Tradition Meets Psychology and Says "Hello"

Creatures of the animal kingdom might think the airport experience something akin to an organized stampede. Everyone is heading to different places in the same direction, odors are myriad and unaccounted for, and the ultimate goal, particularly during the Christmas migration, is to hastily return to the safe and familiar. The family, however loving, represents all that hectic hullabaloo your independent self needed to leave behind for the sake of sanity. And the food, however delicious, whispers (at each savory bite) little reminders that you’re soon to regret the decision to have just one more piece of pie.

In short, Christmas break is a sham. Perhaps the elves secretly planned to exact revenge on our consumer culture for overworking them. Santa is no philanthropist; he is mercenary with an agenda, and happens to know how to chew a cookie while faking a smile. Perhaps, to be more realistic, popular culture has infiltrated, and technological advances manifested themselves to such a degree that we can no longer identify exactly what it means to relax and enjoy time off. Whatever the case, I’m tired.

But if there is anything to take away from Christmas aside from a few extra pounds it is the importance of tradition itself. Formality, though excruciating at times, reminds us of the important things. Our grandmother’s excessive exaggerations of any and all of our embarrassing moments, our parents over protectiveness, and our sibling rivalries reawake the fundamentals we were raised to believe—whatever those believes were.

The historical church swings with a similar stroke. We recite the Lord’s prayer and Orthodox creeds with monotone repetition for their effect. The proverbial Jesus died and rose again for my sins creates ambiance for the soul; it is the paint on the wall by which every piece of furniture is color-coordinated. Remember in the old testament (I can’t recall off hand where) when it says something about surrounding yourself with the law? I keep saying this, and will continue to, but we need to start including psychology in the theological discussion. Self imposed classical conditioning is not nonsense, it’s common sense--even scriptural in its appropriate application. Enacting a stimulus/response relationship by, say, treating a prayer with an attitude of obeisance results in believing that practice and its object sacred. That’s the real reason we bow our heads. Putting scripture around your house puts scripture in your heart. This is not theological, this is psychological. And the suggestion, i think, opens up interesting possibilities.

Under these new protocols, we bypass all the debate concerning—to continue the example—inerrancy and inspiration, while still treating scripture and our Lord with fear and love. In other words, let’s do what we already do, and practice beliefs which we have not come to understand (whether we know it or not), and try adding epistemic humility to the soup. “Ah love, let us be true to one another,” our individual systematic theology is shoddy at best. What you and I actually know, what beliefs we can actually formulate are so few that it takes a certain level of audacity to maintain our multitudinous positions. Our modern hierarchical protocols have proven altogether intangible to anyone who is not a theologian in a specific field.

If you ask me about the inerrancy of scripture I will say, “This is what my parents told me most of my life, this is what some other people have told me the past few years, and this is a subject with which I have no affiliation save authorities.” As you might well notice, i don't have a 'position.' If my best friend’s life depended on me answering the question, I will always go with the Orthodox position. (And of course I would; this is a post about tradition) But I couldn’t tell you why the church is right or wrong; I merely bank on it. I guess based on authority. And here is the terrifying fact: such is the nature of 99 percent of our cumulative knowledge.We guess based on what we're told.

Obviously, I’m talking about the difference between believing with action and knowing with reasons. The trouble is the relationship between an idea and a psyche. The majority of our parents and their parents joined under a system of beliefs because they found psychological security in epistemic certainty. But we, the children of post-modernism, know better. We are meek skeptics, more like a self-conscious girl than the modern know it all brute. But we too have our shortcomings, and they mirror that girl: we are hesitant and indecisive; we don’t know what to believe, and wallow and whine.

The solution, to our horror, is not certainty, or even the accumulation of knowledge. The first is impossible and the second so limited it isn’t worth the effort. The solution, rather, is what our church fathers said years ago, “Credo ut intelligum.” I believe in order to understand. I repeat that psychology needs to be included here. How does one believe in naked propositions without battling within the confines of attitude, feeling, stimulus, memory, and desire? He doesn’t.

There is more to be said here, especially of our psychological relationship to Orthodoxy, but I’ve jabbered on long enough. Maybe i'll continue in another post.

The K.H.

"That you are here--that life exists, and identity"

No fluid segway exists for saying what I came on here to say, so let me blurt it out and connect things later. I am both afraid of any internal propensity within myself toward elitism, and, in contrast, partially believe myself a flag-bearer for the everyday man. The confession is honest, the appellation relatively accurate, and the mental dichotomy confusing. I reprimand myself every time I lord over someone, and combat over-lorders with a near excessive vigor.

I like common sense as much as I like cheeseburgers. I like the common experience; I like habit more than interlude or interruption. Normal seems altogether abnormal compared with abnormalities. Jay Leno’s chin looks funny, but a chin on every face looks like a miracle. God did not make all men for metaphysics; He made all men, to one degree or another, learners. What greater act exists for the teacher than the cultivation of minds made in the image of God? A teacher peddles things greater and more terrible than himself. Ideas rule the world.

And by the way—to interject—degrees of intelligence make no difference in the kingdom of Heaven. I am half tempted to wish mediocrity on all of us. Littleness treated confidently completes us. Children and their admirers flood the rivers of paradise. I think naivety works to a child’s psychological advantage, and that, perhaps, our Lord was talking about a faith easier to maintain due to smaller ability. I can hear Jesus adding a new verse to Matthew 5 now, “Blessed are the numbskulls, for they shall inherit the truth”! If we lack the capacity for volumes of knowledge, we avoid self-satisfaction. Humility rules when we are satisfied in the negative. After all, it is what we are not that makes us who we are. A triangle with 4 sides is no triangle. We’ve forgotten to read our Augustine, leaving behind the principle that it is none other than the image of God in us which causes us to sin. A blind man cannot sin with his eyes, only with the instruments available to him.

But this is only half of the truth. Easy is the marriage of humility to littleness, but hard is the marriage of self-confidence to littleness. Satan’s fall reflects the feminine self-consciousness as much as the masculine arrogance. He lacks the property of Deity like Susie lacks straight teeth. Both are tragic misunderstandings of beauty and the phelix culpa, and stem from a poor view on identity. They get things mixed upside down. Before we know it, Satan will be trying on a two piece, and Susie wielding a triton.

Our reasons for sinning always seems silly years later, when the experience is no longer fresh, and the memory abstracts. But its consequences rarely go unnoticed. An assault on our identity leaves an impression. Paul warns most severely against sexual sins for a reason: they destroy the both the physical and metaphysical man. And that, I think, is the great sin of elitism. Its primary failure reeks not of insecurity—though that is true— but of self-centered indifference to the identity of a consciousness external to itself. What of our axioms? What matters more than loving others? The Mona Lisa pales in comparison to Mona Lisa; quoted lines of Tennyson’s Ulysses are not the words of Ulysses. Paul at the coffee shop has a fairyland somewhere in his rib cage. Our friends, our lovers, our parents have a history rich with adventure and tragedy and love. To hell with metaphysics if it comes at the cost of a love which consists in knowing someone. I’d rather talk about whatever they want, like what they like, see what they see. The real trick seems a dance between the actualized, authentic self and the other dancers.

the K.H.

Edge Im Acation

Christians only have the luxury of knowing that a good God controls their tomorrow, not the luxury of knowing exactly what that includes. I’m applying for graduate school, and await either a yes or a no. Fingers crossed, libations poured, and several rabbit’s feet later, I am hopeful. But whether God decide I sit in a classroom, or spend the long hours of my life elsewhere, my approach to education will not change; His decision will only determine how much time I spend on it.

Americans can be classified as having one of two mentalities toward learning. To their chagrin, the majority employ a mode of learning characteristic of a defense mechanism. With an air of unconscious dismissal and superiority, they censure any and all foreign ideas, criticizing both people and philosophies they do not understand. As a species of learner, they fail to listen, which is their primary problem, and lack a healthy curiosity, which is their secondary. Our parents are particularly susceptible to this approach—part of it having to do with a misunderstanding of their valued experience, and part of it with their Modernist tendencies. Concrete experience consistent with correlative philosophies procure a sentimental attachment, making people feel a security toward tested propositions.

Have you noticed, for example, that the majority of elderly people cannot, or rather, will not so much as listen to an alien idea—no matter the source? If you introduce someone they believe to hold a position contrary to their own, they simply will not listen. Condescending patience arises and nostrils flare. This mentality, they have come to believe, is the result of wisdom—the amalgamation of learned experience opposes any idea. And this, I say in a manner meant to shock, is Codswallop.

Experience can only turn into wisdom if one has learned how to learn first. A lifetime spent with a poor learning attitude (regardless of the degree of intelligence) does not produce sages, it produces dilettantes and immaturity. Education and learning is a field like any other. There are better and worse approaches. On its own, the critical habit limits learning. When we criticize anything, we can only take what we already know—our intuitions, assumptions, and facts— to contradict novelties. Criticism is by its very nature an exercise with parameters. One cannot learn and criticize at the same time. We may, if we like, switch in and out of this mode, but in the actual moment by moment a critic cannot learn.

Contrary to popular Protestant Evangelical belief, criticism as an intellectual habit is the less impressive mental activity and weaker sister to creativity. In fact, criticism is most laudable, when it is at all, as an act of creativity. Our preoccupation with Christian ‘filters’ has made proud and naïve Christians. Don’t get me wrong, I think there is a time and place to shepherd our’s and our flock’s minds. But no amount of safety should come at the cost of unhealthy sheep. Why protect from wolves the environment killing your sheep?

I am talking about the difference between a mature and immature mind. Let me clarify that I do not believe myself to be promulgating the ideals of youth. There is a measurable difference between those who operate within the unhealthy or healthy mentality, no matter the age. The learned as well as the laymen, the young and as well as the old are equally in danger of using their minds incorrectly.

Doubtless, you find the source of these words ironic. Who but the kid with a high appreciation for education would pick on peccadilloes of the mind? Of course. But here, you will be cheating both me and yourself. If you take me for what I am actually saying, if you listen, you will realize that I do not believe sins of the mind small—not when I have personally witnessed their destruction upon myself and those I love. Christian anti-intellectualism has not resulted in a few silly Christians, it has resulted in the perpetual spiritual depravity of every major university in the Western hemisphere.

The great tragedy of all I’ve written here is that I will only be preaching to the choir. Those who don’t know how to listen will surely not listen to this pile of rubbish. Mentalities usually go unchanged until a crisis moment smacks sense into us. Quickly, then, I will try my best to recreate such a moment in writing: the critical mentality does not only make you stupid; it makes you immature of mind; it makes you a greater sinner. Patience and prudence are not your virtues because you have never enacted them, and know nothing of the goodness they confer to you and yours. Agnostics consider you naïve because you are. Atheists think you superstitious because you are. Your disagreements turn into emotional attacks because you do not know how to say ‘I don’t know’ or ‘you might be right.’

I hate getting preachy, especially with abrasive language in public view. But I have had too many conversations with ph.d.’s whose critical genius has made them peevish, and too many conversations with laymen who would have you believe they have a ph.d in any given subject. When our Lord commanded us to love Him with all our minds, He meant that thinking is an act of worship. To treat it as anything less is sin. Like loving God with all our hearts, souls, and strength we are required to do it well. We are required to do it with purity as well as sincerity.

5 Stuff Thing Doodads

1. My apologies for the lengthy absence. I’ve been a little preoccupied this week with working 12 hours a day. And all my free time has consisted of icing sore limbs, and checking practical necessities off the to do list.

2. Speaking of the to do list, I’m presently working on a post which consists of what I’ve been thinking about lately. Someone asked me what had been rolling around upstairs, and found in answering them, that I was incapable of articulating it. I may or may not post it here, as I expect its unpopularity, but I’ll be glad to at least have it worked out in my own head.

3. Stuff This Week:

I’ve learned, or rather, solidified my suspicions that I like to teach.

Monday is a big day, November a big month, and the future inevitable.

I, uh, turn 24 on Nov 13, and I, uh, don’t know how I feel about that.

Five Guys Burgers and Fries.Hereafter is a mediocre film.

I have a newly found love: hummus; it’s delicious and healthy.

4. I was told that hormonal traffic was most sever in the latter teen years of male growth. Somewhere around 18 and 19. Bullocks. I’m inching toward a quarter of a century over here, and balls—literally.

5. Quote of the day: I can remember how when I was young I believed death to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely a function of the mind — and that of the minds who suffer the bereavement. The nihilists say it is the end; the fundamentalists, the beginning; when in reality it is no more than a single tenant or family moving out of a tenement or a town.—Faulkner

You Know When

1. You know the moment just before you take off a smelly shoe? How you’ve already mapped out an exit strategy? And how, once it’s off, you begin the dash out of the hazard zone only to discover through your peripheral that you’ve left your phone on the counter? And you know, then, about that moment of indecision and hesitation where you stop suddenly, and your momentum lifts all your weight onto one leg, your arms extend awkwardly in front of you for balance while your back and neck twist around to look at your miscalculation? How the choice between you’re nose and a phone call from a friend have each settled themselves in two opposing corners of your body, one pushing the other pulling? And you know how you choose your friends, because, well, who wouldn’t, so you take a breath before you take the plunge, but you take it too late, and now you have smelly shoe in your mouth? And you know how you can’t tolerate the old, leathery flavor, so you exhale, and breath through your nose instead, but now you’re breathing in your own bad leathery breath? And you know how you’re breathing heavier because of all the excitement, and you get in more smelly nose-breaths per capita than you would have had you just taken your shoes off, calmly grabbed your phone, and proceeded out the door?

the K.H.

Ode To Flicking Off

I sometimes quote poems i'm trying to memorize while driving. Usually, i bob my head or tap my fingers so as to give the illusion i'm singing along with the radio. No need to make public my private habits. On this unfortunate ride, however, i was either too tired or too indifferent to pretend, and made the mistake of looking over to the car across me at a stop light. Stanza five of John Keats' Ode to a Nightengale made its way from my lips as i stared unconsciously at the two gentlemen seated in a white pickup truck.

Now, either they have a serious distaste for Romantic poetry, or they took my mumbled words and vacant expression to mean i harbored some undeserved contempt toward them. I take it, and i trust this is an educated guess, they assumed the latter. Before i could look back, a horn honked, and the sweet music of Keats vanished into the background. Foremost in my thoughts, not to mention my visual field, was raised a stout middle finger.

You can imagine my shock. One moment i am in a forest of "white hawthorn...fast fading violets covered up in leaves," and the next confronted with the trunk and stem of a finger belonging to an angry African-American man. It didn't register at first. I gazed blankly at the figure, trying to remember my geometry. Then it hit me. "Yep," i thought "he's flicking me off."

"But why?" my thoughts continued "What is this? What did i do?" I was too confused to react in kind (another habit of mine i should probably keep in the private sphere), and too tired to labor for an answer. I simply continued to stare and quote John Keats. Not one ounce of emotion escaped me; not one twitch of my cheek muscles. This went on for nearly 10 seconds before the light turned green, and i turned my head to watch the road.

Off we went, the two angry black men and i. The passenger shuffled in his seat to be sure i still noticed his gesturing, and i kept on with my poem. One mile and many obscenities later, their need for McDonalds outweighed their need for retribution, and they dropped into the turning lane. By now i was finishing up the last few lines "Fled is that music-Do i wake or sleep."

Only now do i realize the irony. I got flipped a bird for quoting a poem about a bird, half asleep, and failing to pretend i was listening to fleeting music.

the K. H.

Methinks and Middle-English

I still remember the first time I heard the word dullard. “Here,” I thought, “here at last is the word I have been searching for all my life.” To call someone a dullard is not so brazen as to call them an idiot, but neither is it so unsophisticated as to call them stupid. It sounds cleaner, like a sharp note on queue.

Anyone with an inkling for poetry will find this easy to follow. One peculiar word or a harmonious alignment of phrases excites some of us the way the first visage of a grand piano excites a musician. Something fundamental in our nature shivers with delight at the color of language.

The gift, vaguely dubbed an ear is, on the Christian view, part of the way God has formed some of his children. To some He gave apostles, to some prophets, and to some a man crush on John Keats. Without patting my own back, I think I can safely hoist my flag among the big eared, Dumbo-like personages with whom I find camaraderie. Of course, it does not follow that I have Millay’s or Dickenson’s talents, but it certainly follows that I’d take them both out on a date--so long as they promised to whisper their lines in my ear.

But dullards, if you remember its perfection in sound, is made even more perfect here as a description of those impoverished souls whose aesthetic range scarcely surpasses that of a block of cheese. There are two main types of dullards: those who can and don’t and those who don’t because they can’t. I’m not upset at the lame for losing marathons, so I’m not upset with those who have no tongue for tastes. What irks me are those who, for whatever reasons, disengage themselves from aesthetic experiences they are capable of indulging.

We listen to music because the aesthetic experience requires no effort, external instruments manipulate the internal self. Poetry, on the other hand, sometimes requires an effort akin to reading philosophy. The mind must actively engage, the imagination must be set loose like a dog on a leash. But we are lazy.

The resultant tragedy is the death of an artistic mode. Those outside of poetical circles will not consider this very tragic; they will probably prefer it, as they consider language in its use its only relevancy. But this trend is symptomatic of the whole modern tendency to strip a thing’s value down to its utility. In truth, calling Donne’s Holy Sonnet 14 valuable because it is efficacious for producing piety among Christians is like calling caviar valuable because it fills our stomachs. You simply miss the point. Holy Sonnet 14 produces piety because it is beautiful; it is not beautiful because it produces piety.

Poetry’s not all methinks and middle English; it is a mode through which we engage reality. We who have a knack for it know this best. But we also know we are like the man with two arms trying to convince a one armed world that there’s more to the world than a handshake and a high five. There’s patty cake, and eating cereal while reading, and full embraces. It’s not until we demand a little creative effort on their behalf, and not until they break through their excuses, that they will partake in the tones and tastes, the amplifications and secrets of poetical ecstasy.

"Be subtle, various, ornamental, clever,
And do not listen to those critics ever
Whose crude provincial gullets crave in books
Plain cooking made still plainer by plain cooks
As though the Muse preferred her half-wit sons:
Good poets have a weakness for bad puns." -W. H. Auden

the K. H.

Nonsense Ought To Be Suggestive

Few moments deserve more attention than the one in which your primary goal is to make it to the toilet on time. That first realization and the reckless dash following it surmise the tragi-comedy of the human condition. No, i'm not talking about the fact that you shouldn't have had Chinese food for the 2nd time this week, i'm talking about the fact that you shouldn't have had McDonalds at all. I'm talking about food poisoning.

I spent the long hours of yesterday with my arms wrapped tightly around my porcelain savior. But snug as we were, i'm glad it's over. I only bring it up because 1) it's funny and 2) because, given the history of my attitude toward suffering of any kind, i'm surprised that i find it funny.

There's more psychology than i care to relate, and more philosophy than i know, but as far as the observable facts of my life go, no issue has caused more relational strife between God and i than the existential problem of pain. Of course, i have no room to talk about suffering; i am the quintessential poster-child for bratty Christians. My only excuse is that, having been given so much, i am more sensitive to ailments. Now trust me, i’m not justifying myself; if anything, I’m condemning.

But let me pause before you think i'm indulging in an episode of self-loathing. Public confessions shouldn't be public unless the goal of said confessor is to benefit consciousnesses external to himself. I have a serious disagreement with several theologian's take on the book of Job. They are under the impression that God provides the man from Ur an answer to his probing question. In point of fact, without hermeneutical gymnastics I cannot find within the text a clear, definite, and most importantly, satisfying answer.

Frost puts our modern formulation of Job’s sentiment accurately, "I'd give more for one least beforehand reason than all the justifying ex-post-facto excuses trumped up by You (God) for theologists." Who cares to grow if growing requires suffering? In those bleak moments, ontological standings matter little when ignorance is bliss. The values of comfort and stability rule when a man desires no change. But just because the sentiment is accurate, it does not follow that it lasts.

Chesterton distinguishes between the kind of paradox upon which the mind can build, and one which kills thought. The paradox inherent to Job, the paradox inherent to the existential problem of pain, is of the first order, requiring the whole man to participate. God hurting us to heal us is nonsense, but it is paradoxical nonsense which suggests something.

And to suggest is exactly the point. As a poem and drama, subconscious suggestion is all Job is. It suggests something alien, on the parameters of consciousness—something alive. Job’s existential problem of pain is answered only by God’s existential derailment of Job’s question. “The answer is in the full drama.” The meaning of the event is, of itself, nonsense, as no event can have meaning. We can, if we like, abstract meaning from it (and here our ambitious theologians go too far), but Job’s moment by moment conscious engagement with the Divine is pure experience. Nevertheless, it was here, in the unmeaning, that Job found his answer. Not that he found an answer to his question, only that he discovered, certainly to his wonder, that he no longer had a question. As Orual put it, “Before Your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice”?

All that to say something rather simple. Whether it be upchucking, nose two inches from the same place all manner of evil abides, or angst of the most violent kind, the point is that sometimes there is no answer. Sometimes the point is that you aren’t asking the right question.

the K. H.

Preliminary Remarks

I've avoided blogging--and its ugly step-sisters--to save myself the potential embarrassment inherent to saying anything in public. Mistakes revealed in whispers, or hid beneath layers of hard-drives and paper stacks are easy to keep private. Life is like poker, the idea is to seem like you know what you are doing at all times. Keep it up long enough, and people start to believe you--or so says Machiavelli, a man who, with a cigar in his left hand and seven/deuce in his right, would have you believe he doesn't smoke and is sitting pretty with a couple of ladies.

But alas, i grow weary of charades. What i think and how i feel are in motion, and motion is part of being human. We're not all pith and vigor, and i've come to terms with the fact. So what if what i think today will seem childish tomorrow; who cares? Not i, at least not any longer.

What am i going to write about then? I haven't the faintest. I'm sure my reasons for involving myself in the social anomaly we call blogging are reminiscent of everyone else's. There are times we like the attention, times we want to discuss, or times we want to communicate something exciting. So long as things are kept in right proportion, i can't foresee any dangers. All in all, blogging is useful for someone who finds writing a natural mode of communication.

the K. H.


"Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress
Of every chord, and see what may be gain'd
By ear industrious, and attention meet:
Misers of sound and syllable, no less
Than Midas of his coinage."--John Keats