Month: August 2010

by Zoe Pollock

Bonnie Alter has found a nice epitaph for the death of the long-sick chestnut tree outside Anne Frank's attic, which finally fell this week under heavy winds. From Anne's own diary in February of 1944:

Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs. From my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind. As long as this exists, … and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies – while this lasts I cannot be unhappy.

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

I've found the recent debate about spiritual music fascinating, but I have to take issue with a comment a reader recently made:

I could see these pieces in a "Christian coffeehouse."  But if the "hip" emergent church or the megachurches have begun using this sort of material for "worship," then they have departed even further than I realized from thousands of years of Judeo-Christian tradition for gathered celebration and supplication.  And in that case, the answer to your question would be, it may be hip, it may be Christian, but it's not church, because it's not worship, any more than listening to a reading of John Donne's or T.S. Eliot's lyrics – admirable Christian poetry – would be worship.

I often find that people who invoke thousands of years of Judeo-Christian teaching generally have no idea what they are talking about. This seems to me similar to the approach to history of NOM, who blithely assert that the institution of Judeo-Christian marriage has remained unchanged for thousands of years. It's only true if you adopt very loose standards about changes.

I can't speak to the Judeo part of the equation, but as a student of medieval history, I feel pretty confident in saying that our ideas about what constitutes worship have changed in some pretty significant ways over the past two thousand years.

I'm not entirely sure that I understand the objection to contemplation of John Donne as an act of worship. How, exactly, does it differ from the contemplation and reading of Psalms, which are again poems written by individuals contemplating the nature of the divine? For that matter, who says that worship must be communal? I don't disagree that it is often communal (the bit about "wherever two or more are gathered in my name" springs to mind), but there is a rich history of solitary worship in the Christian tradition. Many early saints, such as Cuthbert and Guthlac, were hermits, and while they would certainly pray with those who visited them, I can't imagine that many would dispute that their solitary rites constitute a form of worship. Early traditions in Ireland, England, Egypt, and many other places often placed a strong emphasis on monastic traditions that involved a withdrawal from the world, with community expressed through shared experiences of individual contemplation.

I'm also not sure what the reader's objection to these songs are. What makes one piece of music appropriate for "gathered celebration and supplication" and another not? Why are Donne's "Holy Sonnets" different from Psalms or modern hymns like "Amazing Grace" and "Be Thou My Vision", or even contemporary praise and worship songs? If everyone read Donne together, would it be worship?

The problem here seems to be that the reader is attributing qualities to the word worship which it simply does not have. The OED definition: "Reverence or veneration paid to a being or power regarded as supernatural or divine; the action or practice of displaying this by appropriate acts, rites, or ceremonies" seems pretty spot on to me. Over time the appropriate acts, rites, and ceremonies have changed quite a bit. We've seen this happen at an institutional level with the reforms of Vatican II.

(Photo by Martin Fisch)

by Zoe Pollock

In another of Caroline Lazar reports from McSweeney's "Oh My Gawd: A Column About A Teenager Navigating Religion" we get her very contemporary and contemplative read on the end of the season:

We pack up trunks of summer skin and easy living in our attics to prepare for the chill of fall but the ream of summer scenes of the sun pinching our cheeks can stay in frames on the wall until next year. Until then, we can continue to search for summer in our worn bathing suits and straw hats—plucking leftover crumbs of sand out like specks of the season—in anticipation of all meeting again.

by Zoe Pollock

Tracy Clark-Flory rejoiced after science finally confirmed her long held belief that hookup culture doesn't kill off all chances for love:

University of Iowa sociologist Anthony Paik's survey of 642 adults in Chicago initially found that "average relationship quality was higher for individuals who waited until things were serious to have sex compared to those who became sexually involved in 'hookups,' 'friends with benefits,' or casual dating relationships," according to a press release. But when he controlled for people who had zero interest in having a relationship, that difference disappeared. "Couples who became sexually involved as friends or acquaintances and were open to a serious relationship ended up just as happy as those who dated and waited."

by Zoe Pollock

Troy Patterson reviews the new Laura Linney program:

If we must take away any "messages" from The Big C —and the show, a gently mordant comedy about a 42-year-old cancer patient, insists that we try a small few—then chief among them is this: Dying well is the best revenge.

by Zoe Pollock

I don't entirely agree with this read on Judd Apatow's critical success, but it's an interesting take:

They strain to wring relevance out of Apatow’s pro-family message. (Who in America is against families and children?) They strain to argue for his place in a tradition. They use him as a cudgel against flawed filmmakers who are both smarter and more ambitious than he is. All the while they miss the simple moving force behind the gratuitous cameos, the accumulating in-jokes, the repeated casting of the director’s wife, children, and friends, and the constant carping about aging in Apatow’s films; they miss all the vanity. He is allowed this vanity because he delivers a message Americans crave to hear. As long as you behave yourself, take on a modicum of responsibility, and wear the yoke of commitment, it is entirely acceptable—even preferable and profitable—to be stupid.

by Zoe Pollock

Alex Gurnham interviewed the artist Brandon Bird about his most recent foray into pop culture madness, starring Nicholas Cage:

I think that's really what pop art, or maybe even all art, is about. Presenting something people encounter every day in a way they had never considered. Whether that something is a sunflower, or a soup can, or Sam Waterston's awesome face.

(Hat Tip: Utne)

(Image: Uncanny Valley by Brandon Bird)

by Zoe Pollock

After being compared to a Holocaust denier because of a piece he wrote criticizing Elie Wiesel, Terry Teachout fired back:

I'd like to think that anybody who read a piece (or a posting or tweet) in which I was compared to a Holocaust denier would simply roll his eyes and move on. But I'm old enough to know better. More and more of the American people are choosing to live in closed circles of collective concurrence, and I have no doubt that in certain of those circles, those who read such an attack on me would nod their heads sagely and say something on the order of "Yep, it figures. Probably beats his wife, too."

George Washington once drew up a list of rules of civility. Here is the first one:

1st Every Action done in Company, ought to be with Some Sign of Respect, to those that are Present.

I'm with the father of our country. To be gratuitously nasty in public discourse is like relieving yourself in a swimming pool. Even if nobody knows you did it, you still made the pool a dirtier place for everybody–yourself included.

by Zoe Pollock

New research suggests wearing knock-off designer goods impacts more than your ego:

Wearing counterfeit glasses not only fails to bolster our ego and self-image the way we hope, it actually undermines our internal sense of authenticity. “Faking it” makes us feel like phonies and cheaters on the inside, and this alienated, counterfeit “self” leads to cheating and cynicism in the real world.