Dirty Cow Milk
Last weekend sent me spinning a little. And it wasn't just because Pinya, the cow I was milking, put her foot not once, not twice, but three times in the bucket of milk. No, it was sitting outside on a cool night, totally relaxed with people I barely new, sitting on a stump that had soaked in that day's warmth.
It had something to do with the fact that as I was milking the cow, my Mennonite companion and I were discussing whether theology in isolation, away from community, can be anything but a morality of practical strategies for survival. After all, nature doesn't care about your kindness, right?
We didn't come to any conclusions that would interest anyone else (we would have been very interested indeed if we had come to any conclusions), but I know the conversation was a serious and fruitful one, because at one point someone said something about reading the "fabric of the cosmos." Occassioned by a fierce nodding of the head by the other person.
Honestly, the fabric of the cosmos is serious business.
Back in the City, back on the Metro. So Nietzsche said that "the common good" is a meaningless phrase, one that hides its inherent contradiction within itself so well as to fool even the nicest philosophers that embrace it as a goal, or a workable concept. That which is common is never that good; that's why it's common. And we all strive to be uncommon. Okay, I'll accept this.
My wife heard Bishop Peter Storey speak the other day, and he said that humans were addicted to division amongst themselves, and so we've been since our origin. And so, Storey and Nietzsche agree. Okay, me too.
Nietzsche described the danger as the submission of that drive, and Peter Storey cited it as that which has created so much misery until now. That's okay, I can fit them both in. As the German one wrote: "my answer is my answer."
The fact is: I don't want to be common, but nor would I like to contribute to the self-absorbed fear of being deemed merely "common," a fear that seems to drive so much of the world's mean yen-yang of indifference and hate. Perhaps I'd like to be the humble exception, a quiet contrarian. Does that result in being merely the loyal opposition? I don't know, but in my dotage (I turned 30 a few weeks back), I'm beginning to think that I don't care about being a loud revolutionary. (Maybe that's what happens to young men who find their passion too late for that crazy curve of sanguine to self-loathing to sanguinary that marks revolutionary worldviews imagined by twenty-something-year-old males.)
In fact, I think that I care only about settling in somewhere. But when I write that, I mean something like settling into a self-built palace surrounded by the warmth of some quiet, green world of ideas, or grass and trees and earth, and love all showing my own eccentric stamp. I mean settling-in in grand style. Michael Pollan described Alice Waters's brilliantly bright, but soft and quiet food revolution as something akin to gently subversive. And you know, gently subversive, slowing...that appeals to me. I've no evidence of this, but I imagine that humans are the only animals that can make love gently. If that's true, we should really run with it...take it to its logical conclusion.
Being the gentle subversive, I think I would have a rich family history to draw from.
Turns out, I come from a family of quiet crazies, pulling and tucking their little pieces of earth into rich loamy folk art. My father built our house (with some help), stacking the logs to fit my mother's vision. She chose large canvas for her works: our home; the endless repetition of artisanal crafts, and sets and backdrops for theater productions and Mardi Gras balls. Her father literally conquered the world, coming from nothing and nowhere to education, respect (he was a elementary school principal), and eventually back to where he came from, rural land big enough for his books, garden, memories, and personality to merge into a well-crafted plan for humble living. My grandmother's father built homes, a church, and an ethics for his daughter that included charity and gentility to his darker skin neighbors (an uncommon feat in Alabama of the early 1900s). Cousin Charles, like a mad physicist with one hand in the cosmos, and another grasping the most minute quark, carves the most intricate tininess into his mandolins and guitars and then moves the earth around his humble hand-made home to create lakes, ponds, damns with a bulldozer drug from the local dump. There are many other examples. The fact is that everyone of us is drawn to the giant and the miniscule, and our place somewhere between as little creator. Not always with happiness or success, mind you. But maybe that could be my contribution.
Today's Rule: Figure out why Billy Graham was utterly and horribly wrong when he said that war doesn't create any more death. And then figure out why the crowd clapped and cheered when he said it. Crazy people.
It had something to do with the fact that as I was milking the cow, my Mennonite companion and I were discussing whether theology in isolation, away from community, can be anything but a morality of practical strategies for survival. After all, nature doesn't care about your kindness, right?
We didn't come to any conclusions that would interest anyone else (we would have been very interested indeed if we had come to any conclusions), but I know the conversation was a serious and fruitful one, because at one point someone said something about reading the "fabric of the cosmos." Occassioned by a fierce nodding of the head by the other person.
Honestly, the fabric of the cosmos is serious business.
Back in the City, back on the Metro. So Nietzsche said that "the common good" is a meaningless phrase, one that hides its inherent contradiction within itself so well as to fool even the nicest philosophers that embrace it as a goal, or a workable concept. That which is common is never that good; that's why it's common. And we all strive to be uncommon. Okay, I'll accept this.
My wife heard Bishop Peter Storey speak the other day, and he said that humans were addicted to division amongst themselves, and so we've been since our origin. And so, Storey and Nietzsche agree. Okay, me too.
Nietzsche described the danger as the submission of that drive, and Peter Storey cited it as that which has created so much misery until now. That's okay, I can fit them both in. As the German one wrote: "my answer is my answer."
The fact is: I don't want to be common, but nor would I like to contribute to the self-absorbed fear of being deemed merely "common," a fear that seems to drive so much of the world's mean yen-yang of indifference and hate. Perhaps I'd like to be the humble exception, a quiet contrarian. Does that result in being merely the loyal opposition? I don't know, but in my dotage (I turned 30 a few weeks back), I'm beginning to think that I don't care about being a loud revolutionary. (Maybe that's what happens to young men who find their passion too late for that crazy curve of sanguine to self-loathing to sanguinary that marks revolutionary worldviews imagined by twenty-something-year-old males.)
In fact, I think that I care only about settling in somewhere. But when I write that, I mean something like settling into a self-built palace surrounded by the warmth of some quiet, green world of ideas, or grass and trees and earth, and love all showing my own eccentric stamp. I mean settling-in in grand style. Michael Pollan described Alice Waters's brilliantly bright, but soft and quiet food revolution as something akin to gently subversive. And you know, gently subversive, slowing...that appeals to me. I've no evidence of this, but I imagine that humans are the only animals that can make love gently. If that's true, we should really run with it...take it to its logical conclusion.
Being the gentle subversive, I think I would have a rich family history to draw from.
Turns out, I come from a family of quiet crazies, pulling and tucking their little pieces of earth into rich loamy folk art. My father built our house (with some help), stacking the logs to fit my mother's vision. She chose large canvas for her works: our home; the endless repetition of artisanal crafts, and sets and backdrops for theater productions and Mardi Gras balls. Her father literally conquered the world, coming from nothing and nowhere to education, respect (he was a elementary school principal), and eventually back to where he came from, rural land big enough for his books, garden, memories, and personality to merge into a well-crafted plan for humble living. My grandmother's father built homes, a church, and an ethics for his daughter that included charity and gentility to his darker skin neighbors (an uncommon feat in Alabama of the early 1900s). Cousin Charles, like a mad physicist with one hand in the cosmos, and another grasping the most minute quark, carves the most intricate tininess into his mandolins and guitars and then moves the earth around his humble hand-made home to create lakes, ponds, damns with a bulldozer drug from the local dump. There are many other examples. The fact is that everyone of us is drawn to the giant and the miniscule, and our place somewhere between as little creator. Not always with happiness or success, mind you. But maybe that could be my contribution.
Today's Rule: Figure out why Billy Graham was utterly and horribly wrong when he said that war doesn't create any more death. And then figure out why the crowd clapped and cheered when he said it. Crazy people.
posted by Michael at
6:58 PM
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