Another Week Ends

1. For some reason it seems appropriate to start off here with the problem of evil… In an exceptional essay for the Point, Linden K. Smith says that no matter how one interprets the fact of evil, the question remains: “What is one to do about it?” This emerges in response to Marilynne Robinson’s new book Reading Genesis, which seems to suggest that “we must forgive evil … God had to forgive Creation for Creation to continue.” Smith sees all of this in relation to the tragic death of his younger sister, and extrapolates from there:

When you forgive, you love what you do not and cannot understand. There’s no explanation for how one might come to love like this. There are no psychological tricks, no spiritual recipe. Either one does or one does not. If one loves absurdly, it is only by grace. And if one wants to love absurdly but cannot, it is a stark reminder of our smallness. Love is a duty that the will cannot fulfill.

It is there, in experiencing absolute limits within myself, in my failure to love and forgive, that I found God. Of course, I never found a story that redeemed my sister’s death. I had thought I could busy myself with the poetry of living, but after a while, I discovered that I could not live on narrative alone. Not only did I fail to find a story that could explain the evil outside of me, I could not even manage the evil within me. I have long sought to discover why I am as selfish and dishonest as I am; why I am so callous toward my neighbor; why I love to hold a grudge. I have found a hundred convincing explanations. And yet none of them have ever changed me to my satisfaction — my will is something apart from any story I can tell about it. “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” Or as Wittgenstein put it, “Explanations come to an end somewhere.” When you experience yourself as being entirely beyond your own control and forgiveness feels out of reach, prayer is all you have.

That is so good. Off to a great start here.

2. Next, an obituary of “St. Richard” Simmons — exercise eccentric, sporter of extra-small shorts, inspirer of decades of Halloween costumes. The obit, by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, surveys Simmons’ legacy in the broader context of 20th-century American exercise movements:

The notion of exercise as a sign of moral virtue is as old as the activity itself. Movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Muscular Christianity, positioned it as a means of disciplining the flesh, and physical work as bodily proof of God’s grace. That ethos was still thriving when Simmons burst onto the fitness scene in the 1970s, a decade when Oral Roberts University’s “Pounds Off” initiative required Christian students to maintain a particular weight, diet, and exercise regime, or else face suspension. Secularized versions of this mentality were everywhere, too. Avid runners described trading cigarettes and steak for daily miles as a “conversion” experience that made them superior to their slothful contemporaries.

Muscular Christianity? Sounds — needless to say — terrible. Yet thanks to “the weight saint,” there arose a kind of Reformation in the theology of exercise:

Simmons took that religious devotion to exercise, stripped away its grim asceticism and elitism, and imbued it with pure emotionalism and inclusivity. […]

Born in 1948 to a Jewish mother and Methodist father, Simmons once considered the Catholic priesthood, but found his calling in converting Americans — especially those often cruelly excluded from the dominant fitness culture at the time — to exercise. […]

Perhaps the most profound way that Simmons transformed the fitness industry was by challenging its gender norms. His trademark spangles, makeup, and campy showmanship were entirely new to the mainstream gym world … Before achieving success, however, he had faced alienation. Simmons wrote of having felt “like a failure” in men’s gyms, his ebullience and emerald-green tracksuit at odds with the militaristic trainers and muscle heads in stained gray sweats. […]

He was living proof to his disciples that they could turn their feelings of inadequacy and exclusion into fuel for fitness. Unlike those polished celebrities and perfect trainers who headlined other videocassettes, Simmons insisted that, just like you, he was a work in progress. Decades before trainers infused exercise with therapeutic talk or stories of personal vulnerability, Simmons held support groups and always returned to the message that everyone deserves to feel good, and to move with abandon.

3. For summer travelers this next one will be especially pertinent, by Tara Isabella Burton in the Hedgehog Review. Laying out the fascinating history of spiritual pilgrimages in the West, Burton contrasts two different kinds of modern travelers: the self-styled globetrotter seeking spiritual epiphany Eat-Pray-Love-style vs. the “derided” tourist.

Of these, it is better to be the tourist.

It is precisely in its lack of emotive “authenticity,” its rigid refusal to conform to personal desires or tastes, that the “tourist trail,” traps and all, demands a kind of conformity of its visitors … I have often been struck by the energy, enthusiasm, and curiosity of those travelers — regardless of their level of prior knowledge or experience — most willing to sacrifice their autonomy, not because (as “authentic traveler” lore would have it) they demand an inordinate degree of comfort, luxury, or safety, but because they would like to see and do as much as possible in a place, in the limited time available.

In this, bucket list tourism, even — perhaps especially — the organized, package kind, may be more closely aligned with the spirit, if not the form, of traditional religious pilgrimage. […]

The classical pilgrim does not leave home in search of new rooms for his interior castle — though he may well be open to the emotive experience of divine love should he be fortunate enough to perceive it — but in pursuit of concrete, external, and earthly goals. The relics he goes to see or venerate or kiss are real bones (though, it must be admitted, not always those of the saints to whom they purportedly belong); the churches he visits are real places. His travels do not so much bring him into himself as demand that he put his own self — and his desires — on hold; that he perform actions both unpleasant and perfunctory, for a purpose that transcends any particular goal, need, or want he may have. The goal of the pilgrim, after all, is not to Have a Religious Experience but simply to make it, alive and relatively healthy, to his final destination, and then, having dispensed with his obligations, to make it back home.

4. And if you liked the above, you might also enjoy Burton’s recent review of the new Charles Taylor book, Cosmic Connections:

If poetry moves us, Taylor suggests, it’s not primarily because it strikes our individual fancy. Rather, his book makes the case that there is some truth to poetry — indeed, in language itself — to which reverential awe is not just an option but a necessity. There is, for Taylor, a there, there.

Which relates, I think very much, to what Christian Wiman wrote for the latest issue of The Mockingbird magazine:

​​After a reading I gave once, a young poet came up to me to dispute something I’d said. It was about the way that so much poetry, even determinedly secular poetry, creates a sense of transcendence, and how that suggests something about the nature of reality: a certain excess is inherent to a thing’s thingness (I was much more eloquent, I hope) … He said that sense of transcendence was simply “built in” to the form, part of what it was, the nature of language. This seemed, to me, to exactly prove my point. Why is poetry this way? Because reality is this way. Why is reality this way? Because God made it and lives within it.

Back to Burton:

Drawing on the work of the German sociologist Hartmut Rosa, [Taylor] proposes that we add to our poetics an account of what he calls “resonance”: a deep, morally felt sense that our emotional response to great art is a kind of answer to a cosmic call, one that originates not from our respective psyches but from the world itself.

For an easily digestible summary of Taylor + resonance, check out Andy Root’s recent MbirdNYC talk. And for those interested in going further, an excerpt from Taylor’s Cosmic Connections was recently published in The Lamp magazine. In which Taylor inquires — and traces the history of the question — what is a meaningful life?

5. This week’s funnys are tech-related, and all too real. From the New Yorker: “Your iCloud Storage Is Full! Here’s Why“: “Five Thousand Screenshots of Your Home Screen That You Took By Mistake.” Ha! Plus: “All emotional support tabs lost in recent Chrome update” and “Your Body’s Updated Terms of Service.”

I also loved this from the ever-faithful Reductress: “REPORT: Song Good Because It Sounds Like the Past“:

… this phenomenon occurs because people are generally overwhelmed, uninterested in the present, and would much rather escape into an idealized version of the past when that had 0 responsibility or were simply not alive.

6. For the Christian Century, Yolanda Pierce reflected on the lost art of phoning home — the spiritual ramifications of hearing the voices of loved ones and letting them hear yours. I loved how she put this:

When you are close to someone, the sound of their voice tells you so much. You can hear their sorrow or joy; you can tell if something is wrong or if everything is going right, just by listening to them say a few words. And for those who love you and know you well, even the slightest changes in your tone or inflection can tell them more than thousands of written words ever could. […]

Sometimes I want to walk around campus and tell our students to answer those phone calls from home. I want to tell them to save that voicemail or audio message from a parent or a sibling. I want to hold up a sign to remind them that someone who loves you is calling. Someone whose time on this earth is finite needs to hear your voice. In the fullness of time, you understand how precious those calls from home are — that they will not always last. And one day you may mourn the loss of that beloved person who insisted on hearing your voice just to know that you were OK.

If that inevitable day of loss comes, we can rest in the promise that we can always call our spiritual home. That as we pray, as beloved children of God, we are heard, seen, affirmed, and cherished. We can remember that there is a heavenly parent who rejoices in the sound of our voices, comforts us in our silences, and understands our every tone and inflection. 

Strays:

• In an excerpt from his new book, The Narrow Path, Rich Villodas writes: “Social media creates the illusion that we can know all things, be everywhere, and use our words for the sake of power. It’s the seductive lie that we can be omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent.”
• Guardians of the Sacred: Ethiopian Orthodox monks on spiritual conservation.

And last but not least, Mbird’s big announcement, teased above: the Home issue of our print magazine is available to pre-order! See the cover below, proceed here to secure your copy. The cover art by Kristin Moore reflects so much of what this issue is about. Its orientation draws the eye upward (it even looks as though the windows are gazing vertically) at the expanse above. As promised, this issue comes with a fresh correspondence from Christian Wiman, plus interviews with Mike Cosper and Sarah Westfall, new writing by Gretchen Ronnevik, Natasha Smith, Sarah Condon, and so many more. Excited for everyone to see it!