dwelling in the memory of God

[gurdonark]

When I reached high school, I discovered the liberal Christian theologians. My Methodist upbringing had been moderate, as Methodism in my area covered a broad tent from nearly charismatic to moderately theologically liberal (which, of course, is something altogether different from being politically liberal).

I believe that the first two writers I discovered in this vein were Paul Tillich and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The two men shared some similarities, but substantial differences.

Tillich spent World War One as a German army chaplain, losing in the trenches, as many religious people did, any remaining sense of a personal "father up above" God, and then devoting his life to finding ways to reconcile faith with the asynchronies of modern life. Part of this quest involved a rejection of conventional sexual mores; lately I've been reading his wife Hannah's memoir, an impressionistic, novel-type story of what it is like to live the most unconventional life with the liberal theologian of their era. I like about her story that facts seem subordinate to impressions and feelings, because any relationship is less about what happened than about what the couple experienced.

Bonhoeffer came along later. He was an originally moderate German theologian whose found his views refined and a call to active dissent in the wake of the Nazi ascent to power. I started with "The Cost of Discipleship", which taught me a concept I treasure today--the idea of 'cheap grace'. Cheap grace is the grace one confers upon oneself, a faux substitute for the real thing, which real thing, in the book's view, requires true dedication and sacrifice. Bonhoeffer himself did not cleave to the somewhat harsh approach of this book, but I remain struck with the idea that the search for what is real requires more internal work than just telling oneself that one is okay. Despite having the opportunity to live outside Germany, Bonhoeffer elected to return to Germany to oppose the regime. Later, the Nazis imprisoned Bonhoeffer for his active resistance to the regime. In prison, he managed to smuggle out a series of letters and papers. In these, he writes to a friend of his vision for a post-war church that recognized the realities of the post-Christian era. Liberal and conservative theologians, eager to "claim" this fellow for their own, debate the ambiguities in these letters, each trying to argue to what extent Bonhoeffer was leaving behind tradtional notions of God. What is beyond debate, though, is that Bonhoeffer came by the end of his life to see the flaws in the way in which "religious people" approached the problem of faith, and tried to roadmap ways to make church matter again. The Nazis hung Bonhoeffer roughly a month before the end of World War Two, after papers surfaced implicating him among the conspirators who plotted to assasinate Hitler. He was 39 years old.

When I reached college, I had nodding acquaintances with a series of ideas which differed substantially from the "old time religion" that the church hymn assures "is good enough for me". I think, with hindsight, that my every religious impulse has been flawed and imperfect, but I also think of myself as having been deeply religious then. I think of myself as deeply religious now, for that matter, but I use the words differently.

I went to college in Fayetteville, Arkansas, in the Ozark Mountains, some 260 miles and in some ways a world away from my small home town in piney-woods south Arkansas. This was 1977, in the Carter years. Economic disaster fueled by the OPEC nations' oil embargo caused economic dislocation against which the current mild recession pales. Nixon had resigned in 1974. Vietnam had ended with a rather ignominious whimper for the US a year or two prior to that. The campus, like much of the nation, was filled with a defeated, cynical, tired air. The radio airwaves spilled out disco music literally around the clock. Among the few exceptions, maudlin songs like Dan Hill's "Sometimes when we Touch", in which the narrator assured us that "the honesty's too much" and a ditty "Torn Between Two Lovers", in which the narrator describes an affair with another man, with the line "and he knows he can't possess me, and he knows he never will, there's just a litte part inside of me, that only he can fill" provided the only relief from the pounding dance beat, albeit satirical relief rather than real comfort. Among my friends and I, though, music mattered a lot. For thinking rock fans, progressive and art rock had largely shot their bolt, and the record stores were filled with albums by the early UK punk bands, the Sex Pistols, the Damned, and a myriad of other bands. None of these bands ever really sold all that many records in the US, as most US fans saw that for all its good points, UK punk was just another detour into retro, not a real transformative movement. All the cutesy/tough faux anarchy that played so well in London fell utterly flat for most of the people I knew, being all pose, no go. The NY and LA punk scenes were different things altogether, and the NY bands were quite interesting, but they, too, did not capture the public imagination. New wave was largely corporate marketing, albeit with some fun bands (I miss Stiff Records). Eventually, post-punk showed a way out, and music became more interesting.

At my campus, the word was that Playboy Magazine had claimed to end Arkansas' eligibility for "number 1 party school of the year", claiming that it was no longer fair to the other schools for such a pure party school to be permitted to compete. The dormitory was an endless reek of burning marijuana. The streets on weekends were the never ending sight of frat boys and bleach-blonde girls wearing red, driving convertibles, drunk, screaming the football team cheer, "woooo, piiiggggg, soooiiiiieeeee". The graduate assistant instructors were all late 60s/early 70s type would-be radicals, trying to retreat from earning a more mundane, different form of honest living into the honest living of academia,lecturing us all on the intrinsic nobility of marches and be-ins, in what seemed to be a parody of self-indulgent hippie sensibility. The professors seemed mostly relieved that the 60s were long over. The sexual revolution in this era before AIDs was in full and vibrant swing, though I am quite afraid that I did not personally experience it all that much as a revolutionary. As I speak with an old friend I thought a kinda of Che of the intimate, I realize that even those who seemed "in the swing" did not necessarily have the "free love" moments I imagined, but still and all, I think it was a wilder time then than now in many ways.

I take some pride in being a fish out of water, so I suppose I'm intrigued that as I recount this, I feel the pain of having been a fish out of water. I was a chaste, serious, nerdy kid who would not touch a cigarette, much less a joint. But I also was not at home at all among "religious" people who memorized Bible verses and advocated conservative social agendae (I'll post another time about my brief, failed effort to become a conservative). I remember going to the local main Methodist church, to find myself sometimes literally the only person who would be at the college youth group meetings. The only person, that is, other than the associate pastor, Kurt.

Kurt, hailed, like I did, from a small Arkansas town. His father had been a newspaper publisher. Kurt was in his early twenties, having just finished seminary school and moved, with his similarly young wife, to his first minister's appointment, assistant minister at the largest church in this college town. Methodist ministers get appointments to different churches from a central bishopric every few years, and move "up" and "down" the ladder to larger or smaller churches as their minsterial fortunes rise and fall. Kurt had landed a reasonably good first position, an assistant at a large-ish church.

Kurt proved a great deal unlike most of the "open minded but very traditional" ministers I'd met in churches and at church camp as I grew up, though. I got the first clue during a Sunday school meeting at the church. In a discussion of Heaven, Kurt put forward his view that there was no real afterlife, other than, perhaps, the remembrance of people dwelling in the memory of God. I remember being a bit shocked, perhaps even affronted, by what I considered an un-Biblical doctrine. I remember even saying as much, and watching him acknowledge that a literal belief in the Bible would not support his view. But as time went on, I found that I really liked Kurt, and learned much from him. Kurt was impressed by the liberal theologians, who made faith real to him. He was surprised that I had some reading acquaintance with some of the ideas he admired. He road-mapped for me better understandings of those ideas.

During his time, our church's Methodist college youth group grew a good deal. He found a good youth leader, a divorcee in a time when the church was still discovering that divorce should make no difference to church service (how long ago that seems). I always enjoyed learning from him, though I did not share his views. I do not mean to imply that I was any great monolith of virtue or deep thought. I was just a college kid, and about as flawed as they come. But I wanted to learn.

Kurt did not stay at the church for more than a year or two, though. He came to be concerned that ministers should not work for a church organization. Instead, he said he felt that people should just work day jobs, making their faith part of their lives, not something that they preach to others from an church institution. In essence, Kurt posited that the deep vocation of religious faith should be pursued entirely avocationally. This idea influenced much of my thinking on many things, about the nature of vocation. Kurt left the ministry, to go to work at his father's newspaper. Although Kurt has a very unique surname, when I google him, I get multiple entries for what the various Kurts of the world with his name are now doing. I rather think he is in New York doing financial analysis, but I've never hit the e mail to figure out "which Kurt is Kurt". After all, I did not know him that well, but I liked him a lot. I wonder what happened to him, and I would like to e mail him someday.

As the years went on in my college town, the same conservatism which brought Reagan to power by the end of my college days brought college kids flooding back to the "born again" churches. Authentic spiritual exprience was lost in the search for comfort and the supernatural. On Sundays at the school cafeteria in my freshman year, I was one of the very few who came in "church clothes" to Sunday lunch after church. By my last year of college, most of the cafeteria was dressed in Sunday finery.

The scent of marijuana did not exactly disappear from the dorms, but let's say perhaps the smoke cleared slightly. Our church's next associate pastor was a businessman returned to the ministry, who tried to market potential college youth group Holy Land trips, and who later left the ministry, apparently rather abruptly (and perhaps involuntarily), to return to the business of business.

But for all that it was a glancing acquaintance, I've never forgotten Kurt. My own search for what is "real" has not gone down any particularly noble pathways, and I've lived a highly imperfect life. I think a lot about the "big issues", but accept that in the main I have only little answers. My life is filled with self-conferred cheap grace and a quest for simple integrity. But if God has a memory, I like to think that Kurt is somehow embedded there.

Comments

[dabroots.livejournal.com]

Very, very interesting read for this Saturday morning. I am reminded that I am four years older than you, graduating from college in 1977 while you started college in that same year. Must admit that I skipped over much of your beginning section on Tillich and Bonhoeffer, directly to the part about Fayetteville in the mid-to-late 1970's. Interesting to think of Bill Clinton in that same era in your state.

I may have told you at some time, earlier on in our LJ friendship, that I was living in New Orleans, south and a bit east of Fayetteville. One year, and I think it was early 1979, I hitchhiked from New Orleans to Fayetteville and Eureka Springs. Yep, our exchange about Eureka Springs is sort of coming back to me.

Sometimes, I wish I had found my way to living in NYC in 1977 rather than New Orleans, but fate and chance have their ways of directing us, I think. If Amtrak had a direct line from my hometown in Illinois to NYC, like it had and still has to New Orleans, I might have done so. Before I start cleaning my apartment for prospective tenants this morning, I might post something about that idea.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the comment. It's really two posts, not one, so I think it makes perfect sense to skip to the second one.

I'd have to imagine that New Orleans would be a wonderful way to transition to New York. Do you think that Illinois boy would have "gotten" NY right out of the box? Point to ponder. I'll be watching for your post.

Re:

[dabroots.livejournal.com]

New York might have scared the shit out of me, really, but when I eventually got here for a visit in very late 79 or early 80, I was amazed at how low-key it was in places like the East Village. Actually, I might have done okay. But New Orleans was great.

p.s.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

and you know, anyone who lived through that time, in that region, understands the Clinton virtues and flaws far better than the media ever seemed to do.

Re: p.s.

[dabroots.livejournal.com]

That "New South" thing was really just then beginning to take off. I recall skyscrapers going up in New Orleans, for example, and the whole race thing in New Orleans seeming to be taking on a very different sort of life, as if I had walked into the last vestiges of South Africa under white rule--that's an exaggeration, but not completely off the mark.

Re: p.s.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'd say that the 70s changed a lot of things in the south.

[coollibrarian.livejournal.com]

I think you should email the "Kurts".

What's the name of the Hannah Tillich memoir?

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I think you're right, though he may not remember me as well as I remember him.

Hannah Tillich's memoir is "Time After Time"

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

or it may be "From time to time"

[coollibrarian.livejournal.com]

That's the title!

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

i found this entire entry very interesting. we've discussed a bit already the gradations one can make from conservative to liberal theologically. i'm currently trying to find a place to stand, not feeling at home in an orthodoxly christian setting any more but unable to go all the way to paganism, e.g. it's a queasy thing. the liberal theologians certainly help. i have for quite a long time held the position you describe as tillich's -- the loss of faith in the personal father type of god. (my mother used to say she had experienced that lost during WWII, when the god she'd been raised to believe in permitted the holocaust to happen.)

i'm not thinking very clearly this a.m. and so won't go on. probably not making much sense! if you do search for kurt (and i hope you do), please let us know if you find him. he would surely be deeply gratified to learn that his short tenure in that church was of spiritual significance to you. oh, btw, i did hear back from larry sitton! he's elsewhere on the 'net, posting his poems. he seemed to be pleased to know the poems he'd posted on cis had found a welcome somewhere out there in cyberspace. :)

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thanks for commenting. I went the Unitarian Universalist route, and was very active in our CA church, but find myself much less active the last couple of years. I didn't leave Methodism over some massive loss of faith so much as a feeling that more roads work than just one narrow road.

I'd love to find or found a little church based on
no minister, little dogma, but an emphasis on universalism and not rejection, but that's beyond my
meager abilities.

I will try to track down Kurt, although I hate sending e mails to the wrong strangers :). I'm so glad you found Larry Sitton. I imagine it would be bliss to hear from a delighted reader hitherto unknown :).

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

"I'd love to find or found a little church based on
no minister, little dogma, but an emphasis on universalism and not rejection"

wow, if you find one or found one, lemme know, please. i'll be a long-distance member!

[nacowafer.livejournal.com]

I'd love to find or found a little church based on
no minister, little dogma, but an emphasis on universalism and not rejection...

Hmmmm...I think you may have already done this...the church of gurdonark!

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I wish I were the type of person to be a "religious" person, but I'm afraid I'm of this world.

[robertstheology.livejournal.com]

Wonderfully written, thought provoking!

You have given me a marvelous insight into your life, and triggered a flood of memories for me.

Early this morning, I have been reading WE, UNDERSTANDING THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ROMANTIC LOVE, by Robert A. Johnson. Here is an excerpt:

"We are asking once again why the splendor of God comes to us, not through our religious lives, but in our loves, our projections, our illusions. The answer is startling: It is because we do not have religious lives, and the divine realm has to find us, even trap us, where it can. We have churches, we have dogma, we have doctrine, we have opinions, we have groups and meetings; but we do not have religious lives because we pay little attention to our souls or to our inner lives.

The inner act required of a Western man is to affirm his own religious nature. It means to affirm seriously that the images and feelings that flow our of him in dream, fantasy, and imagination are the stuff of the divine realm, a separate order of reality distinct from his physical and personal life but equally real and equally important. He must be willing to take those images seriously, to spend time living with them, to see them as powers of great importance within himself, inhabitants of a spiritual realm that his soul transmits to him in symbol.

One may do this by traditional religious practice, by contemplative meditation, by yoga, by fantasy and dream work, or by Jung's active imagination. But it requires an inner practice, an affirmative soul-life, actually lived day by day."

This is where I am today, I have left the world of the first paragraph quoted above behind. Evangelical fundamentalism is, for me, bankrupt...still powerful politically...but devoid of love, beauty, and truth.

I have sold all of my theology books, and purchased books on prayer, meditation, contemplation, and love in human relationships. I once had firm opinions on every issue, and relished the bare knuckle brawl of bloody debate. Now, I realize that I know very little, I will not argue about anything. I can accept, and relate to, every human being, every belef system, from atheism to zen.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

This is very thought-provoking. Thanks for commenting.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I hear they do a great version of "coffee, coffee, coffee" to the tune of "Holy, Holy, Holy"!

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

My goodness. That's two comments that came off unintentionally satirical. Sorry if I offended.

echoes

[hlee.livejournal.com]

In these, he writes to a friend of his vision for a post-war church that recognized the realities of the post-Christian era

Did Bonhoeffer (or others) give a date for the beginning of this post-Christian era?

Your thoughts seem to run somewhat parallel to mine. With the major difference that I'm not Christian. We are living in a time of massive social and intellectual change. It does not seem surprising to me that belief (of all sorts) reflects the general sense of unease and can only offer partial solutions. Not that non-belief does any better.

I've been reading 2 history books that focus on Christianity. One on Europe in the 11th-mid 14th century and the other the 17th-mid 18th. Times when othodox theology and worship for many people no longer seemed applicable to the lives they lived. Do you know if Tillich or Bonhoeffer offer solutions that are radically different from ones expressed by earlier dissident Christians? From what little I know of the two it seems that they don't.

Have you ever had any contact/interest in the Third Stream (Christians who sit zazen)?

Sorry for the spew. Your journal entries sometimes set off fireworks in my head. (That's a good thing on my side of this interface.)

Re: echoes

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

No, that's not spew. I almost hate to post anything about these topics, because I feel that it's so easy to use language which excludes folks, when it's sure not a "Christian" issue. The two milestones for the end of the Christian era, the thinking goes, are the scientific advances of the late 19th Century and the First World War. I think that the problem with this post is that it implies that the problem of the half-answered question is solved in some way by Christian thinkers, when in fact atheists have carried a great deal of the ball on the new ways people look at the world. I wonder, sometimes, if the Ethical Culture people got it right, when they tried to take the power of the religious impulse, without the supernatural. But I don't know.
I think for those of us in Texas, so many reactionary forces which arose in response to the positive developments, such as fundamentalism, take up so much of our attention that "Christianity" acquires a distasteful secondary meaning.

[chevrefeuilles.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed many different dimensions of this post.

What do you think of Clinton? Has that changed over time, and how?

You would probably enjoy talking with my mother about theology, I think, because you just might have the gentleness to open up some of the wisdom and ideas about religion she keeps to herself. Like me, she is more shy than articulate, yet carries around complex opinions and quite a bit of knowledge. In her case this involves many years of passionate reading and keeping informed about theology.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I like a lot of things about Clinton. I like his fiscal monetarism, which I credit, along with the budget balancing work done by the first Mr. Bush, for a significant portion of the economic boom. I liked his social stands by and large, although the way he mishandled "don't ask, don't tell" was one more needless delay in giving equality to gay people in this country,
which troubles me. I think our country has lost a great deal with the election of the current Mr. Bush, and that we are not sailing vigorously with a very poor crew. I'm a social liberal and a fiscal moderate, so it's not surprising that I supported most of Mr. Clinton's policies. I also thought that the trumped up accusations lodged by the radical conservatives throughout the country, aided and abetted by Mr. Clinton's enemies in Little Rock, were a grim chapter, and the Starr appointment, induced by activist conservative judges, was a disaster for due process in this country.

But when Mr. Clinton's fictions about Ms. Lewinsky surfaced, I still wanted him to resign. I feel that his appearance in an interview before the American people to deny the affair was disgraceful. While I dislike probing into people's personal lives, a probee should not lie about something--he or she should just refuse to comment. I felt then, and feel now, that Clinton should have resigned.

My opinion about Clinton in college was that he was basically a good guy, but too much of a would-be consensus builder to get anything done. My opinion about Hillary was that her obvious disdain for the people of Arkansas would prevent her from ever charming anyone. I was wrong on both counts.

I notice that I got dropped by someone I really liked over either this post or over a comment I made in this post, so
I suppose my powers of expressing theology are entirely imperfect. But I do like the idea of "less theology, ,more faith", and maybe that's my problem :).

[chevrefeuilles.livejournal.com]

In re that last bit...Do you have any idea what that was about? What happened? I don't see anything "offensive" about what you wrote. Would this person expect you to be in absolute agreement with them on matters of faith and theology?

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I checked into it, and it's all understandable. I misinferred that I had given offense. Instead, the situation resulted in an entirely acceptable way for entirely acceptable reasons. I don't mind that people wish to read or not read whom they will, but I did not wish to give offense.

I'm glad that you don't judge my threadbare theology too harshly. After all, I'm an unknown pleasures guy, ,and I'll bet you're a Closer devotee instead.

[blue-by-you.livejournal.com]

You write so well and always such interesting things. I was really surprised that Arkansas would be so liberal and such a party school. That shows my own ignorance about the south, actually. Thanks for sharing Kurt. I'd love to know what he's doing now.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I wish I could find the wonderful article on the Arkansas Socialist Party, which gave a good run at the statewide office in the 1900 to 1920 era. They favored "absurd" leftist agendae like a minimum wage and equal rights for all. Arkansas and Texas both have strong liberal minority factions, which generate the Fulbrights and the Bumpers, et al.

I really appreciate your many kind words about my writing. I really enjoy having readers who engage with what I'm saying. That's what making the weblog so satisfying.

I liked very much your poem about the fulcrum. If I had your job, I think I'd be a crime novelist full time :).