- Distilled advice from Wendell Berry.
- Who fired first?
- Can you understand this wisdom?
- What liberals fret about.
- Port William lives!
- Can Muslims really get away with anything?
Sunday was the birthday of Wendell Berry, whose humane vision I’ve been celebrating in daily Tweets and who also got a shout-out at The Writer’s Almanac.
I jokingly referred to him as St. Wendell of Lane’s Landing yesterday, but sadly he’s neither Orthodox nor orthodox. I think he’s officially a Baptist. He’s not particularly optimistic, but he’s hopeful.
Every day do something that won’t compute […] Give your approval to all you cannot understand […] Ask the questions which have no answers. Put your faith in two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years […] Laugh. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts […] Practice resurrection.
After I recently suggested that a friend was Christophobic, he blogged his view partly in response, and in his comboxes, I was told that the Chick-fil-A boycott preceded Dan Cathy’s recent comments, and was originally motivated by a Chick-fil-A affiliated charity giving big bucks to “anti-gay” groups.
One of the sad realities of the present day is that we’ve become like the Hatfields vs. the McCoys. Why would a Chick-fil-A affiliated charity give money to “anti-gay” groups? Might the Cathy family have felt that their values were under attack? Who really fired the first shot? Does anybody even care any more?
Our “debates” today consist of Ring Lardner’s “Shut up, he explained” and invention of novel “rights.” We don’t even understand each other.
I’ve read this story before. It starts with hubris and ends, short term at least, in mutual incomprehension.
But that wasn’t the end of the story:
When the Most High came down and confused the tongues, he divided the nations. But when he distributed the tongues of fire, he called all to unity. Therefore, with one voice, we glorify the All-Holy Spirit!
(Orthodox Kontakion of Pentecost)
But we’re too sophisticated now to remember the Most High. And too mad even to want unity.
A group called Exodus something-or-other has recently been in the news for backing away from claims about people losing same-sex attraction through therapy (and some other intramural Evangelical faux pas).
This question-and-answer pairing may strike some “Christians” as incomprensible or wishy-washy, while it strikes me as deeply wise:
Q: I’m wondering … have you experienced situations … where men or women who’ve struggled with same-sex attraction have become heterosexual?
A: … We kind of reject the terminology, and the idea that sexuality is a condition, so the terminology of homosexual and heterosexual – and also that changes in sexuality are inevitable, so transformation is possible. But to make it your goal, to aim at becoming heterosexual, is a kind of idolatry. It’s not really a healing goal at all. It’s not a Christian goal. Our aim is to grow closer to God by learning how to deal with our passions … So as Christians, our goal is not heterosexuality. It’s a full-blooded and faithful desire for God that has as one of its results a life of chastity ….
(Andrew Williams, co-creator and facilitator of “Finding the freedom to live in the image of God,” a therapeutic program based on Orthodox Christian principles for sexual addictions and sex-related issues, interviewed on Ancient Faith Today.)
If a puritan is afraid that someone, somewhere is having fun, a liberal is afraid that someone, somewhere, is making more money than his credentials warrant.
[F]or a younger generation, whose memories are marred by the abandonment of divorced parents, deracination by the global economy, fragmentation by consumerism, alienation from ties of history and tradition, Berry’s fiction becomes memory itself. In a very real way, they do not merely read about Port William; they participate in it.
From The Human Vision of Wendell Berry, commenting on Berry’s many stories set in fictitious Port William.
Here’s a little antidote for those who think Muslims in the U.S. can get away with things Christians can’t get away with. The ACLU in 2009 sued Tarek Ibn Ziyad Academy, a Minnesota Charter School, charging the school with unconstitutionally promoting Islam. The case has settled, largely in favor of the ACLU position.
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Tipsy Teetotaler ن 