At the same time, memory being what it is, I also forget. What remains is all the time Caleb and I spent running errands or going to the library or hanging out at the park. Just his crazy smile and running legs, my exasperation with him for taking off as if he can't hear me, my missing him terribly when he's finally taking a nap after a hard and resistant insurgency. A quiet living room on a rainy Spring midday. Getting the paper off the drive and reading it for a change.
Why not leave well enough alone?
About two months in, just after Christmas, bottled up with ghosts, I sent a letter to a pastor friend. Pulling it up now turns memory over to see what is underneath. As much as I'd like to put it down with commentary--maybe I'm trying to make myself look better than I am; maybe it is still the need to put a smile on things or pretend I'm a superhero; and the thoughts that follow may make little sense--I'm going to reproduce blocks below. . . . Maybe I will come along later and insert commentary. There is more to the story. This is just the emotional landscape two months in. And as for why it is here: it is here because it should be here, or needs to be, or I can't admit that it doesn't matter anyway. So here goes:
__________
It is an odd thing being unemployed. At first I was stunned, then determined, then forthright. Now I alternate between becoming alarmingly used to the lifestyle of "every day's a Saturday" and being truly and deeply angry or pitiful and remorseful about no longer going to work
In a moment, someone pulls a lever and there's that well-meaning shove out into space, legs
dangling and arms flailing and mouth saying, "Thank you" to be nice. . . the shock and sting of Nietzsche's Abyss--[the discovery that it has been] right there all the time!
It is dangerous to admit to emotions . . . [and there is] the fear of secret police. [Passed over because you felt too much.]
You aren't supposed to take it personally. "Nothing personal," they say, "but you'll read about my vacations on Facebook and see my photos while your family makes do with what was already purchased for the kids beforehand."
You aren't supposed to take it personally. "Nothing personal," they say, "but you'll read about my vacations on Facebook and see my photos while your family makes do with what was already purchased for the kids beforehand."
Is it truly nothing personal? This is the difficulty of ethics in a world defined by the corporation: who is exactly at fault? What is exactly being said? There is no context for any statement, and the usual context of HR and policy and the tradition of the company and the politics of this or that department, all of that is gone. There is no face, just the abyss. My Presbyterian friends might even go so far as to say that this is a little bit of judgment peeking through: hell, after all, if one takes it as it has been traditionally understood in line with Dante and the rest, means a place from which there is no point of appeal. There is no appeal in hell. One must simply come to grips with the situation.
It is an odd thing being unemployed. For this state, this "unemployed" is actually the real state of things, whereas having a job is a convenient fiction entered into for the sake of good ole American getting-things-done. I've thought quite a lot about that. Actors, contractors, and--dare I say--pastors and other entrepreneurs come to grips with this reality and find a way to live in it. We are our own labor and, (invoking Marx), we indenture ourselves to profit-making pacts called corporations for a length of time. My mistake was forgetting--I didn't mean to forget, but when you mix [a] religious enthusiasm with Adam Smith it is difficult not to forget, to let a bit of eschatology slip into one's paycheck and things-to-do, and the solving of the little devils of commerce.
[what one should hope for] . . . the Christian community [is] moved in the direction of the realization of the kingdom of God, but what person can of him or herself truly know the end purpose, the telos, the realization in concrete terms for that parousia. We hope, sure, and we see it darkly, but its how and when, even its coming-to-be now in all of us whose faces are turned to catch its light against the coming horizon: well, that is a mystery. A company, however, has definite ends. And when it "downsizes" or goes through a "reduction in forces" (a military term, please don't miss that), it confesses that end, namely, the production of wealth.
So much of the emotion that I try and sort out now comes from getting it so mixed up to begin with. It is, as they say, the prerogative of theologians to keep first things first. On the other hand, one cannot deny that good things are done: and so there is a kind of theological anthropology of corporations, even though corporations cannot ever assume the imago Dei. Okay, but then where do economic policy and the recognition of the imago Dei cross each other? [One's work is charitable. It may make lives better. It may save souls even while it is undeniably so that the same work has] a pro forma behind it, a P&L. It used to be a meaningful problem: how to sneak as much of the former past the unblinking and dead eyes of the latter. Now that problem is meaningless. The inertia of the energies that keep one thinking in the shower, in the commute, in the lunch break has nowhere to go but to slowly bleed out into empty space.
So, then, there is nothing to do but let the cacophony of unanswered questions: some felt and personal, some academic and theological, slowly recede into forgetting, and try and brush up on the cover-letter writing skills: homo economicus at play in a world full of horizontal act without vertical meaning.
So today I made a mistake: I listened to the news again. I'm atlas these days, wandering around with the world balanced just so across the shoulders and watching every step. Yesterday a friend asked me, "So, are you worried yet?" and the thing started tipping badly. I put my game face on and said, "No. After all, it only takes that one person with a job." I nearly had my balance back until the news today: the usual economic panic, thousands of people laid off, hundreds more whose lives and hopes, the work of years, is now in the dock of whatever accounting strategy their company prefers. Bang! My balance: there it goes again.
I've been trying to figure out exactly how to write you back. Which person should write you? The thankful one? The determined one? The eschatological one? The one still in a fetal position somewhere? The planner? (Did Kierkegaard have this problem?) Perhaps putting off responding will bring some tidbit of news so that anything of importance to talk about is obscured by "and then this is this latest thing."
It is an odd thing being unemployed. For this state, this "unemployed" is actually the real state of things, whereas having a job is a convenient fiction entered into for the sake of good ole American getting-things-done. I've thought quite a lot about that. Actors, contractors, and--dare I say--pastors and other entrepreneurs come to grips with this reality and find a way to live in it. We are our own labor and, (invoking Marx), we indenture ourselves to profit-making pacts called corporations for a length of time. My mistake was forgetting--I didn't mean to forget, but when you mix [a] religious enthusiasm with Adam Smith it is difficult not to forget, to let a bit of eschatology slip into one's paycheck and things-to-do, and the solving of the little devils of commerce.
[what one should hope for] . . . the Christian community [is] moved in the direction of the realization of the kingdom of God, but what person can of him or herself truly know the end purpose, the telos, the realization in concrete terms for that parousia. We hope, sure, and we see it darkly, but its how and when, even its coming-to-be now in all of us whose faces are turned to catch its light against the coming horizon: well, that is a mystery. A company, however, has definite ends. And when it "downsizes" or goes through a "reduction in forces" (a military term, please don't miss that), it confesses that end, namely, the production of wealth.
So much of the emotion that I try and sort out now comes from getting it so mixed up to begin with. It is, as they say, the prerogative of theologians to keep first things first. On the other hand, one cannot deny that good things are done: and so there is a kind of theological anthropology of corporations, even though corporations cannot ever assume the imago Dei. Okay, but then where do economic policy and the recognition of the imago Dei cross each other? [One's work is charitable. It may make lives better. It may save souls even while it is undeniably so that the same work has] a pro forma behind it, a P&L. It used to be a meaningful problem: how to sneak as much of the former past the unblinking and dead eyes of the latter. Now that problem is meaningless. The inertia of the energies that keep one thinking in the shower, in the commute, in the lunch break has nowhere to go but to slowly bleed out into empty space.
So, then, there is nothing to do but let the cacophony of unanswered questions: some felt and personal, some academic and theological, slowly recede into forgetting, and try and brush up on the cover-letter writing skills: homo economicus at play in a world full of horizontal act without vertical meaning.
[some hiatus of time]
So today I made a mistake: I listened to the news again. I'm atlas these days, wandering around with the world balanced just so across the shoulders and watching every step. Yesterday a friend asked me, "So, are you worried yet?" and the thing started tipping badly. I put my game face on and said, "No. After all, it only takes that one person with a job." I nearly had my balance back until the news today: the usual economic panic, thousands of people laid off, hundreds more whose lives and hopes, the work of years, is now in the dock of whatever accounting strategy their company prefers. Bang! My balance: there it goes again.
I've been trying to figure out exactly how to write you back. Which person should write you? The thankful one? The determined one? The eschatological one? The one still in a fetal position somewhere? The planner? (Did Kierkegaard have this problem?) Perhaps putting off responding will bring some tidbit of news so that anything of importance to talk about is obscured by "and then this is this latest thing."
[I'd started attending morning prayer at my church] . . . this morning my vicar and I assembled in the sanctuary--everything cold, but warming. Quiet but animated by the anima of we two shuffling into our places. And we began. I'd managed to drag the world there pretty much on schedule. Dutiful me showed up--and he's often about as good as any other, and much better than some. "Would you mind reading the Old Testament reading this morning?" "No, not at all." The text was Isaiah 41:17-29.
"When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the LORD will answer them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them. I will open rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. I will put in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia, the myrtle, and the olive; I will set in the desert the cypress, the plane and the pine together, so that all may see and know, all may consider and understand, that the hand of the LORD has done this, the Holy One of Israel has created it." (NRSV)
I nearly broke. And though the prophet is not talking about my life, about my vicar and I, prayerbooks in hand, standing for the reading on this cold morning, though the prophet is talking about the only metanarrative that matters, the Kingdom of God, I thought I caught something. I shifted the immense weight over to the other shoulder to see if I could get a look. Someone there? Nothing. All continued until the sufferage.
Show us your mercy, O Lord; And grant us your salvation.
Clothe your ministers with righteousness; Let your people sing with joy.
Give peace, O Lord, in all the world; For only in you can we live in safety.
Lord, keep this nation under your care; And guide us in the way of justice and truth.
Let your way be known upon earth; Your saving health among all nations.
Let not the needy, O Lord, be forgotten; Nor the hope of the poor be taken away.
Create in us clean hearts, O God; And sustain us with your Holy Spirit.
There it was again. A footstep. "Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods."
Are you finally here, then? . . . What can we hope for? And by we, I mean me? The vicar--looking very reverent at the moment and pastoral. The guy talking on his cellphone in the sedan on I65S. The middle-aged teller at the gas station on the way here. "Yes, I believe he will rise again at the resurrection." said Martha. She was used to being faithful to the metanarrative--the real one--willing to wait patiently, expectantly even, for whenever Adonai chose to get on with it. She was a woman of faith--her patient gaze an "evidence [now] of things yet unseen."
"When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the LORD will answer them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them. I will open rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. I will put in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia, the myrtle, and the olive; I will set in the desert the cypress, the plane and the pine together, so that all may see and know, all may consider and understand, that the hand of the LORD has done this, the Holy One of Israel has created it." (NRSV)
I nearly broke. And though the prophet is not talking about my life, about my vicar and I, prayerbooks in hand, standing for the reading on this cold morning, though the prophet is talking about the only metanarrative that matters, the Kingdom of God, I thought I caught something. I shifted the immense weight over to the other shoulder to see if I could get a look. Someone there? Nothing. All continued until the sufferage.
Show us your mercy, O Lord; And grant us your salvation.
Clothe your ministers with righteousness; Let your people sing with joy.
Give peace, O Lord, in all the world; For only in you can we live in safety.
Lord, keep this nation under your care; And guide us in the way of justice and truth.
Let your way be known upon earth; Your saving health among all nations.
Let not the needy, O Lord, be forgotten; Nor the hope of the poor be taken away.
Create in us clean hearts, O God; And sustain us with your Holy Spirit.
There it was again. A footstep. "Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods."
Are you finally here, then? . . . What can we hope for? And by we, I mean me? The vicar--looking very reverent at the moment and pastoral. The guy talking on his cellphone in the sedan on I65S. The middle-aged teller at the gas station on the way here. "Yes, I believe he will rise again at the resurrection." said Martha. She was used to being faithful to the metanarrative--the real one--willing to wait patiently, expectantly even, for whenever Adonai chose to get on with it. She was a woman of faith--her patient gaze an "evidence [now] of things yet unseen."
But what about the dead body?
Moving on.
[In response to the reminder that "all of these things you're experiencing right now are perfectly normal."]
For all the nested questions and other issues, thank you so much for saying that. Bold. Italics. Thank you. I'm not a lunatic. But, honestly, perfectly normal? This shadow shade of an existence? This empty nothing of any importance? The temptation to sit down and let the cold slowly overtake you, limbs going to sleep, until it doesn't matter any longer. There's another dead body, just like on Everest where they just leave them as markers for or against the way up.
Perfectly normal?
I have a new sight now. Not that it is anything worth having, I'd rather not be the Neo in this story--all day I've been wanting to make a Matrix reference to something. It sees new things and old. People seem as fragile as blown glass, still warm and whisper thin. Their bodies fade into living souls where tissue paper hearts tremble, and all the while there is the "all is well." Just yesterday, again, my friend who asked the "Are you worried?" question. He was telling me all about his work history. He did this and that. One piece of driftwood confessing that it is the current that does all the work. But aren't we are all tenuously adrift on unseen currents? Most people pretend they are like piers, sunk deep into the sand. They are unmoving. They are secure. But I've been pulled up. It is so obvious that I'm a driftwood, despite the self-assured me or the pragmatic me or the optimistic-to-the-death me. I'm so obviously untethered that there is no denying it. And put up against me, everyone else is revealed for what they are. And it makes them uncomfortable. "Are you worried yet?" The grass withers. The flowers fade. We are but a mist that vanishes. They were marrying and being given in marriage. "No, really, I'm an experienced editor--think of me as a project manager. I've worked with . . . Years of experience in . . ." That is pier language--a language game. Just more houses built upon sand.
I also look and see so many people who are dead, like those Everest corpses.
Once, in a men's group I attended, the question was asked how many men were doing that day something other than what they had wanted to do with their lives. Nearly all raised their hands. Dead men, all. And there was a day in their past when they stopped swimming and started surviving. What does purpose matter when there's mouths to feed? Practical me finds that a wholesome and good statement. I feel my American frontier roots. I feel the yes stretched out like voweled taffy in the Southern accents of the poor Mississippi planters and their wives whose genes are still with me, though they're but unremembered ghosts. (The present is the most forgetful of times. The past remembers, and the future is its child. It is only the present which is so empty that some say it doesn't even exist.)
Of course, there are beautiful colors in this new sight as well. [Sometimes my need to put a face on things is beyond irritating, but what can be done? That's just good business.]
Gratitude is a beautiful thing in this new sight. When we finally coax Caleb into holding his sister's hand and mine, all of us in a circle, and we give thanks. I am aware these days of the existence out there of not eating, of its at-your-side reality and possibility. Thus, there is real thanks behind table grace.
I see the innate value of each person: the image of God. Each person joined to all the others: we are all holding on to each other like driftwood determined that none escape and be lost. There is a prayer in the daily office, in the compline service (where compline is a beautiful word of itself, don't you think?) that says this so well, and it is one of the reasons that I like the office, for it calls to mind those bits of the world that we'd forget or that we ignore. It says
Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or
weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who
sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless
the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the
joyous; and all for your love's sake. Amen.
I want to say to businesses everywhere, calling to mind C. S. Lewis, "These are immortals you're tossing about like so much chaff." And I want to say to the dead, "Wake, O sleeper. Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you." (Eph. 5.14 NIV) Lines of people on the news, the faces of those driftwood-and-dying like me trying to keep paddling, and I want to say you are a human being. You are valuable. You are men and women of possibility and promise, of beauty and dignity. I no longer see you for what you do--that is paper thin. We are back to thin-spun glass, glass made of sand. No. The real solidity of us is in our made-ness, for he made us and we are known and not just known--loved.
Then, finally, pissed-off me shows up. The fifteen-year-old in there. Thank God for him: he just gives the finger to the whole thing, and wow! that just feels pretty good. I exist. I'm not dead.
Moving on.
[In response to the reminder that "all of these things you're experiencing right now are perfectly normal."]
For all the nested questions and other issues, thank you so much for saying that. Bold. Italics. Thank you. I'm not a lunatic. But, honestly, perfectly normal? This shadow shade of an existence? This empty nothing of any importance? The temptation to sit down and let the cold slowly overtake you, limbs going to sleep, until it doesn't matter any longer. There's another dead body, just like on Everest where they just leave them as markers for or against the way up.
Perfectly normal?
I have a new sight now. Not that it is anything worth having, I'd rather not be the Neo in this story--all day I've been wanting to make a Matrix reference to something. It sees new things and old. People seem as fragile as blown glass, still warm and whisper thin. Their bodies fade into living souls where tissue paper hearts tremble, and all the while there is the "all is well." Just yesterday, again, my friend who asked the "Are you worried?" question. He was telling me all about his work history. He did this and that. One piece of driftwood confessing that it is the current that does all the work. But aren't we are all tenuously adrift on unseen currents? Most people pretend they are like piers, sunk deep into the sand. They are unmoving. They are secure. But I've been pulled up. It is so obvious that I'm a driftwood, despite the self-assured me or the pragmatic me or the optimistic-to-the-death me. I'm so obviously untethered that there is no denying it. And put up against me, everyone else is revealed for what they are. And it makes them uncomfortable. "Are you worried yet?" The grass withers. The flowers fade. We are but a mist that vanishes. They were marrying and being given in marriage. "No, really, I'm an experienced editor--think of me as a project manager. I've worked with . . . Years of experience in . . ." That is pier language--a language game. Just more houses built upon sand.
I also look and see so many people who are dead, like those Everest corpses.
Once, in a men's group I attended, the question was asked how many men were doing that day something other than what they had wanted to do with their lives. Nearly all raised their hands. Dead men, all. And there was a day in their past when they stopped swimming and started surviving. What does purpose matter when there's mouths to feed? Practical me finds that a wholesome and good statement. I feel my American frontier roots. I feel the yes stretched out like voweled taffy in the Southern accents of the poor Mississippi planters and their wives whose genes are still with me, though they're but unremembered ghosts. (The present is the most forgetful of times. The past remembers, and the future is its child. It is only the present which is so empty that some say it doesn't even exist.)
Of course, there are beautiful colors in this new sight as well. [Sometimes my need to put a face on things is beyond irritating, but what can be done? That's just good business.]
Gratitude is a beautiful thing in this new sight. When we finally coax Caleb into holding his sister's hand and mine, all of us in a circle, and we give thanks. I am aware these days of the existence out there of not eating, of its at-your-side reality and possibility. Thus, there is real thanks behind table grace.
I see the innate value of each person: the image of God. Each person joined to all the others: we are all holding on to each other like driftwood determined that none escape and be lost. There is a prayer in the daily office, in the compline service (where compline is a beautiful word of itself, don't you think?) that says this so well, and it is one of the reasons that I like the office, for it calls to mind those bits of the world that we'd forget or that we ignore. It says
Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or
weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who
sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless
the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the
joyous; and all for your love's sake. Amen.
I want to say to businesses everywhere, calling to mind C. S. Lewis, "These are immortals you're tossing about like so much chaff." And I want to say to the dead, "Wake, O sleeper. Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you." (Eph. 5.14 NIV) Lines of people on the news, the faces of those driftwood-and-dying like me trying to keep paddling, and I want to say you are a human being. You are valuable. You are men and women of possibility and promise, of beauty and dignity. I no longer see you for what you do--that is paper thin. We are back to thin-spun glass, glass made of sand. No. The real solidity of us is in our made-ness, for he made us and we are known and not just known--loved.
Then, finally, pissed-off me shows up. The fifteen-year-old in there. Thank God for him: he just gives the finger to the whole thing, and wow! that just feels pretty good. I exist. I'm not dead.
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