I have moved to http://buckholler.wordpress.com/

Buck

A few years ago Travis brought up a discussion on particular love as opposed to general love. I don’t remember all of his thoughts, and do not assume to (mis)represent them. But I recently began reading Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and came across an interesting dialogue between the elder from the monastery and a wealthy townswoman that reminded me of this issue. The dialogue begins with the woman asking “how can I get back my faith?”

“By the experience of active love. Strive to love your neighbour actively and indefatigably. In as far as you advance in love you will grow surer of the reality of God and of the immortality of your soul. If you attain to perfect self-forgetfulness in the love of your neighbour, then you will believe without doubt, and no doubt can possibly enter your soul. This has been tried. This is certain.”

“In active love? There’s another question—and such a question! You see, I so love humanity that—would you believe it?—I often dream of forsaking all that I have, leaving Lise, and becoming a sister of mercy. I close my eyes and think and dream, and at that moment I feel full of strength to overcome all obstacles. No wounds, no festering sores could at that moment frighten me. I would bind them up and wash them with my own hands. I would nurse the afflicted. I would be ready to kiss such wounds.”

“It is much, and well that your mind is full of such dreams and not others. Sometime, unawares, you may do a good deed in reality.”

“Yes. But could I endure such a life for long?” the lady went on fervently, almost frantically. “That’s the chief question—that’s my most agonizing question. I shut my eyes and ask myself, ‘Would you persevere long on that path? And if the patient whose wounds you are washing did not meet you with gratitude, but worried you with his whims, without valuing or remarking your charitable services, began abusing you and rudely commanding you, and complaining to the superior authorities of you (which often happens when people are in great suffering)—what then? Would you persevere in your love, or not?’ and do you know, I came with horror to the conclusion that, if anything could dissipate my love to humanity, it would be ingratitude. In short, I am a hired servant, I expect my payment at once—that is, praise, and the repayment of love with love. Otherwise I am incapable of loving any one.”

She was in a paroxysm of self-castigation, and, concluding, she looked with defiant resolution at the elder.

“It’s just the same story as a doctor once told me,” observed the elder. “He was a man getting on in years, and undoubtedly clever. He spoke as frankly as you, though in jest, in bitter jest. ‘I love humanity,’ he said, ‘but I wonder at myself. The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular. In my dreams,’ he said, ‘I have often come to making enthusiastic schemes for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually have faced crucifixion if it had been suddenly necessary; and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with any one for two days together, as I know by experience. As soon as any one is near me, his personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner; another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.’”
(book 2: chapter 4, “A Lady of Little Faith)


There are so many things here, and I am not going to attempt addressing them all. There is and interesting relationship between the general and particular in the two stories told here; on the one hand love for humanity becomes impossible because of the ingratitude of individuals, and on the other a distain for the individual intensifies the love for humanity. It is obvious that the more difficult love is for the individual rather than the general. General love is easy, though the lady supposes that she would loose even that, but the elder tells an opposing story that shows how it only increases with a disdain for the individual. The argument, as I understand it, is that the inability to draw near to the individual leaves one with the option to remain so broad in their love. There is no danger of having to sacrifice anything of one’s self in so broad a love as a love for humanity. At that level one is probably closer to loving an idea and engaging themselves within this ideal relationship, in actuality, a relationship of their own creation. They are in reality loving the self, but wouldn’t this be a form of particular love—a non-sacrificial form of love?

I can see this in the case of the doctor, but in the case of the lady active love will only bring about its total absence and move her further away from any belief in God.

This brief episode also causes me to reflect on my own culture—notice how I am keeping the conversation in the realm of the general! What about the issue of racism? Aren’t we encouraged to a large degree to establish a general love? Terrorism? Now the conversation here does work hard to focus on a particular group of Islamic radicals. But as the cliché goes, “while all Muslims are not terrorists, all terrorists are Muslim.” Yes, I understand difference, but sometimes—and increasingly so—it is a difficult distinction to make. I think where I am going in this is the tension between racial/religious/political/economic equality and individual freedom. Equality becomes the poster child for a general and broad love for humanity, which eventually conflicts with the freedoms of the individual. A simple example is the eradication of capitalism and redistribution of wealth—stealing from the rich to feed the poor. Taking the money that I have worked for and giving it to someone who has not worked for it (and I am aware of all the social arguments that are packed into this such as the environmental factors that enslave one to social poverty) creates an equalized society, but has simultaneously robbed me of my freedom. This would be the “ingratitude” spoken of earlier, and I can easily see how that would destroy my love for humanity or at least for the poor in general.

Why is this democratic ideal of general love enforced upon our culture? But can I have a particular love for something without the general? It does seem possible to have the general without the particular. But the ultimate reality of this is best displayed, I think, in socialism/communism. Can I truly live without being loved in particular, if I am castigated to the melting pot of humanity and no longer Buck Holler. In fact, Buck Holler becomes an irrelevant and meaningless association of words.

Buck

A couple of weeks ago I went to the grocery store and parked right across the street where another car just pulled out. I thought that I was safe, but when I came back out to the car there was one of those wretched orange envelopes conveniently placed under the driver side windshield wiper. A $60 parking ticket! Just when I got slack and thought that I was getting a handle on this place I was quickly knocked down and lost $60 dollars in less than 20 minutes. It felt like a bad day at the casino.

So RaChael and I are even on the tickets, and NYC is doing very well on our contributions. I haven’t quite yet factored it into the Holler budget, but we are getting close.

But then on Thursday night RaChael went to the going away party for the Cubblers’ who helped us tremendously when we came to NYC. I stayed home with the kids because I didn’t want to be out all night and then have to go in to school the next morning – sort of anticlimactic and perhaps a sign of Jerry(atric) disease (for those who don’t know, Jerry is my father). I drank a couple of cups of coffee that night, which was stupid, but it didn’t use to affect me, and was having a rough time falling asleep. Just as I fell asleep RaChael comes in from the party at about 1am, and says “Buck, I know you love me.” Now that’s always a bad sign. It turns out that she parked the car in a school zone, which is free to park in except from 7am – 4pm, and the ignition froze up and wouldn’t turn. I told her she needed to hit it, and she said she had. Needless to say the conversation was not that pleasant. But I got up and walked 7 blocks down to the car to start it. The key wouldn’t turn. So now I have to apologize to RaChael and figure out how to get the car out of the school zone before 7am.

While I am walking back home I begin to feel sick and it was confirmed as soon as I got back to the house. I maybe slept 2 hours the whole night. I got up at 6am thinking maybe the sunlight would have changed things, so I stumbled back down to the car, but the ignition still refused to budge. I was still sick so I called in at the school, called a tow truck, and waited while RaChael met the tow truck on her way to take the kids into school. The tow truck managed to get the car before the parking Nazis’ discovered it, but now I am stuck with a Ford Focus that won’t work. After looking on the web I discover that this is a more than common defect with the Ford Focus. There are countless stories of this happening to people, and yet no recall on the matter. In the meantime I have to figure out how I am going to fix it, do the laundry, and go to Costco. Anyone got a mule?

Buck

I will just start by saying that I was supposed to be watching the kids.

A few weeks ago Trinity started crying in the other room. When I went in I discovered that she was jumping on the bunk bed and had hit her mouth. This of course did not concern me at the moment because there was a puddle underneath Trinity, which after 3 kids was an all too familiar sign of potty system leakage. So like any good father would do, I chastised her for peeing her pants. Looking back I suppose that I was in effect diverting the pain, because the next day her mother discovered that her front tooth was out of alignment. Trinity had hit her tooth hard enough that she had to have it pulled. Now she's a snaggle tooth, but she's still cute.

A few days ago while RaChael was at work I was talking on the phone to a friend of mine in Red Bluff about our house, so it was a pretty important conversation. In the meantime the girls had gone out on the small patio to mess around in what little snow was left. They kept yelling and shouting so I looked and could see them through the door jumping up and down, but I just thought that they were messing with me so I went back to the living room talking to my friend. . . . A little while later I hung up the phone and the girls were still yelling so I headed out to get after them, but, the door was locked! They had been locked out the whole time and were trying to get me to let them in. Trinity was shirtless, all the girls were shoeless, and our landlord called me to inform me of the situation just as I let them in.

One of these Father's Days I'll get that "World's Greatest Dad" shirt, but probably not this year.

Buck

Ok, so we had a four day weekend with Presidents day and all, and RaChael managed to get Monday and Tuesday off. We decided to get out of the city for a couple of days and at 12 o'clock midnight Sunday night we decided on going to Plymouth, Massachusetts.

It was a four hour drive and there was practically no one there. You want to know why? Because it was freakin COLD! The ocean was iced over, and there were no lines to see Plymouth rock or the Mayflower II. The Mayflower being a replica of the original and the rock...well, it was a rock. However, it had 1620 carved into it. Eewww, that makes it all special.

We found a really nice hotel on the ocean with its own private beach and indoor pool/spa. You would think it would be really expensive, but believe it or not, it was cheaper than the other hotels in town. Crazy. It was just past the plantation on the south/east of town called the Pilgrim Sands Motel, www.pilgrimsands.com, in case you find yourself out there any time soon.

So why did I title this post "trees?" Well today was a little warmer so we were walking around town and heading for a coffee house on the main street. All three girls decided to be horses and were galloping down the sidewalks whinnying as they loped along. (Seeing this in NYC you would think we just escaped Belvue Hospital.) As Gavriel was runing free and wild she smacked right into a tree that laid her out. It was the funniest thing. The bark scratched her knee and the left side of her face up. "You got to watch those trees Gav. They'll jump right out in front you. Try putting some reigns on that horse of yours." That was my fatherly advice.

All in all, it was a nice break. So we're back, and school starts tomorrow and RaChael has an interview for a new job tomorrow.

Buck

RaChael: "I got some bad news."

Buck: "What?"

RaChael got a ticket for "obstruction of view" because there was too much snow on the back window, even though it was snowing. Then she says that the officer gave her another ticket for no insurance. But we have insurance and she pulled out the new cards with a 2/20 effective date. She tried telling the officer that she grabbed the wrong one and that the other one was in the glove box, but he refused to let her talk because he was being a prick.

That was Friday. Today as we were heading to church I notice something under the windshield wiper, and guess what?, it was a parking ticket. This one was for "missing equipment," which was in reference to our broken driver side mirror. But here's the deal, the car was PARKED! Now I can understand if we were driving, but it was parked. So I looked up the violation code, and it reads as follows:

Parking Violation Code #80:

Standing or parking a vehicle not equipped with head lamps, rear lamps, reflectors or other required equipment.

Fine:

Manhattan: $60
All Other Areas: $45

Honestly, this is the dumbest violation. It feels like the cops are a bit cranky right now. Nonetheless, I guess I better replace that mirror.

All in all, NYC just made $135 from me this week. That sucks!

Buck

I have read various books discussing what exactly constitutes the essence of personhood--i.e., what it means to be a person. Basically that personhood is grounded in various webs of relation. Personhood is relational. We are what we are in terms of our relations to others and other things that we encounter constantly in our lives. This concept of our humanitty directly opposes alternative models that seek to ground personhood in individualsm, which has become the normative vision of the person in our western culture. Such notions of individualism tend to emphasize either the rational or ethical elements to our humanity. Both of which having become means of measuring our goodness, rightness, and worth. All of which determining an individual's acceptability to the extent that they have correct thinking and morals.

This alone creates problems, because at least one door opens that draws individuals to seek acceptance wanting to fit the particular mold in order to receive acceptance. The other problem moves in the other direction by accepting or rejecting individuals based on their conformithy to the particular mold.

My point in mentioning this is in reference to a recent reading of mine in Walter Brueggemann's "Theology of the Old Testament." Brueggemann essentially argues that, based on the analysis of Israel's relationship to God, the human person stands in relation to God by the movement from "complaint-petition-thanksgiving." What is so boldly present in the Psalms, Job, and OT Israel but grossly absent in today's church is "self-assertion" before God. I think this is primarily because of fear--fear of abandoning faith and one's relationship with God. But can one truly say they have a relationship with God if they cannot be honest before God, even if that means complaint in their venting of self-assertion? When looking at Israel in the OT, they did not have this fear--it was part of their identity as people, as a community that stood in relation to God. But what Brueggemann says has resulted in the church, and I totally agree because I have seen it and still do, is the creation of the "false-self," of phoniness.

By attempting to save face and silently conform (if conformity is the right word; the idea is perhaps better described by "appear") to right thinking and a right morality true humaness is loss, and a culture of phoniness has embedded itself within religious communities. See, I believe that embracing self-assertion before God can only be grounded in a relational model of the human person, whereas the false-self is the child of individualsm.

I will leave this with some comments from Brueggemann and you can chew on what he says or respond to my reading of it.

Brueggemann, pp. 475-76:

"It occurs to me, nonetheless, that compaint and petition wherby the speaker can be fully honest before Yahweh and expect Yahweh to accept the self so expressed requires a strong sense of self on the part of the petitioner; it also requires, with equal urgency, a God who can cede initiative and authority in the transaction to the petitioner who speaks imperatives to Yahweh and so enjoys an instant of omnipotence. Thus in Israel's practice such prayer belongs to a healthy self.

"In my judgment this matter of omnipotence before Yahweh in prayer relates to healthy believers before Yahweh. If one must always please God (like always pleasing mother), one learns to fake it and so become a "false self" vis-a-vis Yahweh. I suggest that in its characteristically flat articulation of God as omnipotent, the church has unwittingly done much to nourish believers to be false selves. The predictable consequence, now so evident, is church persons who are inordinately moralistic in an insistence that others should please God in the same undifferentiated way they have learned to do.

"Moreover, the loss of this standard practice of complaint and petition from theological perspective, which has entailed the loss of self-assertion over against Yahweh and the forfeiture of countertestimony about Yahweh, is precisely what has produced "false selves," both in an excessively pietistic church that champions deference and in an excessively moralistic, brutalizing society that prizes conformity and the stifling of rage. Quietisitc piety and conformity moralism together have encouraged docility and deference that generate phoniness at the most elemental levels of human existence. Israel's sense of healthy humanness is profoundly transactional, with the two parties in turn exercising initiative. Israel, moreover, understood that the drama of rehabilitation, including the sequence of complaint, petition, and thanks, requires the Holy One, over against whom the human person in extremis must take shrill and vigorous initiative."

Buck

Ok, so I am attempting to post more often and attempting to keep more of an update of NYC life. Although, I can't guarantee that it will always be funny, assuming that what I post is funny. At least I'm laughing as I write it, which oddly enough reminds me of being too much like my father who is known for laughing at something that no one else seems to get.

Anyway, RaChael is applying for this new job at the Container Store and had an interview coming up. She kept saying something about her hair growing and the roots showing, and there's different colors, and stuff like that. I suggested that it was probably just grey that she was seeing, and then felt a slight pain on my face. So she was determined to color her hair before the interview, but when we were in the store she was asking my opinion on light or dark. "Uh...yeh...they both look good. Didn't Shar threaten you to never dye your hair again?" Well, she gave up on me, but the funny thing was when I came back around the corner RaChael was kneeling on the ground with packages of hair coloring on top of her head asking Sivana and Gavriel which one was closest to her roots. So Sivana and Gavriel were hovering over RaChael's head looking with inspectful eyes giving advice. I was too embarrased so I went to another department. However, I did suggest going with the dark just in case things went bad, since they could go a lot worse trying to dye your hair lighter. Yet I didn't have a flippin clue of what I was talking about.

Things all worked out, but the kicker was when RaChael was walking home from work a couple of nights later. She said no one really noticed or said anything about her hair at work except for all the gay boys. But on her way to the subway from work she always passes this homeless guy who is typically begging for money. So RaChael is walking down the sidewalk seeing this guy asking for money from people as she approaches. Walking by, the homeless guy says, "Hey, I like her hair. It looks good." At least the homeless guy noticed!

Buck

So it actually snows here. We were beginning to think it a myth, though it is not a lot. However, it is flippin cold. They call it the "artic blast." Yeh, walking home from the train in the wind is a real joy. The snow is pretty gross with all the garbage, dog piss, crap, and street gunk. But of course, Sivana and Gavriel think "snow walking" as they call it is great fun. So I am usually yelling at them to get off the snow, or scanning the terrain looking for any unwelcomed substance of waste. I have come to the conclusion, and it wasn't hard, that animals in the city is cruel, gross, disgusting, and just flat out retarded.

Which reminds me about RaChael's experience a couple of weeks ago. She first tells me that she was having one of those bad days. On her way to the bus stop she was pushing Trinity in the stroller not really watching the ground when her right foot nearly slipped out from underneath her (ok, a slight exaggeration). At this point she fully realized that she had step in dog crap. This alone is slightly humerous, but it gets better. She turns around to see what she has done, and as she does she walks back through it with her other foot. Now she has it on both feet and realizes that she can't get on the bus like this, but she was pressed for time to get Trinity to school. She then proceeded to clean her boots off in the snow along the curb but ended up getting fecal material all over her gloves. The whole thing ended up taking her over 30 minutes to tackle. Now the next morning I am walking with Sivana and Gavriel to the bus stop mindlessly watching them do there "snow walking." All of a sudden I remembered RaChael's slip and slide in the area, so I start looking. Just before Gavriel went feet first I grabbed her and pulled her aside. But the most astonishing thing was the pile of RaChael's encounter. Good grief, it looked liked a freakin bear took a dump on the sidewalk. I am not kidding, that was the biggest pile of crap that I have ever seen, and RaChael hit it square on, twice!

Buck