Thursday, December 11, 2008

Forced Hiatus

If anyone is actually still checking in here, my apologies for seeming to abandon ship. My laptop's been quite the little princess the past few weeks and has presently decided to hate me in a form that makes it almost impossible to spend more than 3 minutes at a time on it. So...maybe check back closer to January when I've had a chance to fix or find a power cord...

Until then, read a book.
Try it.
They're good.
I promise.


much love,
shaina

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Nothin' Much / Somethin' Else

I've got a couple of (what I hope are going to be) good pieces lined up for you, but you'll have to wait on them.
Tonight, we chill.
(If you're reading this in the day, come back to it in the night.)
(If you know me, you know how crucial the timing/ambiance is..go! Come back later!)

* * *

Alright. If it's dark out, you're allowed to continue.


Get real quiet-like, congregate with yourself in your living room or basement or wherever it is that you find your chill, maybe light a couple candles and pull up your best couch-spot or lay on the floor a bit, drink some coffee, and hang out with the ghost of me and Neil Young. Have a swell night, friends!








Sunday, November 16, 2008

Back to the Future

I keep thinking I've made entries on here, when in reality I've just made notes to myself in margins and notebooks. I apologize for greedily and secretly carrying on without you--but here I am! I write tonight on Chapter II: The Maniac.

By way of introduction, allow me to lament the abandonment of abstract thought.

It seems the less folks are agreeing to grow up, the less they are able to venture outside themselves into the realm of the abstract. Which, if you are a psychology nerd like myself, you will see as being a curious psychosocial phenomenon. Which, if you have no idea what I just said, I will explain like this:

When you are a child, you think in concrete terms. Things are literal and personally biased and you can't really be empathetic or see things from my point of view or think deeply about hidden meanings or consider the vast planes of the universe so well. Then (so I hear it once went) you begin to grow up, and you become able to think in abstract terms. Things are not so black and white and you realize you are not the Great Owner of the Right Answer and you are able to "walk a mile in my shoes" and consider how I might hear what you are saying and pull great Truths out of simple stories and venture off to explore invisible or unreachable places, and hey, maybe even create things instead of just consuming them.

The great debate of this chapter brings us into a discussion about which character is the maniac: the one who "owns" the answers, or the one who admits his inability to.

"Let us begin then, with the mad-house; from this evil and fantastic inn let us set forth on our intellectual journey." (p.18) (<-- here I compensate for the aforementioned scholastic deficiency by including proper referencing. siiiick...)

Chesterton begins with a delightfully dark reiteration of a conversation in which a colleague proclaimed the foreseeable success of a man on the grounds of his "believing in himself." Chesterton suddenly saw the absurdity of the popular cultural doctrine when he simultaneously noticed a sign for an asylum. "I said to him, 'Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Supermen. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.'" (p.18)

To tie down what may look like a flapping tether here, we are laying some groundwork regarding the Source of Truth. Steeped in the age of reason (the book was published in 1908), Chesterton goes on to argue against man's assumed ability to intellectually contain/own/explain/ultimately answer his own (and the universe's) existence. In a time when scientists and "materialists" and intellectuals were getting their egos in a twist over usurping God and such "primitive" things, he sounded a warning about attempting to become your own personal Ultimate Source. (Hmm..now doesn't this all sound kind of familiar?)(If not, please refer to the first 4 pages of a bible.)

So anyways, at this point I think Mister C. and I would agree that you can't make God into math, and that if you are at all aiming to become a more developmentally advanced version of a human being, it's probably more productive if you just skip that whole part where you try to one-up him, because that was the very first mistake ever made and they put it in a book for us to remember, much like the thoughtful folks who wrote down lists and pictures of poisonous things so we wouldn't each have to find out on our own.

And here we get to one of my favorite parts so far: Where we touch on the last blog I posted (which I thought was a pleasant coincidence), and where we explore The Overall Cripplingly Juvenile Desire to Put Things in Boxes and Call Them What We Think They Are vs. The Perhaps-More-Mature (Or At Least Better Informed) Relinquishing of Intellectual Ownership for the Sake of Sanity. (What's this?! A paradox!? Mais ouis! Abandon reason--gain sanity! Ah, to be human...)

(Here is where I dread that nobody reading this will have any idea what I'm saying anymore. This is why I reluctantly write for the public--because when I'm saying what I really want to say, I fear I am the only one able to understand my strange dialect! Aaahh...save me!)(If this is really the case, and I have entirely lost you and am just seeming narcissistic and painful, please do leave a comment to tell me, and I will cease and desist. This can all just as easily be politely kept to myself! Which I often think would probably be best for us all!) Anyways, as you can't answer now, on to the good stuff! ;)

"Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite...The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in...only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits." (p.22) Ah, I absolutely love this image! Because I know that horrifying ache (see: pleasantly coincidental previous entry), and because I also know the wonderful freedom of ownership's abandon (see: things that kind of look like poems but are mostly just garbled 4am nonsense). There is nothing quite so comfortable and safe feeling as creating something unnamable out of ideas and words that aren't quite your own, to express nothing in particular to no one at all.

I met a man outside a bar on East Hastings once, who was sincerely intent on showing me just how horribly smart he was by vehemently refuting and decimating every possible argument for the hope of God there ever was. I'm pretty sure I hadn't even said anything about God to him, and possibly hadn't even said anything at all to him. And I certainly wasn't looking to argue with anyone. But there he stood, arguing away like he could go on forever. For all I know he's still standing there and has said everything possible against it and has had to resort to just saying "nothing nothing nothing" over and over again to stress his ultimate point. (Literally, on two levels: he aimed, I assume, by such thorough deconstruction, to arrive at "nothing"...and the product of such a dedicated and finite analysis would quite simply be: nothing.) I feel sorry for the poor guy, 'cause while he's been working tirelessly away at the nothing, I've had the delicious luxury of imagining all kinds of something.

"And if great reasoners are often maniacal, it is equally true that maniacs are commonly great reasoners." (p.22) The redundancy and unoriginality of undoing everything is especially tragic to me. To be in this world and to say "today I shall undo this place" is the equivalent of arriving on the heels of a hurricane in a bulldozer.

I think I've come to the point where I've lost myself at last here. (If you've had a conversation with me, this would be where I stare off to the side and say "umm..." and we both realize we're not sure quite why I started the tangent that has now led us around too many corners from the initial thought for any hope of return.) Perhaps this is fitting, considering the subject at hand? hahah. I do immensely appreciate when a medium embodies its message, so I can appreciate the irony ;) I hope you can too! In any case, I've a bit more to say about these topics, and I'll try to make a cohesive conclusion after I've been away a day and come back to collect my thoughts.

And if you are beginning to regret visiting this space, feel free to abandon ship--there are only 7 more chapters. (Though the second-next one is going to be about fairy tales, which I would strongly recommend checking back in for--mm, fun!) And after Orthodoxy, I am thinking about carrying on to another book I have recently read and very much enjoyed, called The Culturally Savvy Christian: A Manifesto for Deepening Faith and Enriching Popular Culture in an Age of Christianity-Lite, written by one of my faaaavorites, Mister Dick Staub. So if you want to hear me go off about the horrors of modern cultural mediocrity and the even more horrifying horrors of the "Christian versions" of such sad things (oh, and the hope and inspiring challenge to create change--there's that?), tune back in to Professor Shaina's upcoming course: "I'm Gonna Country Woman This Place Up." (Which will make sense, should I remember to explain it in that section.)

Alright! See you soon--I promise!

Friday, October 3, 2008

A Foolish Romance: Act I

For the better part of my life, people have been going around trying to make me feel I'm smart. Sometimes I humor them and let them say things to this effect, or even act the part. But the deep dark truth is...I'm a complete idiot.

For all the things I've let take up residence in the chasms between my ears, there isn't much to show. Demonstrations of this "knowledge" tend to terrify me (please refer to the secret chapter of my life entitled "How Many Papers I Actually Handed In In College"). They are not terrifying in and of themselves; the terrifying bit is the appealing abyss in which their contents tend to be tucked away among an infinite number of other intriguing items. Easy to get lost in.

I find myself constantly crippled by the things I've discovered, and in this mere quarter of a lifetime have accrued such a collection of debilitating concepts that I sometimes have to check and make sure my body hasn't atrophied as a result of the extensive adventures taken in this cerebral limbo. I am not very good at being a person, and even worse at being a godly person. The more I feel I should be improved by all the answers I've sought, the more holes I feel in my diminishing self, worn thin by the thousand more questions each answer breeds.

Comfort comes from dear unmet friends: mister Lewis, Paul...and now mister Chesterton. Brothers who have been to these same places and have realized the paradox of it all, who have resigned themselves to the fact that they are but foolish humans, destined to strive and fail in a world and a state that is unownably their own.

I've carried on into Chesterton's introduction, where he defines the thesis of his book as being a desire to "set forth [his] faith as particularly answering this double spiritual need, the need for that mixture of the familiar and the unfamiliar which Christendom has rightly named romance." He goes on to paint a picture of humanity's need for a "practical romance; the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure...an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome."

Now, if you need to know anything about me, this is the one thing to know:
Paradox is my lifeblood. (Well..I mean, Christ is my lifeblood. But paradox comes in a close second. Or perhaps we could include it with Christ, because if we're being honest with ourselves, that whole thing is one epic paradox, right?)

So whenever someone gets going on paradox, I am a happy camper.

Anyways, you may be wondering if I'm planning on making this coherent at all, now that I've meandered between the topics of folly, romance, and paradox. Fear not! Although my writing skills have also atrophied (perhaps as a result of the aforementioned "secret chapter?" wink wink), I am determined to lead you out of this tangled path and back into the light! (Thank you for the small stroll into the edges of my favorite abyss, by the way--it's nice to have company from time to time.)

Ah yes, so. Sweet comfort comes, when I find myself most deliciously and tragically lost in the realms of the ultimately unknowable, from friends who have been there before me...who readily admit to me their utter inability to own any special knowledge at all and the weakness of their faltering pens...who so wisely abandon the knowledge others like to claim they've captured and who carry on down the fool's road toward the True Owner's Home.

Dear mister Chesterton, whose text is widely celebrated and used in college classrooms, offers us this impending work "with the heartiest sentiments to all the jolly people who hate what I write, and regard it (very justly, for all I know) as a piece of poor clowning or a single tiresome joke."

And my old friend Paul advises us well in the paradox of worldly wisdom and holy foolishness:

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate." Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength. Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things--and the things that are not--to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God--that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord."
(1 Cor. 1:18-31)

So here we all are at last.
Fools striving for a glimpse of wisdom, hobbling down a well-worn path having conversations with ourselves over questions whose answers aren't answers at all in our eyes.
Grownups told to become children again.
Scholars stripped of medals and left with furrowed brows at the base of a crude old tree.
Hopeless romantics.
Here we all are at last.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

"It was perhaps an incautious suggestion to make to a person only too ready to write books upon the feeblest provocation."

I decided tonight, upon extrapolated urging from a dear friend interested in fishing some thoughts out of my overindulged mind, to create a small cache in which to store a few for her and anyone else bored or silly enough to find themself here.

So, whoever you may be, welcome to the autumn semester.

I considered being cheesy enough to include a "syllabus" for you, but decided that clashes too much with my nature and the nature of this space. So all you need to know is that I think this is going to be primarily a place reserved for my reflections on a book suggested to me by a friend who knew it was right up my alley.

The book is Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton.

I've only just read the first paragraph of the introduction, but judging by the title of this entry (a quote from said selection), it seems mister Chesterton and I are already on the same page...