Music

I was driving in the car with some friends of mine, listening to some new bands I hadn't heard, and it hit me like a fever that I need to make music more a part of my life. I asked my friend Sean who some of the bands were that we were listening to, and started writing them down. That night I watched "Once" for the third time - it's a movie about a busker in Ireland and the performance of his songs are the soundtrack throughout the movie. This is the movie that the song "Falling Slowly" came from. So I was watched Once again, and that added to my burning desire to listen to more music, write songs, and play songs for people. The next day I wrote a song.

So this onslaught of inspiration has come rather suddenly. I've had flashes of inspiration throughout the year, but this has been more of a light bulb that stays turned on. It comes with some humiliation though. I played an open mic a couple days ago, and let me first say that I thoroughly enjoyed it - I got to play some of my songs for people, I got to hear some other (good) songwriters and musicians, and one of the most exciting parts was being in that coffee-shop environment, meeting new people and having good conversation. But I felt somewhat deflated when I realized how rusty my songs, my guitar-playing, and my voice were. Part of me wanted to say 'Forget it, music was a thing of the past for you,' but then I realized why I wanted to make music again. I was inspired to make something beautiful. When the writer Reginald McKnight came to one of my classes last year he said 'There are three types of responses to beauty (literature, music, etc.): there's the critic who analyzes it and discerns how it can be better, there's the person who immerses her/himself in the beauty, and then there's the creative type who sees beauty and responds to it by wanting to make more beauty. I identified most with the third one - hands down.

I like to be creative, and I feel incomplete when it's missing from my life. I'm glad music is coming back. My friends Mike and Bernard have been key for helping me get back into it. Mike plays piano and we've been jamming and we're hoping to record later this summer. Bernard is a musical Jack-of-all-trades who plays drums, guitar, piano, makes hip hop beats, and is an excellent freestyle rapper. He invited me to busk with him and some friends at the downtown mall and we'll keep doing that. I love how music brings people together.

Kite Runner

The thing that stuck out to me the most was the role of suffering. In one of the most powerful parts of the book, Amir reads the letter that Rahim Khan writes him informing him that he knows about the secret he has kept for the past 15-20 years. This is in the midst of Amir's risky attempt to redeem his past by saving his deceased best friend's son (Sohrab), who has been abducted by the Taliban. The letter reads: "A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer." This epitomizes the conflict that Amir faces throughout the book - he has been privileged his whole life, and though he has not committed crimes to the degree of the juxtaposed Taliban criminals, his inaction eats away at him. After making the decision to save Sohrab, he begins a process of being liberated while his comoforts discarded. This allows him to share his past with his wife, which she embraces immediately because she has had a difficult past. The redemption is not perfect, which makes it seem real, but the story is hopeful overall.

The themes of violence and redemption are interesting to look at together too. There is certainly a conflict - Amir applauds Sohrab for violent actions toward the Taliban leader that oppressed him, but Sohrab doesn't seem convinced that it was the right thing because his father had told him that everyone can be redeemed and it is never right to hurt someone. It seems like Amir's opinion wins, which was disappointing - but Hosseini does a great job of painting that eternal question: Is violence necessary and permissive in cases of extreme oppression? My emotion was certainly bound up in that conflict.

The Kite Runner

I'm finally reading The Kite Runner. I'm close to the end, so I'll probably finish it in a couple days. I was interested right away with Amir's relationship with his friend Hassan - how he knew he treated him condescendingly, and was bothered by it, but not enough to change. I love how Hosseini makes Amir's faults subtle, but has them gradually lead more considerable consequences. There's not a whole lot to say about it right now because I haven't finished, but so far I'm kind of taken by the way that power and privilege is handled, by the social structures in both Afghanistan and America, and the kind of questions it poses about guilt and redemption.

Confession (cont.)

A couple more things...This means that things I learn should be relevant to my current experiences. I shouldn't get bogged down by conceptual theory. There's nothing wrong with learning things that aren't directly relevant, as they may be relevant at some point. But I should make sure that learning things related to my current experiences are first.

This will also mean more time spent with people and engaging in good conversation, and seeing incredible value to that. I think another root of this desire for living in the present with what I learn is that I think we get the most out of our relationships with other people - more so than books most of the time.

Confession

I have a confession to make. I've been stuck in a rut for I don't know how long, in which I've been so focused on the future that I haven't fully engaged with the present. A lot of this has concerned how I envision my vocation in life - in all aspects: job, friends, etc. And part of my vocation includes what I learn and how I share it with others. And since I'm going to seminary next year, I've been waiting until I become trained and prepared to share what I've been learning, which has prevented me from sharing the process. I have a confession: I dream of writing a book. That's embarrassing to admit because it's pretentious. But I'm getting fed up with myself being caught up in the future. I'm learning new things every day, and I'm engaging those things with people I love every day. So instead of preparing to live life, I'm ready to start living life right now.

I think this will mean more blog posts. It doesn't get the return that a book or article does, but it's present and it's real (haha, I write this as though more than 3 people actually read this...and that might be an exaggeration).

creative pieces

This is a link to a blog with some creative pieces that my friends and I put together: http://wordsonaline.wordpress.com/

Church amidst Earthly Authorities

I just finished an essay called "A Vision of Reality: The Redemptive Task of the Church amidst Earthly Authorities." I set out to research and write about how a Christian should view the War in Iraq, and after I began my research I realized 1) There is so much theological grounding on the role of government that I need before I can have something helpful to say about the war, and 2) The political complexities in Iraq are way out of my league. So I decided to do some further research on the role of the government and its use of force in the Bible and write a paper about that. I think this was an important thing to realize - if Christians do not have their theological convictions in place before talking about politics, they can end up making either careless theological misjudgments or ignorant political statements. I've been quite guilty of both.

After looking at the role of government in the Biblical story, and reading books and articles by some of the major just war theorists and pacifists, it seems to me that Christian engagement in warfare detracts from the redemptive task of the Church, which is to witness in word and deed to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Governments are instituted by God as ministers and servants to preserve peace and administer wrath to everyone. As such, the purpose of government is to grant common grace to everyone in the same way that God allows all people to taste chocolate chip cookies and bask in the sun. The most fundamental response for the Christian is to submit to these authorities. Most just war theorists say in one way or another that since governments are ordained by God, Christians are permitted - and in some cases are morally obligated - to take up arms. But the Bible in no way indicates this next step. And in fact, when a Christian uses force - even in war - he or she fails to demonstrate the submissive nature of Christ. Force and submission cannot happen at the same time. The Church's number one purpose is to witness to the redemption that happened when Christ chose not to raise the sword and submitted to the cross. And this has a power far beyond armies, which the world doesn't understand. If we fail to do bear this witness in both word and deed, the hope of eternal peace will remain an illusion to the world.

This is nothing new - it is essentially what people like Yoder and Hauerwas say. But distinguishing between the common grace function of government and special redemptive task for the Church is a helpful way for me to understand how they fit together.