Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it…do this, understanding the present time.
-Paul, a servant

Between delight in emptiness and the lie of fullness, the prevailing intellectual situation allows no third way.
-Theodor Adorno

The gaze method is a yo-yo, jumping from materialist promises to historical criticism and back to idealism.
-Marcella Althaus-Reid

Scheming to convince my aching mind
That pleasure’s got nothing on the miracle of need.
– Circle Takes the Square, “Crowquill”

Not Yet, Already

Our encyclical reading group deferred the problem of gender to the second week since it could not be adequately covered in the first. The pope’s latest message on social life and values emerged misunderstood. Fratelli Tutti uses male language initially, as a placeholder, and the text explicitly insists that what is most important is the ending all. Outcry over the use of a gendered placeholder for a universal relation met instantaneous justification, reflexive assurance, the acknowledgment that of course something is off, that the formulation is imperfect but perhaps also the best that can be done right now, whether because of the weight of tradition or because there seems to be no word personal and translatable enough to name the particular relations of all. What is important here, we are reminded, is the potential for this to work, for people to recognize themselves in it and to be thereby motivated to turn from their wicked ways before we reach the global point of no return. All is a promise to do better the next time and a plea to stay tuned.

Teaching Machines (Integral Development)

I am writing now because I have momentarily deactivated my social media accounts. The experience of fragmentation, frustration and dislocation they seem to have exacerbated for me have become too much. I tried something different first. I went private, thinking perhaps I would share just anything I thought was both interesting and not imprudent, that I might reveal myself in hiddenness. The constant moral force demanding one speak out in obviously inadequate ways on important and complex issues of the day felt strong enough that one inevitably despairs of communication itself. I have been trying to write and think towards freedom. I thought perhaps I could continue sharing my paths in any form, so long as I continually remind myself of the relative nature of the value of both my thoughts and the feedback I receive from sharing them. Twitter, however, has its own account recognition-system, and I could not avoid the obvious fact that my copied and pasted representations were not objectively valuable in themselves, on the shared terms of experience. I didn’t care what other people thought, and also could not help but notice the empty hearts which I knew wanted to be filled, without knowing how. What’s important here is not my choice to leave but the conditions of its necessity.

Catastrophic Recurrence and Effectual Revelation 

We as the sons (and daughters) of God report for duty to clear the air, we sheepishly ask to be sent. If goodness means anything, it must mean something here. Anything less seems to be failure indicating the end of representation. It is by now a point of order in various forms of socially-conscious theological discussion to compulsively admit to or defend against the many crimes of history which have been authorized through reference to Jesus of Nazareth, to achieve reconciliation by building bridges across the gaps between appearance and essence in order to operate a tour bus line and drive over back and forth without looking down. It seems here are ever new frontiers which we explore together; as one we are creating, connecting and expanding worlds. It cannot be said that we are not humble when we only admit: we are not perfect, only God. Let’s take a look at His plan; If it were up to any of us, you could have others. We could always point somewhere else. Fearful glances along the way reinforce a sense of gratefulness in all involved. How could the idea of a virtuous cycle be wrong? How and why could you wish to leave?

What’s wrong with society today? Theologians disagree on the specifics but share a relative unity on the idea of what’s right: sacramentality, reconciliation, the act of God. We all need reminders to build our house on the rock because we always seem to build on sand. Does the rock exist or is it a regulatory principle of distinction? How can it be made useful? What if others don’t buy in? Perhaps the glory will shine through our words, perhaps everything in the end is already this rock. In these processes of objectification we can identify the turns to languages and acts returning to us as the desire for difference in itself.  We share all that we have already in common and hope there will be no sneaky business, that in all we are compelled to say there will be no lies.The world seems in crisis, it appears to never have been more important to say something true and different. The sound of creation’s groans deafen.

From Occupied Territory

Take, for instance, myself as the paradigmatic theologian. This summer I could not stop refreshing Twitter as the bad news filtered through. A horde of police were moving into the neighborhood, and indeed they were already here. I found myself caught up in the street, among a crowd which had begun overturning shop carts in a corridor which had been a center of Black cultural and economic life in the city. What I have to tell you is that there was obviously good happening as people cheered each other on. They asked me what I needed and provided things I did not, including a Michael Jordan championship T-shirt and a pack of cigarettes (I took one and not the other). They screamed and raised their fingers and fists towards the figures of deadly authority, who began in that specific place to fire tear gas indiscriminately in various directions, at anything that appeared to be moving, for hours on end.

Now experience is given, moral ambiguity established. Now, as a theologian, it seems to be my job to switch gears, to start interpreting. I could describe my vision of the rioters as an alternative church, as a proleptic sharing in the spoils of Babylon. I want nothing more than to point towards an insurgent church. What exactly in this situation is being valorized? What is it that I am saying I love when I say that I love God? Let’s say I want to convince anyone of the intrinsic goodness of something more specific, something like rebellion against unjust authority. How can they be made able to judge my work? I must provide an analysis which connects. I must to some degree satisfy their doubts. I must say as little as possible using the most persuasive language in hand, lest I be suspected of exaggerating, of stretching truth. Fortunately I have the most powerful tools yet developed for shaping desire, and what’s even better is that the power happens to not actually belong to me, instead being its own intrinsic self-relation, a symbol to which I must only ever refer, and there are always new symbols if I find one out of place. I must follow the rules; I must confess that I already know my representation of desire is not actually real, that it is particular. What I am talking about directly must not matter. The effect is immediate. Perhaps I’d like to argue differently, but here is a loss which I have already accepted, since I feel certain no one will be convinced of the latter, since belief in the potential justness of the police seems to be a rare source of social unity. I relent, connect to what we already value together, and pray fervently for an effective transfer. I am able to persuade that I saw something good insofar as it is recognizable on the terms of shared experience, insofar as blanks are filled, as we are willing never to learn.

This feels inadequate. Perhaps I should start somewhere less polarized. I am by now convinced that creation desires the end of police, but the rest of it seems not to be. Perhaps an analogy is in order. How about the idea of a world without hunger – that every mouth and stomach, every body be full? This feels more realistic and less contentious. What will it take to get there? Old songs remind us that such planning is not the point. We are reminding people of the need for full bodies, we are cultivating imagination. The plagues in our midst will be gone once we agree together: in the mean-time the dining-in which used to seem hazardous re-emerges as the only way to get anything to eat. Argumentation through identification seemed the only possible way to convince people to imagine along with me a world without police. In this case, however, the work requires that nothing be added. What does it look like to imagine the idea of fullness? What is everyone already doing? Can we focus and develop this intensity?

Broken Windows

This essay regards theological structuration. You might fill in the blanks with any structure you like. How bad does it have to be before it is a problem? Imagine the common philosophical metaphor of the mirror, which when showing two things signals that something is wrong. How and why this break, and what is to be done? It is not just that I think I am the wrong person to say, though as a self-professed mirror-breaker-in-chief, I do. The problem I think is deeper, which is that a broken mirror splits the gaze and ground of experience such that neither can be understood in the way the mirror suggests they otherwise should be, thwarting the desire to build back better. One might of course develop theoretical apparatuses to explain this break, to determine what happens and when. The political scientist James Q. Wilson had a theory that visible breaks were a sort of moral hazard, that the first step to building strong communities is repair, guided by strength. The sight of the break generates the pursuit for that which cannot be broken. Psalm 42 describes the experience of want after water; in Luke 11 Jesus asks what kind of father would, when asked for a fish, give a serpent. I just take it for granted that something of truth is communicated here.

Word Work 

Think of a pressing ethical issue and then of a contemporary theological work written in response. Flip past the empirical research convincing that this is a problem worth reading about, past the gesture towards secularized theological concepts and their always implicit reversal, past the hints towards an evaluation of Christianity’s adequacy in near total abstraction. Find the place where things fall apart. Find the turn, where the energy used to convince the audience of the problem’s urgency wants to dissipate but must be made to pay off through the articulation of a better way forward, demanded in spite of and because of its apparent impossibility. You can confess to anyone who will listen that you don’t exactly know what to say. That is no problem, they respond; something feels better than nothing. In fact, your writing is breaking new and as yet fallow ground; you are gesturing provocatively towards a larger mystery, you are pointing us to the work happening on the ground. An original alienation is named only to remind us of the necessity that it remain there, since it feels important that our work not belong directly to the world. What matters is our ability to show that something really happened, and failing that to point towards where it might have, whether or not for us. The demand is to effect a clear and useful starting point for authorization. It’s a dirty business; but we must find a start in order to heal. What is important is that something has been resolved, even if it is not everything, especially because it is not. Theology and ethics appear to merge in grammar, the elaboration of the rules of the game. It’s been rigged too long, made exclusive. In any case, power has gotten into the wrong hands too many times before; now we know everyone must play. 

Post-script : Hidden in the Wheat

As a theologian, I have brought myself back online. The word came to me when I was young and afraid, but I have grown and they appear gathered around. They can see what I am doing, together forming a horizon. They also want an end to the idiotic repetitions insisted upon by everyone to improve the general morale. They stir me on because they are sharing the same concerns, the same structures of interest, because they sense we are getting closer. We destroy our parent’s idols with no more use for a fleece, initial timidity overcome through collective effervescence. We are still hungry and exhausted, we take the meagerest revenge but we don’t really want to rule, not anymore. We stay ready because we want peace. I’ve led since night fell, but only in reasonable service. I want to sleep and be full. Everything is clearer and less intelligible. I know we are on the way; I know because we are not quite free. I must confess that I have made mistakes along the way. How and why could I let them down now?

‍