The Holy and the Broken Hallelujah

So for several months now--since a friend of mine referenced it online, as a matter of fact--a particular song has been rattling around in my brain, inviting me to embrace its complexities.

I refer to Leonard Cohen's classic song "Hallelujah." One of the great things about the song is that there is no one correct version of it--the lyrics vary wildly in order of the verses and in content. (This is true, by the way, whether Cohen himself is singing it, or another musician is covering it. In fact, covers tend to be more standardized--John Cale, Jeff Buckley and Rufus Wainwright all use pretty closely similar versions).

Here is, for example, what is posted on YouTube as the "original studio version":



Note the verse:

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light in every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Won't be hearing that again.

Ok, let's go to John Cale:



(Quite possibly my own favorite version, though the next contender is close)

And, just for good measure, a really good late Cohen performance:



So, we have a verse introducing the story of David, singing before the Lord--but with a bitter edge. Then, the story of David and Bathsheba--"You saw her bathing on the roof/Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you." And, just to complicate matters more, the story blends with that of Samson and Delilah--"she tied you to a kitchen chair, she broke your throne and she cut your hair". Bathsheba may have a verse herself--"I've seen your flag on the marble arch/but love is not a victory march," sometimes feels like a wry observation from a woman whose preferences were not, shall we say, consulted.

The other verses, in counterpart, speak of the bitterness of betrayal, the seeming meaninglessness life and love itself ("maybe there's a God above/but all I've ever learned from love/is how to shoot at someone who outdrew you"") can present at times, and our own crippling inability to "only connect." And throughout, the narrator refuses to accept the stereotype of an easy festal shout of "Hallellujah!" Life hurts, bucko. You may give that shout--but not easily, not without the experience of desolation that the spiritual life doesn't immunize us from.

The biblical references frame the song--in some versions they follow each other, in others not. They invoke Scripture but not in a simple re-telling--the scriptural story goes back and forth with a narrator who (as the verses quoted above shows, and ) is pretty jaundiced about life, and, as this and other verses show, about love--sacred at times (the "Holy Dove was moving too"and yet so transitory. But then what a finish--in the versions that use it:

I've done my best,
it wasn't much.
I couldn't feel
so I learned to touch.
I've told the truth,
I didn't come here just to fool you
And though it seems it all went wrong,
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
with nothing on my tongue but Hallellujah

George Herbert has gotta love that. Seriously, beat this as a theological rumination--it's a testament of a soul battered, not broken, hurt by life but choosing to love, and appearing before the Great Mystery with truth and a kind of hell-busted joy.

A Decade Later

Everyone is, reasonably enough, looking back on September 11, 2001. Decades say something to us, in our desire to track events, and measure lives. My own experience was more opera bouffe than anything else, but here it is.

I was working, at that time, at a small Long Island law firm, and we had a office in the WTC. Fortunately, there was a whole-office meeting out in Nassau County, so that nobody reported to our Trade Center offices that day. Everyone was at the Long Island office.

Except me. But I was not at the WTC either; I had just completed a two day meeting with clients in DC, in which we began laying the groundwork for the litigation in which we challenged the Communications Decency Act's application of "local community standards" to judge the content of material posted online, and, especially, the Government's then-extant strategy of having government employees access websites from conservative jurisdictions, and making the artist/authors stand trial in that jurisdiction, under its standards, a policy under which the most conservative community essentially set the limits for what was permissible throughout the United States.

So, I was at the then-relatively-newly renamed Reagan National Airport, about to fly home. Did you know that RNA is quite close to the Pentagon? Neither did I, then.

About to board my flight, I saw the first plane strike the Tower. I thought it was an accident--an unbelievable accident. I even called home, and left a message asking if I had actually seen that. Then, a woman in an airline uniform ran out from behind the baggage area waving her arms and yelling "GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT!"

As far as I could tell, that was the evacuation protocol. Straightforward, at least.

I went to the main concourse. That's when I saw tape of the second plane, and realized this was big. And deliberate. Another guy, about my age now, maybe a few years older, said to me, "Damn. We'd better try to get a train before they get closed down, too." We walked back to the abandoned baggage area, got our bags, and began to head back to the concourse. All of the people in the airport were out on the tarmac, trying to work non-functioning cell phones. A low, dense black smoke rolled toward us--word of mouth had it that the airport had been bombed. And so, with no clear idea where we were headed, we walked across the grass, down a hill, across a highway, and then into the nearest town. My companion was taken ill on the way down-started feeling his chest tighten--so I helped with his bag. And a bunch of Americans streamed into an American town like refugees.

A nearby hotel (a Marriott) let us in, and started handing out water. My companion (forgot his name after all these years) was taken to a doctor, and I was on my own. I hate to admit it, but I immediately flashed on the Flashman novels, especially Flashy's dicta that if you look like you belong, people will assume you do, and carry yourself with a high hand. Rather than fold up my best suit for the trip home, I was wearing it. I closed my shirt collar, jacked up my tie, and hid my bag behind a chair. The, walking in a swift but unhurried manner into the manager's office, with a cool nod to the secretary, I closed the door behind me and made calls--I couldn't reach my parents, but I did reach my client's Executive Director, and she and her husband offered me a bed for as long as needed one.

From there, it became simple-- a short ride on the Metro--up again after only an hour or so, a walk from the station, and a refuge.

I had it incredibly easy.

My friends didn't all have it so easy. I knew several people, good friends, who had damned close calls that day, and one former work acquaintance who died. My silly little experience was nothing like that--yet I got a taste of something most Americans haven't--a loss of security at the most basic level. I understand the anger the attacks caused at a visceral level, because I experienced first hand the "this cannot be bloody happening" feeling that underlines it so often. Ten years ago, we learned what it was like to be vulnerable. We also learned that there were heroes among us--the passengers of Flight 93, the firefighters who ran in, the police officers who shepherded people to safety, or died trying. The clergy at St. Paul's and Trinity, and St. Peter's, who provided succor and hope. And we saw good in each other--the testy mayor rose to the occasion, and President Bush (not a favorite of mine, shall we say) gave a speech in which he refused the poisonous bait Bin Laden proffered, and rejected the framing of the attack as one done by Islam as a whole against the West, thus denying Bin Laden his dream of a clash of civilizations.

A lot went wrong after that, and history will bring its usual microscope. And so it should. But for today, tomorrow really, because I'm posting this the night before the anniversary, we should, I think focus, on not just our losses, all the losses worldwide from this terrible conflict, but on those who have chosen to strive to redeem the mess--those of all and no faith who have tried to bring peace, to, each in his or her own way, still the ancient brutal dream of Attila the Hun.

As for us, who benefitted from their services, or from luck, or both? We're still here. Peace be upon us all.

On Purity Trolls of the Left

From DKos:

I hate to accuse President Obama of being an Uncle Tom, but like Uncle Tom he counsels accepting our system of enslavement to the rich and powerful. I mean this literally, based on the book that, as Lincoln said, started the War to Free the Slaves. Obama began his Presidency being compared to Lincoln, because he supposedly appointed rivals to his cabinet. If he wanted real rivals, he would have appointed Krugman, Stiglitz, Trumka and Warren, not Summers, Geithner, Donovan, and Clinton. Obama has not shown the determination of Lincoln to restore the union, whatever the cost. If Obama had been president in 1861, he would have negotiated an end to war based on a promise from the slavers to treat their slaves better.

This framing is simply racist. Period. It's also deeply stupid, and smug to boot. And plug-ignorant, as well. (Did the author even read Stowe?)

But more to the point, this sort of thing helps explain why the "professional Left" doesn't find a lot of love in the Obama Administration. Because this is just today's example of this sort of insane nonsense--and check out the comments. Or check out Firedoglake . Or any post by Glenn Greenwald (seriously, I don't even have to pick a specific post; they're all over the top Obama bashing--and in comments and on Twitter GG consistently refers to Obama as "Dear Leader" and his supporters as "cultists").

And then compare this unfortunately named but understandably frustrated response.

Even when they have a point, who can hear them through the hate?

A Commercial Announcement: "Command and Coercion,"

or what I've been doing instead of blogging. This article is, I hope, a section in my projected second book, in which I'll be exploring the relationship of Church and State, not from the perspective of what the Supreme Court has said about it (too muddled with inconsistent and conflicting rationales and results). Rather, I'll be looking at the harm done to religious bodies by efforts to exercise secular-style power.

This section examines the sex abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church and the Church's response as in the light of John Henry Newman's views on the Church's "regal function" and the clerical immunity from secular criminal law fought for by Thomas Becket. As this is a draft, a "pre-print," comments especially welcome.

The Letter Killeth...

I have a few thoughts about the symposium issue of the Anglican Theological Review dedicated to Same Sex Relationships and the Nature of Marriage: A Theological Colloquy. The debate is quite interesting in its own right, and I recommend a reading of all of the various papers for a nuanced view of the scope of the disagreement. But I'm not here to recap it, but to riff off a few themes in the main conservative paper "Same Sex Marriage and Anglican Theology: A View From Traditionalists," by John E. Goldingay, Grant R. LeMarquand, George R. Sumner & Daniel A. Westberg. I feel a little bit guilty riffing off the themes that struck me in the paper, in that the Task Force appointed by the Theology Committee of the House of Bishops strove mightily on both sides to express their views in the most charitable way possible, and some of the things I have to say about this paper will not read as altogether charitable. Still, I can't help but feel that a lay reaction to this paper may interest some readers.

First, and foremost, I can't help but note that the paper reaches its viewpoint in a very abstract manner, proceeding from hermeneutics, to scriptural analysis, to science and natural law, and then to natural law and marriage. Now, this isn't a bad approach to certain legal problems--the interpretation of a constitutional text, for instance--but it seems awfully bloodless as an approach to theology. The most passionate, and eloquent, passage in the paper addresses hermeneutics:

we are trying to achieve an objective understanding of this text according to its own presuppositions and concerns. There is an analogy here in the process of gaining an objective understanding of other persons whom we love. Because of our commitment to them, we want to know them in reality, and not just make them a projection of our own interests. We commit ourselves to understanding them in their distinctiveness, even where we may find them difficult or objectionable. Often we find when we do that, what seemed objectionable, becomes, if not likable, at least understandable. We may then be able to learn from who they are--which does not happen either if we reject them or if we assimilate them too quickly to what we understand and accept.

(14)

Pretty good, hey? To quote the great Mark Twain, Sir, it is pie. But, what's interesting about the paper is that it doesn't apply this standard to the people most affected by the doctrine it defends: our GLBT brothers and sisters. There is no effort to engage with the experiences, the pain, the lives of those at the center at the debate. Now, I'm a great believer in intellectual rigor. But when it runs away from the Holy Spirit, and the experiences of those impacted by its sweeping analysis, it becomes scholasticism--a closed system, which may or may not connect with reality at a given point.

Here's another question about hermeneutics: The paper stresses the importance of fidelity to Scripture--not in a fundamentalist way, but to the whole tenor of Scripture, a general viewpoint with which I agree--and finds in the few pieces of Scripture that touch upon homosexuality (in some way) and marriage a point of contact with natural law theory. But the paper acknowledges the prospect that there are "moral issues where subsequent reflection and experience led to genuine change in the church's teaching." (20). The paper gives three examples, two of which are non-controversial, and the third which is--interesting:chattel slavery, the subordination of women, and the prohibition of usury. (Id). Wait a second. What about the prohibition of usury? Ah:

The prohibition of usury, for example, was held for centuries, and came to be seriously questioned both on the adequacy of the interpretation of the few scriptural texts that were thought relevant, and of the philosophical understanding provided by Aristotle of the nature of money.. In that case, the evidence to decide the issue comes from reason and Scripture and not from tradition. In other words, the challenge to change the canon law on usury could not be answered simply by appealing to the many centuries when the prohibition was accepted.

(11).

At the risk of seeming pedantic, my copy of Aristotle's Politics at I x describes usury as unnatural, stating further that "The most hated sort [of wealth-getting], and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural." (That's Jowett's translation. The same text is less colorfully but consistently translated at p. 87 of the Penguin translation by TA Sinclair and & Trevor J. Saunders (1981)).

I don't see how Aristotle helps undermine the canon law here. (Fairness requires me to point out, though, that in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle's theory of equality of exchange does suggest that individual transactions are not the ideal context of ensuring equality; medieval thinkers used this passage to moderate the canon law on usury, but the more specific passage in the Politics seems to me to make this much less obvious than the paper assumes). How about Scripture? A quick review of the texts quoted by Jeremiah O'Callaghan in his 1825 tract Usury, or Interest at 5-8 yields 18 separate prohibitions and condemnations of usury from the Gospels (Matthew and Luke) to St Paul and the Revelation, and a series from the Old Testament from Leviticus to Ezekiel, as well as the Psalms. And let's not forget the earliest Christians' practical common possession of all assets (Acts 4:32). If this is a "few" scriptural texts, the verses regarding homosexuality--the paper itself cites a total of five directly relating to same-sex relationships (at 26-28)--are dramatically fewer in number.

The paper contends that the prohibitions of same-sex relationships (the paper's characterization, not my own) gain in coherence because of their consistency and harmony with the texts relating to marriage, and natural law. But surely Jesus's concern for the poor, and distrust of the power of riches--fuels the prohibition of usury? It is itself a major theme of both Old and New Testaments. And, one might add, quite defensible today, in our post-crash world, as argued by Brian McCall in a recent article in the Cardozo Law Review. (McCall's article draws on Aristotle, Jewish and Roman law as well as the canon law tradition, and--wait for it--natural law).

So why am I brow-beating the paper and its authors on an ill-chosen example of "acceptable" moral development in this context? Because the paper's hermeneutic is inconsistently applied--for the change which is more comfortable to a modern conservative--the devaluation of Jesus's teachings with regard to money, and the prohibition of usury before and after His life, a significant number of specific passages which fit with the overarching themes of Scripture can be dismissed. For a change that is uncomfortable to them, a few snippets linked rather tendentiously to marriage must be honored. It's interpretation in support of what is most comfortable to the interpreter.

Which brings me back to where I began. The paper's most eloquent passage calls for knowing the other and understanding that other where he or she is. That isn't limited to Scriptural interpretation. With greater knowledge, comes less discomfort and more empathy. And possibly with understanding would come a theology that does more than lay burdens on others, while casually relegating pastoral care to a single sentence bromide, followed by recommending sublimation and/or a "therapeutic change in orientation."

Steppin' Out With STC...

So, I have recently received as a gift a subscription to The Anglican Theological Review, and, in reading my first two issues, found an interesting article by Jeffrey Barbeau, Coleridge, Christology and the Language of Redemption, which gave me new insight into the poet as theologian. The article traced Samuel Taylor Coleridge's symbolic view of the atonement (or, as he called it on at least one occasion, at-one-ment, a usage I've seen fairly often, though not attributed to Coleridge) and his concern for recapturing the language of Scripture as deployed in context. It's worth reading.

Bit here's a small facet of the article that leapt out at me: Coleridge, as quoted by Barbeau, rejected the notion of Jesus as pure example, or teacher: "But I want, I need, a Redeemer, and this is possible only under the two-fold condition which I find asserted in the New Testament and the creeds of the Universal Church--that he is my fellow-man but not my fellow-creature." (280; emphasis in original).

Coleridge further explains that the effect of Redemption is to replace the Old Man with the New--the self-centered with the Christ-centered life, which has the effect on us as of liberation from bondage, beginning our path to a new life. As he writes, the goal is for the human will to be "concentric" with that of God. And, Barbeau notes, these evolving views on the Atonement reflected Coleridge's own experience as he dealt with his opium use, and his "emerging recognition of the need for complete dependence on the Absolute Will". (276, n. 24).

Sound familiar? It should: In AA, the Third Step is for the alcoholic to have "[m]ade a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him." And, if STC is to be believed, such is the beginning of the human side of the action of at-one-ment.

Good Friday

For years, when I was a teen, I struggled with the name of this day--"pretty bloody awful Friday, if you ask me," I would snark in my best sub-Wodehousian manner.

Very clever.

Then, after my college years, I had a spell of alienation from the Church (Roman) and had not yet found my spiritual home in the Episcopal Church. My twin and I even scheduled inadvertently scheduled a birthday party on Good Friday, having lost track of Easter.

Oops!

Some years later, after my return to organized religion, as an Episcopalian, I hit bottom as an alcoholic. On Good Friday. On the day of our Lord's suffering for us, my own self-inflicted suffering reached its nadir. Good Friday has never been the same.

The difference was that, in my worst moments, God reached out to me again and again, and in the most unlikely ways--the Good Samaritan (an ex-convict, just out of prison, who walked me home, and thanked me for letting him help me), a good friend who bagged his plans for that Saturday night just to be with me, and so many others. (Hey, you want to her the full qualification, get to a meeting).

At the time, the irony seemed bitter--that I was such a drama addict that I had to stage my own collapse to last through Easter morning. In retrospect, though, I think it was entirely appropriate--I was past subtlety; I needed God to speak to me not with the "small, still voice" but fortissimo. Fortunately, He obliged.

So now Good Friday is inextricably linked for me with my own redemption not just in theology but in lived experience. I'm off to mark the occasion with the Liturgy of the Hours tonight, and then tomorrow I'll be at the Easter Vigil, where we celebrate our journey by God's Grace out of darkness into light.