Singing in the Shower

"Do not leave until you bless me!"

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Kennedy) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 04:51:00 +0000

One of my major goals for this Lent is to wrestle some semblance of peace out of the Book of Job. Perhaps such is a fool's errand, and perhaps I'm naive to think that such a thing is ever possible. Yet I find myself drawn back to it like Jacob wrestling with the angel--even should I end up with a life-long limp, I cannot keep from charging back shouting, "Do not leave until you bless me!"

The year since last Lent has been an eventful one--eventful, not like in years past where I find myself face-down in the dirt, rather like the events of picking oneself up, moving on, and nervous as hell that some unseen bump in the road may throw me down again. What's set into my heart more than anything is the same thing that Job realized when arguing with his friends: there are no pat answers in life. The comfortable systems we live in, the expectations gained from thinking we know more than we do, and even the false security that arises from what some people would call "orthodoxy". There are days that I feel like the Prodigal Son being chided by his dutiful older brother after his return, and there are days when I feel like the dutiful older brother chiding his prodigal younger brothers. Some days, I feel like both of those things at the same time and for the same reasons. Because of this, I see my own need for a period of deep inner silence, one where I stop looking for answers and simply dwell within the questions.

The truth is, I see how I myself have at times been all-too content to merely accept and to reiterate those platitudinous answers on this blog with all the self-assuredness of a Pharisee. In one of my lesser moments, I actually played it off as a cynical ploy appealing to some of the more chauvinistic qualities of a particular audience, and it worked much too well for my own liking. No, I will not state exactly which post or how long ago it was, only to say that its tone, force, and perspective is one that I deeply regret--not simply because I don't believe it, but because I wrote it while not believing it.

The realization that this brings me is that, in like manner of all other sins, I shoulder a part of the blame for the things I hate the most about online life. The deeply inhuman tone, the crassly arrogant styles, the tendency toward thoughtless and reflexive extremes reinforced by groupthink--I detest all of it so much. But then to realize that I may have at times been complicit in it, and might have fostered some of these tendencies--I detest that so much more.

For these 40 days of Lent, I will be taking a retreat from blogging and taking the time to do some of my own more personal writing projects. I also need to spend myself in my ongoing quest to solicit donors so that I may enter the Dominican novitiate. I need to grow as a Christian, and I need to grow as a writer (in that order).

So, I'll see you around Easter. In the meantime, I ask that you pray for me, and I ask that you consider helping to contribute financially so that I may pursue what I deeply believe to be my vocation. If nothing else, please help to get the word out. I'm sorry to sound like such a beggar here, but I think of it as fine preparation for a mendicant vocation.

SWM seeks LTR with OP's

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Kennedy) — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 04:06:00 +0000

Hello to all!

Getting things started on a fundraising project is, if I may say so myself, a tad overwhelming. Fortunately the Dominicans have been very helpful in this and have given me a lot of tips on how to get started, where to look, what to do, etc., and to that end, I would like to ask your help in getting the word out!

You may notice a new page on the blog entitled, "Help me Become a Dominican!" On that page is a letter with information on how to contribute to this cause.

Or, if you feel so inclined, you can like the Facebook page and help get the word out there.

Or, if you feel yet again inclined, you can like the Google+ page and help get the word out there.

I want to thank all of you for your prayers and support through this process, and for being the best darn readership a blogger could hope for. May God bless you, and let's get moving!!!

IT: Confessions of a Spiritual Insomniac

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Kennedy) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Fittingly, written between the hours of 12:00 and 2:00am, in which we explore a how peaceful, tranquil heart is the ultimate form of revolution.

I’m a chronic insomniac. There’s a lot to that statement beyond my not being able to sleep at night—insights into my temperament and psychological composition, and, if you pay close enough attention, explanations as to why I’m largely sardonic in relation to topics of an over-arching and weighty nature. Really, how is an insomniac supposed to react to an endless barrage of calls to “wake up” because of this or that issue? It’s like telling a fish to take a bath.

An Open Letter to Joss Whedon

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Kennedy) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 06:23:00 +0000

Dear Mr. Whedon:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of those facets of my growing up that I count as an incomparable pleasure. Week after week I would watch the teenage femme fatale hunt down demons, take down vampires and werewolves, and continually save the world from impending peril. She once pulled off her gravity-defying moves to climb a clock tower in order to keep a troubled rifle-wielding classmate from going postal, but the best thing about it was her ability to persuade and empathize with the young man that would win him over. Then there was the witty banter, the unique characters that each possessed a remarkable amount of development, the engaging plots and character arcs--Buffy was so entertaining and so captivating that at a young age I almost didn't realize the incredible amount of substance behind it.

Fast forward to my college years, and Firefly/Serenity came close to filling that same gap. Captain Mal Reynolds and his motley crew each reacting to the blackness of space--you successfully and thoughtfully blended the classic sci-fi space opera genre with the Westerns I know through my parents. Even now, I find it astounding how sensitive you were to both genres in their integrity, for example, how the Western arises from the context of the post-Civil War era of Reconstruction and its lingering issues, and how the sci-fi space opera comes as the expression of a bubbly, wide-eyed hope and wonder at the future and its possibilities. Then there were the characters--wow. It takes a truly adept creative mind to make this work so well, and I thank you for sharing your vision with such care and passion.

I have not always seen eye-to-eye with some of your viewpoints, but I don't necessarily have to. You do great work bringing your characters and your vision to life, and it works because they're so human, because your vision is so compelling. What disagreements I may have with you are merely incidental, things that don't necessarily fit with what truly compels in your vision. Yet it was with great disappointment and sadness that I discovered that you plan to write into the comic series an arc in which Buffy procures an abortion.

As I've said before, one of your immense strengths as a writer is your ability to bring a truly human dimension to your characters. They live and breathe a life of their own--a life that is separate from you, their writer. Captain Reynolds, Zoe, Wash, Inara, Shepherd, Rain; Angel, Willow, Spike, Xander, and Buffy herself--they're not just stand-ins for the opinions and personality of you, they possess an integrity and mind all of their own. Yet, the issues of the real world often tempt any writer to intrude upon that integrity and use their characters to editorialize. They lose that truly human dimension of having a life of their own and become little more than spokespersons for after-school specials. My instinct tells me that you're well aware of this, and that you're taking pains to make sure that Buffy stays true to her character. In fact, I agree with you on a major part of why you've made this decision: so few in the media and society want to even discuss the issue of abortion in realistic terms. So few touch upon what happens when a woman chooses to terminate a pregnancy--why she does it, what goes through her mind, how she feels trapped, and what happens afterwards as she tries to move on and live life as normal. If I know Buffy at all at this point, I know that this decision will be a difficult one for her, not just to formulate, but most especially to carry out and then to overcome.

Perhaps my sadness and disappointment come, not necessarily because of what you endeavor to have Buffy do, but because of the danger of Buffy losing her integrity as a character through it. It's true--I don't agree with you on the issue of abortion. I don't think that intentionally ending an infant human life is a legitimate option for any person, man or woman, pregnant or not. But this isn't the concern I have, because I can stand the disagreement, especially in an artistic realm. The concern comes because it seems that this is too close to an editorial, too close to subverting the entirety of the graphic novel series to a utilitarian end bound up in an ideological viewpoint. It's not because I disagree with your views on abortion. Letting Buffy honestly face this reality, and honestly braving up to the difficulties therein--that's something I applaud you for.

Let me be bold enough to suggest a real-life dimension to my concerns. My fear is that the act of procuring an abortion is one that would shatter the development of Buffy's character, that it would effectively tangle up her inner structure so much that moving past it would be impossible. There's no going back--her decision is made. That's the very same problem faced by women who do, in fact, seek abortions. Buffy is like each person with an integrity as a subject, with an inner structure without which a person is no longer that person. What happens when a woman chooses to undergo an abortion is that the experience shatters their inner world; it tangles up their fundamental subjectivity so much that moving on is often impossible. Were such a woman a character in a graphic novel, television show, or what have you, it would be an act that would have far-reaching repercussions in everything that character experiences from that point on. She would never be the same, and healing would be very, very difficult. If she lacks hope, healing would be impossible.

What I'm asking, Mr. Whedon, isn't necessarily that you rescind your decision, though if I'm honest, I earnestly hope that you might. What I instead ask is that your treatment of the topic be an honest, artistically informed one. Please, don't listen to the ideological factions in carrying out this arc--that includes the pro-choice lobby as well as the pro-life lobby. Against abortion that I am, I also realize how trite and insufferable such an ideological approach can often be. From either position, it would effectively kill the artistic merit of the series. If this arc is to be genuine and sincere, it must be Buffy dealing with these issues and not anyone else, not I with my pro-life stance nor you with your pro-choice stance. While I'm sure Buffy won't end up being some pro-life figure, I also think it equally insincere to have her become a pro-choice figure. That's just not how it works in real life. I think this is where my fear lies the most, because I never imagined before how Buffy would react to this issue. I have no idea what this will do to her other than to know the pain, confusion, and brokenness that goes into and comes out of this decision. I think my plea to you boils down to this: be kind to her. Give her cause to maintain hope, because without it she will not heal. Let her heal. Let her face this head-on with courage, integrity, and dignity through all the pain. Let her see her decision for what it is, and to find peace in coming to terms with it afterwards. But no shortcuts.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think your decision prompted a realization I haven't known before. You see, it's not that I just don't want to see Buffy lose herself as a character, thus ruining a franchise and forever altering a graphic novel series, it's that I don't want to see Buffy lose herself as a person. A great testament to your storytelling skills and to your almost preternatural gift at developing characters is that I've, in a strictly fan-boy sort of way, fallen in love with her and don't want to see anything bad happen to her. Watching her slay vampires and demons and things that go bump in the night is one thing--Buffy's in her element there. That's who she is; that's what Buffy does--she's a vampire slayer, and she has struggled to find out who she is now that's no longer a part of her life. But this--it makes me tremble for her. I don't want to see her hurt. Compared to this, being a slayer is like playing hopscotch on the playground.

Buffy is such a strong young woman, and I know that if you give her the hope she needs, she can come out on the other side of this wiser, stronger, and more mature. My goodness, if that's not the essence of this monumental struggle we call young adulthood, then I don't know what is. An atheist such as yourself might surely be able to appreciate the humor of my feeling compelled almost to pray for Buffy as she enters this ordeal.

In the meantime, Mr. Whedon, I expect that we will continue our disagreements on this wider topic and several others as well. I'm okay with that. I also recognize that we are both individuals who yearn for an honest discussion over abortion and neither of us want any shortcuts when it comes to seeing it for what it is. I still admire your work and your vision, and for that I will always respect you as a writer, artist, and creative talent. Thank you for introducing us to Buffy and her Buffyverse; thank you for introducing us to Captain Reynolds and his Serenity-verse. Please let us continue to enjoy them for what they are, and nothing more and nothing less.

Your sincere fan,

Nathan Kennedy

On the Dignity of Subjectivity

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Kennedy) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 17:43:00 +0000

The primary motivation for subjective relativism is the deep fear that, should the “objective” in truth turn out to exist, it would be so inhuman and cold that it would be better to ignore it than to acknowledge it. The relativist seeks to preserve his subjectivity over and against this impersonal “reality” and rightly seeks to determine personal meaning—meaning that, since it cannot come from the objective outside, can only come from the subjective inside.

I find this mechanism fascinating. It’s poignant, relatable, and dare I say, compelling. It’s personal, existential, and immensely understandable. If we find ourselves dead to the kernel of truth found here, we have no hope of discerning truth in its entirety, even apart from this discussion. The relativist is according to his own understanding a subject, and as such cannot be reduced to the cold, impersonal realities arrogated by the claims of the hard and objective—at least, according to his own mind. Other relativists, while seeing themselves similarly, might see any other particular relativist differently.

And yes, we can rail against the impossibility of rational discussion, the obliteration of common ground, the agreed-upon premises and measures allowing for consensus to build in any discussion. But here, I want to remind the supposed “objectivists” that the thrust of the relativist’s motivation is true, and we must take this into account. The subject cannot, ever, be reduced to cold and impersonal realities arrogated by what calls itself “objective”. Whether these “realities” consist of economic, utilitarian, materialistic, social, ideological, or even religious, they each distort the fullness of reality when taken out of the context of the others and offer a positive barrier to the personal dignity of subjectivity.

For our purposes, the realization that religious “objectivity” can be such a barrier may be quite a point of contention. Objectivity and the conviction that one’s faith speaks truly of transcendent matters are separate issues. Objectivity requires a distance, a detachment, a lack of personal investment in what one observes; faith requires an intimacy, a connection, and a full personal investiture in its content. Objectivity is a narrowing of the within to be open to the without, while faith is an expansion of the within in order to be open to both. The thought that true doctrines make us more objective misses the point: true doctrines ought make us more authentically subjective because only the subject has the dignity of knowing, has the dignity of being irreducible and of never becoming an object. Animals know objectively because they cannot know as subjects. For a human to know merely objectively is a bestial perversion of his own capacity as a knower—to know objectively, one must be likewise an object.

Religious “objectivity” is, by extension, a perversion of religion. This does not mean that doctrines do not speak truly—it means that the truth of which they speak cannot likewise be reduced to the objective. To think so objectively about religion means that one reduces the entirety of human existence to an ideological system imposed from without. One can only engage with something insofar as it reinforces their consciously held religious tenets, thereby blocking out a great bulk of human experience. Music, films, books, etc. can only be enjoyed if they are specifically and supportively Christian, or at the very least, so unchallenging to one’s religious beliefs as to generate stagnation and inaction. Other persons can only be engaged personally only insofar as they share our doctrinal and ideological convictions. The result, then, is a sort of interpersonal paralysis, further compounded by the conviction that one’s state is a necessary condition of being on the side of truth. The other is seen only in light of a system, only good insofar as they seem conducive to a belief system—and worse, justified by the misunderstood insight that the love of God comes before the love of neighbor, an insight based on a primacy of value, not a primacy of chronology. The truth of the matter is that if one’s neighbor is not loved with the dignity of an unalloyed dignity and value, God is not loved either. In the words of Dorothy Day, “I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.”

In 642, the city of Alexandria fell to the Muslim army of Amr ibn al’Aas. When asked as to the fate of the city’s great library, Omar writes to Amr, "If those books are in agreement with the Quran, we have no need of them; and if these are opposed to the Quran, destroy them.” This narrowed myopia doesn’t just apply to jihadist Islam—it’s present in the fallen forms of all religious traditions. “Is this book written by a saint? If not, I have no need of it.” “Why read this book if I can just read about its themes in theological or philosophical texts?” “This novel doesn’t specifically refer to Christ, the Church, the sacraments….it can do me no good.” “This music is made by an artist/band who specifically doesn’t believe in the Christian faith, so I will not listen to them.” Religious “objectivity” need not burn a library to lay waste to the dignity of human knowing, even if that knowing (perhaps, seeking) lacks true doctrine. It needs only to set the pyre of condemnation alight in one’s own heart and mind.

In the light of such perversions of thought and behavior, it should take us no time at all to understand the appeal of subjective relativism. It should take us no hard effort to empathize with those who reject the threat of the objective in order to preserve the dignity and integrity of their subjectivity. Nor should it take any hard effort to see why so much of our efforts into evangelization fail, and fail miserably, when we resort to claims of objective truth and objectivity. The person longs for truth interiorly, on the subjective level, and mere objectivity can no more fill this longing than a cookbook can satisfy hunger. The response to objectivism shouldn’t be relativism, that’s sure, but of relation. Truth isn’t relative but relational. And if you were to enter into a relationship on merely objective grounds, it would fail. Persons are not objects and cannot be known “objectively”—they are subjects to known subjectively. A person loves another person as a person, not as an “objectively good being” whose existence one respects but whose actual personality one ignores or despises. If we claim that love must be objective, we fool ourselves. Love is absolute; only hate can be objective in the face of a good.

Your blogger has been officially accepted into the Dominican novitiate

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Kennedy) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 16:58:00 +0000

A week ago today, I attended a round of interviews for the admissions board in New Orleans. The board decided to accept me into the novitiate, to begin in August in Irving, Texas. The acceptance letter is in the mail.

Though I've known for a week, I've had some time to sit down and take it in. While this brings great joy and peace, I'm by no means in the clear right yet. I still have the minor issue of student loan debt--of which, $30,000 of it needs to be paid off before July 30. I cannot do this on my own--not by a long shot.

Within the next week, I will be solidifying a game plan revolving around social media, community events, and letter writing. In true preparation for a mendicant vocation, I will have something of an upturned hat or opened guitar case sitting nearby. It's time to trust in Providence and in the charity of others.

In the meantime, I ask that you please pray for me and the (so far) three others accepted into the Southern Province novitiate--Adam Deline of Adrian, MI, Adam Fisher of Columbia, SC, and Andrew Duplechin of (near) DeRitter, LA. There may as many as two or three more in the months to come--a true blessing for the province!

What I Learned by Going as a Hipster

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Kennedy) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:05:00 +0000

Remember my Halloween costume back in October? Remember how I promised some pictures and a personal essay? Well, it is up and posted at IgnitumToday.com. Check it out!

And remember to pray for me this week. I'm flying to New Orleans today to have my final review board with the Dominicans. Nothing serious or anything--just my future.

Relativism Bad!

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Kennedy) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 21:46:00 +0000

We're objective. No matter what sort of disagreement we find ourselves in, we at least know one thing about ourselves: we're not relativists. Whether this goes for the monumental moral issues of our time or for our overblown personal obsessions and neuroses, we must have that unshakable, unquestionable certitude that we're on the side of objective truth and that those who don't agree with us are wrong. There's, at bottom, no such thing as taste--you either have an openness to the true and the good, or you don't. We're in a cultural war, after all, and relativism is one of the main generals in our Enemy's army. We can't compromise one bit with this cunning, evil foe. We're in a zero-sum game. It's clear that we must reassert the objective, to make sure that "hard" truths take precedence over our lived reality once again. We have to see past our own desires, our own experiences, and reach out to that which is "other" and entirely outside. We are our own obstacles to truth, and we must treat ourselves and others accordingly.

Isn't this true? Isn't it after all the case that relativism has become one of the bedrock weapons wielded against our souls by our Enemy? To cut out the very standing place for any moral, intellectual, or aesthetic objectivity--to deny the very possibility for anything outside of one's own personal experiences and desire--what further harm need be done to ensure the demise of a civilization? It seems so simple, wrapped up in that neat little distinction between what is "subjective" and "objective". We just focus on the objective, submit the subjective to it, and that's how we pursue truth.

Wait a minute--I think I've been listening to too many armchair philosophers who have little grasp of epistemological and metaphysical methods outside "Relativism bad!" It seems that much of the standard "objectivity" being discussed has little more importance than being a reaction to relativism. In the discussion is lost the crucial insight that, in matters of dichotomous disagreement, the truth nine times out of ten will not be found on any one side of the disagreement, but in an area that encompasses and transcends both.

And so the two sides of this dichotomous disagreement--relativism and objectivism*--are the mirror images of each other and, according to a principle once stated by C.S. Lewis, aggravate each other instead of suppressing each other. Beyond the delineation offered by usual philosophies, there remains one fact that many seem eager to overlook or unable to see because of the usual assumptions accompanying the discussion: that the objective and subjective are, in essence, united. The subjective realm exists because of its formation in the objective order. While we can distinguish these two realms, we cannot offer an ultimate line of demarcation between the two. There is no objective standard that says, "This is where the subjective starts and the objective begins." It's a useful tool for us in our thinking, but on its own means little.

That means that when discussing the problems of relativism, we cannot start by assuming that the subjective realm has no realm in the determination of truth. The human person--the entire human person--is an organ of the objective realm. His entire inner life, his feelings, thoughts, experiences, and desires are all intertwined with objective reality.

Now, perk your ears, oh objective-thinking Christians, because this is the major blind spot we have when confronting the topic of subjective relativism today. Do we really think that what motivates people's decision to not take heed to objective reality is some philosophical reasoning? Do we really think that when a person gives priority to his subjective inner reality it's because of some refined argumentation on his part? No, the roots of relativism are found on a deeper level. Behind relativistic views is the deep, profound fear that if there were any objective truth, it would be so harsh, so inhuman that it would be better to not acknowledge it. It would be a limitation to human living, a barrier to a happy, fulfilled life. Demanding that people "buck up" and face it only reinforces this fear, like a strict father getting angry with his stuttering child for not being able to speak, thereby making the stutter worse. Relativism is the moral stutter we develop; harsh treatments toward those who hold it only deepen the disorder.

A normal relativist sees in his position the only real response to both the moral uncertainties we confront in life and the fear of being deprived his interior integrity in the face of the certitudes offered, certitudes that most often prove false. His position is his way of asserting that integrity, attempting to reconcile his interior life with the vagaries of uncertainty. And misguided as it is, it's, like every other error, based on a kernel of truth. That truth is the connection between the subjective and the objective, that truth is found in the mind. Aquinas defines truth as "conformity between the intellect and a thing," meaning that truth cannot be purely objective anymore than it can be purely subjective. The relativist senses that his being has some connection to truth, that his desires, experiences, and perceptions can't be so false as to warrant being ignored or suppressed.

This is precisely what the objectivist cannot see, and as such will never make any real headway in his dialogue with and against relativism. To be sure, the relativist is misguided--that persistent condition known as human fallenness makes it difficult to accept our desires, experiences, and perceptions at face value. Truth really isn't just what we want it to be, and there is hard work involved in ordering those desires, experiences, and perceptions according to it. But this is by no means a free pass from the hard task of still living as a subject, as a full human person whose entire being begs for union with truth. It's not enough to respond with the philosophical equivalent of "Relativism bad!" If it is true, the old saying that "The heart has its reasons that reason knows not," then we must be attentive to those reasons. Without the heart, our search for truth is doomed.

[Writing this post opened up a lot of insights. This will likely not be the last I'll have to say on this subject. Ha--"subject!"]

--
*Not Ayn Rand's form of "Objectivism," which is a stronger but less textured form of crazy. Objectivism, as opposed to relativism, sees truth as being a matter essentially separate from the observer, so much so that nothing the observer can do can have a bearing on the nature of truth. In other words, it truth is so external, so objective, that it doesn't matter whether or not anyone believes it. Which is true, but not without qualification about the very nature of the observer.

You have Simcha Fisher to thank for this

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Kennedy) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 02:36:00 +0000

Get that? Simcha Fisher.

Dominican Sociopath

Nice pictures of love,

Love photgraphy abstract,

Pictures of love--

Gerard Manley Hopkins?

I caught you streaking in your Birkenstocks,

Dorothea Lange.

(Texas expressions):

Well if that don't put the pepper in the gumbo!

Hipster elephant

Singing in the shower:

Facebook shower curtain madness--

Dystopia!

Person looking up about to climb a mountain:

Stephen Sawyer--

Awful Christian painting!

Cool hot air balloons!

Reason to join Google+ #8450798243537

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Kennedy) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 17:28:00 +0000

First of all, if you're not already on Google+, get on there as soon as you can. I'm serious, it's that good. And don't get on there, not fill out your profile, look for people, or post content, and then complain that nothing goes on over there. That wouldn't work for Twitter or Facebook, and it's not going to work for Google+.

But I have a specific reason for you to join: Trouba-Dorks. Trouba-Dorks is a budding community of music enthusiasts who all happen to be Catholic, who post on their favorite music and share their latest finds. We tend to be alternative/indie/folk/pop (-ish) fans, and love to discuss music from a spiritual perspective.

Members so far include myself and my friend Ashley Collins, whose music blog gives a real sense as to what the community's like, and a handful of others from around the country.

Besides, Google+ is worth it on its own. Why don't you join?

The Ten Best Albums of 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Kennedy) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 06:03:00 +0000

I will spare you the cliché disclaimer saying that a Top 10 list should really be called a “favorites” list instead of a “best” list because of subjective reception of art, differing tastes, and the like, but I just really, really liked the idea of having a “best” list for no particular reason. Yes, it’s true that most of the material here consists of folk/alternative/indie/pop acts, neglecting country, top hits, harder rock, mainstream Christian, hip-hop, and rap acts, and for that I offer no apologies. Taste is taste, after all.

What I will offer is a semi-apology for all of my earlier hipster jokes and comments. Several of these albums might be unknown to they whose only access to music is through FM radio, albums such as those by Wolf Gang and Josh Garrels. Heck, give me a time slot on a radio station and it may as well be called “The DJ-NK Wannabe Hipster Hour”. Besides, I can’t be a hipster—I wear way too many polo shirts. If anything, I’d be a “prep-ster”, but I digress.

What you find on this list reflects a great amount of talent focused on good song writing, engaging styles, and an eclectic blend of influences that have spoken to this blogger in particular. From the folksy and mellow strums of The Head and the Heart to the high power and energy of Adele and Florence + The Machine, this list may after all have something to offer, if not everybody, then every folk/alternative/indie/pop fan, and that’s quite a spread believe it or not.

Adele - 21

Adele's not just an artist, nor is she just a phenomenon: she's a force of nature unparalleled by anything in the pop scene today. Today Adele ranks as the single most downloaded musician in all of Europe having broken the record set by Madonna in 1991 with her Immaculate Collection. "Rolling in the Deep", the album's trademark single, debuted at number 2 in the UK pop charts, and is the first female British artist to have sold over 5.5 million copies of a single. This album has gone 12x Platinum in the UK and 4x Platinum in the US. But Adele's greatness doesn't rely only on her popularity. With a combination of elements such as her wizened, deep, soulful, older-than-her-years voice, a distinctive styling featuring influences of Gospel, disco, R&B, and soul, and a genuine, authentic openness toward the creative process of music making, Adele's pop success is one of those rare instances of true talent being recognized for what it is.

Her sophomore album 21 introduces us to a contrast in musical textures with the heart-thumping and rhythmic "Rolling in the Deep" and the chest-swelling and melancholy "TurningTables". The trademark intensity of her performances suffuses the entire album with a power and raw emotion present even in her more subdued tracks—her cover of The Cure's classic "Lovesong", for example, while still faithful to the original spirit, is distinctly Adele. Compared to her first album, her 2009 hit 19, Adele's stature as an artist has grown into a greater maturity regarding her themes and her songwriting.

While one of the best albums of 2011, 21 isn't perfect—it still suffers from some blandness in material and a trite repetition of relationship drama (though, in all fairness, such experiences were instrumental in the formation of this album). Yet Adele seems to transcend even these flaws with a winning voice, a creative spirit open to greater depth, and a style, a presence, and statement that alone would suffice to justify keeping vinyl recordings alive.

9. The Black Keys - El Camino

A one-take video featuring four young men doing a choreographed skit on four treadmills is one of the hallmark cultural memories of 2006. A one-take video featuring a middle-aged man in a pink Oxford dancing awkwardly to a summery, surf-like, blues-styled song that shouts, "I'm a lonely boy / I'm a lonely boy / I've got a love that keeps me waiting" might be one of the hallmark cultural memories of 2011. If so, it’s a memory that would belong to none other than The Black Keys.

The Keys are a two-man act formed out of Akron, Ohio that now works out of Nashville. El Camino is their seventh studio album, having enjoyed a career in which their material has featured on major films such as “Twilight: Eclipse” and others. Their 2010 breakout album Brothers represents their roots and subtleties of style. 2011’s El Camino is different—this time, they’re all rock and roll.

El Camino is, like its titular vehicle (which is not featured on the cover, rather a Chrysler Town & Country), a self-consciously showy, awkward, yet awesome blend of brash glitz and glittery glam. They’re something like ZZ Top meets David Bowie, combining an overblown racket with a sublime corniness. And it works. From the jazz riffs and bluesy “Lonely Boy” to the glam-packed retro throwback “Gold on the Ceiling” (doesn’t that just scream glam?), El Camino is a roller-coaster party ride that gets better exponentially with every decibel you turn it up.

8. Florence + The Machine - Ceremonials

Florence Welch, the titular lead singer of Florence + The Machine, has a voice capable of filling an entire stadium. The power she packs into her soaring vocals surges in such singles as "Shake it Out" and "No Light, NoLight", rising in anthemic melodies and bursting into pure energy, is rousing and startling enough, but the real interesting aspect of her sophomore album is in her song writing. Take, for instance, the poetic reflections found in her low-key third track "What the Water Gave Me": "And oh poor Atlas / The world's a beast of a burden / You've been holding on a long time / And all this longing / And the ships are left to rust / That's what the water gave us."

Yet for all the larger-than-life power behind her vocals and her high melodrama, there’s something inescapably down-to-earth about Florence. Even at the screaming peak, her voice retains an elusive subtlety. Even her archetypal anthemic single “Shake it Out” came about as what Welch describes as “the ultimate hangover cure.” Make no mistake, there’s something special about Florence + The Machine, which makes the prospect of future albums even more exciting. With that voice, with that vision, with that passion, the possibilities seem endless.

7. Wolf Gang - Suego Faults

Maybe I’m alone here in my not seeing in Wolf Gang a derivative reiteration of David Bowie/MGMT pop techniques and instead seeing something more thoughtful and talented. The difference, I think, is in an aspect of music that most reviewers criminally neglect or see as a mere afterthought to style, sound, and genre: the lyrics. Take, for example, a verse from “Lions in Cages”: “I see you in another place / I expect a familiar face / The city joins us with hands of grace / Hands free there are no constraints / Just as normal, that you see / The illusion of you and me / Illusions come illusions go / And if you leave you'll never go on.”

It’s true, I concede, that 23-year old front man Max McElligott will have much to learn in the years to come, but I don’t think it’s fair to relegate this excellent work to the mosh pit of youthful first attempts without qualification. No, there’s a deeper dynamic at work with Wolf Gang, one that I think has the potential to rise to higher levels of style, sound, and genre than most imagine. And yet this is a first attempt, one that, should I have come up with, I would have no complaints regarding my work as an artist save the process of refining and perfecting my own skill and vision. There’s much to learn, and the same is true no matter where you are in your career. Besides, this album is just so great to listen to that all comparisons mostly seem not to matter.

6. Seryn - This is Where We Are

The five-piece folk-Americana outfit out of Denton, Texas is one of those acts that, when you first hear them, you inevitably ask yourself, “How the heck have I not heard about these guys?” Seryn is so new and as of yet still so obscure that Wikipedia doesn’t have an article on them. Hopefully that will start to change, as this is one act that just can’t be kept secret for much longer.

Utilizing a veritable musical chairs approach to instrumentation—mostly acoustics such as violin, guitar, banjo, accordion, trumpet, and others—Seryn masterfully weaves a slow build leading to joyful, ecstatic, and beautiful choruses. They’re approachable and easy to listen to, but more than that, they’re good—good enough, in fact, to be a perennial favorite over at Paste Magazine, even having landed a spot in the middle of their 50 Best Albums of 2011 list.

Seryn has earned comparisons to Arcade Fire and Sufjan Stevens, but such as it is these comparisons are lazy at best. It’s hard to say exactly what it is about Seryn that makes them so unique. Perhaps it’s the weaving and meandering melodies that rise and fall seamlessly between extremes, like a lazy river become heady rapids and back again. If so, the real art is that, no matter what extreme they seem to play toward, they genuinely savor each moment, putting their hearts into every chord, every phrase, and every lyric, and you can’t help but to go along with them for the ride.

5. The Head and the Heart - The Head and the Heart

Grunge never really was the best representation of Seattle, come to think of it. The violent angst of Kurt Cobain has about as much to do with the laid back, chill, artsy atmosphere of Seattle as Sasquatch has to do with Jane Goodall. Laid back, chill, and definitively more folksy than their grunge predecessors, The Head and the Heart presents a more organic, fresher face of the Pacific Northwest music scene than stoner punks in dirty t-shirts ever could—though we could say this about the folk music scene as a whole, particularly such acts as Blind Pilot.

Perhaps we can view the larger reception of their debut in light of a certain comparison: while critics have given largely mixed reviews of the album, citing its too-safe formula and its lack of original contribution to folk, the Amazon user rating is at four and a half stars out of five, based on 6,884 reviews. Professional critics pan it, but music enthusiasts—particularly in the indie and folk scenes—love it. That’s because The Head and the Heart does what folk music is supposed to do and sounds how folk music is supposed to sound. The Head and the Heart represents a more truly “indie” and “folk” sound than the established norms of the industry. In my opinion, that’s what folk music is supposed to do anyway.

But not all critics have passed it off. The album’s earned a spot in Paste’s 50 Best Albums of 2011 list and has, despite the critics, generated a great deal of excitement and enthusiasm. City Arts Magazine named The Head and the Heart as Seattle’s best band, and they’ve shared the stage with Vampire Weekend, The Dave Matthews Band, Iron & Wine, The Decembrists, and Death Cab for Cutie. A listen to their hallmark single “Lost in My Mind” may be all the convincing one needs to fall in love: “How’s that brick layin’ coming / How’s your engine runnin’ / Is that bridge getting built / Are your hands getting filled / Won’t you tell me my brother / ‘Cause there are stars up above / We can start moving forward”. With that spirit, this band can take those basic elements of folk that make us all love folk and truly move forward.

4. St. Vincent - Strange Mercy

It seems strange to compare St. Vincent—the stage name of Annie Clark—to the likes of Sufjan Stevens and the Polyphonic Spree, but the comparisons are warranted nonetheless. Clark did, after all, spend time touring as part of the Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Steven’s backup band. Her multi-instrumental approach resonates well with Stevens’, but her style is definitely more chamber pop/cabaret jazz than the quiet folk of her Midwestern counterpart or the jubilant insanity of her prior outfit. She’s certainly got more aggression and anger as she sorts out her own dilemmas and existential place as an artist, an element found even in her most pure pop track, “Cruel” with its tongue-in-cheek indictments of objectification and casual cruelty.

But none of it is bombastic or obnoxious—oh no, that’s not St. Vincent at all. She’s deeply introspective, self-possessed, and very balanced in her approach to even her anger and aggression, tempering it with a serene sweetness that can sometimes be delightfully unsettling. This album is very conceptual, playing between experimentation on the one hand and an intimate performance on the other, both qualities hinted at in the album cover: a veiled cover-up over her screaming mouth, at once both restrained and intimate, passionate and subdued.

In all fairness, it would be hard to claim that St. Vincent is for everyone. Her material is quite edgy, though never obscene, and while some may find her subtle aggression to be refreshing and thought provoking, others may find it off-putting. I doubt that most people would have a hard time with this, as she is far from the raw rage and vulgarity that pervades much of the music out there. Taste and sensibilities being what they are, none of this means that her material is bad. It’s good, wow is it good, but it’s also demanding though never overwhelming. And that’s one of the reasons why she’s so good.

3. Josh Garrels - Love & War & the Sea In-Between

Josh Garrels may be the best musician you’ve never heard of. Having self-released no less than seven albums to date, his most recent, Love & War & the Sea In-Between, represents to him “the most rigorous and spiritual struggle [he’s] known as an artist.” The fruits are abundant—eighteen tracks totaling over an hour in length with an astounding diversity of style, from the lush harmonies of “White Owl” to the soft-spoken eloquence of the rapping in “The Resistance”. His rich vocals are full of subtlety and grace, and his falsetto tones are enough to send shivers up even the stoniest of spines. Given his proven talent and his work as an artist, none of this is surprising.

What is surprising can best be summed up in the following fact: that the evangelical Christian publication Christianity Today has named Love & War & the Sea In-Between as their pick for Album of the Year. It’s not that Garrels’ material isn’t specifically Christian—it is, and unabashedly. It’s just that it’s so darn good that it eschews the usual triteness and cheap sentiment packed into most Christian music. Though full of Christian themes, religious language, and outright appeals to Christ (“Tempted and tried, I wondered why / The good man died, the bad man thrives / And Jesus cries because he loves 'em both”), it would still seem a reduction to call Garrel’s music “Christian” music. It offers material that, in the words of the CT article, is “prophetic, incisive, achingly human, and longingly spiritual.”

To make a great deal even better, Garrels is offering Love & War & the Sea In-Between on his website completelyfree of charge, at least through May 2012. While you might God forbid never hear Garrels on the radio—Christian or otherwise—his work deserves a good listen. It may do us some good as well.

2. Over the Rhine - The Long Surrender

That voice, oh God, that voice, at once sultry and supple, wizened and hopeful—it manages to wrap around the timeless questions of heartache and pain, love and hope, as effortlessly as a sigh. And then the lyrics, oh God, those lyrics: “Come on boys / It’s time to let it go / Everybody has a dream / That they will never own…/…It weren’t not for tryin’ / It’s called the laugh of recognition / When you laugh but you feel like dyin’.”

The husband and wife team of Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist are seasoned and embattled veterans of a 20-year long career that has seen the ups and downs of hope and uncertainty, of success and failure. Their first album Till We Have Faces (C.S. Lewis fans, take note), self-released in 1991, demonstrated talent and promise, even if guarded and restrained. A two-decade long career has ensured greater confidence and surefootedness, but with that comes deeper artistic questions. This album is the product of the long, intense process of experience and questioning, of having been there, of having proved and accepted the boundaries that come from realizing one’s limits as an artist, as a husband or wife, as a career musician. The entire album, in fact, is a “Laugh of Recognition,” a painful coming to peace. Because of this, The Long Surrender comes out as quite possibly Over the Rhine’s best album ever, and unlike many in the music world, I’m not apt to seeing this as being their glorious swansong, but as a period of confirmation of the path up to this point.

The themes expressed throughout the album come to a heartbreaking but peaceful conclusion in the final track “All My Favorite People”. “Is each wound you’ve received just a burdensome gift / It gets so hard to lift yourself up off the ground / But the poet says we must praise a mutilated world / We’re all working the graveyard shift / You might as well sing along.” Ah yes, that seems to sum it up perfectly, why to keep on going after so long, after probing the depths and limitations offered by one’s own heart: “You might as well sing along.”

1. Bon Iver - Bon Iver

[Say it with me: bohn ee-vare--rhymes with Sean E. Ware]

The thought of writing anything of a review for Bon Iver’s second studio album fills me with dread. So much has been said about it already—from Paste Magazine, to Pitchfork, Uncut, Spin, and Mojo, what can I say? How can I possibly offer an opinion of this utter masterpiece without simply restating what greater minds than I have already said? I’ll start by saying that my first hearing of “Holocene” is one of those rare music experiences that seeped into my mind and haunted me for days. I re-listened to it no less than eight times over the next three days, each time hearing something new, something that hinted at why it was that this music stuck so much. I never could figure it out completely, but it wouldn’t be until I heard the whole album that I could ever get a sense of it capable of being put into words, and then only tenuously.

The great importance Bon Iver puts on the aspect of place and time is fascinating. Their track list looks like a Greyhound itinerary: “Michicant”, “Hinnom, TX”, “Calgary”, “Minnesota, WI”, and so on. Some of these places exist, some of them don’t. The lyrics themselves contain an artful balance between abstract concepts (“Someway baby it’s a part of me apart from me”, “And at once I knew I was not magnificent”) and very specific, concrete references (“Third and Lake it burnt away, the hallway / was where we learned to celebrate”, “That night you played for me ‘Lip Parade’”) that juggle back and forth, between the pictorial and the transcendental, and coming to rest with the ebbing and flowing chord progressions falling on the phrase, “And I could see for miles, miles, miles.” These lyrics are specific, ordinary, yet introspective, densely layered—it suggests something of the relationship between the concrete and the abstract, between the immanent details of place and time and the transcendent qualities of experience and longing. The gentle, folksy style is simple and uncluttered, transporting the listener to an almost hypnotic place where these elements of place and time intertwine into one vista, much like the album art painted by artist Gregory Euclide.

And through all of this—it’s so achingly human, so full of the things that mark the processes that define our identities, such as growing older, tying ourselves to places and times, and the inevitable changes that challenge these ties. This is what folk music is all about—heck, this is what music itself is all about. The album may not be perfect, but it’s the closest to a perfect album you might ever hope to find.

Honorable Mentions:

Iron & Wine - Kiss Each Other Clean

Radical Face - The Family Tree: The Roots

The Civil Wars - Barton Hollow

The Joy Formidable - The Big Roar

James Blake - James Blake

Your blogger is now a college graduate.

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Kennedy) — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 20:59:00 +0000

Should I have graduated at the same time as my brother, I think there would have been two cakes at home: "Congratulaions Dylan!" and "It's about time Nathan!"

Fortunately I didn't have that problem. :)

Late but in time for Christmas!

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Kennedy) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:27:00 +0000

In four short hours, I will be walking across the stage to accept the diploma cover for my degree. It's a couple years late in coming, but today, I don't care about that. I'm graduating! That's what matters--that, and the ability to follow through with the vocation I believe God has put on my heart. It may be late, but on God's schedule, it's just on time.

And so it is with my recent posting, or lack thereof. Just because it's been a bit sparse lately doesn't mean I haven't had things swirling around and getting ready for something new! In particular, with school out of the way and seven and a half months until beginning the novitiate, I've thought about the new directions to take blogging and to see where it may lead. To those of you who have seen my profile description and wondered, "Musician? What kind of musician never posts about music on his blog entitled 'Singing in the Shower'?" well, let me alleviate your concerns, because that's about to change. I'm still going to be doing what I've been doing, but with more content featuring music, original and not.

I have my first-ever Youtube video up featuring the MIDI digital recording of a piece I've been working on and off for nearly a year now. Since we're coming upon our celebration of the birth of Our Lord, it's fitting. For more information, see the description on Youtube. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but it's freaking fantastic. Watching the expressions on unsuspecting supporter's faces has been a joy the likes of which few people can experience.

But here's where I could use some help: I'm kickstarting a campaign to have my music performed and recorded. If you can, please post, send, share, and most of all, enjoy the music I have up in the hopes of attracting the attention of someone who is willing and able to help.

But enough gabbing. Here's the promised video:

Just in case you were wondering...

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Kennedy) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 22:50:00 +0000

This is the time of the semester when Nathan puts on his work gloves and gets his nose to the grindstone.

My graduation is in 17 days (not like I'm counting or anything). That, and I've already been getting those finals-week nightmares about discovering that you signed up for a class at the beginning of the semester, forgot about it, and never showed up for it--and we're still two weeks away from finals! This is going to be a rough next couple of weeks...

So...sparse posting, yadda yadda, insert another lame excuse here. Besides, why are you reading this when you could be here having a much better time? (I particularly recommend Seryn's "We Will All Be Changed")

Pride and Delusions of Adequacy

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Kennedy) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 19:16:00 +0000

I have suspected as of late that a great deal of the tensions we experience in the spiritual life arise from the nature of pride in the human heart. While this might not seem a particularly profound insight on the surface--it seems sort of matter-of-fact and obvious--the real depth of this reality often lays hidden precisely because we tend to think of it as obvious.

If there's anything I know about as a human being, it's pride. Pride isn't just thinking too highly of oneself, but something more fundamental entirely. Pride is thinking of oneself according to false, delusional perceptions--perceptions manufactured by one's own need for greatness, by one's own desire for high esteem. Thinking highly of oneself is no sin insofar as one thinks according to truth, and given our human nature and its destiny within God's merciful providence, some level of high-thinking is in order.

But pride is the lie that one's worth, value, capacity for high esteem lie outside of one's being. Being is a realm an individual has no control over. We value talents, accomplishments, social connectedness, rewards, and abilities, but often we're at a loss as to what defines the worth of a person on a more foundational, existential level. We try to earn our worth by being useful--by doing rather than by being. Pride tells us that we're adequate in ourselves to go through life in a meaningful and happy way--and this sense of adequacy is a delusion.

The problem is, every single one of us will someday be, according to the world, useless. Perhaps it will be injury, old age, emotional debilitation, or some curve ball thrown by life that will bewilder, cripple, and bring us to our knees. Death will certainly do this. When all of our talents, accomplishments, social connections, rewards, and abilities crumble beneath the weight of life, where will we find ourselves? Where will our value come from then? Perhaps we delude ourselves by thinking that we can store up our accomplishments before the time hits, but if we're really, truly honest with ourselves, we can see our own powerlessness lurking beneath the surface. We really don't know when the time will come, and we have no control over it. But come it will.

Pride tempts us to believe that we can only be valuable if we are useful, and so we imagine ourselves as being a lot more useful than we really are. Activity becomes a substitute for being; since we cannot connect with that foundation of God-created goodness in being, we seek a self-created goodness in doing. We cut ourselves off from that amazing realm of love that energizes, refreshes, and affirms our very existence and in the process produce works of only limited, non-lasting, and narrowly pragmatic value if we can then produce works at all. Lacking in love, these works will perish when tested by fire.

Our spiritual tensions arise when we present to God our false and graven images of self based on these delusions and think that in doing so we're giving ourselves to God. God sees through them. God sees who we really are. What we experience in these moments is a kind of silence on God's part, as though God doesn't see us, as if God has rejected us or as if He hates us. No, God has rejected the false self, because in relation to the beloved creation He has made and loves, it has no right to exist. It has no right to assert itself or to claim for itself the affections of the Divine Lover. Instead, God ignores it, and it falls away; it shrivels and dies.

Somewhere along the way though, we have to see the falsity of this image, otherwise we will die with it.

The Stupidest Argument for Atheism I've Ever Heard

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Kennedy) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 17:35:00 +0000

One of the most peculiar tendencies among atheists, agnostics, and other so-called “Freethinkers” is to refer to themselves as “Brights,” that is, people whose use of the intellect somehow sets them apart from the dumb and superstitious rubes who happen to believe in things they cannot see. Not every atheist or agnostic fashions themselves as such, but certainly enough in the “New Atheism” of our day and age to warrant comment. It’s a thinly-veiled, almost naked arrogance, and everybody recognizes it as such except those who hold to it. Push them though, and they bitterly resent the charge of arrogance. “We’re not the arrogant ones,” they would cry, “but those who would have us believe in foolish fairy tales without a shred of evidence are!”

In fact, this sentiment is at the core of the New Atheism. It argues that religion is something of a collective mental disorder plaguing humankind; it argues that religion is antithetical to a free and prosperous society and that when atheist ideologies manifest the horrors of Stalinist Russia, Pol Pot, and the Third Reich, it’s actually a religious impulse motivating the atrocities, not atheism. We’re meant to believe that not believing in God somehow makes man more sane, more rational, less prone to violence, and a-okay hunky-dory well adjusted and adult.

Consider the sources:

"Over the centuries, we've moved on from Scripture to accumulate precepts of ethical, legal and moral philosophy. We've evolved a liberal consensus of what we regard as underpinnings of decent society, such as the idea that we don't approve of slavery or discrimination on the grounds of race or sex, that we respect free speech and the rights of the individual. All of these things that have become second nature to our morals today owe very little to religion, and mostly have been won in opposition to the teeth of religion." -- Richard Dawkins, quoted in Natalie Angier, "Confessions of a Lonely Atheist," New York Times Magazine, January 14, 2001

"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass; he is actually ill." -- H.L. Mencken, Prejudices, ch. 14, "The Believer" Third Series (1922), also New York Times Magazine, September 11, 1955, per James A Haught, ed, "2000 Years of Disbelief"

"Religious faith or a belief in the supernatural despite contrary evidence may appear to be benign on it's own. Mixed with fear, a desire for power, or prejudices, faith can be a dangerous motivating force for doing harm to oneself or others." -- Davy Russell, "Faith - A Psychological Disorder?" X-Project Paranormal Magazine, 13 July 2001 (Though, I have to add, if you look at the trajectory of some of my own posts on this blog and my challenges to co-religionists, on a factual level, he has a real point.)

Now let's not get mixed up with people thinking that I'm saying something that I'm not saying. I'm neither arguing for nor against atheism as such, nor am I trying to provide a justification for acts of atrocity committed either by or against religious people. My view on the matter is, in fact, that atrocities are atrocities no matter who commits them, why they commit them, or against whom they commit them. I could argue all day against Mencken's definition of faith and discuss just exactly what faith is. I could even go on to argue that Dawkin's claim of an ethical and legal system with no roots in Judeo-Christian belief isn't only false, it's utterly foolish. But this isn't the heart of the matter; the heart of the matter is this particular strand of argumentation and this particular mindset for atheism and against religion.

Let’s look past the atrocious pride behind this argument for a moment, as well as the utterly insane and quasi-mystical understanding of Darwinian evolution that has more to do with X-Men than The Origin of Species. Let’s look at the logic of this argumentum de praestantia instead and see exactly why this qualifies as the stupidest argument for atheism I’ve ever heard.

It hardly bears mention that the vast majority of all people of all places of all times have believed in, well, something. From tribal shamanisms, to the classical and world paganisms, to philosophical monotheism, to Abrahamic monotheism, to Eastern spiritualities, and so on, religion is a constant among human history. Contrary to the atheist’s claim, we are born pagans, not atheists. We might not be born believing in the Judeo-Christian God, but we all as children populate our worlds with fairies, monsters, and various imaginary creatures. Paganism is our natural religious center of gravity untrained by revelation; it is our default as fallen human beings.

What this demonstrates about man is his possession of what we call imagination—an entity the Greeks and the Scholastics termed the “phantasia”. This is how human beings are capable of, not merely rational thought, but also abstract thought. The phantasia allows the human mind to picture concepts, objects, and entities never made present to the senses, or even those that once were present to the senses. World religions, taken as a whole, are a testament to the workings of this faculty in diverse, beautiful, and sublime ways.

The atheist mania against religion as a collective form of madness not only misses the point about religion, but about man’s faculty of abstraction. For their argument to be correct, one of two things would have to be the case: 1) that the imagination as such carries no purpose outside of practical abstraction (like developing a cognitive map of a place) or mere amusement (like telling stories, presumably such as this), or 2) that the imagination carries no purpose whatsoever and is merely a vestigial holdover of man's mental evolution. Let’s pull out Ockham’s Razor and see for a moment just exactly what it looks like when the irrational assumptions of the argument are torn away.

What’s more rational: 1) View human history and see the one—and I mean one—constant throughout all barbarian, civilized, and intermediate societies, with all its importance and weight, and then to isolate it, separate it, and quarantine it (as 19^th century anthropocentrism did), and finally to obliterate it, saying that everyone—everyone—who ever held it was the victim of some collective, pathological disease and oppressed by the powers that be (whatever the case may be, depending on your particular ideological iteration of atheism); or 2) View the bulk of religious belief and activity of human history as a natural, normal, and normative endeavor proper to human nature that, like all other human endeavors, has enriched, expressed, and given meaning to human life while concomitant to human failings? (One need not even believe that religion is true to hold this view.) The first view requires an artificial multiplicity of entities to be plausible. It leads to a highly unlikely and improbable characterization of, not only the mass of human beings throughout history, but also of human nature itself.

The problem here isn't atheism, nor is it atheists: it's the use of shallow, arrogant, and circular arguments used to bolster atheistic views. If atheists are the pinnacle of highly-evolved and intelligent thinking that they claim to be, then they should actually show some highly-evolved and intelligent thinking and not give us these stupid, shallow arguments. Either that, or they should drop the pretense of highly-rationalized thought and admit that they are petty, disingenuous, narrow-minded fools on par with the rest of humanity with all its glories and warts.

The reason this is the stupidest argument for atheism I’ve ever heard is because it appropriates a psychological language with no bearing in actual psychological research, it imposes an arrogance of the worst kind into one’s view of history, and it allows one to write off anyone disagreeing with them as “insane.” It’s so circular, so insulated, that only the most shallow of all minds could ever possibly take it seriously, minds such as those who argue that Jesus was an atheist.

What RNA polymerase can teach us about theology

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Kennedy) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 19:10:00 +0000

What you are looking at is a computer model of a unit of RNA polymerase I, a single enzymatic molecule that acts as a transcribing agent for constructing an RNA stand from DNA. The tangles of ribbons represent complexes of proteins constructed into particular structures that clamp onto the DNA strand, run the strand through itself, read the code on the strand, and splice together a strand complementary of the code being read. The model attempts to hint at the known complexity of the molecule while still being comprehensible, besides being limited itself by what we currently know--and can know--about the enzyme itself.

What you see here is an electron micrograph of RNA fragments being constructed from DNA fragments, starting at the 5' end (labeled "End") and currently at the 3' end (labeled "Begin"). What you do not see here are RNA polymerase molecules, themselves being entirely to small for resolution or even detection.

Despite these images, I have not shown you RNA polymerase. I have shown you a conceptual representation of it, and an analog image showing the report of electrons off a silver or gold coated specimen of the work that RNA polymerase does. The specimen, may I add, is dead--it has been mounted, stained, preserved, and fixed to allow for the imaging process and to make its visibility possible. What its structure or behavior looks like in a living cell, exactly how to put this into a completely accurate and based-on-the-reality comprehension, is completely beyond our capability. We use the pieces that we can comprehend to grasp something of what we can't. Mere human perspective is useless when it come to seeing the objective reality of molecular biology.

Does this predicament sound at all familiar to those of us who grasp for theological truths? What does the nature of molecular science tell us about the Queen of Sciences?

The problem any kind of human knowing runs into is precisely this question of whether a thing can be known in itself, and if so, how. We run into this problem because our knowing, as human, has to be human. When we measure distances, quantities, and qualities, we must use measurements that have some sort of coherence to the human mind--so we use units such as parsecs and light years, years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and ounces, pounds, tons, and meters, kilometers, and so on. Each of these measurements, whether metric or customary, exists purely as an abstraction to act to mark off boundaries. Even time measurements, based on the rotation of the earth around the sun, are to some degree arbitrary: what if the earth should alter in its course? What would become of our time measurements then?

Let's expand this to enclose a more empiric sampling of scientific knowledge. What in reality is a "force" in physics, if not a principle that helps us to understand the pushings and pullings of motion? Does a "force" exist on its own devoid of the quantified action? Likewise, we can argue the same thing for atomic models: what, in fact, is an electron? We refer to it as a particle bearing a negative charge that orbits the space around the protonic/neutronic nucleus. What what is a particle? Does it have mass? And what is a charge, if not just something that attracts something opposite of it? Do these concepts have any integrity on their own, or are they helpful "graduations" that help us to wrap our minds around realities that are otherwise unintelligible?

This is the anthropic principle, and it underlies the scientific method and the searching for all measure of human knowledge. But if the human mind is relegated to abstract though arbitrary concepts in order to grasp a thing it cannot know purely in itself, what role does this kind of knowing have to do with God and the truths of faith?

Try as we may to arrive at a principle in which we define faith as an entirely separate way of knowing--which is true nonetheless--this does not negate the predicament by which we cannot know a thing in itself. This is why, in working out the question of how man can know God, Thomas Aquinas and the Catechism alike make use of the concept of "analogy," that is, the inherent likeness between the Creator and creation. Formally revealed truths as iterated in dogmatic statements, doctrinal formulae, and theological principles all have at their heart the basis of analogy.

For us, we can see analogy as being something of the anthropic principle applied to theology. We use such handy terms with precise definitions as "sin," "faith," "virtue," "salvation," "revelation," "creation," and the like, but somewhere down the road, we find that even those definitions oft rest on somewhat arbitrary assumptions. What, in fact, is sin? The most common definition I've heard is an act or state by which one separates oneself from God. Notice the figurative language--what does it mean to be "separate" from God? Is it like being separate from distance? This wouldn't make much sense, as though we were on earth, God were in Heaven, and there be this great physical space between us. No, this distancing, this separation, has to refer to a deeper reality that we otherwise cannot communicate. The goal of seeking knowledge of God requires that these assumptions be laid bare and that all false literalism dies away.

The way to arrive at this place of knowledge once all falsehood has fallen away is through contemplation by which one receives God as He is and overcomes the limitations of language, abstract concepts, and human categories. This starts in this life. Though we won't fully experience this until Heaven, our life of faith on earth empties us out in preparation for that great fulfillment.

Can you see, then, how dogma and dogmatic thinking are very different things? A dogma is a formally revealed truth; dogmatic thinking is in clinging to a particular iteration of it at the expense of the reality it is meant to contain, which is beyond any possibility of iteration. In science, this would be like being so caught up on the RNA polymerase models shown above that one loses sight of the fact that one does not in fact see RNA polymerase. In theology, however, it would be idolatry: one would get so caught up on a particular facet of human understanding that one would lose sight of the fact that one does not, in fact, see God.

Let this be a challenge for you, then, especially if you find your forte in particularly discursive fields as systematics, apologetics, and dogmatics. Even to those who take radically different views on essential dogma and principles do not give us license to believe that we have things more figured out than they do. We may have the clearer electron micrograph or computer model of a particular molecule, but that does not mean that we know the molecule more than they do. In fact, we might not know the molecule at all.

False Greatness and its Remedy

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Kennedy) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 19:44:00 +0000

Most of the time I assume myself to be a person falling into the same category Churchill found himself in when dealing with people he didn't like: "He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." People rub me the wrong way, and they will continue to do so until the day I die. But at least I try to keep an eye on my own prejudices; that someone rubs me the wrong way might not be a problem with the other person, but a problem with me. Maybe a person's loudmouthed, snap-to-judgment personality isn't truly something to despise, rather a facet of their person-hood that deserves all the tolerance and respect as their annoying but harmless mannerisms and inability to manage a working relationship with personal hygiene. A person may be annoying, grating, and obnoxious, but that hardly makes them evil. Thus it makes it even more difficult when, in dealing with a person, that deep unease takes over and, without calculated judgment or malicious intent on my part, I realize that, yes, this person is truly and unmistakably nuts.

What makes this even more difficult is when I come to know a person, have some real understanding of their character, and then I see that most of what they emanate through the grating obnoxiousness is a real and willful striving toward a notion of greatness that lacks a basis in reality. Great a man as he was, for example, Steve Jobs was a bona fide jerk toward those he worked with and who worked for him: he always lived as though he were some exceptional person to whom the rules did not apply. He would park in handicapped spaces because he felt like it; he would be unrestrained and particularly harsh in his criticisms of others. I do not mean to defame an otherwise good man who made real contributions to the world--what I mean to say is that our notions of greatness can become so inhuman, so draconian, and so self-centered that we lose sight of the real importance of life itself.

Contrast this pragmatic, one-dimensional view of greatness with the teachings of Catholic morality and spirituality. If we can put them side-by-side, we can see many similarities and differences, but the most foundational difference between our notions of greatness lies in the places of both charity and humility: the foundation and the keystone of the whole structure, respectively.

Humility and charity. Great men have feared very little, except these two things. Caesar could have embodied all of the great virtues of prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude, but when reminded that he too was a mere mortal prone to mistakes, he lashed out in fury. When the face of charity looked him in the eye and hinted at some sort of reality beyond politics, pragmatics, and power, he had it crucified, and hasn't stopped since. How delightfully humorous it is, that the humility of a child is enough to make a great man lose himself in fear; how deliciously ironic that the love of a saint can make such "greatness" retreat to the bowels of Hell. No, this is not greatness at all--greatness refuses to associate itself with the petty trifles of the world and the stifling limitations one puts on oneself. If ego, slavery to one's own opinions (and by extension, enslaving others to your own opinions), fretting over having one's own way, and treating others as mere accessories in achieving your own vision, goals, and dreams don't count as petty trifles and stifling limitations, then there's no such thing as a petty trifle or stifling limitation.

The Christian call to greatness raises us up out of this one-dimensional and inhumanly pragmatic view of greatness and into something truly great, based on Truth and Charity. It calls us to recover the essence of our human nature and to fulfill it. Without humility we can't know the truth of our nature; without charity, we can't use it to aspire to anything. Any substitution to either of these is false and will lead to frustration, fruitlessness, and futility.

Humility means that we base our understanding of our nature and worth on what is authentic and true. That means that we do not base our worth on our work or achievements, but on the fundamental openness we have to God and to each other. Nothing else matters.

I find it telling that all the qualities that we associate with an ugliness of person all have to do with an overreaching ego, with a preoccupation with self and an exaltation of one's own personality. The more you strive for greatness, the more you are to surely lose it, unless you first start by striving for humility.

Do you wish to be great? Then begin by being. Do you desire to construct a vast and lofty fabric? Think first about the foundations of humility. The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation. -- St. Augustine

Why I Love Blogging

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Kennedy) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:42:00 +0000

When I was in the third grade, I wrote a short story about five little bug-eyed aliens who crash landed, found refuge with two brothers whose single mother dated a government agent named Brian, and had to lead their new-found friends to safety and back, somehow, to their home planet. I included a title page to it with big, capital letters "THE ALIENS FROM OUTER SPACE" and featured drawing of these five little gray men. That's about all the details I remember from it. It ended up achieving third place in a local county fair children's contest for such short stories. To my knowledge, mine was the only entry to feature aliens and government agents, and third place was an honor I was more than willing to take. But what I remember the most of that whole experience was that it was the first time I recall ever being aware of how much I love to write.

My second year of college, my questioning nature began to get the better of for the first time since childhood. The ultimate reason for this was my coming around to a Christian worldview, and trying to place all of my perceptions, beliefs, judgments, and assumptions within this context. This was still over a year before I made the decision to become Catholic. You better believe that writing had a big part in this process; I found my mind boiling over with ideas and impressions that I had to find some way to organize them and give them expression. The summer months following my freshman year in college involved me typing out a sloppy but oh-so-earnest treatise on the nature of Christian theology (the end result, while still unfinished, was 20 pages, single spaced, with only a tenuous grasp of any kind of structure or organization). The first thing I began to realize was just exactly how much I sucked at writing. My thoughts were like a tangle of fish hooks thrown into a huge bowl: I could never just pick one of them up without bringing up all the rest. The discipline of clear thinking is not one of my natural talents, so acquiring it required that I live through experiences that added perspective to otherwise abstract topics. Eventually, I learned how to write with more concision, with more focus, and a heck of a lot less pretense than when I started out, but through it all, beginning to end, I have repeatedly sharpened my awareness of how much I love to write.

Whether or not I've come a long way from writing silly little stories like or sloppy and undisciplined treatises, I don't care at the moment. What I do care about is how the whole experience of blogging, in the few months I've been doing it, has helped me to reach our for different perspectives, deeper expressions, and broader thinking than I would have otherwise. It's helped me to grow as a writer because it's helped me to grow as a person; after all, you cannot write if you're not a person. As far as readers go, I've been truly blessed--the internet is a place full of hapless and miserable trolls whose vitriolic hand-wringing can quickly make a blogger regret the existence of comboxes. I've not encountered a single person this whole time who's sought to unleash wrath or scorn on this site, this despite my writings on controversial topics and with a sometimes edgy style (not to mention my equal-opportunity criticism of both rad-trad and AmChurch iterations of misguided ideologies, along with their related symptoms).

The 64-count box of crayons: pure joy

One of the things I've realized over this time is that blogging is most truly understood as an art form. It takes a discipline and an expansiveness; a technical proficiency and a creative vision. A blog is as much an expression of the one writing it as it is an expression of its subject matter, and given this intuition, it is difficult to not collapse into a form of performativism by inventing a fictional online alter-ego, or in using the distance of cyber space to project an idealized image of oneself. That's one of the most important things to me as a blogger and as a writer. While there is room for such performative expressions as anonymity, pseudonymity, and even creative personages in blogging, writing, and internet citizenship, the whole purpose of this blog is and has been simply to write without performance, to think without being graded, to, in other words, "Sing in the Shower." This doesn't mean that I don't care about the readership, nor about the social dynamics of blogging; it doesn't mean that I don't care about the truth of what I write, nor about the effects on those who read it. What it means is that in order to contribute, I have to stop being my own toughest critic. I have to dis-inhibit, even while I work on refining and polishing my approach. Writing of any kind, except for solely introspective journaling, is a social endeavor, and without a society of readers, fellow writers, and yes, even critics, writing would be a frustrating and fruitless exercise.

My writing may or may not speak for itself, but ultimately, I'm still that little third-grade child whose imagination and wonder led him to write a silly little story that proved that E.T. was his favorite movie. I'm also still that fascinated though perplexed college student trying to sort things out and to organize his thoughts in sometimes embarrassing ways (by the mercy of God, none of that writing exists anymore except as an object of my own memory). The overarching principle is that I love writing, and I should do what I love, even if I should do it badly. I don't have this all figured out. If I ever have this figured out, please God, may you take me soon.

More of my brother's art awesomeness

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Kennedy) — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 02:06:00 +0000

Remember my brother the artist? He's been at it again. Here's a sampling of some of his more recent work. I'd tell you what my favorite is, but I think it might be apparent.

"Blue Djinn", oil on canvas

"Genie in a Coke Bottle", screenprint


"Flying Fish", ink on paper

Untitled, 6' x 4', oil on canvas (open to suggestions for title)

Untitled, detail

Kid's got talent. I think getting a high-quality website would be in order. But I'm just his big brother--what do I know?

"I have to love you, but I don't have to like you"

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Kennedy) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 00:23:00 +0000

In order to overcome our linguistic limitations as English speakers using the word "Love," we rightly run to the Greek terms eros, filia, and agape. They provide us with these nice, neat little categories in which to place the components of the mysterious entity bearing these names. They allow us to gauge our own experiences and to evaluate them according to our goals--do I "love" this person with eros, or with agape? My friend and I--is our friendship based on storge or filia? We rightly esteem agape as the highest of them all and aim for it above the others. What we get right is also what often get terribly wrong.

The problem is, when we think of agape as an autonomous category, we lose its meaning. Not only do we lose its meaning, we lose something of the depth of faith, something of the true beauty of life and love. What we often mean when we say we, "I love this person, but I don't have to like them" is an excuse to be able to hold them at an arm's length and feel justified about it. It can be condescending, an "I'm-so-righteous-and-holy" kind of inauthentic pat-on-the-back that regards one's own affections to be so precious as to give them out only as one would throw a biscuit to a dog. The distinction can become incredibly self-serving and cold, because it regards as a matter of mere intellectual category what properly belongs to the mysteries lived by the heart.

But the real reason it's wrong isn't because it over-categorizes what can never become a real category, but because God Himself does not love in this petty, distant, and socially-polite way. The love of God, which we often call agape, contains the fullness of eros, filia, and storge. God isn't the merely cordial neighbor: he's the affectionate, amorous, friendly, head-over-heels-in-love father, brother, spouse, friend...He doesn't distinguish, as we do, between "love" and "like," between what He would die for in you and what He would not. He died for all of you--sins and all (read this in order to get something of what this means). He doesn't just love you--He's in love with you. Sin isn't so much doing something that offends God in a legalistic sense--though sin does indeed offend Him--but sin is a means of shutting one's self away from God's love.

If you've ever been in love, you have some starting point for approaching what I mean. You know the giddy, almost euphoric rush of being enamored with one's beloved--you know the life-affirming experience of having a beautiful person show some interest in you, and that thought that says, "Can there really be something there? Ah, but no..." When you're in love, nothing else matters. Everything seems better. Every cheap imitation of it finally appears as it really is.

And yes, God loves you like this. God loves you in a way you could never imagine. While we go on and on about the disinterested portion of love, what we forget is that this disinterestedness isn't so much an "I don't care if we never see each other again" kind of disinterest, but a "To never be with this person ever again would be hell, but I would endure that if I had to."

Love God. But don't love Him as though he were an annoying neighbor, or as though the love of God were something akin to appreciating art in a museum. Don't just love God--but be in love with God. That's the only fitting response to the way He loves you, and to who He is. There is absolutely no vocation in this wide world that would ever succeed without being in love--not marriage, not the religious life, not the priesthood, not singlehood, nothing. And, for God's sake, don't put barriers up between you and Him. Don't refuse it because you're afraid it seems too silly.

Love isn't a theory or a linguistic category. It's so real, that you need it more than your body needs food.

Media vita in morte sumus

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Kennedy) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 05:33:00 +0000

A very old graveyard in the Northwest Missouri countryside

A slow, deliberate, and measured succession of peals from a single bell is enough to force one of the most frightening and profound reflections of a person's life. This is especially true if one is at the time alone, or has the bitter experience of having lost loved ones, perhaps even having faced death on one's own. At first, one's attention may turn toward the questions, "Who passed? Do I know them? How did they die?" Once the identity of the deceased has become known, then the questions change. If we knew them, we grieve. If we didn't, we still find ourselves asking, "How long will it be? Will it hurt? What will it be like?" And in the middle of it all--fear.

Funny, that. Fear, being an experience common to all creatures possessing passive sentience, is certainly understandable in the face of death--but the human fear of death seems a bit odd. For one, we are the only creatures who recoil at the sight of a dead body. No animal minds the presence of a corpse belonging to a member of the same species. Also, animals seem to only fear death when faced with it. Humans seem to possess a capability of being preoccupied with death--fretting about its possibility, worrying about the experience, recoiling at the thought of having loved ones die. And yet, we humans are also the only creatures who possess the capability of ignoring death--losing perspective, forgetting its inevitability, downplaying its necessity.

All of this is because human beings alone face the concept of death as a mystery. We find something deeply, horribly, and uncompromisingly unsettling about it. We feel as if death just isn't supposed to happen, as if something is very, very wrong that we just can't make sense of. We cannot rationalize death--why it's necessary, what it's for, why we have to face it. Its permanence stands starkly against some agent of the human spirit that begs, that pleads, for some kind of cosmic leniency over and against the blind and impersonal forces of entropy and decay. While the harder and more impersonal philosophies of our age may reinforce this idea, that this really is the case and there's nothing we human beings can do about it or believe that would make a difference, our faith tells us otherwise. Faith and faith alone is the progenitor of that quality before death that has us see through the appearances, that has us see the reality behind our deeply-held sensibility that there's something wrong with death. Quite simply, our faith alone gives us the license to hope.

I can personally vouch for this as true. I've lost people I've loved--friends, family, classmates, coworkers. I've also had the experience of coming face-to-face with the inevitability of my own death in a real and dramatic way, through the threat of terminal illness and a long, lonely drive through the Missouri countryside to and from this particular appointment. Most of the times I've heard of the death of a friend, I've been alone. I've found it a particularly fruitful exercise to stand in a cemetery in the middle of a snowy Lenten night and in anticipation of my own death to enter into silence as deeply as possible. Chronic insomniac that I am, it often helps me to see each and every night's retirement as a rehearsal for death. In order to sleep, I have to die to the world and to myself. I have to enter into the darkness of unawareness, of helplessness, of a necessary void. To an insomniac, Compline is a way to find meaning in the ongoing search for rest, for it allows one to really ask God for true rest, the rest that can only come in His peace.

What I find is that I fear, not so much that I should ever die, but that I should die without ever having lived. I dread the possibility of being taken from this life in such a way that it never could have unfolded the way I long so much for it to; I dread that my death should come before my ability to outpour my full potential as a human being--a human being who loves, who dreams, and who longs for a particular kind of authentic greatness. I fear a meaningless death as the end of a meaningless life. And what tempers this fear is precisely the hope that death ultimately has a meaning beyond itself because life has a meaning beyond itself. If I choose to live, really and authentically live, then I can find some assurance that death will never carry the sting of permanence and despair. Death becomes a something when before it was a nothing. Death, then, never comes early, nor does it come late, but it comes precisely when it should. The power of hope is inestimable, for only in hope can we truly live and can we truly die.

When each of our hours come, we will each discover and experience the truth as prayed by the Church in the antiphon, Media vita in morte sumus: "In the midst of life, we are in death." If our lives are earthly, then death is an interruption that ends our unfinished or neglected work, but if our lives are centered on God, then death is a transition that becomes the middle of our lives, standing as the bridge between Heaven and Earth. With hope, we can sing St. Francis' praises to Sister Death:

Be praised, my Lord, through our Sister Bodily Death,
from whose embrace no living person can escape.
Woe to those who die in mortal sin!
Happy those she finds doing your most holy will.
The second death can do no harm to them.

"I caught you streaking in your birkenstocks..."

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Kennedy) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:48:00 +0000

Just a little update for your Halloween: I am, as we speak, sitting on campus, typing on a Mac, dressed as a hipster. That's right--your uber-preppy overweight 20-something blogger is sitting on a college campus in a knit hat, huge glasses, v-neck striped shirt, rolled up jeans, and modified facial hair. Though I'll be posting pics later, here's a little preview:

This took a lot of courage.

Forthcoming is a post with full pics and a personal essay on today's experience.

Thank God my facial fair grows at a faster-than-average rate.

People of a Relentless Hope

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Kennedy) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 02:31:00 +0000

The Russian Orthodox have a beautiful tradition
in which the Woman at the Well (John 4) is named
Svedlana, meaning "Radiance," an image as to
the type of hope and joy that comes from the
encounter with Christ.

Ask anyone out there why they adopt loony New Age beliefs positing crystals, chakras, reincarnation, crude pantheism, and Barack Obama instead of the Christian faith, and you might get any number of answers. To some, Christianity seems too unenlightened or dreary; to others, it may appear as judgmental or overly harsh. Even to many Christians, the Catholic faith in particular may seem too hung up on rigid doctrines and authoritarianism. What each and every of these impressions lead to is a perception of a lack of personal authenticity in the Christian faith. If the Christian faith is true, and we believe it, then it has to show in perceptible and undeniable ways. In other words, if God loves you and you know it, please kindly inform your face.

Yet how many times do we as Christians look to our faith, charged with admonitions to take up our crosses, to suffer our pains with patience and silence, to deny self and to die to the flesh, the world, and the devil, and from that, come up with a monstrous form of gloom and doom spirituality that quickly suppresses any hint of happiness or joy?

This, I believe, is the greatest scandal we give to the world around us. So many--too many--Christian blogs, websites, magazines, books, radio and television programs, and social functions radiate precisely this joyless, formalized, and sterile charade that has the gall to call itself "Real" Catholic/Christian spirituality. It goes so far as to argue that "You don't become Christian/Catholic to become happy, but because it's TRVE. Personal happiness doesn't mean a whole lot."

If this isn't one of the clearest, deepest, and most pernicious of all lies given to anyone bearing the name of Christian, then the devil quite simply doesn't exist. It is true that personal happiness is not something to grasp at, nor is it something to be preserved at all spiritual or moral costs. Christians are called to carry the Cross, to suffer their pains in union with Christ, to deny themselves and die to the flesh, the world, and the devil--but since when does this mean that personal happiness means nothing? Since when have we bought into the awful lie that to carry one's Cross is somehow antithetical to a life of happiness, even in this world?

We are Christians; we are people of the Resurrection. We are, above all, a people of hope. Hope isn't some form of wishful thinking or dopey naivete, but a deep, persistent, unrelenting conviction that everything works out for good for those who love God. It's the freedom to positively choose to live, not merely to wait for the other side of death. And, here's the part that we Christians often forget, something so integral to our faith that it makes all the difference between authenticity and living a sham: it is by hope that we are saved (Romans 8).

We're in a crisis of hope as Christians in the modern world. We're in a crisis of hope, not because we don't believe our teachings (though we definitely have work to do there), but because our teachings have become something so outside of our personal experiences that we cannot personally vouch for their truth. If our teachings are true, then we're not being as faithful to them as we can be. Sure, we may be able to adeptly handle theological questions and arrive at a theologically correct answer, but when do we demonstrate that we are able to internalize and say that these teachings aren't simply true, but that they're true for me? We can't be so afraid of the individualistic culture that we lose an authentic individuality, nor so afraid of personalism that we lose our effective personal witness. There's, quite simply, so substitute for it, and the world knows this.

Here's where I get personal: there are few things that tick me off in this world more than sour-faced Christians (Catholics especially, as in-house quarrels tend to do this) who convince others that their foul temperaments, their joyless lives, their gloomy dispositions are a requirement of authentic faith and not a detriment. Moralistic, self-righteous ninnies are enough to ruin any gathering, and Christian morality, far from fostering such stoniness, actually condemns it. More than anything, this stoniness makes me want to splash them in the face with water from a joke boutonniere, shake their hand with a buzzer in palm, hand them a light for an exploding cigar. And when I find myself falling into the same traps, I sometimes go out and do something visibly stupid as a reminder to not take myself so seriously. If I ever go out and argue with someone that the greatest obstacle to pioneers heading west were the treacherous mountain ranges of Kansas, I may actually be stupid, or I may be trying to come down a notch.

Now, the remedy, as prescribed by the Church, is to bolster hope. We have to choose to live, to courageously, gratefully, and relentlessly rest ourselves in God's love. We cannot, if we should choose to live, convince remain so convinced of our unworthiness that we close ourselves off from God's love. We cannot hide behind the mere formalities of faith and teachings without allowing God's love and life to transform us from the inside out. To constantly remind ourselves of misery to inoculate ourselves against joy is a sin against the Spirit: it's despair, coupled with believing in the deception that depriving the world of your own joy will somehow render it a better place. To fall into the habit of turning your knowledge of doctrine into a set of expectations of how life should be is presumption and the refusal to be open to the unexpected and living reality of God's love. Sins against the Spirit aren't sinful because they violate some code of doctrine, but because they inoculate the human spirit against the very life of God as breathed through the Holy Spirit. Hope is the cure, for we cannot love without it.

This is what the world can see that we're often blind to: that mere doctrine and dogma, when held for their own sake, can be shields that we erect to protect ourselves from the personal encounter with Christ. These teachings lead us to the Truth, who is a person. We cannot merely iterate doctrine and say that, in doing so, we are proclaiming Truth any more than describing my mother's mannerisms, daily schedules, personal history, loves, and dislikes can allow me to say that I've introduced you to my mother.

So, my conclusion is this: you cannot be Christian if you do not want to be happy. You cannot live the demanding life of hope, love, and joy if you are unable to come at the faith with your entire self, hopes, desires, frustrations, hurts, loves, and all. If you deny joy, you deny Christ, because with out it, you cannot proclaim Him. To want to be happy, to want with your entire being that abundance of life offered by Christ through His love and your transformation within it: this is the necessary prerequisite for the Christian life, and with it, salvation.

Occupy Wall Street: In which I break one of my own rules and directly address a contemporary issue

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Kennedy) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 05:04:00 +0000

Occupy this, occupy that, everybody's occupying whatever they can occupy. But nobody would be occupying anything other than their own spatial dimensions had it not started on Wall Street, where so many other deleterious events with resounding effects on the world begin. The so-called "Occupation Zones" resemble some kind of college student jamboree; the hodgepodge of counter-cultural expressions on display are enough to make Woodstock look like a GOP convention. With the crackdowns on these protests in cities like Oakland and Albuquerque, OWS has become everything your disaffected youth could ask for: great fun, a chance to stand up to "The Man", a formative experience, and a socially-acceptable chance to exhibit narcissistic personality traits while getting a night in jail and/or a face full of tear gas to solidify their radicalization.

But perhaps I'm too tough. Admittedly I'm not a fan of the whole "angry disaffected youth shouting at everyone to give them their way" type, so forgive me if I seem too hostile to the whole Occupy Wall Street phenomenon. My real complaint with them at any rate isn't so much the personality traits being celebrated, nor their disruptive and antisocial behaviors, but the fact that the Occupy Wall Street Movement isn't even a movement, but an eruption of angst and unease with no clear purpose or direction other than railing against the status quo. Why this is a complaint is simple: it represents the death of a vital democratic process.

I'm reminded of one of the most virulently Fascist American films ever produced, V for Vendetta. Take an inflated, exaggerated, and distorted view of reality, impose it on a seemingly plausible scenario, and commence to bash the hell out of it until there's nothing left. Form a revolution, gain the support of the masses to your side, blow up the Bailey, Parliament, and overthrow the leaders until there's nothing left. The Guy Fawkes mask gives a face to your Revolution, and it conceals your identity. You get to hide behind an impersonal anonymity by joining the great throng of Revolutionaries. It's a thrill; you shout with them and enjoy the surge of taking part of something great, bigger than yourself, shaping history and making a difference in the world. But once the Revolution is over, what's next? There's nothing left.

It's pure magical thinking to believe that once the old structures are gone, once the old leaders are out of power, once the old has passed away and given the new its chance reign that we can just begin anew with a fresh start. The Soviets tried it. The Chinese have tried it. Every right-wing, left-wing, ideological totalitarian regime has tried it. It didn't work then, and it won't work now. When Wall Street collapses, and free market capitalism ends, what then?

I suspect that there's a lot more ideological maneuvering taking place in this movement than the protestors are letting on, even to themselves. Without a clear and definite message, and no clear and definite goals for the final end of whatever Revolution these characters imagine themselves belonging to, the entire OWS population is something of a flock without a shepherd, open to the predation of the stronger and more radical voices in the camps. The only thing more dangerous than ideological groupthink is groupthink that occurs independent of ideology, when being a part of the Revolution is more important than the aim of the Revolution itself. You open yourself up to being played as a useful idiot (look up the Greek term). Any knowledge of the history of ideological revolutions and the establishment of their subsequent regimes will tell you: once you're no longer useful, you're just an idiot--and the regime has no patience or toleration for mere idiots (again, according to the Greek term. Stupid people they like). Once you burn down the forest, you're left exposed to the naked power of the wind--and what a blustery cold wind it can be.

Instead, here's what I propose for the OWS movement: many of your complaints are valid. Economic policy and the socioeconomic status quo in America and throughout the world is unacceptable. When a corporate entity is granted the same rights but none of the responsibilities of the citizenry, something is deeply, terribly, and frighteningly wrong. Every revolution knows what's wrong, but never has there been a revolution that has known fully what's right. And given your track record on keeping your doctrines, ideologies, and ultimate goals intentionally vague, you show just as much ability to inform policy, think constructively toward the common good, and advocate real reform as does, say, roundworms growing in a slab of rancid pork (but at least the roundworm knows he's a parasite). Actually, a roundworm can be quite effective at shaping public policy; serve infested meat in the Congressional cafeteria and see if, tomorrow, food safety legislation isn't proposed.

In other words, start thinking like and adult, and get over your magical thinking. Things won't suddenly get better if you obliterate our free institutions and the ideas that drive them. They're more likely to get terribly, horribly worse. It's been my experience that every young adult radical is fond of Ghandi's phrase, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." Please, for the love of all that is good and free stop quoting this and actually take the time to reflect on what this would mean for you, personally and in your own life. Stop celebrating yourself for being creative and start actually being creative (zombie performance art--really?). In order to address social injustice, start with cultivating personal justice and go from there. You are a grassroots movement, and this is good. The problem, however, with grassroots movements isn't that they start from the bottom, but the middle. Real change that moves the world starts in your own heart.

And with that in mind, my friends, put down your signs, pack up your tents, stop shouting, take a nice hot shower, get some decent rest and a nice home-cooked meal--and then, let the real revolution begin.