group's ethos, some being accepted while others are rejected, so that a group's ethos becomes entrained towards a particular set of expressions that the group holds as Spiritual.  From the other end, God's persona - again, I tend to limit this to the Spirit's persona - engages individuals, so that each person (perhaps) brings to the group ethos a persona that bears convictions about Spiritual experiences.  Further, God's persona interacts with the group at the ethos level, meaning God's persona engages both individual personas and the group's ethos simultaneously.  And in a more distant way, God's persona engages the group's surrounding ethoi, since a group's ethos is simultaneously engaged with God's persona and external ethoi.  Again, these are all narratives, constructed in the real process of living and praying and worshipping, etc.  As narratives, they are available to us to read, given that we can understand their expressions.

In this trialectic, all three parties - persona, ethos and God's persona - are available for critique and evaluation.  A "Spiritual" persona is always open to evaluation whether it is actually "spiritual," "(S)piritual" or "Spiritual," primarily from a particular set of criteria.  These criteria, of course, depend a great deal on the persona and ethos of the person(s) evaluating, which leaves a lot of room to consider whether there is something new going on that may indeed be Spiritual in a form we've never seen.  However, I do return to scripture as the authoritative and revelatory witness to all things Spiritual:  should a group claim an experience to be Spiritual that not just extends the scripture's witness but in some ways goes counter to it, I'm going to be real skeptical whether the Spirit is actually present.  But, again, that brings into play my own ethos, especially in terms of scriptural interpretation:  I read scripture a certain way, my tradition places its own limits on my reading, I may be stupid, etc.  Yet this messy situation is always the case, so there's no way around it.

Further, I'm interested in this process primarily not to evaluate someone else's narratives but to help me judge my own:  how can I recognize the Spirit's presence in my own life?  Now, you may say that the experience of the Spirit itself will be so clear and distinguishable that I will instantly know, and indeed that tends to be the scripture's witness about the matter:  when the Spirit is present, Spiritual things happen (e.g., speaking in tongues, burning heads, visions, dreams).  But scripture itself is a narrative, produced not in the moment of Spiritual experience but on reflection:  the process of writing scripture has been one of identifying and promoting those experiences that the writers deem Spiritual, so even at the point of experience, to be able to recognize the experience as Spiritual means I do so by reference to such narratives as scripture.  Again, the Spirit's presence may make such identifications redundant, but, again, this is phenomenology rather than reading:  to read a narrative, even my own, means I have to have some distance to it, even while it's going on.  Hence identification, apart from the ecstasy of the experience, is always a reflective matter.  And in this reflection, in my opinion, I take myself out of the experience and into the narrative about the experience.

Another way to say this is I move my attention from the personal to the persona.  When I ask myself, "Is this the Spirit," I'm actually pointing to my evaluation of a personal persona - who I am vis-a-vis the Spirit - and the Spirit's persona - who the Spirit is when it comes to me.  My presumptions about my Spiritual persona include openness, meekness, receptivity, sensitivity, holiness, etc.  My presumptions about the Spirit's persona include movement, inspiration, otherness, depth, etc.  So I'm checking both my and the Spirit's persona - reading them - to see if they fit quite valid criteria.  For instance, I think many of us would be unwilling to call ourselves Spiritually open when we're jealous or envious or proud, etc., though the Spirit may catch us even in those moments.  Likewise, I think few of us would point to the Spirit's presence in an event that is cruel, inhumane, miserly, etc.  Again, the Spirit can blow where it will, often in new and surprising ways, but the problem is in the reading:  I'm trying to validate a Spiritual experience and contrast it with a spiritual or (S)piritual experience, and that entails a critical act of reading, even in the middle of an experience.  Conversely, I may actually miss-interpret the Spirit's presence because of the limits to all criteria:  the Spirit exceeds our criteria, so using them necessarily limits our reflections on the Spirit.

The same process holds for groups and their ethoi.  A group caught up in the Spirit is actually a group caught up in an engagement between their ethos and the Spirit's persona, both of which are narrative constructions.  Being constructions, they have a history and life quite independent of the group's current experience.  For a group to KNOW it's experiencing the Spirit instead of simply experiencing the Spirit means the group is critically aware of its ethos and the persona of the Spirit it embraces.  I'm tempted to argue that even to experience - rather than only to reflectively know - relies on these same narratives, as does a person on her own narratives regarding her and the Spirit's personas, since one needs to recognize an experience to experience it in any real way.

Now, according to scripture (primarily Christian New Testament), the Spirit engages a persona primarily through dreams and visions.  The other avenues of the Spirit's engagement - tongues, prophecy, love, compassion, etc. - all happen at the level of ethos rather than persona.  Now, one may argue that dreams and visions bypass persona, that they are complete interior matters unmediated by the messy intercourse between personas (human and Spirit).  That may be phenomenologically correct and I don't want to discount it.  However, simply having a dream or vision is never the end of the matter:  at the very least, on returning from the ecstatic state, the person asks, "What did that mean," and by asking the question the person returns to the narrative level.  Dreams and visions must be interpreted, it seems to me, and interpretation is a narrative action.  Without interpreting, a person (from the outside) seems to be in danger of confusing the Spirit with spirit or (S)pirit.  Indeed, I think I'm bold enough to argue that a person, to be faithful, MUST seek to interpret such experiences:  this is a should, to me.  "The Devil walks in slippery shoes," the old song says.  In my terms, I think it is always a danger to confuse a (S)pirit (a spirit is less dangerous, perhaps) with the Spirit.  In our culture, for example, we can probably recall instances where divinely-granted wealth (a (S)pirit, perhaps, but at least a spirit) is promoted as a real work of the Spirit (which, even though purported to be in scripture, seems far from the scriptural witness).

The key to experiencing or evaluating God's presence in our lives, it seems to me, is to look at the narrative level, which this trialectic attempts to do.  Narratives - stories we tell ourselves and each other - are not simply passive and reflective:  narratives are the means by which we form the only world we will ever know.  Such hard distinctions as sacred and profane, holy and mundane are actually narrative constructs:  one would be hard pressed to demonstrate their reality outside our narratives about them.  We tell stories that divide our world this way.  Consequently, the way we construct narratives can also construct our world (as Berger so clearly argued, see "Sacred Canopy," older but still brilliant).  By emphasizing reading narratives I'm also emphasizing the other side - constructing narratives.  You and I bear a world-creating responsibility, especially as God is concerned:  we, along with the Spirit, create a world in which the Spirit moves and breathes, for without our side of the deal, even though the Spirit blows where and when it will, our narrative constructions and the world derived from them would be Spiritless.  Thank you for reading.

Beyond Tolerance

A very old friend reminded me today that I tend to think and write densely (my word, I think he was being complementary and suggesting I think and write deeply). Reading my own posts makes me want to be clearer, but not less erudite.

I've been reading instances of tolerance lately and thinking about what I've read. Tolerance, not as a political stance (such as that of our Constitution, that "tolerates" all religious faiths and even non-faith) but as a personal matter, begins with pain. In its oldest meaning, "to tolerate" meant to endure pain and discomfort. Though that usage has largely disappeared, it's still used to refer to an organism's ability to survive extremes of heat, dryness, pH, etc. Every once in a while, someone will ask another, "Are you in pain?" And the other will respond, "Yes, but it's tolerable." This usage gets back to the original meaning of "tolerance."

Now, pain is a person matter, a feeling. But we should distinguish between physical and mental pain (though any kind of pain is processed in our brains). If you should stick a knitting needle in your eye, you will undoubtedly feel a great deal of physical pain, especially if you actually rupture your eyeball. That pain is a bunch of electro-chemicals rushing to your brain from your eye, essentially telling you, "Hold on, chief, you've done something real stupid with that knitting needle." We all have the opportunity to feel that kind of pain every day: just let me go without coffee for 24 hours, and I'll tell you all about pain. That's physical pain.

Mental pain is different in its mechanics (perhaps) but just as real if not more real. After you've poked out your eye with that knitting needle, your mind begins to let you have it with both barrels, "You idiot! Look what you've done! Now you're going to go through the rest of your pitiful life with only one eye! Cyclops! How could you do something sooooo stupid?!" Mental pains - grief, regret, sadness, loss - these are just as real as physical pain but derive from mental rather than physical processes (again, I'm being crude: mental processes are also physical processes). They are a matter of interior dialogue, of thought and evaluation, more than body damage or distress. And, depending on their content and origin, they tend to endure longer than instances of physical pain (chronic pain is somewhat a different matter).

"Tolerance" used to refer to the capability to endure pain, both physical and mental. Though not used so much any more to refer to physical pain, tolerance is used quite often to refer to mental pain or, since I like to get my discussions back to my own model, persona pain. When we use "tolerance" today, I think we're referring to a clash of ethoi and, since ethoi are always a matter of personas, persona pain. Let me unpack that a little bit. Our persona(s) are constructed through interacting with other personas in the arena of ethoi. For instance, in my recent trip to Israel I went out one day alone to get lost in the Old City of Jerusalem, purposefully wandering to see how it felt to be lost in a different culture. Intellectually I knew that I was in little danger of being kidnapped, blindfolded, placed on a webcam and having my head cut off to make a political statement. But my persona - white, Western, infidel, Ugly American - is heavily constructed by an ethos that is derived from gruesome web pages, 9/11, anti-American demonstrations, anti-Islam rhetoric, etc. And this ethos is built on personas, constructs about other persons that I happen to engage whether immediately or remotely: images of beheadings, Osama bin Laden, the students who took over the American Embassy in Iran, United States politicians, friends on Facebook, etc.

Now, I was able to tolerate this discomfort, not by making it go away, but by walking and letting these feelings settle, knowing full well that my persona was fabricated in some sense falsely in my own ethos. Further, by opening myself (my persona) to the ethos of the Old City, eventually my discomfort lessened. One important moment came when, in my purposefully purposeless wandering, I returned to a vendor who the day before had sold me six University of Alabama t-shirts written in Hebrew (a big hit back home, you can be sure). I greeted him and he thanked me for sending some business his way (the t-shirts were also a big hit with other members of my group, who promptly went and found his store and bought t-shirts for themselves). That vendor was not Jewish, was probably Arab and may have been Muslim: I couldn't tell and didn't ask him. But that different ethos - vending - lessened my discomfort: I was a buyer, he was a seller (this is not necessarily an endorsement of commerce, though commerce has brought many ehtoi together peacefully) and we had done business together.

Tolerance should, it seems to me, be a process of recognizing the sources of our discomfort but not letting our discomfort get in the way of engaging "alien" personas and ethoi. However, the way "tolerance" is often used seems to imply that that's all we need to do: tolerate our discomfort, but not engage other personas and ethoi. To move beyond tolerance seems to me to be a matter of recognizing our discomfort and its sources, then through engagement with other personas letting our discomfort settle and dissipate through experiencing or forging a common ethos. When I hear someone say, "I do not accept homosexuality, but I tolerate homosexuals," I think she or he has not moved beyond tolerance. His or her persona, when engaging a gay man's or a lesbian woman's persona, has remained rigid so that the person feels icky, uncomfortable, pain. To step beyond tolerance means creating a common ethos, however briefly, with that gay man or lesbian woman. Sharing an ethos means both personas are affected, are changed and modified, so that the pain and discomfort both feel begins to subside until, hopefully, it disappears.

Moving beyond tolerance, then, is a matter of forming new ethoi, a root characteristic of Christianity (not just love your neighbor - one like you - as yourself, but loving your enemies - even those trying to kill you - as well, so said Jesus). Sticking with the gay and lesbian theme, David Wilcox has a great song, "Fearless Love," about a person attending a protest against homosexuality, holding a condemning sign, and being faced by a gay man with HIV carrying a sign that reads, "There's Nothing Here to Fear." The person flashes back to Jesus encouraging his disciples to "carry that soldier's (Roman's) pack and, after the gay man has been hit in the head with a rock, crosses (!) over and lifts the gay man to his feet. Fear is pain and tolerance is putting up with that pain. Moving beyond tolerance is embracing (Volf's term, from "Exclusion and Embrace") another persona (and perhaps the person as well) and letting our own pesonas be changed in the engagement.

Tolerance alone will not construct new ethoi, hence the need to move beyond tolerance, because in our global, shrinking world, cultural clashes, etc., we need new ethoi not just as an ethical matter, but as a survival matter, an economic matter, an environmental matter, a Christian matter. Though tolerance is better than intolerance, since intolerance aggressively maintains rigid divisions that perhaps should pass away (though some divisions are necessary and good), tolerance, too, can leave rigid divisions in place because the tolerant person is not allowing persona change or the creation of new ethoi: the tolerant person is simply tolerating the pain from recognizing difference in personas and ethoi, not engaging and embracing different personas and ethoi. The pain remains.

What lies beyond tolerance? Simply, relief. The Old French for "relief" was "a raising up" (think of "bas relief" in sculpture), a lifting of burden or distress, or rescuing a town from siege. In terms of persons, by engaging other personas in new ethoi, the pain one formerly tolerated is relieved. In Christian terms, "lifting up" implies resurrection, not just in the future kingdom, but in present terms: no better demonstration is Paul's insistence that Jew and Gentile form one people (a common ethos), even though they had been long estranged, a new ethos that Paul names "a new creation, the Israel of God." Though moving beyond tolerance doesn't do much for physical pain (though shamanistic or faith healing may have something to do say about this), it has much to do with relieving mental or person pain. To end with politics (the matter of negotiating ethoi), if America is to be a "city on a hill" for the world, our shining beaconness lies not in our wealth or might, but in our capacity to embrace multiple ethoi from every corner of the world and - by not just tolerating them but embracing them - forge a commonwealth stronger because of our diversity, not despite it, and one in which healing from many ethoi pains (poor, wretched, huddled masses) is not just promised but accomplished. And to be explicit (and perhaps argumentative): intolerance of Muslims here in our homeland, even tolerance of Muslim Americans here, keeps the pain, but engaging Muslim personas here and abroad and together forging a new ethos relieves us from much pain, even, perhaps, the pain of 9/11. Thank you for reading.

Personas and Politics

Oops, I've gotten enmeshed in a thought stream about politics. I posted to a friend's Facebook page my argument about reading original texts, specifically Speaker Pelosi's press release about transparency regarding the funding for the proposed Islamic center at Park 51 and about the funding of those who so vocally oppose its construction. In response, a friend of my friend posted, "Hey Jeff, which side are you on? I don't want a mosque at ground zero. Do you?" Now, reading this response, two things come to mind: sides and wants.

First, about the sides. Clearly the poster sees the building in question to be a dividing characteristic between two "sides," with one being in favor of the building's construction and the other being against its construction. I don't know what sides the person is talking about, but I assume the poster is referencing a classic Republican/Democrat split. But why use the word "sides"?

Ethoi create boundaries. Strong ethoi have strong boundaries. When one crosses a strong boundary of an ethos, one knows it: one's feelings get engaged, one feels strongly affirmative about the ethos' tenets, one feels a strong sense of belonging, one feels a group mind about issues. A strong boundary is necessary for a group to be cohesive and aggressive, both good qualities in groups. But ethoi are not neutral entities: there's always something at stake, something that requires a person's commitment of at least some time and, usually, money (even such a weak commitment as commenting on someone's Facebook post requires the money and time to have an internet connection and to check it regularly).

I guess the bothersome aspect is the notion of two groups faced off against each other as if the other were an enemy, when in fact, in this situation, the two sides are all citizens of this great commonwealth. And this is where our current politics have taken us: to persist, the two major parties have to draw lines in the sand and each get firm commitment from the twenty to twenty-five percent of the total voting population that will adopt their ethoi and vote accordingly (the forty-five to fifty percent of the population eligible to vote but don't show how these two ethoi certainly do not engage even the majority of us). And voting, let's be clear, involves in our capitalist society the allocation of dollars: dollars to this state's program, that special interest and, as is clear, into our congresspersons' pockets. So a great deal of power is wrapped up in the production and maintenance of these ethoi, on both sides of the aisle.

Now to the second issue: wants. I find it interesting that the poster posted, "I don't want a mosque at Ground Zero." I doubt this poster lives in New York or spends any time down around Ground Zero, but apparently we all are being asked what we want in regard to this issue. Wants are feelings: I want to smoke, for instance, is a complicated feeling that includes desire for nicotine, for orality (the doctor says I'm oral), for self-image (I'm a pipe smoker), all of which point to my persona, at least when I'm alone or with other smokers. Remember, "reading" is a matter of feelings and their interpretation. So the poster, reacting apparently without much reflection, hits the nail on the head: I don't want.

So often, our personas get engaged with ethoi - we experience feelings - without thinking about what we're feeling and where our feelings come from. Ethoi are persuasive for that very reason: they impel us to respond from our feeling selves and rarely ask us to engage our thinking selves, and this goes for both sides of the aisle. Now, I'm not trying to elevate thinking over feeling, even though our feeling selves are our less evolved selves, whereas our thinking selves, at least in terms of our species' advanced cognitive skills, are more recently evolved. We need both feeling and thinking (indeed, both come from our brains) to prosper as people and as a species. Yet politics, it seems to me, should depend more on thinking than feeling, at the very least because thinking critically helps insulate and preserve us from demagogues, charlatans and the like.

So reading, as I'm advocating for it here, entails feeling one's way through different and often conflicting ethoi, sensing where our personas become engaged or enraged. But reading also entails thinking about what we're feeling, probing the issues to make explicit the often hidden nuances of competing ethoi, thus becoming erudite about the power that pervades all ethoi. My argument about reading original texts derives from my disappointment with the current state of our various media: our media, probably for financial reasons, have become reduced to pinging on ethoi rather than delving into them deeply and critically. And, actually, this is mostly our fault: when we refuse to read, when we simply feel our responses to different ethoi and react by subscribing to them and their sponsors' products, we encourage our media to do exactly as they are doing.

Read original texts. Point out where our media are getting away with slipshod feeling-mongering. Be aware of our feelings and our thoughts. Don't let vested interests divide us and make us take sides. Feelings and wants, ultimately, form a very unsound basis for any political process. Thank you for reading.

Discursus: Reading "A Ground Zero Mosque"

I'm sorry to be so tardy in posting: Nancy and I were having such a busy time in Colorado that I haven't finished my work on the persona/ethos/God trialectic. In the meantime, I've noticed a lot of discussion about the "Ground Zero Mosque," so I thought I'd exercise my reading skills for a bit.

On reading the moniker, "Ground Zero Mosque," I ask two questions immediately: first, is the building in question at Ground Zero and, second, is it a mosque? To address the first question, I did a bit of reading online about the proposed building's location. Turns out it's about two city blocks (by most estimates) away from the sprawling space that is known as "Ground Zero," itself about two blocks square. So how does this proposed building (currently an empty building that formerly housed some type of clothing concern) that is two blocks away become characterized as being at Ground Zero? I guess some people have drawn a circle around the former World Trade Center complex (a complex of six buildings) that is greater than two city blocks in radius, so that every building within that two city block (about a third of a mile, or 1760 feet, or about the length of six football fields for those of us in Alabama) is considered part of Ground Zero. Now, I saw a blog in which the blogger had taken pictures of the other buildings within that radius, which included a McDonalds, Burger King, a men's club, etc. Yet that blogger was being argumentative, something I wish to avoid.

The point seems to be that the proposed building is too close to Ground Zero for decency's sake (a question I will not address since it's already late and I need to sleep). So I have to ask, "What distance would be decent?" And I think this is the heart of the matter. I think some people, as I have seen in comments sections, would say our national boundary is a decent distance, i.e., that ANY mosque is this country is too close to Ground Zero, whether it be in Key West, or Anchorage, or San Diego. Perhaps this sentiment is prevalent as the subtext for much of the discussion of this proposed building: Muslims Go Home! Please know that I consider this sentiment to be unacceptable, to use a light term, since we've had Muslim Americans for over two hundred years now. And perhaps I'm being argumentative here as well: I think if I were to ask someone opposed to the building whether they thought the Muslims should go home (i.e., leave our country), that they would probably say that American citizens who happen to be Muslims are, in fact, American citizens and have as much right to be here as you or I.

Still, how close is too close? Would the proposed building be acceptable if it were, say, a mile away? Or would that, too, be considered part of Ground Zero? How about out of Manhattan? If one argued that the proposed building should be built outside of Manhattan, what about the mosques that currently exist in Manhattan? Should they move? For instance, the Assata Islamic Center (about which I know nothing) is roughly two miles away from Ground Zero? Is that too close? You see, somehow we've drawn an arbitrary line around Ground Zero, called it "hallowed ground" (which it may indeed be) and said the proposed building is inside that line and, thus, offensive. But where is the decent line? And who gets to draw it? Instead of asking these types of questions, our media (bless the "fourth branch of government"!) present the proposed building as a dividing line not between decent distance and indecent distance, but between you and me: are you on my side or not? Whose side are you on? So the real line is one that divides us, the citizenry, over an issue that is perhaps best left to the New Yorkers. After all, if what were talking about is drawing a line of decent respect around Ground Zero, who better than local New Yorkers to draw that line? They live there, they walk the streets, they know what is decent and respectful distance.

As to the second question, is it a mosque? Now, I've seen Mosques aplenty in Jerusalem. Here's a picture of one mosque's minaret looming over one traditional site of the garden tomb. In the old city of Jerusalem you see this sort of thing all the time. Looming next to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a Mosque whose minaret lights up in green neon at night. Mosques are like churches: there's a place for worship, a place for study, a place for music, perhaps a place for Friday afternoon pot lucks. But what does a building require to be a mosque? I don't know the answer to this.

The proposed Islamic building sounds more to me like a mega church site. According to what I've been able to deduce from the "news," the proposed building is more like a community center with a prayer space tacked onto it, kind of like a mega church that has a gymnasium, a school, a pool, a weight room, a shopping center, a park and playground, and, oh yes, a worship space. Unlike a mega church, which usually comes with an impressive steeple, I have not read of plans for a minaret on the proposed building. So is it a mosque? To be useful to faithful Muslims, it must accommodate prayer five times a day (just like the Pentagon, to be argumentative, which has prayer space for the faithful Muslims serving there), so the plans include a prayer space. But is it a mosque? And how does one distinguish a community center from a mosque? Again, I'm ignorant about the details, but do you see my point?

The very phrase, "Ground Zero Mosque," engages ethoi and, inevitably, engages personas. As some civic body in New York City went quietly about its business of approving the petition of some Islamic body to build a community center two blocks north of the World Trade Center complex, some folks representing one ethos began complaining about it, saying it was disrespectful to those killed on 9/11/2001. That ethos, built of millions of personas in this country, expressed itself so clearly that its opposing ethos, build of millions of other personas in this country, pushed back, saying that its approval and potential construction was respectful to the founding principles of our country. The media, quick to make a buck, heightened these conflicting ethoi, thereby engaging the millions of personas who see themselves as having a stake in these ethoi, thereby advertising their sponsors' products all that more effectively. Whose side are you on? Whose side are YOU on?

Here's my proposal: let's all read original texts, not news (though the type of reading I'm advocating helps get to the ethoi underlying our media). At this time we all have so much access to original documents, such as press releases, building applications, meeting minutes, etc., that we don't have to rely on the media to report it to us. For instance, our media, both "sides," reported on President Obama's speech at the end of Ramadan party he hosted at the White House. You can easily find the full text of his speech online. You can read it for yourself. You can disengage from the media ethoi that wants to sell you product. If we find an issue that engages our personas through explicit or implicit ethoi (liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, Christian or Muslim, etc.), let's all do some online research and jump over the media, find the original texts in all their complexity and nuance, read them, and then think about what we've read. I think that's a good start.

Real Soon Now I'm going to get that trialectic done and posted. I appreciate your patience. Please, read original texts. Thank you for reading.

Prayer: Persona and Ethos

A disclaimer first: as I speak about prayer, I want to remind us that I'm not interested so much in the phenomenology of prayer, but in the narratives we construct about prayer. For instance, as I discuss persona prayer, I draw a distinction between what we experience as "personal prayer" and what we talk about when we talk about personal prayer. That we talk about it, even to ourselves, places our focus at the level of persona rather than person. More pointedly, in this discussion I'm not denying nor discounting the possibility that a person may commune with God during personal prayer. However, given my narrative theory, that communion is not available for my reading. Instead, the data available derives from personas.

At the narrative level, recounting personal prayer is a narrative about a person's persona interacting with a divine persona, which I restrict to the Spirit for theological reasons. Now, I know that many people pray to Jesus and consider their personal prayers a conversation with Jesus or even the Creator, but as a Christian - even better, as a Reformed Christian - i understand that the persona through which they pray is actually the Spirit because the Spirit is the only persona available to us (the Creator is somewhere else and Christ is there, too, interceding for us). So in a narrative about personal prayer, told from whatever perspective or point of view, we have a most basic ethos: two personas interacting. And reading such a narrative tells a great deal about how the narrator views the person praying and the God hearing.

Even at the personal level, I want to maintain that a person prays through her persona: the person prays self-consciously in a persona that is prayerful, for instance. And the person prays to a divine persona, itself a construct based on all kinds of factors: theology, tradition, experience, etc. We pray in certain ways, all of which rest in personas. "Spiritual" prayer in this analysis is prayer that honestly engages the two personas, but the question remains whether the prayer is "spiritual" or "Spiritual" (the capitalization of "Spirit" at the beginning of this sentence is accidental). A "spiritual" prayer, given my earlier definitions, is one in which personal characteristics are honestly communicated in that person's prayer persona. A "Spiritual" prayer is one in which the same is true on both sides of the prayer: both the individual and the Spirit are honestly (or truly) communicated in the ethos of their two personas. Now, it remains (for me) a real question whether the Spirit must always engage with us when we pray. I'm very hesitant to make the Spirit accountable to our desire to pray, and I'm equally hesitant to make the Spirit coterminous with existence itself, as if the Spirit were everywhere and in everything. I do not think that very scriptural. But I'm straying into phenomenology again. From a perspective of narrative, then, a narrative about personal prayer is open to critical evaluation: is the person's persona honest, and is the persona of the Spirit reflected/recounted honestly and truly? Just to be honest myself, critical evaluation inevitable brings in the evaluator's theology, presumptions, convictions, etc., with which the evaluator evaluates. Yet reading narratives necessarily entails such a messy process.

At the corporate level, the main frame of analysis is the dialectic between the group's ethos and its encroaching ethoi. In corporate prayer, a group, through its ethos, prays in interaction with the Spirit's persona but in awareness of all those surrounding ethoi. For instance, in the old days in the Presbyterian church, the prayer of confession was often a collect (you can Google the collect form if you're unfamiliar with it). The collect is a very old, formulaic but delightful, literary form of prayer. Now, a particular Presbyterian church praying corporately using a collect is certainly, at the level of narrative, praying in the Spirit, but they're also praying in the midst of a church culture in which the form of a group's prayer distinguishes the group from others, perhaps critiques others (conversely, some of the more "free" churches emphasize extemporaneous prayers, in distinction to written prayers). Further, reminding ourselves of the complexities of ethoi, corporate prayers are often political, or socially-conscious, etc., all of which must be seen not just as conversation/dialogue within the walls but in conversation with many ethoi outside the walls as well.

Now, as in persona prayer a corporate may indeed be "spiritual" if it honestly and truly voices group convictions, characteristics, etc. By watching a congregation during a corporate prayer (and I confess: sometimes instead of closing my eyes I watch congregations pray) you can often tell whether the person praying actually gets the congregation and its ethos. Heck, you don't really have to watch: you can feel when a prayer hits the mark and when it misses. One that hits the mark is "spiritual." A "Spiritual" prayer, on the other hand, is one in which the Spirit's persona is truly engaged with the group's ethos. That engagement changes even the most spiritual group prayer, giving the words unplanned depth and resonance, sometimes even thwarting the prayer itself, transforming it into something quite apart from its original intention. Sometimes, perhaps in the best of times, that Spiritual prayer calls forth the very essences of a group's ethos and reaffirms them. Again, I'm very hesitant to put the Spirit at our beck and call simply because as a group we pray, but, again, that's phenomenology, and I'm trying to stick to reading narratives.

My posting has been delayed and erratic because Nancy and I are on vacation in Colorado. At any rate, my next post will (finally) get down to the persona/ethos/God trialectic. Thank you for reading.

Feelings

I realize by my prior posts that I've described personas and ethoi largely in terms of conversation or thought. In actuality, though personas and ethoi are constructed through social intercourse, they actually owe more to feelings than to reflection or conscious intention. Now, when I say "feelings" I don't mean emotions alone, though emotions - themselves complex phenomena - certainly play a role (perhaps major) in the construction of personas and ethoi. In addition to emotions, our personas and ethoi form largely as a result of feelings: we feel another's response to our personas, so that our personas become formed in response to things we feel in our interactions with other people. Conversely, our interactions with other people make them feel certain ways that in turn help form their personas. Call this nonverbal communication, if you will, but when we respond in such a way that we damp a characteristic or conviction, we do so not so often because someone has expressed disapproval, but because we feel reluctant or hesitant or "wrong" based on another's nonverbal cues.

More positively, our personas and ethoi are often affirmed by those around us. This affirmation, too, is primarily "felt": we feel positive and secure and endorsed and in consequence we form our personas to conform to these positive feelings. Groups, too, mold their ethoi through feelings - "group minds" if you will - that derive either internally or externally. When a group is positive and unconflicted, the group's members all feel quite well about themselves. The tendency is for a group (or a person) to keep doing those things until they become solidified (if we can speak of solidity in this regard) in its ethos. And when newcomers experience the group ethos, they in turn feel certain ways that either encourage or discourage them to "join" the group. By joining a group, a person places her persona into intercourse with the group ethos and in response to her feelings, her persona changes or, more concretely, her persona in relation to that group forms.

If this holds, then in the interaction between our personas/ethoi and the Spirit's persona our feelings become determinative. We begin to associate certain feelings with the Spirit's presence, and these may be quite trustworthy, i.e. each time we reflectively assert that the Spirit was in fact present, we remember how we felt during that experience and begin to expect that we'll feel similar in future congress with the Spirit. The most extreme example of this is religious ecstasy, a phenomenon historically associated with the Spirit's presence but which is greeted with some scepticism today. Yet for those who have experienced such ecstasy, its presence becomes a requirement for them to assert that the Spirit is/was present. Even for those who greet ecstasy with scepticism, other, milder feelings are just as prevalent: an uplifting of the breath into one's throat, chill bumps, tingling, peace, unity and self-expansion - all feelings - become just as stringently associated with te experience of the Spirit.

Historically, the Enlightenment cast a huge pall over feelings, particularly in the work of Descartes, who argued that one cannot really trust one's feelings at all: instead, one must examine one's mind and thoughts, for feelings cannot be trusted. And lest the rationalists become smug, Kant argued that rationality and thought also cannot be trusted unreservedly. So by the end of the Enlightment, we were left with severe scepticism about both thought and feeling (though not reason or logic, it must be admitted), leading eventually into our post-modern age and its scepticism about object referents, real truth and objective viewpoints.

However, personas and ethoi know nothing about all this. Instead, they still function and arise as they have for all of our long history as a species. In this I'm asserting that personas have played a significant role in our evolution as a social species (and, by extension, in the evolution of other social species). Consequently, the mental processes (and feelings are mental processes) that lead to the formation of personas have a long evolutionary history and, as such, are pervasive and persistent: they work across cultures and histories because they have biological roots whose history is much, much longer than those associated with critical thought, perhaps even language itself.

If personas and ethoi are fundamentally about feelings, then reading them is a matter of feeling (at least immediately) as well. Let me clarify: I can read historic narratives without using a great deal of feeling, yet authors know that their most effective work is that which elicits feeling. To become engrossed in a work of literature, engrossed to the point that one no longer realizes she's reading, is a matter of the work's engaging her feelings as well as her mind. And I have certainly wept and laughted while reading, as I suspect most of you have. But reading literature or documents, even though they may engage our feelings and personas, is one step removed from the immediate experience of other personas and ethoi. In immediate events, reading persona/ethos is always a matter of feeling rather than analysis, though analysis certainly contributes its part. In fact, the type of "reading" I'm discussing is actually more removed from the natural, organic reading we all do when we interact with others. I've often heard someone say, on meeting a stranger or newcomer, "I just can't read them" or "I don't know how I feel about them." Such comments point to the more organic reading that we all do, which is actually a mutual formation of personas. Thank you for reading.

Person and Persona in Narratives

Just a short post today, since Nancy and I will leave for Colorado tomorrow bright and early. Without straying into more formal literary theory, I'd like to say a little about how I read these living narratives that I find whenever people interact. These narratives may be implicit (no one's talking about an event) or explicit (a person recounts an event, or people recount an event, or talk about what's happening), but they do not have to be conversations expressly about the event: people can converse and, if one listens carefully, one can read their narratives even though implicit. More importantly, when I use "implicit" or "explicit" I'm not describing from some universal vantage point: rather, I mean the narratives are implicit or explicit in terms of ME. In fact, from inside the living narrative, implicit and explicit have little meaning: people speak with each other, live with each other, all the time crafting a narrative whether consciously or unconsciously that makes sense in light of their lives.

From my vantage point as reader, implicit narratives are the more difficult to trace but also the more valuable. For instance, I observe a particular phrase propagating through a group's conversation over the course of several days. Let's say the phrase is "that's over there" as in "though that may indeed happen, it hasn't yet and so we shouldn't count on it." As the phrase propagates and more members of the group use it, I can read that as becoming a part of the group's ethos and can follow up to probe it's depth of meaning. A more difficult instance is when a group has been together for some time and I, an outsider, happen to intrude on their narrative. Then the implicit elements become much harder to identify, because they may not only be implicit to me but also to the group itself. And for that very reason, when a reader does identify implicit elements to a narrative, they are unguarded and very revealing. Implicit narratives also appear in literature, but there they may be implicit because the author did not feel the need to make them explicit (such as the narrative about daemons in scripture discussed earlier) or because the author herself was not consciously explicating them. Granted, these are hard to distinguish.

Explicit narratives are much easier to trace, since someone is speaking to me directly and usually telling me something, though a person's language and manners are often riddled with implicit narratives that they may not be able to voice. Explicit narratives are also those that I participate in: though some elements may be hidden from me, I am willing to grant that I know what I'm doing when I craft a narrative, not in terms of skill, but in terms of recognizing that I'm participating. I think it's the same for everyone. Say two people in a long-term relationship are recounting their history, but disagreeing about an event or two. Though they may not know why they're disagreeing, they do know they're disagreeing and, if they reflect a bit, may be able to identify why they're disagreeing (e.g., not disputing a fact, but negotiating the meaning of a disputed fact). Literature is always, on the surface, explicit narrative: an author writes something consciously, deliberatively, though implicit narratives usually are present.

Now in terms of person, narratives are always first person (like the literary term): I did/am/think so and so. Even when narratives are in the form of second and third person, they're still first person: a person, the "I," says something about themselves (first person form) or about you (second person form) or about she/he/it (third person form), but the fundament is always first person, the narrator. I think this holds true for literature as well: the writer, the "first" person, is always the one telling the narrative, whatever form of person the narrative takes.

Personas are more tricky, being both first and second person since a persona is always engaged in a dialectic with another persona, in which a person negotiates the first person view with the second person view coming from the other person/persona. And personas are not simply verbal: one's manner of dress, speaking, eating, etc. all elements of that person's persona, shaped by inner desires/needs and by outer expectations/pressures. Further, personas often have a third person referent: what will do they think about me/us? In literary terms, the "implied author" is actually the author's persona as it can be derived from the narrative. The "way" I write this blog is little like the way I talk or preach or sing or dress, though some elements undoubtedly appear common to all. Particularly in this medium, when I write self-consciously I'm being sensitive to a third person referent, those who may perhaps read this blog.

In short (A lie! you say), "person" in terms of narratives refers to the form of explicit reference (a person speaks of I, you or he/she/it) while realizing these are always first person expressions. Yet, as I've argued before, "person" is actually irretrievable in narratives in terms of interiority: "person" refers to the form and source, not what's actually going on inside. In reading narratives, we're limited to data in the form of personas - social constructs that show a person's convictions regarding self-identity, other-identity, meaning, purpose, etc., but which fall short of the interior life of the actual person. When President Obama visits a GMC plant in Detroit, we do well to remember we're viewing a persona engaged in constructing a political and policy narrative with our own pesonas, with all the attendant, messy presumptions/assumptions/rhetoric that such a construction entails. President Obama may actually love Toyotas.

Well, I encourage you to think on these things in terms of the persona/ethos/God trialectic: avoiding phenomenology (for now), I'm attempting to analyze social constructs whose creation you, I, we and God together construct. Thank you for reading.

Scriptural Anthropology: spirit, (S)pirits and Spirit

Time for some scriptural anthropology, a necessary step prior to a full discussion of the persona/ethos/God trialectic. Please know at the outset that scripture is deep and wide: consequently, this post can hold only the broadest outline of this discussion. First, the title terms. "Scriptural anthropology" refers, in this discussion, to the placement and form of humanity vis-a-vis the divine realm. In scripture, "spirit" is sometimes used for the force by which God animates dusty life (God breathed the breath of life into Adam, but please note: though the verb "breathed" is derived from the same root as "spirit," the word for "breath" is from a different root) or, in the Christian New Testament, a more generically animating force. Less so in the Hebrew Bible but prevalent in the Christian New Testament, there are other (S)pirits, the daemons, that are usually wicked and that can enter a person (the usual expression is "that person has a spirit"). Finally, there is God's Spirit, in the Hebrew Bible an emanation from the Creator that "falls on" people, a careful description that is followed usually in the Christian New Testament (Mark says the Spirit entered "into" Jesus at his baptism [though your English Bibles probably translate this as "on"] whereas Luke and Matthew change that to "on") but, notably in Paul, sometimes the Spirit is said to enter "into our hearts" (Gal. 4:6). Please note: in the wider Graeco-Roman world, (S)pirits were both good and bad, the former leading to greatness ("he has a daemon" = "he has a genius," Greek "daemon" becomes Arabic "djin" becomes Latin "genius," so that, for instance, Alexander's greatness is attributed in some part to "his genius") the latter to possession, seen almost always as deplorable.

In the gospels, particularly in Mark, Jesus is reluctant to allow the (S)pirits who possess people to speak because they know who he is (leading to much literature on Mark's "messianic secret"). It's important to note that the (S)pirits have it right, apparently (though one must be careful: perhaps according to the author of Mark Jesus is wrongly named "son of God" but rightly named "son of man"): they recognize Jesus in a way few in the gospels do as one powerful in God's Spirit. If one wished to visualize this scriptural anthropology, imagine a person standing on the earth. Above that person is perhaps seven realms or spheres, with the highest being God's, from whence God's Spirit comes. In the bottom two spheres, those just above the earth (the spheres of the moon and sun), dwell the (S)pirits: they are higher than humanity, perhaps spirits from bygone heroes, more powerful (explicitly in Plutarch) than humans. Jesus commands the (S)pirits because his Spirit is way more powerful, since it's from the very top realm, God's realm. Indeed, the scribes in Mark 3 accuse Jesus not of having God's Spirit but of having the prince of (S)pirits, a sin Jesus say is eternally unforgiveable. Please note: our conception of demons crawling up from Hell underground owes more to Milton than scripture. In scripture, they are higher than humanity, not lower.

In the majority of cases in the scriptures, the Spirit comes "upon" people rather than enters into them: think of the tongues of fire falling on and resting on the disciples at Pentecost. However, the places where the Christian New Testament speaks of the spirit coming into a person are noteworthy. First, the resurrected Jesus at the end of John's gospel breathes ("infuses") the Holy Spirit into the disciples, with John using the same Greek word ("emfuso") that the Septuagint (the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible) uses in Genesis 2:7. The implication is that Jesus begins a new creation with his disciples, explicitly breathing into them not just the breath of life (they're already alive) but the Holy Spirit itself. Second, Paul in Gal. 4:6, perhaps quoting a baptismal liturgy, says that God has sent the spirit of God's Son into our hearts, leading us to cry "Abba, Father!" even as Jesus did in Gethsemane (showing Paul's conviction that we all have to suffer with Christ if we are going to be glorified with him). We should contrast this with Paul's more communal discussion of life in the Spirit in Romans 8, where each "you" is plural and God's Spirit is said to "live among you." Indeed, both "spirit" and "Spirit" are used side-by-side in Romans 8:15-16, where Paul says "When we cry, 'Abba! Father!' it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our (plural) spirit (singular) that we are children of God," after which he emphasizes that we must suffer with Christ.

I mention all this in order to forefront some of my presuppositions or, if you will, to read some of my own narrative for you, a narrative I'm explicating in this blog (your comments help show where my narrative differs from yours). And I tend to be as conservative as scripture in speaking about the spirit/(S)pirits/Spirit, reluctant to speak about the Spirit entering into us, though many of the contemporary narratives I read presume just that. I tend to see the boundary that is a person as impenetrable even by God's Spirit except in extraordinary cases of which I am skeptical. Instead, even in cases of "divine inspiration" I tend to see an engagement of personas rather than the Spirit's infusion of a person. But in this I'm straying into metaphysics rather than reading narratives, though such metaphysical presuppositions color and may even determine how I read narratives, even scriptural narratives. And here's another warning: I'm going to try to get you to say that scriptural narratives are authoritative for you in some way, then try to foist my reading - which is surely colored by my own presuppositions - on you as if it is as authoritative as scriptural narratives, a process that surely pervades most preaching.

So having put so many cards on the table, let me try to summarize a basic anthropology that underpins my discussion of the persona/ethos/God trialectic, being careful to note that I'm speaking of reading narratives rather than describing the divine/human encounter. First, the interior life of a person is truly unknowable expect as it is expressed in that person's persona: when I read a narrative about a person, I'm actually reading the social construct (which both the person and her social context help to construct) that is that person's persona. Experimentally, I want to reserve this interior life even from the divine gaze, even though scripture speaks of God knowing our very hearts: though scripture may undoubtedly be correct, the data we have derive from the persona level, not the personal level.

Second, "spirit" is, in my opinion, a good word for the animating life force. Our culture uses "life" to refer to this animating force, even though "life" can refer to one's simple biology as well as its animating force. While simple biology may actually be the only animating force we have, speaking in purely empirical terms, "life" does not capture the drive and energy, even the aggressivity, that "spirit" does. Further, "spirit" seems to cross the person/persona boundary: when we describe one's spirit (archaically, "she's a gentle spirit") we're saying something about both the person's interior life as well as their persona. That makes "spirit" - pardon the pun - a powerful, descriptive word.

Third, I tend to locate "(S)pirit" exclusively in the realm of ethos, i.e. at the intersection of two or more personas. We don't really use such a term any more, though a hundred or so years ago one could hear a person describe another by "He has a genius" rather than "He's a genius" as in our day. I find the older way more accurately since it realizes that "genius" as well as all (S)pirits are recognized and named socially, i.e. in terms of an ethos. Einstein, a well-known example, was thought of as a rather slow student until he published his work on thermodynamics and relativity, for which he was recognized by the scientific community as "a genius." Just for your reading pleasure, it's ironic - deeply so - that in the gospels those who have daemons (my (S)pirits) recognize Jesus while his followers (at least the men) do not, even more so that Jesus would take the power that recognizes him away from those so possessed, so that they become as thick and unwitting as his disciples. (S)pirits are constructs of ethoi, and we can update scriptures "powers and principalities" to our time by looking at those powerful concepts and ideas (perhaps memes, Dawkins) that can take hold of us, for instance, consumerism.

Fourth, I tend to locate Spirit as that third person of the trinity, but I do so within the same person/persona strictures. Thus, to speak of the Spirit as a "person" means that when we experience the Spirit our experience is mediated through an ethos, i.e. through the intercourse between our persona and the Spirit's persona. In other words, our experience of the Spirit is also socially constructed, perhaps not in the immediacy of the experience, but certainly in reading about that experience. Further, I tend to consider the person of the Spirit, as the person of you or me, as impenetrable: personas are so thorough-going that we cannot experience each other or the (S)pirits or the Spirit except through personas, and that means through ethoi. In short, all our experiences are particular and colored (perhaps determined) by the ethoi through which we move and breathe. Again, I'm speaking about reading narratives. Phenomenologically, I'm certainly willing to hold out the actuality of the Spirit entering a person, it's just that we can never read about that, only about the interaction of personas since even that experience, to be expressed, must be expressed in terms of persona and ethos.

Well, I've warned you before that I tend to write this way, but I hope you've been able to follow my narrative. Next post I will delve into personal prayer, itself one more step prior to considering the persona/ethos/God trialectic. Thank you for reading.