Minding Souls

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The mind, despite nay-sayers, is real. It isn’t an illusion. Emergent phenomena are often larger than the sum of their parts. One of the problems with the non-physical is that we can’t parse it precisely. “Mind” may be called “soul” may be called “personality” may be called “spirit.” You get the picture. Many scientists would answer “none of the above” to the question of which of these exist. Other scientists, not on the fringe, are beginning to see that the answers aren’t quite so simple. A recent piece in the mainstream Washington Post, dares to say what we all feel. Or at least many of us feel. There are realities that religions have recognized for millennia, that demonstrate the existence of the non-corporeal. “As a psychiatrist, I diagnose mental illness. Also, I help spot demonic possession,” an article by Richard Gallagher, is worth reading. Gallagher, with a hat-trick of Ivy League-awarded degrees, believes in demons. They’re rare, of course, he says, but real.

The standard story—in large part correct—is that ancients misdiagnosed epilepsy and some forms of mental illness as demons. Undoubtedly their standard threshold was too low. Occasionally, however, they may have been right. Unlike what we’re sometimes told, the ancients recognized at least some mental illness when they saw it. There were non-functional people then, and while some may have blamed demons, others saw them as people who don’t think like the rest of society. Then there were the possessed. As Gallagher notes, humans with superhuman strength, speaking languages they never learned, and yes, even levitating, have been witnessed by credible viewers. Very rare, yes. But also very real.

Despite the need that many feel for freedom, we are, as a species, fond of laws. We want to know the rules and we’re quick to call out those we catch cheating. We’re so fond of laws that we apply them to nature and claim that natural laws can never be broken. Well, at least not above the quantum level. A friend shared that this concept of applying legal language to nature is a fairly recent development in human thought. The idea of a law, however, requires someone to oversee and enforce it. One of the subtleties here is that any enforcement that takes place requires a measure of value, and value, as much as we all treasure it, simply can’t be quantified. Is gold more valuable than silver? It depends. The value comes in assessing its usefulness. Laws separate good behavior from bad behavior. And, if many credible people are to be believed, the behavior of mind sometimes defies the laws of nature.

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Holy Oak

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It was already ancient when first discovered by the early European colonists of New Jersey. The Basking Ridge oak is a well-known and time-honored New Jersey denizen. Over six centuries old, the white oak, it seems, is dying. Like it’s cousin, the Swamp Oak that I mentioned back in January, this tree is dear to many in the state. It is also historical. An article in the New Jersey Star-Ledger begins with some religious associations: George Whitefield, one of the evangelists responsible for “the Great Awakening” from which we’re still trying to awaken, preached under this very tree. George Washington also knew it. It has been tended and cared for by the town for so long that there is a reluctance to let it go. In the words of another New Jerseyan, “well everything dies, baby, that’s a fact.” Job, in a more optimistic moment, declared, “there is hope for a tree.” Like the Good Book, the good folk of Jersey wax religious about this sexcentarian, and for good reason. The human outlook is far too short.

Think, for example, of what was happening when the Basking Ridge oak was a mere acorn. In the early 1400s there were no Protestants yet. That didn’t stop Jan Hus and Joan of Arc from being burned at the stake, however. Although the Vikings, and perhaps others, had ventured here from across the ocean, North America was blissfully unaware of those waiting to claim for their own any land they could set foot on. Good thing too. The Inquisition was still underway and witch trials lingered on, flying in the face of enlightenment. Cambridge and Oxford University Presses were, in some sense, neophyte businesses. This Eurocentric view overlooks the great achievement of Machu Picchu down south. As the Dark Ages were beginning to lighten, this oak began its life’s journey. We who are a mere blink of its slow eye are still spouting hate for those who are different and are determined that nobody should outlive us.

The Holy Oak, as it is known, stands beside a Presbyterian Church. One of the trustees of the church is in charge of the tree. In the article he stated that this is about eternal life. From our perspective, trees seem to live forever. That’s because we are so dreadfully short-sighted. It’s surprisingly easy to become nostalgic for a tree so old. In terms of accomplishment, we think humans are exceptional for surviving a century of all the misfortune we dish out for one another. The tree, however, seems innocent by comparison. We’re changing the climate even now, making it more difficult for trees to thrive. We continue to shoot people for the color of their skin and although we don’t call it witch-hunting any more we still find ways of oppressing anyone who is different. At this rate we may need six more centuries to come to our senses. If only we had the perspective of a tree.

Sense of Place

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Visiting the Holocaust Museum was one of the most wrenching activities of my life. I was in Washington DC for a meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature when my friend Jeff came across the Atlantic to attend. He wanted to see the Museum and I reluctantly agreed to accompany him. About half-way through I found a secluded bench, sat, and wept. I simply couldn’t take the weight of the sadness and cruelty this represented. I have trouble telling another person “no,” let alone striking, or harming them. How could millions of people simply be discounted? Murdered for being born who they were? Could there be anything more inhumane? A quote from the recently departed Elie Wiesel hung on the wall behind my bench. “Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.” My wife asked if I would be okay. “I don’t know,” I said.

I have to admit to being a Pokémon illiterate. I don’t know who or what Pokémon is. I do know it/he represents a game universe that originated in Japan. The last “game” I ever played was Myst. Before that it was Pong. I suspect that growing up without computers made real games seem, well, real. I don’t have time for computer games and I wouldn’t know an X-Box if if fell on my head. I don’t even know if they still exist. You’d have to be dead, however, not to know that Pokémon Go is all that anyone cares about any more. An app that lets you “find” Pokémon in various places, adults and kids alike are blindly walking out in front of cars to get her/it. One of the undying lessons of my childhood was, “if the ball rolls out into the street, don’t run after it!” Natural selection at work.

So what do Pokémon and the Holocaust Museum have to do with each other? Nothing at all. Or thus it should be. A story in the Washington Post shares the plea of the museum for people to stop seeking Pokémon there. One of the sites programmed for the whimsical creatures is more sacred than a church, synagogue, or mosque. Genocide is not a game. Headlines boldly proclaim that Pokémon Go is great for businesses. The Holocaust Museum is not about business. It is a mass grave on a scale that the human mind simply can’t conceive. A place to remind us where hatred and fascism lead. As difficult as it may be, we need to visit that terrifying place and we need to remember that it began as distrust of those who are different.

Photo credit: AgnosticPreachersKid, Wikimedia Commons

Photo credit: AgnosticPreachersKid, Wikimedia Commons

Biblical Literature

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HB as LitIt must be difficult to write a Very Short Introduction. Although the series is published by Oxford University Press, I’m not being a shill. As someone who writes the equivalent of several of these little books a year, I imagine it must be nearly impossible to confine what you need to say to such a small space. I recently read The Hebrew Bible as Literature: A Very Short Introduction, by Tod Linafelt, and I imagined the anguish of my colleague as he had to decide what to leave out. Professors these days appreciate short books because there is an actual chance that students might read them. The Bible itself is intimidating as a textbook—massive and brooding as it is. Then, in addition to the Ding an Sich, the instructor also has to provide interpretive tools. One of the most common these days is that of the Bible as literature.

This obvious assignment is not without dispute, however. Literature is defined by some as a secular category. The Bible, as a set of one, is a holy book. That is to say, it can’t be considered literature at all. As a collection of written texts, however, the Bible can be understood as a literary venture as well as a sacerdotal one, and for many schools this is the only way the Bible can be legally taught. Not only that, but almost all scholars now realize that, protestations aside, the Bible is literature. It is one of the great books of the western canon. Civilization for huge swaths of the planet was based, in some way, on this book (the Bible, that is). Understanding it as literature is the venture of a lifetime, and condensing that down to an easily digestible Very Short Introduction is no mean task. Linafelt performs his duty admirably. The basics of prose and poetry are covered, as well as their interaction. The examples he chooses are compelling and I learned quite a bit myself, even having taught the Bible many years.

As I read, it struck me that the main objection to the Bible as literature revolves around the concept of truth. Linafelt raises this question early, and it stayed with me throughout the book. In a kind of sacred exceptionalism, “Bible believers” treat literature literally. Ironically, this can lead to grave misunderstandings. Truth, however, is a difficult concept to pin down. Many people equate literature with fiction and truth with fact. Truth is actually a bit more fluid than that. As any poet knows, some truths can’t be expressed in prose. Or history. Or philosophy. And some truths are best expressed in fiction. That brings us back to literature as a form of truth. I suppose that’s a good thing too, because were I to write much more I might be in danger of accidentally composing a Very Short Introduction. As long as I’m being a shill, just consider this a very short introduction to a Very Short Introduction.

For the Dogs

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DogsThatKnowYou know that feeling of being dropped into a very strange place?  Sure, it’s disorienting for a while, but once you get used to it, you start to enjoy your surroundings.  Now ask yourself: what if my entire way of looking at life is based on a faulty paradigm?  Many, I suspect, will drop out at that point.  There’s strange, and then there’s going too far.  For those wedded to the idea of finding the truth, however, weirdness is part of the journey.  I just finished reading Rupert Sheldrake’s Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home.  Yes, it felt like the room was spinning (actually, I read it on the bus, so that might’ve been true a time or two), but it confirmed something I’ve suspected for many years.  The reigning, mechanistic universe paradigm is wrong.  Please don’t take this as an anti-science statement.  Sheldrake is a bona fide scientist, and I’m an avid reader of science books.  It’s not so much that science is wrong as it is that science doesn’t go far enough.  Ever since the Industrial Revolution—not coincidentally—we’ve been informed that the universe is really a giant machine.  We can figure out how it works using this squishy stuff in our heads that insists we can find Pokemon everywhere we look when it’s not busy solving the riddles of the mulitverse.

Sheldrake, who is given a wide berth by many scientists, states what any of us who grew up with pets knows: they know more than they’re saying.  Admitting up front that much of the evidence is anecdotal, Sheldrake provides empirical studies to demonstrate what folk say.  Dogs do know when their owners are coming home, before they are within sight, hearing, or smelling range.  His study, however, isn’t limited to dogs or to knowing when someone’s coming.  Animals, by virtue of their own minds, have abilities that we do not.  Since they don’t speak our language, we assume they are dumb.  In fact, as this book shows, a great many animals know a great deal more than we do.  The question is, if this is the truth why don’t we hear more about it?

We prefer, it seems, our truth to be qualified.  There’s a lot at stake here.  The reigning paradigm keeps us plugged into this corporate machine we’ve devised.  Our lifestyle cannot subsist without the subordination of animals.  We can’t give them abilities we lack, apart from tastiness.  If the universe isn’t a machine, it might open the door for a broader view of reality.  Maybe it is better to be post-Christian, but religion has proven benefits to humans (and perhaps animals).  Why does religion remain in a mechanistic universe?  Perhaps what we call “souls” are the same as “minds” and perhaps they aren’t the same as brains.  If we really do have minds, it is in our best interest to care for them, develop them, and improve them.  It may seem like a strange world indeed where your dog informs your view of reality.  Read Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home, however, and see if you don’t find yourself wagging your tale, just a bit.

Ham’s Ark

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Noah and his ark have been in the news quite a bit over the past several months. A friend recently shared a story on American News X about Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter, soon to open in Kentucky. It may be open already, but I haven’t been down yonder lately. I’m not going to attempt to match the well-deserved snark of Thomas Clay’s article, but I did find the design of Ham’s ark worthy of comment. I’m afraid I’ll have to wait while you check the article since photographs are covered by copyright and, well, I haven’t been down yonder. What first strikes me about Ham’s ark is that it has a rudder (as well as a keel). The Bible does imply that this was the first boat built, but then it also states the plans, like the Bible itself, came directly from God. The Almighty surely understands fluid dynamics, but I was wondering what the rudder was for. Did Noah plan on going someplace? Presumably in his flat world he’d have wanted to just stay afloat over the same place since, to quote another scripture, “there’s no place like home.”

Genesis doesn’t say anything about a rudder. In fact, apart from the inexact measurements in cubits, all we know about the ark are the following features:

•its dimensions (300 cubits by 50 cubits by 50 cubits; RMS Titanic, by comparison, was approximately 548.5 cubits long)
•it had three decks
•it had a door
•it had a window.

The Ham-style ark design is based on that advocated by Sun Pictures some years back as being especially seaworthy. Nobody knows what gopher wood is, but there was plenty of it around since all the plants were considered expendable in the face of a flood that would kill everything. But a rudder?

The biblical ark took its cue, somehow, from the much older tale of Utnapishtim. There are even earlier versions than that in the Gilgamesh Epic, but the parallels between Gilgamesh and Genesis have been known for well over a century now and are pretty remarkable. The original ark, however, was a cube. It had six decks. Now a cube of wood—even gopher wood—would sink like, well, a cube of gopher wood. Such a ship wouldn’t require a rudder to help it find the bottom of the New World Ocean.

Before my academic career took a tumble I was slated to write a book on Noah. Too bad that never happened, what with all the interest these days. A cottage industry in making arks has been launched. As modern-day arks sail, or at least get towed, through the present-day oceans, or are built high on dry ground, we can be glad for a rudder in the prescient mind of the sender of all floods.

Photo credit: Centre for Research Collections University of Edinburgh, via Wikimedia Commons

Photo credit: Centre for Research Collections University of Edinburgh, via Wikimedia Commons

Camping Season

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Summer is the time for camp. I’m not into extreme sports, like sleeping outdoors in the snow, so in my mind, summer is the time for camp. While in college I spent two summers as a counselor for the Western Pennsylvania United Methodist Conference camps: Wesley Woods, Camp Allegheny, and Jumonville. These were formative experiences for me since I’d never camped as a kid (beyond sleeping on the front porch and an ill-fated attempt at Boy Scout camp one winter), and certainly not in a Christian context. My wife recently sent me a story in The Guardian about Jesus Camp. The documentary is a decade old now, and people are wondering if the religious indoctrination of children is child abuse or what. As always in such situations I tell myself the real issue is that you can’t understand Fundamentalism unless you’ve believed it. Really believed it.

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Some psychologists claim children can’t conceptualize God. Many adults can’t either, but for those who try, what they believe is true. The Fundamentalist parent doesn’t attempt to deceive his or her child. The thought of having your own children suffer eternally in Hell is a wrenching, and very real one. A convinced adult is morally, viscerally, and utterly compelled to teach her or his child the truth. Anything less would be monstrous, hideous, and inhumane. Critics from the outside say that such nonsense damages children psychologically. I have to admit that watching Jesus Camp made left me feeling enraged and, in some measure, victimized. The untold reality, however, is that apart from some cases of deep insincerity, most Fundamentalists truly believe what they teach their children. They’re not trying to abuse any more than a parent who teaches their progeny that the stove is hot. They want the best for their kids and life is full of uncomfortable truths.

Richard Dawkins, notably, has argued that teaching children religion is a form of child abuse. The fact is nobody knows the truth about religion. All we can do, scientists included, is believe. Believe for or against or somewhere in the middle. God, by definition, stands outside the reach of empirical evidence. Perhaps it’s just a trick of consciousness, but we have to leave the possibility open. We don’t even understand consciousness yet. Rare aberrations apart, people love and care for their children. They try to give them the best that they can, and that includes their religion or lack thereof. I saw some strange stuff at church camp. It wasn’t in any sense “Jesus Camp,” but it’s safe to say it changed my life. On the brink of fully legal adulthood I was coming to learn that certainty was impossible, and the only honest way to be in the world was to admit that we all, in some form, believe.

Nazi Religion

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CatholicismRootsAs a lifelong pacifist, I’ve never been a fan of war books. Indeed, war seems to be to an utterly useless waste of life and a source of herculean suffering. The fact that wars happen, and books about them depress me, causes me to avoid them. Still, Derek Hastings’ Catholicism and the Roots of Nazism is less about war and more about, as the subtitle phrases it, Religious Identity and National Socialism. As I read through this history of the early Nazi movement, it occurred to me that this was probably the first actual book I’ve ever read about it. My knowledge of the Nazis had previously come from articles, movies, and documentaries. And Hogan’s Heroes. Being largely of germanic pedigree, I suppose I bear some residual guilt. I have to remind myself that my ancestors had left Europe before Germany had even existed as a unified state. I like to think they would’ve left during the rise of the Nazis, if they hadn’t already left generations before.

In any case, I had no idea of how the Third Reich dealt with organized religion. I have heard anecdotal opinions from time to time that the Catholic Church should have been stronger in its condemnation of the atrocities that wartime Germany perpetrated, but I had no sense of their official outlook toward each other. Hastings makes clear that although Catholicism and Nazism came to distrust each other implicitly, at the beginning of the Nazi movement they were considerably more chummy. In fact, anti-Semitism was something they had in common. Many of the early member of the party were Catholics—some of them priests—who felt an accord with the developing ideology. As Hitler’s rise to power increased, his personal antipathy to Christianity widened the growing gap between his own outlook and that of the early Catholic Nazis.

The book has no schadenfreude for the church, however. This is academic history. As Hastings notes, few studies have focused on the early developments of Nazism. In today’s political climate, that struck a chord with me. It seems vitally important to be aware of how such movements start so that we can recognize them as they attempt to rise again. I have little confidence, reading the news, that we are any better in the 2010s than people were in the 1920s when political instability, economic distress, and hatred of those who were different led to a reactionary, fascist regime. Could it happen again? I look around at a culture in love with guns and endless, selfish gain, and distrust of those of different ethnic origins and I wonder. The early stages are, I think, the most crucial to recognize. Surely no German Catholics could’ve anticipated just what Nazism would become.

Words for Play

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Maybe you’ve seen it too.  Corporate-style psychobabble.  Memos land on your desk, whether real or virtual, jostling with neologisms, indicating the trendy new directions the business is going.  Apparently a legal requirement is that old vocabulary is vorboten in such information-bytes.  You can’t call a spade a spade—it might confuse somebody.  Do you mean a playing card spade, or something to dig with?  And do people even use spades anymore?  Why not call them loam-moving facilitators?  Isn’t that really what they are?  If you can get through a memorandum without a dictionary (slang or otherwise) you’re much more fluent in my native language than me. Or I.  I often wonder how much this has to do with an inherent inferiority complex.  A cog in this corporate machine has to prove it’s usefulness.  If nobody can understand what you’re doing, it seems, your job is secure.  I imagine think tanks as being like big aquaria, but with fewer viable ideas than captive fish.  I once read a memo that had to give each and every stage of a process a chic new name.  I felt like I needed to update my wardrobe and get a fashionable haircut just to read the thing.

Perhaps it’s just that a simply guy like yours truly prefers things explained clearly.  I can imagine a meeting taking place where nobody really understands what’s going on but they all have to nod their heads in approval for fear of feeling stupid.  New phrases, of course, have their place.  We needed a portmanteau for “telephone” back in the day, since there had been nothing like it before.  Most of my memos, by contrast, have been about plain old things that have been around for centuries.  Or millennia.  And if an old word is used, such as “idea,” it has to be in quotes.  Business must find a way of ensuring stakeholders that it’s on top of the latest developments.  Who uses a fax any more?  Most people consider email outmoded.  The period itself, I’ve read, is about to go extinct.  Still we have time to make up corporate-speak.

I work in the publishing industry, which is notoriously slow.  Unhurried attention to detail is a sign of quality.  If you want a book to be good, you need to take your time at every stage of the process.  Sure, a book can be churned out mere days after an important event, but if you read it you’ll see the corners that have been cut.  We even received an issue of Time once that had the “e” accidentally chopped off by a hasty cutting machine.  You want quality, you need to take your tim.  Adopting the newest coinage in the busyness business hardly seems a way for minting success.  Utilizing quality ideas isn’t the same as the fabrication of nonce words.  Of course, attention to detail takes away from time that could be spent making more money.  Churning out new verbiage creates the illusion of being ahead of the game.  If you need a dictionary to understand what your company is doing, perhaps it’s a good thing to work in publishing, even if you have to look words up online.

Joban Vampires

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Interview VampireThe first vampire novel I ever read, I remember correctly, was one of the Dark Shadows series written by Marilyn Ross. I don’t recall which one, since I had to buy my books from Goodwill or some such vender utilized by the poor. Now, I’m really a squeamish guy and the sight of blood bothers me. Barnabas Collins, however, was a compelling character—deeply conflicted and a reluctant vampire. The combination of his sadness and the setting in coastal Maine kept me looking for Dark Shadows books every time we went shopping. It surprised me, given all that, that I had such difficulty getting into Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire. I started reading it years ago (it was also a second-hand copy, and, interestingly, the color scheme of the cover nearly matched Dark Shadows novels) and some eighty pages in put it down only to forget about it. Starting from the beginning a few weeks ago, I gave it another try. Although Louis is a conflicted vampire, the pace is languid and it was almost as if the self-pity was overdone. I was determined this time, however, to see it through.

One of the recurring themes of the book, and I presume the Vampire Chronicles series, is that vampires are not evil because of the Devil. In fact, there is nothing Satanic about them. Blame tends to fall on God for their state. The more I thought about it, the more the theodicy of the vampire began to resemble that of Job. Like Job, death for a vampire takes a long time. There is much suffering along the way. Louis can love, in a measure, and can loath himself. He never really understands what it is to be a vampire. The other undead he meets help to define him, but he can’t get too close. His life is a kind of Hell without Satan.

Rice’s vampires don’t fear crucifixes or shun churches. In fact, Louis takes a priest as one of his victims, sacramentally near an altar in a church. Religious imagery and discussion abound in the book. It truly is a vampire theodicy. Perhaps, for its day, it was the next step in vampire evolution. Bram Stoker, while the most famous contributor to the modern vampire myth, didn’t corner the market on defining the undead. When Louis meets vampires of the old world, they are mindless, plodding killing machines that even other vampires avoid. Rice’s vampires feel, think, and yes, theologize. I feel strangely satisfied now that I’ve finally finished the Interview. It was a vampire at my bedside for so long that it feels like an accomplishment to have finally laid it to rest.

Holy Girdles

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Religions, it seems, come in belts. Or at least elements of religions do. Although we may not all agree on what constitutes the “Bible Belt” we all have a pretty good idea that it includes several southern states, and parts of the Midwest. It doesn’t really resemble a belt that I can tell, but its convenience and assonance keep the phrase alive. Over this past weekend I was in the “Borscht Belt.” I’d heard the term before, but had no idea where this supposed belt was, or, indeed, why it was called this. Historically, three counties in the southern Catskills, so I learned, were attractive locations for summer homes for Jewish families from New York City. All within a easy day’s drive of Gotham, they provided the low mountain, resort feel of much of New York State and Pennsylvania. According to Wikipedia (surprisingly, I had no books on the Borscht Belt in my library) this designation is less descriptive now than it had been, back in the day.

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One of the immediately obvious features of the region, at least as recently as last weekend, were the number of orthodox Jews walking beside the roadways throughout these counties. I’m using “orthodox” here not as a technical term since I have difficulty identifying the different brands of conservative Jewish belief (there I go again!). Another obvious indicator was the number of billboards written in Hebrew. Just a hundred miles down the road west and these markers tend to disappear. By the time you reach the central part of “the southern tier” you come back to what was once called “the Burnt Over District” from the “Second Great Awakening.” Distinctively Christian in orientation. Religion is endemic in these hills.

The internet tells me that the Borscht Belt began to unbuckle with the relative ease of air travel. I have many Jewish colleagues who pop over to Israel on a fairly frequent basis. I suppose the Catskills just don’t compare with the Holy Land. Further south, along this same rocky spine, you come to the Poconos. I grew up hearing about this vacation paradise in my own state, but, like the Catskills, the region has been largely abandoned for higher mountains, bigger thrills. Having grown up in the foothills to the Appalachians, I learned in school that these are ancient mountains. Old ways are naturally preserved here. The religion I grew up in was old-time, for sure. There’s an agelessness to these weathered hills that seems to invite those with old religions to form enclaves and imagine that little has changed, despite what Wikipedia might say. And maybe it’s time to get a bigger belt, since conservative religion seems to be growing rather than shrinking.

Buying Intangibles

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Perhaps it seems that I’m writing quite a bit about music these days. Being a theoretical and practical failure in the practice of music, it may seem presumptuous. If I’m honest, I’d admit that visiting the site of Woodstock was kind of a religious experience for me. That experience and the fact that popular musicians from my younger days have been in the news of late compel me to analyze a bit. My wife shared a blog post on John Pavlovitz’s website entitled “Bono Called Out Christian Musicians For a Lack of Honesty. He Didn’t Go Far Enough.” The screed is both about the Christian music industry and about current trends in evangelistic super-churches that share in the glitz and glam and leave you wondering what Jesus would do. The message of early Christianity and the sixties was similar: social justice, peace, non-judgmental attitudes, care for others, love all. Don’t worry about the bottom line.

Many churches, it has become clear in this age of nones, are struggling to compete in the spiritual marketplace. Since every institution must have “product”—not books, music, reverence, or worship, but “product”—money must change hands. If you have any doubts look at what the mega-church pastors are driving. Christian bands seem not to have a social conscience so much as a desire to feel good. It’s a thriving industry, for sure. Music that makes you feel safe is delivering false promises, though. The deity thundering on that mountain might ask you to sacrifice your own son, and there could be a good, solid backbeat to that. What is the role of religion in an entrepreneurial society? It used to be that you couldn’t buy what they were giving away. Everything now has a sale tag on it.

Back in college we used to argue about whether U2 was a “Christian band” or not. Clearly they recorded on a secular label. Amy Grant, the darling of 1980s believers, matured and seemed to fall from grace. Larry Norman, never part of the establishment, died too young. Music and religion both stand, in fact, out of the reach of sticky capitalist fingers. Anything that you have to pay for is more a cheap imitation. YouTube has made all of recorded history available for all. Even mainstream churches are experimenting with tablet hymnals and virtual communion. Grace mediated through a touch screen. Debit cards accepted. The only thing that seems to be missing is that human touch. That down in the mud reality of it all. Music that had a message and that message wasn’t about supporting convention. “Upon this rock,” you can almost here the man say, “I will build my church.”

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Simon Says

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Music preserves your youth. When my wife was studying music therapy, one of the pieces of information she received is that those whose brains have begun to shut down the speaking faculties can still sing. People respond best, in such states, to the music of their youth. Anyone who lives long enough will decry the noise that the younger generation calls music. I’m thinking about this not just because of my recent visit to Bethel Woods, but also because of a New York Times story that Paul Simon is planning to leave the musical stage. Simon and Garfunkel was among the music of my youth. Accessible music with profound lyrics and, for the most part, a muted sadness. I grew up a long way from New York City, but listing to this music I felt like I was wandering the streets of the Village, soaking in a reality I would otherwise never experience.

It strikes me as no surprise that among the earliest manufactured artifacts discovered are musical instruments. While I seem to have missed nature’s boon in offering musical gifts, I nevertheless inherited the appreciator’s side. I don’t often listen to background music. I listen to music to listen. It carries its own meaning, akin to what we tend to think of as a religious experience. No doubt, for many, Woodstock felt like such an encounter. Music that could take you away from the troubles of a war-torn, prejudicial, jaded society. Even if only for a few moments. “I am a Rock,” was, for much of my youth, a kind of personal anthem.

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During a commencement address in not too distant months past, Simon told the graduates that ours was becoming a society at war with art. Music is money. College isn’t about becoming who you are; it’s career training. We don’t allow our young any time to explore any more. Few are willing to admit that capitalism, unrestrained, is just as bad as communism. Music used to be about the soul. The artists I know tell me it’s now about the cash. The man calls the shots. So as I stood on the hill overlooking the former Max Yasgur’s farm a few days ago, the lack of sound was poignant. There used to be, it seemed, different ways of existing in the world. Today the tempo is set and the music composed by those who prefer marching tunes that lead straight to the bank. Standing on that windswept hill I’m sure I can hear the sound of silence.

Things Remembered

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Freedom. Independence Day is our celebration of liberty. Yesterday I happened to find myself at Bethel Woods, the out-of-the-way location in New York where Woodstock was held. Probably no one in 1969 realized just how formative Woodstock and its message of peace, love, and music would become for American culture. Those of us who came of age in the ‘70s learned about it as recent history (I was only seven at the time and, I’m sure, would’ve found the whole thing somewhat unChristian had I been here then). Much has changed in the intervening years. Not many peaceful events get so much airtime any more. Upwards of 400,000, basically unpoliced, youth, gathered in Bethel, New York, for three days of music, chaos, and peace. The Vietnam War was still draining our nation of its youth and murdering its idealism. Fear of the other, racial inequality, and male superiority were part of the context that led to the need for Woodstock. Freedom was free.

Often on this blog I reflect on the sacredness of place. Events that take place in a location leave their impression on the land. Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, the current administrators of the property, have left the field largely intact. As my wife and I stood at the top of the hill and tried to imagine almost half-a-million people here, it was strangely quiet. The nearby museum had plenty of music playing, but standing where it actually happened, there were only ghosts of an event studied in school and which, even today, kids can generally identify. I couldn’t have named every act that played the concert and, although the music was clearly important, it was the gathering that is most remembered. Self-governing youth getting along in an area so remote that still today you have to drive a couple miles to find even basic necessities, sent a powerful message. It was an event that, I fear, can never be replicated. The snake has spoken.

Nearing fifty years later, we’ve become so paranoid that anyone who looks Middle Eastern is under suspicion. Guns, which children of the sixties shunned, have proliferated and may now be carried, wild-west style, in many states. A fear-mongering candidate bellows fascism before the Grand Old Party. Remember, Nixon was president during Woodstock. I may have lived hundreds of miles from here, occupying myself with the matters that seven-year-olds find so pressing. But Woodstock happened. By the time I got to Woodstock, everybody else had gone. I see others milling about the museum, slightly older than me. Perhaps some of them were here for the event itself. We all seem to be searching for something here. The festival had its problems, for sure, but with a sincere belief in freedom, it makes the pre-seventies United States feel like a strangely foreign county. How do we get back to the garden?

Kidnapped by Religion

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The title is, unfortunately, not mine. My wife sent me a story on NPR entitled “Humility Is Embedded In Doing Science, But What About Spirituality?” by Barbara J. King. The piece is largely an interview with physicist Marcelo Gleiser about his new book, The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected. Of course, now it’s on my reading list. The interview treads the well-worn path of science versus religion. Science is presented as humble (which I don’t doubt, when in the right hands—or the right minds, rather) while religion is arrogant, claiming to know everything. Gleiser states that spirituality has been “kidnapped by religion” but still has a place in the life of a scientist. I wish there were more of them like Gleiser.

Now, I have to admit my data are limited. I read science books—I have since I was a teenager—but with a layman’s eye. My scientist dreams were dashed against the unyielding rocks of complex mathematics, something evolution cruelly withheld from my gray matter. I wouldn’t have survived high school pre-calc without my younger brother’s help. I’ve nevertheless read the pre-chewed, partly-digested science regurgitated for the formulaically challenged, and find myself, like Glieser, awed at the wonder of it all. Still, I also find many scientists—at least those with the loudest voices—claiming that what they’ve discovered is all there is. There is only matter, and we with our three-pound brains have figured it all out, by the gods, without the gods! We know all that can possibly be known will conform to the system our brains have developed, and there are no gods out there and no spirits in here and that pang you’re feeling in your gut is merely physiological, not spiritual.

I haven’t read The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected, but I have found many scientists walking the same trail I’m on. We are those who are seeking the truth, and who don’t assume the answers. Religion need not be arrogant. At its best, it’s not far from science. As a species, we have developed rationality extremely well (even if we fail to use it). Much of biological existence, however, is emotion, or feeling. That we sometimes leave behind. It participates in reality as much as rationality does. I’m reminded of this every time I hear someone in the business world refer to “soft” skills. What mere humans bring to this rationalistic business of making money. We’re just the squishy stuff that CEOs can’t live without because wealth mean nothing if you can’t compare it to someone else’s. Humility? I agree, Dr. Gleiser, we must maintain a sense of wonder. For those of you who say we’re just a number waiting to be quantified, I would humbly ask for 42, if it’s not already taken.

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