Finitude and Freedom

Human beings are torn between limitlessness and limitation.

This I know, for a professor in a BIble class told me so. 

Every human being has innumerable things they can choose. This works on a micro level (what item in Kroger, what note on a guitar, who to talk to at the bar) and on a macro level (what city to live in, what career to pursue, how much to organize one's day versus being blown by the wind).

At the same time, we are not infinite. First and foremost, we're all going to die, and - despite my belief in the spirit carrying on - what's next is unknown, and what's known is that we are no longer here. Another limit is the number of hours in a day. Also, every person has thresholds in physical, mental, emotional areas. Ironically enough, too much of limitlessness can become a limitation. All the possibilities can overwhelm you into inaction. 

But what was overwhelming me today was thinking about the horrible situation of Amanda Berry, Michelle Knight, and Gina DeJesus.

Shortly after the Cleveland case hit the news, I made the mistake of re-reading the book Room by Emma Donoghue. Make no mistake, it's an outstandingly written book, but the details are horrifying. It is told from the perspective of a five year old, born to a mother imprisoned in a fully-furnished captivity shed, much like Berry's child fathered by the abductor. Spoiler alert: they escape, but the horror cannot be undone.

How can someone like Ariel Castro, in the name of their own pleasure, inflict horrible trauma on another human being?

There are ways to accidentally inflict harm on another person. You get into a bar fight, you get out of control and permanently injure someone. You drink and drive, or text and drive, and wreck someone else's life through your own negligence. These are the ones that quickly come to mind, making me wonder if I do much more with my life than drive, go to bars, and play with my phone.

But imprisoning multiple women, looking at them every day, ignoring their pleading to be let go, innumerable opportunities to free them (and redeem yourself, much like Charles Ramsey redeeming his own domestic violence)… How can someone sit with that? Really, dude, you couldn't save up for hookers? You couldn't just jerk off like everyone else? You had to take another human being away from their people, who think they're dead, imprison them, rape them just to get a few of your own jollies? You weren't moved with compassion by their pleas?

The easy answer is, "He's a fucked up sociopath- part of his brain is missing," and most people can leave it at that, but sometimes it's not so easy to put that horror out of your mind when you stop to think about it.

In the Internet era (and the TV era, for I remember being able to detach myself much more from the news stories that made my mom cry), there's plenty of word going around about all the horrible parts of life. It's easy to put it out of mind- probably as a good psychological defense to avoid being paralyzed by awful things. But sometimes something shakes you to the core and is unshakeable. I can't stop thinking about the awfulness of this case.

But that's a limitation. And I, like all human beings, remain torn between limitation and limitlessness.

Shout out to another professor here, because I remember a discussion of moral "responsibility" that recognized that people marginalized by racism, sexism etc. don't have the same limitlessness to "freely choose". Being kidnapped obviously does even more to get in the way of limitlessness. So I need to check my privilege- which, besides the obvious of being not kidnapped, includes being male in a sexist society, being white in a racist society, and, more lightly, not being from Cleveland. 

And rather than trying to swing carelessly back to infinity ("Well, I'm not imprisoned or imprisoning anybody, so let's all go to the bar!"), I want to think about how I can not be complicit in things like the Berry case. Do I need to volunteer for an organization that works to help human trafficking victims? Do I need to write a check to them every month and put it out of mind?

Even thinking about the stuff makes my head hurt. Rape culture, for instance. There needs to be a discussion of how human beings are complicit in harming others, in our sexist, consumerist society that dehumanizes people. But no one wants to talk about it when they're in the middle of getting drunk and fucking, because people of all genders do that as one of the few ways to escape the noise of said sexist, consumerist society. I don't know where to begin.

A tension between order and disorder, between infinity and limitlessness, that sounds like fuzz to me. 

Fuzzy Monday is here. In my bohemian part-time life, I've strove to keep a couple days a week free for self-care and personal sanity, and, as my pharmacist housemate spitefully puts it, to re-read books when he hasn't even had a chance to finish them. Every Monday, I'm going to try to write something on here. The amount of social media sharing I do of each piece will depend on how proud I am of it, versus vaguely ashamed and awkwardly cagey. I don't intend to share this many places.

A writer turned seminarian eulogizes Virginia Carr

On April 10, 2012, accomplished biographer Virginia Carr died of natural causes. She was eighty-two. 

Virginia Carr may be best remembered for her biography of Carson McCullers. McCullers, a fellow Southern writer, was known for her novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, a book esteemed not only for its writing quality but for its honest portrayal of the outcast.

Southern Gothic writing includes despair, death, and dysfunction, not as inconvenient parts broken from the whole, but as the heart of reality. In Hunter, a small Georgian town's misfits are presented as real people deserving a fair, loving look.

The recently deceased Virginia Carr, in researching Hunter's author, sought to provide a similar fair look. McCullers, like the characters she created, was an outcast. Rheumatic fever left her paralyzed on one side by her early thirties, just on the cusp of authorial glory. She had been divorced and attempted suicide.

“Vanity of vanity, all is vanity”. This is from the book of Ecclesiastes. Its author lives long in both pleasure and virtue, all in the quest to make sense of life and death. And “all is vanity” is the best answer he comes up with.

This same book ironically provides words for one of life's most hopeful occasions: a wedding day. “Two are better than one – for if one falls, a friend can help them up, but pity the one who falls and has no one to help them.”

In writing about the life of Carson McCullers, the recently deceased Virginia Carr was seeking to help someone who had fallen and had no one to help them up. To someone held in low regard, Carr sought to give a fair, loving look. 

This noble work parallels what McCullers sought to accomplish for her characters, and the messy parts of life. It is the work of all good writers, and it is God's work.

Jesus, who Christians believe to be God in human form, sought out those who had no one to help them up. On one occasion, there was a man with a withered hand, excluded from community life. He was on the fringes, and Jesus called him to the center of the temple, where he was healed.

On another occasion, there was a tax collector who was disliked by his peers but who happened to catch Jesus' interest. Jesus decided to go to his home for dinner, giving him a fair, loving look.

We mourn that we no longer have Virginia Carr to remind us of the humanity and worth of people that we might overlook. But when we do choose to do so, we are following in not only her footsteps, but those of every great writer, and perhaps even those of the Author of the universe.

This piece was originally written for a homiletics project in graduate school.

Such an Awful Game

Last weekend, Alabama Shakes played Saturday Night Live. Their Stax-esque 60's revival songs are belted by the unconventional and badass Brittany Howard.

I first became aware of the Shakes last year when my hipster-est friend identified "these kids from the South about to blow up!" I first became aware of them having played SNL by my mom's casual mention of how unimpressive they were.

But I thought one of the main disses of the Shakes was that "your parents would like them"! Did my mom not watch Brittany kick ass at the Grammy's, stealing the show on "The Weight"? (Link)

After the faith-in-humanity I lost this morning...I'm surprised I didn't hear more jerks letting jokes write themselves about Brittany singing "The Weight".

My friend Erin was driving her teenage daughter to school when she heard some Columbus radio DJ's mocking Alabama Shakes not for their art, but for their singer's looks.

Was just in the car with my almost 13 yr old daughter when we heard 2 jackass radio dj's making fun of Alabama Shakes singer on SNL. Not the performance, or the songs, but her "300 lb weight, her "50's style dorky glasses", and her "creepy" way of singing . My daughter got teared up and said "That reminds me of how the popular kids make me feel bad for being myself. At least she's up there trying, instead of just sitting where people can't see you and making fun of everybody." I love my kid.

Apparently the DJ's even said that "only hot girls should be named Brittany." So this is it. The year of Our Lord 2013 marks the formation of a crucial council. Henceforth, all women shall line up before two Ohio DJ's, one by one, to determine if their name matches how much they please the peckers of these two peckerheads.

My disappointment is multi-faceted. I'm disappointed that the radio station in question is a major sponsor of a major summer festival that I've played thrice. I'm disappointed that when playing with my band in question, who are quite sex-positive and body-positive, we played behind banners for these jerks.

And I'm disappointed at how the jerks turned me into a jerk.

Because my gut reaction to this story was to sling venom at these two paunchy, ugly assholes behind a DJ desk, with their "weight" probably being being that of multiple divorces, alcoholism, and turning tricks for Clear Channel. (I've spun Harry Chapin's "WOLD" too many times; here.) My reaction to bullying was to bully the bullies.

And deep down I know that's not the answer. Both bullies and the bullied have people who love them and are equally human and don't deserve to be degraded; that's why bullying sucks.

Common humanity is why I can't let go of Jesus, even though I generally am put off by His fan base. I love the idea of a leader whose love and authenticity were so powerful, so earth-shattering, that both tax collectors and anti-government terrorists wanted to follow him (and had to learn to get along). And Christians believe that this Dude abiding was God incarnate, and thus a reflection of the force of love that created the universe. Holy shit.

Some people get "hugs" from Jesus when they're feeling down. (I first learned of this concept from a seminary colleague, incidentally named Brittany, who incidentally would certainly meet the DJs' standards.) But while I've felt God in nature, in friends, and even in the occasional existential meltdown, that wasn't what I went for. I turned up the stereo.

I put on Cloud Nothings' "Fall In", a gloriously snotty, catchy anthem, thrashing drums, angry solo. The music video portrays synchronized-swim-like moves, cheerleaders, and high school gossip. As it played, I thought of my friend Erin's daughter- going off to endure seven hours of school cliquey put-downs, after witnessing those clique-y put-downs continuing in the adult world and even broadcast over the airwaves. "It's such an awful game / they want to play with me."

But there is an alternative. As I listened to Cloud Nothings thrash through their song - a bunch of creative and awkward kids from Ohio, now getting their album on critics' lists alongside the Shakes - my own creative and awkward self felt a kind of release. There's an alternative to the bullshit. It's just as much a part of the universe, just as human, just as God-made. And you can turn it up just as loud, whether it's Ohio lo-fi or even the "underwhelming" Alabama Shakes.

I sometimes question whether I need to be doing more of "God's work" by actually working with teenagers in a church or nonprofit, helping them navigate the bullshit that sadly doesn't end after high school. But maybe playing some rock and roll, and offering others the catharsis that I was offered, is something, too. Tonight I teach my first guitar lesson to a kid wanting to learn Christian rock.

And this is why I sign off with: God Listens Through the Fuzz.

One for the Weird: This article says more than I can

http://www.vice.com/read/shooter-boys-and-at-risk-girls

Listening Through the Fuzz 101

The book Velvet Elvis opens with a discussion of the titular item- an overwrought painting, oil on velvet, of the King of Rock and Roll. I am reluctant to actually crown him as such a king, alluding to Public Enemy, but cultural capital is cultural capital.

If I were to write a book titled like this site (an initial goal, now supplanted by the desire to write about Phish and birth control), I would have to open with the first time I heard the phrase "listen through the fuzz". In 2010, I was a naive twenty-two year old, new to Columbus, and in strange circumstances had found myself at the glorious Lost Weekend Records just before closing on a Friday night.

With nerves buttressed against fears of High Fidelity-esque mockery, I whispered to the clerk whether he could recommend some local stuff. The mighty Kyle maintained his zen calm behind his glasses, and began speaking of a band called Times New Viking. He pulled out their latest single. He set the needle on the 45 and I was greeted by an atomic assault of distortion, organ, drum thunder, and pitchy yelling.

"It's fuzzy," was the first thing I could say.

"You kind of have to listen through the fuzz."

I wish I could say, "I boldly went home and started writing this project." But that would be creative fiction. After making other purchases not by Times New Viking, I probably surfed the Internet until I passed out.

Yet they stayed with me. I'd occasionally pull them up on Youtube, asking the cinder block walls of my student apartment, "Walls, how can folks find this band listenable?" Yet the line between confusion and intrigue is even blurrier than that between love and hate. Before long, I'd identified their guitarist's amazing sensibility I've described as "two Strokes in one". Before long, through forays into twee, artrock, and the Velvet Underground, I identified passion as just as important as pitch. Before long (precisely June), a burned CD of Times New Viking accompanied my journey north to Lakeside, OH for a youth retreat.

Lakeside, OH is full of fuzz. Well, at the time it was more full of mayflies. But Lakeside, OH happens to be located along Lake Erie in a beautiful gated community, shut off from the rest of the world. The titular lakeside is undeniably beautiful. It's also behind that gate. This little Methodist hideaway is built on money, and even if youth can retreat there on scholarship, it carries that sense of Cameron's house from Ferris Bueller.

The community is built around following The Guy who dined with "sinners" and welcomed lepers into places that kept them out - but this community exists behind literal and metaphorical walls. As one of my colleagues related, "Is there anything less Christian than a place that says you don't have enough money to be here?"

I never really explored this tension at the time. I was just more angsty over the difficulty in getting a stiff drink and the fact that the only women around were either fifteen or forty-five. But listening to Times New Viking thrash about what they'd do with their summer- that made enough sense to get me through.

The idea behind "listening through the fuzz" is manifold. From a rally-the-troops standpoint, it means not letting a little mess discourage you. From a Jesus standpoint, it's exploring whether the things you want to shut out as being disagreeable are ultimately the things that will set you free. (My inner deconstructionist jumps for joy- if something outside of the system comes in and wrecks the neat-and-tidy order of things, it reveals not the flaw of the outsider, but the flaw of the neat and tidy order.) From a personal standpoint, it means struggling through the things that are uncomfortable and often finding redeeming qualities - or finding that the struggle is just as much a part of the whole as the glory of reaching the goal.

The goal of this project is to explore messy theological and cultural topics- guided by a commitment, as with lo-fi garage rock, to enduring and eventually embracing the noise in the quest to hear the harmony.

May you have a fuzzy weekend!

Love,
Nick

Get Up Stand Up! : "For Today"-gate

So many Christian establishments are failing their target market.

This is the first sentence I have to deliver, dear readers. Welcome to God Listens Through the Fuzz.

I was called to action, so to speak, by the latest teacup tempest to rock the world of Christian rock.

It's bad when the first I hear of a band is some PR disaster involving a band member. For Today is a Christian metalcore band that I'd never heard of until said PR disaster. After Louie Giglio's anti-gay past sermons prompted his withdrawal from Obama's inauguration, For Today's guitarist had the following to say...er, tweet:

Source: Alternative Press

Naturally, this rustled some jimmies. A conspiracy rant about a "state church", a true Scotsman fallacy proclaiming that you can't be gay and Christian (excuse me?), the idea that there's one monolithic way to be "true to God" that dovetails with conservative ideology....hmm, understandably, Mike Reynolds might've pissed some people off.

Ironically enough, he pulled a Giglio, pulling out, and today became the ex-guitarist of For Today.

The lead singer, Mattie Montgomery, independently whipped up a video response. "I've been thinking and praying what would be the best way to handle it..."

I scoffed to myself, "I wonder if he prayed, 'Dear God, help me convey my band's conservative beliefs!'" My scoffing was premature.

The main thing he conveyed is that he was sorry. "Instead of trying to argue or try to defend what was said...I just want to say I'm sorry. I'm sorry to anyone who felt alienated by those comments...condemned...rejected...written off...The last thing any Christian should do is make someone feel that way." Mattie even had the cojones to leave his personal phone number.

I really do see God in such a response. It reminds me of Donald Miller's "confession booth", wherein he invited strangers in, only to confess to them that Christians have done a lot to hurt people.

Honestly, it might be best for me to just leave it here.

But this is just one situation. There will be dozens more like it. 2012 saw Chick-fil-A, "legitimate rape", and battles over Texas textbooks. And does even a most heartfelt apology cancel out the hurtful underlying beliefs that gave the band something to apologize for?

There's plenty of Christian rhetoric about the need to "stand up". Stand up for Jesus. Stand up for what's right. But this rhetoric always makes me bristle. A lot of the time, the rhetoric about "standing up" is coming from parties that hold a narrow definition of marriage, a rigid literalism of Scripture, and a questionable age of the Earth.

Why are those perspectives the ones that we keep seeing "stand up"? I know as a Christian we are called to be unified with our fellow believers, but I find myself more and more alienated from the rude and vocal newsmakers. There are plenty of Christians (many of whom have had higher education) who love Jesus and don't believe it's a sin to be gay, who don't believe God really ordered genocides, and who don't think the Earth is 3,000 years old.

I count myself among them.

Christians are supposed to stand up for the dispossessed, the weak, those who don't have anyone to stand up for them. Instead, so many Christians on the news are standing up for the powerful establishment and the status quo.

A major part of why this blog now exists is because of this urge to "stand up". There need to be other voices shouting just as loud as the obnoxious and uninformed ones. It needs to be made clear that there is not one way to be a Christian.

And above and beyond my own need to write and soap box, I want to point to higher things. I have to believe that even in this mess there is some order, that there is a light that never goes out, to quote the Gospel according to Morrissey. If there is an awesome God, worshipped by both Gene Robinson and For Today, what might this God think about it all? And how do we hear this awesome God through all this noise and fuzz?

Fed