Something on Tragedy

Early in his career as a theologian, Stanley Hauerwas challenged the pattern of public Christian rhetoric by claiming that much of the thinking and living of the church in the U.S.A. had lost its understanding of the tragic nature of human existence.  Some kinds of scientific rhetoric seek to provide a theodicy of necessity; in pop culture, the harshness of nature becomes "the circle of life."  Thus the horrors of the world can be put aside as somehow inherent in the system.  I'm not trying to claim that any of my scientist friends participate in this kind of reductionist philosophy, but I'm characterizing a kind of rhetorical repositioning of the aspects of life that one might call tragic.

It happens in other ways, too.  Self-help gurus try to convince us that we can avoid the tragic by simply aligning our lives the right way, taking the right steps, making the right friends, using the right techniques, and focusing on the right goals.  Positive thinkers try to make sure they have the right thoughts and say the right words so that they do not become the cause of their own pain and problems.

All of these kinds of philosophical convolutions help to hide from consciousness that the world does not happen strictly according to human choice and plan.  Part of the truth of tragedy is that an element of existence in this created world still can be called fortune.  Good fortune and bad fortune are not to be confused with a supernatural power of fate or determinism, nor to be confused with a quality attached to a person making him or her lucky or unlucky.  Fortune is a term naming what we acknowledge as factors beyond our control.

A hurricane hits land on the coast of one state and not another.  A tornado strikes one neighborhood and not the next one.  One person develops cancer, and another person with a very similar set of life circumstances does not.  One child grows tall and athletic, another excels at taking standardized tests, and another has physical features deemed beautiful by the culture.  I am not making an argument that these are utterly random occurrences, but they also are not matters strictly under human control.  When there is an understanding of fortune as an element of our existence, then it is also possible to conceive of the tragic.

We do not choose to be born.  When we are born, we do not choose our parents and their ancestral heritages.  We don't choose the neighborhoods in which our parents live when we come into the world.  We don't choose their religious and cultural background, nor the language that they speak and will teach us to speak.  All of these are elements of fortune.  Sometimes fortune allows a person to avoid many life difficulties.  Other times, it opens one up to the tragic.

One major example of how the absence of fortune and tragedy have hindered biblical interpretation is the well-known conversation Jesus has about wealth and poverty with his fellow diners and disciples.  The people having dinner are not very sympathetic toward a woman who comes to the dinner and anoints Jesus' feet with an expensive jar of perfumed oil.  One complains she could have been more practical and sold the perfume for a high price, using the money to help the poor.  Jesus is not very patient with that statement, and suggests that the speaker has surprised him with a sudden concern about poor people that was missing on the other days they had been together.  This is the story in the foreground when Jesus says, "The poor will always be with you."

Another biblical text is in the background, as Jesus' perspective on how to live is rooted in his study of the scriptures.  His statement is a quotation from one of the most important economic passages of the Bible: Deuteronomy 15.  This text provides the divine mandate for economic justice, for the safety net and economic security for all.  It says, "There will be no need among you," explaining that God will bless the community with what they need.  But it also says, "there will never cease to be some need," because things happen.  Bad fortune comes along.  Sometimes people make bad decisions, but more often, they find themselves in untenable situations.  Maybe the person in the home who contributed the most to their economic well being becomes sick or dies.  Maybe another family member requires close care, making it hard for workers to get the necessary work done to keep the house supplied with food and other goods.  Maybe a storm or flood or fire harms some households.  Maybe criminal behavior or war affects the viability of some people's economic situation.

Deuteronomy instructs the people to keep their hands open to the poor.  Don't be tightfisted.  Give what is needed to fulfill that mandate: there will be no need among you.  When the community finds people in need, they share the bounty of God.  Some will experience tragedy.  We cannot eliminate all tragedy.  But we can be present to make sure that tragedy does not leave people hungry or homeless.

Deuteronomy is reminding us that tragedy is part of life.  Our responsibility is to care for those who face tragedy.  Moreover, if there are ways to prevent some kinds of tragedies, if they are caused by systemic injustice, then we ought to be doing work to prevent the continued influence of those unjust systems.  Thinking good thoughts will not keep tragedy from happening nor make it go away.  No amount of self-help practices can allow persons to control their lives to the point that tragedy cannot strike.  The tragic is part of human life, part of creation's finitude.  It is in the commitment to one another, to walk together, to share the goods of creation among us all, to bear one another's burdens, to live as beloved community for which we were created and which is our purpose for living--there we find our defiance against the power of tragedy to control us.

Seven Years Between Haircuts

On May 20 I wrote about a hermeneutical flight of imagination.  I had realized that it was 70 months since Everly's death.  I had realized it had been seven years since Everly's first harsh and nearly deadly dose of chemotherapy, when her hair fell out from the poisonous effects.  Those numbers recollect biblical images of fullness, completion, and specifically the number of years associated with the exile of Israel after Jerusalem was destroyed.  I don't need to repeat everything I said there--you can go back to it.  But in summary, I said that I'm not claiming the verses of ancient texts are directly about me; rather, they interact with my life through imaginative comparisons and reflections.

I've continued to think about whether I should see this period of my life as marked by new beginnings.  Is there something I might learn about my own time and place by thinking about the end of Israel's exile?  "I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?"

One thing that occurred to me back on that day was that maybe the time had come to cut my hair.  Some people know that I started growing it out to its full length when Everly's hair fell out from chemotherapy.  Since 2012, seven years ago, I have had only a few trims when my mom or kids urged me to get the ends cleaned up.  I've not been much of a hair stylist.  I just let it grow as it will, and tried to keep it clean and combed.

I've told that story to many people who might have wondered why the Baptist preacher had such long hair.  I've explained when people inquired about the old man's unusual non-fashionable hair style choice.  I would say, "I started growing it when my wife's hair fell out from chemotherapy.  After she died, I kept it.  So far I haven't thought of a good reason to cut it."  I'm not sure what I thought a good reason would be.  But on that day, I thought maybe a reason with symbolic sense had come to me.

A few days later, I was talking with a friend who told me she had a discipline of "harvesting" her hair.  She grew it out to a full length, then periodically cut it off to send to an organization which used it to provide wigs for cancer patients.  She had done this cycle many times.

I also had sent my hair to a cancer support group once before when I experimented with growing out my hair for few years.  It seemed to be one more reason to add to my hermeneutical reflection about possibly cutting my hair.  I started planning to get a haircut. I even leaked this plan in conversation with a few people.  One person, knowing my mischievous side, suggested that I wait to cut it until I made my out-of-state trip to visit my dad in Texas.  That way, when I returned to North Carolina, I could anticipate getting the "maximum shock value."  I settled on that plan.  Dad was extremely happy to be a partner in getting my long hair cut off, as he was never fond of it.  We took care of it right away after I arrived.

The shock value plan worked.  I've had a great time showing up to my usual activities and encountering people's amazement.  A few have felt the need to tell me I look younger, which is not my goal.  I'm proud of my years achieved.  I'm not surprised that many emphasize that I "look great."  I know that having that long, shaggy mop of hair was in part a way to make myself distasteful to people's expectations, of thumbing my nose at conventionality.  I didn't expect people to like it.  One fellow minister said that if I could get a haircut, it was another sign that "with God all things are possible."  The locally owned pharmacy staff, with whom I've been doing business every month for a decade or more, had to ask my name when I came in to get my refills.  It's been fun to reappear in Durham as a new person.

Aside from the shock value and the fun, getting my hair cut is also for me a symbolic change.  Growing my hair was a sign of solidarity with Everly when her hair fell out, and it continued to be that for the remaining months of her life over the next year.  After she died, keeping the long hair involved shifting from solidarity with her in her living to a symbol of grieving her loss.  From year to year, I did not see a reason to cut it.  Perhaps at some deep level I was wearing my hair like a veil of mourning.  I sometimes entertained that idea, but never formally adopted it as my rationale.  I simply could not bring myself to the point of wanting a change.

In May of this year, as we were approaching what I had come to call my "sad season" between May 24, my wedding anniversary, and July 18, the anniversary of Everly's death, once more the weight of grief pressed upon me.  But under that weight, I found myself in the midst of a complexity of emotional and intellectual ferment.

Intellectually, I had arrived at a moment in my research and writing that had been very slow coming.  About ten years earlier, Willie Jennings and Dan Rhodes had coached me toward developing a book idea based on thematically similar essays I had written.  Dan even helped me create a possible outline and suggested a title I might use.  Yet as he and I talked through the structure of the project, I realized that there were severe gaps that I would have to fill before an outline of the book would make sense to me.

So I started working on those particular tasks.  I wrote and presented papers in the next few years that took important steps toward filling those gaps.  In each case, when I reached the temporary end of an assignment, I realized that I still had more work to do.  My pattern of scholarship over the years would have meant that I would pick up these topics again and complete the research as I prepared to present at an academic conference.  That process was interrupted in 2012 when Everly was diagnosed with cancer.  All of my energy and focus shifted toward supporting her "in sickness or in health."  I stopped writing new essays for a number of years afterward.

Eventually I started to get back on track, but the great breakthrough came about because of the invitation to give lectures at Hong Kong Baptist Theological Seminary last October.  They agreed to my topic for Baptist Heritage Lectures as "Baptist Ecclesiology After Whiteness."  The three lecture topics corresponded to three unfinished gaps in my research and writing.  The gift of a place to stay and focus on writing allowed me to bring all three topics to a satisfying point of development.

Building on that progress, I wrote an essay for a conference in May which further built upon the critical work necessary to write the book I was envisioning.  A month later, on a week-long writing retreat, I put together a full outline of the book, with chapter summaries, a new prologue, and a fleshed out proposal so that colleagues could help me refine it before sending it to a publisher.

Yes, something new is happening in this year of my life.  I am emerging from a season of intense grief toward what my buddy Willie has been pointing me for a couple of years.  He has told me a few times that he is seeing signs that "I'm still living."  In similar tone, Curtis Freeman keeps reminding me that I have important work to do and things to say that he and many more people need to hear. He told me that my presentation in May had him and the entire room "spellbound."  I'll take the complement even if it may be an exaggeration.  And my colleague in organizing, Tim Conder, keeps reminding me that there are things that I need to write that no one else he knows is able to say the way I can say them.  I'm not inclined, at least in my saner moments, to believe with Elijah that I am the only one left to do God's work, but I appreciate Tim's reminder that the distinctive person I am and the life that I have lived entail a message and calling from God that I need to faithfully carry out in my scholarly work.

Part of what is new in my life is also the rising up of joy after a long valley of sorrows.  If any of you followed my blog over the years, you know about the grief I have waded through.  It has not been only grief, but I have sometimes wondered if I would forevermore be known to many of my friends as the sad widowed man.  I wondered for myself whether I would have strength to be more like the visionary and committed servant of God that Everly once chose to share her life with.  Or would I be confined as the broken man who struggles to find the energy to finish out an academic career.  It's an exaggerated contrast, but it isn't lacking in truth.

In May, and June I started writing in this blog about the emotional transformations I was recognizing and working through.  I wrote about friendships, and about taking to heart my responsibility to enrich and expand those relationships with people who care about me.  I wrote about friends who were influencing me, encouraging me, and inspiring me to fulfill what they could see in me, even if I did not always see it for myself.  I'm not going to repeat what I wrote in those posts, but I will reiterate that I'm striving to live not only in the shadow of a great loss, but in the light of a community of friends and the hope of joy in sharing life with them. 

My deepest theological convictions tell me that we are put into this world to play our parts as builders of loving, just community wherever we find ourselves living and working.  We receive the blessing of those who come our way.  We recognize the failures of justice and love and commit ourselves to repair and restore the goodness that ought to be. 

I can't do that if I'm shrunken into myself and pulling away from the liveliness of caring for one another.

A few days ago I was looking through my Facebook account and noticed that it said I am married to Everly.  I guess I never felt the need to change it.  But now it seems as if the symbolic meaning of keeping my hair long aligns with the symbolic meaning of continuing to list myself as married.  My marriage with Everly brought fulfillment, gave us three children, and I believe blessed many other people.  It is okay to acknowledge that our anniversaries ended at 33 years, and the household we built did not continue as long as we had hoped.  I've been saying it for many years--I am widowed.  So I quietly changed it on the worldwide software platform, too.

Recently I was looking at some photographs in a blank greeting card display.  One of the photographs showed a trail through a plush woodland, thick with green undergrowth.  The picture showed the trail bending as it appeared more narrow, extending farther into the distance.  Around the bend, no one can yet see.  I can't be sure what is ahead, but I do believe this is a season of new things.  I've cut my hair after seven years (for now).  I'm opening my daily routines and my heart to build loving friendships here and now.  I'm in the midst of compiling many years of work into a book.  I'm looking ahead to see what might be next.  "From this time forward I will make you hear new things, hidden things that you have not known."  I hope y'all will walk with me.

Wondering If We're Ever Gonna Get Home Tonight...

Some days just call for listening to the blues, and my go-to blues singer is Ruthie Foster.  For those who don't know her music, here's a little bio blurb from her website.

   In the tight-knit musical community of Austin, Texas, it’s tough to get away with posturing. You either bring it, or you don’t.
   If you do, word gets around. And one day, you find yourself duetting with Bonnie Raitt, or standing onstage with the Allman Brothers at New York’s Beacon Theater and trading verses with Susan Tedeschi. You might even wind up getting nominated for a Best Blues Album Grammy — three times in a row. And those nominations would be in addition to your seven Blues Music Awards, three Austin Music Awards, the Grand Prix du Disque award from the Académie Charles-Cros in France, a Living Blues Critics’ Award for Female Blues Artist of the Year, and the title of an “inspiring American Artist” as a United States Artists 2018 Fellow.
   There’s only one Austinite with that résumé: Ruthie Foster. And with the release of her latest album, Joy Comes Back, the Recording Academy might want to put its engraver on notice. Because every note on it confirms this truth: It’s Ruthie’s time.  The small rural town of Gause, TX, had no chance of keeping the vocal powerhouse known as Ruthie Foster to itself. Described by Rolling Stone as “pure magic to watch and hear,” her vocal talent was elevated in worship services at her community church. Drawing influence from legendary acts like Mavis Staples and Aretha Franklin, Foster developed a unique sound unable to be contained within a single genre. That uniqueness echoes a common theme in Ruthie’s life and career--marching to the beat of her own drum.

Having introduced Ruthie to any novices, let me get back to thinking about some of her songs.

Lots of times, when I've got some emotions to sort out, I will turn to some of my favorite singers to search for a lyrical line and a musical phrase that will help me dig deeper into what I am feeling.  In this case, the song just kept popping into my consciousness, so I knew I would have to dig into my Ruthie Foster collection and play "When It Don't Come Easy."  It's a song written by Patty Griffin, sung and recorded by Ruthie Foster on The Truth According to Ruthie Foster.  I linked the album version, and here below is a live version that lets you see her onstage performance.  (And here is  another live version with Patty Griffin and Melissa Etheridge, including a very touching story about music and healing when going through chemotherapy.)


It seems like I'm doing a lot more driving on the highway lately.  More meetings at work mean I'm driving back and forth to Raleigh more often.  Working on building better friendships means getting out on the road to go around the Triangle or around NC to meet up with folks.  I'm also spending more time with a specific friend who, as we have gotten to know one another better, has shown me how we've been able to bring goodness into one another's lives.  Living a couple of counties apart gives me another reason for driving.

The other side of those trips is that I have to drive back home.  And it is that moment the other night when this song kept pressing itself on my mind.  "Red lights flashing down the highway...wondering if we're ever gonna get home tonight."  There is a kind of feeling that comes when I have to leave, kind of like the feeling that comes at the end of visits with my kids or my dad.  All the joy of the shared presence seems like it starts draining out, opening up a little space of emptiness, a kind of heavy emptiness. 

I don't mean to be overly dramatic, and I don't think I'm describing something unique.  It's something that many people feel when they have to leave what has been a time of blessing with loved ones.  A version of it can come after a moving time of worship, a great discussion in class that has to end, and a deep conversation with a friend over dinner.  But I felt it as I got in my car to drive home that night, and this song kept asking for my attention.  I put it off and listened to the baseball game on the drive home; then, at home I fell asleep early.  But the next morning, it was waiting for me when I woke up, so I got out the Ruthie Foster music to listen.

There's a part in the middle of the song that seems to articulate images of what is stirring my own thoughts and feelings these days.

I don't know nothing 'cept change will come.
Year after year what we do is undone.
Time gets moving from a crawl to a run.
Wondering if we're ever gonna get home...

 

You're out here walking down the highway,
And all of the signs got blown away.
Sometimes you wonder if you're
Walking in the wrong direction.

I remember being twenty years old and not knowing what the future would bring.  But it seems like the not knowing at twenty years old is pretty different from the not knowing at sixty-one years old.  As a young adult, growing up middle class, single-family/nuclear family living, white, college-educated, church-going, called to ministry--there was a script written for me that I had largely accepted and agreed to act out.  I would marry after college, go to seminary, learn about adult life and decisions, find a job, consider further graduate school, have some kids, and follow a ministry or academic career trajectory that looked like the lives of people I had been watching for many years.

The script is never quite as complete as we imagined it would be.  Your companions often have a different version of the script.  You find that there are missing pages, rewrites, conflicting plot lines, and eventually that it fragments more and more into various possible directions without providing an ending.  But at the beginning, those things are not so obvious.  Thus, an uncertain future at twenty seems way more like a clear plan than an uncertain future at sixty-one.  Now one's life may have the look of either mid-career or of the final stage of a career, but which one is not certain.  Many of my students in graduate school come in their late fifties or sixties, starting a new phase in their lives after retiring from another career.  Am I at a point like they have found themselves?  Or am I just getting my stride in the place where I am already?

 

Being this age, according to demographic trends, is far from the end of one's life, even though I've been called a senior citizen for a decade already.  My dad is eighty-nine and thriving.  That's almost three more decades of living if I keep his pace.  On the other hand, Everly and Mom didn't match the years of their husbands.  And the fact that my dad and I live so far apart during this time of his life is another one of those nagging thoughts asking whether I need to make a change.  So life is ahead, and behind, at the same time.  The signs all "got blown away" is an image that makes lots of sense to someone who has lived through at least a dozen hurricanes in his lifetime.  When things get most uncertain, it really can seem that I might be walking in the wrong direction.  "Don't know nothing 'cept change will come."

Ruthie's version of the blues can stare straight ahead into the despair, as in "Ocean of Tears," "Harder than the Fall," or "I Don't Know What to Do with My Heart."  As the bio says, she isn't confined to one genre, and she sings plenty of soul songs that share the wisdom of her community heritage, such as "Mama Said," "Heal Yourself," and "People Grinnin' in Your Face."  Her gospel formation also appears in "Up Above My Head," "Woke Up This Morning," and "Lord, Remember Me."  Actually you can't quite separate these songs into a single or discrete genre, as blues, gospel, soul, jazz, and more intermingle into a mass of healing-struggling-hoping-sad-defiant songs.

However, many of her blues songs intermingle the pain with hope, as is not uncommon in blues tradition.  Foster returns again and again to a kind of hope that has been learned over time because of friendship, family, and community.  She has known and places confidence in friends and loved ones who show virtues of faithfulness in hard times and readiness to reach out, listen, and lift up when one feels lost and alone.

"When It Don't Come Easy" is one of those kinds of blues songs.  It delves into the confusion and pain that arises in our lives.  It expresses the lostness of feeling like one has nowhere to turn, or one who is questioning whether the hard times are ever going to end: "wondering if we're ever gonna get home."  But the self-focused sense of loss gets turned around in the refrain and becomes a message of empathy.  The singer looks away from her own struggle to realize that those she loves also are wondering about getting home.  Sticking with the image of driving down a highway, the song imagines a loved one's car breaking down on some lonesome road.

But if you break down,
I'd drive out and find you.
And if you forget my love,
I'd try to remind you,

Oh, and stay by you
When it don't come easy.

This refrain stands out as the song's hook, the powerful message of connection and care that will not be broken even by the power of disappointment and uncertainty.   The song doesn't depart from the blues genre and get simplistic and goosebumpy.  It doesn't tie up all the loose ends with a closing about living happily ever after.  The final stanza is back to the beginning, driving down a dark road and wondering if home will ever be there.  It keeps things real about life's struggles and our emotional ups and downs.  But sewn into the lining of the blues is a reminder that we can get through things together if we will stand by one another, if we will show mercy to ourselves and those we love, to get through the hard times.

 

A moment of critical self-assessment requires that I not simply hear and believe these words through the normative gaze.  The refrain could easily play into the cultural formation of white men (which I know personally from my own psyche) to imagine ourselves as the heroes of every story.  Conrad framed it through imperialistic and colonialistic eyes as the "white man's burden" to uplift the lesser races (and gender) toward the fullness of humanity.  Hollywood retells the story again and again through white messianic figures who enter into complex issues of socially structured racial and gender politics to fix the problems out of their inherent goodness (and superiority).  

 

I have had to learn through marriage and parenting the hard lesson of interrupting this narrative in my own imagination, to stop trying to fix the problems of my wife or children, and to learn to listen and "stand by" them as they make their way toward using their own strengths, their own power.  I'm not the guy in every story who has a monopoly on power.  I'm not the hero of every struggle that touches the people I care for.  Caring for someone and needing to be the fixer of all problems are not the same things.  But the steady caring, the readiness to give of myself for others, the walking alongside in the struggle--those are the real things toward which the song can encourage my aspirations to be human and to be good.

Ruthie doesn't write all of the songs she sings and records, although she has written some great ones.  But she fills each of them with a soulfulness and power that doesn't leave me asking whether this is "her song" or someone else's.  Thanks, Ruthie, for trying "to remind" me that even when by myself and feeling a little empty, the music can fill up that space with memories and commitments made to "stay by" one another "when it don't come easy."