Avdat

Decline and fall II

Cantor cites other reasons why Rome "fell." In a time of economic decline, localism reigned, and Romans everywhere resented the central government's increasing demands and increasing inability to deliver basic services. "Rome" was not an entity that many Romans were wholly committed to, and some hard-pressed aristocrats welcomed the Germans because they thought they'd cut their taxes!

But they deserved to be hard-pressed. Drawing a comparison to high Mandarin Chinese culture in the first millenium A.D., Cantor speculates that Roman aristocrats had become so culturally ossified, that they couldn't and wouldn't look for technological or economic solutions to a changing world. All they knew was how to live off slave labor and read Cicero--because reading Cicero helped you win lawsuits!

Failing to effectively manage the inevitable migration of people from south to north certainly poses problems. The greater danger, however, is a refusal to adapt to a changing world. The world is getting hotter. New diseases are constantly appearing. The population is growing and aging. The global flight of a deadly new flu, or the forced evacuation of tens of millions of people from low-lying coastal areas make our current illegal immigration problem look like small beer indeed. These problems need to recognized as such, as real problems, and we need new technology, new forms of community, and ways of defining and generating economic development to deal with these problems.

We also need a new commitment to the common good. The culture of cars, cul-de-sacs, and starving the beast is ill-equipped to deal with pandemics or a changing climate. And the public sector needs to demonstrate an ability to provide a good return on what the public invests with it

You have a right to be pessimistic

In the spirit of "History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes," you can't help but wonder if the 21st century isn't shaping up to be a repeat of the 14th.

At least, you can't help but wonder that if you have a blog and are all too willing to pontificate about stuff you don't know much about, exploiting the (slight) advantage in knowledge that you have about the Middle Ages over (some of) your readers.

But I digress.

So western Europe had a great run from the 11th through the 13th centuries. The Vikings settled down. Not too many famines. Hamlets became towns, and towns became cities. Kings flexed their muscles way off in the Holy Land.

And then in the 14th century there were so many more people in Europe that all those hungry mouths overtook the good weather and the new, improved farming implements. And then weather got bad, and people starved. And then the Black Death came.

Now this is a cautionary tale. Even many of us who are smart enough to decry the liberal myth of progress operate, if at an unconscious level, under the assumption that things really will get better, eventually. The economy will bounce back. It always has in the past.

But I wonder if these last 200 years haven't been modernity's version of the High Middle Ages, and while it's been a nice run, it's definitely run its course. So global warming = the Great Famine of 1315-17, and the Black Death = I dunno, an asteroid?

The new hagiographers

The title of the Ian Bradley book I referenced yesterday is Celtic Christianity: Making Myths and Chasing Dreams. It's a clever debunking of the Celtic Christianity fad, which among mainline Christians is a close second to the Emergent fad, and is something of an overlapping phenomenon.

In short, Yes the Irish celebrated Easter on a different date than they did on the continent. And yes, Irish ecclesiology, which developed outside the Empire, vested authority in the abbot, whereas on the Continent, a diocesan structure modeled on Roman administration lodged authority with the bishop. And yes, the continental (Roman) ways prevailed. And yes, Brigit was probably a Celtic goddess whose powers got attributed to the founder of a convent at Kildaire. And yet, Pelagius was a Briton (perhaps), and Augustine was a Mediterranean Catholic.

But to then conclude that an egalitarian, pluralistic, free-spirited, "green" Christianity not hung up on sin thrived in the northwest corner of the known world until Rome crushed it does not necessarily fly. Such a romanticized view of Christianity in the British Isles has to ignore a lot of data.  Like how their monastic rules prescribed severe corporal punishment for any whiff of insubordination.  Like how Saint Columba forbade cattle on Iona because  "Where there's cows there's women, and where there's women there's trouble." And how Columbanus' sermons describe our nature as depraved. And much else that won't fit into a blog post--primary sources that our professors are having us read because they want the MDivs especially to use this stuff responsibly once they're in a parish.

What's interesting about Bradley's book is that he shows how Celtic Christianity has always been romanticized. He compares Saint Patrick's Letter and Confession, the only extant writings we have of the saint, to the Life of Saint Patrick composed a couple of hundred years later. In his own voice, Patrick is a defensive and admittedly poorly educated man, who frankly doesn't like the Irish all that much. But the Patrick of his biographer goes from strength to strength, sitting at the feet of the great Germanus, and then sailing to Ireland to smack down druids and dull-witted kings with signs and wonders. The transformation of Patrick is certainly due to the author's wish to play up Patrick's town of Armagh over against Kildaire (home of Saint Brigit) as an ecclesiastical and pilgrimage center.

And so it goes. Scottish Presbyterians lauded the Celtic saints as proto-Protestants, those who'd fought the good fight against Rome in days gone by. Patrick became a symbol of Irish nationalism, despite the aforementioned fact that he was only in Ireland under duress--a divine imperative to evangelize those who'd once enslaved him.

Bradley admits to letting himself get swept up in some of the current romanticizing of the Celtic past, and even contributing to it a bit in earlier writings. But he wryly concludes that, If you're going to write hagiography, and that's what much of the pulp Celtic devotional stuff is, better to write it for the sake of cleaning up the environment than because you're engaged in some kind of locker room conversation about the relics at your cathedral versus the cathedral down the road.

Put differently, it's time once again for me to link to Elliot's cautionary tale about lapsarian myths.

Nature deficit

Back to school! My January term began today. I am glad to return to the classroom. During Christmas break I picked up a lot of hours at The Casual Dining Chain You've Probably Eaten At Before where I wait tables. Maybe too many hours. I didn't uproot my family and leave my job to be a waiter. I needed the extra money, but I was starting to feel like I was majoring in minors.

I worked many double shifts last week, and thanks to the advice of a fellow waitress, I took to spending my breaks at a nearby park. The half-hour or so of looking at trees and geese alighting on a pond was a sight for sore eyes. Our restaurant windows offer a stunning view of a shopping center parking lot. Even better was a brief respite from the restaurant soundtrack. There were no sounds except for geese honking, kids laughing, or just silence.

It occurred to me that a lot of people have to live the way I've been living over Christmas break, in a world of asphalt and concrete, illuminated by artificial lighting, ears force-fed with crappy pop music. Others simply choose to live in this world. Even if you live in a home on a two acre tract of suburbia, if you leave home before dawn and return after sunset, and hire a lawn service to maintain your lawn, you're as bereft of nature as I've been lately. The last month has taught me to appreciate the Union-PSCE life, in which one can read a book in a beautiful library with big windows that open out to a lovely quad. And I appreciate my old life as a small town minister, classical music drifting in from my secretary's office, a garden to tend, and no traffic jams along tree-lined streets.

Urban living

So I was out there yesterday, doing my best to save the earth.  I escorted our younger son to school and back--by bike.  After I dropped him off, I continued on to the bank.

When I entered the parking lot I realized that I'd left my lock at home.  Not wanting to drag the bicycle indoors, I used the Drive-Through.

As I was reaching for that plastic cylinder that travels through the pneumatic tube, a car comes up behind me.  Guy sticks his head out the window and says, "You can't do that!  This is for cars only!"

I ignored him.

"Hey!  You need to go inside!"

"If they ask me to go inside, I'll be happy to," I replied, wondering, What's up with this guy?

There was a few seconds of silence, and then, "That's not a vehicle!"

"Yes it is!"  I said, over my shoulder.  I was thinking, If I have to obey all the traffic laws while on the road, then it must be a vehicle.  But I was having a hard time compressing an argument about the ontology of a bicycle into a pithy zinger.

More silence, then, "Turn on your signal!" Aha.  The clincher.

I'm caught between disbelief that I'm even having this conversation, and the desire to cheekily demonstrate all the hand signals for turning.  You know, left arm up for right turn, left arm pointing for left turn, left arm down, palm facing back for slowing down.  There were some other hand signals I pondered demonstrating, but he was in a car, and I was on a bike, and, metaphysical arguments aside, there's no question who'd win the fight if my signaling triggered a bout of road rage.

When the cylinder returned I dropped the receipt and some of the money on the asphalt.  Honestly, I wasn't trying to be slow on purpose, but then again, there was nothing about the guy behind me that encouraged me to hurry up.  As I pedaled away I could hear him yelling into the intercom, "He can't ride a bike through the drive-through!"

What does this guy do when he ain't hatin' on bicycles?  Probably whines about gas prices.

Who knows?  I'm in a new state.  Maybe when I take my driver's license test this weekend, I'll discover that bicycles are only allowed on beaches and playgrounds.  Or maybe it's that the NC-VA border is a bright white line between the cheerful and the surly:

Stream of consciousness

For some strange reason, this report on the Scientologist view of the afterlife, specifically, Issac Hays' afterlife (it sounds like reincarnation with a gnostic chaser) reminded me of this post on the worrisome trend toward first world population collapse.  The author thinks that middle class parents need to be educated on the facts, and will respond by having more children. 

I think we should really play up the "Your son could be the next Issac Hays" angle.  Or even better, the next John Shaft!  I mean, what do you want to do?  Reduce your global footprint or sire a bad mutha who can watch your back in the nursing home?

Field trip

Last Wednesday a group of us set out for the island of Staffa, home of puffins and the muse for Mendelssohn's Hebridean Overture.  Our boat made straight for the island, and as I was in the stern, I didn't get a good look at it until we were almost upon it, and the boat turned to make its approach to the landing:

My first impression was that a multi-mouthed sea monster has reared up from the waves to swallow us.  This was reinforced when we got a chance to explore Fingal's Cave.  The sound of the seawater filling and then receding from the cave, plus the splendid isolation of the island is what Mendelssohn tried to capture in his Overture.  Looking up, the algae covered roof of the cave looked liked the monster's poorly capped molars:

The rock formations on Staffa are extraordinary.  Some of us commented that they looked like someone had poured concrete into hexagonally-shaped cylinders and stacked them on top of each other.  A strange image came to mind--God has created this island as an eight-year-old kid at the beach might make a sand castle by filling his bucket with wet sand and dumping the formed contents upside-down:

Wikipedia states, "It consists of a basement of tuff, underneath colonnades of a black fine-grained Tertiary basalt, overlying which is a third layer of basaltic lava lacking a crystalline structure. By contrast, slow cooling of the second layer of basalt resulted in an extraordinary pattern of predominantly hexagonal columns which form the faces and walls of the principal caves.^[1]The lava contracted towards each of a series of equally spaced centres as it cooled and solidified into prismatic columns. The columns typically have three to eight sides, six being most common. The columns are also divided horizontally by cross joints.^[7] Similar formations are found at the Giant's Causeway In Ireland, on the island of Ulvaand Ardmeanach on the Isle of Mull.^[6] "

While I was taking in the view below, the person next to me commented that she just didn't understand how people could witness such beauty and not believe in God:

I replied that that the difference between believers and non-believers might be that while the latter would certainly feel awe in the face of such beauty, the former would feel awe and gratitude.  I can't help but think that it must be something of an impoverished existence to be stunned by the sight of the seas pounding on the rocks and yet have no one to thank or glorify for it.

On my last overseas trip, to Israel, we had the chance to view another jaw-dropping geologic formation, the Machtesh Ramon in the Negev Desert.  At the visitor center on the lip of the crater we watched a movie about the formation of this vast hole in the ground.  It stated that if you compressed the history of the universe into a year, then human beings and our hominid ancestors have only been around since December 30.

If there is no God, then that's a lot of beautiful sunsets, lovely flowers and awesome geology that no one has taken aesthetic delight in until just now.  That doesn't seem right to me.  If there isn't a God who's been saying, "Good, good, very good" for all this time, well then, there ought to be.

That's not a very good argument for the existence of God. Heck, it's not an argument at all.  It's more a sentiment.  But it's what I came away from Staffa with.  That, plus a close encounter with a puffin:

Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!

It's another insanely beautiful day in Salisbury, North Carolina, and a dramatic departure from years past.  I can't tell you how many springs we've had that jumped straight from dogwoods blooming into summertime.  But this year the Good Lord has blessed us with a month called May!  Upper fifties by night.  Upper seventies by day.  Generous rain every three to four days.  The landscape is green, green, green, and the irises and roses are just as enjoyable as last month's azaleas.

I'm up for it

Tomorrow is National Bike to Work day.  HT.

I'd do this every day, but in mainline congregations of older members there's an expectation that the minister make pastoral calls in pressed slacks and clean shirts, preferably free from sweat rings extending down the sides of one's trunk.  And, unlike some of my relatives who work for corporations, or megachurches, there's no shower facilities here at good ol' John Calvin Presbyterian Church.

But since all that's on my schedule tomorrow is sermon writing plus a little disc golf with a teenager, it fits my lifestyle for this particular day.

I think it's worth wondering about how certain cultural expectations are at variance with good common sense.  I hear that everyone but lawyers have abandoned suits in south Florida, but honesty, they could be done away with in most places in the United States, at least in the summer.  Even far northern cities like New York and Philly are south of those latitudes from whence came the bulk of immigrants accustomed to wearing wool even in July.  And not only are they far to the south of Great Britain, Ireland, Germany and eastern Europe, but they're hot and miserable in summertime.

I know.  Part of what makes fashion fashionable is willingness to submit to a certain amount of physical or financial discomfort.  But heat and humidity and the prospect of even more on the horizon, thanks to global warming, do make me wonder when convention has taken leave of its senses...

Friday "How does your garden grow?" blogging

There's not a lot to show of the verdant gardens of Che Lindsay.  But I was inspired to go out and snap some photos of what is growing this time of year.  And speaking of snapping pics, these sugar snap peas should grow up to yield plump, sweet pods!

The kingdom may be already and not yet, but not the asparagus!  After three years of patience, mulching and watering and modest harvesting, we've been chopping at it with reckless abandon:

The drought really took a toll on the Piedmont flora.  You can see that this dogwood in our front yard is not nearly as spectacular as dogwoods usually are in these parts this time of year:

But these unknown bulbs are lending some spring cheer underneath our still dormant grape vine:

And the azaleas are lovely:

That shade of pink is not what I would have planted against a red, brick house, but thankfully there's some white in there as well, and the green acuba in the back to offer contrast rather than clash.

And while I am aware of the existence of a whole other hemisphere who greets the resurrection in the fall of the year, spring nonetheless renews my faith as no other season can:

Tis the spring of souls today

Christ hath burst his prison

And from three days sleep in death

As a Sun is risen

Now rejoice Jerusalem!

And with true affection

Welcome in unwearied strains

Jesus' resurrection.