It's getting late and I'm trying to process some of what I'm readnig in Richard Niebuhr's book Christ & Culture. If nothing else, I find myself torn as I approach this book. It's sort of paradigmatic in how I feel about a lot theological issues--I really respect people who land all over the spectrum of opinions regarding how Niebuhr works out his ideas and it's hard for me to hear my own voice in my head because I hear so many others. I certainly want my thoughts and opinions to be impacted by my teachers, pastors, leaders, friends, theologians, various authors and just those who see things differently than I do, but sometimes I get lost in the faux dialogue that they all have with each other in my head. There's a sense in which I can't find my own thoughts in the drone of theirs. It usually takes me stepping away from the book/lecture/article/program to get the space to hear my own thoughts on it, though. Not that my own thoughts aren't influenced by theirs, but more that there's still a mediating factor in how I think sometimes. I haven't fully reckoned with their positions such that I can integrate their insights into a position of my own. Something that seems to come out here is my fear of being wrong or having an overly-simplistic view of something. I tend to want to nuance my understanding of things so that I can fully see and present all sides involved in the discussion. This desire sometimes conflicts with another desire of mine: to come to a conclusion. And this makes me tense up while I'm reading and gives me a headache--like right now. While I say claim to love the process of doing theology and the perpetual conversation it involves, I think I'm still very much learning how to let my philosophy and theology be in a state of development and growth, to be in progress so that conclusions can be fluid and subject to change. This, along with trusting that God guides me in the process helps me relax while I read, and enjoy rather than dread evaluating ideas.
Well, on with it now.
19 February 2007
Penumbra
Penumbra. In short, this is the fuzzy edge of light around stars. It’s the shining of the stars, but it’s come to mean anything that had indistinct edges due to a spilling out of light. It’s light that lets our vision be clear. We see best when light shows us distinction, line, curve, shape, depth, movement. Basically, we see when we can see. But all this has to do with the object and the environment—the stuff outside that we perceive. What happens when our vision is bad? Without glasses or contacts or some form of aid, everything has penumbra for me. I’ve often wanted to paint the perfectly circular blur of brightness that car headlight and tail-lights form. When I was little I liked to take my glasses off when we would drive at night—everything had a perfect shape with a distinct center out of which came sharp spokes of light that all ended abruptly in the same blurry manner at the perimeter. There were larger ones, brighter ones, red ones, green ones, yellow ones—some were affixed in front of houses, others along streets.
There was a sui penumbra to all this—my own penumbra, a penumbra that originated in me and not the things out there. It’s not that the lights themselves were indistinct the way the stars seem indistinct to us—but my eyes couldn’t (and still can’t) see the distinction, can’t see the squareness of headlights—only the perfect roundness of the light. All light was shaped the same, even if the colors were different. Whereas light usually brings better perception, in these cases—when I let myself see with my natural, unaided eyes—light precluded perception. I couldn’t tell distance or speed; movement and motion seemed imperceptible—everything was both threatening and safe at the same time and in the same way. Knowing I was in the car with some licensed adult driving made that collapsing of categories okay since there were other things that guaranteed my safety in the midst of these various sui penumbra. But if I were to drive without my glasses now, it would be a simply terrifying experience for everyone involved—it would be foolish and cause untold trauma for me. I wouldn’t know how to feel about which lights—I wouldn’t know when to feel safe or when to feel scared, when to drive straight and when to use an evasive maneuver, I wouldn’t know when I could safely pull out of my driveway and when to wait for traffic to pass. Even if I know not to pull out in front of a semi in my little red, 1990 Eagle Talon, I wouldn’t know when the opportunity was presenting itself so that I could apply that piece of wisdom.
Seeing rightly and living rightly are inter-dependent matters. I can have wisdom, and I can know how to feel when a semi is barreling down on me, and I can desire to protect myself and my passengers, but if I can’t see the world around me for what it is, I can’t apply that knowledge correctly. My thinking can be directed rightly, I can have wisdom and understanding about what to do in certain situations, I can have the skills necessary, and I can even desire the right things—but if I see with penumbra all around, then life gets very scary, frustrating, and confusing and my opportunities to exercise foolishness instead of wisdom increase manifold. In this way, I feel blind. What good is seeing at all if it doesn’t let me interact accurately with reality?
The only times this penumbra goes away—or becomes insignificant—are when I get really close to the light source or the object I want to observe. When I remove the distance factor, then I see reality—I see the body of the star and not the bursting of light all around the gaseous entity that’s emitting the light. When I let myself get close, I can accurately assess reality. It’s either risking like this or—sometimes the better option until I start to see better—ask someone who can see!
There was a sui penumbra to all this—my own penumbra, a penumbra that originated in me and not the things out there. It’s not that the lights themselves were indistinct the way the stars seem indistinct to us—but my eyes couldn’t (and still can’t) see the distinction, can’t see the squareness of headlights—only the perfect roundness of the light. All light was shaped the same, even if the colors were different. Whereas light usually brings better perception, in these cases—when I let myself see with my natural, unaided eyes—light precluded perception. I couldn’t tell distance or speed; movement and motion seemed imperceptible—everything was both threatening and safe at the same time and in the same way. Knowing I was in the car with some licensed adult driving made that collapsing of categories okay since there were other things that guaranteed my safety in the midst of these various sui penumbra. But if I were to drive without my glasses now, it would be a simply terrifying experience for everyone involved—it would be foolish and cause untold trauma for me. I wouldn’t know how to feel about which lights—I wouldn’t know when to feel safe or when to feel scared, when to drive straight and when to use an evasive maneuver, I wouldn’t know when I could safely pull out of my driveway and when to wait for traffic to pass. Even if I know not to pull out in front of a semi in my little red, 1990 Eagle Talon, I wouldn’t know when the opportunity was presenting itself so that I could apply that piece of wisdom.
Seeing rightly and living rightly are inter-dependent matters. I can have wisdom, and I can know how to feel when a semi is barreling down on me, and I can desire to protect myself and my passengers, but if I can’t see the world around me for what it is, I can’t apply that knowledge correctly. My thinking can be directed rightly, I can have wisdom and understanding about what to do in certain situations, I can have the skills necessary, and I can even desire the right things—but if I see with penumbra all around, then life gets very scary, frustrating, and confusing and my opportunities to exercise foolishness instead of wisdom increase manifold. In this way, I feel blind. What good is seeing at all if it doesn’t let me interact accurately with reality?
The only times this penumbra goes away—or becomes insignificant—are when I get really close to the light source or the object I want to observe. When I remove the distance factor, then I see reality—I see the body of the star and not the bursting of light all around the gaseous entity that’s emitting the light. When I let myself get close, I can accurately assess reality. It’s either risking like this or—sometimes the better option until I start to see better—ask someone who can see!
11 February 2007
A short not so meditative post on Christmas decor
Having just taken down our Christmas decorations, I think I'm feeling like spring can officially start. In Florida, it feels like winter just started in mid-January. It didn't get cold until then, save for the bit of a cold front that came through on Christmas day sparking some tornadoes. Now it's cold, but it feels like we should be moving on. It was in the eighties for the entire time we had our Christmas decorations up.
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