Theatre: Anniversary Plays

Covenant by York Walker, Directed by Nicholas Japaul Bernard, Arts West Through 2 March.

Blues For an Alabama Sky by Peral Cleage, directed by Valerie Curtis-Newton, Seattle Rep through 23 February

The Lovely Bride and I have crested 42 years of marriage this past week (thank you, thank you), and to celebrate, we decided to hold a "staycation" where both of us took off work. As a result, we played games (I lost several games of Wingspan), ate a lot of good food (Chestnut Cafe, which is the LB's favorite's lunch spot, Lobster Shop in Tacoma, Mashiko Sushi in West Seattle, and Toulouse Petite near the Seattle Center). And, as fate would have it, we had two plays scheduled over three days - Covenant at the Arts West, and Blues for an Alabama Sky at the Seattle Rep.

Let me get to the heart of the matter - Covenant was the best play and the best performance I have seen in Seattle for years, Arts West has been putting together bang-up seasons for the past couple years, and this one fired on all cylinders. The writing was top-notch, the performances were amazing, the direction was fantastic, and set design was grand. The small nature of the theatre brought an intimacy that allowed the actors to reach out across the void of the forestage and grab the audience by the collective shoulders and give them a good shake. The play is mythic and suspenseful and fully engaged.

Covenant is about secrets. It is also about faith and superstition, but it is most of all about secrets. The setting is a small town in Georgia, 1936. Johnny (Donavan Mahannah) comes back to his home town. He left town a stammering boy in the wake of his older brother's death. He returns now without the stammer, a master musician with his guitar, and possessing a smooth self-assurance. Naturally there's suspicion he made a deal with the devil. He came back for Avery (Simone Alene), who was just a friend but now something much more. Avery's Mama (Felicia V. Loud) is a god-fearing woman who does not approve of Johnny and his juke joint antics. Little sister Violet (Deja Culver) and family friend Ruthie (Kaila Towers) round out the ensemble. They're all brilliant.

And I don't want to say more because I don't want to do spoilers here - it's that good. Each character gets their turn to tell stories and reveal secrets, as well as sparking off each other in meaningful relationships. And the writing is SO GOOD, of the level that I was left thinking "Man, I wish I had written that" and "Man, I wish I could write like that". There is a not an ounce of fat in this play - even the most cast-off line has meaning and subtext, and is delivered in such a natural and engaged fashion, that over the course of the play as you realize (often to your horror) what is really going on here. All questions are resolved, even the ones you didn't know you had.

And part of that is the direction (Nicholas Japaul Bernard) and the dramaturg (Marquisa 'QuiQui" Dominguez. The players maneuver perfectly a two-tiered stage, the back stage being Mama's dining room, dominated by a cross, which the forestage was open for a variety of purposes, including a general "theatre space" as the actors share secrets with the audience. The sound design was excellent, accenting the action on the stage. Even the stagehands, the black-dressed theatre ninjas moving props onto and off the stage, were used perfectly. 

I rarely say that something is a near-perfect play, but this is it. Get yourself out to West Seattle for this one. 

Sunday we decamped for the Seattle Center and Blues for an Alabama Sky. And I will be honest - it was good. And if I saw it on its own I would probably give it greater praise. But it suffers in comparison with Covenant.

We're still in the 1930s, but this time in Harlem. Angel (Ayanna Bria Bakeri) is a hot mess of cabaret singer who just lost her job, her living space, and her boyfriend. Guy (Jamar Jones) is her gay best friend from Savannah, who is a costumer and is sure that Josephine Baker will sweep him up and invite him to come work for her in Paris. As he is trying to navigate a drunken Angel home, they're aided by Leland (Ajaz Dontavius), newly arrived from Alabama in the big sinful city. Delia (Ester Okech Lewis) is the prim neighbor from across the hall who is working to bring a family planning center (read: birth control) to Harlem, aided by a boisterous local doctor (Yusef Seevers). The five of them struggle with life and survival in the wake of the fading Harlme Renaissance.

And it works, mostly. The first act feels like it drags a bit, Checkov's gun makes a requisite appearance, and you can see some of the twists and turns coming a ways off. Some personal revelations and traumas show up rather late in the day. And there is a huge amount of name dropping going on - Marcus Garvey, Josephine Baker, Adam Clayton Powell (Jr and Sr), Margaret Sanger, Langston Hughes, none of whom show up on stage. 

The music, however, is haunting and delightful, with Nathan Breedlove on the trumpet acting as the ghostly spirit of the city itself to show time passing. Which is a good thing, since the stagecraft involves a turntable set that shifts back and forth to show what apartment we are in. I would wonder if the play would work better in a smaller confines, or, on the other hand, if Covenant would fade if thrust onto a larger stage.

Yet, it all comes together. The actors are fine. It is the best of three revivals at the Rep this season (it was originally produced 30 years ago). Given a choice between this and the Super Bowl, I'd definitely choose Alabama Sky. But seriously, go hunt down Covenant and prepare to be impressed. 

More later,

And To All A Good Night

 Grubb Street wishes you and yours a safe and happy Holiday Season.

Rest on the Flight into Egypt by Luc Olivier Merson (1879), MFA, Boston.

Season's Greetings

A Merry Christmas, a Joyeux Noel, and a Happy, Safe, and Reflective Holiday Season from Grubb Street.

Rest on the Flight into Egypt, 1879
Luc Olivier Merson 

More later,

Is Cthulhu REALLY a Great Old One?

Here's something that has always bothered me. In H.P.Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu", there's the following passage:

They worshipped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first men, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him

Boldface and underlines are mine.Cthulhu, who in later texts is recognized as a one of the Great Old Ones, is referred to here as being a "great priest". Does this mean that Cthulhu is a priest OF these Great Ones, or is he one of the Great Old Ones, and his position among them is that of a Priest (i.e. - he's the cleric of the party)?

Either way, it is is an interesting take on things. If he's a priest who venerates these Great Old Ones, he's subordinate to and separate from them, and the Great Old Ones (of which later writers have constructed an entire pantheon) are unknowable, godish beings who we have never really met. If is a priest among the Great Old Ones, what do these Great Old Ones worship?

Hang on, it gets even more interesting in the next paragraph.

Meanwhile no more must be told. There was a secret which even torture could not extract. Mankind was not absolutely alone among the conscious things of earth, for shapes came out of the dark to visit the faithful few. But these were not the Great Old Ones. No man had ever seen the Old Ones. The carven idol was great Cthulhu, but none might say whether or not the others were precisely like him. No one could read the old writing now, but things were told by word of mouth. The chanted ritual was not the secret—that was never spoken aloud, only whispered. The chant meant only this: “In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.

So no one has ever seen the Old Ones, but here's a statue of Cthulhu, which we know from the later in the story is a pretty fair representation of his titanic majesty.

So it seems, from this reading, that the entire later industry of Great Cthulhu as one of a pantheon of elder eldritch beings may be off. His fictional worshipers, as well as later real-world chroniclers, have confused and conflated the two, promoting the priest to the godhood itself. Of course, all of this is from a highly unreliable narrator, a mad and degenerate worshiper of these Great Old Ones, On the other hand this is a primary source, THE primary source, of Cthulhu lore.

Anyone have an theory on this?

More later,

And To All A Good Night ...

Grubbstreet wishes everyone a safe and sane holiday season, and a New Year filled with promise and hope.

Rest on the Flight into Egypt by Luc Olivier Merson (1879), MFA, Boston.

More later,

The Gaming News

There is a lot of gaming news that gets passed around these days. However, most of it is on Facebook, which means you will see it once, think that you might get back to it later, and then never see it again as the feed churns relentless onward. Here are some things of note from the past few days.

First off, Baker Street: Roleplaying in the world of Sherlock Holmes is for sale on RPGNow. This is a nice game which works off the very inspired conceit that while Holmes was off on his European Holiday (and the world assumes that he had plunged to his death at Reichenbach Falls), Watson employed talented amateurs to fill the Great Detective's shoes. Those talented amateurs would be the player characters, who negotiate clues and get to the truth of matters great and small.

As part of a stretch goal for the product, Fearlight Games produced a Baker Street Casebook, which involves a handful of talented individuals such as Skip Williams, Bryce Whitacre, Steven S. Long, and yours truly. Naturally, given the chance, I wrote about the goings-on at a club on Pall Mall where the younger members pinch policemen's helmets. Because I could. Find out more about it here.

Secondly, speaking of Kickstarter, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the talented and lovely Rob Schwalb has a kickstarter going on for his new project, a dark fantasy RPG called Shadow of the Demon Lord. The game has already burst past its inital and is wracking up the stretch goals even as I write this. Go check it out here.

Third, I am planning to go to GenCon in Indianapolis for the first time in many years, despite the best efforts of the Indiana State Legislature to convince me otherwise. The state legislature has passed a bill, SB101, which pretty much says you can refuse service to anyone as long as you belong to a faith that says its all right to do so. It is pretty much aimed at the GLBTQ community, although under the law of unintentional consequences, things can get out of hand pretty damned quickly. Being Indiana, the bill was passed by the legislature and now only needs the governor's signature.

Now GenCon is currently hosted in Indy, but is run out of this part of the country, and a goodly chunk of it and many other game companies are part of, or friends and/or relatives and/or co-workers of, the very community that the bill is targeting. GenCon put together a very cogent, polite letter pointing out that the convention brings some 50 mill into downtown Indy and, if they and their friends aren't wanted, they will gladly take that business to people who are more willing to treat their convention-goers with respect. A lot of the click-bait online sites are calling it a threat, but it sounds pretty damned calm and reasonable. You can read the letter here.

It is a pity, after spending years trying to convince people that they should actually go to Indianapolis in the middle of August (And I have BEEN in Indiana in August), they are now determined to flush all that away.

Finally, on a very sad note, I must report the passing of Mike McArtor. I worked with Mike on the D&D 3.5 Spell Compendium, which was pretty much my last WotC D&D project. Mike would go to work on Magic: The Gathering and for Paizo, and he and his wife joined our gaming group of a while, playing Call of Cthulhu. Mike died in a car accident yesterday, and I will honest, has left me rattled. He was a pleasant, talented, thoughtful young man, and the industry is lessened by his passing. Rest in Peace, Mike.

More later,

Evolutionary Wars

The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins, Free Press, Distributed by Simon & Schuster Digital Sales, 2009

How I Got This Book: Recommended by a coworker who name-checked a number of books he has been reading. Since I was looking for books to take on my Pittsburgh trip, I downloaded a couple of them onto my Kindle.

I've talked about my Kindle before, and find it to be an excellent travel book, but some volumes do not fair well on the device. This is one of them. Greatest Show makes copious use of annotations and footnoted sources (which it navigates well enough). It uses extensive black and white illos and tables (which reproduce badly) and color plates (which reproduce worse), and the bibliography and index sprawl over more Kindle pages than they really need to, since the multiple indents in their formatting do not come across easily.

And while it is tempting to think about this book's possible evolutionary success within the environmental niche of e-publishing, that would be pretty wrong. Because evolution by natural selection belongs to one particular science, and when you transport it to another field, things get dodgy fast (like the "Social Darwinism" of Herbert Spenser, which takes Darwin's biology and transfers it into a rationale of why Rich People need not feel sympathy for Poor People). While tempting (and I do it all the time), when you're talking about natural selection, the natural part of the concept is applicable.

In any event, the book was both a good summary of stuff I knew (speciation, continental drift, mutation) and things I needed updated on (protein folding, which is sort of organic origami). Dawkins is best known for his avowed opposition to the religious who reject Darwinism (and most of the post-15th century) out of hand. He fires more than a few high hard ones against the religious institutions and their minions, but over the course of the book, I find that I can understand where the religious-based evolution-deniers are coming from.

I mean, if evolution was a religion, it would make the Cthulhu Mythos look all warm and cuddly.

First off, it take an uncaring universe to its logical extreme. There is a pass-fail existence where the tests come continually and the price of failure is always death. Old-Testament Jehovah is more forgiving than this grim clockwork of action and reaction.

And it's about species, and not about you. Not only are you just another of the striver in the universe, success of your species means absolutely nothing about your personal needs. It is about a larger genetic grading, of which you are a very very small part.

And its not really about you species than about your genes, stupid. The entire purpose of natural selection is the guarantee that the most suitable genes survive. You survive only because your genetic package crafted a suitable housing to create more genes. In these terms, the childless are evolutionary failures (I can envision a conservative evolutionary distopia where children are mandated, and only tested and harvested before they can reproduce). Genetic duplication (with all of its additional mutations) is about as close to salvation as you can hope for.

And because it is about your genes, your fate is sealed at birth. Never mind the concept of "Grace" among us Protestants - this is worse. Your genetic makeup is sealed before you even attained sentience. And if that makeup is suitable for the current environment, or even if that makeup is outdone by the makeups of OTHER individuals whose mutations are better, well, it sucks to be you.

And in the face of all this, we have a strong strain of "human exceptionalism". Despite this supposedly uncaring universe, we are here, and thriving (mostly). We take care of our suboptimal mutations and, spitting in the face of nature, allow them to pass on genetic material. We also pass along a "soft" heritage in culture, art, and knowledge, which exists outside the hardwired chemistry and biology of our forms. You can make a case of both secular and religious thought as being in direct opposition to the uncaring clockwork of natural selection.

The big thing is, of course, that evolution is NOT a belief system, any more than gravity (also called "Intelligent Falling") is. It is a scientific tool that explains the natural world, and knowing where that tool can be applied (like a hammer to a nail) and when it shouldn't (like a hammer to a screw) is part of the process. To haul evolution into the court of beliefs is like hauling religion into the court of science. It is condemning those apples for making overly tart orange juice.

But if you consider science to be an alternate belief system (as opposed to, you know, science), the frightening nature of evolution is apparent. You can suddenly sense the palpable revulsion in the faithful to the threat of this line of thought, even though there should be no threat.

Lovecraft would, on the other hand, be delighted.

More later,

Grab Bag

First, I'd like to welcome author and 4E game designer Rob Heinsoo to the blogroll on the right. Rob promises more entries if I add him, so I'm going to hold him to this.

Also, I've been spending a lot of time with Steambirds, a brilliant little game by Andy Moore and Daniel Cook that evokes everything I like about Crimson Skies. The central conceit, that there is a more powerful engine available for flight, allowing heavily armored planes, fits nicely with the game itself. The interface is simple and the rules capture the basics of dogfighting while the alternate universe setting allows for non-standard weapons and attacks.

Finally, I've mentioned before that I've been listening to a lot of lectures on tape from the Teaching Company. One of them I enjoyed was on Lost Christianities, by Bart Ehrman, who is also the author of "Misquoting Jesus". Here's the first part of lecture by him that captures the gist of his larger lectures, and well worth listening to. You can follow the other sections on YouTube.
More later,

Bonfire of the Virtues

Depending on your political leanings, the debate last night was either an Obama victory or a very boring evening.

But I get tired of the politics, the economy, and the weirdness that results from a light comic book week, and I turn to the Citizens of Virtues site to become spiritually refreshed.

I'd recommend it to you, too.

More later,

End of World As You Know It

The world ended yesterday. Nuclear war, as I understand it. Yeah, I know, I missed it too. Just got too busy, and things backed up, and we had a game last night and before you know it, the day was done and so was the globe, all in a nuclear fireball.

No, really, this guy not only called for a nuclear war by yesterday if not sooner, but has gotten national press coverage for his statements. This despite being wrong before (September 12, 2006, for you apocalypse aficionados).

And it reminded me of the Millerites, who were the followers of minister William Miller and a predecessor of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Throughout the 1830s, Miller and his followers preached on the imminent return of Christ, no later than March 21, 1844. When that deadline passed, there was a reconvening and a reconfiguring using a different calender, setting a new date for April 18 of that year. When THAT day passed, they settled on October 22, a date now known as "The Great Disappointment" due to the lack of heavenly trumpets and ending of the earth.

And in the wake, there were a number of theories about what happened, ranging from the idea that doomsday was pushed back due to the inherent goodness of Miller's followers to the proposal that doomsday had happened, but it was a heavenly event and we just didn't get the memo.

Me, I think the minister pushing the current doomsday (who has the nickname "Buffalo Bill", which I think if from the book of Hezekiah) was just trying to spare us from another Friday the 13th. Nice try, but no mushroom cloud.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the Midwest has been wracked by heavy storms and floods. Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is underwater, and the man-made Lake Delton, near the Wisconsin Dells, has been swept away. Oddly, this doesn't seem to get the same level of press as a crazy preacher in Texas calling for doomsday.

The natives of Lake Delton describe the dam break as "The End of the World", and it is a horrible thing. But, alas, it the end of the world by water, not fire, so we can't even give "Buffalo Bill" half-credit.

More later,

Book of Hezekiah

"Jesus said," spake a co-worker, "God helps those that help themselves."

And overhering this, and being of both a theological and intellectually curious mind (and armed with the power of the Internet), I choose to find out where Jesus said this.

And found nothing. More interestingly, I found nothing in the Bible at all about that bit of advice (it exists in several proverbial forms, and was echoed by Ben Franklin in Poor Richard's Almanac). But most interesting of all, I found the Book of Hezekiah, from which this quote and similar imaginary quotes come from.

Proverbial biblical wisdom that is anything but biblical is attributed to the Book of Hezekiah, a Biblical tome which is the jackalope of religious texts, a left handed smokeshifter of the seminary, the inside joke among divinity students. There is no such book (kinda), but quotes that should be in the bible, but aren't (like "The Good Lord moves in mysterious ways" or "Cleanliness is next to godliness") are sent there, along with such near-misses as "Money is the root of all evil" (closer is the version "The love of money is the root of all evil").

Now I say the book of Hezekiah is "kinda" imaginary, because Hezekiah IS in the Bible as one of the Kings of Judah, and his story is told in Isaiah, Kings, and Chronicles - the Isaiah version could be a "book of Hezekiah", or at least a "pamphlet of Hezekiah".

But if someone is quoting chapter and verse from the Book of Hezekiah, they are bluffing you. Similarly, test out your Bible lore against an opponent by trotting out the book in a quote. If they smile and laugh, then you know that they know their Biblical chops.

More later,

Conspiracy

As a method of explaining the universe, conspiracy theory falls more to the belief/religion end of the scale than the knowledge/science end. The unprovable existence of a clique involved in world domination is more strongly related to the ideas of phlogiston and aether - substances that exist because they MUST exist in order to make the theory work.

That is not so say that conspiracies do not exist. Any gathering of individuals for a particular end can be said to be a conspiracy, particularly if that gathering is aimed at excluding others that might disagree. Price-fixing corporations, wheeling-dealing politicans, and bomb-planting terrorists all engage in conspiracies. But these conspiracies have a single goal (keep profits high, push a political agenda, blow up a building). The conspiracies of conspiracy theory exist as a self-sustaining creation with a broad range of ongoing goals, generally operating under the title "global domination". The Elders of Zion, The Illuminati, Vampires, and Doctor Evil are all examples of this type of conspiracy. Conspiracy exists as a verb, not a noun - it is something people are doing, not a structure that does many things.

All of which gets me to the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuits. A friend send me this link the other day, seeking to "prove" the conspiracy of the Jesuits by publishing a list of influential graduates from Marquette, a college in Milwaukee. I'm sorry, a JESUIT college, which is churning out influential JESUITs who are therefore part of the JESUIT conspiracy.

On that list are some people I know Carrie Bebris (author of the Jane Austin Detective novel Pride and Prescience), James Lowder (author and comic book editor - more on that last one later), and John Rateliff, who known in these pages as Sacnoth. John is that most dangerous of Jesuits, a Southern Presbyterian, who claims that he went to Marquette only for its Tolkien collection, but sounds much TOO EASY, so he MUST be part of the conspiracy.

I understand conspiracists, I really do. It is easier to believe in some world-controlling malicious organization (secret, of course) responsible for all the worlds' ills. It beats the heck out of the alternative - that we are hurtling randomly through an uncaring universe with no control and no ultimate destiny. We can take solace in the fact that even an EVIL plan is still a plan, and the existence of a greater force, be it god or conspiracy, lifts the burden of responsibility and action from one's own shoulders, and places it in a fictious entity.

And the thing is, I believe more in god than I do in conspiracies like the Jesuits. God's got more options.

More later,

Post-Game

A game is a game, and Seattle played a very good one yesterday. But what is interesting is the narrative that surrounded this game.

Media loves a narrative, a story which gives deeper meaning to mere recitation of facts. Sports provides a lot of potential for narrative, since it involves scrappy underdogs, unappreciated heroes, last chances of redemption, establishings of dynasties, and all sorts of stuff. Anything can provide the narrative, and, once found, it is cheerfully pounded into the ground.

Case in point, the posthumous fate of Sean Taylor, Pro Bowl safety for the Washington Redskins, who was killed in his home by an intruder mid-season. Since then, the Redskins have rallied, won their last four games of the season, made it into the playoffs, citing Taylor's memory as their spark, their "gipper" (As in win one for...). And that is a great thing, the team rallying behind a shared tragedy, and the NFL put Taylor's number (21) on all the helmets in memorial. A fitting and positive testimonial to the untimely passing of a great player.

But for the past week, we have been subjected to a relentless summoning of Sean Taylor's ghost, a carpet-bombing with his spiritual essence. The narrative was "Washington is going to go in and win for its lost comrade". Strong narrative, one of the strongest of the weekend's. And it was relentlessly pounded home in article after article, newsclip after newsclip.

And then the game hit. The Redskins went down 13 points with no response, and Taylor, their patron saint, was mysteriously absent from discussions. Had he forsaken them? But wait, two quick touchdowns in the fourth quarter and the 'Skins lead, and the announcers suddenly uncork about how Taylor was the spiritual leader of the team, bringing him out of the tomb like Lazarus, and how it was a near-certain thing that their guardian angel would see them through the last 8 minutes of the game (I wish I were making this up - it was like watching the announcers find Jesus in High Def).

But it was a game, a game played by mortals, and the Seahawks stiffened, rallied, and brought it back to win, 35-14. And suddenly the narrative, trotted out early, fell apart, leaving the announcers to pick up the pieces, sputtering praises of the late safety even as the Seahawks ended the Redskins season. When the 'Skins were ahead, the narrative was divine intervention from the afterlife to bring victory - the Hand of God. When they lost, their guardian angel was quietly shelved, and you could hear the disappointment from the announcers that reality did not comply to the cool story.

Of course, there is the little matter that the Seahawks won by 21 points, Sean Taylor's number? 21. I haven't seen anyone make a divine connection between the two facts. I wonder why?

More later,

Postscript As one narrative falls, another rises in its place. Seattle goes to Green Bay next week. While the narrative could be "Old coach comes back against QB he taught", it is more likely the narrative will be "Seattle QB said something stupid the last time the two teams played - will God punish them this time as well?"

Church and State

So here's where I shear myself away from some of my fellows. A lot of them (in mailing lists and in journals) are comfortable with the idea that science and religions are opposites. Black and white. On and off. Thinking and feeling. Up and down. One cannot exist in the presence of the other.

Actually, I think of them as salt and pepper, which can be combined (in various amounts) but really two completely different things, and have completely different paths to your kitchen table. Salt is a mineral, an edible rock that appeals to certain parts of your tastes, while pepper is a plant (a dried fruit of a flowering vine, actually), which appeals to other regions of one's taste buds. To say that the two are polar opposites is kinda silly, and in the same fashion I think the science/religion split is a false dichotomy as well.

In fact, the two work together better than working apart. Over the course of my lifetime, there have been Biblical stories that have benefited from scientific support. As a lad, the Great Flood was a "bible story", a religious tall tale with a moral ("Don't cheese off the Lord"). Yet over the years archaeological thought has moved from "was there a Great Flood?" to "Was there a single flood or a series of localized floods?") Indeed, discovery of previous legends, like that of Deucalion, act to support the existence of a biblical flood, not diminish it.

Similarly, faith has supported science over the years. Gregor Mendel (genetics), Roger Bacon (scientific method), and Copernicus (astronomy) were all men of the cloth and received encouragement from their church. There are the monks in Ireland who kept knowledge alive in the wake of the fall of Rome, and the flowering of Islam brought new concepts, even new words (Algebra, Algorithm, Alchol) into European thought.

I think that both science and religion are spectrums as opposed to absolutes, and when we have a hard orthodoxy in control in either case, there difficulty for the rest of us. In religion we currently seem to be under the sway of the orthodox forces, but not too many years ago we were in the porgressive grips of Vatican II and the Ecumenical Movement. In science we have seen where the hide-bound individuals who control the mechanisms twisting vital research for their own ends (Gallo and the HIV virus comes to mind). Yet in both cases it is moving across a spectrum (of course, in both cases, the installed orthodoxy wants to KEEP their power, and to that end seeks to exclude others who might disagree. The spectrum becomes a single wavelength).

There is pseudo-religion and there is psuedo-science. Both science and religion can have bad ideas, false leads and dead ends. The Catholic Church, seeking to answer the question - what happens to the unbaptized innocent? - ended up with the concept of Limbo, which was recently abandoned. Science similarly has a long history of mechanisms created to make the theory work - Ether (if light is a wave, how does it travel through a vacuum?) orphlogiston (what is that makes stuff burn?). Now dark matter and superstring theory are similar constructs. Both science and religion have a tendency to pick stuff up, examine it, and discard it if it does not work. In both cases, problems show up when the thought process becomes rigid and rejecting (Papal infallibility, corporate-paid research think tanks), seeking to exert temporal power as opposed to seeking knowledge, comprehension, and understanding.

Science and religion are playing fields, where conservative and progressive forces move back and forth. Orthodox forces in both seem to limit both what is going out (in the way of sharing understanding) and what is coming in (as far as believers or theorists who may hold contrary views). While it is very easy to identify an established extreme as an enemy, it is not representative of the entire spectrum. Indeed, calling all scientists heretics and all faithful people ignorant supports those orthodoxies by restricting the number of participants that need to be controlled, exiling those non-, un-, and wrong believers into some sort of darkness where they may be ignored.

The answer for both spectrums is "more light". More thought, more discussion, more examination of both science and faith. Because only then can either sphere move forward.

More later,

Jesus Has A Blog

Ganked from the Stranger (better resolution, but (often) NSFW):


The sound you hear is the entire Internet jumping the shark.

(Actually, from his blog the Big Guy sounds like the Geico Caveman, only whinier)

More later,

Article of Faith

I think the thing that really cheesed me off about the Mike Daisey situation was the fact that, while committing vandalism on his work, the assailant was justifying his behavior by being a Christian. I've gotten real tired of people using faith (in particular, MY faith) as cover for their moral cowardice. Hey you kids, quit hiding behind my cross!

MY cross? Maybe not. I caught this on Blog-Lebo, which bounced me over to the Post-Gazette, which made me kinda sad.

By a vote of 195-4, Beverly Heights Presbyterian Church in Mt. Lebanon has decided to leave the Presbyterian Church (USA) with the intention of joining a more theologically conservative Presbyterian body.

BHUP is the church I was confirmed in. I am Christian, subgroup Protestant, subgroup Presbyterian, subgroup United Presbyterian, subgroup Beverly Heights United Presbyterian Church, recently deceased. The church itself was originally in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, but moved south soon after the tunnels were punched through Mt. Washington. I grew up in this church, attended Boy Scouts in its basement, played in the bell choir (wonder if that is still around), and pretty much had Presbyterianism installed as my base moral operating system.

The church I remember was comfortable and welcoming. It was apostalic in nature, meaning it was about spreading the good word. There was a lot of sermons about making joyful noises and new wine, and the Book of Acts was a regular feature in Reverend Dosch's sermons. Reverend Dosch typlified a minister to me - a gentle, warm man who could roll into a hellfire sermon when the occaision demanded it. His wife handled the Sunday School and our confirmation classes, and I think it was from her that I got my interest in reading the Bible, and being able to treat it as simultaneously as a spiritual guide, historic artifact, and creative work.

But I went off to college, and despite a few feeble attempts to keep up with organized religion(as opposed to faith), I drifted away. Reverends Dosch and Barrett moved on to other churches. I remember there was some sex scandal long after they left, in the late 80s. The last time I was in the building was for my sister's wedding, which was well over a dozen years ago.[[LATER EDIT: Try 17 years - I found the pictures in a photo book from 1990]]

And in the time since then, the Church veered to the right, heavily. The new ministers and the hard-core faithful viewed the United Presbyterian area as not apostalic, but apostate, corrupted by the very world they sought to reach out to. Too soft on issues of homosexuality, women, and the existence of other faiths. The church leaders haven't paid their dues to the presbytery for seven years, and currently have stiffed them for 72 large. A solid chunk of the congregation lit out a few years back, taking elders and a pastor with them. to join up with South Minster Prebyterian down the road. At the time of the vote, the church was down to 267 members. As a point of comparison, my Boy Scout troop was half that size.

And the breaking point, if I'm reading this correctly, comes from an announcement from the General Assembly that "for us the assurance of salvation is found only in confessing Christ and trusting him alone". The words that have flung them into righteous fury is "For us", which implies that there are other methods of salvation. The current church is very much about absolutes - the phrase "your mileage may vary" is anathema to them. So they're leaving, going evangelical, and want the UP, who they've been yelling at for years, to turn over the church building itself to them. Because, of course, you will know us as Christians because we duck our obligations.

Now the thing of it is, I went back a few years ago and dug up the Presbyterian Book of Confessions and Book of Order, which are pretty much the church's dogma. I found that what was there pretty much jived with my own moral outlook. Open, positive, looking at root causes, and ecumenical in an environment that is becoming increasingly restrictive. I'm a bit more to the left than the church doctrine, but not as much as I thought I would be, and I support a lot of their historical and current initiatives. And my faith, the faith given me by BHUP and Reverend Dosch, has given me the guidance I needed, the encouragement to help others, and the aspiration to be better than I am.

And I am sorry to see my church go away, replaced with an identity that seems to be hostile to what it once stood for. But on the other hand, my faith is not a building, or a minister, or even one particular shade or sect of a larger construct. My faith is what gets me through the day, wonder at the world, and treat others as I would myself choose to be treated.

And if it sounds like I am endorsing faith and religion? Well, I'm just saying that it's worked for me, though your mileage may vary.

More later,

Daisey

So I've become a fan of Mike Daisey and have reviewed a lot of his monologues in this space. So I was surprised to find out that this past weekend he suffered a walkout by his audience and had his work vandalized.

What happened next is recorded here (complete with tape). The short form is that a self-identified Christian group took offense to Mike's use of profanity, got up and walked out. None of that is really out of line - in fact, I support it - I've been trapped in enough bad productions where the herd mentality kept me in my seat more than the action on the stage. Where it gets worrisome is that one of the adults walked up to Mike's table, picked up his glass of water, and poured it over his only copy of his notes.

OK, we've just crossed a line, here. I recognize your right to beat feet (though I'd quibble with your cause), but dousing the speaker's work? What kind of thuggishness are we talking about here?

And Mike, to his credit, pulls through it with openness and kindness. Me, I'd be coming across the desk and throwing elbows, but Mike kept looking for answers, which the vandal and the departees did not want to provide.

What Happened Next gets even more interesting, and is here. Mike tracks down the (loudly) self-identified Christian Group and finds that, once the press started asking questions, they morphed into a High School outing from Norco, California. He tracks down the individual who trashed his script, and he and Mike have a talk.

And what strikes me in his discussion is the cascade of excuses offered up throughout the process. Of why this lummox (I am not as kind as Mr. Daisey) felt he was justified to trash Daisey's manuscript:
* I am a Christian, so I was justified.
* There were children present, so I was justified.
* I didn't get the memo there was bad language, so I was justified.
* It was a safety issue, so I was justified.
* It was a security issue, so I was justified.
* You are a libr'ul, so I was justified.
* I was scared, so I was justified.
* I have anger issues, so I was justified.

Each one offered up and each one patiently knocked down by Daisey. And in the end the assailant mans up and apologizes. And Mike forgives him, because that is the worst punishment he could up with - the guy is going to have to deal with the fact that Mike Daisey, this profane liberal who incurred his wrath, acted more Christian than he.

Well, that's second-worst punishment. Because Mike is a monologist and he monologues his life. His assailant entered into that narative when he decided to annoint Mike's manuscript, and now is trapped there, as all of us are trapped in the memories of those we have sinned against. Forgiven, but not forgotten. Yeah, we're going to be hearing this tale as we move forward, and it will remain a self-inflicted wound for the guy who decided to vent his anger against the artist.

Mike Daisey will be talking about it. And, you know, he'd be justified.

More later,