Tensegrities

Pope Benedict focused his statement on World Communications Day this year on silence: its value, silence as a foundation for good listening, silence in a world of noisy chaos.

I found his words very profound.

It’s hard not to wonder, of course, to what extent we are to follow what is said, rather than what is enacted. I am reminded of the dictum in the Rule of Benedict that goes: “To obey in all things the commands of the Abbot or Abbess even though they (which God forbid) should act otherwise, mindful of the Lord’s precept, ‘Do what they say, but not what they do.’” (RB 4.60)

The Pope’s message is difficult to encounter when so many church officials seem to be urging silence not for reverence’s sake, but for political reasons. Still I resonate with this reflection, written by a Jesuit, who is reflecting upon his increasing need for reverence in church and how that connects with his practice of bikram yoga:

So I want something different. Not just in my own room, but in a place out in the world, with others. A silence that is shared. I want to enter a place where quiet is not only an expectation, but is so internalized by its devotees that they wouldn’t think of breaking it. I find this then, for a few precious minutes each day, at Bikram. People are quiet because, I think, they know how good it is. For themselves and for the others. They enjoy being quiet there. In fact, I think my fellow yoga students have fun being silent. As people walk down the hall toward the hot room, you get the sense that they are going to an amusement park. Oh, come on in with me. They let us be silent in here! It’s a riot! You’ll love it!

Along with everything else, this is what Bikram gives me. Silence, and calm, and silence. Most weekday masses do their best to be quiet too, and sometimes they pull it off. Every day at Bikram there is silence. I go as much as I can.

So, a couple of weeks ago I asked for a Catholic response to this video, and it seems there are now many of them! Here’s one of the better produced versions -:

I love that this has become a kind of goad to individual production, and I think the more versions/voices we engage, the better!

I haven’t been blogging much — too much going on to slow down to write. But I can’t resist sharing this music video:

(Hat tip to Stephanie Lape)

I’ve had a wonderful new set of books to read these past few weeks, and I’ll try to get around to talking about each one of them at length. Until then, note that I highly recommend Lawrence Lessig’s Republic, Lost, David Weinberger’s Too Big to Know, and Stephen Brookfield and John Holst’s Radicalizing Learning.

Jeff Jarvis has a great review of Weinberger’s book. I’ll look for other reviews as they emerge to post here.

Eric has written about this to our senators far more persuasively than I can, so I refer you to his letter. There is also additional information at the Electronic Frontier Foundation site. (There is also a useful one page handout available there.) Take action today — we really only have a brief time in which to make a difference!

Here’s a powerful spoken word poem that is making the rounds of facebook:

It’s clearly Protestant in theology, with production values strong enough that I’m having a hard time finding a similarly powerful Catholic piece. Anyone out there have some examples? I’d like to find one that takes seriously the communal character of Christian life, with an emphasis on social justice. While I appreciate much of what this young man is saying, it falls too much into the individualist mode for me to really want to use it as a stand alone.

Wisdom from a community activist organizing around the death of Danny Chen:

We all need to pay attention when anyone in this country is attacked for his or her identity, not just when the attacks are against people who are like us. When a gay college student is tormented by his peers to the point of suicide, we all need to respond. When a black man is beaten by power-crazed police due to prejudice, we all need to respond. When a state decides to chase out its undocumented immigrants, the very people on whose backs its economy depends, based on obviously false economic justifications, we all need to respond. And not only that, but we also have to respond to the daily reality and culture of oppression in this country, including stop-and-frisk, bullying, and hate speech, which make life for marginalized people impossible. We all need to respond to these things because they are not isolated events – they are symptomatic of something else that is dangerously wrong at the core of this country. We need to emphasize the fact that these attacks on people from our communities should not and, in reality, do not affect only our communities.

What does it mean to pay attention to this? How is it that we can begin to emphasize our connectedness? I don’t know. But I think it has to start with being willing to acknowledge how much of this is happening, how pervasive and systemic it is here in the US. And for those of us who are Christian, we have to recognize that Christ is being crucified again in the midst of such attacks. Refusing to see what is going on is sinful.

Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks of London reflects on religion in a so-called secular society. Among other fascinating observations:

Think about it: every function that was once performed by religion can now be done by something else. In other words, if you want to explain the world, you don’t need Genesis; you have science. If you want to control the world, you don’t need prayer; you have technology. If you want to prosper, you don’t necessarily seek God’s blessing; you have the global economy. You want to control power, you no longer need prophets; you have liberal democracy and elections.

If you’re ill, you don’t need a priest; you can go to a doctor. If you feel guilty, you don’t have to confess; you can go to a psychotherapist instead. If you’re depressed, you don’t need faith; you can take a pill. If you still need salvation, you can go to today’s cathedrals, the shopping centres of Britain — or as one American writer calls them, weapons of mass consumption. Religion seems superfluous, redundant, de trop. Why then does it survive?

My answer is simple. Religion survives because it answers three questions that every reflective person must ask. Who am I? Why am I here? How then shall I live? We will always ask those three questions because homo sapiens is the meaning-seeking animal, and religion has always been our greatest heritage of meaning. You can take science, technology, the liberal democratic state and the market economy as four institutions that characterise modernity, but none of these four will give you an answer to those questions that humans ask.

(Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan)

I’m psyched to introduce you to Will Van De Crommert, a great new songwriter/singer. Check out this song!

(Hat tip to my son Alex, who lives in the same dorm at SJU with Will)

Happy New Year! It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, which is partly due to the holidays, and probably more due to the impossibly bad cold I’ve been fighting. I’m finally surfacing enough to read, and discovered that I’m really looking forward to David Weinberger’s latest book, Too Big to Know. He’s interviewed on the Atlantic’s blog, and among other observations noted :

I think the Net generation is beginning to see knowledge in a way that is closer to the truth about knowledge — a truth we’ve long known but couldn’t instantiate. My generation, and the many generations before mine, have thought about knowledge as being the collected set of trusted content, typically expressed in libraries full of books. Our tradition has taken the trans-generational project of building this Library of Knowledge book by book as our God-given task as humans. Yet, for the coming generation, knowing looks less like capturing truths in books than engaging in never-settled networks of discussion and argument. That social activity — collaborative and contentious, often at the same time — is a more accurate reflection of our condition as imperfect social creatures trying to understand a world that is too big and too complex for even the biggest-headed expert.

I can’t help thinking that this makes Parker Palmer’s observations even more pertinent — as these diagrams point out.