"Imagine No Religion: Wait. Scratch That. Imagine a Secular Religion"

Imagine No Religion: Wait. Scratch That. Imagine a Secular Religion | Mockingbird

This article is an illustration of something I've long talked about on this blog: how grateful I am for the Great Church Year, and all its seasons and events - and especially for (dare I say it) the particular emotional experiences that attach to them. The Incarnation mirrors human life and how we experience it, in all its breadth and depth - and this is one way it heals on a very deep level. The God who created the stars in heaven has given up power and dominion to put on human flesh and live life as we do, from the highest heights to the lowest depths. God has said, by this means: "See? I know what it is to live a human life, too. This, too, I understand - and all this I have redeemed." (As the Roman playwright Terence put it: "I am human; nothing human is alien to me." In Christianity, this is God speaking!)

What's being argued below is that "secular religion" can't provide anything except a kind of sunny - and false - optimism about the world and about humanity. It cannot speak to our hearts, because it doesn't mirror our own lives at all. But Christianity recognizes, and commemorates (in the "do this in remembrance of me" context), life on earth in all its triumphs - and in all its disasters (and a million shades and colors of every other kind of experience). This is why it's given birth to all that music and art and literature - and all that theology centered in "Incarnation" and the redemption of the human being by means of Incarnation.

What we're seeing below is a rather heartbreaking cry of pain, in fact; he's saying that people have no way of dealing with their own internal emotional lives anymore - with their own heartbreak and sorrows (and joys). And that's a true tragedy - there couldn't be anything worse, IMO. And if true, addressing this is what our vocation going forward must consist of.

Imagine No Religion: Wait. Scratch That. Imagine a Secular Religion

This just in: Swiss writer/thinker Alain de Botton has begun publicizing his forthcoming book Religion for Atheists, in which he revisits the French Revolution attempt to create a ‘secular religion.’ Meaning, he rejects the new atheist tendency to dismiss religion altogether, instead choosing to highlight a few factors that might be worth preserving, post-God. As he points out in an article for Forbes, he’s not the first to hazard the idea – it’s been a humanist hobby ever since there were humanists (or professional athletes) – but what is relatively distinctive are the religious elements he wishes to cherry-pick. That is, de Botton’s not primarily looking to ‘religion’ for insights about charity or ‘random acts of kindness’. Instead, he advocates for the peculiar ability of religion to put man into proper perspective and counter-act our predisposition toward hubris, in the process shedding more than a little light on the vacuousness of much of what passes of the ‘secular’ mindset when it comes to the human condition and human enterprise. In other words, a little pessimism might do us all a little good, and even allow for a bit of much-needed compassion re: misfortune… Of course, while he may be on to something, de Botton’s project is ultimately a silly one; religious ideas will always make a poor substitute for a living God. Call me pessimistic, but one can’t help but notice how the scaffolding, no matter how exquisite, always falls down when it becomes the focus, that is, when there’s nothing there to hold it up, ht SY:

We, more blessed in our gadgetry but less humble in our outlook, have been left to wrestle with feelings of envy, anxiety and arrogance that follow from having no more compelling repository of our veneration than our brilliant and morally-troubling fellow human beings.

A secular religion would hence begin by putting man into context and would do so through works of art, landscape gardening and architecture. Imagine a network of secular churches, vast high spaces in which to escape from the hubbub of modern society and in which to focus on all that is beyond us.

A third aspect of secular religion would be to offer us lessons in pessimism. The religion would try to counter the optimistic tenor of modern society and return us to the great pessimistic undercurrents found in traditional faiths. It would teach us to see the unthinking cruelty discreetly coiled within the magnanimous secular assurance that everyone can discover happiness through work and love. It isn’t that these two entities are invariably incapable of delivering fulfillment, only that they almost never do so. And when an exception is misrepresented as a rule, our individual misfortunes, instead of seeming to us quasi-inevitable aspects of life, will weigh down on us like particular curses. In denying the natural place reserved for longing and incompleteness in the human lot, our modern secular ideology denies us the possibility of collective consolation for our fractious marriages and our unexploited ambitions, condemning us instead to solitary feelings of shame and persecution. A secular religion would build temples and anoint feast days to disappointment.

A secular religion would deeply challenge liberal ideology. Most contemporary governments and even private bodies are devoted to a liberal conception of help, they have no ‘content’, they want to help people to stay alive and yet they make no suggestions about what these people might do with their lives. This is the opposite of what religions have traditionally done, which is to teach people about how to live, about good (or not so good) ways of imagining the human condition and about what to strive for and to esteem. Modern charities and governments seek to provide opportunities but are not very thoughtful about, or excited by what people might do with those opportunities.

There is a long philosophical and cultural history which explains why we’ve reached the condition known as modern secular society. Yet it seems there’s no compelling argument to stay here.

Choral Evensong with the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge

Choral Evensong with the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge - YouTube

Haven't listened to this all the way through, but I've heard the Clare College Choir before and can safely predict it will be musically gorgeous. Best of all: it's a full hour, and you don't have to click from vid to vid to get the whole thing.

I'll come back with some info on composers, etc., if I can. From the YouTube page:

The Anglican Episcopal House of Studies at Duke Divinity School with the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge present Choral Evensong, September 13, 2010, at Duke University Chapel. Choir under the direction of Timothy Brown, Director of Music, Clare College.

"All Work and No Play: Why Your Kids Are More Anxious, Depressed"

Well, here I am, lifting content from Mockingbird again. This is an article in Atlantic on the topic of the sharp decrease (since 1955, it says) in the amount of free playtime kids have available to them (for a host of reasons).

I'll just let David do all the work and quote him directly. Only to add that, as I commented over there, we all already know - from watching television, of course! - that baby animals need exactly the kind of free playtime that human kids aren't getting, in order to develop the skills they'll need as adults. It seems to me, thinking about this, that at one time people seemed to instinctively understand this - but apparently do no longer.

Are people in the process of losing any instincts we might have had - perhaps because we've put such a distance between ourselves and our own animal natures, by virtue of our intelligence? Is it because the "nuclear family" has taken the place of the "extended family," and a certain kind of wisdom is no longer getting passed down via the elders (all the while "intelligence" continues to be highly valued)? Is it because we're all so afraid of each other now - because we don't really know our neighbors, and/or we move around a lot - that we can't trust kids to be on their own in the world anymore?

Kind of scary, all that, isn't it?

Wowza! The Atlantic followed up their recent opus on overparenting-induced anxiety with a report on how decreased playtime is affecting children’s emotional health, “All Work and No Play: Why Your Kids Are More Anxious, Depressed.” It’s sobering, to say the least. There’s not a whole lot to say on the issue that SZ didn’t make pretty clear in his classic post, “Freezing Repetitions and the Spirit of Play in Thornton Wilder’s Theophilus North“ (not to mention the conference talk on which it was based). Only minor note is to say that the authors of the article use the word “control” in a way that might initially sound theologically suspect, but is instead meant to contrast with “being controlled.” A child being given the space to pursue his/her own whims in playtime is not only a beautiful example of liberty, it is the opposite of control as we might understand it; it is the experience of freedom, or as Dr. Gray suggests, the experience (and survival) of things being “out of control” or scary which appears to be a key factor in the healthy childhood development. In fact, “playtime,” to the extent that it stands for unstructured, non-evaluated time, might as well be called “gracetime.” No wonder that Dorothy Martyn pursued the play therapy model all these years, ht AP:

An article in the most recent issue of the American Journal of Play details not only how much children’s play time has declined, but how this lack of play affects emotional development, leading to the rise of anxiety, depression, and problems of attention and self control.

“Since about 1955 … children’s free play has been continually declining, at least partly because adults have exerted ever-increasing control over children’s activities,” says the author Peter Gray, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology (emeritus) at Boston College. Gray defines “free play” as play a child undertakes him- or her-self and which is self-directed and an end in itself, rather than part of some organized activity.

Gray describes this kind of unstructured, freely-chosen play as a testing ground for life. It provides critical life experiences without which young children cannot develop into confident and competent adults. Gray’s article is meant to serve as a wake-up call regarding the effects of lost play, and he believes that lack of childhood free play time is a huge loss that must be addressed for the sake of our children and society.

Five Ways Play Benefits Children:

1. Play gives children a chance to find and develop a connection to their own self-identified and self-guided interests.

As they choose the activities that make up free play, kids learn to direct themselves and pursue and elaborate on their interests in a way that can sustain them throughout life. Gray notes that: “…in school, children work for grades and praise and in adult-directed sports, they work for praise and trophies…. In free play, children do what they want to do, and the learning and psychological growth that results are byproducts, not conscious goals of the activity.”

“Children who do not have the opportunity to control their own actions [ed note: who are given no freedom from supervision or evaluation], to make and follow through on their own decisions, to solve their own problems, and to learn how to follow rules in the course of play grow up feeling that they are not in control of their own lives and fate. They grow up feeling that they are dependent on luck and on the goodwill and whims of others….”

3. Children learn to handle their emotions, including anger and fear, during play.

In free play, children put themselves into both physically and socially challenging situations and learn to control the emotions that arise from these stressors. They role play, swing, slide, and climb trees … and “such activities are fun to the degree that they are moderately frightening … nobody but the child himself or herself knows the right dose.”

Gray suggests that the reduced ability to regulate emotions may be a key factor in the development of some anxiety disorders. “Individuals suffering from anxiety disorders describe losing emotional control as one of their greatest fears. They are afraid of their own fear, and therefore small degrees of fear generated by mildly threatening situations lead to high degrees of fear generated by the person’s fear of losing control.” Adults who did not have the opportunity to experience and cope with moderately challenging emotional situations during play are more at risk for feeling anxious and overwhelmed by emotion-provoking situations in adult life.

5. Most importantly, play is a source of happiness.

When children are asked about the activities that bring them happiness, they say they are happier when playing with friends than in any other situation. Perhaps you felt this way when remembering your own childhood play experiences at the beginning of this article.

Gray sees the loss of play time as a double whammy: we have not only taken away the joys of free play, we have replaced them with emotionally stressful activities. “[A]s a society, we have come to the conclusion that to protect children from danger and to educate them, we must deprive them of the very activity that makes them happiest and place them for ever more hours in settings where they are more or less continually directed and evaluated by adults, setting almost designed to produce anxiety and depression.”

More of the same....

Not to pick on Grace Church Newark - I love Grace Church Newark - but expanding on the previous post, I'd like to look at the last four bullet points in the set that lays out its thoughts on "What Is an Anglo-Catholic Parish?"   These seemed to contain the only real faith content in the group, which mostly talked about historical circumstances (and mostly as reaction to other points of view).

Anglo-Catholicism, it's claimed, holds:

• That the sacraments were effectual means of grace.
• That Baptism bestowed a new birth.
• That Christ was objectively present in the sacrament of his Body and Blood
• That the Eucharist was an act of sacrificial worship offered to God the Father by Christ through the Church, his Body.

In response, I ask:

• What are "sacraments"?  What's "grace"?  Why "effectual"?
• How does Baptism bestow a new birth?  What, exactly, is meant by "new birth," anyway?
• Huh?
• Huh?

None of these questions is answered in any meaningful way in our Catechism.   So where is Anglo-Catholicism getting these views?  Where are they taught?  More importantly:  what can they possibly mean to or for the uninitiated?

The Catechism is set up as a short series of questions-and-answers that does nothing to help people outside the church make sense of its claims.   No deeper explanations are offered; none seem to exist.  Examples:

Human Nature

Q. What are we by nature?
A. We are part of God's creation, made in the image of God.

Q. What does it mean to be created in the image of God?
A. It means that we are free to make choices: to love, to create, to reason, and to live in harmony with creation and with God.

Q. Why then do we live apart from God and out of harmony with creation?
A. From the beginning, human beings have misused their freedom and made wrong choices.

Q. Why do we not use our freedom as we should?
A. Because we rebel against God, and we put ourselves in the place of God.

Q, What help is there for us?
A. Our help is in God.

Q. How did God first help us?
A. God first helped us by revealing himself and his will, through nature and history, through many seers and saints, and especially the prophets of Israel.

I don't know about you, but: I mean, could this possibly be any more tame and tepid? Is that all there is to "human nature"? Really? Is that all there is to this religion? To life? Further, it all rests on prior acceptance of the initial unsubstantiated claim about God; without that, there's literally no point in reading on. No attempt is made to speak in non-religious language, in order to show that these things can have real meaning for human beings who might not already belong to a church.  

(By way of contrast, the Catholic Catechism claims outright that "By natural reason man can know God with certainty, on the basis of his works."  That sounds a little more interesting, doesn't it?  And it attempts to speak to the inner life of the reader:  "By love, God has revealed himself and given himself to man. He has thus provided the definitive, superabundant answer to the questions that man asks himself about the meaning and purpose of his life."  Apparently, Episcopalians don't have any such questions.)

I'm not picking on Anglo-Catholicism, either, BTW.  I love Anglo-Catholic parishes - at least, certain of them - for one particular reason (as I understand better now):  you can dependably get some religion there.

My point here is this, really:  the reason the Episcopal Church is in the spiritual state it's in is that it doesn't teach anything that makes sense to people.  It offers almost nothing in the way of comprehensible or vital content at all - except in its "liturgy."   But of course, how "liturgy" is done is the purview of the rector of a parish - which means that content will continue to change with the wind, every 5-7 years (the average length of a rector's tenure).    This is, I realize now, why Anglo-Catholic parishes make more sense to me; there is much more consistency over time. (The question still remains, however: where do Anglo-Catholic principles come from? Does Anglo-Catholicism offer a coherent set of faith claims? What are they? Where can they be found? Isn't this all rather hit-or-miss? Anglo-Catholic-style "liturgy" has been adopted, it's said, over time and throughout the Episcopal Church: candles, incense, vestments, etc. Has Anglo-Catholic faith content - whatever it is - come along with it? Hard to say, since we don't know what that content actually consists of - but I think the frustration felt by many of us argues against any sort of "great awakening" or hunger for the Gospel in TEC.)

It's possible  that by osmosis, some people might absorb some ideas about faith - but it's not very likely.  By the evidence:  so far, at least, this doesn't seem to be happening.   In fact, the evidence seems to point in the other direction entirely; nothing is being absorbed at all. 

Is it actually any wonder that the Jesus Seminar has gotten a hearing?  It, at least, has something to say - even if it's a complete dead end that doesn't offer anything meaningful or vital - and it has rushed into the vacuum we left there ourselves.   Is it any wonder that people don't even know what's meant by "preaching the Gospel"?  (I didn't, I can say, for a long time.)

I'm saying: I don't know that there's really any correlation between "liturgical style" and content. I know the idea is that there ought to be - but the facts don't seem to bear this idea out. Which is why we need to preach the Gospel, and let the liturgical chips fall where they may. We need to forget about "reforming the church through liturgy" - to stop pretending that tearing out pews has anything to do with anything - and think about how we can express to people that what we have to offer is a life-giving message about living as human beings on earth.

The truth is:  we need some Lutheran-style Evangelicals.   (Some pro-gay, pro-WO, non-inerrantist Lutheran-style Evangelicals, that is - something the world has not yet seen.  And what better way to fight 'em than on their own turf, anyway? I'm volunteering; who's with me?)

Some recent thoughts

•  The Episcopal Church is mad for "liturgy."  Over the top, really - that's all we ever hear about, in fact.  "Liturgy" this and "liturgy" that - everything seems to be about the parade and the pageantry.  
  
  Now, listen:  I, like every Episcopalian, love a parade, and I do like pageantry.  I love incense and chant and the whole drama.  But I think in many ways this focus on "liturgy" is just a way of avoiding talking about content.  And I think we've arrived here because we're comprehensive.  We contain multitudes:  high and crazy, broad and hazy, low and lazy.  We contradict ourselves.  Anglo-Catholics, High Church Protestants, Evangelicals (a few), the great middle.  That's where the emphasis on "liturgy" came from originally:  the attempt to keep everybody in the same church, using the same Prayer Book. 
  
  But now it's coming from another source, I'd say:  a complete loss of confidence in Christianity itself - at least for the broad middle.  We rarely talk about content at all - except to say, perhaps, sentimentally:  "God loves absolutely everybody."   Which might be true - except how can this say anything at all to anybody who has trouble believing in that God (a growing percentage of the population)?  (This leaves entirely aside the question of whether or not it's convincing!)   So at the outset, we can only be talking to ourselves, or to people like us.
  
  But that isn't the idea, really - is it?  I mean, if we think about the origins of Christianity, we realize that Paul (for example) stood in the middle of synagogues and preached to hostile crowds.  He went to the public square and talked about faith to people who were not very inclined to listen.  He did it over and over again, in city after city, over the course of years.  (Fast-forward a thousand years, BTW, and you get St. Francis of Assisi, who did the same thing.  And Francis is loved and adored by the religious and non-religious alike.  Just a thought.)
  
  
• I would identify as an "Anglo-Catholic," I think, generally speaking - on the basis of "liturgy."  That stuff really speaks to me - the smoke, the chant, the statuary, the movements, the reverence.  I like it.  I was rendered literally speechless - kind of choked in the throat, and not from the smoke - when I first saw it.  And I agree that all this was meant to express a certain point of view - but I do wonder what, actually, the actual content is, at this point.    The following comes from the Grace Church, Newark, website:
  

  Parishes identified as “Anglo-Catholic” reflect the strong influence of the nineteenth-century Catholic revival in Anglicanism.  This revival was inaugurated by a small group of priests at Oxford University, who were distressed by the low esteem in which most members of the Church of England held the Church, the sacraments, and the ordained ministry, about the slipshod way in which the services of the church were conducted,  about the laxity with which most members of the church practiced their faith, and about prevalent disregard for the poor and afflicted.  Their movement came to be known as the “Oxford Movement”; and because they expressed their views in publications called Tracts for the Times, they came to be called “Tractarians.”  The principal tenets of the Oxford Movement were:
  
  
  

  • That the Church was not a mere human institution but a divine organism, the Body of Christ in the world.
  • That the Church of England was not denomination, founded at the Reformation, but the selfsame branch of the Catholic Church planted by missionaries from Rome and Ireland in the sixth century.
  • That Christ’s promise to lead his disciples into all truth was addressed to the whole Church, not to any single branch of it, and that the only authoritative teaching was that which had been accepted throughout the Church before the break between East and West in 1054.
  • That although the Church of England, reacting to increasingly extravagant claims about papal authority for which Catholic tradition provided little support, had declared its independence from Rome in the sixteenth century, it had not cut itself off from communion with the Church of Rome, but that schism had occurred only in 1570 when Pope Pius V had excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I.
  • That although the sixteenth-century Reformers’ rejection of papal authority had been justifiable, the  Reformers’ own teaching could claim no authority except to the extent that it reflected the teaching of the undivided Church. 
  • That the Book of Common Prayer ought not necessarily to be interpreted as its compilers intended, but according to the tradition of the Catholic Church.
  • That the Church of England, unlike the Protestant bodies on the continent, had steadfastly maintained the threefold ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons, traceable to the first century, and that its bishops derived their authority not from the state but from Christ and his apostles through the laying on of hands in historic succession.
  • That this threefold ministry was essential to the very being (distinguished from the mere well-being) of the church
  • That the ministry of validly-ordained bishop or priest was essential to the celebration of the Eucharist.
  • That the sacraments were effectual means of grace.
  • That Baptism bestowed a new birth.
  • That Christ was objectively present in the sacrament of his Body and Blood
  • That the Eucharist was an act of sacrificial worship offered to God the Father by Christ through the Church, his Body.        

All well and good, I guess - but what, really, does it have to do with anything (except for the last 4 bullet points - which hardly constitute a catechism)?  And there's no particular clue in that article, titled "What Is An 'Anglo-Catholic' Parish," about anything else we might regard as content.  It's all about form:  historical events and counter-reactions, and "ecclesiology" and "how we do things" - i.e., "liturgy."   We keep covering the same old ground, almost 200 years later! And again: it says nothing to those not already initiated - who know nothing about the church and don't care, either (as why should they?). So I have to ask again: what is the content of our faith? Well, we don't generally say, I think because we've been worried for a long time about offending people. But, as St. Paul has said pretty plainly: Christianity is offensive. There's no getting around that; we're not going to convince people that it's of value by making it seem attractive or elegant or whatever the adjective happens to be. It's offensive - so we'd better start talking about why that's a good thing - why it's a necessary thing - I'd say.  And that means talking about content. (Listen: I myself am living proof of the idea that seeing and recognizing this "offensiveness" can lead to conversion! I'm sure I'm not alone.)                   
• My previous post, below there, "Too Fat To Fly," is just one illustration of the concept that we human beings are deeply flawed.  Not our fault; we were born that way.  We're animals - we evolved out of the jungle (red in tooth and claw) - and our animal nature can, when the chips are down, render us greedy, violent, and totally crazy.   When we don't get our own way:  look out!  And even when we're fat and happy (and ostensibly "peaceful"), we continue to mess ourselves up; it's in our DNA.  Religion and philosophy were always an attempt to overcome this animal nature - to find some way to approach the "holy" or the "good."   (The urge towards which are, apparently, also in our nature.  In God's image, that?)   To find some successful means of "living in the moment" and escaping fear of death and annihilation.  The Greeks tried it - but they were pikers, really; only a very few people in that society had real agency:  male citizens.  The rest - women, children, and (let's not forget!) slaves - were without rights.  Christianity did the brave and bold thing, though:  trying to bring all human beings into the fold.  "No Jew nor Greek, no male nor female":  that's the real stuff right there.
  
  "Nature, Mr. Allnut," said Kate Hepburn to Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, "is what we were put on earth to rise above."  Lizard brain nature, that is - with its fear of death and scarcity and want built right into us.  Evolution out of the Lizard brain - if it ever occurs, something I doubt - will take thousands of years.
  
  Thus, the content of Christianity becomes quite important - and can be an actual selling point to those would would be otherwise uninterested. 
  
  Those who've rejected Christianity are, in my experience, rejecting two things:
  
  
  1. The authoritarianism and hostility to reform of the Roman Catholic Church.
  2. Brain-dead evangelicalism.
  
  But at least the RCC has tried to make a case.  As I've said quite often before:  I have RCC Catechism envy.   I admire the massive intellectual tradition of the RCC, and its appeal to reason; it's very unfortunate that all that has come along hand-in-hand with claims of "infallibility" and the authoritarian tendency.  (By contrast, our feeble Catechism in the back of the 1979 Prayer Book is nothing except embarrassing, at least to me.  More of a problem:  it once again assumes prior acceptance of Christian claims.  It has nothing to offer anybody who doesn't already accept the basic claims of Christianity - and it doesn't offer anything really interesting even in that case.  "An outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace"?  OK - but could you please say a little something about these "inward and spiritual graces" that connects our minds with our hearts and souls, instead of just offering bland doctrinal summaries? Apparently we have nothing very deep or interesting too say on the topic, which is mighty sad.)
  
  We need to make a case.  Reformed Protestantism - it seems to me - speaks to the individual modern human psyche, in all its alienation and anxiety.  It does have something important to say - but our case can't be predicated on Biblical literalism or shallow, "personal salvation."  It can't assume facts not in evidence; it must make an argument.
  
  And if we're not going to go the massive "natural law" Catechism route - and it seems that we're not - then can't we at least do a little deep thinking in other directions?   As you are all no doubt aware by now, I've become a big fan of what I've been reading and hearing (at Mockingbird and elsewhere) about some of Luther's ideas (which eventually resulted in the creation - believe it or not - of Alcoholics Anonymous!).  I think the Gospels - and Paul - are making some really convincing claims about the facts of the world and the human condition - and that A.A. has (re-?)discovered some of these things almost by accident.   I think Luther was really onto something in his parsing of "Law" and "Gospel"; it has taken me a couple of years to come to understand more about this - but it's real.  It's true - and it's actually backed up by quite a lot of real-world evidence.  This kind of thinking really does change your point of view - and it's philosophy as much as religion, really.  It's got legs.
  
  We need to be able to say these things to people who do not know our language already - and we need to offer people who do know the language a way for the faith to remain vital and alive - to continue to offer sustenance and excitement - in and for them, too.  We need to make a case.  "Mystery" and "mystification" are two completely different things; we really can retain the former and eliminate the latter, I believe.  It's clear to me from years of discussions about these things that many people are interested in religion - but just can't get with some of its manifestations (mentioned above).   And of course, we have the problem of some of the .... erm ..... more extravagant claims of the Christian faith (sometimes called "believing six impossible things before breakfast").   So I do not believe we can count anymore, my friends, on Christianity being "believed in" as it's been "believed in" in the past.   We are going to have to assume that many (most?) people will not be convinced about these "impossible things" much anymore - and we're going to have to depend far more on Christianity's fascinating unveiling of counterintuitive ideas and mystical insights.   (This, to me, is fine; the "impossible things" can come later, if they come.  If they don't:  consider Hinduism, another mystical religion, and one that survives even given its florid claims about the universe and certain events.)
  
  We do have things to offer - but we're not saying anything that's very interesting to anybody not already interested!   (And sometimes not even to those of us who are, when you get right down to it.  I mean, when we're not talking about "liturgy" we're talking about partisan politics - both of which get my eyes to glazing over these days.)
  
  But the Gospel is very interesting - it's speaking to some of the most basic facts about living life as a human being on earth - and we just can't let the opportunity to talk about it go to waste.
  
  
• Bonus question for the attentive: Where have I quoted Walt Whitman above?

"Too Fat to Fly"

In November's Vanity Fair, writer Michael Lewis' talks about the "cratering" of California in particular and "dysfunction in American life" in general. Here's a clip from "California and Bust", ht Mockingbird. This stuff is really central, I think: a neuroscientific perspective on what one might call - oh, hmmmm....I don't know - can we call it "Original Sin," perhaps?

The road out of Vallejo passes directly through the office of Dr. Peter Whybrow, a British neuroscientist at U.C.L.A. with a theory about American life. He thinks the dysfunction in America’s society is a by-product of America’s success. In academic papers and a popular book, American Mania, Whybrow argues, in effect, that human beings are neurologically ill-designed to be modern Americans. The human brain evolved over hundreds of thousands of years in an environment defined by scarcity. It was not designed, at least originally, for an environment of extreme abundance. “Human beings are wandering around with brains that are fabulously limited,” he says cheerfully. “We’ve got the core of the average lizard.” Wrapped around this reptilian core, he explains, is a mammalian layer (associated with maternal concern and social interaction), and around that is wrapped a third layer, which enables feats of memory and the capacity for abstract thought. “The only problem,” he says, “is our passions are still driven by the lizard core. We are set up to acquire as much as we can of things we perceive as scarce, particularly sex, safety, and food.” Even a person on a diet who sensibly avoids coming face-to-face with a piece of chocolate cake will find it hard to control himself if the chocolate cake somehow finds him. Every pastry chef in America understands this, and now neuroscience does, too. “When faced with abundance, the brain’s ancient reward pathways are difficult to suppress,” says Whybrow. “In that moment the value of eating the chocolate cake exceeds the value of the diet. We cannot think down the road when we are faced with the chocolate cake.”

The richest society the world has ever seen has grown rich by devising better and better ways to give people what they want. The effect on the brain of lots of instant gratification is something like the effect on the right hand of cutting off the left: the more the lizard core is used the more dominant it becomes. “What we’re doing is minimizing the use of the part of the brain that lizards don’t have,” says Whybrow. “We’ve created physiological dysfunction. We have lost the ability to self-regulate, at all levels of the society. The $5 million you get paid at Goldman Sachs if you do whatever they ask you to do—that is the chocolate cake upgraded.”

The succession of financial bubbles, and the amassing of personal and public debt, Whybrow views as simply an expression of the lizard-brained way of life. A color-coded map of American personal indebtedness could be laid on top of the Centers for Disease Control’s color-coded map that illustrates the fantastic rise in rates of obesity across the United States since 1985 without disturbing the general pattern. The boom in trading activity in individual stock portfolios; the spread of legalized gambling; the rise of drug and alcohol addiction—it is all of a piece. Everywhere you turn you see Americans sacrifice their long-term interests for short-term rewards.

What happens when a society loses its ability to self-regulate, and insists on sacrificing its long-term interest for short-term rewards? How does the story end? “We could regulate ourselves if we chose to think about it,” Whybrow says. “But it does not appear that is what we are going to do.” Apart from that remote possibility, Whybrow imagines two outcomes. The first he illustrates with a true story, which might be called the parable of the pheasant. Last spring, on sabbatical from the University of Oxford, he was surprised to discover that he was able to rent an apartment inside Blenheim Palace, the Churchill family home. The previous winter at Blenheim had been harsh, and the pheasant hunters had been efficient; as a result, just a single pheasant had survived in the palace gardens. This bird had gained total control of a newly seeded field. Its intake of food, normally regulated by its environment, was now entirely unregulated: it could eat all it wanted, and it did. The pheasant grew so large that, when other birds challenged it for seed, it would simply frighten them away. The fat pheasant became a tourist attraction and even acquired a name: Henry. “Henry was the biggest pheasant anyone had ever seen,” says Whybrow. “Even after he got fat, he just ate and ate.” It didn’t take long before Henry was obese. He could still eat as much as he wanted, but he could no longer fly. Then one day he was gone: a fox ate him.

The other possible outcome was only slightly more hopeful: to hit bottom. To realize what has happened to us—because we have no other choice. “If we refuse to regulate ourselves, the only regulators are our environment,” says Whybrow, “and the way that environment deprives us.” For meaningful change to occur, in other words, we need the environment to administer the necessary level of pain.

"‘Secrets of Archimedes’ at Walters in Baltimore"

‘Secrets of Archimedes’ at Walters in Baltimore - Review - NYTimes.com

Wish I could see this - it looks to be fascinating!

Archimedes Palimpsest

Lost and Found: The Secrets of Archimedes, a restored book on display at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.

BALTIMORE — “The Archimedes Palimpsest” could well be the title of a Robert Ludlum thriller, though its plot’s esoteric arcana might also be useful for Dan Brown in his next variation on “The Da Vinci Code.” It features a third-century B.C. Greek mathematician (Archimedes) known for his playful brilliance; his lost writings, discovered more than a hundred years ago in an Istanbul convent; and various episodes involving plunder, pilferage and puzzling forgeries. The saga includes a monastery in the Judaean desert, a Jewish book dealer trying to flee Paris as the Nazis closed in, a French freedom fighter and an anonymous billionaire collector.

At the center is an ancient volume, its parchment recycled into a 13th-century prayer book. And at the climax we see those old folios, charred at the edges and scarred by dripping wax from the candles of devout monks, being meticulously studied for 12 years by an international team using the most advanced imaging technologies of the 21st century. And what is found is more revelatory than had ever been expected.

The Archimedes Palimpsest has precisely this history. It really does begin with a 10th-century copy of Archimedes’ third-century B.C. writings. Three centuries later they were scraped off the parchment, which was reused — creating a “palimpsest.” And while there aren’t enough dead bodies or secret cabals to support a full-fledged thriller, there really is a sense of excitement in the account of the book’s history, restoration and meanings, at an exhibition at the Walters Art Museum here: “Lost and Found: The Secrets of Archimedes.”

Almost nothing about the tale is banal or ordinary. In a companion book, “The Archimedes Codex” (Da Capo), William Noel, the museum’s curator of manuscripts, describes how the saga was brought to its conclusion. In 1998, after reading about the Palimpsest’s sale at a Christie’s auction to an anonymous purchaser for $2 million, the museum’s director, Gary Vikan, suggested to Mr. Noel that he discover who bought it and whether it might be exhibited at the Walters.

The purchaser not only deposited the book with Mr. Noel but also provided funds for the project, as scientists and other experts took it apart for restoration and research. The owner, who remains anonymous, also stipulated that all the findings and images be made available to the public. (Next month Cambridge University Press is publishing a two-volume account of the team’s discoveries.)

It may be difficult, at first, to understand the fuss. At the exhibition’s start you come face to face with two leaves from the Palimpsest; all you see is a fragment of a ruined manuscript, charred, stained and inscribed with prayers. But lines of reddish text, scarcely visible, run perpendicular to those prayers. And you can also make out the ghost of a diagram, a spiral. Above these leaves a series of slides shows the same pages under colored lights, revealing various details.

The juxtaposition neatly demonstrates the challenge posed by the Palimpsest and the technology used to explore it. The effort is made more complicated by the Palimpsest’s nature. After being erased, each leaf was rotated 90 degrees and folded in half, one Archimedes page yielding two of the prayer book’s.

That book was apparently in use for centuries at the Monastery of St. Sabbas in the Judaean Desert. Its towers peek out of the rocks in one of David Roberts’s otherworldly Holy Land illustrations from 1842, shown here. But by then the book was gone. In 1844 a biblical scholar happened upon it at the Metochion of the Holy Sepulcher in Istanbul and saw the curious mathematics underneath; a leaf from the book was found in his estate and deposited at Cambridge University Library.

Then, in 1906, the Danish Archimedes scholar Johan Ludvig Heiberg saw the book in Istanbul and recognized seven treatises by Archimedes behind the prayers, making it the oldest source for his writings in existence and the sole source for two unknown works, “Method” and “Stomachion.” Heiberg deciphered much of the text and took photographs that he worked on in Copenhagen.

It was assumed that Heiberg discovered all there was to find out, which may be one reason that, when the battered volume was put on sale almost a century later, few buyers were panting after its riches.

What became startling to the Walters, though, was the extent of the restoration required. Through much of the 20th century the Palimpsest had disappeared. Heiberg’s photographs juxtaposed with leaves of the book show how ruinous that century was for its condition. Some leaves disappeared. Illustrations of Evangelists, forged to look medieval, were inexplicably painted on some pages.

As part of the restoration the book’s history was examined and is surveyed here. There was the devastating impact of World War I on Istanbul’s Greek communities, which affected a large number of artifacts. Some damage may have happened at the Metochion. Similar stains appear in another Metochion book at the Walters.

"Frank Lake on Confession, Depression and The Dangers of Religious Duty"

Frank Lake on Confession, Depression and The Dangers of Religious Duty | Mockingbird

More from Dr. Lake:

From pages 350-351 of Clinical Theology, a Theological And Psychiatric Basis to Clinical Pastoral Care (Volume 1), ht JL:

“There is all the difference in the world between the word ‘must’ as an ethical obligation which can be fulfilled by an external act of mere attendance, and as an ontological statement, affirming that this is the nature of things, or in this way the Eternal God has covenanted His gifts to man. If churchgoing becomes a duty to be performed in order to stand right with the parson and his religious picture of God (certainly determined by the depressive dynamics of the natural man) then the centre of gravity is displaced from the Gospel of God. It now lies between the unwilling man and the law which stands over him, with the religious pedagogue in the foreground, ostensibly speaking for God, who is supposed to be behind all this. Here is religion. It is not Christianity.

We go to confession in ‘order to receive not to give’, writes Luther. You go conscious of your misery and seeking help, ‘in order to have once more a joyful heart and conscience’. Confession brings joy and healing. That is the clear intention of it in St. James’s Epistle. These are exactly what the depressed person needs above all. But the whole gist of the matter in confounded if confession is made into a religious duty by anxious priests, eager to exercise their power with God and man. In New Testament terms it is not an extractive religious duty; it is a donative Christian resource. Luther says, and he has the dynamics of it perfectly straight, that ‘it is better to abstain from confession than go to it unwillingly or in order to do a good work’.

Religion is basically effort and striving. Christianity is basically rest and abiding. That is why, in the crisis of depression, religion is a menace, whereas Christianity is a marvel of therapeutic resource.” [italics his]

Dr. Frank Lake on "The thorn in the flesh"

Simul Iustus et Schizophrenic: A Quick One from Clinical Theology | Mockingbird

Aside from the (to me) unfortunate title, this is a terrific post. Lake's really interesting, from the little I know so far of him; his books are out of print and so quite expensive! I hope I'll be able to get one, though, at some point. Here's the post:

Dr. Frank Lake was that rarest of beasts: a clinical psychologist, a pastoral counselor, and a learned theologian. Not surprisingly, we consider him a hero. In his landmark Clinical Theology, a textbook for pastoral counselors and theologically serious therapists, he relates classic Protestant anthropology and Christology to the process of psychoanalysis, using real-world case studies (and the Bible) as his foundation. The following is a characteristically profound quote on the simultaneity of human weakness and divine strength, viewed through a clinical lens:

The nature of the help God gives through His Church is to make what cannot be removed, creatively bearable. Paul’s thorn of weakness in the flesh remained. Resting in the power of God, he could glory in his infirmity. It is natural, and it is, I think, spiritually desirable, that we should at first strive and pray, as Paul did, to have our weakness and negativities removed. But the utmost of personal effort and of professional skill may disappoint our hopes in this direction.

What then? There are no lectures in the medial course to inform the doctor of the paradoxical movement of the spirit which can turn decisively away from the evidently vain hope of a cure, to a courageous bearing, and more, to a creative using of the pain and loss that cannot be cured. There is a strength which is made perfect in weakness. Without the prior weakness this particular endowment of strength could never be experienced. Medical practice must extend itself to prevent the outward man from perishing. Pastoral practice, recognising a certain inevitability of failure in this entirely laudable object, extends itself to ensure that the inward man is concurrently renewed from day to day.

The natural man in us tends to reject the paradox that mental pain and spiritual joy can exist together in us, without diminishing either the agony of the one or the glory of the other. The whole personality may be afflicted by a sense of weakness, emptiness, and pointlessness, without diminishing in the least our spiritual power and effectiveness. This is possible because Christ is alive to re-enact the mystery of his suffering and glory in us. So far as our own subjective feelings are concerned, any inner-directed questioning of our basic human state may produce the same dismal answer as before; the cupboard is bare. While we regard our humanity as a container which ought to have something good in it when we look inside, we miss the whole point of the paradox. We are not meant to be self-contained, but channels of the life and energies of God Himself. From this point of view our wisdom is to let the bottom be knocked out of our humanity, which will ruin it as a container at the same time it turns it into a satisfactory channel….

We must expect that the fullness of the Holy Spirit and the fullness of life within the Body of Christ will force out the alien elements of despair, distrust, anxiety, rage, envy, lust, and the like, which are each man’s deposits from the intolerable passivities of infancy, to declare themselves before they are cast out.

Freakonomics » Surprise: Money Still Beats Goodwill as Incentive for Organ Donors

Freakonomics » Surprise: Money Still Beats Goodwill as Incentive for Organ Donors

Well, not so surprising, really, is it? Just a little more data about human nature on its own, then, without intervention from outside itself. Curvatus in se, indeed - even with the intervention.....

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know we write a lot about organ donation and incentives. Like whether registered organ donors should get priority when it comes time to get in line themselves. Or whether the transplant market is too restrictive.

A recent Bloomberg column by Virginia Postrel highlights the difference between goodwill and cold hard cash as incentives to donate, not to mention the legal limits that exist to prevent transplants going to the highest bidder. Internet entrepreneur Amit Gupta is currently awaiting a bone-marrow transplant. But as he is of South Asian descent, odds of a close genetic match are lower than average, in the region of about 1 in 20,000. So Gupta’s friends turned to the web in an effort to encourage people to take a swab test to find a match. It turns out that goodwill alone wasn’t much of an incentive.

Author Seth Godin, Gupta’s friend, tells Postrel that while they got a lot of Internet attention, it amounted to little more than buzz. Or, as Godin puts it, “a lot of digital handshaking” that resulted in “a feel-good waste.”

Enter monetary incentives:

[Godin] wrote a post on his own blog offering to pay $10,000 to anyone who became a match for Gupta and made the stem-cell donation, or to give the money to that person’s favorite charity. The offer, he says, was “a chance to say to my readers, ‘Hey, I care about this. A lot. Money where my mouth is.’”

He picked $10,000 because, he says, it’s “enough money to matter to both the giver and the recipient, without being enough money to sue over, cheat over or corrupt.”

Michael Galpert, another tech friend, matched this, bringing the offer to $20,000 and increasing the number of people swabbing for Gupta, along with their twitter brags of #Iswabbedforamit.

However, the activity was illegal under the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984. So the official offer has been changed to a $20,000 award for a match, rather than the actual transplant.

From the article:

The law subscribes to what Viviana Zelizer, an economic sociologist at Princeton University, calls the “hostile worlds” view. This is the assumption that, as Zelizer puts it, “money and intimacy represent contradictory principles whose intersection generates conflict, confusion and corruption.”

As Gupta’s story illustrates, however, that’s not necessarily the case. Money can be an expression of commitment and a powerful spur to get people to act on their compassionate instincts. Financial incentives can overcome inertia and procrastination. They can steer people toward socially beneficial behavior. Nobel Prizes come with money, and we don’t, after all, expect every firefighter, nanny or transplant surgeon to work for free.

 

Anonymous 4 News: "Secret Voices" CD Released

Anonymous 4 News

From their latest newsletter:

NEW RELEASE! Secret Voices: Chant & Polyphony from The Las Huelgas Codex, c. 1300

Anonymous 4's newest program is a return to the heart of their favorite century, and to a repertoire that proved to one and all that medieval women could, and did, sing the most complex polyphony in the Gothic era.

This varied repertoire of 13th-century polyphony and sacred Latin song was collected for a convent of noble and aristocratic women, who were clearly used to having their own way. In spite of a rule forbidding the singing of polyphony by the women of their order, these sophisticated ladies sang the most beautiful, advanced and demanding music from all over Europe in the 13th century.

There are elegant French motets here, like the Benedicamus domino setting Claustrum pudicicie/Virgo viget/FLOS FILIUS, the original text of which describes pastoral love in the springtime; and the hybrid 4-voice conductus-motet O Maria virgo/O Maria maris stella/[IN VERITATE]. There are virtuoso conductus, like Ave maris stella and Mater patris et filia, with unpredictable rhythms and lively hockets. A playful Benedicamus domino à 3 is written in rondellus fashion -- like a catch or round -- typical of 13th-century British polyphony. There are also heartfelt laments, like the monophonic song O monialis conscio, a planctus written on the death of a beloved member of the sisterhood; and elegant duos with intertwining lines, like the sequences Verbum bonum et suave and In virgulto gracie.

We also get a glimpse into the musical dedication of the convent in a unique "solfeggio" exercise, Fa Fa Mi / Ut Re Mi, for the sister's music lessons, where they practiced singing their hexachords under the watchful ear of the music mistress.

The repertoire of the Codex Las Huelgas manuscript provides the proof that Anonymous 4, far from singing "men's music," are following in the footsteps of their much-older sisters who had no difficulty (except from their male monastic superiors) in finding and performing the most virtuosic, avant-garde polyphonic music of their time. It's time now for Anonymous 4 to bring them to life again.

***

Visit the Secret Voices discography page to hear track samples, read the program notes and reviews, and purchase on Amazon.com

We'll be touring with the Secret Voices cd program, and with a version featuring master instrumentalists Shira Kammen and Peter Maund. The music from Secret Voices is also included in our program Sisters in Spirit. Check our concert listings to find a performance near you.

The Amazing Canyons of Northern Arizona

The Amazing Canyons of Northern Arizona

Some lovely photos here - like this one from brentbat's photostream:

 Other great images there, too.

And this one, from Hekay's photostream:

Others, too - go see!

Franklin Kameny, Gay Rights Pioneer, Dies at 86

Franklin Kameny, Gay Rights Pioneer, Dies at 86 - NYTimes.com

A pretty amazing guy. In fact, a truly great and courageous man:

Richard Perry/The New York Times

President Obama with Franklin Kameny, right, in 2009 after signing a memorandum providing benefits to the same-sex partners of federal employees.

Franklin E. Kameny, who transformed his 1957 arrest as a “sex pervert” and his subsequent firing from the Army Map Service into a powerful animating spark of the gay rights movement, died on Tuesday at his home in Washington. He was 86.


Bob Witeck, a longtime friend of Mr. Kameny’s, confirmed his death, saying the cause was a heart attack or heart failure, The Associated Press reported.

A half-century ago, Mr. Kameny was either first or foremost — often both — in publicly advocating the propositions that homosexuals were found throughout the population, that they were not mentally ill and that there was neither reason nor justification for the many forms of discrimination against them that were prevalent then.


Rather than accept his firing quietly, Mr. Kameny sued the government in federal court. That he lost was almost beside the point. The battle against discrimination now had a face, a name and a Ph.D. from Harvard.

Mr. Kameny became a founder of the Mattachine Society of Washington, an early advocacy group. He picketed the White House in 1965, and in 1971 he ran for the delegate seat representing the District of Columbia in the House of Representatives, calling himself a “qualified Washingtonian who happens also, but incidentally, to be a homosexual.”

He also claimed authorship of the phrase “Gay is good” a year before the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York, which is widely regarded as the first milestone in the gay rights movement. Many of the tributes that began to appear on the Web on Wednesday noted that Mr. Kameny’s death coincided with National Coming Out Day, which was observed Tuesday.

Mr. Kameny has been likened both to Rosa Parks and to Gen. George Patton, two historical figures not frequently found in the same sentence. “Frank Kameny was our Rosa Parks, and more,” Richard Socarides, the president of a new advocacy group, Equality Matters, said on Wednesday. It is a measure of how much changed in Mr. Kameny’s lifetime that Mr. Socarides served as the White House special assistant for gay rights in the Clinton administration.


The Patton analogy was made by Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney in their 1999 book “Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America.”

“Franklin Kameny had the confidence of an intellectual autocrat, the manner of a snapping turtle, a voice like a foghorn, and the habit of expressing himself in thunderous bursts of precise and formal language,” the authors wrote. (Mr. Nagourney is a reporter for The New York Times, and Mr. Clendinen is a former Times reporter.)

“He talked in italics and exclamation points,” they added, “and he cultivated the self-righteous arrogance of a visionary who knew his cause was just when no one else did.”

Mr. Kameny recognized early on that a high hurdle facing the gay rights movement was the stigma imposed by the classification of homosexuality as a mental illness, and he was among those who lobbied for its reversal in the early 1970s. He declared himself “ecstatic” in 1974 when members of the American Psychiatric Association upheld their board’s resolution that homosexuality, “by itself, does not necessarily constitute a psychiatric disorder.”


Though far less celebrated than the Stonewall uprising five years earlier, the resolution was a development of great consequence. And Mr. Kameny survived long enough to receive an apology from the government for his firing a half century earlier, The A.P. noted. It was tendered in 2009 by John Berry, director of the United States Office of Personnel Management, who is gay.

The Real World - hypersync

The Real World - hypersync

"The so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom."

- David Foster Wallace

Chile’s Rescued Miners Face Major Struggles a Year Later - NYTimes.com

Chile’s Rescued Miners Face Major Struggles a Year Later - NYTimes.com

After the media sideshow and the (undeniably) feel-good moment, the current reality. Is there any real hope for anyone, except in God?

Tomas Munita for The New York Times

Claudio Yáñez, a survivor with a new home but no job, said, “We're in really bad shape.” More Photos »

COPIAPÓ, Chile — After his dramatic rescue from a mine last year, Jimmy Sánchez traveled the world, cruising the Greek islands, visiting Britain, Israel, Los Angeles, Disney World — all paid for by people who were moved by the Chilean miners’ story of courage and perseverance.

But today Mr. Sánchez, like many of the 33 miners who survived 69 days nearly a half-mile underground, is jobless and at wits’ end. Twice a month, he boards a bus to Santiago, Chile’s capital, traveling 11 hours each way for a short visit with a psychiatrist. He is one of nine miners receiving sick-leave pay for prolonged post-traumatic stress; a handful of others say they are seeing private therapists.

“Most of us are in the same place with emotional and psychological problems,” said Mr. Sánchez, 20. “It was the fear that we would never again see our families, that we were going to die. We just can’t shake those memories.”

One year after their globally televised rescue, after the worldwide spotlight faded and the trips and offers have dwindled, the miners say that most of them are unemployed and that many are poorer than before.

Only a handful of them have steady jobs, they say. Just four have returned to mining. Two others, Víctor Zamora and Darío Segovia, are trying to make ends meet by selling fruits and vegetables, one from a stall, the other out of his truck.

“They made us feel like heroes,” said Edison Peña, another miner, who is now in a psychiatric clinic. “In the end, we are selling peanuts. It’s ironic, isn’t it?”

Some miners have been paid to do interviews or give motivational speeches. But those opportunities proved fleeting for most. Now many are counting on a Hollywood movie about them — which still does not have a script — to be their economic savior.

Mr. Peña, the miner who became famous for his love of Elvis Presley and running, is coping with trauma caused not only by his time below but also by the aftermath of the rescue, when the demands of instant celebrity proved overwhelming, his doctor said, leading him to abuse drugs and alcohol.

Three miners, including Mr. Sánchez and Mr. Segovia, recently resumed psychiatric treatment after the nightmares and sleeplessness returned. Doctors said that they expected more of them to have a relapse, and that many now get by on a steady regimen of sedatives and antidepressants.

“This is very similar to how Vietnam veterans suffered,” said Rodrigo Gillibrand, the psychiatrist treating the nine men on sick leave covered by labor insurance, though the mine has been closed down. “They have post-traumatic symptoms that could be chronic.”

In the wake of the rescue, the miners benefited from an outpouring of sympathy and support. A Chilean mining magnate, Leonardo Farkas, gave the miners more than $15,000 each so they could rest and recuperate. He also gave free homes to two who were marrying, and he said he helped one miner find psychiatric care after the miner found his fiancée with another man.

Mr. Sánchez, like many of the 16 miners interviewed, said he wanted to return to the mines. But Dr. Gillibrand has recommended that none of them work underground again.

José Ojeda tried to go back in February. After descending more than 1,000 feet in a drilling truck, the water was cut off. An assistant went to turn it back on, leaving Mr. Ojeda alone. He suffered a panic attack.

“I started to sweat a lot, a cold sweat,” he said. “I don’t even remember how they took me out; I blacked out.”

Potential employers in Copiapó have declined to hire the miners for fear that they were psychologically scarred by their experience, several miners said.

Some people wonder whether the miners are trying. Mr. Farkas said no miner took him up on his job offer. But their requests for money keep rolling in.

He said he “felt taken advantage of” by Claudio Yáñez, a miner for whom he bought a house worth $63,500, at least twice as much as he would usually pay for a worker’s house. Mr. Farkas said that he wanted to give him a less expensive house, as he had done for his own employees, but that Mr. Yáñez used a television crew to press him to buy the costly one.

“I did plenty for the miners; now they have to do it on their own,” Mr. Farkas said.

Mr. Yáñez, 35, denied taking advantage of Mr. Farkas, who he said gave him the house “from his heart.”

Mother's Spiritual - Laura Nyro - YouTube

Mother's Spiritual - Laura Nyro - YouTube

Teens Leave Churches Seen As Judgmental, Unfriendly According To New Book 'You Lost Me'

Teens Leave Churches Seen As Judgmental, Unfriendly According To New Book 'You Lost Me'

(RNS) Why do young Christians leave the church?

New research by the Barna Group finds they view churches as judgmental, overprotective, exclusive and unfriendly towards doubters. They also consider congregations antagonistic to science and say their Christian experience has been shallow.

The findings, the result of a five-year study, are featured in "You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving Church and Rethinking Faith," a new book by Barna president David Kinnaman. The project included a study of 1,296 young adults who were current or former churchgoers.

Researchers found that almost three out of five young Christians (59 percent) leave church life either permanently or for an extended period of time after age 15.

One in four 18- to 29-year-olds said "Christians demonize everything outside of the church." One in three said "Church is boring."

Clashes between church expectations and youths' experience of sexuality have driven some away. One in six young Christians said they "have made mistakes and feel judged in church because of them." And 40 percent of 18- to 29-year-old Catholics said their church's doctrine on sexuality and birth control is "out of date."

Kinnaman called the problem of young dropouts from church "particularly urgent" since many churches are used to "traditional" young adults who leave home, get educated, find a job and start a family before age 30.

"Churches are not prepared to handle the 'new normal,"' said Kinnaman. "However, the world for young adults is changing in significant ways, such as their remarkable access to the world and worldviews via technology, their alienation from various institutions, and their skepticism toward external sources of authority, including Christianity and the Bible."

Yom Kippur Service Taking Place At Occupy Wall Street

Yom Kippur Service Taking Place At Occupy Wall Street

NEW YORK -- It's rare that Mae Singerman, a self-described secular Jew who grew up in a Reform family, observes Yom Kippur by praying, fasting or attending synagogue.

But at sundown on Friday, the 27-year-old from Brooklyn planned to join hundreds of other Jews at the Occupy Wall Street demonstration for Kol Nidre, the opening service of Yom Kippur that starts the holiest time on the Jewish calendar.

"For me, it's about bringing my Jewish identity and my politics together," said Singerman, who has participated in several anti-capitalism protests in recent years and visited the demonstration at Zuccotti Park for the first time last week. "Having a Jewish service or ceremony brings more Jews who wouldn't necessarily come. I know people coming tonight who are pretty skeptical about Occupy Wall Street but are willing to give it a try because of the Yom Kippur service."

Organized mostly via Facebook over the last week, the Kol Nidre service starts at 7 p.m. across from the downtown park where demonstrations have occurred since mid-September. Almost 500 people have RSVP'd on Facebook, although at least a few dozen of them are out-of-towners who are just showing their support.

The service, led by rabbis and students from several Jewish traditions, has been endorsed by Jewish organizations such as Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and the Shalom Center. The Rabbinical Assembly for Conservative Judaism has donated 100 prayer books for the service, and organizers say that the Battery Park Synagogue and Chabad of Wall Street have welcomed holy-day observers who spend the night at the protest camp to come pray at Saturday services. Similar Kol Nidre services have also been planned in Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

Daniel Sieradski, one of the service's organizers who has been participating in the Occupy Wall Street demonstration, said he was inspired to arrange for the Yom Kippur service by a part of the haftarah from the Hebrew Bible, which is typically read the first morning of Yom Kippur.

"You can fast for a day, you cover yourself in ashes, you can wear a sack cloth, but who cares if you are not out there feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, breaking the bonds of oppression?" said Sieradski, paraphrasing Isaiah 58:5.

"I am less concerned about halacha, Jewish law, and traditional observance than I am about the prophetic character of recognizing the divine in my fellow human being," said Sieradski, who also plans to observe the Jewish holiday of Sukkot at the demonstration.

While Sieradski said he does not plan to sleep over at the encampment Friday night, Nom, a 23-year-old Talmud student, said she plans to spend the night there with a group of friends to start her Yom Kippur observance. She will walk two hours to her upper Manhattan home on Saturday morning to attend synagogue.

"Part of Yom Kippur is that you are supposed to review the past year to see what you can improve about yourself and your community. I am seeing right now that I live in a country where homes are being foreclosed, where people are losing jobs and people are suffering," said Nom, who did not wish to give her last name.


"We're hoping the people up top can do some sort of teshuva. It literally means 'return,' but the whole point is that one specifically in the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur will admit their wrongdoings and ask for forgiveness," she said. "We are putting ourselves out there. and so should Wall Street. They should have the opportunity to review their actions and change."

What is the purpose of the church?

This is a real question, arising from a conversation I'm having elsewhere online.  (It could also be asked in this way, I suppose:  "What is the purpose of religion in general?"  But I'm asking it about the Christian church in particular, since I don't have any real, personal experience with any other religion.)

I think this question needs to be answered - or at least, discussed - at depth, in fact, before we can figure out how to talk to other people about faith - or about anything else, really.  I don't think the church really stops to think about this question - people involved think it's already been answered, or that it's self-evident, perhaps, which I don't think it is;  at least, I'm not aware that it is - but it's one I'm thinking about all the time these days.   I obviously have my own ideas, which I talk about fairly often on this blog - and which have changed over the last few years, in fact.

I'm asking as somebody who's fairly new to the whole thing; I've been around for only about 7 years or so.  I purposely stayed completely away from the church for almost my whole life; hated the place, and the whole idea of being here.  At this point, I'm mainly here because of certain personal experiences I've had that have changed my point of view - but I doubt most people have similar experiences.

What good is the church to people who don't know anything about it - a group that's becoming fairly large at this point?   

What are we doing here, anyway?  What's the point of it all?  What is our purpose for existing?  What does the church have to offer the world, that it's not seeing currently (or else it might be more interested)?  What's our apologia?

Not in theological language, I mean; take nothing as assumed.   No "to be the body of Christ in the world" arguments; that assumes prior knowledge of terms, and also prior faith.  Plain English, please - something anybody not already involved can understand and perhaps even concur with.  Because I think we have to make an argument that doesn't depend on prior assumptions - one that can stand on its own.

In other words:  what thing(s) of value do we offer that are not offered anywhere else?   Can we think about this question for awhile, do we think?

Iste Confessor Domini

Iste Confessor Domini (Confessor Bishop, Hymn) - YouTube

In honor of St. Francis of Assisi, whose feast day began today at Vespers, here's a lovely version of Iste Confessor, sung by "the Choir of the Carmelite Priory, London." This Office hymn is dedicated to "confessors," and was originally written c. the 8th Century for St. Martin of Tours. The English words are below.

(The header reads "Confessor Bishop, Hymn," and I'm not sure exactly what difference there might be in the texts for Bishops vs. other "confessors." I don't see any, but then I'm not fluent in Latin, either; if anybody can point to something specifically Bishop-ish in this, please do, in the comments.)

This the Confessor of the Lord, whose triumph Now all the faithful celebrate, with gladness Erst on this feat-day merited to enter Into his glory.

Saintly and prudent, modest in behavior, Peaceful and sober, chaste was he, and lowly, While that life's vigor, coursing through his members, Quickened his being.

Sick ones of old time, to his tomb resorting, Sorely by ailments manifold afflicted, Oft-times have welcomed health and strength returning, At his petition.

Whence we in chorus gladly do him honor, Chanting his praises with devout affection, That in his merits we may have a portion, Now and forever.

Glory and virtue, honour and salvation, Be unto him that, sitting in the highest, Governeth all things, Lord and God Almighty, Trinity blessed.

Here's Giotto's "St. Francis preaching to the birds":

Anglican Chant XVI: Psalm 138 Westminster Abbey - YouTube

Psalm 138 Westminster Abbey - YouTube

"Psalm 138 sung by Westminster Abbey Choir at the visit of the Pope, September 2010." (Which composer? Wait for my sources to comment!)



From the Coverdale Psalter:

Psalm 138. Confitebor tibi
I WILL give thanks unto thee, O Lord, with my whole heart : even before the gods will I sing praise unto thee.
2. I will worship toward thy holy temple, and praise thy Name, because of thy loving-kindness and truth : for thou hast magnified thy Name and thy word above all things.
3. When I called upon thee, thou heardest me : and enduedst my soul with much strength.
4. All the kings of the earth shall praise thee, O Lord : for they have heard the words of thy mouth.
5. Yea, they shall sing in the ways of the Lord : that great is the glory of the Lord.
6. For though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly : as for the proud, he beholdeth them afar off.
7. Though I walk in the midst of trouble, yet shalt thou refresh me : thou shalt stretch forth thy hand upon the furiousness of mine enemies, and thy right hand shall save me.
8. The lord shall make good his loving-kindness toward me : yea, thy mercy, O Lord, endureth for ever; despise not then the works of thine own hands.

Gorgeous! HT Sed Angli.

The Elements Revealed: An Interactive Periodic Table: Scientific American

The Elements Revealed: An Interactive Periodic Table: Scientific American

Very nice!

For India’s Rural Poor, Finally, Banking

For India’s Rural Poor, Finally, Banking

Very interesting!

Kainaz Amaria for The New York Times

(Rashan Penkar, right, an employee of the State Bank of India, took a cash deposit from Altaf Sheikh inside her home office in the town of Nerdar Navgaon. )

KOLAD, India — Time was, banks employed armies of human tellers. Later, they replaced many of them with automated teller machines. Now, India is using a hybrid of the two — the human A.T.M. — to expand banking to its vast rural population.

Swati Yashwant, a 29-year-old mother of one, is part of a growing legion of roving tellers intent on providing bank accounts to the nearly 50 percent of India’s 300 million households that do not have them. Using a laptop computer, wireless modem and fingerprint scanner, Ms. Yashwant opens accounts, takes deposits and processes money transfers for farmers and migrant workers in this small town 70 miles south of Mumbai, India’s financial capital.

To reduce the risk of robbery or theft, no transaction by law may exceed 10,000 rupees (about $212). And in practice, many amount to no more than a dollar or two. But with the bulk of India’s population living in villages that have never had a bank branch, Ms. Yashwant, with her electronic devices, is a missionary of financial modernity.

Many Indians “don’t know anything about banking,” she said in her small office here, which is decorated with a garlanded picture of Ganesh, the Hindu god believed to remove obstacles. “I want to open their accounts and help them understand banking.”

Economists and policy makers say mobile agents like Ms. Yashwant — who also are employed in countries like Brazil, Mexico and Kenya — represent one of the most promising ways to help the rural poor save and protect their money. Many people in India who do not have bank accounts, for instance, buy gold necklaces or simply keep cash in their unlocked homes.

“This is something that could be powerful,” said Abhijit V. Banerjee, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who wrote “Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty” with Esther Duflo.

The banking agents enable the poor to easily save money they otherwise might be tempted to spend, Mr. Banerjee said. And when times are lean, people could withdraw money they had saved, instead of borrowing cash at high rates of interest.

The accounts earn currently earn 4 percent annual interest, which is standard for savings accounts in India. There are no maintenance fees, or charges for deposits or withdrawals.

“It’s true that this will not make them rich,” Mr. Banerjee said, “but it will make them less likely to face starvation someday.”

Ms. Yashwant is one of an estimated 60,000 of what Indian bankers call “business correspondents,” who are not bank employees but earn commissions that the banks pay them for each transaction.

The Reserve Bank of India, the country’s central bank, began the push for banking correspondents about five years ago. After slow initial growth, the central bank predicts the ranks of correspondents will more than double, to 126,000, by March. The Reserve Bank has ordered commercial banks to set up correspondents in every village with more than 2,000 people and has assigned each of those villages to one bank or another.

For India’s banks, it is a relatively inexpensive way to recruit customers. While about 70 percent of India’s population is dispersed among more than 600,000 villages, the entire country has only 33,500 bank branches. Correspondents like Ms. Yashwant have set up 74 million bank accounts in India.