Troy Meeder's book Average Joe is an unwelcome review. I do not delight in criticizing his work, and in many ways, I think it harmless. As an autobiography, or even as an apologia for his life, it does no ill. As a Christian document, it is dreadful. Average Joe is intended as a defense of the working-class man, a man who may not have received what he expected from career or fortune, but who remains faithful to his God and family nonetheless. Mr. Meeder recounts his own experiences of failure and wisened hindsight to affirm such men. He mistakenly counts the biblical heroes among them. Whoever King David was, he was by no means an "average Joe." Nor was Paul, nor Jesus. This would be near to suggesting that Mozart was an "average composer" who, by his sheer grit and American spirit, wrote some darned-good symphonies. It is either a gross historical error or a complete redefinition of the word "average."
I wondered, as I began to read this book, whether I might find anything approaching Horace's exhortation to the Golden Mean; satisfaction by balance. Mr. Meeder is, regrettably, uninterested in balance. (He denounces compromise) In fact, I don't believe Mr. Meeder writes with any intention other than defending himself. He may not be wrong to do so--he seems, from his own portrait, at least, an honest and sincere man--but it is not wisdom to be commended to others. At various points Mr. Meeder assures the "average" man that the future is all foreintentioned by a loving God. Only a few chapters later, he insists that the whole problem boils down to our choices. His description of the spiritual life is inseparable from his experience of the California outdoors. He describes and petitions God in the pseudoromantic language of the modern praise chorus. He is unashamedly anti-intellectual (taking time for several incursions against lawyers, the educated, and those that would frequent "metrosexual coffee shops") and asserts the great fundamentalist arrogance: My ignorance is as enlightening as your knowledge. I believe, at root, this is the thesis of his whole book: My mediocrity is as satisfying as your accomplishment.
The book contains very little in the way of instruction for the "average Joe" initiate. Meeder's spiritual counsel only touches on sin management, with the remedy of "try harder" urged in various ways. At his worst, he appears to be advocating his experience as the destination of all Christians: What we all really need is to be middle-class Republican American evangelicals. Many of these types are my dearest friends, but most of them sense that they aren't the climax of Christendom. I'm afraid that Mr. Meeder thinks he is, or at least his purified version. He looks at Paul and David, and sees cowboys! Mr. Meeder may wish his life to be read in the Ford truck commercial voice, but he ought not suggest it be used for the Bible.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Friday, September 16, 2011
Orwell and a Hard Decision
A few weeks ago I found an Orwell novel at the local used bookstore called Keep the Aspidistra Flying. It was my last summer novel before the school year started, and it was, as is always the case with Orwell, a provocative book. It tells the story of Gordon Comstock, a poet who has declared a personal war on Money. Living in England after the first World War, he is disgusted by the servitude of all around him to the endless and pointless task of earning more money. He is pressed reluctantly through school towards employable skills, and then coerced into finding a "good job"--something that will preserve the appearance of middle-class respectability. This unspoken pressure to be respectable is personified by the aspidistra, an ugly and useless plant kept in most middle class windows at the time. It can survive with little water or light, and scarcely anything--even burning it with half smoked cigarettes--seems to be able to kill it. Gordon finds ready employment in the advertising industry, where he has an unwelcome talent for writing slogans. He despises his vapid co-workers, the artless job, and the waste of his real literary talent. He is allured by some small successes in his poetic work to quit the advertising firm and devote himself fully to real literature, taking a menial job as a bookseller to support himself. He finds in doing so that his creative and personal vitality is sapped by lack of money; he doesn't have money to eat, smoke, have a cup of tea, or even take his girlfriend (Rosemary) for a train ride in the country. Constantly feeling the pressure of family and the ubiquitous aspidistra to take a "good job," he maintains his principled stand and works when he can to become a real poet, tortured by days when success seems imminent, followed by days of utter despair at his failure. Broke, indebted, and friendless, he learns that Rosemary is pregnant with his child. With London Pleasures (his unfinished magnum opus) in his pocket, he reluctantly takes the hateful job that will cost him his literary future but will provide for Rosemary and his unborn child.
"He was aware of a lumpish weight in his inner pocket. It was the manuscript of London Pleasures. He took it out and had a look at it under the street lamp. A great wad of paper, soiled and tattered, with that peculiar, nasty, grimed-at-the-edges look of papers which have been a long time in one's pocket. About four hundred lines in all. The sole fruit of his exile, a two years' fetus which would never be born. Well, he had finished with all that. Poetry! Poetry, indeed! In 1935!
What should he do with the manuscript? Best thing, shove it down the w.c. But he was a long way from home and had not the necessary penny. He halted by the iron grating of a drain. In the window of the nearest house an aspidistra, a striped one, peeped between the yellow lace curtains. He unrolled a page of London Pleasures. In the middle of the labyrinthine scrawlings a line caught his eye. Momentary regret stabbed him. After all, parts of it weren't half bad! If only it could ever be finished! It seemed such a shame to shy it way after all the work he had done on it. Save it, perhaps? Keep it by him and finish it secretly in his spare time? Even now it might come to something.
No, no! Keep your parole. Either surrender or don't surrender.
He doubled up the manuscript and stuffed it between the bars of the drain. It fell with a plop into the water below.
Vicisti, O aspidistra!"
A little over two weeks ago I was offered a fellowship with the New World Symphony Orchestra in Miami, FL. For the past ten years I have studied to be an orchestral trumpet player. I have practiced every day, I have attended six years of school, and I have taken more auditions than I can count. At times I've been among the last few standing at the finals. At times I've not even advanced beyond the first round.
My wife has waited patiently for me win an audition. She has endured daily hours of the same excerpts for years, listened to my inevitable vomiting the night before an audition, consoled me in the aftermath, and sacrificed much financial and personal stability that could be had by the same zealous pursuit of a career teaching music in the public schools.
The process of our decision was complicated and wretched. It came to us unsought, and with either choice would come much grieving. The orchestra, which is a musical academy functioning as a full-time performing orchestra, was only able to offer us dormitory-style housing in the company of twentysomethings. Accepting the fellowship would require us to leave friends and family in Rochester. It would mean the sacrifice of our professional inroads in the NY area. It would mean that our son would only see his uncles and grandparents over holidays. It would have no guarantee of a job or income at the end of the three and a half year program. It would mean the sacrifice of my uninteresting but hard-to-find teaching job at LCS.
I couldn't abide the thought of not going. Every former orchestra member and professional connection recommended the program with high praise. Those who knew us personally and our situation told us not to go. None envied the task of making the decision. Should we voluntarily turn down a won audition? Should we bring an infant to a cramped dormitory in Miami?
During and after I shrunk from the counsel of Christians. They simplified the decision to a choice between family or career values. They insinuated that God had purposed this, as some sort of test. They promised great rewards if I chose the right answer on the test. They are people I love and respect. And they (unwittingly) painted our God as a vivisectionist, directing me along ten years of work only to be forced to kill with my own hands the long-awaited issue. Yet perhaps it is time to rethink a God I would prefer be distant and, on my terms, benevolent.
ὃν γὰρ ἀγαπᾷ Κύριος παιδεύει,
μαστιγοῖ δὲ πάντα υἱὸν ὃν παραδέχεται.
For the Lord loves he who he rears, and chastises every son he recieves.
I do not know why the events of the past few weeks have come. Was I committing some sort of career idolatry that needed to be punished? I still don't have an answer. I do know that there are two things I find untenable. One is to stop taking orchestra auditions, if there is, somewhere, a chair in an orchestra where I can play Brahms and Bach for a living. The second, and more important, is to compromise how I love my wife. It would have been dishonor to compel her to Florida, although, I think, she would have gone. It is dishonor now for me to sulk and hold it against her, as I have selfishly done for the past few days. No more--it was already a marvel and a wonder that I should have the privilege to be married to her. I will forget it no longer.
O aspidsitra, invicti erimus.
"He was aware of a lumpish weight in his inner pocket. It was the manuscript of London Pleasures. He took it out and had a look at it under the street lamp. A great wad of paper, soiled and tattered, with that peculiar, nasty, grimed-at-the-edges look of papers which have been a long time in one's pocket. About four hundred lines in all. The sole fruit of his exile, a two years' fetus which would never be born. Well, he had finished with all that. Poetry! Poetry, indeed! In 1935!
What should he do with the manuscript? Best thing, shove it down the w.c. But he was a long way from home and had not the necessary penny. He halted by the iron grating of a drain. In the window of the nearest house an aspidistra, a striped one, peeped between the yellow lace curtains. He unrolled a page of London Pleasures. In the middle of the labyrinthine scrawlings a line caught his eye. Momentary regret stabbed him. After all, parts of it weren't half bad! If only it could ever be finished! It seemed such a shame to shy it way after all the work he had done on it. Save it, perhaps? Keep it by him and finish it secretly in his spare time? Even now it might come to something.
No, no! Keep your parole. Either surrender or don't surrender.
He doubled up the manuscript and stuffed it between the bars of the drain. It fell with a plop into the water below.
Vicisti, O aspidistra!"
A little over two weeks ago I was offered a fellowship with the New World Symphony Orchestra in Miami, FL. For the past ten years I have studied to be an orchestral trumpet player. I have practiced every day, I have attended six years of school, and I have taken more auditions than I can count. At times I've been among the last few standing at the finals. At times I've not even advanced beyond the first round.
My wife has waited patiently for me win an audition. She has endured daily hours of the same excerpts for years, listened to my inevitable vomiting the night before an audition, consoled me in the aftermath, and sacrificed much financial and personal stability that could be had by the same zealous pursuit of a career teaching music in the public schools.
The process of our decision was complicated and wretched. It came to us unsought, and with either choice would come much grieving. The orchestra, which is a musical academy functioning as a full-time performing orchestra, was only able to offer us dormitory-style housing in the company of twentysomethings. Accepting the fellowship would require us to leave friends and family in Rochester. It would mean the sacrifice of our professional inroads in the NY area. It would mean that our son would only see his uncles and grandparents over holidays. It would have no guarantee of a job or income at the end of the three and a half year program. It would mean the sacrifice of my uninteresting but hard-to-find teaching job at LCS.
I couldn't abide the thought of not going. Every former orchestra member and professional connection recommended the program with high praise. Those who knew us personally and our situation told us not to go. None envied the task of making the decision. Should we voluntarily turn down a won audition? Should we bring an infant to a cramped dormitory in Miami?
During and after I shrunk from the counsel of Christians. They simplified the decision to a choice between family or career values. They insinuated that God had purposed this, as some sort of test. They promised great rewards if I chose the right answer on the test. They are people I love and respect. And they (unwittingly) painted our God as a vivisectionist, directing me along ten years of work only to be forced to kill with my own hands the long-awaited issue. Yet perhaps it is time to rethink a God I would prefer be distant and, on my terms, benevolent.
ὃν γὰρ ἀγαπᾷ Κύριος παιδεύει,
μαστιγοῖ δὲ πάντα υἱὸν ὃν παραδέχεται.
For the Lord loves he who he rears, and chastises every son he recieves.
I do not know why the events of the past few weeks have come. Was I committing some sort of career idolatry that needed to be punished? I still don't have an answer. I do know that there are two things I find untenable. One is to stop taking orchestra auditions, if there is, somewhere, a chair in an orchestra where I can play Brahms and Bach for a living. The second, and more important, is to compromise how I love my wife. It would have been dishonor to compel her to Florida, although, I think, she would have gone. It is dishonor now for me to sulk and hold it against her, as I have selfishly done for the past few days. No more--it was already a marvel and a wonder that I should have the privilege to be married to her. I will forget it no longer.
O aspidsitra, invicti erimus.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
vosmet ipsos temptate si estis in fide
What are we to conclude? In every act of faith, there are two elements at work. First there is the formula, the conceptual complex containing the truth to which we assent. This presents itself to our mind like any other intentional knowledge: in the form of a judgement. But it does not enlighten the mind in the same way as ordinary knowledge. On the natural plane, a conceptual judgement illuminates the mind by the clear evidence which is contains. In an act of faith, the conceptual content of the proposition throws no light, of, itself, upon the understanding. The difference between belief and unbelief is not measured by our power to grasp the meaning of the articles of faith. A man may acquire a profound technical knowledge of the theology of the Holy Trinity and never believe in the Trinity. Another who has no grasp of the dogmatic problems involved in the mystery may believe it. He is the one to whom God has made Himself "present." He is the one who is "saved." He is the one who can be raised to contemplation. Hence in every act of faith there is a second and more important element: an objective and supernatural light, penetrating the depths of the soul and communicating to it the real content of truth which cannot be fully grasped in the terms of the credible proposition.
Each of these two elements is absolutely necessary for an act of living faith, because there is an intimate relation between them. If the articles of faith were merely an occasion for the infusion of supernatural light, then it would not matter what God proposed to us for our belief. One concept would serve as well as another. But this would mean that the intentional content of our creed would be without value or meaning. Any creed could do as well. Hold anything you like! If you are sincere, God will infuse light into you, and you will know Him. But the God Who is Wisdom would not uselessly reveal a whole body of truths that had, in the end, no objective value. He Who is Truth would not complacently put His grace at the disposal of all, on the sole condition that they be ready to adhere to falsity on His account!
The relation between the conceptual content of faith and the infused light by which God actually gives us His Truth lies in this: that the truth is actually contained, in a hidden manner, in the articles of faith themselves. And it is by the light of faith that we find the truth in those articles.
Each of these two elements is absolutely necessary for an act of living faith, because there is an intimate relation between them. If the articles of faith were merely an occasion for the infusion of supernatural light, then it would not matter what God proposed to us for our belief. One concept would serve as well as another. But this would mean that the intentional content of our creed would be without value or meaning. Any creed could do as well. Hold anything you like! If you are sincere, God will infuse light into you, and you will know Him. But the God Who is Wisdom would not uselessly reveal a whole body of truths that had, in the end, no objective value. He Who is Truth would not complacently put His grace at the disposal of all, on the sole condition that they be ready to adhere to falsity on His account!
The relation between the conceptual content of faith and the infused light by which God actually gives us His Truth lies in this: that the truth is actually contained, in a hidden manner, in the articles of faith themselves. And it is by the light of faith that we find the truth in those articles.
Upcoming
I have much to write about, and at present neither the leisure nor perspective to do so. I hope to make some time soon.
I'm currently reading Thomas Merton's Ascent to Truth, a sort of introduction to the work's of St. John of he Cross. Calvus and I (later with Beka) started reading All's Well that End's Well earlier in the week, and are attempting to make our readings a weekly event. M Laine, meanwhile, has put together a reading of The Importance of Being Earnest this weekend.
I owe great thanks to J's brother Tim, who returned our quickly aging Neon with several thousands dollars of work done substantially discounted. Our siblings have been extraordinarily kind to us lately, as have been, among many others, our pastor and his wife.
Meanwhile, it's time for more reading. Every pair of fingernail shears we own seems to have disappeared. I've now cramped my fingers beyond writing any more, and it isn't any easier to type. Bother.
More to come.
I'm currently reading Thomas Merton's Ascent to Truth, a sort of introduction to the work's of St. John of he Cross. Calvus and I (later with Beka) started reading All's Well that End's Well earlier in the week, and are attempting to make our readings a weekly event. M Laine, meanwhile, has put together a reading of The Importance of Being Earnest this weekend.
I owe great thanks to J's brother Tim, who returned our quickly aging Neon with several thousands dollars of work done substantially discounted. Our siblings have been extraordinarily kind to us lately, as have been, among many others, our pastor and his wife.
Meanwhile, it's time for more reading. Every pair of fingernail shears we own seems to have disappeared. I've now cramped my fingers beyond writing any more, and it isn't any easier to type. Bother.
More to come.
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