Hi Tad,


Do not be frustrated! God is not some cruel ogre dangling candy before our eyes and then snatching it away as we reach out to grasp it! The Law is not there to block desire, but to direct it. Calvin devotes a hundred pages to the Law, revealing all it provides for and the rich world of possibility it opens up to us. He has a robust view of Providence. God does take delight in us and we are to take delight in God's creation. However it must be done in moderation and always with God first in mind. It is God's love for us that is ultimately satisfying. Everything else is only a taste of that promise. We need to learn that God's grace is sufficient unto us and should not be tempted to desire more and especially break the law in an attempt to satisfy ourselves. What sense is there in gorging on food half tasted instead of enjoying fully the little we have been given by grace?

Nort

Throwing Out the Baby With the Bath Water

Hi Nort,


I read you last email with a great deal of frustration! Are all our pleasures, addictions and all our desires, temptations? You let the music and poetry seduce you into an idyllic repose but then catch youself up and return to the shadow of your cave! Has God made some cruel joke giving us bodies to feel and a beautiful world to delight in, but then saying, "no touching?" The Christian message is love and yet all sorts of constraints are constructed on how that love is to be felt such that we can't feel it at all! What is love if it does not affect our God-given, in-God's-own-image, to-be-resurrected bodies. Can we not feel love sensually the way Teresa of Avila did or Gerard Manley Hopkins desired? Are our bodies not vehicles for God's love, or am I spouting blasphemy? Heloise became a saintly abbess and yet never forget or repented her affair with Abelard. Where does one draw the line between love and pleasure, love and desire? Does God not love us through others? What is the Christian promise?


Tad

Hi Tad,

Just listened to a wonderful rendition of Vaughn Williams' "The Lark Ascending" by the violinist Christopher Warner Green. It is one of my favorite pieces of instrumental music and the musician did a delightful job improvising with the tempo to mimick the erratic, spurting flight of a bird. The piece reminds me of Canadian poet Archibald Lampman, who better than most captures the feeling of a lazy warm summer day. In both the music and poetry you can almost feel the warmth of the sun on your face, the dampness of the earth, the buzzing of insects and prickly grass. Lying back with eyes closed you can imagine you are back in the garden in love again with the world! But it is a bittersweet feeling, knowing we are still on this side of paradise, gazing through the mirror dimly. The temptation to step through that looking glass and be one again with the world is tremendous and can trick us into any number of addictions and false hopes. I would be careful falling to whichever way the wind does blow, no matter how soothing. It may be a malevolent spirit!

Nort

Something from Nothing

Nort,

I am researching now accounts of love, its source and ways in which it is managed across cultures. I have a general theory, a working hypothesis, if you will, which will no doubt be refined in the course of my research of specific cultural accounts. My working hypothesis is that our love and feelings have a superorganic origin. They originate in the mind. More specifically, they originate, or flow from, a point of "negation," for lack of a better word, within our consciousness. Linguistically we distinguish between what is and is not. In most general terms we distinguish between life and death, light and dark, the physical and spiritual world, order:chaos, being:non-being. It is hard for us to imagine what non-being is, nevertheless linguistically we have it as a category. It is the binary opposition of being to use Levi-Strauss's terminology. My simple thesis is that love originates from what is not! Does this make any sense to you. No doubt it has to be expanded upon and refined. Perhaps our future conversations can help in this regard.

Tad

Tad,


If the scale of the Pudong airport in Shanghai is any indication of the scale of changes that have been occurring in the rest of China then I am impressed. I wish I had the opportunity to stay and see the country, unfortunately the flu scuppered the chance, as you know. However I will try again! I do want to learn more about Christianity in China. I want the opportunity to meet and worship with Chinese Christians and I would like to know more about their theology. I have read some translations of Chinese Christian sermons and essays. The emphasis is on service and justice. It reminds me of the mainline denominations here in the sixties and the ecumenical emphasis of the World Council of Churches. I am sympathetic to Bishop Ting's love theology. Love is the answer, as far as I am concerned. Christianity has a way to tap into that love and sustain it. In your anthropological research you must find accounts of what you called "managing empathy" and the source of that empathy?

Nort

Hi Nort,

You note the strong wind blowing from the East and how that will affect our culture, a reverse cultural imperialism. I must say that I was indeed blown away when I returned to China after twenty years and saw the enormous changes that have occurred there since I was last there. Shanghai is almost unrecognizable, all built up with elevated highways crisscrossing the city and its signature skyscrapers. It was not only Shanghai, but every city I visited--Nanjing, Jinan and Chifeng--was the same. It has been an incredible building boom, fueled by export earnings and cheap migrant labor. The scale takes your breath away. There is a vibrant, innocent spirit is in the air which reminds me of our country in the fifties. I can't see any holding the Chinese back. They are the engines of history at this moment. They are the story of this century!

Tad

Which Way is the Wind Blowing?

Tad,

I do believe in the zeitgeist, a collective will beyond individual wills, however reassuring that is. There is no way a few people can prevail against strong headwinds. On the other hand a small spark can ignite a prairie fire if the wind is right. I do think the left has to speak out and rally in defense of their beliefs. We have become too silent, too used to having things our own way. But there is a bigger issue. There are many winds blowing these days both within this country and across the globe! There is a strong wind blowing from the East and most of us here in this country have no clue how strong it is. It puts our internal squabbles to shame as they hinder us from responding to the real danger. By danger, I mean anything that is not faced up to and we are not facing up to Chinese power and civilization. My hope is that this will not be a clash of civilizations, which this world can ill afford, but one of mutual accommodation as we have much to learn from each other. From my perspective, Christianity provides a framework for this encounter, something that is capable of responding to the depth of Chinese Confucius civilization. It is one way we can have a heart to heart conversation between civilizations!

Peace,
Nort

Nort,

Politics is a messy business, especially in a democracy. Nothing comes easy! What you end up with is never what you started with. But you have to respect the process. I would like to think that a genuine process of health care reform has begun and there will be no turning back! I believe there is a zeitgeist, a popular will behind health care reform, and that we are at a tipping point. The present crisis we face is one of imagination and communication. The changes this country faces are enormous, hard for us to imagine, that is the reason why we resist it in spite of all the talk for change. However, the financial debacle has softened us up and there may now be no turning back! Some states have already moved ahead with health care reform. If successful they will be leaders and others will follow. We need a communicator who can empower us. So far such voices have only come from the right. Where is FDR when we need him? Obama are you listening?

Tad

Hi Tad,

How is your ethnology of love coming along? I support your endeavor one hundred percent. I hope this conversation has been helpful! I woke up this morning with the discouraging news about the Republican upset in the Massachusetts senatorial race. While health care reform was not the central issue in the campaign, its prospects are now effected. What is it about health care reform people do not understand? Do people regard health as an entitlement? Do they believe that health is something that must been earned by the sweat of our brow. The reluctance of the have-littles to give anything away for free to the have-nots! Is it a knee-jerk reaction against big government encroaching on our republican Hobbit-like-down-in-the-shire spirit? Is it the fear of government playing God? Where is the Spirit in all this? Sorry to distract you, but it does have something to do with love, or lack thereof, yes?

Nort

Hi Nort,

I would agree that justice is an expression of love and that there is no true love without justice. Love without justice is a charade. What angers me is how we piecemeal love! We cut and divvy it up; shower it on some and hold it back from others; as if it is exclusively ours to give and control. For me love is like a tsunami that washes over us, tumbling us with joy and pleasure. It is sensual! It can overwhelm us! It is not ours to control. I do not subscribe to Lewis' attempt to classify and rank love. All kinds of love are aspects of divine love. All loves are doors to the divine. We should be grateful for any love we can feel and embrace. There is a saving grace in our ability to feel love. Give me someone who has a passion about trains over someone who is emotionally aloof. I am sure Jesus consorted with prostitutes, yes, because they were sinners, but also because at least they knew something about love, more than than the self-righteous Pharisees! He enjoyed their company! I am ranting here, excuse me, but it is an emotional subject for me! No pun intended!

Tad

Hi Tad,

Today is Martin Luther King Day. It should be a reminder how limited our love is and that love alone is not the answer. Love is not God. That is a point Lewis made. He said that if we make love a god we sow the seeds of hate. To love any one thing too strongly is an addiction. We set up walls around that love and fear losing it. However, we cannot put walls around God's love for us, nor walls around our love for others. I will never understand fundamentalist Christians who try to do so? How do they know whom God loves? Why can't they love anyone outside their ranks?What are they afraid of? One message of MLK's life is that there can be no love without justice and that justice is an expression of God's love for us, or agape. Justice and love both depend on God, something we believe in outside and above us, something greater than us and beyond our knowledge. A mystery.

Nort

Hi Nort,

Is it better to love and lost than never love at all? I fear that in aiming for a higher form of love we deny ourselves any love whatsoever! We get caught in a Puritanical trap, denying ourselves any feeling. Too closed off to our feelings, we then erupt into extreme forms of love and hate, and are easily manipulated by others. Regardless of how one might want to classify, rank and evaluate erotic love, it does teach us much about love in general, even God's love for us! At least that is my experience. Eros revived my interest in love as an important and powerful emotion, one central to the human experience. The filial love I witnessed in China also touched me deeply, too. Love is central to Christianity, which is one reason I have come back to the church. Nevertheless, I am frustrated by the general lack of discourse on love, even in the church. I laud the poets for giving expression to love and the prophets for holding us accountable to it!

Tad

Hi Tad,

An ethnology of love is an ambitious project. You may find that there are as many different ways to express love as there are cultures. Your project may turn into an anthology of poetry instead! Perhaps I am old fashion, but I would disagree with you that all love is the same! I believe that Lewis' hierarchy of love is justified. The Christian holds up charity or agape as a higher, more pure expression of love. We are to love God as God loves us! God's love gets refracted into the many kinds of love we feel and express, like light going through a prism. Our purpose in life is to get back as close as we can to that purer form of love. We have been given a means to do it too through Jesus Christ. Without Christ love can turn into hatred; brotherly love can lead us to war; erotic love degenerate into debauchery. Love without God can lead us astray. A passage from First Timothy comes to mind, "For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving."

Nort

Hi Nort,

I guess what I am proposing is an ethnology of love, an ethnology being a cross-cultural analysis of a specific type of cultural behavior. Of course you know C. S. Lewis' The Four Loves. I regard it as a kind of ethnology of love. He identifies and classifies different kinds of love and arranges them in an evolutionary and hierarchical fashion. It is a typical ethnology of his day, however, totally outmoded now! Anthropologists today no longer presume any evolutionary arrangement of cultural behavior as it presumes a hierarchical arrangement of cultures and people. Such an approach is rightly criticized as a justification for colonialism and any kind of imperialism. However, I think anthropologists have thrown the baby out with the bath water and avoid cross-cultural studies all together because of its association with imperialism. In any case a cross-cultural study of love is valuable if only to reveal the variability of love in its many different aspects. What do you think?

Tad

TO: tadr@hotmix.net

Hi Tad,

Your etymology suggests that to love and to believe are similar acts. This may be the case. But at some point, for example when one has fallen in love, they are natural acts. The word "believe" implies self-conscious effort. However eventually belief becomes part of us and no longer requires effort. The so-called belief system then becomes a reality maintained by symbol and ritual. A Christian believes by simply looking at the cross. That is enough to open the door to the kingdom and love. No effort required. There are times when that world is threatened and special effort is required, such as prayer. Science too has its belief system, its theories and the reality of the physical world. However, Christians and people of other religious traditions believe also in a non-material world, a world of the spirit, or spirits, which have their effects. You cannot pry these spirits from the material world, no more than you can live completely in the dark. Humans have the ability to think outside the box, what is not there, even if it is nothing! There is always the antithesis which is the world of the spirit.

Peace,

Nort

TO: nortonb@gmax.net

Hi Nort,

To believe is perhaps key to enter this realm of love. The word "belief" has the same root in Old German as "love". The modern skeptic who suspends belief for the sake of scientific objectivity handicaps himself. He will never enter this subjective realm of love, the so-called kingdom no matter how close it lies, without belief. Belief systems are important parts or so-called premodern societies. One cannot build a model of such societies from the ground up but need to include a top-down view based on their religious system. What we know on the ground and what we do not know above both affect us. There has always been a split between idealistic and materialistic approaches in anthropology. However, social organization is dependent on emotions which are as much affected by ideas as by material factors. How empathy is managed is a significant aspect of social and cultural behavior. I am working on my first case of love among the Truk Islanders in the South Pacific and hope to report on them in my next email.

All the best,

Tad

TO: tadr@hotmix.net

Hi Tad,

Yes I enjoyed our visit, too. It certainly got me thinking and I welcome this opportunity to continue the dialogue. Of course I come to the subject of love from a theological perspective, but I am sure we will discover an overlap with anthropological views. Theologically speaking, love does have a divine origin in God. God freely loves creation and us. From this love we are to love the world and our neighbors. For Christians, Christ mediates this relationship providing access to God's love and eternal life through belief in the Risen Christ. This is as simplistic as I can get on Christian love and faith. You ask does love evolve and does our species depend on it? With the Incarnation love reached it apogee and it is up to us to realize it. Also with that event love became the context in which to see the world and live our lives in the past present and future. As far as our survival goes, I certainly hope that if there is a choice between love and our self destruction we choose love. I encourage your scientific examination of love. Why not? Love has been the purview of religion, literature, poetry and the arts. It is time science takes a stab if only it is humbled by the effort. I am not disrespecting science, but I believe there is a whole realm out there beyond its reach! How does a thermometer take its own temperature?

Nort

TO: nortonb@gmax.net

Hi Nort,

A quick Email to say thanks for dinner and the ride to the train station last week. I enjoyed our conversation and would like to continue it! I have begun a new research project examining love cross culturally. There are many kinds of love. Indeed, love constitutes its own universe of feelings. As I already mentioned kinship is an aspect of this universe. Each culture regulates the flow of affect in certain ways and patterns. The patterns themselves may have a material base, but the feelings themselves might have a different source. Where do our feelings come from? Where does love come from? Does it serve us to reduce love to just a biological or psychological effect? Or should we hold love up as having something like a divine origin, an aspect of the superorganic as the anthropologist Alfred Kroeber put it 100 years ago? Does love evolve? Does the survival of our species depend on it? I would like to know your thoughts on this.

Peace,
Tad

A Ride to the Train Station

Two days later, Tad's stay is town is over. Nort has offered him a ride to the train station. Casual friends at seminary, they have only recently met a couple times after years of being out of contact. Their conversation continues about China, anthropology, theology, and love.

Hi, Nort! Thanks for the ride.

No problem, Tad! It is on my way to work. I just wanted to thank you again for your visit. I have enjoyed our talks!

Me, too! We should keep it going. You have my email and whenever you are in Washington, by all means come stay with me. I have an extra guest room.

Sure, thanks. No plans now but I do get down there occasionally.

We have talked a lot about "love". It is such an important subject! It is central to Christian practice and faith. I also believe it is the Holy Grail anthropologists are looking for when they investigate "culture," the glue that holds premodern societies together. I mentioned earlier how kinship is managed empathy. Christianity is in the same business also of managing empathy. Am I right about that?

I suppose so, if you want to be reductive. One first has to tap into or orient oneself towards the source of love, which is God. It requires belief and commitment. That is why I do not have much hope in science to save us with its skeptical stance.

Yes, that is the rub. In order to get there, we need to believe, which is not a scientific predisposition! When you begin to believe, social scientists think you lose objectivity, the ability to measure and determine cause and effect.

Yes, but didn't that go out with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle? To love one has to be a subject in both its meanings as agent and object. There is no other way! Modern life has tried to ignore and deny the relevance of our so-called irrational feelings, to our detriment. Without knowing and owning our feelings we become easily manipulated by the powers that be. At worst we become terrorized!

To express and communicate feelings requires some order, some stability. That is why we have the Law, that is why we have kinship, with all its rules. It is also why China is obsessed with maintaining order to the detriment of indivdiual human rights.

You could make that argument. The church is very much in the business of trying to restore our feelings, our love for one another. Anyway, here's the train station. As I have said, I have enjoyed all this. Thanks for making the effort to meet up again after all these years!

Its been my pleasure, Nort. Let's continue this conversation. There is a lot we can say about love from the anthropological and theological perspectives, and also the personal! Let's email!

Definitely! Take care, Tad!

Thanks for the lift!

Walk Home

What is this Christian virtue love? It seems to be at the core of the faith and yet who is talking about it? Who is practicing it? Is the church feeling it?

You're asking me if my congregation feels it? I would say a little. Wherever you have people come together in a common worship there has to be some love. Some feel it more than others. But church is no love fest, nor should it be.

Why not? Why can't we all be madly in love with each other! Isn't that what the kindom of God is supposed to be, a love fest?

You make the kingdom sound like some 60's orgy. You and I both grew up at the tail end of the sixties. You know that did not work!

It didn't work because the state didn't tolerate it. Too much free love can undermine commerce and our willingness to go kill someone we don't know halfway around the world.

A typical sixties mentality to blame everything on "the system!" I am sure that there were other reasons, too, internal to the movement. Such profligacy cannot be sustained. There is love, but there is also the Law. All behavior has to circumscribed in some way, otherwise it would be sheer mayhem, the rule of the strongest, might making right. The individual ego has to be checked, otherwise it thinks itself divine.

Love and the law, can they be ever reconciled?

Of course they can! Within the law, marriage, great love is possible.

This woman I fell madly in love with was married! So much for the law! It created tremendous tension in myself but I could not help it. It was too good. It did not last, probably because of the law. Why wouldn't God be one hundred percent behind any love affair? I truly felt I was living in the kingdom.

You said yourself you lost touch with God at that time.

Because of the law! I was making a choice and hoping for forgiveness afterwards.

Having your cake and eating it too!

I remember clearly it was a decision. The honest thing for me to do was to act on my desire, my passion.

That's okay! We are allowed to make mistakes. We have a forgiving God. After Jenny left I felt a real loss. I realized how much I loved her, perhaps too much. It was too much about my need to love and be loved. Perhaps I wasn't paying enough attention to God and to her. I thought I was. I was a good minister, after all, doing my duty. I became totally dependent on her! She became my crutch. I am sure she found that wearing. Now I am being asked to walk on my own two feet.

So, how is it going?

It is hard, but I am finding tremendous solace in Jesus Christ. He has become the focus of my passion and desire, and is transforming it. I see now that desire misplaced is sin. The Buddhists certainly see it in that way. Jesus takes that inordinate desire upon himself, dies with it, and rises up liberating us from infatuation in order to love more freely and indiscriminately.

An interesting theology, Nort! Here is my hotel. Thank you for walking with me. I really enjoyed this conversation. Indeed, it has been truly revelatory! I have not really had the opportunity to talk about all these things before. Thank you!

I feel the same way, Tad! Thank you for looking me up and dropping by. You came at the right moment. This conversation definitely needs to be continued.

It most certainly will! Good night Nort.

Good night, Tad!

Coffee

Did I mention earlier how much I enjoy travelling? I Guess I have a wanderlust! I love seeing and meeting strangers. I love the anonymity of foreign travel. I enjoy stepping out and leaving the past behind. Have you read Bruce Chatwin's Songlines?

Yes, a long time ago. It is about his travels in the Australian Outback among the Aborigines. Their myths, or songs, were their continental road maps.

Yes, that's right. Chatwin believed that humans by nature were wanderers. He based it simply on the fact that the human species has lived a migratory life for a million years and only 10,000 years as settled farmers.

To wander is in our genes.

That's what he would say, I suppose. The journey gives us a sense of purpose, like riding on a train, we are going somewhere, in some direction, to some destination. If we are born walkers then walking fulfills our nature. It makes us feel good!

Does the final destination matter?

Does it matter where we are going? The Trobriand Islanders traveled in open boats across seas to trade economically worthless necklaces and bracelets. The Polynesians were even greater seafarers crossing thousands of miles of open sea. Tell me what material factors pull a person one thousand miles across open ocean? To journey in space is to be part of that space. To sail the sea you become part of the sea, something bigger than yourself.

A theologian wrote once that all of human knowledge is only a small island in a vast ocean of unknown mystery. To sail on that sea is to be part of that mystery, to be developed and be defined by it.

Humans are both distinct from the mystery and yet also part of it. Our minds are open to the unknown and therefore can't but be shaped by it. We even give it a name, either "God" or "The Void." Does it matter which?

I think it does matter. "God" is a more personal term then "The Void." It helps to define us as persons in relation to it and not in distinction from it. It allows for love, that sublime interpersonal feeling. The journey is not something one does alone but with others. We do not walk alone. That covenantal relationship is a important dimension of Christian life. We are social beings after all.

The Confucian virtue ren is translated as "benevolence," but also "love." The character itself is a clue to its meaning, a combination of the characters for "human" and the number "two."

"Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them."

Yes. Are you feeling it?

Ha! It has been hard to feel love for anyone since Jenny has gone. It is as if she took it away with her!

You feel nothing at all?

No, no, I am not a stone! I have received a lot of sympathy from friends and my congregation, many whom I consider my friends. However the emotional intensity of an intimate relationship is gone. Is that good or bad, I wonder? Should I have had that strong a desire for any one person or thing? I feel now I am going through an addiction withdrawal. Was I an addict? It is very strange! I fully understand why people hook up on the rebound. They need to continue that emotional intensity, both to love and be loved.

One reason I did not become ordained after seminary is because I fell deeply in love and I found in that relationship everything I was looking for in religion. It was a beautiful moment, love freely exchanged. We were in a world of our own, like heaven, the garden, or the kingdom, choose your metaphor. I never understood Christianity better than at that time, but strangely I lost touch with God. The human relationship was all consuming. Where did God fit in? My lover was not religious. It set me on an entirely different track, until now. Heh, it is getting late. I am enjoying this but it will have to be continued another time. I have a big day tomorrow.

By all means, lets call it a day. I'll walk you to your hotel.

Good enough.