My Boston–or, how to find your home

Thanks to Rod Dreher, there have been several discussions about finding and making a community lately; a theme that resonates a lot when the city I’ve come to love and reluctantly called home is attacked. I don’t know that I ever wanted to admit my love of this hard region, with the constant winters, the people and their famously laconic social skills, and the lack of real mountains. However, reading Dreher’s work and reflecting on how much New England has adopted me has certainly been a time of reflection and thus it’s overdue for some praise to my community.

Boston has a strange draw for us Lichens boys. I can recall being eight-years-old and being moved to tears that my oldest brother decided to leave Oregon for Boston. “Boston,” I thought, “Where is that and why would he want to leave?” Bob had just moved back in with the family and now needed a change; he needed to get as far away from Oregon’s spirit and geography as he could, and New England is as much a foreign nation to a kid from Cascadia as much as any other place. It seemed so weird to me, but I ended up following in his footsteps a good fourteen years later and would return to this region after my departure from grad school. Like Bob, I too needed to get out of Oregon but I never imagine that I’d feel the same affection that he did for this place.

My first impression of Boston was that it is an old city, carved by Puritans in a hostile place and refined by the toughest people I’ve ever encountered. New Englanders can come off as rude, with a huge chip on their shoulder. It can be mistaken as rudeness, but it is only their odd way of loving. They protect their hamlets, towns, neighborhoods, and cities much like the hero of The Napoleon of  Notting Hill. A boy growing up in East Boston or Bow, NH is likely to see their simple land as citadel worth protecting and loving. In fact, these last few days of carnage have reminded me that New England can teach the whole nations one simple truth: that a place is loved not because it is great but that its greatness is but a reflection of the love the people have poured out on it.

I may have been initially put off by the people, but I truly do love this region. Her old forests, colonial towns, and ages of folklore produce stories of ghosts, romance, and adventure and very often these same stories happen in the same few square miles. If you go to one town of a few hundred people you can plop down in a pub and feel the many ages of hopes and dreams that were poured out for generations even if not a single person will engage you in small talk. This is, after all, the soil which was tilled by the Sons of Liberty that helped plant the seeds for our many great poets and novelists.

“There are two ways of getting home,” Chesterton wrote, “and one of them is to stay there. The other is to walk round the whole world till we come back to the same place.” Chesterton was talking about seeing the familiar things made new, as if you found a new joy and adventure by gazing at the same hill you’ve walked one thousand times before. As I look at the videos of the Marathon Bombings I see the unspeakable horror of what a coward will do to maim and harm other but I also see the much overlooked simple kindness of people running back to offer aid and help to their fallen friends. Even in a place renowned for its less-than-friendly demeanor  there is still enough good in people that they will help when all common sense would say to run.

Boston and all of New England have so much beauty but it takes a second look before one can see it again. Here is my hope that I don’t forget the joys that this adopted land of mine teaches me.

Some Music For Labour Day

I don’t know that it’s entirely fitting, but I couldn’t think what to write that wasn’t already better said by Dorothy Day or a Pope. So, here’s a song. Cheers.

How Borders Taught Me To Move Forward

I’ve been working since I was sixteen and thus I am no stranger to job hunting. This practice has made me usually optimistic when changing career paths and I always manage to find a way to make myself an invaluable employee, no matter how many of my resumes will be rejected. Now, as you’ve no doubt read before, my reader, I am in a precarious situation shared by millions where my past successes aren’t exactly indicative of future greatness. Looking back on my previous jobs, perhaps stability was not always my calling.

Harper Memorial Library, University of Chicago (from Justin Kern, click image for his amazing photo blog)

When I first entered the working world it was largely in restaurants, working among the salt-of-the earth that is the back kitchen, an experience I wouldn’t trade. Of course, my affection for books eventually led me to believe that a bookstore was an ideal place for employment–proof that going to grad school wasn’t my first decision led by my heart. I was initially turned down over and over again but my persistence finally led me to landing a job in a Presbyterian-run Christian book shop and even doing data entry for a great intellectual bookstore. When the Presbyterian store went out of buisness, I found a job with Waldenbooks and finally Borders. As usual, I was always praised for my interaction with customers and my odd cherriness when working the graveyard stocking shift.

At Borders I was sometimes arriving at 4am to start shelving the books and the dreaded Hobby/Games section. That upbeat attitude I talked about was my reaction to having a job I really enjoyed and my general unfamiliarity with the early morning hours. However, it was really helping people with book recommendations that I loved in each book shop I worked in. Every book was a chance to change someone’s life or at least see to it that they had a great time with a book. My crowning achievement was helping a young girl who was looking into religion and being able to send her home with Augustine, Chesterton and Anthony Flew. It was also at these stores that more and more philosophy and religion titles claimed a spot on my bookshelf.

However, Borders soon let me go due to one of Oregon’s many economic lulls and I worked part time at Waldenbooks in conjunction with several other positions until I decided to go back to college. Now, with them out of business, I am trying to understand how a giant in the industry is gone and one of several buildings I worked in is soon to be empty. This marks several of my former employers who are no longer operating, three of them bookstores. Along with so much that is unknown in my life, employment shouldn’t be such a new one.

The economy is the prime example of instability, as is perception of a college education and even our political model. Today I am reading emails and facebook status updates of my friends who are enduring Hurricane Irene. As I found out in graduating from a liberal arts school, even a bastion of stability like a university or a liberal arts college can change locations or curriculum in what seems to be a split second. Perhaps there was never that much stability in my life anyways, but being able to only find temp jobs that pay worse than Borders sure makes the unknown that is the future that much scarier.

As I said in my last overly-personal post, the freedom that many gradate school quitters desire comes with that price of uncertainty. For the first time in over six years, I don’t know what I’m doing this Labour Day and I have nobody dictating what I will have to do for the next nine months. At once this is a feeling of liberation and oppression: I’m free to choose my road in life now, but I’m having to daily fight the paralysing fear that sometimes comes with that choice. I could find the job of my dreams and really start paying off my debts so I can truly explore the religious life or I could be working temp jobs for another few months. Heck, I could just randomly decide to move to Boston tomorrow and rejoin my friends and live in a city I have come to adore; but nothing is certain and that can make me stop altogether.

I should end this rambling missive, my reader, but there is one thing I have to say to all the googlers who find my website and might be deciding which path to choose. That one thing is that staying in what seems to be a stable life purely out of fear was a much worse feeling than any kind of anxiety I experience now. While in graduate school I was having to see counsellor once a week and I was, by the end of my time, on four different types of medicine that were aimed at alleviating my stressed-out mind. Where I am now is not where I want to be but I am finally able to be open to change or a new calling and I can read what I wish when I wish to. If your vocation is in the academy, then I commend you, but don’t stay or go to the ivory tower purely because of uncertainty. Being lost is about the best thing you can do with your twenties before the joyful responsibilities of family and real life come into play. Have a good time with it!

A Single Tree Monastery

From Byzantine Texas, comes this cool story:

(Atlas Obscura) – The One Wood Monastery seems tiny. It seems absolutely miniature, and fairly unimpressive until you realize it was constructed out of the wood from just one Oak tree.

in the early 16th century, a monk made an interesting discovery inside a hollowed oak while walking in the Romanian countryside. To his amazement, an icon of the Virgin Mary was carved into the interior. The icon spoke to the monk, telling him to raise a church using only the wood from the icon-emblazoned Oak tree.

This legend has obviously stirred controversy and claims of historical inaccuracy. Another version of the story has a shepherd finding the icon and acting accordingly. Even the icon itself has been victim to strict scrutiny as to its age and origin, with some claiming that it was a creation of Constantinople era Christian artists or 4th century Greek craftsman. Others are still more inclined to believe the religious legend of the monk.

Despite the holy origins of the church, it is in fact a recreation of the older building originally constructed. In the 17th century, a fire ravaged the church completely destroying the original Oak building and sparing the icon.

The legend persisted after the fire, and a monastery was built up around the area. Today, 50 nuns have dedicated their lives to the holy site. The icon is now housed in a stone church on the premises and is considered the most valuable of the monastery’s collections, which also include other icons and old books.

 

When I Agree With Krugman, You Know It’s Weird

Paul Krugman is undoubtedly an intelligent and perceptive man, but I always have a hard time agreeing with him. Part of that is that he’s a DNC supporter who has trouble blaming his own party for ills, but actually will when facts get too hard to face. Also, Dr. Krugman tends to write almost as if his Fiat grants him the right to make claims without backing things up and when something doesn’t work he can fall back into the Keynesian excuse, “We just didn’t spend enough money!” However, in this short column I find Krugman makes some great points and some fair challenges. I still don’t agree with everything he’s writing in this column, but it is worth a read.

If you were shocked by Friday’s job report, if you thought we were doing well and were taken aback by the bad news, you haven’t been paying attention. The fact is, the United States economy has been stuck in a rut for a year and a half

Yet a destructive passivity has overtaken our discourse. Turn on your TV and you’ll see some self-satisfied pundit declaring that nothing much can be done about the economy’s short-run problems (reminder: this “short run” is now in its fourth year), that we should focus on the long run instead.

Read the rest at the New York Times.

The Beauty of Your House: The Churches of Calabria (via Caelum Et Terra)

Daniel at Caelum Et Terra shares some gorgeous churches from Calabria, a traditional Byzantine enclave in Italy. Adding these places to my “things to see” list.

Calabria is the "toe" of Italy's boot, the southernmost part of the peninsula. Greek-speaking until relatively recently, it still maintains much of its Byzantine heritage. … Read More

via Caelum Et Terra

R. R. Reno’s “Preferential Option for the Poor” (via On Journeying with those in Exile)

1. Introduction In Matthew 13.44-46, Jesus is recorded as describing the kingdom of heaven in this way: The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.  Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it. There are many people who ha … Read More

via On Journeying with those in Exile

The Episcopalians Steal Everything From Us…

 

Image from HuffPo

WASHINGTON (RNS) The Episcopal Church is rejecting charges that its top leader, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, mishandled the ordination of a former priest who is now accused of sexual abuse.

Jefferts Schori has remained silent on the matter, which surfaced after an alleged victim filed suit last month against a Benedictine monastery in Missouri where the priest, the Rev. Bede Parry, once lived.

Parry, a former Catholic monk, was ordained as an Episcopal priest in Nevada in 2004, when Jefferts Schori was the local bishop before her 2006 election as presiding bishop.

Her successor in Nevada, Bishop Dan Edwards, said Tuesday (July 5) that a thorough review of church records shows that Jefferts Schori “handled the situation perfectly appropriately.”

“The spin on this, that Bishop Katharine failed to follow the rules to protect children, is highly ironic,” said Edwards, who noted that the Diocese of Nevada has wrestled with problems of clergy misconduct. “She has done more to clean up this diocese than anybody.”

While the Roman Catholic Church has weathered years of allegations from victims and lawyers of mishandling abuse cases, the issue has not similarly roiled the 2.4 million-member Episcopal Church, or Jefferts Schori’s leadership.

If you have the stomach, please read the rest of this article at the Huffington Post.

If only the Episcopalians would allow priests to be married! If only they would listen to Maureen Dowd and let women be bishops and then none of this would happen!

Transitions: How To Cope With Quitting Grad School

Doing it once more, but hopefully for the last time. I’m packing up boxes, sorting out books, throwing stuff away, and looking to move out for one last adventure. I hate moving and everything that it entails. This, among all the reasons why I didn’t want to leave school, is the most salient excuse I had. I don’t know if it’s because I hate having to organize all my life into boxes or ask myself the uncomfortable questions such as, “Do I really need this old, moth-eaten sweater? Yeah it’s warm, but come on!” “Do I need to have a copy of Descartes in Latin? Do I even remember how to read Latin? Hell, did I ever learn Latin or just enough to satisfy the exam?” “Karl Barth? Sure, it will look great on my shelf, but there’s no way in hell I will ever have the time or patience to read Church Dogmatics.“

I no longer believe there are any strangers who read this blog, all the same I’ve been reluctant to talk about the fact that I have decided to leave academia. Not just because UChicago has rendered me exhausted, both emotionally and even physically, but because I just can’t ignore the stats and figures reported by MLA, AHA, and the facts plainly stated in articles such as Thomas Benton’s “The Big Lie About the ‘Life of the Mind,’” and even a report in The Economist or such great encouragement from Dr. Amanda Krauss and Mr. Rex at selloutyoursoul.com. Reading these reports, combined with my personal observations and conversations with current professors forced me to face the hard truth and ask the question, “If I am no longer having fun, and the chance of me getting a job are rather low, then why spend another four to six years preparing for a career that is unlikely?”

Family Matters

Ultimately, however, I had to look at what I wanted and what I was doing to achieve that desire. I am still discerning a vocation with the Dominicans, but as my diagnosed mental health difficulties keep becoming apparent I am no longer certain if it’s possible. If it is not to the religious life I am called then I still desire a family and, as most professors will tell you, it is almost impossible to start a family while in graduate school unless blessed with a very patient and supportive spouse. Even with such a great spouse, divorce rates are all too common among graduate students and professors. It really is no wonder that the University has been the traditional domain of consecrated celibates and confirmed bachelor dons.

Also, the demands of the academy require you to put everything second to your scholarship. This is why the most posh and cosmopolitan man in the world will end up in Kalamazoo or Eugene, OR instead of their natural New York/Boston habitat. This means that family is often put second and many academics are expected to delay having children until their 30′s and 40′s. While cultural norms tell us that thirty is the new twenty, biology still dictates when having children is optimal and when it becomes nearly impossible.

The Good News About Being A Quitter

All these family concerns are what finally made me want to quit grad school and move to Colorado. I want to be near the family I already have, which includes my ageing parents, my nephews, and my impossibly patient older brother and his wife. For the last six years I have had to live thousands of miles away from what little stability I have in life, and now it is time to try to get my roots and actually be from somewhere instead of just having another destination to travel back and forth to.

Ultimately, this freedom is the good news for all of us who have quit grad school and braved the uncertain job market. We will give up the chance for prestige and academic fame for the freedom to move where we want and to do what we wish. However, this freedom necessarily means a great deal of uncertainty, which is why many never leave the ivory tower even after years of working for $20k and no benefits. The reality is clear, but life outside of the hollowed halls of academia is a scary place, especially for someone in their mid-twenties with no job experience and a degree in a seemingly useless field like philosophy or English.

I’m moving to Colorado so I can be closer to family and the mountains I have missed so much while living in Chicago. Yes, I am scared shitless, but I’m also excited. For the first time in six years I have no clue where I will be in September; this is also the first time where I have a real choice where I will end up and what I will be doing with only the normal, quotidian circumstances dictating what I have to do with my days. I am unemployed, not at all certain of the future, and at the end of the day I’m ok with that because of the rewards of finally having the freedom to decide the course of my life.

How will I explain this decision? How do I explain to people why I have spent so many years writing and studying an obscure subject? At the end of the day, I don’t know a bloody thing, but nobody ever said I had to. Also, if I can make it through the great volumes of research and all the work it took to get where I am, I doubt that anything can be that daunting. We shall see, and you shall hear much more from me as I write this out. However, for all of you who might be reading this and about to go through the same experience and feelings, try to keep in mind the freedom you are purchasing in exchange for the small comforts of the academy.

Pray for me, my dear reader, and see if you can offer any advice. As always, I love feedback and would enjoy any observations or violent disagreements you might have.

GK Chesterton, 75 Years and Still Getting The Attention

On 14 June 1936 the world lost one of the most colourful and controversial writers of the modern era, and it is this man that I raise a glass to and say many thanks to Mr. G.K. Chesterton. It has never been a secret that I have great appreciation for the Beneficent Bomb, and I would go so far as to say that I owe him so much that I often wish he were alive so that I could in some way pay his debt. It is not just for his use of paradox, his exciting mysteries and thrillers, but it is the combination of his witty prose and larger-than-life attitude that I have been thankful for, but a combination of these things that  have made him admired by authors such as Aidan Nichols, Slavoj Zizek (who actually quotes GKC more than any other non-Christian critic I know), Graham Greene, and C.S. Lewis. For all these things he is admired, but for me it is because he did what so few authors outside of the realm of mysticism were capable of doing: showing that innocence and joy were within reach without succumbing to ignorance.

Innocent, But Not Ignorant

Chesterton and many of his followers are often derided for a “Chestertonian Gusto” that can frankly be annoying to the more cynically-inclined like myself. Kafka is said to have remarked that Chesterton was so happy that one would think that he had found God, which is perhaps closest to the truth of the matter. There has been much written on the happiness exhibited by Chesterton and the almost controversial nature of his joy, but there is one thing that many writers seem to miss when analysing and scrutinizing how a man can be so happy at a time when so much seemed to be going wrong. The assumption that I have long suffered from and one that permeates almost all of society is that if one is innocent or has a feeling of joy then they are not paying attention. I believed this myself, and often still do during my ‘black dog days,’ but it is from this illusion that I will forever be thankful to Chesterton. In a way, he literally saved my life.

I can still remember on one bus ride from work in Boulder and reading my copy of Orthodoxy when a seed from Chesterton’s work was planted with the simple sentence, “I believe in Liberalism. But there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in Liberals.” This was one of three times in my life where depression had actually made me into a monster most would never recognise; I had ceased believing in any form of spirituality and had come to suspect each and every person I encountered with a paranoia that I still find unbelievable. I had planned on suicide and had even composed a rather angry letter towards everyone I blamed. It is true that depression makes one act almost like the worst caricature of adolescence, and believe me it is embarrassing to think I am even capable of such behaviour. What Chesterton had planted was an idea that there was a goodness beyond the failures and inconsistencies of life, and in fact that there was great joy to be found in the very things we take for granted.

The world of Chesterton was always a search for a  man with a golden key, a figure from his childhood  toy theatre that opened a world of possibilities behind the most simple of doors to find something as exciting as a dragon or a piece of chalk. While it is easy to call him a childish optimist it cannot be understated that even Chesterton knew that blind belief in the perfection of the world always led to disappointment. Writing of these peculiar optimist, Chesterton states:

“If optimism means a general approval, it is certainly true that the more a man becomes an optimist the more he becomes a melancholy man. If he manages to praise everything, his praise will develop an alarming resemblance to a polite boredom. He will say that the marsh is as good as the garden; he will mean that the garden is as dull as the marsh.”

His view from the first sentence and through the many adventures confirmed in my mind for the first time that you might say that there are defects–what theologians call the stain of sin–throughout the whole of creation, but there is still an affirming goodness that we often forget about. The Chestertonian view found a goodness in the world that was rooted in the Christian belief that God created out of love, a love so great that God through Christ chose to become one with its creature. For someone who grew up in an Evangelical and liberal setting that imagined all suffering was just perception and could be defeated with prayer and positive thinking, Chesterton was an iconoclast who came to destroy the weak images and open the windows to a new world.

Chesterton believed that all people had the dignity of God in their character as it was imprinted in the order of creation; but this glory was expressed in the rest of the world that he often called a playground or a fairytale. Indeed, he probably looked to many as a mythological figure who had wandered into the real world and needed to be shaken back. However, this joy at life was not at all in ignorance. Chesterton was among the first to warn about Eugenics and the consequences that scientism could reap. Though he certainly spoke an anti-Jewish statement, he was also aware of Hitler and the dangerous ideology he represented while much of Europe remained ignorant, and even in his time he was debating issues that we now know are monstrous but in his own time were fashionable. This was a man who was in love with God and all of His creation, but that love did not mean he had to be delusional about it. When he affirmed the goodness of chalk, trees, his faith and his wife he also knew that this love would drive him to fight ardently while never forgetting why he started fighting. “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”

All of this, as I mentioned, was quite revolutionary for a young man who was in a rather great fit of despair. While I have read philosophers and theologians since that bus ride who have helped me in changing how I see the world, Chesterton still holds a great place with me for showing that such a vision was possible. I still have the black dog days and will always struggle with my own cross, but on that day I was able to walk back from the bus stop and look at the mountains with the single thought, “Perhaps it is good, but just has something missing.” Not profound, and certainly not  a new idea, but it was something that probably has saved my life. For this alone, I agree with George Bernard Shaw when I say that the world is not thankful enough for G.K. Chesterton.