The Pub Fall 2009

Wheaton’s Unofficial Undergraduate Journal

the pub

My American Childhood Naming God: Feminine Predication of God Why Gay Marriage is an Issue of Rights, Not of Morality “Are We Dreaming?”

A Reflection on Wendell Berry’s The Unsettling of America Volume

Volume 4, Issue 1 Fall 2008

the pub Thoughts from the Editor

What I wasn’t mature enough to assert in junior high is that all learning begins with a question. The author of James writes, “You do not have, because you do not ask” (4:2). This may refer to material possessions, but doesn’t it also apply to knowledge? What understanding do we lack because we’ve been afraid to ask difficult questions? It is fear that keeps us from asking questions: fear of seeming ignorant and fear of having our paradigms challenged. Honest inquiry is an act of humility; it is an acknowledgement of limitations, and for that reason, it is a uniquely Christian calling.

Asking questions is The Pub’s business. The Pub was born out of the question, “Why isn’t there a student publication at Wheaton that represents more academic thought?” And ever since that first question was asked, our staff and writers have been working together to explore the answers to whatever questions come our way. The Pub exists because questions exist.

You, our readers, play an important role in this quest to question. We have no purpose unless you vocalize your curiosities, doubts, and confusion. We’ve made your participation as easy as possible by including the email address of each contributor to this issue at the bottom of each piece; ask them questions about what they’ve written. And, on behalf of the staff, I want to invite you to send us feedback about this issue—questions about the goals of The Pub or about any of the material within these pages.

Together, let’s humbly acknowledge our inability to know all the answers by seeking to find some of them. It would be terrible to lose our “holy curiosity,” but it would be even worse to waste it.

As soon as I could talk, it became apparent that

I was an inquisitive child. My mom recalls that on days when both of our family cars needed to be driven home from church, she deliberately chose to drive the car without my car seat in it, just so she could have a few minutes of rest from my endless questions. Yet even if it made them weary at times, my parents always encouraged my insatiable curiosity.

But at some point during junior high, I learned that asking questions wasn’t “cool.”

When I raised my hand in class, my peers rolled their eyes; when I asked them to explain their innuendos at lunch, I was teased. I began to believe that there is such a thing as a stupid question, and I grew uncharacteristically silent.

“The important thing is not to stop questioning,” Einstein said, “Never lose a holy curiosity.” I hadn’t lost my “holy curiosity,” but I had stopped asking the questions that gave it value. Rather than learning from those around me, I satisfied my nagging curiosities with whatever I could find in the pages of a book, and, in some cases, I became content to remain ignorant altogether. My learning became an independent process, and I carried these individualistic habits with me all the way to college.

At Wheaton I’ve witnessed peers and professors boldly inquire into difficult issues, and I’ve taken part in those inquiries. But I’ve also sat in countless classes where the professor’s question, “Does anyone have any questions?” goes unanswered. I’ve endured the torment of class “discussions” where no one speaks.

I’m guilty of letting my questions go unasked in these settings, and after three full years here, I’m beginning to realize what I’ve been missing.

Elise Bremer Editor-in-Chief

Special Thanks:

We would like to give special thanks to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, General Casualty, Student Government, and Dr. and Mrs. Steven Loomis for their generous support; to our faculty advisor, Dr. Read Schuchardt, for his counsel; and to the staff of the SAO for all their help.

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[content]

the pub [narrative] 5, 10 My American Childhood O Nata Lux

Alexa Adams Elizabeth Graves

[poem] 3, 4, 33, 38, 48 Rome The Breakneck Boys Ghiberti’s Creation Panel, Front and Back Moonlight on Scaffolding Ad-libs from a Poem on Pentecostal Living

Amanda Miller Amanda Miller Laura McClain Jane Beal Joe McHale

[essay] 14, 18, 28, 34 Naming God: Feminine Predication of God Why Gay Marriage is an Issue of Rights, Not of Morality Christians in the Axis of Grace Fulfilling Heroic Myths

Landon DePasquale Christopher Smith Gary M. Burge Alicia M. Cohn

[image] 22 “Are We Dreaming?”

Amy Coles

[review] 39, 43, 45 A Reflection on Wendell Berry’s The Unsettling of America Indie Music is Singing You a Love Song Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham and the Case for Bollywood

Jana Papp Nikolai Tomlinavich Julia Stanton

Cover Photo: The Writing on the Wall 2008 by Dr. John Walford Dr. John Walford is Professor of Art History at Wheaton College. He has a small book on his photography forthcoming entitled, An Art Historian's Sideways Glance, Carlisle: Piquant Press, 2009.

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the pub

Rome Amanda Miller Rome, casually felled in an afternoon, pages 78-323, Jewel of the West, original toga party – (Well, boys, we had a good run?) & all the girls with their shiny gems & silky hems & flowers in their hair... regret-me-nots [a slip?]

– no, thank you; not necessary, thank you; things are quite opaque, thank you; Pass the last of the wine (if you’d be so kind) all [Good.] things must end I say, The city is burning! You say, for-king-and-country /or/ could-be-worse /or / Hell / & a shrug (Or, you may go down in blood-and-flames, of course – if so compelled.)

Odoacer? they say. You must be joking.

(Another cigar?)

Don’t worry.

Friend – Noble? – Countryman – [No, that’s not right...]

They’ll all write things about us.

Brother – [No.] This, sweetheart, (over last of Roman wine,) will look better on paper. will all be over soon. will [if it’s cool with the gods] put us in purgatory around 6:30 EST.

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[poem]

The Breakneck Boys Amanda Miller prettily-lit & laced with that wealthy haze insinuating older gentlemen (aged less by trial than by trouser-ironing better halves) practiced in rain-based exchanges of words an hour here or there in rooms kept safe barred from the breakneck boys by the legitimate sons however dumb (however deaf) in letter jackets linens & ties crafted for the occasion crowded ’round listening carefully for oceans in shells hallowed out for the purpose of being easily swayed

Amanda Miller is a senior Theasethicism major (an IDS invention: philosophy + theatre) from West Point, NE. Her important 1994 research in the field of magnetics earned her the prestigious first prize at her 2nd grade science fair. Amanda.Miller@my.wheaton.edu

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the pub

My American Childhood

way it shaped my own mother.

Alexa Adams

This is what I do know: My mom always burnt the toast. Most dinners growing up were I barely know my mother. I’ve lived with her accompanied by some kind of bread: rolls, for twenty-one years and know nothing of garlic toast, French bread, and without fail my where she comes from. Her mother, born and mom burnt all or some portion of it. Sometimes raised in Honduras, died from cancer six years the damage was all consuming and we’d have before I was born. My mom was twenty-two. to throw it all in the garbage after soaking it After my mom’s mother died, my grandfather under the faucet to ensure none of the paper remarried Mary. She is a petite, white-haired towels or old receipts in the trash caught fire.

But if the damage wasn’t woman with cataracts and too severe, she would pull racist inclinations. She I’ve seen the way the bread out of the oven doesn’t talk much and my mother has or toaster, carefully scrape loves Higgins Glass. She’s always tripping over shoes raised us, and it has the burnt edges into the sink, and spread some on the floor or roots in the been nothing short butter on what was left in grass and is afraid to drive out of the two-mile radius of American with no an attempt to cover up that familiar, burnt after-taste. surrounding their eastern semblances of the We became trained to head Michigan condominium.

She is nothing like my own Latin American culture for the kitchen to eat when we heard that rough sound mother and I’m guessing I expect to have been of steel knives against hard she’s nothing like my mom’s mom was either. passed down from her bread. She was Pavlov and we were her dogs.

I’ve heard my mom’s vague mother.

My mom is a pretty and fading memories of good cook now. Two her mother, about the way she muttered in Spanish when she got angry Thanksgivings ago, I had something of a and how she came alive at parties. I’ve seen the domestic crisis when, in helping make dinner way my mother has raised us, and it has been with the women, I realized how little I knew about nothing short of American with no semblances cooking. My future kids’ lives flashed before my of the Latin American culture I expect to have eyes, lives marked by Kraft macaroni and cheese been passed down from her mother. Beyond rare and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at every murmurings and one tumultuous story involving meal. I realized that I would probably have to my great-grandfather’s banana plantation, throw a little bit of their college educations away embezzlement, a stolen safe, and a hit man with every white, origami box of Chinese takenamed Conrado, I don’t know anything of my out. Aware of the risks involved, my mom put grandmother’s life in Central America or the me on dessert duty. I read the directions and

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[narrative] still managed to put egg yokes instead of whites in the crème brulee, two cups of water instead of milk. After some minor harassment from my relatives about what was a sensitive subject to begin with, I slipped out of the kitchen so no one would see me crying. She gave me a few minutes alone, but eventually, as expected, my mom leaned her head into the doorway of our family room and came to sit down beside me on the couch. “Come finish the dessert. Chase will help you.” But I was unyielding. My stubbornness was the only power I had left over my defeat and so I chose to sulk on the couch instead. “Okay, if you won’t finish it that’s fine. I can ask Chase to do it, but at least come help with the salad.

No one’s tossed the salad together yet.” I took five more minutes to stick it to that crème brulee before I walked back to the kitchen to toss our Thanksgiving salad.

Eventually we caught on to my mom’s negligent toasting and once we did we teased her mercilessly: “Good thing our mouths have built up a tolerance to flames!” or “Now we won’t have to lick the oven anymore to get that ‘smoked’ taste.” She euphemized her problem by calling it “smoked” as though it were purposeful, like a good cheese or salmon. We weren’t all mean though. When she succeeded at toasting bread we praised her over-enthusiastically, like the troublemaking kid who gets smothered with affirmation when he does something good for a change. But amid our grumbling and backhanded praise she never complained. She never objected that she was being underappreciated or that we should live a day in her shoes before we attacked her for trying her best to do it. She simply laughed.

She kept toasting bread, shrugged her shoulders when it burned, and crossed her fingers that next time she’d get it right, even though she hardly

ever did.

I know that my mother has a rosary she keeps in her underwear drawer buried beneath rolls of coupled socks and a bag of potpourri. She converted from Catholicism sometime in college.

We attend a contemporary, nondenominational church now, one decidedly lacking ritual, tradition, and weekend communion. Whenever we complained about being bored or not wanting to go on a Sunday morning, she would give us a short rebuttal about how lucky we were not to have to go to mass. Otherwise, she never talked about Catholicism, and I have never known it myself. It was the faith her mother and father had given her.

I used to spend one week every summer with Gree, my grandmother on my dad’s side.

She lived in Traverse City, a small, forested town in northern Michigan. Her apartment building backed up to Little Traverse Bay. We spent the week the same way every summer—in her paddle boat on the water, circling the bay endlessly, crossing from one shore to the other until there was no daylight left to see by and no more conversation left between the two of us. Every week ended with another showing of Treasure Island on her small, boxy television and a bag of Fritos with Cheez Whiz and 7Up to share.

One summer my other set of grandparents caught wind of my weeklong getaways up north and got jealous. So I was bound to a weekend in Sparta. Considering the fact that most of my cousins on my mom’s side are significantly older than me, my grandparents were a little out of season with young grandkids. I spent three days building towers out of poker chips on the thick, salmon colored carpet in their living room while

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the pub my grandpa went golfing and Mary played room and thoughtfully fondle toy cars, the lamps bingo at the local senior center. The weekend set out on the coffee table, stacks of boys’ shorts, ended with Sunday mass. I sat through the and Beanie Babies with the crucified Jesus at service bored and confused by all the standing the end of the rosary always brushing across my and kneeling and recitation I didn’t know and t-shirt as I made my purchases. My mom usually couldn’t follow. As I approached the table to take walked in on our make believe and patiently the bread and wine, my head bowed and hands explained the purpose of the rosary, that it was extended like everyone else, I began to weep. I designed for prayer, that the beads themselves had been fighting tears the whole service, not were meant to be fondled between my fingers sure why I was getting so upset. Finally, watching with the same earnestness I showed running my my grandfather ingest hands over the plastic the body of Jesus Christ, wheels of those matchbox My mom’s dad was seeing him place the cars or the covers of my a mix of English and thin, flesh colored wafer dad’s novels arranged on on his outstretched Scottish, but my mom’s the floor. I was to touch tongue and draw it into the necklace and thank mom was not, and that Jesus for my daily bread himself and swallow, became too much. makes my mother half and his continual grace The whole thing was towards me. My mother Honduran.

You’d never horrifying. So I cried, is no longer Catholic, but and as I did I was not know it looking at her. her patient reverence for comforted but hushed the peach colored beads instead. My grandfather and tarnished cross has told me I had to be quieter in church, to control persisted. Day after day my brothers and I would myself, to take the body and sit back down in the wake up and set up shop in our family room, pew silently. But I could not stop. Eventually, my carefully laying out knick-knacks we thought grandparents ushered me out of the sanctuary would be of interest to wealthy people. My to sit out in the parking lot until my mom pulled “rich lady” ensemble never seemed right to me up to take me back. without that rosary around my neck and I knew That same summer I found my mother’s right where my mother kept it. Day after day rosary beneath the potpourri and draped it she walked in after allowing us a half hour of around my neck. The long strand of beads play before she would lift her sacred beads from leading to Jesus hung down past the waistband around my neck. She never scolded or shushed of my shorts. I would wrap myself in my mom’s me outside to sit on our driveway and think about oversized bathrobe, don a pair of high heels, how I had treated the crucified Jesus, about how make long fingernails out of masking tape, I had spoiled his body and blood. Instead, she and my brothers and I would imagine with would just explain once more the tenderness he our toy cash register. I would swagger into the deserved before putting the necklace back in her department store that was formerly our family drawer again.

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[narrative]

me who were born with dark features, we look Anglo-Saxon. My brothers burn easily in the sun and have my mom’s hair. My mother and I can hold a conversation in Español with the little we both learned in introductory Spanish, and in high school I eventually opted for French as my language of choice. My seventeen-yearold brother has done the same. The only proof at home of our Central American ancestry is one picture of a man who is supposedly my great-grandfather, dressed in khaki and wearing a safari hat in front of rows and rows of banana trees. It used to hang in my dad’s office at our old house, but I don’t know what happened to it since we moved five years ago.

I recently started going to Zumba, an aerobics class here on campus that incorporates Latin dance into a work out. For an hour we listen to Latin music sung in a language I don’t understand and that I usually think is too loud.

A passionate Brazilian woman closes her eyes and follows the music while we try to follow her.

She tells us that to salsa properly all movement should come from the hips. My roommate laughs every time she glances back and sees how stiff and uncomfortable I look when I really try to move the way the instructor tells me to.

I am middle-class America. I ate toasted bread at every meal and thought mass involved plastic coins and toys. While my mother gave us an idyllic childhood, in many ways I’m uncomfortable with it. I feel a loss when I spend an hour every week in a stuffy dance room behind the pool in the sports center of a college in Wheaton, Illinois and I still cannot move my hips like I should. I’m uncomfortable realizing how well I fit in with forty other middle class American intellectuals who don’t know how to move like that either. I never met my

My mom’s dad was a mix of English and Scottish, but my mom’s mom was not, and that makes my mother half Honduran. You’d never know it looking at her. She highlights her lightbrown hair blond. It’s stick-straight, thin, and goes flat in the Michigan humidity or right before it rains. She’s not very curvy or vivacious. She doesn’t know how to salsa dance or do the chacha, and none of her siblings do either. Her oldest brother lives in Newport Beach, California. He’s a lawyer and loves wearing linen and eating fish tacos from the seafood restaurant on the pier.

Two of my uncles live in Newaygo, Michigan.

Bob lives humbly. He’s a painter by trade but his own home’s white paint is peeling. I’m not sure how Ron makes a living in farm country, but I do know he perms his thinning grey hair, achieving something of an Albert Einstein coiffure with oversized, coke-bottle glasses he’s had since the sixties. And her sister, Beck, lives in Middleville.

The town’s name is self-explanatory. She’s a second grade teacher with two boys of her own and a stepson. She’s perhaps the closest to what my grandmother was like as far as “curves” and “vivacity” go, but any guess is mostly formed by stereotypes rather than real understanding of my grandmother.

We are a Midwestern family. We live in a nice house in the suburbs of Detroit. It’s decorated with something along the lines of French décor –there are 27 rooster furnishings scattered throughout the rooms of our home last I counted—and we have a big, hairy dog named Ellie. We grew up reading Roald Dahl and taking swim lessons at the local pool. I’ve had the same shoe size since fifth grade—size 10. I was gangly and flat-chested until I was sixteen and I still don’t have hips. Aside from a few cousins and

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the pub mom’s mother, but I wonder if she would have me a quarter Honduran. I like to think that I’m purposely moved the way I wish I didn’t because among “my people” when I go to Zumba, but she wanted to fall away, go unnoticed in a room I’m not. When I’m there, I find myself wishing of forty young Americans trying to dance salsa. I grew up with merengue music playing in the I wonder how much of our background while my mom separate identities have I wonder how much vacuumed the living room. I been sacrificed at the mercy wish that I could have seen of our separate of American oneness. I my mom doing the chawonder if I have known identities have been cha over to the fridge to get an American childhood another tomato every night sacrificed at the because my grandmother around dinner, or that she mercy of American made sure my mom knew grumbled in Spanish when one too. oneness. I wonder she got mad at us like her However American my mom sometimes did with if I have known an family seems, I’ve heard that her. But I’m sure that when I my mother grew up with American childhood look at my mother I’m seeing a Latin-American mother some of her mother’s good because my who spoke Spanish when nature and tolerance in her. It she got angry and whose grandmother made is for these things that I love personality sparked in large her. I’m sure we’re growing social settings. And I now sure my mom knew up the way my mother grew know a mother who burns up, the way her mother raised one too. the toast faithfully and who her in Sparta, Michigan. And still reveres the tokens of while I see nothing of what I a faith she lost with her mother. I never heard imagine or wish my grandmother to have been my grandmother’s story or saw her dark hair, like in my mother, I do know that my mother brown eyes, olive skin, but I’ve seen the way my burnt the toast when we were young, but kept mom has raised us and have to wonder if my making it. She keeps a rosary in her sock drawer, grandmother would have been any different shows more grace to my brothers and me than than my own mother is now. we deserve, and that she had a mother born and raised in Honduras.

My mother is half Honduran which makes

Alexa Adams is a senior English Writing major from Bingham Farms, MI. She wrote this essay after reading Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood. Alexa.Adams@my.wheaton.edu

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[narrative]

O Nata Lux Elizabeth Graves “Your sacred cities have become a desert; Even Zion is a desert, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and glorious temple, where our fathers praised you, has been burned with fire, and all that we treasured lies in ruins.”

-Isaiah 64:10-11

The first time I remember stepping foot inside a cathedral, the incense burned my eyes.

“Why’s it smell so funny?” Joe asked me.

I blinked a few times, trying to wash out the stinging scent and restore my sight. On the bus ride over, Mrs. Bauchspies had told us girls to bring sweaters because we weren’t allowed to go inside Église de Charolles with our shoulders uncovered.

“But it’s 98 degrees outside!” we had said.

It didn’t matter that we had to wear uniforms at our Christian high school, that we were used to long sleeves and skirts past our knees—we still put up a fuss. She’d said something about reverence and history and other things we didn’t hear. Even at school we would roll the belts of our skirts up, lifting them higher on our thighs, trying to be grown up and sexy. She sighed.

When I walked through the heavy doors that day, my feet tapped stones shaped by the thousands, maybe millions that had come before me. I shivered. It may have been the hottest French summer of the decade, but the stones still trapped the coldness of the dusty earth, and I buttoned my cardigan. Our group had fallen silent, everyone tipping their heads back to look up, lips yawning apart. Above us, angels danced in the cracked frescoes.

“A heavenly disco,” Joe whispered loudly, elbowing me and pantomiming his idea of an angelic Macarena.

“Good one, Joe,” I rolled my eyes.

I looked around. A few people dotted the pews. They wore dark colors, blending into the musty darkness of the cathedral.

“Who turned out the lights?” I whispered to myself.

Some candles burned on the sides of the church, and some burned on the altar. Light echoed on the cathedral walls and floors, bleeding through windows of Moses receiving the Law, Jacob wrestling God, Saul’s conversion, the apostles, Mary holding Christ, Peter’s confession of the Lord. Shadows stretched onto the floor from the rafters.

“This way, this way,” said our French host, ushering me back into darkness and toward a door at the front of the cathedral.

She herded us past marble columns, sculpted tree trunks that held up the heavens. Reliefs showed us heroes of the faith, chilled faces carved into the memories of the congregants.

They stared at passerbys; I avoided eye contact.

We went through a small doorway that led to a building adjacent to the sanctuary.

“You can warm up here,” said our host.

I squinted—the afternoon light winked back at me through large clear windows, contrasting with the eerie darkness of the sanctuary.

Before warming our voices, we changed into our concert clothes—black silk dresses for the four altos and four sopranos, black and white

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the pub tuxedos for the four tenors and four basses.

For the first time in our year of performing as a group, I didn’t feel overdressed. We matched our setting, and our attire suggested reverence for its Catholic past.

Truth be told, we were Protestants. We went to a Christian school where we held chapel services in a large gymnasium. We sung choruses with childish hand motions and timed whooping. We used electric instruments and had discarded the liturgy of the past, carving our own from experience and preference. We sat in plastic chairs with the lines of a basketball court beneath us. Here in Église de Charolles, martyrs lined the floors with their graves. The somber setting filled me with awe and made me wonder— should we be mourning something?

at the front of the church, and yet it was hard to see anything clearly in the cathedral. We sang, “O nata lux de lumine, / Jesu redemptor saeculi,” and I wondered if all the congregations in Europe lit their cathedrals like this one.

The dead wood of the pews smelt of varnish, and our listeners had scattered themselves on the hard seats. When we’d first entered the sanctuary, I had wanted to stomp and clap as loudly as I could to test and stretch the echo. I thought of our gymnasium, packed with disinterested students and eager parents. We had brought some of our biggest fans with us on our European tour, and they crowded into the first two rows of the church. Yet the rest of our audience barely filled the cavern with the reverberations of life, their half-hearted applause echoing the Before the concert began, we made a semi- emptiness of the cathedral. We sang, “Dignatus circle in front of the altar. Candles made me es pro perditis,” and I wondered, where were the squint at the crucifix French worshipers? in the dark space, The wooden Light of the French martyrs lined reminding me of a the church walls, while World rested in His place tombstones tiled the fifth grade field trip.

We had gone into the at the front of the church, floor and caskets held depths of the earth local saints. I tried to see stalactites and and yet it was hard to see not to step forward or stalagmites, limestone backward, fearing that anything clearly in the fangs within a cave. The my feet might rattle the cathedral. rocks had dripped. Our bones of those beneath. guide had turned out The church was filled the lights so we could feel darkness. I had waved with American tourists and the dead. History my hand in front of my face and saw nothing. had lived and died in this cathedral.

After the cave excursion, my class had made Even the Latin, the language of the Church candles. We had slowly dropped our strings into had died. We sang, “Nos membra confer effici / Tui a vat of blue wax hundreds of times until the beati corporis,” yet I did not know what the words residue stuck. I now wondered if the glow of that meant. What did it mean to be part of Christ’s candle in the darkness of the cave would have body? Would we, too, have to die martyr deaths felt like the candles in this empty church. The with these local saints? What about the shrinking wooden Light of the World rested in His place congregation of this church? Latin felt foreign

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[narrative] as death itself to me, as did the Catholic liturgy St. Michael, destroying with it the remnants of we had spoken at Mass the day before. Here, it medieval Christianity. The wooden vaulting fell seemed that Catholicism, too, had become part first, as the roof collapsed inward. Then, the of what had always been done, what had always hand-carved sandstone columns fell on their sides been, unmoving, unchanged; it had become and crumbled into pieces. Colored glass blew its own liturgy. The out of stone window marble floors in this frames.

Walking Who prayed before their cathedral had once through the cathedral seemed to make its graves, who prayed before over fifty years later, foundation secure, and I half expected to Christ at the altar, who lit so the dead took refuge crunch glass beneath candles in memoriam? I my sneakers. in its strength. Yet who remembered them dust rose could count all the locals fromThe now? Who prayed the floor of the on my fingers. before their graves, toppled monument as who prayed before my feet led me through Christ at the altar, who ruin. Fire had eaten lit candles in memoriam? I could count all the through flying buttresses and frescoes, saints locals on my fingers. At the end of the concert, and tradition. The memory of the destruction I found myself searching for light switches to of this open air cathedral hung above me. A flick upwards with two fingers, to illuminate light rain wet my face. I looked up, and suddenly the dark spaces of the cathedral. What hid in all of England became enclosed in Coventry’s the shadows? I expected a bat to fly out from fluid walls; all of Europe burned in its memorial some unnoticed corner of the church, his wings flames. I scanned the area and noticed most of fluttering around my face and close to my eyes, those present were tourists with cameras and and the panicked thought momentarily blinded tennis shoes. Not one local sat in dust and ash to me. I wanted to light every candle, to burn the mourn. The church had died, and I could find place with fire—anything to bring back life. no grave stone.

No one could see Christ on the altar. Instead, Yet I noticed a new cathedral across I turned quickly and ran through the dark to the sidewalk. Its builders named the 1960s catch the coach bus. construction an “act of faith”: the faith to

build new walls of sandstone, modern columns, Years later, I entered a second cathedral, colored glass filled with the light of the Holy and this time my eyes burned from the memory Spirit. I peeped inside. The sanctuary held as of thick smoke and charred remains. I had few parishioners as Église de Charolles, filling come to England to study, and as part of our barely a quarter of its space, but its very presence education, the director had decided to take us renewed hope. to Coventry Cathedral—or what was left of it.

The foundation of the new cathedral lay The Nazis had bombed all of Coventry in World in the faith of its dean. After the bombing had War II, refusing to spare even the Cathedral of ceased, he had picked through the remains.

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the pub He had touched the embers, mourning their heat and light, grimacing at the cracked pillars, jagged panes and open graves. He had found two blackened pieces of wood among the rubble and had held them in his soot-covered palms—“were they once pews or rafters?” he had wondered. He looked up, noting the light; ironically, the Nazis had chased away the shadows. Then he had tilted them perpendicular to each other and had bound them together, putting them in the altar’s place. Then he had squatted and inscribed the sand with the words “Father, forgive.”

I blinked the new light of day as I left on the coach. The director’s microphone bellowed

instructions for our next stop while I sat quiet in my seat. Coventry had been the first cathedral built since the Reformation that had received global attention. As journalist David Douglas put it, “The world peered over his shoulder to see what green shoots could [be] coax[ed] from the ashes.” Memories of each cathedral played through my mind. Caves and skies mixed in a jumble of dark and light. I thought of basketball courts and stained glass, candles and microphones. Below the noise of the loudspeaker and the chatter of companions, I found myself repeating and repeating again, “Father, forgive us all.”

Elizabeth Graves is a senior English Writing major from Stevensville, MD. She attends Church of the Resurrection and finds it to be the perfect mix of tradition and life. Liz.Graves@my.wheaton.edu

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[essay]

Naming God: Feminine Predication of God

who and what God is. It is true that any physical metaphor of God falls short, since God is a nonphysical being.1 God, properly speaking, has no body and is made of no material; He is spirit.

Landon DePasquale He has no shape or weight; He is sublime.

This is often forgotten as we speak and think of God. We often take physical metaphors of Language is admittedly imperfect. Nowhere are God as being literally true. Nowhere is this more the limitations of language more pronounced prevalent than with gendered names for God. than when speaking of God. Our language for Typically, thoughts about gendered names for God is a peculiar thing indeed, since we are forced God congregate at the two extremes. Either: to use language to describe someone utterly God is a man because the Bible says so or God ineffable. Our finite language, and even our is the Divine Feminine within us all. There is, finite knowledge, always falls short of the infinite however, a third way, a via media, in which one reality of God. Even such direct revelations as may properly name and conceive of God in the Tetragrammaton – the revealed, most holy the feminine without falling into the new-age, name of God – is not without its limit. Simply politically correct heterodoxy that plagues put, our language fails to capture the entirety of certain modern streams of thought. There are God. two primary reasons why the orthodox Christian This is not to say that our words for God would refer to God in the feminine: one is the have no meaning. Holy Scripture repeatedly affirmation of the feminine metaphors and describes God not only in names, but also in descriptions of God in Holy Scripture, and metaphors to help convey truths about God. another is God’s non-bodily nature. There are Some metaphors are much closer to what God also some cautions the Christian would face in is like while others are more embracing such language. of a stretch. “Lion of Zion” There are many We often take is meant to covey a truth neglected descriptions of about God, but is clearly not physical metaphors God in feminine terms meant to claim that God is found in Holy Scripture. of God as being literally a large carnivorous Christ says: “Jerusalem, literally true. cat. Other metaphors are Jerusalem, you who kill the closer to what God is like, Nowhere is this more prophets and stone those such as light; in the Creed we to you, how many prevalent than with sent say “God from God, Light times I yearned to gather from Light, true God from gendered names for your children together, as true God.” While light may a hen gathers her young God. be closer to what God is like under her wings, but you in that it is immaterial and were unwilling!”2 and Isaiah the source of illumination in the world, more records God saying: “I have looked away, and similar than a lion, it still fails to fully encapsulate kept silence, I have said nothing, holding myself

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the pub in; But now, I cry out as a woman in labor, stems from God’s Nature. God is not physical, gasping and panting.”3 There is also the allegory so any physical description of God is metaphor. of Wisdom in Proverbs 8: “Does not Wisdom Since God is not the kind of being that has a call, and Understanding raise her voice? ‘The body, properly speaking He is not gendered; LORD begot me [Wisdom], the first-born of He is neither male nor female because such a his ways, the forerunner of being cannot be sexed.5 his prodigies of long ago; That is not to say that God As we restrict From of old I was poured lacks gender or is in any the names and forth, at the first, before way deficient. As Genesis 4 the earth.’” These verses states: “God created metaphors we use all use female metaphors man in His image; in the for God, we not only divine image He created to describe God, to show characteristics of God restrict our knowledge him; male and female He that are more feminine in created them.”6 Rather, of God, we run the nature. They don’t purport God is supra-gendered; to show that God is a He contains both genders risk of thinking that woman any more than the while simultaneously our words describe transcending both. He lion metaphor claims God is a cat. They serve to show God as He actually is not confined to a truths about God through bodily gender; He is, a danger akin to finite analogical imagery. These supersedes gender, just like metaphors are key to a He supersedes the physical idolatry. fuller understanding of metaphor of the lion or who God is. of light. In this case, it Any time we neglect a metaphor or seems proper that one would use both gender description of God, we allow our conception of pronouns in describing God, since He really God to overrule who He has revealed himself to is not bound by either gender. This includes be. As we restrict the names and metaphors we using feminine pronouns for God (she, her) and use for God, we not only restrict our knowledge feminine names for God (mother, woman). This of God, we run the risk of thinking that our idea enjoys support in the Christian Tradition words describe God as He actually is, a danger in the works of Pseudo-Dionysius, who lays akin to idolatry. For any human to believe that the foundation for this theory of analogical her language truly or completely describes God language and how it functions for the Christian. is for that human to do violence to the Infinite, In addition, Hildegard von Bingen and Julian of to reduce it to some finite idea. For this reason, Norwich both use female pronouns to describe feminine metaphors and descriptions of God God and some of His more feminine attributes. should be used to affirm a more full view of who It is important to note what I am not saying.

God is.

This is not an appeal to neo-paganism or a The second reason for feminine naming return to any feminine cult. I am also not saying

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[essay] that this should be done to be politically correct. Further, the formula Father, Son, and Holy I am not trying to sanitize God or His names to Spirit reveals particular relational truths about appeal to some misguided sense of plurality. I the Triune God. The relation of the begotten am not suggesting that feminine names be used Son to the Father as First Cause should not be in a liturgical setting. For those of us who use the underestimated. liturgy in a worship setting, the purpose is to call While arguing that God should be named Christians to communal worship by connecting in the feminine may seem like an ivory tower, with the Tradition of the Church. The liturgy abstract argument for something that seems is not about new ways of worshiping, but is a utterly insignificant for the Christian life, nothing means of standing in the stream of Tradition could be further from the truth. Using feminine handed down by the Church. Any change made names is an important part of one’s devotional to the liturgy should be done with the greatest of life. Just as with other limited metaphors that care, in the community by the guidance of the are contrary, using masculine and feminine Holy Spirit, to greater reflect the Tradition of language for God opens up the Christian to the Church. the tension inherent in human language and Finally, this is not an invitation, nor an thoughts of God. This tension is not something excuse, to reformulate the Trinity. The Trinity to be put off or ignored but to be embraced. By is a particular revelation allowing tension between of one of the sublime gendered names, ...using masculine and different mysteries of the Godhead. the Christian is forced feminine language The Tradition of the to remember the nonChurch has sufficiently for God opens up the gendered, supra-gendered established that the Trinity nature of God. is a set dogma and not a Christian to the tension Furthermore, it allows theology to be changed Her to directly inform us inherent in human or reconstituted. While of who She is. She has this may seem to be at language and thoughts revealed Herself through odds with this idea that Tradition, of God. This tension is Scripture, metaphors must not be and the Holy Spirit, not something to be and continues to reveal held literally, it must be noted that the Trinity put off or ignored but Himself in the intimate (Father, Son, and Holy participation that we to be embraced.

Spirit) is not a metaphor enjoy as Christians. This for God. The Trinity is a illumination of God by special revelation that, while not a complete or Her direct revelation is an integral part in uniting total reflection of who God is – it is still bound us to Her, just as Baptism and the Eucharist by our human finitude – is nevertheless one of further unite us to Him. As our language falters, the greatest revelations we have of God and and we realize just how limited our vocabulary requires no reconstitution or reformulation. and knowledge is, truly we stand silent and

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the pub ready for God to inform us of who She is. As we embrace the tension of who God is, we grow to know Him more deeply. As Pseudo-Dionysius says: “The fact is that the more we take flight upward, the more our words are confined to

the ideas we are capable of forming; so that now as we plunge ourselves into that darkness which is beyond intellect, we shall find ourselves not simply running short of words but actually speechless and unknowing.”7

I am greatly indebted to Denys Turner for his work on this subject, particularly The Darkness of God. For further reading, see Pseudo-Dionysius’ The Divine Names, and Mystical Theology; and Jaroslav Pelikan’s The Odyssey of Dionysian Spirituality.

Endnotes 1 I use God here to mean the Godhead, the One shared Essence, not any particular person of the Trinity.

2 Matthew 23:37 3 Isaiah 42:14 4 Proverbs 8:1, 23-24 5 Turner, Denys. The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

6 Genesis 1:27 7 Froehlich, Karlfried. Pseudo Dionysius : The Complete Works (Classics of Western Spirituality Ser., Vol. 54). New York: Paulist Press, 1987.

Landon DePasquale is a senior Philosophy major from Wheaton, IL. He enjoys hunting dinosaurs with his best friend, Moses, and fending off the Bolshevik revolution. Landon.DePasquale@sbcglobal.net

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[essay]

Why Gay Marriage is an Issue of Rights, Not of Morality

religion and traditional family values. Gays are suspected of wanting to deliberately devalue and deconstruct the institution of marriage.

While it is true that there are radical gayrights groups that have declared themselves in opposition to the institution of marriage, this Christopher Smith actually is not true of all homosexuals. In an interview, Karen Ocamb, the rabbi who presided at Diane and Robin’s ceremony, indicated that On the afternoon of June 16, 2008, California the celebrants were “very spiritual people.” She performed its first legal same-sex marriage continued, “Robin’s Jewishness is very much a in the aftermath of part of who she is the Supreme Court and she and Diane decision that struck Evangelicals who complain felt really strongly down the gay-marriage about homosexual that they wanted a ban in that state. The trespasses on their sacred spiritual context for wedding of Robin their wedding—not rite, then, are perhaps Tyler and Diane Olson just a civil context.” was a Jewish ceremony The rabbi’s Kol Ami forgetting that they are and an emotional congregation in West not the only religious moment for both the Hollywood is what celebrants themselves constituency in the United is called a “Reform” and for many gayJewish synagogue, States that lays claim to rights activists for meaning that it is whom this represented marriage as a sacred part of a progressive a tremendous victory. branch of the Jewish C o n s e r v a t i v e s institution or that claims the faith that claims over may have difficulty right to define the word for a million members understanding why in North America the broader culture. this homosexual alone. To say that couple felt the need they are progressive to trespass upon a rite that, in the Christian is certainly not to say that their faith is insincere. tradition, is a sacred union between one man and On the contrary, many progressive Jews and one woman. Civil unions have long been legal also progressive Christians in the United States in the state of California, and already allow for are devout practitioners of their respective homosexual couples to enjoy basically all the faiths and simultaneously believe that it is their legal benefits of marriage, save only the name. moral obligation to extend the sacred marriage Why then must gays take that small, extra step covenant to homosexual couples as well as to and thereby trespass upon a sacred Christian heterosexuals. Evangelicals who complain about rite? Many view this as a deliberate assault upon homosexual trespasses on their sacred rite, then,

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the pub are perhaps forgetting that they are not the only schools and teacher-led prayers re-introduced religious constituency in the United States that to the classroom. They are a violation of the lays claim to marriage as a sacred institution or Establishment Clause and an infringement of that claims the right to define the word for the the religious freedoms of our neighbors. broader culture.

The key to the gay marriage debate, perhaps, Of course, Evangelicals may object—and lies in the concept of “civil religion.” In 1967, not entirely without warrant—that marriage an essay by Robert Neely Bellah titled “Civil has long been understood Religion in America” was as the union of one published in the Journal The truth is that our man and one woman, of the American Academy so that it is not they, but marriage amendments of Arts and Sciences (96:1, the revisionists who are 1-21).

Bellah’s essay and gay marriage claiming the right to define pioneered the idea—now bans are not the the institution’s meaning widely accepted by social for the rest of us. While scientists—that despite defense of the status any claim that this is the the Establishment Clause, quo that they purport way marriage has always America does in fact have to be. been understood would what might be called an be seriously mistaken, it established religion. It is true that this is the way Western culture has is evident, for example, in national slogans like tended to understand the marriage ceremony “in God we trust,” in the Pledge of Allegiance, for much of its recent history. Even so, the fact in the Declaration of Independence, and in the that more than a third of the population of our rhetoric of our presidents. But far from being nation understands marriage differently than do explicitly Christian, as some Evangelicals might Evangelicals (according to a 2006 Gallup poll) too-hastily suggest, this national religion is a sort suggests that the Evangelical definition is not as of lowest-common-denominator faith that exists self-evident as it may seem to the acculturated. alongside of and in harmony with the various Moreover, it is not the gay rights activists religions to which American citizens hold. It is who are pushing for laws and Constitutional amenable to Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. amendments designed to universalize a Even Hindus, who believe that their various particular understanding of the marriage rite. gods are merely facets or manifestations of a That is the province of the religious right, not single divine being or principle, could in good of the homosexual left. conscience affirm the monotheistic language of The truth is that our marriage amendments the national religion. Atheists, too, if they are and gay marriage bans are not the defense of willing to understand God as a sort of symbol the status quo that they purport to be. They or proxy for our common humanity, might take are rather part and parcel of the conservative their places at the table of the American religion.

Christian drive to make America a “Christian The point is that civil religion really requires only nation” by having creationism taught in public a single affirmation: namely, that the principles

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[essay] of liberty and equality upon which our country is short answer is “yes.” The oft-repeated mantra founded are of transcendent origin. Beyond this that we cannot legislate morality is perhaps poorly basic affirmation, the specific religious content worded, but nevertheless expresses a basic truth. of the civil religion is deliberately vague: it is It is true that the United States sometimes passes designed to be able to accommodate the diverse what might be called “moral” legislation. But beliefs of the nation’s citizens. such legislation (at least ideally) is based on what All of this is significant to the marriage political philosopher John Rawls calls “public debate because marriage is, in fact, an institution reason.” According to Rawls, public reason of the civil religion. This perhaps accounts for must be accessible to persons of all doctrinal and the powerful symbolic difference between a civil ideological backgrounds; it must not engage in union—the title of which tellingly includes only special pleading or appeal to principles that are the “civil” half of the term “civil religion”— unique to a certain cross-section of Americans and a marriage. To be excluded from the rite (and that might be offensive to others). In other of marriage is to be excluded from the national words, it is acceptable to argue that polygamy faith, which Bellah called “the spiritual glue” should be illegal because it dehumanizes that holds our nation together. To exclude women. While this argument may not be anyone from the rite of accepted by everyone, marriage, in short, is unit nevertheless proceeds Ultimately, the gay American. from commonly-held In this context, I marriage debate is not assumptions and can be believe it should be meaningfully debated really about whether immediately evident by all parties involved. homosexuality is right why gay marriage is But it is not acceptable an issue of rights. The to argue that polygamy or wrong. It is about American civil religion, should be illegal whether a religious by definition, should because the Christian be broad enough to majority has the right to tradition prohibits it. embrace every American The assumption of sectarian’s understanding vote a religious minority the normativity of the of the marriage rite. If out of the national civil Christian tradition is any one sect’s definition not commonly held by religion. were to be universalized all Americans and so as the “true” meaning of falls outside the pale of marriage, it would constitute an establishment public reason. of religion and an infringement upon the right With the concept of public reason as our of other religious groups to full participation in guide, we can see why legislation concerning the American religious marketplace. homosexual relations differs from legislation that What about morality? Is the question of right prohibits killing or stealing. Publicly accessible and wrong to be discarded? In my opinion, the and acceptable reasons can be given for the

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the pub prohibition of killing and stealing, whereas the same cannot be said for homosexuality.

Ultimately, the gay marriage debate is not really about whether homosexuality is right or wrong.

It is about whether a religious majority has the right to vote a religious minority out of the

national civil religion. It is not about defending the institution of marriage. It is about defending religious freedom and American pluralism.

Gay marriage as a political issue, in short, is pre-eminently one of rights, rather than one of morality.

Christopher Smith is a graduate student from Sacramento, CA, studying the General History of Christianity. He professes himself a Trekkie. Chris.Smith@my.wheaton.edu

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[image]

“Are We Dreaming?”

using a 35mm camera, sitting for hours at a time listening to their stories inside a “sacred Amy Coles space.” The photography studio served as an environment that functioned equally as a social arena for the collective activity and as a quiet From the day I made the decision to be a Studio space conducive to contemplation. The first set Art major at Wheaton College, I began to of images portrayed negative space in a very fantasize about my Senior Show. I saw it as the awkward and looming manor, echoing isolation, culmination of all I would learn as an Art major the weight of suffering, and the desire to retreat and as my chance to stand on my soapbox to shout within. We were dealing with the concept of the whatever dean-approved message I wanted the places in which we “live”—abstract space, metaWheaton community to hear. But as I developed narrative, the “home”—, universal suffering, and the response of the as a photographer and internal escape. Having Because my overall community artist here, first found many of these I began to refine my desire was to call characteristics within process of art making people to be aware myself, I played the role to match up with my “artist as social critic” theology.

I began of the present and the of and asked my peers a exploring methods and theories, and I ultimately community around them question that had also shied away from Western rather than continually been posed to me, “Are We Dreaming?” Because culture’s tendency to retreating into self, my overall desire was to stress the individual within the photographic actively remembering call people to be aware of the present and the process as a sole creator the relatively near community around them and “the other” as a benefactor. By instilling past as individuals and rather than continually retreating into self, a collaborative process as a community was actively remembering in portrait making and the relatively near past essential. recognizing not only as individuals and as a the importance of selfreflection, but of community reflection as well, community was essential. Through instigated my perception of the Senior Show and the writing on this process, my participants began reflecting on the experiences that they have had possibilities it held within it radically changed.

Thus, for the culmination of my learning at within and without that “sacred space.”

Though I had had these experiences, it Wheaton College, I have chosen to involve ten was not until the spring of 2008 that I began to of my friends/acquaintances in a collaborative two-year portrait project. Beginning in the create what has been referred to as “site-specific spring of 2007, I took portraits of each one art,” where my subjects and I are aware of and

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the pub respond to “a function of specific circumstances instigated by an artist… [and are] aware of the effects of these circumstances on the very conditions of the interaction, performing its own coming together and coming apart as a necessarily incomplete modeling or workingout of a collaborative social process.”1 In this methodology, I began finding the vocabulary to describe the process that my participants and I were going through. As a result, the second set of images visually portrays the process in which my peers and I were partaking. I had the subjects hold their portrait from the previous year, which made our present conversation reference the relatively near past. This also enabled the wider Wheaton community to enter into that dialogue through the resulting image created, giving the community tangible signs of growth and hope.

For my senior show, I have once again asked the subjects to return to that “space” with me to create new images for the spring of 2009. We will also be including their images from 2007 and 2008, with the goal of being intentionally present in remembering the past two years. For these final portraits, we will use a large format camera to make the portrait process more intentional. Allowing each participant to take only three representative images of themselves will draw us to an even greater awareness of time and place. Because we believe that much of learning happens through teaching, we hope that as we share this experience with the Wheaton community, we will begin to engrain a practice of awareness and remembrance in our own lives, while at the same time developing a community to keep us accountable as we do so.

“Are We Dreaming?” can be viewed in its final form from April 16th-30th in Adam’s Student Gallery.

Endnotes 1 Kwon, Miwon. One Place after Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity. London: The Mit Press, 2004.

Amy Coles is a senior Studio Art (Photography) major from Durham, NC. She’s never eaten a PB&J sandwich.

Amy.Coles@my.wheaton.edu

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“

When you were photographing me in that

room, with that picture...I felt so overwhelmed.

Not good or bad, just ‘too much.’ For a while, I fought my tears. I was kind of resentful that you were putting me in that place. But the process

”

was one of the most real memories I’ve had.

Kevin Rose Spring 2008

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[essay]

Christians in the Axis of Grace: Notes on Travel to Beirut & Damascus Gary M. Burge

Tell

someone you’re headed to Israel for a couple of weeks and they’ll smile, encouraging you to have a great time. Tell someone you’re headed to Beirut, Lebanon, and they’ll look confused or noticeably concerned. Add that you are also going on to Syria and they’ll look alarmed. It’s like announcing that you planned to serve watermelon with lunch – then adding that you changed the menu to cactus. It’s the same alarmed look. Of course if you’ve never eaten cactus fruit or don’t know how to prepare it like the Lebanese and Syrians do, it might be tough to know what to expect – or if you’d be safe.

When the invitation came to travel to Lebanon and Syria last year, I knew it would be a rare and important opportunity. What began as a request to speak at a Damascus youth conference and give a couple of sermons expanded to include two pastors’ retreats, three sermons, public lectures on Christian theology, an endless number of meals with Christian leaders, an appointment with the Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church, and an interview on Syrian TV. But what I gained outweighed what I gave – by far. I have traveled to the Middle East almost annually now for over 20 years and every trip has yielded unexpected surprises. This would prove no different. One trip to Iraq six years ago gave me a window into the courage and perseverance

of an ancient church that is rediscovering what it means to have martyrs. Another to Egypt more recently helped me see how 19th century Presbyterians indigenized their mission there, and the result today is a strong, successful Arab protestant church of over 450,000. Many visits to Palestine taught me about how ministry works when political struggle and suffering defines life. You can’t live in Bethlehem behind a 30 foot concrete wall and plan a normal church calendar.

From the time my plane landed in Beirut to the morning I flew out of Damascus, I found myself listening to Arab Christians answer questions that seemed more pressing than ever before. What are the things you believe the West doesn’t understand? What is true about the Arab church here that you wish were told from every American pulpit?

Pastors, lay leaders, seminary administrators and academics, Arab college students, and even Iraqi Christian refugees all were eager to weigh in.

If I had a wish, it would be to have taken every Wheaton student with me one Friday night. We would find ourselves on a mountain outside Damascus – at Mar Toma Roman Catholic monastery in the village of Sedneya north of Damascus. For an entire week, about 275 evangelical Syrian (and some Iraqi) young people, ages 16-30 perhaps, were gathered simply to worship and study. These were Christian Missionary Alliance, Presbyterian, Nazarene, and Baptist believers. This quickly dispelled my notions of Syria’s religious makeup. The ancient Syriac Orthodox Church is indeed here (about 250,000 strong), but evangelicals are as well.

We met in a tent on the monastery grounds with an Egyptian worship band. Yes, a worship band. The program was not built around

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the pub ‘activities’ for the youth, but instead, for long And Egypt? Perhaps 8 million. The Iraqi church periods of time, they would sing vibrant Arab of almost 900,000 has been devastated (I was worship songs with a volume that would make told) “by the American war.” The church in the any adult over 50 wince. To preach to a crowd Middle East has a long history living as a minority like this is humbling. You wonder who is blessing with powerful Muslim leaders. And they know whom. As one Syrian told me, “Our world is how to do it. Iraq and Syria are “secular” states, filled with war and politics. All we have is Jesus. and this puts extremist Muslim groups in check.

Just tell us about him.” I asked for a room at In Iraq, the war has torn that restraining power the monastery before I was put before the away, and tribal sectarian violence emerged. microphone – to steel myself perhaps and to Now Iraqi Christians are the targets of Muslim pray and think carefully zeal. To some, this has nearly about what I’d say. I’ve Iraqi Christianity.

I was supposed to destroyed taught New Testament According to Paul Estabrooks be in the axis of courses for 25 years. I have of Open Doors Ministry, the lots of things I can say from Christian church is being evil...Instead, I up front. I found myself directly targeted now. “Every decided I was in the day an estimated 3,000 feeling speechless.

The digital power point refugees flee up to northern axis of grace. slides, the cool acoustic Iraq to Kurdistan” making guitars, the ever-present the future of the Iraqi church dominant Arab drums, the desert wind whipping uncertain. through the tent, and the passionate worship The Syriac Orthodox church is the largest here overlooking thousand-year old Christian and most ancient church in Syria – dating villages dotted with churches and monasteries back to Biblical times. (Its seminary north of made me think about how surreal this all was. I Damascus even teaches its liturgies in Biblical was supposed to be in the axis of evil according Aramaic, the language of Jesus.) In an interview to my government. Instead, I decided I was in with the Syriac Patriarch one morning, his the axis of grace.

Holiness Zakka asked me, “Why is your Why would I want you to accompany me? president hurting the church in Iraq? Is he bad Simply put: every category we learn about or does he not understand these things?” I tried the Middle Eastern church in our American to tell him (respectfully) that the war wasn’t that worldview would be upended. Our assumptions simple. Nevertheless, the public perception here about Arabs in general – and Syrians in remains. A war that quickly spun out of control particular – would have to change. We would in Iraq now has wreaked havoc for the church. discover that there are about 12 million people And Christians there may be in full flight. One in this part of the world – from Egypt to Iraq refugee-believer from Kirkuk, Iraq, told me – that call themselves Christians. Lebanon has that when Saddam fell, many Iraqi Christians about a million. Syria another million. Jordan a cheered. They invited the American soldiers few hundred thousand. Palestine about 100,000. to worship with them. Then came the death

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[essay] threats from Muslim extremists. The Christians is a government that tolerates no dissent and told the soldiers to please stay away. Muslims according to some is feared as much as it is were blaming the Iraqi Christians for bringing respected. Christian and Muslim intellectuals the Americans and for working as spies. One know the inside of Syria’s prisons. This fear Iraqi Christian I know worked for one year as a also can create a culture of “survival” among translator at a charitable American organization the churches where confidence is eroded and (an NGO). When her security guard, a woman, responses are given only with a glance over the was “shot through the head” she and her family shoulder. fled the country.

Lebanon has always enjoyed a strong The government of Syria is indeed controlling Christian population of almost 50%. But today – the security police are everywhere. But at the emigration and Muslim population growth same time, the government also controls those (not to mention Muslim Palestinian refugees who would attack minorities – and that means ejected from Israel) have reduced the Christian an odd sort of safety for the church. This is a population to 35%. They’ve seen 15 years of 1500-year-old political environment that Arab civil war and a devastating Israeli bombing last Christians understand. Nevertheless, the Syrian summer. Today they know that Hezbollah is government gives the church surprising perks. growing in influence daily. If a country can be All church buildings are tax-free, utilities are described as anxious, Lebanon wins the label. free, and the pastor even gets a vehicle without But Lebanon is a place we can learn from for the paying the value added tax (now two times the future. As Dr. Martin Accad, dean of Lebanon’s car’s value). The protestant churches have their Arab Baptist Seminary, explained to me: The own civil court system run by area pastors. realities of Islam now alive in the Middle East Churches can usually be built wherever there will eventually catch up with the West. The is a need. The pastor of Damascus’ National Arab church can teach us how not to idealize or Presbyterian Church, demonize Islam.

Boutros Zaour, has met Presbyterian life in The Arab church can with Syria’s president, Lebanon and Syria goes Bashar al- Assad, many teach us how not to back to the mid-19th times and sits on a century. And churches idealize or demonize monthly religious court. from those missions can Islam.

President Assad, Boutros be found throughout says, respects the church both countries. Western and sees it as contributing to the well-being of leadership disappeared long ago, and these society. churches are now fully Arab, although they This is a welcome position to have, one enjoy treasured relationships with American enviable to Christians in places like Egypt, congregations. For instance, Peach Tree Iran, or Pakistan. An evangelical is even one Presbyterian in Atlanta is known well here thanks of President Assad’s advisors, and she attends to its remarkable missions program and love for Boutros’ church. But make no mistake. This the Middle East. Western spiritual influence is

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the pub surprising. Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life Shouldn’t the church speak out about injustice – especially has been translated into Arabic. The British when its government does bad things? This is true for us, “Alpha Course” for new Christians is also in and we often lack courage – but do Christians in America use. And yes, Christian Arabs watch American ever speak “truth to power” in Washington?

And still more. We know that being a visible Christian TV via satellite. These programs in many ways define American Christianity to Christian is expensive in our society. What price them. I heard the names Joel Osteen, Joyce do American Christians have to pay when they live Myer, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Benny faithfully?

Questions would often turn on the unity of Hinn numerous times. This television diet made me wonder just what they did think about the church around the world and how American the American church. I was often asked why Christians viewed this. We know we need each other to survive. Does the American church “see us?” Do American pastors always looked rich.

On two separate days, I led a workshop for they know we exist? Do they love us? I heard these Arab pastors, one in the mountains above Beirut questions during the workshops, over lunches, almost every day. They and one in the Syrian feel wounded that city of Homs, between This is a place that Americans often express Damascus and Aleppo.

Here were men and breathes politics and surprise when they learn all Arabs are not women of remarkable the suffering that comes that Muslims. piety and courage. They This is a place that shepherd congregations when political leaders politics and that have seen civil war, decide to pursue a war breathes the suffering that comes international war, and or a policy that brings when political leaders potential strife with their decide to pursue a war Muslim neighbors. For an suffering to millions. or a policy that brings entire day, we discussed suffering to millions. As the mission of the Church within the theology of the New Testament. an evangelical, I instinctively wanted to drive These themes were contextualized to a Middle the conversation back to things like personal piety or study of the Bible. But they caught on Eastern ecclesial life.

But then something happened during right away. Does faith always have to be so private, so the discussions. Subjects that I rarely heard at individual for us? We don’t accept this. Faith is a thing home moved to the center of the conversation. found in communities, and if it is real, it speaks to the A sampling: What is the relationship between culture social realities it lives in. This began to feel like a and Christian faith in any society? Arabs can be cultural hard lesson one might hear from a Sojourner’s Christians, but (they asked) are Americans cultural staff meeting in Washington.

The churches of Lebanon and Syria have Christians too? We sometimes think that Americans have substantial challenges. With their Muslim trouble seeing it.

Then there were more disturbing questions. neighbors they wonder if the terror of Iraq

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[essay] could some day spill their way. In Lebanon they worry about losing the delicate Christian/ Muslim balance that is so fragile in that tiny country. In Syria, they are working slowly and quietly to redress some discriminatory laws that impede their ability to support converts. Pastors spend an enormous amount of time networking with the other leaders of society. They attend everything from Muslim funerals to political gatherings, and they make sure they know the politicians who are in power. One pastor said, “We’re not naïve. Knowing the powerful means you are ready to make a phone call to protect your sheep.” Such networking is necessary.

During my visit to Syria, the security police visited my church hosts about three times each week to check up on me. Such undercover police even attended my lectures and sermons. One friend described watching them take notes – which felt gratifying in an odd sort of way. “Are you intimidated by them?” I asked. “Of course not,” one pastor answered, “I know the people who sent them.” Political savvy is a key feature of pastoral leadership.

But like Americans, they also struggle with unity. The ancient churches (Syriac and Greek Orthodox) share limited trust with Protestants – and the feeling is mutual although both groups claim to be friends. Even Protestant churches wrestle with what it means to be unified with one another when one group is more evangelistic

and conservative than another. Trust is a hard won prize throughout the world’s churches.

Even here, with an environment that is less than congenial, you would expect more cooperation than caution.

When I asked leaders what the chief thing that they wished American evangelicals knew about them is, the same answer surfaced repeatedly. Just know that we’re here, that we exist, that we too follow Jesus, and that all Arabs are not Muslims. It seemed a simple request. And I have promised to spread the word.

These two amazing countries are off the map for most evangelicals. But they shouldn’t be. Vibrant Christian life is here. I’ve seen it.

And if we have questions about how to live with and think about Islam in the coming years, we should listen to these Arab Christians. They have centuries of experience.

Final notes for travel preparation (if you visit): use sun block, drink bottled water, eat Syrian ice cream whenever you can, use your clerical collar (if you’re a pastor), take an extra sermon (you’ll need it), and don’t go about wearing shorts or Syrians will think you left the house that morning without your dignity or your pants. Make sure you find a restaurant that serves Arabian Friki (roasted green wheat) with lamb. And try the cactus. Really. You’ll never regret it.

Dr. Gary M. Burge has been professor of New Testament at Wheaton College since 1992. His professional interests include the interpretation of the New Testament gospels as well as the life of the Arabic-speaking church in the Middle East (hence this essay). He has published books on the Fourth Gospel as well as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Dr. Burge was once detained as a college student by the notorious Jordanian secret police (the Mukhabarat). He was innocent. Really. Gary.Burge@wheaton.edu

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Ghiberti’s Creation Panel, Front and Back Laura McClain

I saw Ghiberti form a god-like face,

And on the hidden back imprint his thumb; The wax sat lifeless, cracked, crude—all its sum Could only hint at some forthcoming grace.

And when he broke the bronze from its clay case, His fingers detailed paradise—before He purified with heat the lustrous ore, His maker’s face the lesser sculptor chased.

That other sculptor needed no bronze pools— No chisel but his breath for chasing tools; A word was metal fit for the world’s panels, And for its sprues—affixed as saving channels Through which his molten grace could freely run— He crossed upon its back his only Son.

View the panel at: http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/Exhibit/exhibitDetail.asp?eventID=11541.

Laura McClain is a senior English Writing major from Asheville, NC. While writing this sonnet, she discovered that small gallery corners in Chicago’s Art Institute are most conducive to writing poetry. Now the question of ekphrastic inspiration is a purely economic one: is getting over writer’s block worth the price of a train ticket?

Laura.McClain@gmail.com

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Fulfilling Heroic Myths Or, Superheroes are Among Us Alicia M. Cohn

Americans

love a good superhero story. The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, and the Batman sequel The Dark Knight were all released in movie theaters in the summer of 2008. All starred notable Hollywood cast members, all were budgeted at over 100 million dollars, and the latter two met with significant box office and critical success. There are also popular, long-running TV shows featuring superheroes: Smallville (about Superman) and Heroes (about a variety of comic book-inspired superheroes).

Although the paper comic book business is in recession, hundreds of individual comic books are still released every week. It would be difficult to find any American, regardless of age, race, or hobbies, who could not identify iconic figures like Superman, Batman, or Spider-Man at first glance.

Opinions on superheroes differ depending on whom you ask. Some view them as the remnants of our modern myths, others deem them the final frontier in our quest for true escapism, and some see them as an enduring secular form of the very human belief in the supernatural. Regardless of which view is most accurate, superhero movies continue to be a reliable prediction for blockbuster and franchise success. In the last decade alone, each movie in the Spider-Man trilogy made about 400 million dollars domestically, every movie in the X-Men

trilogy progressively exceeded 100 million, and Fantastic Four and The Hulk, although critically dismissed, warranted a sequel and a remake, respectively. If, as these statistics seem to indicate, the popularity of superheroism does in fact have a tangible effect on modern society, the pertinent question for us is how we, as Christians, should react to its presence.

The issue raises two important questions: 1. What hope can superheroes provide that real life heroes, who are human and therefore fail, cannot?

Superheroes are a peculiar hybrid of supernatural ability and secular power. If defined as a figment of some artistic imagination, they seem to represent a powerful form of wish fulfillment through their capacity for almost unlimited control over their environment.

Superheroes are superheroes precisely because of the power they wield over elemental nature.

This great capability seems to arrive inexplicably through alien intervention: extraterrestrial, mythological, or unexplained.

The standard superhero, regardless of his particular superpowers, is always the product of a great amount of suffering. Humans identify with the suffering of others, and for this reason, a superhero’s survival of suffering earns him instant admiration. His achievement, of course, brings an entirely secular glory—but not one common to the human experience. Humankind aspires to successfully navigate the heartbreak and chaos of reality, but as we age, we learn that this is impossible, and we begin to admire those, like superheroes, who make valiant attempts at this unattainable ideal.

The superheroic ability to triumph over troubled times, as well as the persistent popularity

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the pub of such imaginary ability, reflects a desire that safe distance without ever confronting it in real may be common to humanity: the desire to life. This was never more apparent than postovercome the world. It is their achievement of September 11, 2001, when it was not uncommon this ideal that makes these characters unreal to hear trite sayings like “people need heroes” and qualifies them as something more than just used in every context. When Tom Cruise spoke heroes. They do not exist outside the world, but at the Academy Awards that year and reassured somehow above it. Something in them gives them Hollywood that even in a stricken land, people an improving effect on the world. The conclusion needed entertainment, he presented himself as a might be that popular demand is for spirituality, sort of icon for that particular need. Tom Cruise not specifically for science has made his blockbuster fiction or fantasy. playing heroic Superheroism may act career I suggest it is this ideal, roles, and therefore has or aspiration, that truly as a placebo to soothe a stake in reinforcing attracts superhero fans. significance. Yet the stress-filled minds and their The increasingly reliable emphasis he puts on such as a placeholder for popularity of superheroes roles explicitly describes may be a response to them in terms of their real social change. our troubled world and iconic importance. His the post-September 11 affirmation of these United States, but it is only one symptom of a quintessentially heroic roles within the context more visceral reaction. The implausible success of the post-September 11 United States also of fictional superheroes reflects the widespread, contextualizes Tom Cruise’s style of hero as a underlying hunger for the Biblical promise fundamentally American one. One could argue that “amid all these things we are more than that such super-manly heroes are a particularly conquerors,” an extraordinary promise to those American response to an increasingly traumatic who put their faith in Jesus Christ (Romans 8:37). world.

Although we live in cynical times, when doubt And yet, superheroes are not only popular in passes for common sense and “being realistic” is America; they are an international phenomenon. celebrated over dreaming too big, the desire for The international box office revenue for each something more and something better is at the root of the Spider-Man films was comparable to the of our shared human perspective. domestic, and that is not an isolated pattern for superhero movies. Some might assume 2. Are superheroes truly inspirational, or do they serve terrorism is an international anxiety but only merely to entertain us? recently an American concern, and also point to the similar circumstances surrounding the Superheroism may act as a placebo to soothe birth of the superhero genre in comic books. stress-filled minds and as a placeholder for real It is accepted knowledge that Superman, for social change. In other words, superheroes may instance, was born out of the unique mindset provide the means to address social evil at a created by the series of events that eventually

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[essay] prompted World War II. Do people respond to troubled times through the improbable exploits of superheroes? Heroic idealism, in itself, should not be dismissed as purely entertainment.

the existence of the supernatural realm.

Even Christians often relegate forces of the supernatural to a more discrete category of Christian doctrine. It is a persistent curiosity and a compelling idea, however, and therefore Popular culture has often appropriated often tentatively explored through distant, Christian ideals for the sake of amusement. idealized concepts like superheroes. In their But are superheroes leading the unsaved even extraordinary goodness, strength, and power, further from the path to Christ by attaining superheroes provide a metaphor for the a Christian promise through secular, though spiritual armor characterized in Ephesians 6 imaginary, means? In their world-renowned as something that tangibly benefits real life. status, superheroes have become powerful Believing in the supernatural possibility of culture-bridging shorthand. They could be a the naturally impossible is an essential part of powerful tool pointing toward the path of divine belief in Christ. Christians are called not just to aspiration and true power, and this Christian survive the world, but to live triumphantly, and is troubled by the dismissal of the theological through that triumph to represent Christ. That resonance of these supernatural beings. is the ideal we ought to aspire to—one attainable Why are superheroes, as iconic products through the real supernatural aid of God. of a supernatural life, not more frequently Why do Superman or the “heroes” on the utilized as a metaphor for Christian life? The NBC series keep trying even when they can’t save culture has learned to accept the aid of the the whole world? Because something outside supernatural when it of themselves has given benefits a superhero. As a them extraordinary But are superheroes form of wish fulfillment, powers, an indication relying on supernatural of a source of power leading the unsaved aid is acceptable. But that defies perception even further from otherwise, we have been according to this natural, the path to Christ by trained to believe that human world.

In the supernatural does popular culture, this idea attaining a Christian not tangibly affect “real of something “bigger” promise through life”—an ideology many is pure imaginative Christians, too, have opportunity, but at its secular, though accepted in their daily root is genuine belief in imaginary, means? lives. Yet the words of the possibility.

Jesus, “who gives us the Superheroes are role victory” in life, steadfastly insist there is more models, not intentionally, but for their curious to life in this world than mere human effort (1 capacity to be ambassadors of supernatural Corinthians 15:57). power. Christ imagery, which is often evoked Some fear, many deny, and others disregard in superhero characterization—particularly

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the pub that of Superman, as demonstrated in the most recent movie Superman Returns—is the rightful inheritance of Christ-followers, who have been given the “exceeding greatness of his power” in order that we might carry out his work (Ephesians 1:18-23). As Christians, empowered

by Christ to work his ministry in this world, we ought to regularly demonstrate his super strength through mighty deeds, great works, and reverence for the authority of his words.

So, then, where are the superheroes for Christ? We as Christians live an epic life, one characterized by our understanding of the fundamental choice between life and death (Deuteronomy 30:19). Our God-given ability

to make that choice highlights our supernatural authority. To paraphrase Spider-Man: with great grace comes great capability. Every Christian should rightly be living out the fantastic principles of God’s Word “according to His power that is at work within us,” so that they might become an example of implausible strength and goodness to the world (Ephesians 3:20). Superheroes are not afraid to demonstrate their power. Their supernatural authority defines them. God has not called us to wear brightly colored costumes, but He has called us to a purpose, and in doing so also has given us the power to carry out his will.

Alicia M. Cohn is a senior English Writing and Communications major from Lenexa, KS. Superman is her favorite superhero. Alicia.M.Cohn@gmail.com

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[poem]

Moonlight on Scaffolding Jane Beal I turn a corner and see the full moon shining on two stories of scaffolding.

In the night, light leans against cement blocks: what will be built here? Whose unfinished dream rises before me like a metaphor?

Dr. Jane Beal is an English professor, originally from Vallejo, CA, who has also worked as a carpenter’s assistant, an optician, and a doula. She specializes in medieval literature, classical mythology, and literature of the Bible. This past August, Jane spent ten days in Jerusalem. Jane.Beal@wheaton.edu

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A Reflection on Wendell Berry’s The Unsettling of America Jana Papp “As a people, we have lost sight of the profound communion—even the union— of the inner with the outer life.”

Wendell Berry

To

me, farms mean more than food. But like most children, I always thought that half the fun of growing up on a farm was being able to eat things without my mother knowing: a direct communion with nature. I wandered through the sticky humidity of Kentucky summers with a baptism of blackberry juice on my tongue, my fingernails, and my chin. Sometimes a particularly plump berry contained a leggy surprise in the middle, but not like one of those Tootsie Roll lollipops. As I explored, I often carried a book on edible wild plants, which included pictures of poisonous mushrooms and other helpful tips for wilderness survival. Once, I succumbed to the rich savor of a wild onion, pulling it carefully out of crumbling earth and washing it in the creek. Taking a tiny bite of the opalescent bulb, I gagged and spit it into the water where it all disappeared in a few seconds, but the pungent taste lingered for hours.

Mine was a land that begged to be known.

Clothed in elastic-cuffed sweatpants tucked into black rubber boots, I delighted in finding its secret spaces, seeing treasure in five-toed footprints beside the creek and mysterious sinkholes that appeared overnight. The potholes in the driveway from rumbling farm equipment ensured that every rollerblade ride held the excitement of a black diamond ski hill. The

needs of the farm shaped the pattern of my daily life, from early mornings dodging roosters and chicken dung to collect the eggs, to nights bundled against the cold, waiting for a new-born llama to take its first wooly-legged, trembling steps across a bed of straw. Plowing season sent my siblings out into the fields after a heavy rain, teetering down fresh-made furrows in search of the damp, grey-white shine of flint arrowheads.

The age-old cycle of plowing, harvest, and fallow occurred under our noses.

For me, farms were a part of everyday existence. But in the lives of most Americans, farms are a distant reality. We can only snatch a few images from airplane windows: extraterrestrial crop circles, a silver froth of fertilizer spread from a plane, and the occasional tractor slowly grinding over hewn earth. You, perhaps, have visited a farm and possibly even fed goats out of a tightly squeezed palm, trying not to cringe when their gluey lips smacked down. On a trip to the grocery store, you might stop to consider whether those Idaho potatoes are really from Idaho, or wonder whether the farmers who raised your green beans ever glimpse their crop on the grocery shelves. But how often do we remember that every piece of food is personal, coming from a piece of land and an agricultural community? The concerns facing those farming

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[review] communities are hidden from most of us by In writing that flows as slowly and steadily as barriers of distance and disinterest. What is the his beloved Kentucky River, Berry unmasks the future of these farms that grow more and more causes that provoked the unsettling of American distant from the average American’s reality? farms. In particular, he points out the appeal of This is the question that provoked Wendell specialization, rapid job advancement, and an Berry’s book, The Unsettling of America. In eight increasingly unsettled lifestyle, where a quick essays, he commends the land to a people who move is the solution to any problem. But by have forsaken it, fleeing to the cities in droves distancing ourselves from our farms, we have to escape an unnamed fear of work. Berry is lost something valuable: hard work in the soil unafraid to name the consequences of America’s of one’s own land –dirty fingernails and rough “unsettling,” namely, the mismanagement hands— no longer carries respect and honor of the land by a culture over-dependent on from the community. Instead, we live in a society technology, large-scale that makes leisure its industry, and unchecked goal. From playtime But how often do we consumption. For the to paychecks, we are last forty-three years, taught that work has no remember that every Berry and his wife Tanya worth, but needs piece of food is personal, innate have lived on a farm a measurable reward to coming from a piece of be valuable. Although named Lane’s Landing in the tiny town of Port land and an agricultural we are not necessarily Royal, Kentucky. He working less, we are community?

The writes from experience, undoubtedly working the kind gained from differently, and to concerns facing those hours spent perched on different ends. fencerows and walking farming communities are As students, we furrows, exemplifying hidden from most of us wage a constant struggle the intimacy of place by barriers of distance against academic work of that he advocates. all kinds. Just a step into Berry’s location in rural and disinterest.

Buswell Library shows a Kentucky continues to host of people engrossed deeply influence the agricultural themes of his in the work of the mind –churning out papers, essays, poems, and novels. Although Unsettling was first published in 1977, it transcends the decades lab reports, PowerPoint presentations— all of with broad implications on contemporary issues which, though mentally taxing, require nothing like the energy crisis, fluctuating gas prices, and more than a slight wiggling of the fingers above pollution. Through his essays, Berry discusses the keyboard. A sore back, caffeine addiction, the relationship between culture and agriculture, tired eyes, and writer’s cramp are the most highlighting the intimate connections joining dangerous side effects. We barricade ourselves in our books; Berry argues that our lives have the life of the body to the life of the soul.

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the pub grown too distant from the source of work that farm within twelve miles of Lane’s Landing. sustains us. No longer do we work with our But his is an exceptional case. Modern farming own two hands to supply our food, our heat, has taken on a persona of strict business, our shelter. Rather, we spend the better part of lacking a familial connection. The employees of the day earning money to pay other people to large agribusinesses come to the land with big supply these things for us. machines, seed it, harvest it, and move on.

Yet in my experience, not even most In my small town of Nicholasville, Kentucky, farmers have a close relationship with their centuries-old farms are purchased by developers land. Often, the land is not even theirs, for most whose first action is to raze every living thing working farmers lease to the ground. Huge land on several different oaks topple and We barricade ourselves bur properties.

Current bluegrass is scraped from in our books; Berry economic realities require dark, rich soil. Next, they diversified crops and an scoop the topsoil to sell argues that our lives abundance of land, but it for even more profit. few farmers can afford have grown too distant This complete lack of these things due to a lack from the source of work stewardship or forward of community-supported thinking is appalling. But that sustains us. agriculture. In order in reality, the man who to develop a successful drives the equipment and operation, monetary profit takes precedence removes the topsoil will never live on that land. over intimacy with the land or its needs. For In a few weeks he will move on to another example, cattle erode topsoil and put a heavy project, unaffected by the consequences of his burden on the land, but cattle are selling well, actions. And what will happen to the future so many Kentucky farmers raise cattle on the homeowners? They will be left with a fragile same pastures year after year. In this way, farms land unable to sustain even a small garden, as are stripped of their crop-bearing potential. clay offers little nourishment for tomatoes or The land must lie in fallow for years in order to pansies. Their lawns will be a sprinkler-watered regain its bearing ability. In the end, any short- illusion of sod and E-Z-grow. How can that term profit comes at a much greater cost to the family build a deep connection with a land that fragile soil. is already depleted?

In addition to a lack of personal, long-term My connection to the land is my father’s concern for the soil’s health, farming is being doing. I loved to follow him on after-dinner stripped of its generational aspect. A century walks around the farm as he taught me the ago, a farmer could live his whole life on his names of native trees and plants and told me land and be buried there in a family graveyard, stories about the history of Kentucky. Each time passing his land on to his children. Even our conversation lagged, I’d look behind to see Wendell Berry’s family farmed near Port Royal him bent down, absorbed in examining another for several generations, and both his children plant. Every corner of the farm is dotted with

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[review] saplings he seeded, from blue ash to shagbark hickory. He even planted two lines of beeches along our quarter-mile driveway. Every Sunday as our family drove to church, he would slow the car, saying, “It does me good to see these trees.

You know, kids, they will be here when I’m gone, stretching out their branches in a canopy over the driveway.” I never understood why it was so important to him that each pair of trees touch, forming leafy archways that, though beautiful, he would never see. But my dad took joy in using the land to join himself to those he would never know. Berry would see this as an example of what occurs when deep connections are forged between the land and its dwellers.

As a whole, Unsettling advocates this kind of responsibility. Berry presents a union of agriculture and culture, two circles that overlap far more than the average consumer is aware.

He says, “Our culture must be our response to our place, our culture and our place are images of each other and inseparable from each other.”

He considers the connection of human culture and the natural world with a sense of mystery and wonder that is altogether lacking in most modern farmers. Ideally, we should acknowledge and embrace our debt to the earth. But that would be a different kind of world, one where we walk with our feet on soil, not asphalt.

When I go out into the fields in the back acres of the farm, I sometimes lie down flat on my back, no longer above the earth but a part of it. I am bait for the vultures circling above me, a silent observer of the hundred sparrows that move as one through the air. Small sounds grow in my eardrums. But I also feel the vibration and hear the distant hum of the nearby highway, only

temporarily masked by the sounds of crickets.

Were I to lie there until night, the glow of the newly constructed shopping center a mile away would dim the stars and slice the night with its come-hither spotlight. I realize, helplessly, that though I am personally connected with my farm, my wishing cannot prevent the steady degradation of once-rural places.

Yet, even as someone who has grown up close to the land, I am uncomfortable with the concept of responsibility to the land. Quite honestly, I already feel burdened by the number of issues about which I am supposed to care deeply and engage in on a daily basis. The connection to my farm was easy to maintain as a child, tromping through the woods in rubber boots every day. But as I enter an adult world, how can I remain rooted in my land without sacrificing other dreams to maintain that connection? In general, I am much more concerned with my responsibility toward people than with the land. But Berry calls for me to cherish my responsibility to both. As he gently crafts connections between religion and food consumption, between our bodies and the earth, Berry alters my perspective, encouraging me to see myself as part of the land, rather than surrounded by it.

In the end, Berry says, “The only real, practical, hope-giving way to remedy the fragmentation that is the disease of modern spirit is a small and humble way [...] One must begin in one’s own life the private solutions that can only in turn become public solutions.” It is those private solutions that we must search for in ourselves. I am unsettled.

Jana Papp is a junior English Writing major and Art minor from Nicholasville, KY. In her spare time, she makes crop circles. Jana.Papp@my.wheaton.edu

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Indie Music Is Singing You a Love Song: The Fleet Foxes

The Seattle fivesome’s self-titled debut is a harmonized cry in the wilderness to a music culture diseased by hipster elitism and “I Kissed a Girl” induced nausea. Simple and beautiful, the album has both the unadorned grace that Indie music does so well, and the easy-to-love Nikolai Tomlinavich pop accessibility that the scene tends to shun.

Many bands spend so much of their time

“Say It Ain’t So” by Weezer is the first song I finding glockenspiels or vintage guitars to liked. I was thirteen at the time, home schooled, accessorize their sound that they forget about and just a tad bit sheltered, so it took me the the timbre of the human voice. The Fleet Foxes longest time to hop on to any sort of rock do include several exotic instruments (notably a Chinese Guzheng on bandwagon.

Listening “Heard Them Stirring”), to it made me feel more ...the album has both but their voices always alive somehow, made the take the forefront. the unadorned grace world sharper and more This displays the Foxes piquant than listening that Indie music wonderful mastery of vocal to my parent’s Michael harmony and layering; the W. Smith tapes. I didn’t does so well, and the drums, guitars and exotic know anything about easy-to-love pop instruments are all there, lead singer Rivers Cuomo accessibility that the but the harmonies rightly or the garage-nerd rock steal the show. scene tends to shun. movement of the early The tone of the album nineties. I just thought the is moody and rich, fitting music rocked. for a band that claims the Beach Boys, Bob From those simple power pop beginnings I Dylan, and northwest mountain ranges among stumbled onto Indie music, and everything their muses.

The Fleet Foxes build each song changed. I discovered the thrill of hunting for obscure bands and one-upping my friends for (save for Pecknold’s solo numbers) on a base of Indie cred (Oh, you haven’t heard of them? earthy acoustic guitar work accented by lead Really?). I loved going to shows where I found guitarist Skyler Skjelset’s airy melodies and the myself adrift in a sea of flip-jeaned, flannel subdued drumwork—all that brought together wearing scene kids, who rolled their own under ghostly harmonies.

The crackly barbershop croon of “Sun cigarettes, ate vegan, and had fierce, nay, messianic beards. Now, I certainly like music (and all the It Rises” begins the album with the flowing more so when no one else has ever listened to it), harmonies that characterize the Fleet Foxes’ but sometimes it seems as if I spend more time music. The drums and guitar are laidback, classifying or judging bands than I do actually quality Indie-folk fare, but the harmonies make the music immediate and listenable. enjoying them. Enter the Fleet Foxes.

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[review] The album’s jewel of a single, “White Winter Hymnal,” illustrates this beautifully. The song is a crisp six-line poem carried for two and a half minutes by breathtaking harmony: I was following the pack all swallowed in their coats with scarves of red tied round their throats to keep their little heads from falling in the snow and I turned round and there you go, and Michael you would fall and turn the white snow red as strawberries in the springtime.

Add to that bubbling electric guitar, joyful pounding drum work, and you have one of the most enjoyable songs to hit the Indie scene in a long while (you can see for yourself free, and legally so, at Sub Pop’s website here: www.subpop.com/artists/fleetfoxes). “White Winter,” like the four line “Quiet Houses” and the wordless “Heard Them Stirring,” shows a lyrical simplicity that sacrifices none of its folksy grandeur. Tracks like “Tiger Mountain

Peasant Song” and “Your Protector” strip away the harmonies in order focus on the thready intensity of lead singer Robin Pecknold’s voice.

Between the opening pastoral note of “Sun it Rises” to the simple closing elegy of “Oliver James,” the band manages to create a landscape of considerable depth. Pecknold’s lyrics leave the music plenty of room to breathe without hampering the album’s dramatic scope.

A lot can be said for the Fleet Foxes’ crafty elements, the way they texture and layer their music, their harmonies, but what makes the band matter is that they are a joy to listen to.

Their debut is everything music should be— heartfelt and breathtaking. Listening to them reminds me of the first time I really enjoyed music. The appeal of their music is that it moves beyond boundaries of a scene or genre.

You don’t need Indie cred or impeccable taste to enjoy them; all you need is a love of good music. The Fleet Foxes are calling— won’t you please answer them?

Nikolai Tomlinavich is a senior English Writing major from Geneva, IL. In his free time, he enjoys rapping Romantic poetry. Nick.Tomlin@my.wheaton.edu

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Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham and the Case for Bollywood Julia Stanton

In seventh grade, I bought a pair of twenty-dollar pleather plants (two sizes too big) and proceeded to wear them to my semi-formal middle school awards banquet. I can’t recall what possessed me to buy those pants or to wear them in public, but memories of that ridiculous addition to my middle school wardrobe suddenly surfaced when I recently re-watched Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, a Bollywood movie where all the actors and actresses at one point don pleather and head for a local dance club. In middle school, my pleather purchase made me stick out like a hillbilly at a country club, but on a Bollywood set, I could have assimilated into the scene without a second glance.

My best friend in high school, Christa, first introduced me to the wonders of Bollywood.

She grew up watching Bollywood with her mom, who immigrated to the U.S. from India back in the 80s. Christa initially hesitated to invite me to watch Bollywood movies with her family. “You might not like it,” she said. “It’s really different from American movies.” I convinced her to invite me to their next Bollywood viewing, and she introduced me to Kabhi Khushi. The plot of Kabhi Khushi follows Rahul Raichand, a wealthy high-caste Indian, who inadvertently falls in love with Anjali, a mischievous and outspoken lower-caste girl related to the Raichand’s nanny.

Rahul’s father, however, is a staunch believer in traditional Indian values and refuses to

associate with low-caste Indians. Moreover, he insists on arranging his son’s marriage, despite changes in modern Indian culture, and he even disowns Rahul when Rahul decides to marry Anjali. Finally, after years of separation, Rahul’s brother Rohan takes it upon himself to reunite the family.

In only a matter of hours, I fell in love with Bollywood. I was mesmerized as I watched hordes of women in colorful saris swirl gracefully across the screen to the rhythmic beat of a Hindi song. The artful choreography combined elements of both traditional Indian dance and popular Western dance. Not only did these dance numbers entertain, but the melodramatic acting, which struck me as ridiculous, was strangely satisfying. If a character responded angrily, a resounding roll of thunder followed their every sentence. If a character grew sad, their eyes immediately welled with tears—men included.

When a couple wanted to express passionate love, they would slip into an imaginary “dream sequence” removed from real life, where the couple would proceed to sing a duet of unending love and devotion. I found that these raw and unambiguous emotions made me more attached to the characters and their ultimate fate. Halfway through the movie, I melted into a puddle of tissues and tears in the far corner of the couch, while Christa laughed unsympathetically at my poor attempts to defog my cloudy glasses so I could keep reading the subtitles.

As I’ve grown older, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham continues to charm me with its depth.

Thematically, it holds much complexity, addressing highly controversial issues in Indian culture, such as its critique of the caste system—a recent trend in the Bollywood industry. In Kabhi Khushi, love transcends societal artificialities and

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[review] even familial loyalty. Kabhi Khushi portrays a son Furthermore, unlike the genre divisions we acting against the will of his father and indicates see in Western culture, Indians want the package that family elders have the obligation to forgive deal. They want to see comedy, romance, violations of tradition and to keep their family adventure, and social commentary all rolled into unified rather than blindly enforcing outdated a musical production. This expansive treatment rules. While America may be accustomed to usually makes Bollywood movies quite lengthy: these ideas of equality Kabhi Khushi, for example, and individual freedom, lasts almost three and a This type of movie such cultural statements half hours—definitely are revolutionary for your money’s worth. helps American Indian society. Watching Kabhi Khushi resoundingly viewers come to an a foreign film like Kabhi meets all Bollywood Khushi allows American understanding of Indian expectations. It manages viewers to experience these culture and encourages to incorporate aspects issues from an entirely of every desired genre, different perspective and them to consider issues while also featuring an to wrestle with the global of universal importance all-star cast, an awardimplications of such winning soundtrack, that are sometimes differences in cultural and some of the best values. choreography I have obscured by human Now, despite the ever seen in a Bollywood tendencies toward serious nature of some film. In addition, the of the themes, Bollywood astoundingly beautiful ethnocentrism. movies are humorous, cinematography captures especially to an American audience. In all the energy and local color of Indian culture.

American culture, higher quality movies tend to I laughed; I cried. I experienced a tidal wave of create more lifelike illusions, but this is certainly emotions like I have never felt when watching an not true of Bollywood. In fact, Bollywood American movie. usually offers an unrealistic portrayal of life, and Unfortunately these exaggerated elements most Americans who like Bollywood enjoy the of Bollywood, along with the industry’s play hilarity of the unrealistic acting, the random on the word Hollywood, may give Americans dance numbers, the frequent costume changes the impression that Bollywood movies are (that may or may not make sense in the plot), only a lower-quality knock off of Hollywood’s the skewed depictions of Western culture (such glitz and glam, but in truth, Bollywood has a as the popularity of pleather pants), and the glitz and glam that is all its own. In fact, the corny romances. Indian audiences, however, Bollywood industry typically produces twice expect and eagerly anticipate these aspects of as many films as the Hollywood industry and Bollywood drama, and they would not favor a consistently surpasses Hollywood in terms of more realistic reworking of the genre. number of tickets sold worldwide. The global

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the pub success of Bollywood has made an impact on American producers, and the American public is consequently experiencing a slowly growing exposure to traditional Bollywood elements in American films.

The recent resurgence of American-made musicals, for example, indicates Bollywood’s growing influence on Hollywood, and the widespread popularity of these musicals in America suggests that our nation’s populace is opening up to unique oddities treasured by Bollywood fans across the globe. Films such as High School Musical, Hairspray, and Mamma Mia all draw on the Bollywood tradition. Each of these movies includes melodramatic acting, a catchy soundtrack, and choreographed group dance numbers. Granted, Rogers and Hammerstein certainly experienced their share of success, and Broadway musicals have been made into movies in the past. But these newer musicals and Broadway remakes have a distinct vibrancy and overdramatic flair that echoes popular Bollywood.

In Mamma Mia, for example, during the musical number “Lay All Your Love on Me,” in which a young couple engages in a passionate duet, a horde of men magically appears on the beach and proceeds to perform a choreographed dance number while wearing flippers and snorkel masks. There was a time when this type of utter ridiculousness could only be found in Bollywood movies—no longer. Bollywood has infiltrated Hollywood, perhaps only on a small

scale thus far, but if the popularity of such musicals persists, the Bollywood influence will become more noticeable as American audiences come to appreciate the aesthetic aspects of Bollywood filmmaking that American directors have neglected for so long.

Everyone should watch at least one typical Bollywood movie, such as Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. This type of movie helps American viewers come to an understanding of Indian culture and encourages them to consider issues of universal importance that are sometimes obscured by human tendencies toward ethnocentrism. Kabhi Khushi brings viewers back to the fundamental importance of love, family, and forgiveness, topics often disparaged by blockbuster American films that instead champion wealth, independence, and the pursuit of sexual pleasure. In light of Bollywood’s success, American directors now seem to be borrowing certain aspects of the Bollywood genre, taking American musicals in a direction that combines the more serious social critique with light-hearted enjoyment of life, which, I personally believe, will point the American film industry in a more positive direction. Most importantly, Bollywood serves a good helping of entertaining, laugh-out-loud fun.

If you find amusement in the ridiculous nature of life and get a kick out of your melodramatic friends, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham will have you wishing that you could turn your life into a Bollywood musical—minus the pleather pants.

Julia Stanton is a senior English Writing major from Tulsa, OK. Someday she would like to learn Hindi and take a trip to India to watch a Bollywood movie without English subtitles in a dingy, packed-out theater. She is also working on her dance moves in the hopes of being hired as a “western” extra in a Bollywood dance number. Julia.Stanton@ my.wheaton.edu

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[poem]

Ad-libs from a Poem on Pentecostal Living Lollapalooza 08 Joe McHale

It all started with A cat, the artful Chest of a reclined Woman tattooed With PEACE And singing songs Of summer’s New Mythology; Her gay heart And broad hips; The times Verisimilitude Expressed in Present tense Jubilees falling From the ancient Strings of Greek guitars.

Around a fountain, Red stone gravel Lawns and trampled Streets, the emblems Of a song’s impurity Stand before us Like a stain on wasted Papers and yellow Cigarette tongues,

And a feline shadow Rises with her cliché Loss of innocence, Billowing in a row Like the pillars Of White Houses, As a teenage Fad Peddles battery After battery Into Silence, Reverberating off Loose snares And cymbals: Could we be anything More than stranger Faces in a crowd Of witnesses; In gardens, Maybe Eden’s jungle On a third-world Island where Earwax Tastes like bubblegum, And everywhere There’s a poet Feeding music Through a coconut Microphone?

Joe McHale is a senior English Writing major from Wheaton, IL. He hopes to one day become a farmer on a plot of land neighboring Wendell Berry’s and to visit Sri Lanka and Thailand. Joe.McHale@my.wheaton.edu

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[recommendation] [album]

Barbara - In Ear Park by Department of Eagles Rachel - The Reminder by Feist

[poem]

Ian A - Selected Poems by James Wright Joe - The Spirit Level by Seamus Heaney

[novel]

Ian Y - All the Names by José Saramago Cate - The Girl by Meridel Le Sueur Zach - The Orange Girl by Jostein Gaarder Elise - The Book Thief by Markus Zusak Abby - And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

[other]

Liz - The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

[non-fiction] Aaron - The Harvard Business Review [magazine] David - ”I Believe in an America Where the Separation

of Church and State is Absolute” by John F.

Kennedy [speech] 49

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