Visions of New Haven

It's almost exactly midnight, as I ascend the stairs from the chaplain's office, emerging from the stony corridors of the Bingham basement into the chill nip of a late night in late autumn.

Freshmen, bundled in their brought-from-home best estimation of cold-weather garb, march past me in twos and threes down the flagstones from Durfee to Vanderbilt Hall; I turn in the opposite direction, tracing a beeline toward the High Street gate.

My steps - steady, circumscribed - trudge through the crunchy grass. My sneakers sink into mounds of leaves, impeding my footswings; rebelling against their feather-light bondage, I kick up, watching my reverse footprints swirling through the air, past my knees. My steps shorten, grow taller, until I am goose-stepping awkwardly, kicking up phantom soccer balls, watching the remnants of foliage envelop me, a torrent of sensation: crunching, yielding, bits floating into my hair and eyes and between my teeth.

I push through the final mound of leaves on the dark green quad, and I'm laughing to myself, a child blissfully alone in my own head. To my left, a Yale security officer watches me, grinning; I throw up a hand towards him, inviting him in.

He: "I've been wanting to do that all night."

I: "I love the autumn here."

As I pound the red button beside the High Street gate - a button that was not here when I arrived in this city - and the magnetic gate clicks unlocked, I chance on the uncomfortable realization that this is my last autumn in this city. As I pass through the quietly chilled night, I consider briefly the fleeting thought that I could call my friends, other church members, invite them to Old Campus, to laugh with me and throw the brown and red snowflakes of autumn at one another in large, embracing armfuls.

It's about five minutes after midnight, though, on a late night in late autumn; I tell myself, it would be unkind to bestir those whose time is better or necessarily spent elsewhere. Not to mention, I've been away from home for exactly twenty four hours, and I'm looking forward to sitting on my futon, drinking some orange soda, and watching downloaded TV shows. I trudge home through the flat streets.

That said, I am very glad that I can be a child, truly a child as even perhaps I never was in my younger years, kicking up my heels, stomping through the leaves.

A thought

Arrogance has been on my mind a lot, recently.

I've been perusing some of the writings of Canadian Skeptic James Randi, listening to recordings of the aggressive Atheist debate of Richard Dawkins, and reading through weblogs self-identified with the freethought and Brights movements, in addition to exploring conversation with quite radically anti-religious persons (dialogue being altogether too bilateral a label for what I've experienced).

The standard rhetorical aesthetic of such fora of discussion seem to be a self-righteous anti-religiosity; transcending the boundaries of cheerily areligious belief, the new wave in modern atheism seems to have a bitterly antagonistic bent towards religion, a condescending, sneering sort of spite directed towards the faithful. In such systems, characterizations of theist beliefs often involves words and phrases such as the following: "magic," "imaginary friend," "arbitrary," "unfounded," &c.

Such discussions, and their underpinnings, truly sadden me for two reasons: (I) First, and primarily, as one who believes - intimately, personally - in the being of a loving, wonderful, perfectly fulfilling God who has created and does sustain all of existence, it saddens me that there are people who would so decisively and boldly cut away the possibility of a relationship with that loving God. All rhetorical flourishes aside, the loss of an inexhaustible source of infinite care and grace, even if only metaphysically so, seems as though it ought to bring grief in some degree.

For this reason, I don't feel quite the same way for those atheists who renounce God, but do so with a sense of the loss of the sweetness of what could have been: I can empathize with the humanness of loudly pronouncing, God is not; but, whispering, if only he were. But the point of view that I have recently encountered - rare, I think, in my postmodern surroundings - and that which has been grieving me, is the outright arrogant proclamation: God is not, and it's damn finer than if he were!

If God is not truth, but tale, might we at least admit the beauty of the story‽

(II), such discussions do elicit a fair degree of nervousness in myself: how much of such militant and callous opposition to the very concept of God is social karma for the past wrongs of "Christianity" [the sum of Christians-in-name] (or Christianity [the sum of Christians-in-truth, putatively distinct])? Was there an era - or manifold periods? - in Christian history where theologians, being found bearing the greater weight of authority in their respective societies, were found so overbearing, cocky, swaggering in their clerical roles, that they thus disparaged those honest dissenters in their midst?

Do I? Regularly, I'm sure. How often, in my own unthinking stagger through life, have I hurt, damaged, even spited others, and all while proclaiming, in my best Christian guise, to be an earthly representative of the all-loving Heavenly Father? Of course, I've spoken faithful testimony of being a "broken human being," to being a "sinner in constant need of grace". But has my life born witness to these truths? Or has my life reflected a know-it-all, condescending, self-proselytizing wretch content and happy to sow self-glorifying pride?

A thought.


[edit: 3:35 PM] And, to make it explicitly clear: The arrogance to which I'm referring does not fall exclusively within the atheist camp. My attention has been drawn, increasingly, to my own personal arrogance, theological, intellectual, and otherwise in nature, the pervasive reality of which is pretty challenging and self-perception-shattering (or perhaps, better put, is spurring me on towards redrawing my self-perception).

Realization

I've noticed over the past few days that I conclude a lot of conversations/meetings with people by saying "I love you". I don't think I used to do this; this isn't normal.

Is it good?

Regarding Judaism and Israel

A quick thought, prompted by an exchange with a college friend, following an earlier (if not the earliest) post on hyphenated-Americans, along with beginning to watch (a process that will likely take a substantial amount of time) Spielburg's modern classic Schindler's List:

Whenever discourse includes a discussion of the Jewish people, it is vital that we separate the Jewish people and the modern nation of Israel. It is perilously easy to conflate (a) disagreement with the actions of the Jewish state in the geopolitical landscape and (b) Anti-Semitism. This is a form of an ad hominem, but one which seems to be more insidiously prevalent.

That's how it seems to me, anyways. Am I wrong, and (a) reduces to (b)? I strongly don't think so, but am open to arguments in the positive.

bene dicta, magister

It's 8:34 AM, and the streets of Ilsan are covered in a fine mist, rendering the pavement slick and slightly cool. Passing cars and buses scatter the puddles, tossing minute particles of water two or three feet into the air.

I'm out for a morning jog. Sequestered for the night earlier than I had planned, thanks to the compound effects of jetlag (despite my casually swaggering boasts of having grown accustomed to international travel, I am still impacted by the long reach of geography) and an afternoon spent out with friends, I woke at 5 AM. Completing some long-overdue tasks and emails, I decided to head out for a run, to clear my head and stretch some sorely-neglected muscles.

As I run, my mind drifts; 36 hours ago, when I was a knotted bundle of anxious tics: would my luggage clear through San Francisco onto my Seoul flight? Would the laminar plywood of my forcibly-checked skateboard (intended to be carry-on baggage) crack under the shifting mounds of luggage deep in the hold? Would my computer, with its finicky wireless connection, work in Korea? (Yes; No; Yes.)

My mind worries back and forth; 2 months ahead, with a host of invented complaints and light neuroses: will I grow prematurely bored of a repetitious summer, as I did my second summer in 北京? Will my students respond, grow, respect in the same way that they did (or did not) last year? How ought I - how must I - speak to them in such a way as to grasp at their attentions, or earn their mustered approval? What does it mean, to speak well?

The Benediction is the closing prayer of the Christian worship service, the opportunity for the presiding clergy to invoke the grace, mercy, love, and care of God for the congregants. Its roots: bene + dictio, which serve as a verbal phrase: adverb + verb: to speak well.

Context. One of the fundamentals which I've already begun drilling into my students, with which they will be well - and perhaps frustratingly - familiar by summer's end (or so I hope). What is the context of a speech made well?

My thoughts flow: a story. Bono, gregarious and irrepressible frontman and lead singer of U2, got his name from a music shop in his Irish hometown. He and his gang of youthful, gregarious, irrepressible friends used to hang around in the streets, staging absurdist plays and existentialist physical comedies. On one of the streets lay a music store, Bonovox; and so his mates began playfully referring to him as Sir Bonovox. The young Paul David Hewson disliked the moniker, at first, until he discovered the latinate roots of the word: Bono + vox, adjective + noun: good voice.


Actions speak louder than words. - American Proverb.


It occurs to me, that the phrase, "speaking well", possesses in itself two meanings: transitive and intransitive. To speak well, intransitively, means simply to speak skillfully or convincingly. "He speaks well", as synonymous with "he's a good speaker."

To speak well, transitive: in this case, however, speaking well of another. "He speaks well of her," as synonymous with "he praises her" or "he admires her."

My life is, of course, ostensibly one endowed with a career of speaking well of another: the most beloved condensation of the Christian creeds, to me, is the old chestnut, "To know Christ and make Him known". To proclaim Him; to speak well of His love for me. And it occurs to me, that, in this case at least, the transitive and intransitive uses of the verbal phrase dovetail: to speak well to those with whom I am surrounded for the summer, the most purposeful preparation is, quite simply, to speak well of the one with whom I have grown - am growing - more and more acquainted.

in nomine patri, et filii, et spiritus sancti

Prologue

I begin this work in 5 minutes. Time to get focused.

Our Father Who art in Heaven;

Guide my attitude, that I might not sin against these little ones.
Guide my words, that I might teach them well.

Sanctify my heart; purify my mind; enlighten my soul.

Ad maiorem Dei gloriam, Amen

Party people!

I just returned from a mile and a half ride around town on my skateboard, taking in the sights and sounds of Ilsan on a Sunday night.

After 24 hours in transit, including a 4-hour layover in San Francisco (the first time my feet have touched Californian soil in nearly 2 decades), I arrived in Incheon International Airport this evening: early Sunday morning for the US.

I begin work tomorrow morning: two 80-minute SAT Critical Reading classes. I feel, in some respects, like I'm trying on a pair of worn in - but recently unworn - shoes. Familiar, and yet my body is unaccustomed to this; or perhaps, a nagging whisper stammers, still too attuned to this.

That is, in some ways, my worry: that I will literally pick up where I left off at the end of the last summer, and, in short notice, grow disillusioned and tired with myself, too careless to innovate; too comfortable to make even casual attempts at motivation.

But that is where faith comes in!


There is a song by the Smashing Pumpkins that I have never heard, but whose title has always impressed itself on me: it is, lamentably, located on the movie soundtrack to Batman and Robin, and it says this:

The Beginning Is the End Is the Beginning.