So we like end-rhyme. Sue us. We never
thought this free-verse crap would last forever.
And maybe we cover our confusion
about modern verse with bad allusions
to things barely remembered: satyrs, odes.
Maybe our syntax is hard to decode.
And likely, yes, we remain determined
to burn every poem since the march of Sherman.
We may occasionally be guilty
of trading humor for profundity,
and if that's not bad enough, we tend to
wear it as honor when we offend you
with sighing muses, appeals to Orion.
Well, give us a break. At least we're trying.
One day, I'd love to write a book about Christian kitsch, the product of sweaty, backseat love between somebody's idea of Christianity and good, old-fashioned, All-American consumerism. Usually these artifacts are tacky, and sometimes they attain the rank of baffling, but every now and then, they reach ironic proportions that boggle the mind.
Here's one I ran across just now: enjoy.
I'll admit it: I like control. Not control over others, or even myself, but control over my environment. I like things to be smooth and orderly or I like to remove myself from the situation. It should be no surprise, then, that driving home for the holidays is almost always hell.
Last night as I was packing, I checked my email and learned that a student I reluctantly failed in one of my classes has filed an appeal. This was a kid that I bent over backwards to help all semester, but she ultimately failed to cut the mustard. Immediately, of course, I thought about my reputation and wondered what kinds of accusations she was making: was I a terrible teacher, a heartless human being? I wrote a series of frenzied responses to the dean in an effort to clear myself.
This morning, not ten minutes into the trip, the check engine light came on in our 2002 Toyota Highlander. This baffling little light can mean almost anything on a continuum starting with "your coolant tank cap is loose" and ending with "your engine is on fire." After the usual popping of the hood and surveying of the bared engine with an air of doomed melancholy, searching, I suppose, for a helpful little sign pointing to a part and saying "your problem is here," I decided to keep driving.
Later, I paced around a rest stop talking to the dean on my cell phone about the grade appeal.
When we got to my in-laws' house tonight, there was an email from another student I failed, accusing me of ruining her life and forcing her into community college and a career of thankless servitude at Taco Bell. After auditioning a series of acerbic responses, I decided to take the high road and simply deleted the email.
Not a good day. In one fell swoop, my fairness is questioned, my sense of control challenged, and my good heart and fine intentions called into question. No pats on the back for me. No accolades for upholding an ethical code of teaching or making a good packing list. Not the way I wanted to start a Christmas holiday, which should be about control, and peace, and good intentions.
Or should it? What is driving me this Christmas season, I wonder, and does it have anything to do with joy and gratitude for a baby born to poor parents in a backwoods town, one who happened to be the Son of God, and would later hijack the entire course of my life? Is this the engine that drives me, I wonder, or the simpler, blander hope of cookies, presents, and chats with family?
Maybe I should check my engine.
As someone who spends a large portion of my day trying to teach writing, I've naturally read a lot of theories about writing. Writing is innate and unteachable. Writing is a skill that can be taught. Writing is malleable and culturally conditioned.
Writing is irrelevant.
Writing is everything; everything is a text.
And so on. Yet none of these theories ring entirely true to me, though they have been hatched by minds (in most cases) far sharper than my own. It seems to me that writing, just like thinking, is done well when writers give a crap.
Writers who give a crap read, and think about what they have read. Writers who give a crap pay some attention to how their sentences are constructed--all of their prose does not look like textspeak. Writers who give a crap take ideas and communication seriously. Writers who give a crap are willing to teach and willing to learn. Writers who give a crap do not embrace anti-intellectualism out of cowardice. Writers who give a crap find dignity in human expression of ideas.
Now, not all writers who give a crap write well, but most are capable of writing at least passably well, because writers who give a crap try. Writers who give a crap respect themselves enough to express themselves as well as possible, and respect others enough to make themselves understood. Writers who give a crap understand that writing is work as well as art.
It's true that not all writers who give a crap will be great writers, and some may never even write well.
But those who do not give a crap will never write well, no matter what.
This semester I've been teaching a composition class with the theme of "Christianity and Pop Culture." We've been reading Ashby's With Amusement for All: A History of American Pop Culture since 1830 and WIlliam Romanowksi's Eyes Wide Open: Looking for God in Pop Culture. I've been trying to get them to look at pop culture from a Christian lens.
But, like all of us, the college students are gnostics, loving the spirit and hating the flesh in word, but loving the flesh and hating the spirit in deed. Glancing up from their Facebook pages, they argue that the real point of the Christian faith is to avoid wrongdoing--to keep ourselves separate. But come on, these kids are anything but separate. Their media defines them. They are digital natives, inhabitants of Facebook, Myspace, Youtube. They are not distant from media, and therefore pop culture--they are immersed in it.
In a postmodern culture that multiplies interpretations, these students ironically search for the one "real" interpretation of things, as though we don't see through a glass darkly. They struggle with knowing what a work of art "means" and throw up their hands in despair, returning to the comfortable, unambiguous world of digital social interaction. In a world that grows increasingly entropic, they search for order amidst the ruins.
But what are they looking for? Truth? Because I'm just looking for interpretation; I know where truth is.
A seminary professor used to say that the Bible was God's "baby talk" to us. It occurred to me tonight in a flash of insight that if scripture, our normative text, is mere baby talk, than our art can be no more than fingerpaintings. How many 4-year-olds do you know who agonize about whether their scribbles accurately reflect reality or not? Or whether they've depicted God correctly? They merely do the best they can with passion and utter sincerity, and their parents consider the source.
Isn't it possible that God does the same?
Ever wanted to start a popular email forward, one that would cross the continent several times, be printed and posted approvingly in offices, and yield a crop of happy responses from like-minded folk? It's easy! Here's how:
1) Analyze your target audience. If you are targeting right-wing Republicans, mention abortion, taxes, and the war in Iraq. A lot. If you can work (Protestant) religion into it somewhere, all the better. If you are targeting liberal democrats, mention abortion, welfare, and the war in Iraq. A lot. Leave religion out of it. If you are targeting libertarians, don't bother; they won't read email forwards.
2) Now, start with a commonplace. You know, something everyone in your target audience can agree on. For instance:
Then, work this commonplace into your email wherever it's logical (on second thought, just wherever).
3) You've got 'em warmed up, and you haven't even had to advance an argument. Good. Time for some good old ad hominem attacks. This is where you subtly (or not so subtly) attack the character of your candidate's opponent. Do this by:
4) You've dealt with the present and the past now. Time to focus on the future. For this one, we'll rely on that old standby: the slippery-slope argument. Here's how it works.
5) Finally, end with an appeal to justice, loyalty, or common sense, and tack those things firmly to the candidate of your choice.
6) Add a few blinking gifs of flags, scripture, and animals to the bottom. Perhaps a plea to keep the chain intact. Now, send it to your favorite email zealot, and wait.
God bless America, save the puppies, and shoot the Muslims!
For God so loved the world that he had the faith of a mustard seed, and rendered to Caesar the things that are Caesar's!
Finally, a blog that acknowledges that Federal Vision, but more specifically Doug Wilson, is a bunch of nearly-heretical bologna.
It's amazing how insidious this brand of chest-pounding, pseudo-Anglophile, revisionist theology is; his books are even being carried in the Covenant Seminary bookstore.
My favorite part of a Wilson book: in "The Federal Husband," he creatively misapplies 1 Corinthians 11:14 to imply that long hair, in men, is sinful. (See a good interpretation here)
My favorite part of this blog is actually a link to another blog: Wilson's prized student turns out to be a criminal. Instead of disciplining him, they wisely threatened the father of his victim with discipline.
Priceless.
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