Availing Much

I recently received an email from my church inviting me to a time of prayer. In that email the author quoted a small portion of an essay on prayer by David Wells. I had never heard of this person before which is not really a surprise since he is a contemporary theologian. I don’t know of any such scholars. But I was blown away by several of his observations. And chief among them was this gem:

“What, then, is the nature of petitionary prayer? It is, in essence, rebellion—rebellion against the world in its fallen-ness, the absolute, and undying refusal, to accept as normal, what is pervasively abnormal. It is, in this its negative aspect, the refusal of every agenda, every scheme, every interpretation that is at odds with the norm as originally established by God.  As such, it is itself an expression of the unbridgeable chasm that separates Good from Evil, the declaration that Evil is not a variation on Good-but its antithesis.”

Maybe you are not shocked by these words. But I was. And I still am. I’m still trying to get my mind wrapped around this concept that has made my heart and soul jump late in the night when I first read it. Years ago, the philosophy of phenomenology was explained to me in part as the idea that we have an innate understanding of what to do with things when we encounter them even if we have never before seen, heard or felt them. We recognize them. (We re-cognize them. That is to say, we re-know them.) I have always loved this idea. I confess that I am strangely sentimental about it because when I heard it, it seemed very right. I was re-cognizing the idea as an important fact.

I believe that this concept of prayer, so bluntly yet eloquently stated by Wells as rebellion against the brokenness of this world, is something my soul recognized immediately as right. And it immediately added fuel to my prayer life. Because of it, I have lately spent more time than usual petitioning at the throne.

And I am deeply challenged by it. This beautiful world is cracked and broken and we can all see it. Wars, rumors of wars, men’s hearts failing them, disease, pride, selfishness, envy and all the sin and evil in this world is evident every day. So we must pray against the fallen-ness, knowing, on an intuitive level, that we are right to do so.

Freedom, Beauty and Justice

Over the last several months I’ve read several good books. The one for which I had the highest expectations was Jonathan Franzen’s latest novel, Freedom. The New York Times called it a masterpiece (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/books/review/Tanenhaus-t.html). I enjoyed it. One of the things Franzen does is use characters in modern circumstances to analyze our culture and show us how hollow our lives are. And the thing I like most about his writing is that he can beautifully express nuances of life—those odd sensations and feelings that arise in small moments of intimacy, awkwardness, pleasure, etc. He is an artist of a dark sort and I’ve been thrilled by his work in the past. But I must say that this novel did not knock my socks off. His earlier, very famous novel, The Corrections, was groundbreaking. I had never read anything like it. In that book, Franzen wrote something like an expose on an era and on what it must be like to go a little insane.  I was captivated by that book and the masterful way he examined what it was like to be, well, an American idiot, as Green Day would say. The new novel works toward that. And maybe in the end he accomplishes it. In the end, (without spoiling it) there’s a resolution of sorts but it’s an uneasy resolution—very much like many of the resolutions we experience in real life. But, again, this book wasn't great. It was not nearly what the critics hailed it as. It was, like the movie The Social Network, really good but not worthy of all the critical commotion. 

The book that, in my opinion, is worthy of praise is Steve Martin’s The Object of Beauty. (The Times also gave a good review to this book http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/books/29book.html, albeit without kneeling before it like they did with Franzen’s.) Now, I admit, I've been a crazed fan of Steve Martin since he was touring college campuses in the 70’s with an arrow through his head while getting happy feet. I love the wild and crazy guy. He was a god to me during my high school years. So, I’m a bit prejudiced here. But his latest book is a perfect picture of the art world in 1990’s New York. He knows New York. He brought back the exact feelings I had when I used to live just a few blocks from many of the galleries and museums he mentioned. He captured the awful, insidiousness of greed and the way ambition can flatten you as a person. He expressed the feelings of the upper middle class who stood and watched far, far greater wealth sweep into the city as the century turned. And while the book wasn’t exactly a morality tale it did hold up a mirror to our culture and spoke more about real (and unreal) life in America than Franzen’s overreaching attempt in Freedom. And, oh yeah, it was freaking hilarious in places. To me, this is eloquence. Steve is the man. After reading these two books, I’d rather have some beauty in my life than freedom.  

But I must say that the book that has captivated me entirely is a small unassuming book by my pastor, Tim Keller, (you can get New York Magazine’s take on him here http://nymag.com/news/features/62374/) called Generous Justice. I’m sure it’s unfair of me (if I were a critic) to line up three such very different books (a work of ‘serious’ fiction, a somewhat lighthearted novel and a work of inspirational nonfiction) and make a judgment about which was best. So, I’ll not exactly say that Keller’s book is better. I’ll say that his book seems much more important and has deeper resonance.

Generous Justice challenges the reader to do good—to do the right thing. It takes a look at our world and how we really aren’t doing our job when it comes to helping people in need. It reaches down deep into our cultural mindset and into the Christian faith, the most prevalent religion in the US, and uncovers real reasons to take serious, sustained and even self-sacrificing action to help people. This is an incredibly unsexy concept and who wants to read some sort of scolding treatise? But Keller is such a compelling writer (as he is a speaker) that it doesn’t come off as scolding. It feels like inspiration. That word of course is its own cliché since it is a category in toward the back shelves of every bookstore. But this is the real thing. Of course, I am a Christian so it speaks very strongly to me. It challenges me to ask questions like what am I really about, what is the real purpose of Christianity, what is redemption and what is my role in it.

One of the most interesting and brief moments in the book is when Keller makes the case that we should not only actively help people financially and socially but we must be mindful in daily transactions that we are dealing with something of utmost importance: eternity. He quotes C.S. Lewis who essentially said that nations and cultures will all fade away but the person is something that will not—the person, the soul, is eternal. “You have never spoken to a mere mortal,” said Lewis. This quote has stayed with me. Each day I now wake up with a somewhat altered view on this life. I must allow the spirit of Christ to reign in my daily life so that instead of taking offense by every little bump and bruise I get from people, I look deeper and realize that we are all treasured, immensely valuable entities made in the image of God and each one is due great respect as such. Those bumps and bruises fade away very quickly when you come to this realization.

So, I am grateful that I came across these three books. But above Freedom I would choose Beauty and above Beauty, to my amazement, I would choose Justice.

A Dearth of Leslies

With the passing of Leslie Nielsen (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/movies/05scott.html) I am now alone. That’s an exaggeration of course. But how many guys do you know named Leslie? I’m probably it. Of course, if you’re reading this from England you’ll say that you know plenty of us. But I live here in the US where men are men and women are Leslies. Or they’re Lesleys.  (And no, I have no idea how to pluralize Leslie or Lesley correctly so I’m just tossing on an S and hoping I’m right. Feel free to correct me.) And if you're a Brit you also make all the Leslies into Lezlies. Actually, you say that z so long it deserves an extra z (or zed): Lezzlie. I've always preferred hearing Leslie like Wesley (a name some people choose to hear when I give them my full first name--I rarely correct them). Anyway...

I liked Nielsen not only because he made me, (somehow literally forced me), to laugh in spite of myself at some very silly movies like Airplane, but also because he was the one male Leslie that most people had heard about. I liked that he existed. He no longer does so I’m just left to be the un-famous oddity I already was but now without a helpful referent.

Now, most people call me Les. It’s much easier. I know of no female Leslies or Lesleys calling themselves Les. Guys are Leses. (No, I don’t know how to pluralize the shortened version of myself either.) But, of course, when I meet someone and tell them that my name is Les they look at me for a second. I watch them calculate. They wonder if I’ve said the word yes. And that momentarily confuses them. And then I watch the light click on in their face, oh, yes, Les, of course, that old name from the 1950’s or some era like that. How odd that you have this name. (Yes, I see all that in their face. I do a bit of waiting when I meet people.) And this is ok. It really is fine with me. What it not so great is when young people (now officially anyone under 30) write my name. They ALL add an S. Every one of them want to make me Less than I currently am. I’m already 5’7” with skinny wrists and freakishly small feet (but, thankfully, with normal-sized hands) and ever Lessening hair. Please don’t make me an adjective—especially that one, thanks.

I used to have Les Paul to help me out but he died on me too, just last year (http://www.lespaulonline.com/).  He was great. He used to play every week at the Iridium in New York, right up until his death. Now that was a major Les. Oh to be as great as that Les. Oh well…

I recently learned from my mother that if she had it to do over she’d have made my middle name Preston which was my grandfather’s middle name. She gave me my father’s name, Leslie William Gilbert. Growing up, I sometimes thought about going by William. But this is America where everything gets cut so I’d either be a Bill Gilbert or a Billy Gilbert. And these would be destined to become BilGil or Billy Gilly. I wanted to avoid those. And I didn’t know about the Liam option. But I grew up in the Midwest where I’d have probably been beaten daily for being a Liam. Being a Leslie was already tough enough thank you. But Preston would have been pretty good I must admit. Though that too would have been shortened to Press. So I’d still have that pause from people, especially at parties: Hi I’m Press. They’d calculate—did he just say Yes? Oh, now I got it “Hello Les, nice to meet you”.

So what do I do, you might ask, with my name on a regular basis? What do I do when I order a café au lait and I have to wait? (Isn’t it cool how lait and wait nearly rhyme? Are you with me?) Well, I admit—this name has made me creative. There is no rule that one must use their legal name when waiting for fancy drinks or food to go. I often make up names that have lots of syllables—names that are much more fun than my given one. My favorite is Fernando. If you say it with gusto, everyone smiles. And the prettier the girl behind the counter the more gusto I give it (I roll the r a little for the really beautiful ones and try not to laugh as I do so). If they smile knowingly, I tip them well. If they write it down with no expression, well, they get a quarter or two. 

Here it is; my first blog post

I've resisted entering this particular fray for quite a while becuase there are so many opinions, words, and thoughts floating around on this very big soap box, why should I add my hot air? Well, I've come to notice that reasonable people (of which I hope I'm one) have very little voice among all the vitriol, polarization and unreasonableness that permeates the air and the media including and especially the Internet.

As Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert have grown in popularity I've thought that they could be the spark of reason in our country. And I believe, to some degree, they are. They're smarter and more entertaining than I am so they reach many people with their nationally televised shows and on their media rich websites than I ever will on this little blog and I'm happy about that. But not everyone watches these geniuses eventhough I happen to think that everyone should. And I hope for a large turnout for their rallies this October 30th in Washington. I plan to be there. But as much as I love these guys, they do lean a little further left than I do. They (Colbert in particular) are also very tough on religion and I admit that I cringe just a little when the jokes flow about faith. I'm a Christian. I think of myself as a moderate, non-fundamentalist who believes in the saving, healing power of Christ. I have seen lives changed for the better by the Christian faith. But my fundamentalist brethren seem to genuinely hate certain groups of people and they are quite loud about it so I can hardly blame people for thinking that most of us believers are like that. (For the record, we really aren't.)

So, while I find those two smarties on my TV to be the current lonely outposts of political reason in our country there appears to be a gap that I'd like to help fill; the gap of reason and faith (not in the giant, philosophical sense of the old faith versus reason debate, but in the sense of being politically reasonable or generally centrist and holding to a certain faith). I'd like to be one voice on the topic and would love to hear from others about it as well.

I'll write in this blog on an irregular basis. I'll forget to post things for periods and other times I'll post too often. I'll talk about all sorts of stuff that seems unrelated but I'll try to keep it to the contrarian theme of reasonableness in a very unreasonable world. And just so you don't think this will all be tepid lecturing from just another guy on the web, here are some of the things I'm thinking about and hope to discuss in the near future:

- Moderate Muslims SHOULD build a center near ground zero if only to prove to Islamophobes that there are such people as non-violent, productive Muslims who love this country.

- Our country's polarization is a sad sign of a lack of creativity in America. Honestly, big corporations (yes, I used the C word) are not evil. Some people who lead them are stupid children who ride them into the ground and try to get away with whatever they can. But big companies employ many of us. Sadly, they seem to have become less innovative and they foolishly think that consultants from large consulting companies should tell them what to do (wrong, wrong, wrong).

- Social media is really cool and wonderful but can also be very creepy at times. I believe that, like any tool, it can be used for good, bad or silliness.

- One of the best shows on TV was The West Wing where it was said several times that education is the silver bullet for our country's ills. They were right.

So. I hope you will drop in on occasion and read my stuff and reply. I welcome debate but don't welcome nastiness. There's enough of that and plenty of other sites and talk radio shows where you can display your ugliness. Let's try to stay above that here.


Last item: The name of the blog comes from a quote from Pindar which says "O my soul, do not aspire to immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible". Unlike Mr. Pindar, I do aspire to immortal life but if I were to try to gain immortality by my actions I would surely miss it entirely and I'd also miss out on this amazing world we live in. So, my hope is to daily attempt to exhaust the limits of what is possible. I also hope that this forum can help do exactly that.
All the best,
Les.