sort-of the book and movie post for this summer

Last week I did something I've never done before: I went to see two movies in one day. I normally see 4-5 movies a year. But it was a cool, cloudy day (although unfortunately not much rain fell). My son went to a birthday party in the afternoon, so Nell and I went to see "Becoming Jane." It's a beautifully made movie, and to my surprise, Anne Hathaway did a creditable job as Jane Austen. It's an absorbing account of what happens to two young people who fall in love in a restrictive society. But I didn't find it very convincing as a biographical account of Austen's formative years (about which not all that much is known, as I understand it). I don't know much about Austen besides what you learn in college, but I've read her work fairly avidly, and I've never picked up much sympathy for young, passionate, ill-considered love. I think if she had been through what the movie describes, she would have been quite a bit more sympathetic to the Mariannes of the world.

Then that night we packed up the whole crew, including the neighbor kids, and went to see Stardust. I loved Stardust. That's as much fun as I've had sitting in a theater since the Lord of the Rings movies came out. It's not a great movie, and you can pick at it, it's true. but it was great entertainment. Everybody I had with me, ranging in age from nine to 46 (me), agreed. I might even go see it again.

So that brought me to spend my birthday Borders gift card on the hardback version of Stardust written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Charles Vess, which was also good, but maybe slightly less fun than the movie (my favorite characters in the movie, the chorus line of ghosts, play a far more minor role in the book). That makes several times in the past few years now that I've seen movies that I enjoyed more than the books-- it seems like that never used to happen. But the book is well worth perusing. The illustrations are wonderful and add a completely different element to the story-- I believe it was a collaboration, rather than a book that had a few illustrations done for it after the story was finished.

And this week (finally, finally, after months of chipping away at it), I finished The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton's autobiographical account of his early years and decision to enter a Trappist monastery. I'm not sure why it took me so long; I liked it well enough and found it very absorbing while I was reading it, but then I'd put it down and weeks would go by before I'd pick it up again. It is beautifully written and as heartfelt as anything I've read in a long time. Although there is no question that Merton feels he has found the Ultimate Truth in his Catholica faith, I didn't find that opinion offensive here the way I did in Blue Like Jazz, which I tried to read this summer and finally gave up a couple of weeks ago. More about this in another post.

Off to take my son fishing. He is a fanatic. I don't fish, I don't have the patience for it. but I can take a book and sit in a lawn chair and we are both happy.

Aunt BeaN

So, after you decide you're not going to take the Bible literally as if God dictated it, the next question is: how do you read the Bible? The simple answer, and the one I used for years, is: seriously. You read it seriously, but not literally. It turns out to be much more complex than that, but it is the answer I keep coming back to. (someday I'm going to quit apologizing for dangling prepositions, but not yet: sorry about that one.)

Early on, I went through a number of moments of panic about this, because it is inevitable that you will hear derisive comments made by those who are still literalists and it's hard not to take them personally. My favorite is: "It must be nice to be able to cherry-pick which verses you're going to pay attention to." (do I have to apologize for other people's dangling prepositions?) And the only advice I have is: you just have to let that stuff roll off your back. Because all Christians cherry pick verses. You can't give equal weight to all the thousands and thousands of verses in the bible. It's just that literalists don't admit this, even to themselves-- they hide under the banner of "God wrote it, I believe it, that settles it," often without really being clear about what that means.

this is going off in a direction "on which I had not planned" when I sat down to write this post, so maybe I will stop there and re-start in the next. Which may have to be Monday since the rest of today and the weekend are dang busy. We're taking 15 high school seniors camping tonight. No, I'm not making that up. I have cooler full of hamburger fixings and a case of Red Bull.

It's pretty smoky here-- there are three major and a half-dozen smaller forest fires near the town where I live, and some sort of inversion is holding all the smoke in where we can breathe it more deeply. I should post a picture. Maybe I will for once. If you can see blue sky where you live, appreciate it.............

Have a great weekend and be good.

Aunt BeaN

p.s. (posted later) the case of Red Bull wasn't nearly enough. ack.

The Creation Report, Part 3: what WAS said

I'm getting tired of writing about Creation so this will be short. I told you I have ADD, right?

But what I continue to find disturbing and problematic is the insistence that only Christians are OK. There was less talk about converting people from other religions than I expected, I admit, but there was all kinds of talk about how only Christians can have good marriages, only Christian teens will survive with their morals intact, only Christians can withstand the temptation to use drugs and alcohol and so on.

This is the Fear Factor, nothing else. If you don't become a Christian, you'll be a failure. If you don't become a Christian, you'll never be happy. (this was not from the musicians, mind you-- except a couple of the more conservative ones-- it was from the speakers). Since a I know a number of people from a variety of religious backgrounds (and also some who have no religious preference at all) who have happy marriages, healthy teenagers, and well-rounded lives, this is just ludicrous to me. Not to mention that I know plenty of Christians who have difficult marriages and difficult teenagers. I think this is one of the main reasons that conservative Christians tend to hang out with each other and avoid close friendships with non-Christians-- because their prejudices just wouldn't hold up to reality. We all have similar struggles. There's no magic pill/religious belief that buys you an easy ride.

Oh, wait, I'm up on my soapbox again.

But I'm only getting started, because the thing that really got me going was the haranguing about female sexuality. Or the smothering thereof. Not everyone brought this up, but it was a constant theme. Modesty. Abstinence. Virginity. I'm not opposed to any of those things. In fact, since my daughter was in the 10-12 year old range in the midst of the Britney Spears rage, I would have been happy to hear a little more of it than was being said at that time. As part of a range of healthy sexual options for teens, abstinence works just great for me. BUT what mystifies me is why it's all directed at GIRLS. OK, in order for them to be sexually active, there is usually a guy involved. These people may be opposed to sex education, but there's no way I'm believing they don't know that. How come NONE of it was directed at the guys? Nothing to the guys: keep your mind out of the gutter, keep your pants up above your crack, keep it in your pants (excuse me for being blunt).

I think I've made my point. Packing up soapbox and moving on. I guess this wasn't exactly short but it was short-ER.

Love and kisses,
Aunt BeaN

The Creation Report, Part 2: what WASN'T said

Part two in a series of posts about my recent experience at Creation Festival West, a four-day Christian music festival that was held the last bit of July at the Gorge Ampitheater in George, WA:

One of my biggest fears going into Creation was that there would be a lot of anti-gay, anti-abortion rhetoric. I could write separate posts about why I am not opposed to either of those things, and maybe I will someday, but for now suffice it to say that I'm offended by the Religious Right's stance on those (and many other) issues. Well, I can very quickly in one sentence sum up why I'm not opposed to gays, and that's because I know a bunch of gay people and they are just fine, thank you very much. My opinion about abortion is much more complicated than that, but one way to state it briefly would be: I would never want someone else, especially the government, to make that decision for me or anyone else.

But back to Creation. I was assuming there would be lots of posturing about those two hot topics. But you know, I have to say it: there wasn't. The only discussion I hard about abortion was within our own group. And I didn't hear a word about gays, either pro or con. Which I suppose you could complain makes them into an invisible population, but still the point remains that nothing was said, either by any of the musicians or any of the speakers (that I heard, I didn't hear them all). I was surprised. As someone who has for more than twenty years now considered herself a liberal (at least politically speaking), it made me wonder about liberal paranoia. The numbers show, in poll after poll, that most Americans disagree with conservatives on those issues. All the noise is made by a very vocal, very powerful minority. Maybe we should just drop the paranoia and ignore them. They're very quickly falling out of favor anyway.

You could of course argue that the spokespeople at Creation are savvy enough to stay away from hot-button issues until they lure kids in with great music and inspirational talk about the love of God. Maybe the indoctrination into conservative opinions will take place after they return to their home churches. But then again, our church was there with 20 kids, and when those kids show up at our church, they won't hear anything like that. Opinions in our church range from extremely liberal to extremely conservative (that's one of the reasons I love our church, lots of diversity on theological issues), so they will be exposed to a wide variety of opinions and they will see that all of those opinions are acceptable at a Christian church.

So on the whole, in this particular area, I found that Creation was surprisingly OK. It seemed to me that if a teenager with no religious inclinations at all had come with friends, they would leave having been exposed to the parts of Christianity that I would want them to be exposed to: the importance of service-- ie., helping fellow human beings who need help; the importance of supporting each other; the nature of love and forgiveness.

in the next post: what WAS said, the good, the bad, and the ugly

Aunt BeaN
Intrepid Grammatically-Challenged Reporter
(with apologies for dangling prepositions and all other grammatical sins)

Creation music festival report, part I

Well, I'll try and get some of this down before it's so far in my rear view mirror that I can't remember anymore.

Before we left to go to Creation (a huge, multi-day Christian music festival at an outdoor ampitheater in central Washington state), I was sure I was going to have to just grit my teeth and get through it. My spouse and daughter have been going for years, some years with our church youth group, some years with just the two of them plus a few of our daughter's friends. They would come back glowing, and both of them have wanted me to go for a long time. I kept begging off because it sounded so awful-- miserably hot, primitive camping conditions, and lots of conservative Christian rhetoric floating around. But unfortunately I used as my excuse that our son wasn't old enough yet. I had randomly picked ten as the age when he would be old enough to go, and guess who turned ten last month??

So I had no excuses left, and I was kind of curious how it would go, given that I'm working through my conservative Christian background anyway. This year we went with our church youth group and a bunch of various friends, so it ended up being a group of about 25 of us. All of them that know me thought it would be a brand new experience for me since it's not the type of thing that I do these days, but honestly, I grew up going to this kind of stuff. I've been to stadium revivals, Christian music concerts, and smaller church revivals; I've heard Billy Graham, Luis Pulau, Leighton Ford, Hal Lindsey... well, I could go on, but you get the idea. I even went with my family to a huge thing called Explo '72 (short for Evangelism Explosion) that was held in Dallas in June, 1972 (I honestly don't remember that much about it since I was only 11 at the time but OF COURSE there is a wikipedia entry about it that I just found-- apparently 80,000 students showed up for it and at the final concert, there were more than 100,000).

I find these days that I distrust emotionalism in religious practice. Cynicism, again, I confess. But you would not believe how many times I've been to retreats, meetings, seminars, camps, conferences, concerts, etc (not just Christian) and seen people (myself included) get on a so-called "spiritual high" that just doesn't have much to do with living life in the trenches: the everyday grind. But as reported last week, I'm discovering that maybe I've taken my own cynicism a little too seriously. Plus, it was obvious within twenty minutes of arriving that if I was going to dismiss the "spiritual high" phenomenon, there was going to be little to nothing for me to experience at Creation. So I threw caution to the wind and decided to just let myself experience it as if I were a lot more naive than I really am. Or maybe that is an illusion, too.

So I found myself there, the first night, listening to a speaker whose agenda was clearly to convert as many as possible. Normally I would just tune this guy out, because to me, conversion is the least useful spiritual experience (maybe because I was raised in a religious tradition so I've never had a conversion experience?). But I was trying to allow myself to get into the spirit of the thing, so I listened. As I said, I'm fairly adept at re-writing things in my head on the fly, so it ended up being pretty interesting. Toward the end, he was addressing the fears that people might have that keep them from God. So in the spirit of the thing, I was examining my own fears. And I discovered to my own surprise that my biggest fear was that the conservative evangelical thinking of my youth might actually be true. I don't like the person I was then. I don't like the opinions I held as if they were Ultimate Truth. I don't want to be like that again. But here I am twenty years later, so afraid that it might be true that I don't even want to think about it, or let any of those types of thoughts into my head. Possibly what it would feel like to have been brainwashed by some cult and have to go back into it-- what if I get sucked back in? I believed this once, what if I end up believing it again? what if, just what if, it turns out to be true, and-- as someone who professes to want to know what is true -- I have to believe it?

But the cool thing was that the act of discovering and articulating this fear seems to have been all that was required to let it go. I don't think I knew it was there, although I've felt some of it before (what if it's true? what if I get sucked back in?). And as soon as I let it go, I knew it had lost its power over me. It was a very cool feeling. So I was able to experience the rest of the three-day festival as a curious observer: taking in some of it, letting some of it pass me by, watching the people around me, listening to the artists, and just not worrying about whether or not some awful thing was going to happen as a result of having participated. It was very freeing. Just that one experience the very first night made it worth going.

to be continued....
Aunt BeaN

I could post for days about all the things I observed and thought about and learned while at the music festival last week, but after driving more than 8 hours today on 4 hours of sleep, all I want to do is go to bed. And tomorrow we're headed off again for at least a few days of family time.

In brief, it was a great trip. My spouse and daughter have been going for years now, and every year they've tried to talk me into going. It sounded like the Aunt BeaN version of hell, to be honest-- lots of conservative Christians hanging out in one place (like 20,000 of them), temperatures in the upper-90s, and nary an air conditioner, sink or flush toilet in sight. And all of that turned out to be true. But the thing that outweighed all of that was how good the music was, and how much fun the kids were having. Toby Mac, Relient K, Switchfoot, and David Crowder were just wonderful. I even would say I enjoyed Kutless and the Newsboys, although Kutless leans toward what my spouse calls "pile driver" music and Newsboys is a bit conservative for my taste. They also had a featured speaker each night, which I didn't care for-- more about this another time, I hope-- there was even an altar call every night with hundreds of people streaming down the aisles, just like the revival meetings I went to as a child. But you know, I've become very good at re-writing conservative speakers and sermons on the fly. Often what they're saying contains some sort of universal spiritual truth that I can learn from, I just have to re-word it in my head so that the ideas that piss me off are less prominent. I've learned some great stuff doing that, and this week was no exception. So all in all it went pretty well, and I was very proud of myself for keeping the chip on my shoulder down to a reasonable size.

Stay cool. It gets hotter and hotter around here-- after our hot, dry summer, the forests are starting to burst into flames all around us.

Aunt BeaN

I'm at Creation West 2007, a Christian music festival, at the Gorge Ampitheater in George, WA. I'm a quasi-chaperone for my daughter's youth group-- "quasi" because the group is camping in a field and I'm staying at a hotel. :-) I had planned to write about this whole thing before we left, but we've been so busy lately that I feel like I've hardly been home in over a week. But I did bring our laptop that has wireless internet, and the hotel has wireless internet, so here I am. Once again it is too late to post much, but I just wanted to say that I'm surprised how much I'm enjoying the music. The speakers I could do without, but the music-- especially Relient K last night and Switchfoot tonight-- has been really, really good. I'm wondering if age has something to do with it-- the speakers are all my age, and they are preaching Old News, if you ask me. But the musicians are in their twenties, maybe even early twenties, and they are smart and interesting and alive. It reinforces my belief-- having spent several years now with lots of teenagers around -- that these kids are going to be the ones to change the world, after our generation failed miserably to do it.

I need sleep. No moshing tonight, but I hope I'll be down there again for Toby Mac on Saturday. If I don't have time to post more while I'm here, I'm sure there will be plenty to say after we get back home again. I do feel slightly guilty that I'm about to turn in to a cushy bed in a nice hotel while my kids and the rest of the crew are sleeping in little better than a field of grass outside the ampitheater, but I don't plan on losing sleep over it-- I did offer to let any of them stay with me but they were all excited about camping.

We were meant to live for so much more (Switchfoot)

aunt BeaN

I would just like to record for posterity: I moshed on my 46th birthday. More later, it's way too late for a full report.

Aunt BeaN
reporting live from the Gorge ampitheater in George, WA

Harry Potter again (updated)

Well, it's probably no surprise to my readers, all six of you, that we are still obsessed with Harry Potter around here. It's been such a topic of conversation both here at our house, among friends, and in the press, that I've been tempted to post more about it, but since-- as far as I know-- none of you are similarly obsessed, I've resisted. But I'm posting this one, which I'll update after I've read the seventh book, and it's easy enough to skip if you're not interested.

All four of us (plus some of my 17-year-old daughter's friends) went to our local Borders for the release party last night. It was a hoot. A little weird, yes, but also a lot of fun. I was expecting about a hundred people, but I'd guess there were easily 500 there. It's not a huge Borders like I've seen in some cities, but it's a big book store, and it was packed. all ages, all levels of costume-- some very creative ones, too. We left at midnight, preferring to actually purchase somewhere where we wouldn't have to stand in line for an hour, but it was definitely worth going just for the experience.

I haven't read it yet, but here are a few reactions to things that I've read or heard.

It never ceases to amaze me the attraction Americans feel to being the persecuted minority. I've heard both sides-- people who don't like HP who feel that they are looked down on or ridiculed by the faithful, and those of us who are fans who have been roundly criticized for supporting such a silly cultural phenomenon. I've even experienced this one-- I had a woman I'd never even seen before lecture me about the dangers of poorly written children's books a couple of years ago while I was standing in line at a bookstore with a copy of the 6th book in my hand. I've already stated my opinion about Rowling's writing skills-- that she started out as a thorougly mediocre writer and has turned herself into a better-than-average one-- but even if they aren't the most elegantly written books ever, they still are an interesting story well told, and I'm glad my children enjoy them. I guess my definition of good writing for an adventure story is that you don't notice the writing. I don't care about elegance when there's a suspenseful plot involved, I care about finding out what happens and not being distracted by the writing. And I would say in the fifth and sixth book she definitely made that happen. (I never did re-post my review of the fourth book but maybe I will, since I think I made an interesting point, not that I'm biased or anything. ) She has a somewhat irritating tendency to use ellipses or dashes when Harry is in mortal danger and she is recording his thoughts-- I think she is trying to get across the idea that he is thinking on the fly and they aren't fully formed thoughts, but it is distracting. but that would be my only remaining complaint about her writing.

Of course there are all kinds of people that dislike these books, many of whom have excellent taste. Neither of my siblings likes them, and both of them have tried hard to. I know a number of kids that don't like them. In fact, as I'm tallying up here, I think more of our kids' close friends dislike them than like them. Or maybe not dislike, but just aren't interested enough to read 700+ pages worth. So they definitely don't appeal to everyone.

But then there's the people who seem to dislike HP purely because the series is so popular. As if anything that is that widely popular must by definition be derivative and superficial. I just flat out disagree that that is true, so nuff said there. her depiction of good and evil is (to me) surprisingly complex for a children's book. There are definitely two camps in these books-- the bad guys, followers of Lord Voldemort, and the good guys, the ones that oppose him. But on both sides there are a surprising number of people of all types. There are some very disturbing, nasty people who are good guys (Dolores Umbridge, Mr. Crouch, Scrimgoeur). And of course, Snape, who is so difficult to read that declaring whether you think Snape will end up as a good guy or a bad guy has been one of the most fun debates of the last couple of years. And among the bad guys, there are some who are there purely because they fear the consequences of not following the Dark Lord, and many who display otherwise-good qualities of loyalty, devotion and commitment. I think the confusion comes in because Rowling always, even in the midst of the most dire scenes, throws in some humor, which perhaps makes her approach seem more lightweight than it really is. I happen to appreciate this, because as you have probably noticed, I also tend to be a bit flippant when discussing even the most serious of issues.

The other thing that I've seen a lot over the past few days is various different experts recommending other books that make HP look like sawdust, according to them. Since I'm probably one of the few adults that's read most of these other books, I can tell you that there are indeed a lot of good children's books out there that haven't received nearly the interest or exposure that they deserve, probably in part because of the success of the Potter books. But for me, few of them have the magnetic, mesmerizing interest of Rowling's books. Phillip Pullman's Dark Materials books are indeed excellent, and probably the best example of books that didn't get the exposure they deserved. They're interesting, and complex, and very absorbing. but I thought they went downhill as the series progressed-- the first book is definitely the best. I'm planning on re-reading those now that they're making them into movies, so maybe I will revise my opinion about that. I also read last week a woman recommending "Dr. Strange and Mr. Norrell," which floored me-- I thought that was the most boring book I'd read in years. I tried, I really did. I love fantasy, and it seemed like a book I would really like. I read at least 350 pages of it. But I kept putting it down and not caring whether or not I picked it back up again. I finally gave it up and put it in the Friends of the Library sale pile.

I can't believe I let this get this long. I'm not obsessed, really I'm not. I can quit any time. More later when I've finished the book.

Update: Finished the book last week. As the end of the series, I'd give it an A-. It is a great read, very absorbing, and very emotionally involving. Given all the expectations she had on her shoulders, it is amazingly good. Definite thumbs up. As a standalone book, though, I'd give it a B-. I can't really say why without giving spoilers, so I'll just leave it as that. I enjoyed reading it.

Telling people about your blog is a funny thing. Almost invariably, the people that I am most sure will be interested aren't. I told one dear friend about it not long after I started; for some reason I was sure she above all people would be interested and encouraging. but she was critical of the idea, and as far as I know, she's never even looked at it. It's the people that I've told practically on a whim who are the ones that end up being interested and encouraging. (which doesn't necessarily mean they read it all the time, I know nobody has any time these days.) I've become very wary about who I tell, because the lack of interest from people that you are sure will be interested is pretty discouraging. Sometimes it takes awhile to recover-- and since I'm writing this, you can probably tell it happened recently. but I keep doing it so I suppose that says something. I'm not sure what.

Anyway, what I really wanted to say is how grateful I am for my six loyal readers. Well, honestly, I don't really know how many of you there are but six is a nice number.

SWAK.
Aunt BeaN

A couple of months ago I posted a pretty negative review of the book Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I had a couple of gripes about it, but the main thing was that she wanted the reader to accept the experience of falling in love as a serious part of a spiritual search. As someone who has been married for 23 years, that is so far from my experience that it just seemed ludicrous. Falling in love, it often seems to me, is about self-indulgence. It's amazing, it's one of the most positive parts of being a human being, but it seems practically the antithesis of a spiritual discipline. I've lived through it with friends where it seemed almost teeth-grindingly fatuous. And in each of those cases, the couple is no longer together-- which just reinforced my opinion, of course. It almost seems that the more someone spouts off about how fabulously wonderful and perfect their new love is, the more likely it is that they will split up within a year. That sounds cynical, I know. It is cynical. But call me up and let me know if you disagree after you've been in a relationship twenty years. If you're in it for the long haul, the serious work of the relationship-- the part that (to me) could be considered part of your spiritual path-- begins after the romance has worn off. How do you learn to value who the other person is, even when the way they are requires accepting things that are unacceptable to you? How do you learn to support someone else in their path when it means compromising on some of your own goals and dreams? and my own personal hornet's nest: how do you know when you're striking a healthy compromise and when you're giving away too much? (and of course all of those are only OK if they are being practiced mutually by both partners).

But I read an article recently that is making me re-think my cycnicism a bit, and I'm feeling that a bit of an apology is due to Ms. Gilbert (not that she'll ever know, but I'll feel better) (and for the record, for the purposes of this post I went and checked her website and she and her partner are still together). The article is by Christian Wiman, editor of Poetry, and it appeared in The American Scholar click here. The part of it that is relevant to the above is said in the midst of an elegant and thoughtful essay about the search for God. It's the kind of article that makes me both sigh with envy (for how beautifully written it is) and sigh with relief, because someone with far better writing skills than mine is talking intelligently about this stuff in a public forum.

Anyway. Here is the relevant passage, but you really should read the whole thing. He is talking about three events that happened to him in the previous year that opened him to the possibility of God again, after many years of nonbelief. The second event is falling in love: "it felt, for the first time in my life, like I was being fully possessed by being itself. [falling in love filled him with] a joy that was at once so overflowing that it enlarged existence, and yet so rooted in actual things that, again for the first time, that's what I began to feel: rootedness." There's more, but that's the only bit I can excerpt easily. He convinced me that the resurgence of joy and hopefulness that go along with falling in love can be a legitimate springboard for the search for meaning and transcendence.

So Ms. Gilbert, you have my blessings. (just kidding.)

AB
(expiring in the heat out here, hope everyone else is nice and cool)

Having recently returned from a week at a family reunion (as far as I know, all of whom are still conservative Christian), the topic of recovering from fundamentalism seems more relevant than ever. The problem, though, is that I can't think of anything to say that won't sound ridiculously obvious to anyone who wasn't raised that way. Which brings up the question: are these posts even worth writing? You can tell by the sparse number of posts over the last few weeks that I've been asking that one a lot. Hmmm. Well, they are for me. The process of writing the previous posts about inerrancy made me much more confident about my opinion. Even though I ended up editing out most of the arguments, a lot of thought went into that. Usually when I go to family events it takes weeks for me to recover-- they really throw me off center. But this time I didn't feel that much at all.

The main thing I noticed is that none of them believe strictly in inerrancy, either. At least some of them would protest vociferously about that if they were to read this. But in practice, I really think it's true. Though there were a number of prayers, none of the women covered their heads (I Cor 11:5). None of the men raised their hands (I Tim 2:8). And those are just the obvious examples. Others would be much more subtle.

For me, once I started thinking about inerrancy, it just didn't hold water. Fundamentalists are fond of phrases like: "God said it, I believe it, that settles it!" As if everything were perfectly clear. But the reality is that scripture is always interpreted. You read I Tim 2, the most problematic chapter in the New Testament if you ask me, and there are parts of it that just can't be right. Women will be saved through the bearing of children? (v. 15) How in the world does that fit in with grace? (Ephesians 2:8, among many others) So everyone tends to ignore that verse. but then the one that is most often quoted to justify banning women from positions of authority in the church is just three verses earlier: "I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet." (v. 12) That one gets quoted all the time.

I don't think you can have it both ways, so to me inerrancy is an untenable position. But you know, there are plenty of people, millions of them, that don't see that as a contradiction. They work it out in their own minds somehow (or maybe they just ignore it) and they're fine with it. Does that mean that belief in a particular theological point is more a matter of personality than anything else? You believe what you can live with? With the way my brain works, I can't accept the contradictions raised by I Timothy 2 (and others, that's just the most obvious), so I can't buy inerrancy. Ha. I've always thought of fundamentalists as people who like to have things black & white, no gray areas. But apparently they're just fine with gray areas when it comes to inerrancy, and I'm the one that can't tolerate them. How can you say that all scripture is the literal Word of God, but then pounce on one verse while ignoring the one that occurs three verses later?

But that works just fine for many. Maybe it just comes down to your comfort level with the way you were raised. If you had a happy childhood and you respect your parents and the leaders of your church, you're not likely to want to question their opinions and want to leave.

I'm not sure. I'm starting to believe that religion is more about choices, choosing the way you want to interact with your experience, than it is about ultimate truth. If the way you were raised works for you, you stay with it, even if it has some rough edges. If it throws up too many barriers, if it just refuses to match up with the way you experience life, you start looking for something else. Some other way of thinking about, interacting with your experience.

hmmm. more thought required.

AB

immersed in Harry Potter

Time for a break from all the seriousness.

Like everyone it seems, we are anxiously awaiting the 7th and last Harry Potter Book. My daughter has been an addict (almost literally) since we read the first one out loud when she was about seven years old. The first three we read out loud to her, but starting with the fourth, she has read them all herself. And read them and read them. I think she was twelve when the fourth one was published, and she plowed through all 700+ pages in two days.

But it's not just her. My spouse and I are almost as hooked as she is, and our nine-year-old has read them all, too. They're great stories-- lots of adventure and funny, lovable characters, plus some really really bad guys-- some of the "love to hate them" category and some of the truly evil category. We're so involved that we argue about them over dinner. (We mostly agree that Snape will turn out to be a good guy, although there is some dissension about this.)

I would encourage you to read them yourself, but there's a problem with that if you've never read any of them. I'm so loyal to J.K. Rowling that I kind of hate to say it, but the first one is really not well written (it was her first novel). The story is good, but the writing is so marginal it is hard to read if you're not used to reading children's books. The second is better, and by the third she had turned herself into a decent writer. I thought the most recent one was really beautifully written, given that she isn't even trying to write in the "literary" style. So if you can manage to get through the first one (which won't take long, it's also the shortest one), you're in for a lot of fun. You can also skip reading the first one and just get the idea by renting the movie, but unfortunately the child actors in it are so bad (it was their first movie) that it is also difficult to get through-- though they did a great job of creating the visuals of Hogwarts and Diagon Alley.

That's my plug for the day. I decided not to re-read all six in preparation for the 7th (as my daughter is doing)-- I just started with the fourth. I think I posted a pretty long review of the 4th book when the 4th movie came out, if I can find it, I'll post it, too.

18 days and counting.

Aunt BeaN
(who really wishes she could use Alohamora in real life)

Time for Aunt BeaN and family to head east for a family reunion. Will report more on my return. Have a great week and don't think too much while I'm gone.

H&K,
AB

So I figured out this afternoon that the reason why I'm having such a hard time getting started on this is that I don't want to argue about inerrancy (the belief that the Bible is "inerrant," without error). Since that is the lynchpin of the conservative Christian mindset, it seemed like the place to start. But every time I start lining up my ideas, I hear knives being sharpened in the background-- people girding up to do battle with my meager little arguments. I don't have anything to say that will change the mind of someone who is already convinced. So I just don't want to do it.

And of course I don't have to. So I'm not going to. Whole books have been written on this topic and you can read them if you want. (Try Bart Ehrman and Timothy Paul Jones, who take opposite sides, for a start). I'm just going to chime in with my little bit of experience, the thing that turned the tide for me once I started questioning.

So imagine me, about 23 or 24 years old, still more Evangelical Christian than not, but questioning and thinking and questioning and thinking. And it occurred to me that I had never had the experience of God requiring someone or something to be perfect before God could use it. My experience had always been (and still is, although I would use a different vocabulary to describe it now) that God works through imperfect human beings, messed-up situations, and so on. Moses, David, Peter-- they all had many moments of highly imperfect human-ness. So why would God's scriptures be any different? Why would God cause human beings to supernaturally create an absolutely perfect book, when that isn't the way God has done anything else? Why wouldn't God have scriptures that were messy, vibrant, open to interpretation, a bit confusing, somewhat chaotic-- just like the rest of the world that God created? (again, remember this is me 20 years ago, not the way I would phrase it now).

And that was the grain of sand that tipped the scales for me. You could argue, of course, as Paul does in several of his letters, that Jesus was perfect. But even if you accept that, Jesus didn't write the Bible. Several dozen regular people did. So there it is and I'm moving on, after having been stuck on this topic for weeks trying to figure out how to say it. I know that's not going to convince anyone, so no drive-bys, please. I know it's not an airtight argument. It's just what was helpful to me.

And Happy Summer Solstice to all, by the way...........

Aunt BeaN

p.s. sorry about some of the awkward wording in there, but I was trying to avoid using the male pronoun for God. Even at that stage when I was still mostly Evangelical, that would have been important to me, which I suppose would be the main reason I was only "mostly" Evangelical.

I've spent several weeks now writing posts in my head about how and why I left fundamentalism behind some twenty years ago. At the time it was happening, it was more a survival thing; I had reached the point where continuing in that direction was toxic for me, and I turned and ran. But I never really thought it out, and that seems important, even at this late date. But now that our summer has settled into as much of a routine as it is likely to, and I have an hour to myself before the kids are awake, I'm sitting here at the computer to type out what I've been thinking and the things I've been meaning to say just don't seem that important--the logical inconsistencies in believing in inerrancy; the need to pierce through the self-reinforcing nature of being inside an all-encompassing system of thought; separating out what is one's cultural heritage and what one believes.

It seems more important to point out what I'm moving toward rather than what I'm leaving behind. Which would be: a sense of gratitude flavored with a bit of humility toward the experience of life; a practical integration of what I theoretically believe with the details of being fully present in my current surroundings; and relinquishing the need for the false sense of security provided by the feeling that the universe is explicable. Which is all a very wordy way of saying I want to find meaning in my experience-- my experience as it is not as I want it to be-- rather than thinking about my experience. Meaning instead of meta-meaning.

Ack. Words words words. It's so hard to get them to say what you want them to say. That doesn't quite do it. It's a work in progress.

And my hour is up.

AB

One of the best things about having a teenager in the house is that you keep up with what's going on in popular music, books, and movies. My daughter has me hooked on her radio station, which plays far more interesting stuff than my old classic rock station. But with a few exceptions like Good Charlotte and Pink, we end up buying different CDs. Well, actually, she doesn't buy CDs, she downloads them from iTunes, but that's an aside. She likes the techno-dance-rap stuff that is to me scarily reminiscent of disco music, while I like Robert Randolph and Ben Harper.

I've become a bit obsessed with Ben Harper's new double-disc album, Both Sides of the Gun (you have to wonder if he knew about Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience). He's the guy that did the pop-ish song that was on the radio all the time a few months ago "Always have to steal my kisses from you" --which probably will pay for his children's college educations and many vacations in exotic locations, but most of his music is profoundly thoughtful. I find as I listen to it that lines from the songs pop up in my head in contexts that he probably never anticipated. "Fools will be fools and wise will be wise, but I will look this world straight in the eyes..."

Which brings me to the real topic of this post, which is the relationship that believers have with their sacred scriptures. It's difficult to describe if you've never experienced it. What makes the headlines are things like the Christian Right's insistence on a literal interpretation of the creation story and Muslim suicide bombers who are supposedly acting out the commands of the Koran. But what doesn't make the headlines is the way the wisdom of the sacred words informs all of your actions in a way that makes them both meaningful and thoughtful. The closest I can come to explaining how it feels is the analogy of immersing yourself in someone's lyrics or poetry (Ben Harper, U2, Shakespeare, Keats), which probably everyone has done at some point. The words begin to float around in your ahead, coming to mind at the oddest times-- sometimes adding meaning that you wouldn't otherwise have noticed, sometimes reminding you that others have been where you are.

I think if you weren't raised in a conservative religious environment, any religion, it is difficult to understand how deeply the faithful love their scripture. For Muslims, it's the Koran; for Jews, the Torah; for American Evangelicals, the Protestant Bible. I don't know that much about the eastern religions, but I imagine for Buddhists the sutras of the Buddha and for Hindus, the vedas or Upanishads hold a similar place of veneration.

I still feel a great deal of love for and devotion to the scriptures on which I was raised-- and I use "on" advisedly there, because we were raised on the Bible the way other children were raised on meat & potatoes, or organic foods. I suppose it would be more accurate to say I still feel this love among a blend of other emotions which includes fear (because every time my dad opened the Bible in a disciplinary setting, we knew we were about to feel really, really bad); guilt (of course, because I never have been able to measure up to the teachings of Jesus); and even a bit of embarrassment, because the way we were taught to read the scriptures sometimes led to opinions that (now) I can't believe I ever endorsed.

But there are so many supportive, enriching, marvelous words in the Bible. When I worry about the way I am raising my children, "Perfect love casteth out fear" comes to mind, (I think only those of us who were born up to about 1965 still memorized the King James Version) reminding me that it is more important to love them than to worry about them. When I'm worried that I'll never figure out how to integrate who I am with what I believe, there's James: "If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault..." and looking that up to make sure I had the wording right reminded me of another good one: "Consider it all joy my brethren when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, that you may be full and complete, lacking in nothing." That was always quite comforting to me. That translation is the NASV, I had to try three different versions to find the one I memorized. My sentimental favorite bible is an NASV (New American Standard Version). I could go on and on but it's probably not all that interesting.

This post has been pieced together because I've been working on it all week. It seems an important thing to say before I go on to the next one I'm working on, which is why I'm not a literalist anymore. So this one is "to be continued......."

Aunt BeaN
Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a Light unto my path (Psalm 119)

My soul wait in silence for God only, for my hope is from him.
He only is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold; I shall not be shaken. (Ps 62.5-6)

How blessed are they who walk not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of the scoffers, but their delight is in the Law of the Lord, and on it they meditate, day and night. (Psalm 1)

As the deer pants for water, so my soul pants for Thee.... The Lord will command his lovingkindness in the daytime, and His song will be with me in the night, a prayer to the God of my life. (Psalm 42)

The Lord's lovingkindnesses never cease, His compassions never fail.
They are new every morning. Great is Your faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22-23) which of course brings up the whole topic of hymns, which also live in your head, because there is a great one based on those verses: Great is Thy faithfulness, Great is Thy Faithfulness, morning by morning new mercies I see. All I have needed thy hand hath provided, Great is Thy Faithfulness, Lord, unto me.

ok, I'll stop now.  but I could go on and on.

OK, here's a couple more, maybe my favorites of all.

Micah 6:8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

The wording of this next one is from the version we sang in choir when I was in high school, so it doesn't really match up with any particular translation. But this is the way it exists in my head.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall persecution, or distress, or nakedness, or peril or sword? Nay, in all these things, we are more than conquerors, through Him who loves us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor depth nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God; the love of God which is in our Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 8:35-39 (more or less)

I've talked on a number of occasions about podcasts I've listened to, mostly NPR shows that are made available on iTunes or audible.com. I don't think I've ever mentioned my all-time favorite, though, which is Speaking of Faith. I've been listening to it for over a year now, and while there's been the occasional clinker, it is generally a thoughtful, stimulating look at the many ways that faith plays a role in our culture. It is "public radio's conversation about religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas." The interviews she does often are the springboard for posts in this blog (though sometimes months after they aired). Highly recommended.

a technical aside

So I suppose I should say something about the difference between being a Fundamentalist and an Evangelical Christian. I usually refer to myself as a recovering fundamentalist because most people who are not part of the conservative Christian world don't know the difference. And in fact, from that perspective, I don't think there is much difference. Both groups believe that the bible is the inspired Word of God, every last word of it. It is, according to both groups, "inerrant," meaning "without error." Both groups believe that humans are sinful and that this sin separates us from union with God. Both groups believe that you are only saved if you have accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior, to borrow an overused phrase. And that we can only be reunited with God because Jesus gave his life for us. And the virgin birth and the divinity of Jesus and the bodily resurrection and so on.

I'm not even sure I remember what the technical differences are, but I know I had an impression that Fundamentalists had a lot more rules. I remember my dad saying once that Evangelicals concentrated more on God's grace (his willingness to forgive us even when we don't deserve it), while Fundamentalists concentrated more on God's righteousness and judgment. If someone wants to chime in here and help me out, please feel free. I do remember that we teased about going to Bob Jones University, a decidedly fundamentalist institution, where (supposedly) the male and female students were so thoroughly separated that they were required to walk on different sidewalks. (I have no idea whether or not this was actually true, I just know we used to joke about it). (great humor Evangelicals have).

For the record, I was raised as an Evangelical Christian. I don't think this will make a difference to most of my readers (all dozen of you) but just in case it ever comes up, I disclosed. :-)