Misreading Literature Podcast

During our Cultivating Intention class we have been focusing on identity and calling. This week we took a more focused look at the role of work - even the mundane and tedious - and how work is a way to act out our calling as image bearers and to bring small bits of order where it might be easy for chaos to rule and reign.

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” - Colossians 3:23-24

As we are reminded in Colossians, there is no task that falls outside of this scope, and, in a sense, ALL of our work can be unburdened from toil when we make it about working for the LORD. We can live within our limits, hold boundaries, avoid letting task create our identity and purpose… and we can be free to simply do what is in front of us. It’s a strange thing - on first read of that verse I’ve always thought that the pressure to perform was exponentially added to, but in the context, I know that none of my work will ever replace the work of the cross - and it will never need to. The simplicity of doing the work can be done with the hope that the cross will transform it, just as it has transformed me.

Fascinatingly, I have come to think of how we work, even how we view work, is a reflection of our deeply rooted theology. And I do not mean that this is only for Christians or only for those who claim to believe in a god or higher power - this applies to ALL people. I am more and more convinced of the reality that everyone holds to a faith worldview, even if that faith is in themselves and the material world. Our work becomes a reflection of what we hold to be true about the ultimate in reality because work is often dictated by our purpose and aim - by our telos.

And no wonder so many of us find work to be the great void Tyler Durden speaks into - we live in fragmented times. Our lives are fragmented into different social groups, and we are consumed with code switching from place-to-place, never settling on living out of a single reality, but trying to hold multiple realities as equal and valid - except not. We void each of those realities the second we move from one compartmentalized segment to the next - and this is its own post-modern theology in and of itself. I think this is the heartbeat of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest - who am I really? Addict? Tennis player? Traumatized nonverbal floating head? We don’t know. That’s why we are struggling, in our time, to find meaning, purpose, and place.

“A Cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man, it is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon.” - GK Chesterton, “The Book of Job”

We’ve become enamored with this sense of each of us as our own unique island and cosmos unto ourselves, with unique ways of seeing the world, that we’ve forgotten that we also share a world and fit within a cosmos. I’ll have more to write on that particular topic when I get into reviewing Heinrich Böll’s The Clown, and other existentialist pursuits of authenticity. For now, these brief fragments of there own, will need to suffice.

“In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, ‘I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.’ To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: ‘If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.’” – GK Chesterton, The Thing

Chesterton’s Fence is a helpful framework often used to consider change - change we want to make but may want to spend more time in consideration over, first. This has been a top-of-mind topic in my life lately, but this morning the idea of a fence as a symbol for something deeply rooted to identity within me, but easily overlooked struck me as another part of the fence’s purpose.

Combine that with some of Chesterton’s other thoughts on place, presence, gratitude, the mystical, and purpose, and the idea transitions from the formless to something substantive. In particular, this struck me when considering the exercise my Cultivating Intention class completed this week:

Reflect on a story, narrative, teaching, character, and/or experience that resonates with you (both the good and the bad of it) - why does it resonate with you? How might this connect to your identity/calling/giftings right now?

Story is the most tried and true way we have found and transmitted culture, values, and meaning. I think that’s because of another of Chesterton’s maxims:

“The trend of good is always towards Incarnation” - GK Chesterton, The Mystagogue

The whole point of this prompt is to consider what we have buried (and possibly ignored) from deep seeded longings that have been placed within the core of every single one of us. Then, once those truths have been identified, to think through how, here and now, I can make them incarnate and not merely a concept. There is a dopamine hit that we get from possibility - it’s exciting, all the potentiality and the could-be vision. That dopamine hit, however, can also stop us dead in our tracks - it can act as a substitute for slogging through the very real and very hard work of bringing a vision into reality… because that reality is most certainly going to fall short of the vision.

Combating this urge to surrender and hide in the mystic requires us to stop looking at the somedays, and the maybe-in-the-futures, and to focus on the present - still striving towards the good and ultimate end (telos), but not losing sight of our ability to live that out in small and imperfect ways right where we are.

Wendell Berry summarized this nicely:

“For in spite of all that has happened to me in other places, the great change and the great possibility of change in my life has been in my sense of this place. The major difference is perhaps only that I have grown able to be whole-heartedly present here. I am able to sit and be quiet at the foot of some tree here in this woods along Camp Branch, and feel a deep peace, both in the place and in my awareness of it, that not too long ago I was not conscious of the possibility of. This peace is partly in being free of the suspicion that pursued me for most of my life, no matter where I was, that there was perhaps another place I should be, or would be happier or better in; it is partly in the increasingly articulate consciousness of being here, and of the significance and importance of being here.” – Wendell Berry, A Native Hill

Without fail, at least once during class, one of my high school teachers would mention her core philosophy: “It’s ALL connected.” There is a lot of truth in that statement, and as storytelling creatures we are hardwired to view the world via connection. What we spent a lot of time doing in that particular class was discerning where those connections actually existed, because there are two ways everything can be connected:

* 1) The first is by our own design, making, and wisdom. I would liken this to everything being connected when I go fishing... not ideal as this leads to hooks in the wrong spots and a lot of tangled line.

* 2) The second is in the natural order of things, where we do not need to strive and force things to be, but may need to figure out where we enter into the picture. I’d liken this to top-soil - there is an interconnected biome of all kinds of particles and creatures working to make soil healthy (or out of balance, leading to barren land).

Genesis 15I greatly appreciate Tim Mackie’s teaching on Abram in Genesis 15 and the notion of Covenant. There are a handful of things that stuck out in this teaching, but what God counted as righteousness towards Abram, his faith, stood out. That is, Abram didn’t stand on some moral high ground (read his story closely and you will find plenty of missteps) but he believed, trusted, and followed God’s calling on his life - he understood that God was exactly who He promised to be, even if how that promise would be fulfilled seemed beyond Abram’s imagining. It was this faith in God’s promise that led to God’s strange and bizarre covenant with Abram.Connected to this radical trust and pursuit of God’s heart is the notion of hungering and longing for God’s ways, which, like Abram, requires faith and belief in who God is, along with open and honest pursuit of Him (paradoxically, we find that our “pursuit” is really a secondary discovery of His pursuing us).There are so many paths that we can pursue at any given stage of our lives, and one of the strange and bizarre realities is that we see God giving people over to the paths they choose - we often get exactly what we set out for, strive towards, and intend for our lives... but when we do so apart from the goodness God calls us into, we often find ourselves disappointed and emptied by the results. Right alignment becomes more important than anything we could strive for.I also found this passage from Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, insightful:

* The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away, but He is no longer the only one to do so. When some remote ancestor of ours invented the shovel, he became a giver: he could plant a tree. And when the axe was invented, he became a taker: he could chop it down. Whoever owns land has thus assumed, whether he knows it or not, the divine functions of creating and destroying plants.

* Other ancestors, less remote, have since invented other tools, but each of these, upon close scrutiny, proves to be either an elaboration of, or an accessory to, the original pair of basic implements. We classify ourselves into vocations, each of which either wields some particular tool, or sells it, or repairs it, or sharpens it, or dispenses advice on how to do so; by such division of labors we avoid responsibility for the misuse of any tool save our own. But there is one vocation--philosophy--which knows that all men, by what they think about and wish for, in effect wield all tools. It knows that men thus determine, by their manner of thinking and wishing, whether it is worth while to wield any.

What I love about this quote in this context is that Leopold points out the usefulness of both productive and destructive tools and, much like in the parable of the talents, we can dismiss/hide/bury the heart posture with which we use our tools.