Remembering Rune Engebretsen

Today, at Emmaus Church in Northfield, Minnesota, a service was held in memory of my Uncle, Rune Engebretsen, who died a few months ago. In his memory, I share the following reflections.

In Memory of Rune Engebretsen

My much-loved uncle, Rune Engebretsen (always “Onkel Rune” to me), passed away last week. A Scandinavian Studies professor and a skilled translator (from Norwegian/Danish into English), his special interest in Kierkegaard created a distinctive intellectual connection between us that I didn’t have with other members of my family. To oversimplify it, he was the relative I could always count on to talk philosophy with me. On a deeper level, I enjoyed his enthusiastic interest in deep questions about truth and meaning and values, about God and Christianity. When my first book came out, he was one of its loudest cheerleaders (at one point hyperbolically calling it “essential reading for all humanity”—which I took to mean he was proud of me).

He was also a collector of books. Apparently it got a little out of control.

But these are not the things I will most remember about him. Perhaps one of the best ways to capture his essence is to say that his personality made him quite naturally and easily one of the best Jule Nisses my family ever had. 

That may require a bit of explanation. In our family, we’ve always followed the Norwegian Christmas Eve tradition of having a visit from Jule Nissen: the Christmas Elf. He’d sweep into the home, distribute presents, and dance around the tree with the family. As I was growing up, we had neighbors and family friends don the Nisse outfit to help out with the task. As an adult my sister and I have often enough taken on the job, and in recent years my daughter has been eager to put on the beard, Norwegian sweater, and knit stockings.

But Rune, during one of the Christmas Eves we spent with him and his kids, stands out in my memory as being one of the most delightful. Bantering in English and Norwegian as he stomped into the house, telling jokes as he distributed gifts from his sack—I can’t remember details so much as the way he made us feel: full of joy and laughter. 

To say he always had a twinkle in his eye is a bit of a cliché—but when I think of Onkel Rune, the expression “a twinkle in his eye” comes to mind with such force that he’s who I’d want to point to if anyone hadn’t heard that expression and wanted to know what it meant. He had a way of smiling at you that invited you to share in his personal delight at the world. And he was charming. It wasn’t something he turned on in order to achieve some end, bust something he was: a charming man, in large measure because you really got the sense that he wanted the best for everyone.

This does not mean, of course, that he never disappointed those around him. All of us are imperfect in our own ways. My sense is Onkel Rune always meant well, but wouldn’t always follow through. My mother frequently said to me, “You’re just like my brother!”—especially at moments when despite my initial good intentions I failed to follow through. She’s right about me, so I’m not one to hold this too much against him.

More importantly, there’s the fact that at key moments in my life when I needed him, he had more than just good intentions to offer. One time in particular stands out. The summer after my freshman year in college, my friend Lou and I decided to drive across the country to Washington State (where Lou was from) to work at a fruit orchard for the summer. We started out the journey in an old AMC Spirit whose road-worthiness was a bit sketchy—and which, while paid for, was not yet legally registered in any state (Lou’s plan was to take care of that in Washington once we got there). Needless to say, this journey did not go smoothly. A breakdown and emergency repair, followed by a police stop, took all the cash we’d saved up for the journey and most of our spirits (except, of course, for the AMC Spirit, which we were stuck with).

The good news is that we were a few hours drive from Northfield, Minnesota, where Onkel Rune lived at the time. When we limped into town, Rune gave us safe haven. He offered rest, food, and a renewal of our spirits. And he gave us enough cash to make the rest of the trip to Washington (with no expectation of repayment). As a fan of the Lord of the Rings books, I felt like the hobbits arriving in Rivendell.

One final memory of Onkel Rune also relates to a road trip—this one from when I was a teenager, and our families traveled together on a summer trip to Washington DC and Philadelphia. I remember little from that trip, but what stands out is this silly little mantra that Rune had created, and which he repeatedly offered up to eye rolls and laughter. The mantra went like this:

Are you happy now?

Happy go lucky, you know.

Happy as a flutterby!

Yes, sir, he said. Do you know him?

On the day I learned he’d died, as I was driving my daughter Izzie home from school, I spoke those words to her—finding it a bit difficult to finish the whole thing, because I was starting to cry. But I finished it, and I told her that this silliness came from her Great Uncle Rune, and I was sharing it with her in his memory, because he had died.

Izzie hesitated, then said, “So that’s where that stupid saying comes from.”

Apparently, Rune’s silliness made enough of a long-term impression on me that, without even really realizing it, this bit of delightful nonsense made its way into my own repertoire of dad jokes and absurdities that I’ve used through the years to elicit eye rolls in my kids. 

All of this is to say that Rune’s spirit lives on in those who knew and loved him; that his life has touched and changed the world for the better; and that, since I find it hard to imagine the world without him out there somewhere offering his twinkling glance, his charm, his intelligence, and his silliness, I refuse to do it. Instead, I will believe that he lives on in some different way, a way we may not fully know or understand, a way that—whether wholly metaphorical or metaphysically real—makes the world a better place.

Death's Persistent Sting: Meditation for an Easter Monday

"O death, where is thy sting?"

I woke up Easter morning to the news of terror in Sri Lanka: hundreds dead, many hundreds more injured, in a series of coordinated bombing attacks on hotels and Christian churches. I blinked back horror...and then I got up, dressed for Easter services, and went on with my day.

I felt the sting, but it was a small one: a remote horror, the death of people I do not know on the far side of the world. It felt insufficient, this little sting, as if my compassion were too weak to reach across the miles.

Where is your sting, death? It is here, here in the news of hundreds killed. But it is too small.

"O death, where is the sting?"

For Easter services I put on the cream-colored silk jacket that I inherited from him after his death. It is the jacket he's wearing in one of my favorite pictures of him, the picture that was the centerpiece at his memorial service and that depicts him as I most remember him.

It was his favorite jacket for special occasions. In the last decade or more of his life, if the occasion called for dressing up, this jacket was what he'd put on. And I'd joke: "That jacket is mine when you die."

I rarely wear it, because I want it to last. And when I do take it out I see my father and feel afresh his absence. Sometimes it feels like a kind of treason that it doesn't hurt more.

Where is your sting, death? It is here in this pale silk and the memories it evokes.

"O death, where is thy sting?"

I have friends who are staring down the inevitability of death in a way that most of us do not. Confronted with a terminal diagnosis, the truth of human mortality intrudes on their living and in dark moments threatens to paralyze them, to steal away what life they have left--a kind of death before death that they must continually fight against: "You will not take this, too, o death. This day is yet mine to live."

The rest of us know this struggle in a weakened form: the anxiety over strange symptoms or impending storms or trips where so much could go wrong. We hide from it as best we can, but sometimes the inevitability of death rears before us and for a few heartbeats we can't escape it, the sense of a consuming dark. The only question is when: today, tomorrow, thirty years from now?

Where is your sting, death? Here, here in the universal dread.

There are some for whom the dread has faded in the face of something worse: the monotony of lonely hours. Death has taken too many beloved companions, and it's creeping harbinger has stolen away the skills and powers that make living rich and vibrant. And so they sit, reduced to waiting and remembering. Life is something in the past, something gone with the beloved. The fear of death has been replaced by the lonely horror of feeling nothing worth living for.

Where is your sting, death? Here, here in this living death, where death has stung so deep that its victim has come to see death as a welcome escape rather than the architect of the intolerable.

All around us, death stings and stings. And in defiance we lift our voices and say with Paul, "O death, where is the sting?"

We treat it as a rhetorical question.

As if the answer were that it's sting is gone.

As if we didn't feel its sting every day in different ways.

As if the muting of the sting were born of our faith, our capacity to grasp the deeper truths that assure us that death is weaker than life, when in truth it is born of sin, of our failure to care enough.

And yet we lift our voices in defiance and triumph, an exercise in holy pretense. We cry it into existence, this self who has no fear of death--that has lost its fear not because of despair, not because of insufficient compassion, but because we have seized upon a joy more powerful than death.

The joy eludes us. Death keeps stinging us. And yet in heroic, sacred, audacious hope, we keep reaching for that world where death has lost its victory and joy will have no end.


"O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" 1 Corinthians 15:55

We Weren't Blessed: Reflections on the Stillwater Homecoming Tragedy

My daughter's friend, the tiniest girl on her gymnastics team, asked the question: "Why wasn't God at the parade?"

Let's not hide from this question.

I was at the parade. I stood with my family outside the Hastings store, yards from where the car would crash into the crowd at 50 miles an hour. My daughter and her gymnastics team had just gone by in their float, and I was running an errand to the van, which was just around the corner, to collect my wife's purse and my mother-in-law's keys.

When I came back moments later, the world had been transformed.

I looked at the chaos, heard the sobbing.

Something terrible has happened.

The kind of terrible that shatters lives. The kind of terrible that inspires children raised with a simple faith to see a world transformed. A world hollowed out. A world without God.

I was there. But on that bleak October morning, standing under a slate-gray sky with my wife's purse clutched in my fist, I felt the desolation that a child would later put into worlds. I was there. But God?

My son was there. When I dashed off to the van , he stood with my wife and his Grandma, watching the tail-end of the parade. He heard the explosive crash. He saw things flying into the air. He heard the screams. His ears, if not his eyes, witnessed death.

He ran. "I was sure," he told me later, "that someone had set off a bomb,"

My wife was there. When the horror struck, her thoughts flew to our daughter, whose float had gone by moments before. Reason told her the float was already well clear of the intersection, but once she saw that her son was safe, her mother's instincts urged her to reach the other child.

Doing so took her right through the carnage. When she called to say our daughter was safe, she sobbed into the phone: "Don't let him see! Don't let him see."

My mother-in law was there. She knelt with a weeping young woman who had been a few yards closer than us, and so had an unobstructed view of that moment that divided life and death, that tore into human flesh, that shattered lives. My mother-in-law asked the girl if she wanted to pray with her. She said yes. And so, while chaos swirled, they prayed.

One of my graduate students was there with his wife and young daughter. He'd stepped over to the stroller to get something, which brought him just far enough away to avoid injury when the car struck. His wife was treated and released. His daughter was hospitalized but will recover.

My son's classmate was there--a friend he's known since preschool. The careening car clipped him just before crashing into a pole. He was rushed to the hospital in the bed of Pistol Pete' pickup truck.

A theatre friend and her sister were there. Both hospitalized but recovering. The man my kids call Coach--their camp counselor and a former colleague of my wife--was there with his two small children. He suffered minor injuries. His children were hospitalized but are expected to be fine.

Others were less lucky. Nikita Nabal, a young woman from Mumbai, India pursuing her master's degree here in Oklahoma, was there. Bonnie and Marvyn Stone, 65 years old, were there. Lucas Nash, a two-year-old boy, was there. And because they were there, standing where they were, they're gone. Their loved ones now look at an emptier world, a world hollowed out.

And I think about what my daughter's little friend saw, trembling on the float as chaos reigned: A world hollowed out. A world without God.

So many were there, people I knew and people I didn't know. It was a family event. A tradition. A connection to a time before people's noses were buried in cell phones, a time when children looked out at the world and pointed at the wonders going by instead of fixing their gazes on a screen.

So many were there. But God?

"Why wasn't God at the parade?"

Let us, as people of faith, begin with that. When we confront horrors, let us begin with what my daughter's friend saw in the aftermath of the tragedy: A world hollowed out. A world without God.

Jesus praised the faith of children. He said that the Kingdom of God belongs to those with a child's faith. And when a child of faith looked out across what happened in Stillwater, OK, on that Saturday morning, what did she see?

Let us begin there. Let us begin with a child's shaken faith, because any other starting place leads to platitudes that don't do justice to the horror. Let us start with God's absence.

Let us remember that this little child's question is the same as the one that Jesus asked when he was nailed to a cross: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

A world hollowed out. A world without God. If anyone suggests that it is blasphemy to begin there, then they accuse Jesus of blasphemy. To hide from that starting point is to refuse to pick up our crosses and follow Him.

I waited out the tragedy's aftermath with my family in a coffee shop. We sat at a wooden table, stuttering out our first reactions to what had happened. Someone said we were lucky. Another said we were blessed.

"No. Don't say that. We weren't blessed."

"But that's exactly what we were."

"No. If we were blessed, then what about those who were hit? To say we were blessed is to say that God skipped over them."

"That's not what I meant. No, of course. I didn't mean that."

Silence at the table. The specter of survivor's guilt.

And the questions. How can we see God at the parade unless we see God playing favorites? How could God have been there in all the trappings of almighty power, unless God was protecting some and cursing others?

But what's the alternative to a God who plays favorites? If God does not play favorites, does that mean the toddler who died was blessed? That his mother was blessed? Dare we trivialize the horror? Dare we pretend that their world was anything less than hollowed out?

Maybe our God is a quadriplegic God, a God who cannot act in the world without borrowing others' hands. Maybe nature's laws are something God has set up as a kind of wall between Himself and the world, a wall he dare not shatter on pain of swamping finite reality with the vastness of its infinite creator. Maybe creation was an act of withdrawal, and necessarily so.

Maybe there is no God.

Maybe. Maybe.

My own faith has been shaped in part by the maybes of a Jewish/Marxist mystic philosopher named Simone Weil, who appropriated Christian ideas from her friend Father Perrin, a Catholic priest who begged her without success to convert to Christianity. Instead, she handed back to him his Christian faith transformed by the perspective of an outsider.

And what did she find in the story of Jesus' crucifixion? A God who crosses the infinite distance of time and space to inhabit that place where we can never go--that place where God is wholly absent. God at God's most human is there--paradoxically, impossibly there.

What Simone Weil saw in the Christian story was a God who cast off the trappings of infinite glory to inhabit that place in creation where God is missing, to step into that space of horror and desolation, and to cry out with all of us, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Each of us brushes up against that place of absence. We are there, but God is not. It is a place where, in the ordinary sense of blessings, there are none. There is only good luck and bad. There is only the blind grinding of nature's laws, chewing out its victims one by one while others huddle in witness, grateful that they haven't been taken yet but sure that their time, too, will come.

It would be an assault on the concept of divine love to say that God blessed me by sending me on an errand at the crucial moment, so that I wouldn't have to hear the horrible sounds of death that my son clearly heard. It would be an assault on the concept of divine love to say that God blessed my graduate student by inspiring him to step towards the stroller and so out of the path of injury that his wife and child still fell within. A God who reaches down to spare my life but not the lives of others isn't the kind of God whose blessing we can cling to without a darkening of our souls.

To live in a world where God is hidden, where mechanistic laws and chance routinely strike down the good and lift up the wicked, blindly indifferent to anyone's worth--this is a reality we must recognize, despite our wish-thinking, despite the promises of prosperity preaching that offers us visions of terrestrial blessings if only we agree to ignore the plight of the poor and the sick (or say it's their own fault).

But there is the blessing of solidarity. There is the blessing of the one who sits and cries with us in the silence and the dark.

And there is the blessing of those who are urged by the voice of conscience, or perhaps the voice of God, to run to the aid of those in need, to nurture and care for the wounded, to grieve with those who mourn.

We need to begin with God's absence. We must affirm that a world of blind mechanism and chance combines with the darkest parts of our human wills to produce horrors. Horrors that can strike into the heart of innocent family pleasures. Horrors that can shatter the laughter of a parade even as children are pointing joyfully towards what's coming next. We need to admit that God isn't scurrying around shielding some from harm while letting others fall.

But we don't need to stop there. Because at that parade there was a little girl crying out, "Why isn't God here?" And in that cry we can, without assaulting the concept of divine love, hear the echo of God's anguished cry.

If we are to believe in a God who made the world and everything in it, an almighty God whose power and majesty defy comprehension, let us see that God as constrained, bound in ways we may never understand by the very laws God made. But let us believe that those bindings are not absolute. At the very least, let us believe that God's voice can urge us to be the hands of love. At the very least, let us believe that God can be there with us in the midst of tragedy, sharing in our anguished cries.

Whatever we think might bind God's power, let us not believe it binds God's love. Let us not believe it binds our own. Let us feel the solidarity of God's loving presence, and love each other unfettered even in the darkest places.

Slumber Parties in the Shadow of Death: A Holy Week Meditation

In the spring after my father’s death, on the night before Easter, my then eight-year-old son announced that he wanted to invite his sister over for a slumber party. It would involve bringing her stuffed lion-bear across the hall. And her pillow. As far as slumber parties go it was a low-stress affair.

In fact he’d already invited her. The two were anxiously awaiting my blessing. My daughter—a twirly five-year-old—clung to my leg saying, “Can we, Daddy? Can we? Can we?” Her brother was perched on his toes, hands clasped over his belly and eyebrows raised. “It’s Easter Eve! It’s a special occasion!”

I found myself looking down at my children with an ache. They weren’t thinking about it, but it was hard for me to think of anything else. Hard not to see in this eager moment the shadow of October; hard not to hear that same request, born then from the need for comfort in the dark.

Surgery, Swimming, and War: What Does Diana Nyad's historic achievement have to do with Syria?

Thanks to my wife, I watched Diana Nyad's historic achievement this weekend--swimming from Cuba to Florida--through a more engaged and passionate set of eyes than I might otherwise have done. Were it not for her I would have been fixated on the news about Syria. As reports came in of Diana's astonishing effort and ultimate achievement, the realization of her "Xtreme Dream," I would've distractedly thought, "That's cool," and then been sucked back into the prospect of missile strikes.

For several years now, my Ironman wife has pushed her physical limits through swimming, biking, and running, but her greatest love is swimming. As I write these words I am sitting in a surgery waiting room while my wife undergoes surgery on both her feet. The surgery is cutting short her season, hopefully with the result that she will be better equipped to "do her impossible" into the future ("Do your impossible" are the words that frame her Ironman tattoo). But it means that she will not be participating in Oklahoma City's Redman triathlon later this month, as originally planned.

Family History

I'm in my childhood home for a few days, walking among the memories, the familiar paintings and photographs and objects laden with personal and family history. I'm here, perhaps, for the last time. My mother has decided it's time to move into a smaller space, into one of those independent living communities that's paired with a nursing home. We'll be looking at some of the options today.

Last night my mother shared some family history. I've heard pieces of it before, but as I lay in bed last night those pieces fell together in a new way, forming a story that dovetailed with a mood defined by my awareness of both history and impermanence.

From the Archives: Once More, With Logistics

Seven years ago today, my daughter was born. On honor of that event, I'm reposting here a reflection from the archives on that day and the lessons learned from having TWO children instead of one.

In The Art of Fiction, John Gardner claims that an ideal story will have three central characters. Two is too few, because then there will be only one relationship to explore. But add a third character, and one has six relationships: the relationships of A to B, B to C, and A to C, of course; but also A’s relationship to the BC pair, B’s to the AC pair, and C’s to the AB pair. The relational dynamics made possible by a third character creates just the level of complexity needed for a good story. Add a fourth character, however, and things get TOO complex. You can do the math yourself, but in that case what you have are twenty-five relationships. Too much for any normal human being, lacking in divine powers, to handle.

This year our family welcomed its fourth character. Evan’s identical twin, Isabella, was born shortly after 6 PM on a pleasant Oklahoma spring day with nary a tornado in sight. There was, of course, the usual business of my wife enduring labor and delivery (only 22 hours of labor this time), me cutting the cord, Isabella exercising her lungs for the first time, both parents getting the chance to hold the new arrival, etc. But these events and activities, which seemed so significant when Evan was born, were put in their proper perspective this time around by the inescapable reality faced by every second-time parent: logistics.

The Salvation Army, Homosexuality, and Gestures of Charity

One of the things many of us associate with the Christmas season is the appearance of "bell ringers" outside retail stores and other public venues--sometimes dressed as Santa, more often not. They have a little collection bucket next to them. As people pass by they fish in their pockets for loose change to drop into the bucket. A simple act of charity at a time of year that's supposed to be about love, but which too often becomes about supporting a consumerist culture.

A few years back when my son was three-and-a-half, he'd been collecting change for awhile in a homemade piggy-bank. Suddenly at Christmas time he decided that he wanted to "give it to the bell ringers." He brought all his life savings to the front door of our local Walmart and dumped it all into the red bucket with a noisy clanging.

For my son it was a gesture of giving. He wanted to help people who didn't have enough food--and the bell ringers were, for him, the most visible symbol in his small world of living in a spirit of generous love. When it came to what he should do with his money, he could think of nothing better than to align himself with such a spirit--with the clamorous noise of a year's worth of collected change filling up a red metal bucket.

Or are things really that simple? Most of these bell ringers--certainly all of them here in Stillwater, OK--belong to the Salvation Army. The change that goes into the red kettles goes to support the Salvation Army's Christmas ministries, which focus on providing tangible material aid to "needy families, seniors, and the homeless, in keeping with the spirit of the season" so that "the real meaning of the season is not forgotten."

But the Salvation Army also happens to be an evangelical Christian movement that ascribes to a conservative theology and a conservative view of Scripture. In a sense, the Salvation Army is a Christian movement born among outcasts--the fruits of the unconventional evangelism of William Booth, who reached out to the most impoverished, to prostitutes, to alcoholics, to those who weren't welcomed into the establishment churches of England in the 19th Century. But because of its theory about the Bible's authority and its interpretation of the relevant texts, the Salvation Army today perpetuates what I take to be a damaging teaching about sexual minorities, a teaching that contributes to their social marginalization.

And because I have so many friends and relatives who, like me, are working hard to end discrimination against gays and lesbians and other sexual minorities, I hear a lot about the Salvation Army at this time of year. Some of my friends would, I think, be scandalized that I let my son, as a wide-eyed three-year-old wanting to do good, pour his savings into a Salvation Army bucket.

Primarily their message is this: Don't give them your loose change. Don't support them, no matter how innocent those bell ringers might look and how good it might make you feel to drop your loose change into that little red kettle. It shouldn't make you feel good, because not only does the Salvation Army discriminate against sexual minorities within its own ranks, but it supports broader policies of social marginalization.

Sometimes, however, the message I hear is more strident: The Salvation Army is a hate group.

Sometimes its hard to be clear on all the facts amidst the rhetoric. Among other things, it seems pretty clear that the Salvation Army is attempting to pursue non-discrimination practices with respect to those it serves and its employees (at least those who aren't clergy). They've made a concerted effort in recent years to stress that they are not anti-gay.

That's how they see things, at least. But it is also clear that the Salvation Army endorses the traditional Christian view on homosexuality--namely that same-sex sexual activity is sinful. And as with so many other conservative Christian communities on this topic, it seems clear that the Salvation Army doesn't see a substantive difference between calling homosexual acts sinful and calling, say, drunkenness or prostitution sinful. You can still reach out to alcoholics, love them, care for them, if you condemn their drinking. In fact, that's part of how you show love for them.Why isn't condemning homosexuality the same thing?

In fact, it isn't the same thing at all, for reasons I've addressed at length elsewhere and so won't explore at length in this post. Let's just say that there's a big difference between putting the "sin" label on something that damages the lives and welfare of everyone affected by it including the person doing it, and putting the "sin" label on something that cuts to a person's very identity and prospects for fulfillment and love--essentially telling them that if they express who they are with integrity in loving and caring ways, building a relationship that is life-enriching and deeply meaningful, they are committing themselves to sin, and the resultant relationships really ought to be ended forthwith.

The message my gay and lesbian neighbors hear is this: "You should never form an intimate relationship with someone you are able to love romantically; and if you do it is bad, no matter how virtuous and committed and faithful and otherwise beautiful it seems. It should be ended, even if were the same relationship observed in a hererosexually married couple we would view the dissolution of it as a tragedy to be resisted."

But groups like the Salvation Army don't see this. Perhaps, with enough relationship-building and open communication, with more opportunities for "soldiers" in the Salvation Army to build relationships with openly gay and lesbian neighbors, all of that will change. But for now, they see homosexuality as a sinful life choice that is contrary to God's good plan--something that, as with alcoholism, can be opposed while still loving those who are "afflicted" by it.

If you think they are dead wrong about this, should you boycott their fundraising efforts--efforts that go primarily towards serving the needy? Should you refuse to drop that coin in the bucket...and then hopefully remember to give it to some other charity that doesn't ascribe to the harmful teaching? Should I have pulled my son aside and told him not to give his money to the bell ringers, and then tried to explain to a three-year-old why not? Should I have shattered his illusions about the bell ringers and their good intentions, and then gone through the symbolically less meaningful ritual of taking his money to the bank and writing a check for that amount to Oxfam?

If the Salvation Army were a hate group, then the answer to this question would be clear. I don't support hate groups. If there'd been men in white sheets and pointy white caps raising money for white hurricane victims, and my son had wanted to give, I wouldn't have hesitated in shattering his illusions. But even if the Salvation Army is wrong about homosexuality, that doesn't make it an anti-gay hate group.

My own direct experience with the Salvation Army is quite limited. The only real person-to-person connection comes from my own childhood, and it is bathed in a warm glow of fond memory. I was six years old and living in Norway. My parents were away for a weekend, and my sister and I were left in the care of a woman who was a friend of my grandparents. She was also a soldier in the Salvation Army. She wore her uniform proudly. I remember that she had a dog, a standard-sized poodle. It was a beautiful dog, gentle and smart. When we attended Sunday services the dog came with us. It rose when we rose, sat when we sat.

When I think of the Salvation Army, I think fondly of that dog. I also remember a weekend characterized by kindness.

But one nice dog, and a kind a babysitter, doesn't refute the "hate group" charge. Here's what does: A hate group is a hate group because its mission is fundamentally shaped by an ideology of hate. The group exists, at least in part, to oppose a targeting class of people, to oppress or marginalize or destroy them. Even a cursory look at the history of the Salvation Army reveals that this is not what it's about. The Salvation Army is a nonviolent movement aimed at spreading the gospel as they understanding it. It's about "saving souls." Think what you will of the theological beliefs underlying such a mission. You may find them thoroughly distasteful and unworthy of your support. But such a mission isn't one of hate--even if certain misguided beliefs lead to practices that do harm.

When you hear that bell and see that familiar red bucket--as you think about whether to fish in your pocket for loose change--a key question has to be whether the unambiguous good they will do with that money is outweighed by the harms that might flow from their errors.

And if your son wants to give, there are other questions, too--such as whether a principled refusal to support groups that perpetuate anti-gay teachings is worth derailing a small child's desire to align himself with the clearest symbol of generosity his young mind has found...whether it's worth destroying that symbol and introducing the specter of cynicism at a formative moment in his development.

More broadly, we live in a world where nothing is perfect--no individual, no organization, no movement. But we also live in a world with symbolic acts that stand for our better natures and our higher aspirations. For better or worse, the Salvation Army's bell ringers, their red buckets, have become a symbol during the Christmas season. We are urged to make a small gesture towards the reality of human need--fishing into a pocket--as we rush in and out of the big retail stores buying useless stocking stuffers for people who have more than they need. We remember, for a moment, that there are those who don't have enough in our world of excess. We are encouraged to give.

Those who stand behind that symbolism are flawed people with a sense of connection to the divine and a sense of mission. It is not a mission of hate--not a mission to marginalize and oppress those whose sexuality doesn't fit the norm. But they do have beliefs which happen to contribute to such marginalization. Does this fact mean they do not deserve to carry the symbolic weight of charity during the holidays that they have come to carry?

For me, there is no easy answer. I will say that I haven't thrown spare change into a Salvation Army bucket this season because I'm conflicted about what their views on homosexuality mean, or should mean, for me. But I am also deeply hesitant about encouraging a boycott, or about trying to destroy the symbol that evoked one of my son's earliest and most earnest gestures towards a spirit of charity. There's a sense in which the "bell ringers," by standing out there every December, have helped shape my son's moral development, making him, arguably, a better person than he might otherwise have been--a better person than he would have been had I talked him out of emptying his piggy-bank into that bucket.

Princess Parties Revisited

Yesterday, I read a New York Times article entitled "What's So Bad About a Boy Who Wants to Wear a Dress?" It seemed to connect with some of my recent posts on gender issues--and it reminded me of one of my posts from a year ago. So I thought I'd repost that earlier essay for those who may not have seen it then. Here it is:

Sometimes, the lives of ordinary, mild-mannered philosophers mirror the madness of media melodrama. Not long ago on this blog, I talked about one such case of media melodrama: The Fox-News Induced Toemageddon. And a few weeks back, as if to mock me for mocking Toemageddon's gravity, I came face to face with my own little variant of it.

I was grading term papers in the corner of a local restaurant when the controversy broke--in the form of a text message from my wife. Between spoonfuls of French onion soup I hissed out a fiercely eloquent diatribe—under my breath, of course, but I’m sure nearby patrons were nervously gauging the distance to the nearest exit.

The message started with the confession that my wife was so angry she “couldn’t see straight.” And then she told me why. The tale that emerged was one about judgment, and about my son—my beautiful, almost-eight-year-old son...who, it so happens, had worn a dress to his sister’s fifth birthday party the day before.

You see, my daughter had a “Princess” themed birthday party in the back room of a local ice cream place, and everyone was invited to come dressed as a princess. My son, a thespian to the core, wasn’t going to be left out. We did suggest the option of going as a prince, or in some other costume. "No," he replied. "I'm going as a princess."

(He then asked me to take him wig shopping. I refused.)

Just before we left for the party, my wife took him aside to point out that there were going to be a couple of older girls there, and some of them might laugh at him. This did not deter him. In addition to being a thespian, my son is a very savvy social operator in his own peer group. He knows how to face down seven-year-olds who have the temerity to question his party attire. And so, off we went with two princesses in the back of the minivan--one of them with a crew cut.

An older girl at the party did, in fact, laugh at him. He didn't care. And halfway through the party he shed the princess dress (which was "scratchy") in favor of the shorts and t-shirt he was wearing underneath. We all had fun, ate ice cream cake, opened presents, and went home. Best of all, I had an extended excuse to put off grading.

Now I'm not going to tell you who it was that questioned our parenting skills on the basis of this series of events, because it's none of your business (and few readers of this blog would know the relevant players anyway). But I do want to talk about the nature of the charges against us. They featured two ideas: first, that we were threatening our son's "healthy development" by allowing him to attend his sister's pre-K party in a dress; second, that we were setting him up for bullying.

Now let me be clear about something. My son is entirely comfortable in his own skin. In other words, he shows no signs of being transgendered in the sense of feeling like a female trapped in a male body. And while he doesn't slavishly conform to traditional gender roles (he's loved dance since the age of two, and he's as utterly indifferent to baseball as his father is), he far prefers Shrek to Sleeping Beauty. He delights in a good fart joke, and he can spend hours entertaining himself by combining baking soda and vinegar in a ziplock back, sealing it, and waiting for the explosion. On Sunday mornings, he neither wants to wear a dress to church nor envies his sister for being able to do so. He's a little boy, and he doesn't dream of being a little girl.

But he's also a performer, and dress-up is one of his favorite activities. Our daughter always dresses as a princess, but my son is more ecclectic. He'll dress as a vampire or pirate or dragon or witch, or as some kind of wierd clown-monster hybrid...or as a princess. Whatever strikes his fancy. He takes on a role and plays it to the hilt.

But if my son were transgendered, taking a hard line against wearing a dress wouldn't change that. Imposing strict gender role expectations on children whose native sexualities defy those gender roles is a recipe for suppression, for relationships based on pretense and fear of rejection rather than on honesty and trust. You might succeed in producing women-trapped-in-men's-bodies who pretend to be mountain men, out of the conviction that those close to them can't possibly love them for who they really are. You won't produce healthy, well-adjusted mountain men.

My theory is this: Attend to who your child is, and then support them in becoming the best example of that sort of person they can be. If your child is a budding mountain man, then by all means help him to become the best mountain man he can be. But if your child is a budding ballet dancer, trying to turn him into a mountain man is just a way of telling him that you don't love him. What you love is some human template he can only pretend to fill.

To put on a dress for his little sister's Princess party--well, that's part of who my son is. Casting off the dress halfway through the party--well, that's also part of who he is. For him, it was no big deal. A game he played for about an hour. But it would have been a big deal if (as some apparently think a good father would have done) I'd "put my foot down" and refused to allow him to wear a princess constume to a princess party where the invitation specifically encouraged the wearing of princess dresses. That would have driven home a message--a message about gender, about the rigidity of gender roles and the importance of enforcing them, even at the cost of stifling innocent childhood play. If he internalized that message, I think it would kill some beautiful part of who my son is.

But what about the specter of bullying? Let me say that I do worry about that with my son. He is, after all, small for his age. And brilliant. And he's a dancer. When he was two we watched the Tony awards as a family and he was transfixed by the dance numbers. He pointed excitedly at the screen and said, "Mommy! Daddy! I go there!" He begged to start dance lessons, and so my wife called around only to learn that the earliest they started children in dance was three. She told him as much. Close to a year later, on his third birthday, he suddenly announced, "I'm three now! Now I can start dance lessons!"

He's been dancing ever since. It hasn't always been easy, here in Oklahoma. He is, as of this moment, the only boy in his entire dance studio. A couple of years ago he almost quit, when he first became conscious of the gender-based judgments. (Once, a father and son were waiting in the lobby when he walked by in his leotard. The son said, "I didn't know boys danced." The father replied, harshly, "They don't!") But my son isn't immune to the benefits of being the only boy. And no, I'm not talking about the ones which will likely become obvious to him in a few years. I'm talking about the fact that he's a novelty, and so is more likely to get top billing. This year, his ballet class performed a number to music from the Peter Pan movie. Guess who was Peter Pan?

So I do worry about bullying. I find it horrible to think that my son might be targeted because of strict gender-role expectations that have no room for a boy doing what my son loves to do. And I find it especially pernicious that other children may become the agents of that intolerance, enforcing rigid gender dichotomies through peer teasing and bullying.

But if I were to prohibit my child from dancing, or from taking engaging in some playful bonding with his little sister on her birthday, out of fear of such teasing and bullying, the I would become the enforcer of the very social intolerance I oppose. By "putting my foot down," I'd only be bringing the bullying home.

If you are concerned about your child being the target of intolerance, because your child is unique in some special way, the solution is not to pre-emptively practice intolerance yourself out of fear that if you don't do it someone else will. The solution is to be your child's advocate in the face of intolerance. That is the kind of parenting that promotes healthy development.

Guest Post: Through the Eyes of an Ironman

My wife--a special ed teacher by day--has written an account of her experience competing in her first full Ironman (140.2 mile) triathlon this past weekend at Lake Placid. Since I've mentioned her efforts in a recent post, I thought I'd share on this blog what she's written about her experiences. So...here it is: Through they eyes of an Ironman!
 

A friend recently told me that ironman takes all of your months of training and carefully laid race plans, smashes them to bits, and then hands them back to you in the form of a medal.  That could not be a more accurate description of my race.  :)

After a 4:00 a.m. wake up, I got ready, tried to eat something, gathered my things up, and headed to the transition area.  My bike and gear bags were all in order.  I dropped off my special needs bags, put on my wetsuit, told Eric goodbye, and headed for the swim start.  It was such a surreal experience to actually be in the moment I'd been imagining for so long! The excitement and anticipation of over 2800 athletes makes for an incredible atmosphere! I had no idea that I was about to have the best swim of my life.

 

The pros were called into the water and got to their start.  Then, they called for the rest of us to get in.  I went in right away knowing that being in the water would keep me calm.  (That made me smile, as I found my thoughts wandering back to my first triathlon start in 2010 when I was so terrified that I sat on the dock until the last possible moment.)  The plan for the swim was for me to start about halfway back and toward the right of the pack. This position is a little safer and keeps you from getting quite as beat up in the mass start.  As I waited floating in the water, I realized that only about 100 of us were actually gathering toward the start.  Most people had headed toward shallow water around the edges (I guess because they didn't want to float or tread?) As others began entering and trying to do the same thing, the crowd was being pushed back, and I could see that some swimmers were going to be trapped on the shore.  I didn't want that to happen, and I wanted to be in the water, so I just stayed where I was floating with a group of guys and a few girls for about 20 minutes.  We cheered the pros when they started.  I began moving back a little as the rest of the swimmers moved forward, but I still ended up fairly close to the front and much more to the left than intended. Then the cannon went off, and I was there -- in an ironman!



Chrissie Wellington has described the mass swim start as an all out brawl, and that is exactly what it feels like.  Being kicked, elbowed, hit, swam over...it's all a part of the fun.  :)  As we angled in toward the swim line, I planned to stay a bit outside of the line to avoid the hardcore group.  Lake Placid has an underwater cable that stretches around the swim course.  I had been warned several times since arriving that the real brawl happened near that cable, because everyone wants to swim there so that they don't have to sight.  I swam hard to get to my spot before getting too beat up.  I was feeling pretty proud that I'd managed to hold my own with the tough swimmers long enough to get there.....when I looked down, and saw the cable right underneath me.  There was no way to get out, because everyone seemed to be swimming toward that spot.  It was like being trapped in a washing machine.  I realized that I had no choice but to swim there.  I really surprised myself by adapting to the madness.  I figured out who was kicking hard and narrowed my stroke when I was behind them to protect my head.  When elbows next to me were coming up hard, I breathed only to one side to protect my face.  I fought hard to stay on the cable line and not be pushed inside it.  The people inside would have to struggle to get around the buoys at the course turnaround.  In the end, I really only took two hard hits, and they weren't that bad.  After the first loop, as we ran along the shore, I noticed that I was still near a lot of the guys I'd started with, so I decided to hold that position.  But I did swim a bit farther out from the cable on the second loop.  The swim felt great and was over too soon -- always my favorite part.  I wouldn't know until halfway through the marathon that I'd made such good (for me) time.  One other interesting thing happened during the swim.  When I signed up for Lake Placid a year ago, I ordered a new Road ID bracelet.  On the message line, I had it say, "You are an Ironman!"  I looked at it all through my training to remind myself of the words I was working to hear.  It had the strongest velcro of anything I've ever seen.  As I made the first turn of the swim, it suddenly released from my wrist and floated to the bottom of Mirror Lake.  My immediate thought was that it was a good omen.  After today, I wouldn't have to work toward those words anymore.  I would hear them.  Fortunately, I didn't know at that point just how long it would be until I heard them...

T1 (first transition, from swim to bike) went by without a problem.  I didn't have a volunteer that time, but had no problem getting my bag, getting myself dressed, and grabbing my bike off the rack.  On the way out of transition, I saw my brother and sister-in-law and was able to say hi.  I climbed on the bike and was off.  The first loop was great!  I couldn't get the smile off of my face.  This was the part of the race I'd been the most scared of.  I've never ridden on hills like that and wasn't sure how I would do.  It was hard, and I was slower on the big hills, but I had expected that.  I even relaxed my plan of not exceeding 35 mph before braking on the downhills to not exceeding 40.  It was an absolutely beautiful ride through trees, ski slopes, rivers, and little towns.  After the first loop, I was able to see Eric and the kids cheering.  I was still feeling great.  I stopped briefly at special needs to refill my gels and took off again.  The second loop was harder, but not awful.  It was getting hot, and I had some foot cramps, but that's no shock.  My chain dropped twice, but I was able to fix it fairly quickly.  I did have to stop at port a potties a couple of times, but was relieved that my stomach troubles were nothing compared to what they usually are.  (That was definitely a part of the race plan that DID work!)  I took it easy on the second loop to rest up for the marathon -- especially the last uphill section. Overall, it was a little slower than planned, but a good bike.

I had a volunteer in T2 who was wonderful!  My wetsuit had chafed my arms horribly, and she bandaged them so that they wouldn't get worse during the run.  I was getting really excited at that point thinking that I might actually be able to come in around 14 or 14:30. I was very glad that my stomach issues were resolved so that I wouldn't have to worry about the abdominal cramps I always get on the run leg of triathlons.  I started off the first couple of miles at around a 9:30 pace.  That was faster than planned, so I slowed down a bit for the third mile.  After the third mile, I was slammed by the ab cramps again.  In fact, they were worse than they've ever been.  I walked for a bit trying to shake them off, but as soon as I ran, they came back and got worse.  It went on that way through the entire marathon.  I had to walk/run the entire thing, and by the end, I was at a shuffle. I was so disappointed that what had started out as such a phenomenal race for me was obviously going to end in a very different way.  I saw my family after the first loop which lifted my spirits a bit.  The second loop seemed absolutely endless.  The cramping never went away, I was exhausted, and I'd stopped being able to keep gels down after I started walking more.  The funny thing is that some of the most memorable moments of the day came during that loop.  I walked and ran with different people and learned about their stories.  We shared jokes with the volunteers, got frightened by a horse that snuffled out of pitch darkness, worried together over people being taken away on stretchers in the med carts.  My heart hurt for the many people who were still heading out as I came back in. We all knew that there was no way they were going to make the midnight cutoff, but they were still trying.  Finally, I was coming down the home stretch.  Mike Reilly was there, screaming and waving his towel like I've watched him do so many times on the live feed from my computer at home.  Only this time, he was high fiving ME!  I finally heard the words I'd been waiting for!

 

In the days since the race I have felt so many different emotions. I am humbled and touched by all of the people who left comments and messages that they were following me throughout the day.  I never imagined that so many people (outside of my triathlon friends) would care about the details of the race.  I have felt relieved, elated, disappointed, guilty.  In the end, I have settled on grateful.  I have had an opportunity to make a dream come true.  I have done things that I never dreamed possible.  I wish I could go back to the scared me at CapTex 2010 waiting on the dock and tell her she would be an ironman.  I wish I could go back to the unathletic me who decided suddenly 5 years ago that she'd like to learn to run and tell her that she would do marathons.  I wish I could go back to the 270 pound me of 13 years ago and tell her that someday her thyroid would have less power over her life and she'd be able to make changes.  I'd like to go back to the insecure me and tell her that she would be strong.  Of course, I can't do any of those things.  But I can tell my kids that there are no limits.  I can tell friends that their bodies will do more than they ever dreamed they could.  I can tell my students that it really is possible to reach a goal even when you don't know where to start and everyone around you is so much better at it than you are.  And when those old doubts creep up on me, and I feel powerless to change some situation that seems impossible, I can remind myself that at the end of the long, winding road, I was an ironman.


 

One Philosopher's Manifesto

There is a difference between knowing an array of empirical facts and having wisdom (by which I roughly mean a sense, often hard to articulate, of how one ought to be in the world). Wisdom cannot be reduced to any collection of empirical facts. No scientific method can give it to us. Nevertheless, I believe that there is such a thing as a wise word.

There is a difference between accumulating all the knowledge that in theory can be confirmed by other observers, and understanding something about the meaning of it all. The former will never give us the latter. Nevertheless, I believe there is such a thing as a profound insight.

I believe that wisdom and insight are more likely to come to us when we open ourselves up to the manifold world that lies both before us and, if you will, behind and within us--when we pay attention quietly, contemplatively, without agendas or presuppositions, simply opening ourselves up to being touched and moved by the I-know-not-what that eludes the grasp of our usual concepts and modes of perception.

I believe that such contemplative openness is very hard to achieve, that few of us do it well and that none of us do it perfectly, and that often we think we are doing it even when we're not. And I believe that even when we are struck by wisdom or insight, something is inevitably lost in the effort to articulate it, to put it into language and so communicate it to others. There is a distortion and deterioration that becomes more serious the further removed we become from the original moment of insight. And as others pass on the insight, as with the children's game of whispered messages around a room, the original message can be changed, until all that remains is at best a surface resemblance.

I believe that some words which appear wise turn out not to be, and some apparent profundities are illusory--even when they come to us during our best attempts at contemplative openness. I believe that rigorous critical reflection can sometimes expose the illusion, by uncovering inner or outer contradictions. I think such critical assessment is essential but imperfect, and that there is no such thing as an infallible tool for discerning the difference between apparent and actual wisdom and insight. Nevertheless, I think there is such a difference.

I believe that despite the ambiguity and uncertainty, despite the absence of reliable methods of investigation and testing, we can muddle our way towards greater wisdom and insight. I believe that progress is possible even when it is rare, and hence that there is something we are groping towards, something against which our subjective efforts fail or succeed, even when we cannot tell how much failure or success we have achieved.

I believe it is coherent to hope that the effort is not ours alone, that the deepest and most ineffable truths are, if you will, reaching back towards us, trying to reel us in despite ourselves.

I am conscious of the disputability of each of these beliefs. I am aware that they are matters of belief, not knowledge. And I feel that to be true to them, I cannot treat them as beyond critique. Nevertheless, these beliefs sustain and shape my philosophical life.

Are atheists just in denial? Hellish motives behind a misguided notion

I remember it vividly. It was after my first visit to my then-girlfriend's church, and I found myself out to lunch with her pastor--a forceful personality whose every word radiated a kind of aggressive conviction. You got the sense that, whenever he said something, there was an unspoken addendum that went something like this: "By the way, if you disagree with this, then you are spitting in the face of God and have proved yourself to be a dangerous servant of Satan whom I will do my best to convert or silence so as to make sure that you do not endanger anyone's immortal soul."

Or maybe that was just my imagination. In any event, I found him quite intimidating.

I was reminded of that lunch the other day while I was reading Stephen Law's recent post, "Do atheists know God exists? " Law's post is a response to another post by Randy Everist. Both are considering a claim commonly made by conservative Christians--namely, that atheists really know that God exists but are engaged in some sort of deception, including self-deception. Put another way: they're in denial. Both Law and Everist have some trouble with this claim, but Everist tries to salvage a version of it. Law--I think quite convincingly--shows why Everist's salvage job fails.

But I don't want to talk specifically about the merits of Law's arguments here. Instead, I want to think in a somewhat different way about this idea that all atheists and agnostics are in denial.

My girlfriend's pastor, lo those many years ago, asserted this idea over lunch. And when my face began to inch, ever so slightly, towards an expression that may have hinted at skepticism, he quickly invoked the Bible--specifically, Romans 1:18-20, in which Paul writes, "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."

The man said that last bit more than once: "They're without excuse." This piece was important to him. It was important that non-believers be without excuse. And I remember that an old woman at a nearby table overhead him (the pastor had a resonant voice--he was preaching even in the restaurant), and she felt the need to voice her earnest agreement.

When the preacher said this, I wanted to respond with vocal incredulity. I might have said "Are you nuts?" if I'd had more courage. You see, I knew lots of atheists and agnostics. Some were close friends. Others were loved ones. And it was quite apparent to me that their lack of belief in God wasn't about denying what was plain before their eyes. 

Even though this happened years before The God Delusion hit shelves, I'd met atheists a bit like Richard Dawkins. And say what you will about Dawkins, it's pretty clear that he believes what he says about the absurdity of belief in God. I think it's clear to most followers of my work where I stand on this matter: We live in a world that is like that famed duck-rabbit image, a world that can be seen in different ways. And, contrary to Dawkins, I think one reasonable way in which to see the world is theistically. But in such a world, belief in the existence of God isn't a matter of knowledge but of faith--by which I mean it's a matter of choosing to see the world in terms of a hoped-for possibility. And this means that those who don't see it this way aren't denying something that they "really know in their heart is true."

But let's set aside such philosophical ideas and simply look at actual atheists and agnostics.

The reason I couldn't take that preacher seriously that day was because of the atheists and agnostics I'd known. Some had once been believers but had lost their faith--and they'd lost it kicking and screaming. They'd fought tooth and nail to preserve what had for so long helped to define who they were...until, finally, they had to admit that they just didn't believe anymore.

This doesn't smack of denial. In fact, I've know people who quite clearly were lying to themselves while they avowed belief in God, who really had already stopped believing and just weren't ready to admit it yet.

And I've known people who were perfectly open to the idea of God, but who neither found a compelling internal drive to believe nor saw any compelling evidence for God's existence when they looked at the world around them. And so they remained agnostic--friendly to believers, but honest enough to say, when pressed, "You know, I just don't have any beliefs about that." And these were not people full of "godlessness and wickedness," but rather people with a strong moral center, a noble heart, deep compassion and kindness.

I'm speaking, specifically, of my father. 

The preacher at that restaurant table announced, in effect, that my father was without excuse. That he was willfully denying the truth--this man whose character I knew as well as I've known the character of anyone. And I can tell you this: Anyone who met my father, paid any attention to him, and then insisted that he "knew in his heart that there is a God but lied to himself and others about it"...well, such a person would have to have been doing what that preacher claimed nonbelievers do: Refuse to acknowledge the obvious. 

More broadly, the notion that all atheists and agnostics are in denial is one that you can persist in clinging to only if you either don't pay attention to your atheist and agnostic neighbors, or if you willfully distort the evidence that pours in when you do pay attention. This notion operates as a way of blocking or impeding honest appreciation of other human beings. It is, in that sense, an impediment to love--because love begins with attention and the effort to understand.

So why do some Christians, like this preacher from my past, insist on clinging to this notion?

There are probably a number of reasons. Three in particular come to mind: First, because they cling to a doctrine of biblical inerrancy, and it sounds as if Paul endorses this notion in Romans. Second, because they cling to the doctrine that nonbelievers are damned to eternal hell at death, and they're astute enough to recognize that such a fate doesn't seem just if the person who is being thus damned is, well, exactly like my father in fact was. Third, because the level of certitude that they long to invest in their beliefs is hard for them to preserve in the face of sincere, authentic disagreement, thus leading them to want to deny that any sincere disagreement really exists.

And so, when they meet decent atheists and agnostics whose views are obviously sincere, views that express personal integrity as opposed to denial, they have to lie to themselves and others about those people, and declare them to be without excuse, in order to be able to cling to their infallibilist and hellish certitude.

In the process, they lose sight of what may be the deeper message of Romans 1:18-20--a message about paying attention to what's plain, about being honest with oneself about what one sees; a message about how those who fail to do this risk becoming alienated from the source of truth and love.

What do you do?

"What do you do?"

A couple of years ago I was in a play based on the writings of Robert Fulghum--All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten--which featured this question in one scene. The focus of the scene, and of the Fulghum essay on which it was based, was to highlight how uninformative the usual answers to this question really are.

I think that in my own case, when people ask, “What do you do?”, telling them my profession is probably more informative than it would be in many other cases. I spend a lot of time thinking about stuff, and writing about and discussing those thoughts. But still, to say that philosophy is what I do seems to put in shadow other things that define me at least as much.  
Over the weekend I was at a writers’ conference where the keynote speaker, Steven James, encouraged everyone with a passion for writing to say “I’m a writer” even if that’s not what they’re paid to do. After all, Van Gogh was barely paid for his painting but surely was a painter. My wife is training for her first full Ironman triathlon this summer. She isn’t getting paid for it, but she devotes many hours a week to intense workouts, often getting up at 4:30 in the morning to get her training in before work. She loves it. It gives her a sense of purpose. Is she a triathlete?

At the writers’ conference this weekend I thought to myself: “Philosophers are my colleagues, but writers are my tribe.” So, should I say that writing is what I do? Or playing the violin? That used to be what I said, back in high school. Maybe now it should be acting, given how much theatre I've done in the past year.

I think those kinds of answers are really short-hand answers, gestures that we make because we don’t have the time to tell a story. But here, on a blog, I do have time to tell a story. And for some reason, the story that comes to mind right now, when I think about that “What do you do?” question, is about one of my less-than-stellar parenting moments—a time last summer when I tried to build a tool box with my eight-year-old son.

My son’s a perfectionist, and I’m an academic with insecurities in the face of such things as screwdrivers and measuring tape. But he was so excited about getting started on putting together that tool box—and I thought to myself, “What can go wrong? It’s a kit.”

“Okay,” I said as we laid out the pieces of wood on the table and I squinted at the instructions. “We need three screws.”

He fished in the little plastic bag that came with the kit, and came up with three innocuous-looking bronze screws.

It didn’t take long for things to go to hell. We’d barely started working on the second screw—having abandoned efforts to get the first one into the hole—when he flung down the screw driver, ran into his room, and barricaded the door.

In the span of five minutes, a would-be bonding experience with an eager son was transformed into an hour-long sobbing meltdown. What happened?

The details are a bit hazy. I remember trying to instruct him on how to screw in a screw. I recall seeing the delight wither on his face when, concerned that the screw was going in crooked, I snatched up the block of wood to look more closely at it. I can recall his exasperated hiss: “Let me do it!”

And then came that moment when I knew he’d given up. He started spinning the screwdriver round and round without pressing down. “See? Nothing’s happening.”

“That’s because you’re not pressing down on the screwdriver as you turn.”

“I am pressing down!”

“Here, let me—”

“Aargh!”

And so he fled into his room, and I found myself slumped on the floor in the hallway outside, trying to talk to him through the barricaded door. I was baffled. Somehow I’d turned father-son bonding into (or so it seemed) the worst day of my eldest child’s life.

“Can you explain why you’re so upset?” I asked from my spot on the hardwood floor. The only response I got was the sound of his sobs and one more piece of furniture being pushed in front of the door.

Finally I gave up and did what other 21^st Century fathers would do. I pulled out my Android Smart Phone and texted my wife.

Half an hour later she came home, snatched up a book about perfectionism, and asked my son to look at a page and pick out the thoughts that were going through his head. I watched as he pointed to phrases that were printed in various sizes on the page. His finger landed on “I can’t do anything right” before moving on to “If I goof up, something’s wrong with me.”

“Now are any of those thoughts true?” my wife asked.

“No.”

And he nodded. And in no time at all he was back to his usual happy self. I blinked at my wife, filled with a kind of awe.

But this isn’t about my wife. It’s about who I am. I’m the guy who tried to build a toolbox with my son, even though I’m essentially incompetent with hand tools, even though I haven’t yet achieved the psychological finesse to perfectly maneuver the pitfalls of such a task with a perfectionist child. Because of the eagerness in my son’s eyes.  

And I’m also the guy who followed after my sobbing child, my heart aching, and sat there on the floor in the hall outside my son’s room, baffled and wanting nothing more than to rewind the morning and start again—start again and do it right this time, and put my arm on my son’s shoulder, and look at the finished tool box and say something like, “We did it!”

I’m the guy who was slumped there full of feelings, most of them about my son and my family and my desire to be a good father, about the enormity and importance of the job.

But, of course, what I tell people is that I’m a philosophy professor who specializes in ethics and the philosophy of religion. Go figure.

Opening Night for Love

Tonight's the night! It's opening night for the hilarious (and slightly naughty) musical comedy, "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change" at Town & Gown Theatre in Stillwater, OK.

The brilliant cast is depicted above. I provide the violin part. There are more than 20 musical numbers--and the violin is featured in almost all of them. So I've been busy practicing things outside my usual classical repertoire (tango, blues, jazz, even some serious rock violin!). Here's me posing with the pianist (Gloria) and music director (Cody):

I'm sure that were I to reflect on it for long enough, I could connect themes in the show with the kinds of issues I typically discuss on this blog...but I don't want to. So nya. Instead, I'm going to go practice the bit I stumbled over during dress rehearsal last night. Then I'll probably spend a few moments thinking and writing about Simone Weil.

Thanksgiving in a Time of Loss

This Thanksgiving is, for me and my family, a time of mourning. On Tuesday of this week we celebrated the life of my father, who passed away a few short weeks ago. I sit now in my childhood home and find myself expecting to see my father at every turn.

It's easy to fall into melancholy memories, to sit there in the aching remembrance of a childhood whose pains are long forgotten but whose joys are as clear as they're out of reach--joys bound up with my father, who is now gone. It's easy, in such moments, to lose touch with the spirit of gratitude that we celebrate today.

The experience of loss is part of the human condition, and it is often felt most keenly during the holidays, when established rituals are pregnant with memories. On the first holiday after a loved one has passed away, the empty spaces left behind are especially potent: the place where she sat, the role he played in preparing the meal, the story she always told, the distinctive resonance of his laughter.

You look with habitual expectation and find yourself jolted by absence. With time, of course, the habits fade. The absence no longer hits with such a shock. But it remains an empty space.  And as we grow older, there will, inevitably, be more such spaces.  

This year my family confronts my father's absence--my father who was always the attentive host, the one who raised the glass in our welcoming "Skål," who always made sure everyone had what they needed. How can we help but feel his absence, so fresh and vivid, as we sit down to the Thanksgiving feast? What does it mean for this holiday, whose purpose is to offer thanks, to turn our eyes upward in a spirit of gratitude, to thank God for the gifts of life?

Part of the answer is offered afresh every day by my children. When I find myself falling into the past, longing for what is gone, I'm grateful to my children who exist so wholly in the joys of the present that I'm forced to live there too. And I'm thankful for my own childhood and the family that made it possible--imperfect as all human families are imperfect, but defined by the kind of love that casts a long shadow into the future. 

Were it not for that love, I wouldn't feel the ache of loss. Those who are gone move us to mourn because, when they were with us, we were present with them, attending to them, loving them. And so loss must recall love, and love must flow out again into this place where we find ourselves now, this place where joy waits to be tasted along with the feast. We honor love by loving. We revere treasured memories by make new ones. 

Another part of the answer hit me on Monday night as I was sitting at the table with friends and family who had arrived in town for the memorial service. We drank wine from the wine rack my father had filled (with his impeccable taste), and we told stories and laughed (and cried) and ate together late into the evening. We were living and present to each other, thankful for who my father was and for each other. We were alive and living our lives at the table together. 

And I thought about the final notes of the violin piece I'd composed for my father's service. A "double stop"--two notes of a chord played together. And the thing that struck me is this: When you play two sustained notes of a chord on a violin, the interaction of the sound waves audibly produces the third note in the chord. If you listen carefully for it you can actually hear it. It's there, sounding clearly above the other two. 

And of course my father was there, in just that way, as we gathered at the table. And as we gather for our feast tonight, he'll be there again, sounding clear and true.

In Memorium: Paul H Reitan, August 18, 1928-October 30, 2011

I don’t know if many people beyond my immediate family knew about my father’s capacity for silly dancing. He was a quiet man, reserved with his feelings—in many ways very classically Nordic in temperament. He was a college professor who looked and carried himself like a college professor, who spoke with a combination of careful deliberation and passion about topics that mattered to him. In later years, he was a wise elder statesman of sorts for the community of geoscientists devoted to making the geosciences relevant to contemporary social and environmental problems.

But I remember him dancing in the kitchen while we were washing dishes. It wasn’t quality dancing. And it wasn’t flamboyant. It was very deliberate, almost stately, but at the same time utterly absurd. He’d furrow his bushy brow and perform each move as if it were a thing of regal beauty, even though it was just…well, lifting one arm, then another, then a leg. Kind of a slow-motion hokey pokey.

My parents would sometimes have parties that lasted well into the night: gatherings of well-travelled people with intellectual and artistic sensibilities who’d sit for hours around the dinner table talking energetically, laughing, eating, and drinking fine wines or imported beers (sometimes with Aquavit if it was a Norwegian smorgasbord featuring pickled herrings and smoked fish).

It wasn’t uncommon, in these gatherings, for some kind of silly dancing to erupt late into the evening. Once, when I was a child, I remember wandering downstairs because I heard something utterly uncharacteristic: the sound of an electric guitar playing on the stereo. My parents never listened to anything but classical music, usually classical vocal music. But on this evening they’d abruptly decided to put on an LP of Czech rock music—something they’d gotten as a gift from some friends who lived in Prague.

As I came down the stairs, I saw my father dancing in a descending spiral, finally ending up in a heap on the carpet. What else could he do, when a drawn out electric guitar note was descending steadily down, down, down?

Another time, years later, I remember a line dance through the house to the tune of Hava Nagila (played by me on the violin).

And, of course, there were the more traditional folk dances that we did around the Christmas tree every Christmas Eve without fail. My mother would play the piano (or, in later years, I’d play my violin). But my father always danced.

One of my great regrets is that I never got to do an Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) workshop with him. AVP is an organization founded by a collaboration between prison inmates at Greenhaven Correctional Facility and the local Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). AVP runs experiential workshops—in prisons and in community settings—focusing on conflict resolution and communication skills, community-building, and cultivating the psychological/spiritual resources for living a more nonviolent life.

Not long after I became an AVP workshop facilitator, I introduced my parents to the program. They both went through a basic workshop, but my father got hooked. He went on to become a facilitator himself, and after his retirement worked for about a decade coordinating the AVP program at Wende Correctional Center in upstate New York. I understand that he became something of a beloved grandfather for many of the inmates he worked with there.

One of the distinctive things about an AVP workshop is that, for all the seriousness of the skills and personal resources being cultivated, a spirit of play weaves its way through the whole. This comes out most clearly in what are called “Light and Livelies,” activities that are a bit like the ones that parents plan for their grade-schoolers’ birthday parties (except more fun). Intense discussions, deep sharings, thought-provoking activities—all are woven together by a spirit of play.

After all, what is the point of passionate engagement with social issues, of intellectual inquiry and deep personal sharing, of learning nonviolent communication and conflict resolution skills? What is the point, if not to work towards a world where people can enjoy their lives together more richly, laugh more often, delight in one another more fully? What’s the purpose, if not to learn how to unburden ourselves of all the crud that we too often carry with us, especially in our intimate relationships, so that those relationships may become, more truly, a source of childlike joy?

It’s no wonder that my father was drawn to AVP in his retirement, or that he was such a good and well-loved facilitator. Because although he may have looked the role of a quiet elder statesman imparting wisdom with passion and clarity—although he was such a quiet elder statesman—there was always in his heart a spirit of play.

My mother, in the days following my father’s death, expressed over and over her sense of privilege in the midst of loss: the privilege of being able to live 49 years with one of the best men she’d ever known. I had the privilege of being raised by him. And if there’s a personal basis for my staunch opposition to those exclusivist theologies that condemn to hellfire anyone who fails to embrace the doctrinal details and practices of their brand of faith, it lies in this: My father, an agnostic scientist, was one of the best men I’ve known. He could never share my Christian faith, but he was the first to treat it with respect. He could never see his way to believing beyond what his scientifically-trained mind saw as evidence. But he proudly bought up copies of my first book and mailed them to everyone he knew, include some very staunch atheists.

And the idea that he should be eternally rejected by the God of love because he couldn’t bring himself to believe this or that religious doctrine—well, the idea isn’t just absurd. It’s evil. It’s the kind of crud that keeps people apart, that stifles and truncates our capacity to find joy in each other, to love more fully and richly.

If there’s something I’ve learned from my father, it’s that good, thoughtful people can and do see things differently—often because they can’t help it given their upbringing, their experiences, their inspirations and their loves. None of us can pay adequate attention to it all; none of us can draw all the right conclusions from what we do attend to with care. But we can learn from each other.

Sometimes I get passionate about things, and I debate vigorously with those who disagree. Sometimes I pursue causes in the knowledge that others stand opposed to me. In this I’m like my father. I only hope that, like my father, I can remain focused on what it’s all about. If my father  cared so much about the environment, about war and violence, to become passionately engaged in debates and causes, it was for the sake of furthering the kind of community that AVP forges, of lifting the impediments to its spread, of helping to realize a world where everyone can dance.

Death and Time

I know I said I probably wouldn't blog again for awhile. But last night I lay awake for awhile, things running through my head, and I knew I needed to process it in writing, put it into words. I'm still at my parents house in Buffalo, feeling ghosts and grief. 

Yesterday I fixed my mother her Friday martini--something my father had done with a religiosity that belied his personal lack of religion. The last Friday before his death he wasn't able to do it, and he expressed to my mother his regret.

I made it too strong, but my mother drank it anyway, and we listened to Sumi Jo, a Korean soprano. We cried a little, and talked about music, and about the perfect photograph of my father for the memorial service.

The phone rang. It was Uncle Ralph, my father's brother. There was a time when my father and Ralph were estranged--a conflict involving another brother, Harold. Because of my father's childhood family role as Harold's caretaker (Harold had contracted polio, and couldn't use his arms), my father had fallen into a dysfunctional relationship with him, one which Harold reflexively took advantage of in numerous ways. Ralph pointed this out, perhaps not gently, and my father came to Harold's defense.

It took some years for my father to realize that Ralph was right. It took some more years for them to become close again. Of the five siblings, it was clear that the two of them were the most alike (and not just because they virtually looked like twins). They were kindred spirits, both of them with similar outlooks on the world, both accomplished scientists (Uncle Ralph the more accomplished, considered by many the father of modern neuropsychology). And so in later years they built--or perhaps rebuilt--a strong emotional attachment.

When my mother answered the phone, Ralph could barely talk through his sobbing. When he finally was able to talk, he told my mother what was, for me, a revelatory story. After a lifetime as brothers, what Ralph told my mother about was how he felt when my father was born. He was six years old, and he just loved this little baby boy--loved him so much that he ran home from school day after day in his eagerness to see him.

I could imagine this little first grader holding the baby, maybe feeling the silky head against his cheek, awash in affection. And now, after growing up together during trying times in American history (the Great Depression, World War II), after estrangement and reconnection--after more than eighty years of history together, when he heard about his little brother's death it was as if he was losing that little baby boy. As if death, somehow, has the power to erase time...or, perhaps, the power to erase our temporality.

I lay awake in the night, thinking about this. Because I knew in my own way the same thing. I'm a middle-aged man. I moved out of my childhood home well over half my life ago. But on confronting my father's death, I am that little boy hiding under the kitchen table with my sister, and my father is peeking under at us and calls us Englebert and Humperdink. And how can that little boy manage without his Papa?

Of course, I'm not that little boy. That little boy had his Papa, was lucky enough to have his Papa. And I, a husband and father, teacher and writer, will manage. I have plenty to do. But I think about the way the death of loved ones seems to unmoor us from the inevitable forward flow of time. I think about Einstein's understand of time, as a fourth dimension, one in which every moment is as real as the present, nothing lost with age. I'm reminded of Boethius's understanding of God's eternity, an ancient refection on time that parallel's Einstein's: God isn't trapped in the flow, but is present at each moment "at once." This is the perspective of eternity: to be eternal is to stand, not so much outside of time, but within every moment of it in the way that each of us inhabits the present moment.

If Einstein is right about time, then the mystery is why we experience it as we do. The standard contemporary answer--that biological organisms resist or move against the flow of entropy in the universe--is not so much an answer as a gesture: "Somehow, maybe, this fact has something to do with it." Were I to speculate, I'd say that experiencing time as we do is essential to our status as agents, as selves who act, causally, in the world. To be part of the chain of cause and effect, we need to inhabit time in the way we do, first experiencing the moment of decision, then the moment of outcomes.

Perhaps death is the threshold to eternity--not in the full sense that Boethius takes God to be eternal, but in some deep sense. At death, as our consciousness hits the outer edge of our experience in this life, we subjectively hit the place where another perspective on time becomes possible. Even when it is the death of another, the death of a loved one, we sense the strangeness of time as we experience it, we feel the tug of another perspective.

And so we're jarred loose. The years evaporate. For a moment we're children again, re-inhabiting an earlier slice of our world. We're holding a precious little baby brother, smelling him, savoring him. Or we're laughing underneath a table, looking at Papa's slippers and savoring the silly names he gives to us.